The first red flag was that Eldingar didn't flit to and fro all around his lair checking everything the contractors had chopped and changed. He just walked straight in through the new front door and made a beeline for his hoard.
He'd paid for quick and the Plutocracy labourers had given him quick - they'd made it out to the spire in record time and laid into it immediately, a pair of earth elementals tunnelling straight through the front of the rocky edifice as if it were soft cheese before their shovel-like hands. The gargantuan workers turned the raw stone as malleable as mud with but a touch, and they performed the larger-scale parts with almost breathtaking efficiency. The mortals followed closely behind, carving away and smoothing over the excess before the contact magic wore off, fearlessly pursuing the stony titans down into the freshly-excavated depths. Jun-ho watched it all from his scaly coils with open interest. Makram just floated away to find a less noisy place to nap. Belial only showed up later, once the work was starting to wrap up. That Eldingar was the last one home seemed curious. That he didn't come home all night was almost worrying.
"Oh, hey!" Belial waved at Eldingar as he passed. "I was just wondering what... kept you." His hand slowly lowered as the dragon nearly passed him without so much as a backwards glance.
"Mm? Oh, nothing much. Had to deal with a few financial wrinkles," Eldingar replied, waving his hand dismissively. "Nothing to worry about."
"Hey! You're back!" Jun-ho launched himself forward and half-slid, half-skidded to a stop beside his strangely-still-bipedal blue dragon host. "You should really check the rooms they added! They're still kinda basic at this point but the layout's all there and there's some furniture so it almost feels like a castle now!"
"That's nice," Eldingar replied, and the second red flag was that he was disinterested in entirely the wrong way. Granted he certainly sounded a little irritated and long-suffering which was very him, but there was a note of feigned interest and that was certainly a new companion of Eldingar's. "Look I'm mostly just in and out, I came to grab the map and take another look at the lay of the land, so to speak. I'll be back when the job's done properly so there's a finished lair to look at."
"Okay," Jun-ho replied, a little dejected, and slumped down with his chin on his crossed forelegs. Eldingar walked on, crouched down beside the hoard and started to dig through in search of the map tube. The lair was quiet for a spell, filled chiefly with naught but the jingle of coin rattling against jewels and cascading down and around a pair of scaly forearms thrust almost elbow-deep into the pile.
"Having a senior moment already?" Makram remarked, reclining on his cloud not far from Eldingar shoulder. "How tragic. Kicking in at a fresh young century and change - what will you be like when you get older? I do hope for all our sakes you remain continent."
"Not now, ifrit," Eldingar grumbled, searching through the gold with increasing irritation. Makram's eyes slowly narrowed, his head slowly rising off its lazy perch on his hand.
"Are you looking for this?" he asked loftily. Producing, the moment Eldingar turned his head and looked, a tightly-furled scroll half hanging from a travel-worn leather case. A few trickles of gold dust wormed their way between his fingers as he took hold of it, wiggling it for emphasis.
Eldingar scowled. "Give that back to me. I don't have time nor am I in the mood for any games right now."
Makram slowly lifted his eyebrows. "Hm. I see." He glanced at the map-scroll in his hand, then back at Eldingar.
And immolated the blue dragon in an instant golden pyre.
"MAKRAM!" Jun-ho leapt to his feet in shock as the unnatural conflagration climbed higher and higher, throwing bright light and darker shadows madly across the contours of the cavern walls. Belial started forward in the background, Jun-ho mostly paralysed with in decision, and all the while Makram kept his hand raised to sustain the fire.
"Are you new at this or do you just take no pride in your work?" Makram asked over the roar of the flames, dismissing the random map back to where he'd found it. "I'm definitely going to kill you either way, I just wanted to know for my own interests."
Something shifted within the pillar of golden flame, forcing even Makram to sit something close to upright. There was a flash of heat, movement as quick and sharp as a sword-slash, and all at once the magic was simply cancelled. Flames cut like stalks of barley, severed at the root only to fade away. The shape within, not even close to Eldingar any more, settled into a much more relaxed stance.
