The corridors of the lower dungeon stretched on, a labyrinth of translucent crystal and whispering light. Each wall seemed to breathe veins of silver pulsing faintly beneath their smooth surfaces, carrying both energy and sound.
Artorius walked barefoot through the pale haze, a metal collar cold around his throat, the chain dragging faintly behind him. The Tower no longer needed to restrain him; it owned his obedience in subtler ways now. Pain, blood, and the illusion of mercy. He was the Tower's caretaker now. Its favored experiment.
In one hand he carried a shallow basin that shimmered with strange liquid, not food in any human sense, but the nutrient serum the captives here survived on. It smelled faintly of salt, metal, and despair.
Every cell he passed was a window into a grave. Inside, creatures drifted in crystal cages: broken dragons whose scales had grown like tumors, others with crystal spines, beasts whose bodies were more geometry than flesh. All of them watched him pass with dim, resigned eyes. Some reached out when the bowl neared their cage, mouths opening in wordless need; others recoiled, snarling, feral beyond recovery.
He moved like a ghost through the ranks of the damned. The hiss of his breath echoed off the glass. He didn't think anymore. Thinking hurt. Feeling hurt worse.
He was halfway down the second row when something called out to him. It was like the annoying buzzing of flies at the edge of hearing. He tried to ignore it as he'd learned to ignore everything going on here but it grew incessant, nagging, more persuasive, impossible to dismiss. He paused, the chain clinking softly as he turned to face the caller.
Inside one of the prisons was a creature no longer than his arm, the creature drifted lazily in the air as if gravity had forgotten it. It was a worm-like dragon, scales pearlescent in the dim light, its whiskers long and thin as smoke. Tiny limbs tucked close to its body, and from the end of its snout dangled a droplet of snot.
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"There you," it spoke as he felt something for the first time in a long time, his numbness cracked. The fog in his mind thinned. "Are you back to your senses?"
"...what was that?" Artorius whispered, really feeling those last words as he touched his cheek.
The little dragon blinked slowly. "A slap," came the dry reply, echoing directly inside his skull. The voice was ancient, roughened by disuse, and entirely unimpressed. "You were walking like a corpse. Thought I'd test if there's still a soul in there."
He froze. "You can speak?"
"Clearly better than you can think." The dragon, if one could call such a thing a dragon yawned, revealing tiny translucent teeth. "Name's Ouroboros. Old Serpent. The Worm. Sage of—well, never mind. Not that it matters down here.
It gave a lazy flick of its tail. "Anyways you should be able to communicate with every creature down here now!"
Artorius stared dumbly. "You're one of them? Another experiment?" He blamed his brain which was playing catch up after the haze he was in.
Using inspect he saw it read; [Wisdom Dragon — Level 10]
"First of all that is rude," the little floating dragon remarked as if sensing he inspected it. "And to call me one of them? I was here before half these bastards were even born. Before your keeper upstairs lost his mind to vanity and started playing god with other creatures."
Artorius set the bowl down. "You know… about him."
"I know everything about him," Ouroboros muttered. "He calls himself the Noble Dragon of Silver Thought, a brood of Seath. A wantable researcher who is more obsessed with worshiping himself and perfecting himself. You should have seen him then so obsessed with the purity of knowledge that he plucked out his own eyes to stop seeing imperfection."
The worm floated closer to the barrier, its breath misting faintly against the crystal wall. "And what about you, little dragon boy? Why are you still breathing his air?"
Artorius hesitated. "I don't know."
"Yes, you do."
His hands tightened around the bowl. "…Because I'm too stubborn to die."
"Good." The little dragon's eyes gleamed. "That's the start of every rebellion worth remembering."
Artorius looked away, scanning the rows of cages. He rather put aside thoughts of fighting back until he stood a chance. "How long have you been here?"
"Long enough to have outlived every experiment before you," Ouroboros said casually. "And long enough to stop counting. You'd be amazed how eternity loses its charm after the first century in this Nest."
Artorius felt his jaws drop, this thing was that old? Getting back on topic, he asked. "Why hasn't he killed you?"
The small dragon smiled or something close to it. "Because he can't. Or won't. I'm… useful. I know things he doesn't. That drives him insane."
For the first time, Artorius almost laughed. He knew he was looking at a trouble-maker. "You're enjoying this."
"Of course I am. I've been trapped in this glowing tomb for longer than your bloodline's been crawling upright. I take joy where I can, especially in watching the chosen ones squirm."
He glanced back at Ouroboros, who twirled lazily in midair. His mirth couldn't hide the sadness in his gaze and the exhaustion in his tone. "I'm no chosen one. If that was the case why would I be trapped here far from home."
