"The hell do you mean, my kind? We're the same kind; fucking human," Deacon said out loud, the words bursting past his lips sharper than he intended, as internally he was panicking at Liam's words as his boots scraped faintly against the cube's floor as he took a step back.
"You can obviously identify me as human." His tone carried defiance, edged with disbelief, but the tightness in his chest betrayed the unease boiling under his skin. Three face-to-face meetings in four months, and each time Liam had hinted at the secret he'd been keeping from everyone – this time, he'd practically said it outright.
Because those words Liam had just said… those words had been the very same ones his father had said to him on the very day he set out to climb the Tower all those months ago.
What the hell…?
Liam didn't answer right away. His gaze stayed locked on Deacon, dissecting every twitch of his expression as if he could peel him apart with nothing but his eyes. Deacon, for his part, didn't back down – he couldn't.
Seconds stretched thin, heavy with silence, before Liam finally looked away.
His jaw clenched once, the faintest tell, before his attention shifted toward the purple wall at his side. For a moment, he showed emotions on his face that Deacon had never seen on him before in the almost 9 years that he'd known him for. Distressed, guilt, and confusion.
"Listen," Liam started, his voice, while quiet, was heavy. "We can deny it all you'd like. Say I'm wrong, or I don't know what I'm talking about, and how someone probably slipped something in my drink, and I'm on drugs or something. Fine. But listen to me and remember that I would never lie to you, never about this." He turned back then, his eyes snapping back to Deacon with a renewed sharpness. "Considering your circumstances, you cannot afford any more scrutiny on yourself. I've already had to intervene with House Heart due to Jeremiah's incessant digging into you after he learned you and your party raided his base and looted both them and their map."
Deacon froze as his thoughts went back to the time when he and his Party raided Jeremiah's and the other nobles' base back on Floor Three. Were there surveillance wards that we didn't pick up?... Or maybe a couple of the people that we knocked out got a good look at one of our faces, and people drew conclusions from there.
But… how? How the fuck did Liam even know about that?
His lips moved before his thoughts caught up. "How did you know I'm a–"
"Don't!" Liam's shout-hissed suddenly, which immediately made Deacon's words die in his throat.
"Don't say what you were just about to say out loud!" In the next instant, Liam was right in front of him, his hands gripping Deacon's shoulders tight enough that he could feel the pressure through his armor.
He has been consuming elixirs and pills that permanently boosted his physical stats, considering his strength shouldn't be this high as an archer, Deacon briefly noted.
Liam leaned forward and whispered, forcing Deacon to strain his ears to listen.
"The protections I've set around us aren't foolproof," Liam said with such heaviness it could be detected even from his whispering tone. "And we cannot risk you…" His words trailed for a moment, his grip tightening once before he slowly pulled his volume back down. "… Neither of us can risk you exposing yourself like that, as tossing your life to the sharks with such a thin life vest."
He exhaled through his nose, sharp and measured, before releasing Deacon and stepping away. His cloak shifted as he turned, the weight of his movements dismissive.
"Just… don't make any more enemies among the nobility. Not now. Not when eyes are already on you, and when the both of us have strength equivalent to a gnat to them," Liam said, his back to Deacon as he reached into a pouch on his hip. His hand emerged holding a small purple cylinder capped in white at both ends, the faint hum of mana radiating from it even before it cleared the pouch.
"Be wary of those high above on the nobility ladder and–"
"Wait." Deacon's voice cracked across the cube like a whip, stopping Liam mid-word. His hand shot forward, grabbing Liam's wrist tight, fingers clamping over the cylinder before Liam could so much as tilt it.
"You don't get to just drop cryptic shit like you're some mysterious big brother on a damn TV show, then vanish without telling me anything," Deacon said firmly, his glare bore into Liam's as he yanked his arm slightly back toward himself, refusing to let Liam just disappear on him after being incredibly vague. "Not this time. You're going to tell me what the hell you mean exactly, how you know what I am? And what do you mean by me being the last of my kind?"
Liam's eyes stayed locked on Deacon's. For once, he actually looked like he was struggling; his jaws were tight, grinding against each other, his lips pressed into a hard line, his shoulders wound up. He wanted to say something; Deacon could see it, could feel the tension rolling off him like heat. But no words came.
What did come, though, was worse.
At first, Deacon thought it was just the strain showing on Liam's face, but then his gaze dipped lower and froze.
Around Liam's neck, right at the base where his collar left the skin bare, a faint red band emerged into color around his neck and had begun to glow. And it wasn't just glowing, Deacon heard it before he fully registered it: the faint hiss, like water spitting against a hot pan, and along with it was the unmistakable scent of searing flesh that hit his nose.
"The fuck–"
Deacon's eyes went wide as a fresh wave of panic was now spiking in his chest as the band grew hotter, brighter, the skin underneath blistering within seconds.
It looked like Liam's throat was being cooked from the inside out.
"Oi! Stop!" Deacon barked, releasing Liam's arm instantly and lunging forward, his hands clamping down on Liam's shoulders as he began to harshly shake him.
He was under the effects of a Seal of Silence; in where if he were to attempt to reveal information regarding what was protected by the seal he would be unable to as his neck would be burnt so bad that the area of the band would turn to charcoal and kill him within less than a minute if he were to keep attempting to reveal the secrets of the Seal of Silence.
His voice cracked, urgency rising as he stared at the glowing ring searing deeper into Liam's flesh. "If you keep pushing against it you'll – fuck, you'll burn your own damn throat into charcoal!"
But Liam's eyes… his eyes were defiant, burning hotter than the brand trying to kill him. He was still trying. Still fighting against it.
