Deacon picked himself up from atop the Antlion Prince's corpse, his body struggling to support itself as every ounce of strength drained from his torn and strained muscles and cracked bones.
His mind felt blank, stripped of coherent thought, unable to focus on anything except the vague awareness that he needed to move, needed to check on the others, needed to confirm what Blood Sense had already told him but what his heart refused to accept.
He staggered forward on unsteady legs that threatened to give out with each step, his gait uneven and lurching as droplets of blood, some red and some dark blue, rolled off his molten rock-covered wounds in slow rivulets that traced the dark red tattoos covering his skin before dripping onto the cracked, ornate sandstone platform below.
Where each footfall of his left behind a bluish-red print as he made his way across the platform toward where Sam's body lay motionless.
The vice-like grip that had been crushing Deacon's heart ever since he'd watched Esmerelda die in his arms, since he'd seen Jass hurled away and Sam speared through the chest moments after casting a spell to shield Bonehead and Jass, not himself, tightened with every step he took toward Sam.
The pressure of guilt, fear, and shame built and built until it felt as though his chest might simply collapse under it and crush his heart.
Standing above Sam's body with his sight drifting in and out of focus, the edges of his vision blurring and darkening before snapping back to painful clarity only to blur again moments later, the vice-like grip on his heart tightened even more as bile rose hot and acidic in the back of his throat while his gaze focused on the gaping hole where Sam's heart should have been, the wound so massive and terrible that Deacon could see straight through to the sandstone beneath his friend's body.
His eyes traveled upward from the gruesome injury, taking in the torn and bloodied state of Sam's robes, the unnatural stillness of his chest that would never rise and fall with breath again, before finally settling on the peaceful smile that rested upon Sam's face, an expression so serene and content that it felt like a mockery of everything Deacon was feeling in this moment.
Unable to keep his stomach's contents inside any longer, Deacon hunched forward as his legs gave out beneath him, his knees hitting the sandstone hard enough that he felt something crack but couldn't bring himself to care, and bile rose from his throat in a burning rush that spilled from his mouth onto the floor in front of him.
He retched again and again, his body convulsing with each heave even after there was nothing left to bring up, dry heaving that sent agony lancing through his broken ribs and torn muscles while his hands — or what remained of them, the mangled stubs that used to be hands — pressed against the stone to keep him from collapsing face-first into his own vomit.
As he continued hacking and gasping for air between heaves, silent mangled sobs overcame his body, his frame shaking uncontrollably as tears mixed with the blood and gore on his face, and his trembling right arm slowly, painfully extended outward to reach for Sam's gloved hand that lay still and lifeless on the sandstone, fingers curled slightly as though Sam had been reaching for something in his final moments.
"This was my fault," Deacon whispered through his sobs, his voice so broken and raw that the words barely sounded like language at all, more like the whimpering of a wounded animal than human speech. "All my fault... all my..."
His words trailed off into incoherent sounds as his body continued to shake in silence, grief, and guilt and rage swirling together into something so overwhelming that it threatened to drown him completely, to pull him down into darkness from which there would be no return.
A tall veiled figure wrapped in soft pink veils that concealed every inch of her skin appeared a few meters behind Deacon without so much as a shift in the air or a whisper of sound to announce her arrival, materializing into existence as though she had simply decided the space she now occupied was where she belonged and reality had no choice but to accommodate her will.
Immediately upon her arrival, hundreds of fireworks detonated into the air above the platform with thunderous booms that echoed throughout the massive chamber, brilliant explosions of color and light that painted the bloodstained stone in garish hues of red and gold and green and blue, the sound so sudden and jarring that it snapped Deacon out of his sorrowful state and threw him into one of confusion and panic.
Pivoting off the floor with speed that should have been impossible given his injuries, moving on pure instinct and adrenaline that his body somehow managed to summon from reserves he didn't know he still possessed, Deacon faced the direction of the explosions while crouching protectively in front of Sam's corpse, his ruined arms raising defensively even though he no longer had hands to fight with, only to find a tall humanoid being wrapped in soft pink veils standing a few meters away from him.
The figure waved what he assumed were hands at him in an enthusiastic gesture that he vaguely recognized as jazz hands, her movements cheerful and animated in a way that felt completely disconnected from the carnage that surrounded them on all sides.
Long, silky smooth black hair cascaded down her back, yet did not touch the floor, instead floating mere inches above the stained and cracked platform as though the strands themselves refused to make contact with the gore-covered sandstone platform beneath them.