"Isn't this your home?" the serpent-like creature asked as it narrowed its eyes at him.
Changing topic, Artorius asked, "Why help me?"
"I didn't say I would. But I am curious. You look interesting."
Artorius stared at his hands, at the faint golden light pulsing under the skin. This had to be his adaptation at work. "It's good to know I'm fascinating at least."
Ouroboros grinned, wicked and amused. "Now that's the spirit. Don't lose that, boy. The Tower thrives on despair. It drinks obedience like wine."
The dragon's tail flicked, tapping the inside of the barrier. "Keep walking your rounds, caretaker. But when you come back tomorrow, bring me something better than that slop. Maybe a story. I haven't heard one worth listening to in years."
Nodding Artorius turned to go and he looked at all the prompts he got. There was so much he hadn't dealt with that it flooded in all at once.
Congratulations! You have leveled up.
Race: [True-Blood DragonMen] → Lv. 4
Congratulations! You have leveled up.
Race: [True-Blood DragonMen] → Lv. 5
Stat gains: +1 STR, +1 CON, +1 DEX, +1 Per, +1 CHA
Gained New Mutation: Draconic Communion
Skill: Standard Tongues(Common) has been subsumed!
Congratulations! You have leveled up.
Archetype: [Leader] → Lv. 4
Stat gains: +1 INT, +1 WIL, +1 CHA
Congratulations! You have leveled up.
Archetype: [Leader] → Lv. 5
Stat gains: +1 INT, +1 WIL, +1 CHA
Gained New Trait: Stoic
Congratulations! You have leveled up.
Class: [Storybook Squire] → Lv. 4
Looking at the sea of messages he got, he felt overwhelmed but he honed in on the two new things, his new mutation and trait. And the lost of one thing, a skill.
Standard Tongues was just gone, he wondered if that meant he could not speak with other people now?
Draconic Communion(Rare): You may speak directly to the soul of dragons. Share or exchange intimate thoughts and feelings on a mental or spiritual level. This is a soul mutation!
Stoic: Bears pain, stress, and other negative effects without issue; steadying presence for others that can inspire or intimidate.
He stopped, staring at the cascade of text. His breath came shallow, ragged. It had been so long since he was out of it, he'd even noticed his progression.
So it looked like he had to get to level 5 to unlock new skills, mutations and traits. He wondered if the next milestone was 10 then. He could feel his class was close and wondered what he would get at level 5.
Nonetheless, this was all a great boon. Reading it though, he didn't know what they did, only experimenting would help him figure it out. Though he was constantly under watch here as even the tower had eyes. So he needed to keep it under wraps for now. Hopefully these were the tools he needed to put down this mad creature once and for all.
-
Artorius returned to the lower dungeons again and again, bearing the basin of nutrient fluid. His chains had grown lighter, his obedience smoother. To the Noble Dragon, he was a perfect subject now, compliant, conditioned, loyal enough to be trusted to wander among the failed experiments unsupervised.
But loyalty, like everything in the Tower, was an illusion. And somewhere between the cages and the humming light, he began to converse and plan with another.
He did his rounds, bowl in hand, through cell after cell: the half-formed, the unmade, the grotesque marriages of flesh and crystal. Eyes tracked him from amber cages; some pleading, some empty, a lot angry.
Ouroboros was always waiting. The little worm-dragons' cell never dimmed, its walls thrumming faintly with strange resonance. Sometimes he floated near the glass, half-asleep and mumbling to himself; other times, he coiled around himself in thought, eyes flicking open the moment Artorius drew near.
"Well, if it isn't my favorite custodian of despair," he said in greeting, voice dripping with mirth. "Tell me, how fares the glamorous life of the jailer's pet?"
Artorius knelt, pouring the shimmering feed into a funnel etched into the ground. "Same as always. Wake. Obey. Bleed. Repeat."
"Efficient. Boring. I disapprove."
Artorius managed the faintest smirk then looked around to see if they were being watched or listened to. "Tell me, what is this place really?" he asked. He knew besides the cruel creature another problem he would have is the tower so he needed to figure a way to deal with it.
"You're finally asking the right question." The little dragon's body said, drifted closer, his eyes glinting. "This Tower," he said, "wasn't always a prison. It was once a spire of knowledge, the Ivory Observatory. Dragons of all sorts who had interest in magic would gather here to unravel the structure of creation itself. They called it the 'Tooth of Heaven.'"
He floated near the glass, whiskers trailing in the air. "But knowledge does not stay pure. The one you call the Noble Silver Dragon, Seath's follower, he wanted to see everything. Understand everything. So he began to thread places he shouldn't have, take apart his brethren to understand the secrets of dragon-kind."
