The Ruby Magician

Landon rested his head against the stone wall, taking a rare moment of reprieve. He needed to center his mind. Everything was so muddy, so unclear, and he was starting to lose focus about the true prize.

They had to make it to the final floor. Completing the tower meant the possibility of obtaining true power. The masks were merely the means to an end, a trickle of the truth. He saw the potential future with his mask, sure, but he needed to become something more. Something above a mere human. Above a mere Climber.

He needed to ascend to become a true god.

The masks were the introduction, like small keyholes to peer through that showed the true light on the other side of the door. They were useful and powerful, but they weren't the final prize. To even wield the Mask of the Jackal properly meant he needed to be a god to abandon the curse and embrace it as an equal, not be beneath it. And that meant finishing the tower to claim his rightful place.

Deep inside him he knew the tablets were the key. Like the masks, they were separate parts of something hole, something fantastic when combined. Wyn, that bastard, hoarded the rest like a greedy noble stockpiling gold in their vault. Items weren't meant to be stored and abandonded. Here they were small markers of godly essence, and it was shameful to hide them away.

His lantern could reveal their true purpose, as well as additional secrets of the tower. It was still a considerable prize to Landon, but the tablets had been pulling his focus more and more recently like Corbyn to food. There was something unexplainable about the items that he knew made them incredibly valuable to their goal of reaching the final floor. Having both items in his possession would make the rigorous journey even easier, even if it meant killing the man and his guild to obtain it.

After the other three attacked the guild, Landon was furious. They jumped far too ahead of schedule, letting their emotions take over and refusing to be logical. He had laid out a simple plan to ensure they could take the tablets, but now that was ruined. Wyn was privy to their intentions and Aureus was on the hunt for them. If the showed up anywhere in the city for an extended period of time, the man would find them and subdue them. Maybe even kill them. He had a strange power that even Landon was unsure about.

But surviving and staying in the tower would be possible. They had just to follow his orders, something he reminded them of constantly. The other three weren't the wisest Climbers, but they were useful.

For now.

"Landon, why are we here again?" Jane asked. She rounded the curved walkway, nonchalantly avoiding the holes in the stony path without great effort. "This floor was a bother. Can't we just go back to the thirteenth floor? That had much more fun than this trapped mess."

Landon took a deep breath. Despite having a modicum of power, his teammates really were simple-minded. "There was a hidden area here. Whether it holds a tablet or some other unique treasure, we need to find it and claim it."

"I hated this floor," Octavius said, standing awkwardly around a hole in the ground. "I much prefer the thirteenth. For many reasons. Hells, even the fourteenth is better despite it being so simple!"

"Quit your bellyaching," Corbyn said, walking around or across the holes as though they didn't even exist. "It just means there are more things to kill."

Jane threw her arms up while she started to float in the air on wide, purple and black wings. "Your hunger truly knows no bounds! One of these days it will be the death of you!"

"Shut your fairy mouth!"

"If you could shut yours we wouldn't be in this mess!"

Landon wanted to sigh but refrained with great effort. The bickering was getting worse, their annoyance growing. Admittedly, his was, too. He ignored them, instead pushing on down the spiral stone path.

It didn't take long before they were at their destination. As he kept peering over the side of the slope, he saw the platform and small building that rested in the middle of the large, open cavern of the twelfth floor. A shrouded figure rested in front of the building, smoke completely obscuring it. It was huge, nearly the size of the building itself.

Landon stopped everyone just before the pathway merged with the large platform. He slowly withdrew his swords. "Vi, status."

Octavius stepped beside him, his mask glowing a faint orange. "It's a bone dragon. Undead. Looks like there's a power source where its heart should be, likely a core of some kind."

"Any indication on what kind of magic it uses?"

Octavius shook his head. "My sight is only piercing the shroud and is giving me a vague sense of it. Which is how I knew it was undead. But I'm guessing it's going to be like other dragons, with the addition of using death magic and likely very resistant to bladed weapons."