[?]
W-What? Deacon thought to himself in confusion as he activated Identify on the figure.
"Congratulations on killing that mutated insect!" the veiled figure exclaimed, her voice bright and melodious and dripping with genuine enthusiasm that felt so absurdly out of place given their surroundings that Deacon's mind struggled to process what he was hearing.
Her mood seemed completely untouched by the carnage that littered the platform—the corpses, the blood, his mangled form. She was entirely unbothered by Deacon, who had only moments ago been sobbing over his best friend's body, and equally unfazed by the fact that she had appeared in the unmistakable aftermath of a massacre.
"You and your party really pulled off a miracle there. I mean to kill a mutated General of all things at your levels," she said brightly. "Truly spectacular work!"
Deacon stared at the tall, veiled woman, his mind cycling rapidly through immediate panic, confusion, and fear as his instincts screamed at him that she was strong, far stronger than anything he had ever come across before in his entire life, climbing the Tower.
Standing in her presence felt like standing before a natural disaster, like facing a sandstorm in the desert that towered taller than even the tallest of skyscrapers and tore through sand as though it were paper, destroying everything in its path with casual indifference to the devastation it left behind.
He would die if he did anything to provoke her ire; that certainty settled into his mind, the most sobering of thoughts that pierced through the fog of grief and self-loathing clouding his consciousness despite her excited and pleased tone suggesting she meant him no immediate harm.
"W-who—" Deacon stammered, his voice cracking as he struggled to form words through a throat still raw from vomiting and screaming. "What do you want with my friends?"
He took a step forward despite his terror, despite every survival instinct shrieking at him to run or submit or do anything attack this being, and widened his stance to cover more of Sam's body behind him, an action he didn't consciously decide to take but executed anyway, his body moving to shield his fallen comrade even though he knew with absolute certainty that he couldn't stop this creature from doing anything she wanted to do.
"I wish to reward you," the veiled woman replied mirthfully, clear amusement coloring her tone as she observed Deacon's attempt to further shield his fallen comrade's body with his own broken form, and with a casual wave of her hand the fireworks ceased their exploding mid-burst, the sound cutting off so abruptly that the sudden silence felt almost as jarring as the initial explosions.
Behind her veiled mask, she smiled as Deacon tensed visibly at her answer, his ruined arms coming up defensively even though he knew they would be useless against whatever power she possessed. "You and your Party helped me win a bet between myself and a... coworker of sorts, and a Djinn always pays back their benefactors — sowing good karma and all that, you know?"
Deacon simply stared at the so-called Djinn standing before him, finding himself at a complete loss for words as his mind tried and failed to process what she was saying, the information sliding off his thoughts like water off oil because none of it made any sense in the context of everything that had just happened.
He realized after several long moments of silence that she appeared content to wait for his response, that he wasn't going to immediately die just from being in her presence, and the realization broke through enough of his shock that he managed to speak again.
"Wh-what do you mean?" Deacon asked, his voice barely above a whisper as his muddied mind raced, thoughts flying past at a mile a minute while he tried to make sense of her words. "How did we help you..."
The pieces suddenly clicked together in his head, forming a conclusion that tumbled from his lips before he could stop them.
"... the Amulet of Solomon?" he murmured to himself in disbelief.
"Kind of," the Djinn shrugged.
"My coworker and I had a bet to see who would retrieve the Amulet of Solomon first; my coworker bet on the antlions, while I placed my bet on your Party." Her tone shifted slightly, becoming more animated as she continued, clearly pleased with herself for winning whatever wager they had made. "I mean, how could I not, given your performances over these past few months climbing the Tower — not to mention you being the last surviving Jötunung in the Tower, that really sealed the deal for me."
"I mean, the drama of all that happened all those years ago was just pure…" the Djinn said before letting out a pleased noise. "Magnificence."
Her voice became practically laced with desire as she spoke those last words, the sound dripping like honey in Deacon's ears.
But he remained rigid as stone, not budging an inch from his protective stance in front of Sam's body despite the shift in her tone.
"How do you—?" Deacon muttered in confusion as his mind tried to process the fact that she knew his true race, that she had somehow seen through the amulet's disguise that had fooled everyone else, before he dismissed the thought as irrelevant compared to everything else happening and forced himself to focus on what actually mattered. "What do you want?"