"That is fascinating and all, but how do I take down this place or take control of it?" Artorius addressed his main concern. He liked a good story just like the next person, but when his life and sanity was on the line he could do without.
Chuckling, the old dragon shook his head, "You young whipper-snappers of no appreciation of a fine tale. The answer is in what he did. Do you hear screams sometimes in the walls?"
"Yeah…" Artorius answered, he thought those were mostly prisoners like him screaming in pain, but now that he thought of it the creepy dragon always did keep his experiments private and secure.
"Those aren't machines or prisoners if that is what you thought," the dragon stated as if reading his mind. "They're voices of all his subjects that went under his ministrations. They merged their consciousness into the Tower itself. They power this place now, eternally dreaming, eternally screaming."
"I see now," Artorius connected the dots. "If I let them loose then he will be in a whole lot of trouble."
"Now you are getting it," the dragon grinned.
"So tell me how do I go about doing that…"
-
Another day, another feeding. Artorius came bearing the same basin, but this time the fog of routine was gone. He'd begun to see the Tower differently, not a cage, but a living thing made of stolen sentience. And now that he knew it wasn't just his mind playing tricks on him as he heard whispers, he paid closer attention to them and learned a lot.
When he neared Ouroboros's cell, the worm was already waiting, coiled like a philosopher on a perch. "I spoke to one of them," Artorius said quietly.
Ouroboros tilted his head. "One of what?"
"The walls," he said as if it was the most obvious thing. If the tower wasn't filled with conscious beings, people would have thought he was insane
"You understand what they say?" the dragon asked.
"Yeah, don't you?" Artorius thinking that everyone was like him.
"No… so what did it whisper?"
"That it remembers the sun," he replied, what the long dead spoke about was a bunch of random stuff. Sometimes he caught onto some insightful stuff but other than that they were like a broken record.
"Alright now that you are done playing around. Tell me what's the plan?" the dragon inquired.
"What plan?" Artorius couldn't tell what he was on about.
"Great, you have no plan to escape!" the dragon shook its head.
"Well hey it's a working progress," he defended himself. He couldn't admit he was hesitant of trying his luck on fighting the thing even if the dead would come to his side if he let them loose.
"Alright tell me what I'm working with here?" the dragon changed the topic.
"What do you mean, my race, class, and archetypes?" Artorius asked.
Whistling out loud, Artorius quickly told it to lower its voice. "Do you want our heads removed?"
"Calm down, it's fine. That is a very great accomplishment, young one, having unlocked all three! It's the triumvirate, you are now on your path and ready to ascend!"
"So is it hard getting all three?" he asked out of curiosity.
"Well for your race you are born with that, no changing it. For your class, yes you will need to find & emulatethe role of a great individual. For your archetype you will need to discover yourself or some bulshit."
"Well that is not what happened to me," Artorius remarked. "For my class I got this token kind of like this," he said, bringing out the Lance class token. He thankfully had his stuff still as the thing barely had any interest in what he had more fascinated with his blood.
"Yeah if you can't meet the real deal or disciple of their path, you can use that. It holds all the crystalized knowhow of the specific class, some nifty stuff the system can do."
"On the system, it is what gave me my archetype!"
"Wait, why would the system let you choose your archetype… Don't tell me," it muttered under his breath. Then peering at him closely, it asked, "Are you from a newly initiated Universe?"
Artorius had to give it to the dragon, it was one smart cookie even with a few details it somehow figured him out. Still he was against the wall here and could use any help he could get, "Yeah, I'm not from here. I got teleported by the system into this place after my home universe got assimilated."
"So what era are we in? Is it the 883th now?"
"Are you talking about which universe?" Artorius asked, trying to recall all the messages he got when the system first appeared. "I think it was the 999th!"
"My how time flies," the dragon muttered, and for the dozenth time Artorius wondered how old this creature was.
"Well none of that stuff matters now, tell me about your race and its mutations! That is dragon related if I'm correct."
"It's called True-Blood Dragonman," he answered honestly. "I have two mutations so far, Draconic Communion and Draconic Adaptation."
"I never heard of that strain, but there are countless draconic species which are too many to count, but I know those two mutations, they are very good," the small dragon stated.
"Yeah?" Artorius asked dryly. "Doesn't feel that way."
"That's because you're using them like a hatchling uses fire—just enough to scorch itself." Ouroboros's tone softened slightly. "Draconic Adaptation is a very powerful and dangerous mutation which needs a lot of work but it lets you basically adapt to anything and quickly evolve to any situation, automatically gaining the necessary attributes to face the threat. Most dragons with that ability are basically roaches, immortal in a way, if you don't kill them right off the bat then they will quickly get used to and overcome whatever you throw at them."