Corbyn chuckled a deep rumbling sound as he cracked his knuckles. Landon glanced at his swords before sheathing them.

"So the usual, then?" Jane said, slowly rising in the air.

Landon kept staring at the dragon while he activated his skills. He worked best with free movement, so Greater Speed Up and Greater Agility Up were his most commonly used skills.

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A thick green and black aura surrounded him as his Mask of the Jackal expanded his skills to nearly double in strength and duration. He took a deep breath relishing in the power, the environment around him slowing to a comical crawl.

"The usual," Landon repeated, then started trotting forward.

The movement felt like a steady approach to him but looked like a sprint to the others. They started their own boosts, with Corbyn's skin morphing into a copper brown tone while his body was coated in a black and red aura. Octavius started glowing gold as he grew wings and flew near Jane, who already had a purple and black aura surrounding her as she started to grow a magical ball the size of a barrel above her head.

When Landon was nearly on the dragon, red eyes formed within its smoky skull. It unfurled its wings and expanded, roaring a guttural roar that echoed off the stone walls and hollowed cavern. Landon disappeared in front of the dragon, causing its attention to be drawn elsewhere.

Corbyn also roared as he ran to meet it, his war cry nearly as thunderous and intense. He reached it head on, raising an arm to block the dragon's front arm swiping at him. The hit collided with his shoulder, scooting him on the ground but not knocking him off his feet. Corbyn's skin remained intact but his aura grew, and he channeled his fury by punching the dragon's other exposed front leg.

Bones cracked from his fist, causing the dragon to jerk its limb back and cry in pain.

That was when a magical ball the size of a plate smacked the dragon in the chest, coating its bones in purple. The dragon hardly responded to the hit, but then two more globs of magic hit it in the chest and neck, also leaving marks of purple that seemed to be slowly expanding on its body.

Lifting onto its hind legs, the dragon reared its body and slammed down onto the ground. Corbyn's cloak was shredded from the impact as he was knocked back onto his back. As he stood, his skin was slightly damaged, with orange light peering through the cracks.

He laughed as he drew the double bladed axe on his back. An axe that glowed a similar orange around its black blade and sharply pointed tip. The metal seemed to be blacker than night, as though born from the void itself.

While Corbyn recovered, Landon appeared, striking the dragon with furious and swift slashes of his twin short swords on its hind legs. The dragon snapped its head back and kicked at him, but Landon jumped and rolled to avoid the hit, his cloak billowing from his heightened speed. While he was durable, he wasn't nearly as tough as Corbyn, and a single hit from the dragon could seriously injure him or knock him out of the fight long enough to delay their inevitable victory.

More magical globs continued to pepper the dragon, and it finally noticed Jane still shooting at it from afar. It beat its wings to lift in the air but was caught by a golden barrier that it slammed into just as it rose off the ground. Flustered but not dissuaded, the dragon roared and lurched its bone head up, shattering Octavius's barrier as golden magical essence dissipated into the air.

The dragon resumed its flight, firing multiple shots of black energy at Jane. Each one hit and broke more golden barriers as Vi summoned them in the air. After the fourth one, he staggered in the air, breathing heavily under his mask and flying further away to avoid any type of engagement.

Then Corbyn was below the monster at its side, slicing the dragon's front leg with a heavy axe swing above his head. He was tall enough and the dragon was hovering low enough that he was able to make some contact. The blow impacted the bone hard enough to cause it to crack and bend sideways, and the dragon faltered in the air. Falling off balance, the dragon swayed to its side, its limbs writhing in the air as it fell to the ground in an awkward heap.

That was when Landon appeared at its front, his cloak completely gone. He was nearly as big as Corbyn, now, his skin a dark brown that covered long muscled arms with legs that bent backwards at the knee. His mask was no longer a mask - it was now his face, morphed into a beast with pointed ears and a long snout.