"As I said before," the Djinn said with a theatrical sigh that suggested she found his inability to understand mildly exasperating but not genuinely annoying, taking several steps forward that crossed the distance between them in less than a second, moving so fast that Deacon's eyes barely registered the motion before she was standing barely a foot away from him, close enough that he could have reached out and touched her if he still had hands capable of doing so.
Her eyes watched in mirthful amusement as the almost-dead, severely injured Jötunung in front of her refused to move from his position, still stubbornly shielding the corpse of his fallen comrade even though they both knew it would make no difference if she actually wanted to harm Sam's body. "I wish to reward you and your Party for both winning me the bet and providing me with such a spectacular performance, truly you all exceeded my expectations in every possible way."
Deacon found himself taken aback as he stared at her veiled face, watching as the fabric slowly lowered to reveal sun-kissed skin and bright lavender eyes that seemed to glow with their own internal light, though the veil stopped lowering once her eyes were revealed, leaving the rest of her features still concealed beneath the soft pink veil.
"But what should I give you and your Party..." the Djinn muttered to herself in apparent contemplation, her tone shifting to something more thoughtful as though she was genuinely trying to puzzle out an appropriate reward, tapping one finger against where her chin must have been beneath the veil. "I mean, I could grant you and your friends some rare artifacts, but those seem so impersonal, don't they? Or perhaps a location for a Hidden Quest on the higher Floors? No, that won't work either, there is no guarantee that it would even be beneficial to you, which would keep the karmic debt as it is..."
White noise began picking up in Deacon's mind as she continued talking, rising higher and higher until all he could hear was the rushing static sound drowning out her words, his consciousness narrowing down to a single point of awareness that kept cycling back to the same thought over and over again—they're dead, they're all dead…and she's talking about rewards on our performance.
"... I mean, I guess I could grant you and your Party access to the Karma Shop, that would certainly be valuable in the long run and—"
"My friends are dead," Deacon muttered, interrupting her mid-sentence, his ground and cracked teeth baring themselves toward her as his stance shifted from defensive to offensive despite the fact that he knew attacking her would be suicide. "And you think this is some sort of joyous event?"
His voice rose with each word, the volume increasing as rage flooded through him and temporarily overwhelmed the grief and exhaustion threatening to pull him under. "Like some sort of reward is going to make me feel better? THAT THEM BEING DEAD MEANS THAT LITTLE TO ME!"
He did not care that his resource pools were nearly depleted, that he was in no condition to fight, or about anything except making this being understand that nothing she could offer would ever be worth what he had lost.
"Are you done?" the Djinn asked plainly, her tone completely unbothered as she watched and listened to Deacon's outburst.
With those three simple words delivered in that flat, unaffected tone, Deacon heard something snap in his mind as a cord pulled too tight finally giving way, and his right stub shot forward without conscious thought, moving to slam into the face of the Djinn with all the force his battered body could still generate.
The strike connected with a loud smack that echoed through the chamber, but his rock-covered stub did not come into contact with flesh — rather it collided with something solid, like a wall, stopping less than a millimeter away from reaching the Djinn's face as though an invisible barrier had materialized between them at the last possible instant to prevent contact.
Looking unbothered in the slightest, the Djinn said, "Is your little hissy fit done?"
"W-what?" Deacon muttered as he slowly pulled his arm back, staring in confusion at the space where his strike had been halted, seeing nothing visible that could have stopped the blow.
The Djinn let out a sigh of annoyance and reluctance, muttering a choice few words under her breath that Deacon couldn't quite make out before audibly replying, "The Tower's protection system — it protects you from all the consequences of your actions when you climbers cross us Floor Guardians, preventing us from harming you in person and directly no matter what provocations you might offer."
"W-" Deacon started to say in confusion, but was interrupted by an exasperated sigh from the Djinn before he could form a complete question.
"Now, can we talk about your and your Party's reward?" she asked with the tone of someone who had been forced to repeat herself far too many times already and was rapidly losing what little patience she had started with.
"My friends are dead," Deacon muttered back with gritted teeth, his voice flat and hollow as he refused to let go of that single truth that seemed to be the only thing his mind could hold onto in this moment. "How many times do–"
"Oh, for the love of—" the Djinn muttered in exasperation, inwardly blaming herself for not clarifying this earlier and having wasted more time than she would have liked on this conversation. "Not all of them are dead, so can we please get back to giving you a reward now?"