It wasn't a mortal either, that much was plain as day. Oh it was person-shaped enough, sufficient to pass at a glance - but in these conditions, allowing itself to be studied like a work of art, the differences were striking. Though its features marked it as native to the land across the sea, not Jun-ho's homeland but close enough to be lumped in by the casual viewer, its skin was an impossible milk-white, so flawless it barely seemed to have pores. Its long, flowing locks of hair were the same colour and glossy as silk, easily reaching its waist - and perched atop its skull, emerging from its hair like those of an arctic fox tentatively peeking through fresh snowfall, were a pair of triangular vulpine ears. A pair of slit-pupilled amethyst eyes stared out at the assembled three 'tenants' of the spire, the lips of matching colour below quirked up into an all-too-confident smirk that exposed a pair of almost dainty fangs. All over its face it bore bright scarlet markings, made too crisply and too exactly to be makeup; eyes highlighted as if by thick, winged eyeliner; a circular red mark adorning its forehead flanked by a pair of curves with a single solid line rising up beyond the hairline; and one more set of lines that conformed to and highlighted the contours of its cheeks, almost like whiskers.
Its actual garb seemed almost inconsequential, but it bore noting for its sheer opulence. It had the air of something once simple and sacred that had been altered, gaudily and mockingly. A pair of loose-fitting pleated pants in rich indigo, the pure white folded jacket trimmed with the same, a rigid purple choker sealed around its neck. Its feet, barely visible beneath the hems, were bare and black as ink, each toe tipped in a short, curved claw. No prizes for guessing then, even before it produced a paper talisman from within its voluminous hanging sleeves to cradle like a dagger, that its hands were similarly black and clawed. And then, the finishing piece - the fox tail swaying free from its tailbone, golden-white and bushy as a paintbrush.
"Be nice," Takara said sweetly. "I'm only here for the map. I won't touch the rest of the gold even for a souvenir."
"What did you do to Eldingar!?" Jun-ho demanded.
"What? Oh, the real him." Takara tittered to themselves. "Oh nothing. Just a little prick to the tongue while he slept - nowhere else to draw blood, you see. A simple spell. And temporary, as you can see."
"Well, I'd like it to be made perfectly clear - I absolutely do not care," Makram said. "He's not going to let you live either way once he finds out you tried to steal from him, and you're annoying, so-"
And then with a snap of his fingers he attempted to immolate Takara again. The foxperson was quicker, hurling the paper tag to the stony floor where it promptly erupted into a vast, crystalline wall of quick-growing ice. Boiling water splashed across the ground and thick columns of steam rose as fire met ice, but the infiltrator was unharmed. They darted around the ice, aiming for a better angle on Makram only to run afoul of Belial. The middle-aged demon seemed to just lurch into 'combat' out of simple reflex, eschewing whatever spells he may or may not have had in favour of trying to tackle Takara and restrain them with his superior brawn. Takara was much too quick, in physical speed and willingness to commit violence both. They raked their claws across Belial's exposed chest with the speed of a snake's lunge and moved on, ignoring the incubus as he fell to his knees with a cry of pain entirely disproportionate to the seriousness of his wounds.
Their next opponent was both a dragon and an ifrit at once. Seemingly insurmountable odds - but they were hardly working together. Also unwilling to try and roast them alive Jun-ho was forced to just loop and coil all around the cavern, snatching and grasping uselessly at Takara as they slipped free again and again and again. A stream of curses in languages both contemporary and ancient spewed forth from Makram's lips as he shouted at Jun-ho for blocking his firing line with his gigantic, long, scaly ass. Takara made the best of the chaos, hurling down a pair of tags to occupy Makram with a sudden gust of wind that seemed to comfortably occupy the dead space between dust devil and full-blown city-wrecking tornado.
"Hah! Being of fire and air, imbecile!" Makram called triumphantly, cancelling the spell with naught but a wave of his hand and an audible shattering sound. "Give me a challenge or not at all!"
Takara was in view once more, but far from idle. They were running down the length of Jun-ho's spine, perfectly balanced, bare feet slapping against the armoured scales accompanied only by the meaty adhesive smack of paper talismans sticking to the same. Jun-ho practically tied himself into knots trying to chase them, the incessant squirming and serpentine wriggling eliciting yet more curses from Makram as he struggled to draw a bead on the fox-spirit.