He tore into the dragon's purple chest, carving through the weakened bone with claws as long as daggers. His movements were a blur, both attacking the dragon while also ducking and dodging the dragon's errant swipes or bites. The monster was frantically trying to protect itself, chaotically attacking the direct threat in front of it.

His claws found the core in seconds. A core that was quickly destroyed as the dragon went limp, its cloudy shroud dissipating as its bones began to shrivel into husks.

Landon stood in his beastly form over the decaying dragon, breathing heavily with some gashes and cuts that bled black blood. He howled like a beast up into the cavern at his success.

As a golden healing aura surrounded him, his body started to return to a more human-like appearance. Octavius walked up beside him, inspecting his body. He nodded, satisfied with the single healing ability.

"You just couldn't let me have any of the fun," Corbyn said, his voice even deeper than before as it sounded more bestial than human. He still glowed orange through the cracks in his body, but they started to mend themselves as part of the essence from the dragon was flown into his body instead of out into the tower.

"I'm not here to have fun, you brute," Landon said, trying to calm his heavy breaths. "I'm here for that." He pointed straight ahead at the building that now sat unguarded.

Stepping over the loot pile of coins and potions, the four Climbers reached the door and opened it with ease as there were no locks or magical protective runes. The stone door creaked loudly as it swung open heavily, revealing a simple, single area with a large chest sitting on the far wall. It was wooden, nearly as big as a dining table, and rectangular.

"Another one?" Octavius sighed. "Gods these things are annoying."

Jane put her hands in front of her and summoned a large ball of swirling black and purple. It shot out of her hands faster than any arrow, slamming into the chest and exploding in purple fire that engulfed the entire wall and section of the room.

The chest mimic cried in pain for only a moment before rising on spindly legs and falling to the side, dead.

"Went for the big blast, eh?" Corbyn said, leaning against the wall.

Jane smacked him on his tanned side. "I don't want to mess around with mimics. Might as well kill them fast and fully."

Landon and Octavius walked up to the dissolving corpse, waiting to see if any loot was going to fall. When a brief mote of light appeared where the monster previously lay dormant, Landon nearly gasped.

"Are you shitting me?" Jane said, running up beside the pair.

Landon reached down and grabbed the item with shaking hands. Rising back up, he turned to the rest of his group, holding a large stone tablet.

"That makes three," Octavius said.

"If that welp was right, Wyn has several of them," Jane said, carefully reaching a hand to brush her fingers along the tablet.

"Which means they're either all found or nearly all found," Octavius added, similarly reaching out to the stone item.

"Staying outside in the city is going to be tricky," Landon said, not taking his eyes off of the stone tablet. "Aureus will find us quickly and hunt us down like dogs."

"We have more of the Dimension Crystals," Jane said. "As long as we take one each we can escape and come back here."

Octavius grunted. "I hate hiding out inside the tower. I'm already uncomfortable enough wearing the mask all the time, and now we have to eat, sleep, and piss in here, too?"

Landon wanted to berate the man but held his tongue. He actually agreed with him - the thought of practically living inside Alistair made his skin crawl. But hiding from Aureus was their safest move at the moment. It would take sleeping in shifts on floors, eating rations, and leaving only when the day ended so they wouldn't be torn apart by the tower changing its environment at the very end of each day. It was a miserable existence, but necessary to avoid being caught or killed.

It was just how Octavius complained about it, and complained constantly. It was grating. They all were uncomfortable at their situation - why make it worse saying it out loud?

"It's not so bad," Corbyn said, patting Octavius on the back so hard the man lurched forward. "At least we'll be alive."

Finally, he and Corbyn agreed on something. Landon considered that a miracle.

"So why don't we enjoy us living for the moment and clear our heads before we plan our next move," Jane said. "Maybe they won't suspect us attacking them so soon again?"

Landon nodded. "It's a good thought. I agree. We can recover and prepare and then tomorrow we'll grab those other tablets, even if it means blood will be shed."