"Listen! I fucking trust you, alright?!" Deacon's voice was raw now, ragged with worry as he shook him again, trying to break that suicidal determination in Liam's gaze. "I'll dye my hair. I'll stay the hell away from nobles! You don't need to kill yourself, you crazy bastard, just to—"
"… I-" Liam managed to utter as the band flared brighter, the sizzling turning harsher, skin starting to crack along the edges of the mark. Deacon felt the blood drain from his face as he gripped tighter, desperation cutting into his voice as he could see smoke rise from Liam's neck.
"I swear I'll stop asking about it! I'll drop it right here, right now – just fucking stop before you cook your goddamn neck through!" he shouted.
For a long, terrifying couple of seconds, as Liam showed no effort to stop or react to Deacon's words, and Deacon was just about finishing mentally debating on knocking Liam out in order to get him to stop.
However just as his right hand was about to move to knock Liam out, the molten-red glowing band from the activated Seal of Silence began to fade away. However, the faint whisps of smoke and scent of burning flesh still lingered in the area around Liam's neck.
Deacon released a breath he didn't know he was holding as the seal retreated back into its dormant state. It left behind a blackened scar; thin, no wider than half a pinky finger, but burned all the way around Liam's neck.
Liam tensely raised his left hand to his neck and felt the cracked, angry, raw, already blistered skin along the edges.
Deacon's eyes fixed on Liam's severely burnt neck as he stopped shaking Liam's shoulders. Why did he…? Why would he? Deacon questioned himself as his eyes scoured the defiant look on Liam's face. Liam was the one who decided to sever our friendship all those years ago, so why…
His emotions were a mess he couldn't untangle: panic, anger, guilt, relief, confusion, all knotted together.
"Goddamn it, Liam…" he muttered under his breath, as he quickly began to fumble for his burn salve that he packed into his Spatial Sling Bag. "Why the fuck did you…"
"...Penance." The word rasped out of Liam, broken by a raw cough that tore up his throat. He weakly lifted a hand, pressing against Deacon's arm to push it away. "Keep it. I have my own."
"Shut the hell up," Deacon cut him off, batting away the feeble resistance Liam put up without effort as his tone left no room for argument.
Deacon dipped his fingers into the salve and carefully spread it across the burned band of flesh on Liam's neck. The blistered skin twitched under his touch, but Liam made no sound beyond a sharp hiss through clenched teeth.
Something he learned from Sam was that, unlike normal burns which can heal over time, burns from a seal or via a magic ritual, couldn't be healed with a Health Potion. They could only get healed with your body's own natural healing factor or some rare and heavily monitored, and expensive tonics, and even then, it would only begin to heal after a week, even if you had already consumed the tonic.
Deacon dressing Liam's wounds was just a way for him to ease the pain Liam was experiencing.
Not a word passed between them as Deacon worked, silence pressing against the cube walls like a third presence. His hands moved with focus—salve first, then fresh medicinal bandages unwound, wrapped snug, and locked in place with a strip of mana adhesive. It wasn't neat work, but it was solid. A soldier's field fix.
Only when the final edge sealed did Deacon release a slow breath, his hands falling back at his sides. He took a single step away, shoulders still tense.
Liam reached into his Spatial Pouch, retrieving a thin, worn brown scarf. His fingers trembled faintly as he wound it around his neck, covering the fresh bandage with an almost practiced motion. He coughed once, rough and shallow, before speaking again.
"You must trust me on this, Deacon," Liam steadily said while straining to speak. "If people find out what you are… they will not stop until you're either dead, or strapped to a table to be torn apart and studied like the survivors of 012."
Deacon's brows pulled tight. "…Why? I don't even know what the hell my 'kind' is. Never even heard the word until the day I started climbing this cursed Tower. What even is 012? I've never heard it mentioned before. What happened in the twelfth year of the Tower? What relation does it have with me and my kind?"
Liam winced as a flash of pain crossed his face before he steadied himself again. He raised a hand to touch the scarf over his neck, pressing the fabric tighter against the burn to ensure that not a lick of his burnt skin could be shown.
"You can find your answers…" He coughed again, harder this time, before forcing the words out. "…in the restricted library of the Tower of Gold… on Floor Fifteen. And possibly in the Kingdom of Knights in the Sovereign Blades' library on Floor Ten, I heard they have a library that rivals the Tower of Gold. But you must be discreet, very discreet about searching for it."
Deacon's stomach tightened, his pulse hammering in his ears. He finally had somewhere to search for answers about what the hell a Jötunn was.
But his excitement cooled at the mental reminder of the difficulties he would have to face in order to enter those libraries.
The Tower of Gold only accepted mages of absurd talent, something he did not have, and the Sovereign Blades' trials, while focused heavily on melee combat, were something he was decently proficient in. The new captain hadn't passed more than five people in over thirty years to enter his Knight Order.
Both would be difficult for him to enter and search through.
"I can't stay here any longer," Liam broke into his thoughts, pulling Deacon's focus back. His tone carried weight, heavy and resolute. "The longer I linger, the more likely someone starts searching for me."
Deacon gave a sharp nod, exhaling through his nose, his Party waiting on him as he'd been out now for a couple of hours now and hadn't responded to any of their texts on his way to the Tower. "Same."
Liam's hand dipped into his pouch once more, drawing out the thin purple cylinder capped in white. "I'm sorry I can't say more. But be safe, Deacon."
Deacon held his gaze with his own expression turning solemn. "You too, Liam and... Thank you."
The cylinder snapped between Liam's fingers, and instantly, the cube around them shattered into shards of purple glass before sparkling into light.