Nodding his head, Artorius figured as much he only wished he had the chance to train this ability but all he had been doing here was trying to survive and get by day to day. "Next that Draconic Communion mutation is also very good. I would have done anything to get such a great start. It allows you to speak soul to soul dragons."
"Is that is?" Artorius honestly wasn't impressed. He just didn't see the upside. Yeah, being able to talk with the residents here was useful but besides that…
"Who even raised you?" the small dragon asked, offended. "Why is it that ingrates get all the good stuff! Just talking, he says!" Facing him head on, the creature looked as if it wanted to bite its tongue. "Communion is a lot more than just being able to understand and talk with dragons. It's… how do I put it so you can understand."
Staying silent for a moment, collecting his thoughts, the dragon took on a more solemn atmosphere. "Tell me, boy—do you know what language truly is?"
Artorius hesitated. "Communication?"
"Wrong," the worm said. "Language is creation. When you name a thing, you define it. When you define it, you change how it exists. Dragons learned that before the stars cooled. Our words are not sounds. They are truths! Every syllable a law. Every utterance a command."
The dragon's voice dropped, low and reverent. "Through Communion, you do not just talk to dragons. You feel them. You understand them. You learn not just their names, but what it means to be them. You drink in their memories and existence. You breathe their instinct. You join them and become one! And if you're strong enough, if your soul can handle it, you speak as one of them."
"Interesting…" Artorius said slowly, careful not to offend the dragon. "It still just sounds like talking on a much deeper and personal level."
The dragon stopped. It turned its head. And laughed, not a mocking sound, but a low, ancient chuckle like cracking stone and falling tree. "You poor slow, little spark."
It turned its gaze upward, to a sky that suddenly seemed far too small. "Before flame, before light, before even the thought of gods—there was the Voice. It was not spoken. It was being itself. Every dragon carries a spark of that primeval chorus, the Breath of Creation & Destruction that sang the universe awake."
The dragon's pupils thinned to slits of molten gold. "To commune with dragons is not to speak to them. It is to speak as one of them. It is to awaken the echo of the Voice buried within your soul, to alight with a sound that once forged continents, swallowed empires, and taught the stars how to die."
"Fascinating," Artorius said, his mind filling with imaginations. "So I can do magic!"
"Dragons do not 'cast' magic," the dragon looked so offended it was as if he just killed his dog. "We are magic. Our breath does not burn because we learned a spell, it burns because we will it to burn. Our roars split the skies not because we trained them to but because the sky listens to us. We speak the world's language."
"Fine, fine," Artorius said, trying to calm its temper. "Call it what you want! Can you teach me?"
-
The lessons began that same night. Artorius sat cross-legged in front of the crystal wall, his palms flat against the cool surface. The entire dungeon seemed to hold its breath. Ouroboros floated within his cage, a faint glow rippling down his scales like moonlight on water.
"Forget the tongue," the dragon said softly. "Forget the mouth. The voice you're trying to use isn't in your throat, it's in your soul. Breathe. Use your very being to speak."
Artorius closed his eyes. The air pressed against his chest, thick with invisible tension. He could feel the Tower's pulse beneath his feet, a deep, slow rhythm, steady as the tide. "Now," Ouroboros whispered, "don't think of a word. Just think of the general concept of what you wish. Fire is always the easiest for young ones."
Doing as told, Artorius inhaled deeply and brought up in his mind eye a flame. He thought of how hot it was, the height of it, its make up. "Nothing," he said, opening his eyes after what felt like an eternity.
"Of course you got nothing, this takes years of practice. However with your mutation you can learn from other creatures what Words they master, basically giving you a shortcut. That is why that mutation is a cheat. Forget about your first one, which is also a cheat. Now that I think about it, you are a cheat!"
"Alright, alright," Artorius chuckled. "Is there any creature in the tower that knows any Words I can learn from them."
"As if," the creature snorted. "They are hatchlings like you, the only one I can say knows a word is the Tower Master. He knows the Word, Crystal!"
"Is that why he was impervious to all my damage?" he wondered out loud. Then facing the old dragon he asked, "What about you, Ouroboros? You are an ancient and revered dragon, you must know a lot of Words."
His complements seemed to have pleased it as it rubbed its whiskers happily, "True, true but I forgot all the words I knew," it stated.
"What? That can happen?" Artorius asked in surprise.
"Well not really, but my circumstance is special," he replied. "Now we will need to do this the old fashion way, no two ways around it."
"Alright," Artorius said with a sigh, a bit disappointed he couldn't take advantage of his mutation but quickly getting back to practicing. He needed every tool he could get his hands on if he wished to get out of this place and more importantly get his revenge.