"I got!" Jun-ho called the whole time, desperately grasping at nothing. "I got it I got it I got it I-"
BZZZZZZTTTTT
Each talisman came alive at once, their identical characters shining as one. Violet energy arced between each tag, enmeshing Jun-ho in a tightening net of tainted lightning that bore him down as quickly and easily as being tripped. Relegated to the background, squirming and writhing, calling upon every ounce of strength in his body to break free and defeat the intruder before Eldingar - the real one - could come home. His struggles were in vain.
It was Makram's tun to be arrogant and infuriating. Takara pursued him the length and breadth of the cavern and all the while he couldn't help but scoff at the upstart creature, casually teleporting beyond its reach at every turn, easily deflecting or countering any of its 'serious' curses. Even when they attached the tags to hurled knives in an attempt to change things up and catch the ifrit off-guard he still recovered easily, evading them without so much as a scratch.
"Do tell me when you plan to unleash some real power," he called over the din of spells being hurled and teleportation ravaging the air. "My patience is nearly at its end!"
"So's mine, sweet thing," Takara replied, squatting atop a boulder that had rolled away from the wall during the fight. "You might want to look down."
And look down Makram did. What he discovered was a seemingly random assortment of 'missed' tags and knives stuck to and embedded in the stone floor beneath, all shining in concert as they sketched out a shape in their own right - an inverted pentagram, contained by a circle. Thunder rumbled, lightning flashed, as crackling bolts of violet energy sprang forth from every point in the star and speared Makram straight through. He let out a sharp cry of pain, pitched roughly to the hard stone floor below as his dust cloud vanished. When he looked up it was just in time to see Takara blow Eldingar's diminished treasurepile apart with a similar outpouring of force, sending gold and jewels flying wildly all across the room like precious shrapnel as only the crystal-inlaid map tube was left in its proper place.
"Now that looks more like a magic map," Takara said victoriously, crisply scooping it up and tucking it away inside one of their sleeves, pausing just long enough to set down a piece of paper in its place, And with that they turned and began to walk out, a spring in their step and a hum threatening to break out. They paused only by Makram's side, long enough to pat him on the head. "D'aww, it's alright sweet thing. You did really really well, given the circumstances. If I'd had more time I might've even shown you a little more tail~"
"I will slit you open mouth-to-anus and turn you into a scarf, fox," Makram spat.
"Not really my style but you do you, byyeeee~"
Takara strolled back out of Eldingar's thoroughly-trashed lair, so high-energy as to be nearly skipping as they left the recently-renovated gloom of the blue dragon's lair and entered the steely lack of sunlight characteristic of the area. It was only when they were out of sight that they slowed and dialled it down a few notches, almost sombre by comparison as they skirted the rocky outer perimeter of the spire for some privacy and rummaged around in their sleeve for the map case. At last they retrieved it with a soft sigh, something like relief mixed with a great deal of anticipation. They firmly grasped the cap and twisted-
"You might want to rethink this."
Takara jumped, shoving the cap back on and glaring instinctively at the man responsible. It was Issachar, standing with his back against a tall stone spar jutting out of the earth just in front of the main spire itself, like some lesser tooth pushed aside by the genuine article. Completely unknown to the fox-beast on a personal level at that point of course, yet still there was a certain something about the unarmed, unarmoured man that made Takara narrow their slitted eyes and sniff suspiciously, bushy tail flicking in frustration.
"Can a fox not enjoy their ill-gotten gains in peace?" they grumbled.
"No, no they may not," Issachar said patiently. "I may not know of your kind in any specific fashion, but I do know people, and I know people like you just fine. More than enough to tell you, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that this path will lead to no peace. Even this fresh triumph of yours will turn to ashes sooner than you think. Just to send you off in search of another, and another, and another, as all victories built off the backs of selfishness and self-delusion poison their fruits like sour-"
Takara hurled a pellet at their feet, releasing a thick cloud of cloying dark grey smoke. Once it finally cleared they were gone without a trace, not so much as footprints or bent grass to prove that they were ever there. Issachar just remained silent and still, lips still parted as if ready to continue his lecture if Takara came back. Slowly, thoughtfully, he raised one hand and scratched at the short stubble on his jaw.
"Well," he said. "Did not maintain control of that situation."
