Mask of Humanity

After performing his standard checks, he returned to his upstairs area, checked it too, locked and padded the door, took Kleos out of its jar just in case the head had anything of pressing importance to say—it didn’t—then he placed the archer’s arm aside, stripped as much of his armour as he could, started a fire, removed his tourniquet and flexed his now deadened, numbed arm to get the blood moving through it, putting pressure around the wound with his fingers to stop as much blood as possible coming out, and then for a moment he just sat there, thinking, eyes on the arrow.

It had been a long day, and he felt there were good odds he had nothing to show for it. He’d lost his best weapon. He’d also lost the hook-chain, which he’d hoped to hold onto.

His eyes turned to the archer’s arm. The one hope he possessed. He knew that it would be wise to treat his wound first. But he had to know. He had to see whether he’d gained or lost today. The minutes it would take to check shouldn’t make much difference either way, now he had the tourniquet to largely stop the bleeding.

After sawing at the straps of its gauntlet, difficult with one hand and due to how oddly tight and fused everything was, he eventually got the metal off. Next he cut at the scraps of leather and cloth wrapping its fingers, full up with a desperate hope.

He found withered flesh and bone beneath. After some more work he’d removed all the cloth, all the leather. Just a hand. Just a rotten hand. He turned it over, then paused. On one finger there was a little twist of cloth, stuck in place. Stuck on something. He pulled it free.

Light sparkled on metal. There, on the dried, decayed finger with bone showing through, was a ring. A slender band of gold with a flat part depicting a wing.

Can it be? Nicolai tore the ring from the dead archer’s finger and Examined it.

Pegasi Ring of Flight

This ring, Imbued with a Pegasi Moth Symbiote, provides the defining feature of a typical Pegasi archer: the ability to fly.

Nicolai let out the biggest breath-of-relief of his new life. He’d got it. He’d won. Today hadn’t been a loss, today had been a victory. He held the ring before his eye, admiring how the light sparkled on it, a huge grin twisting his face. This was it. This was going to change everything.

He’d wanted more, of course, but he wouldn’t complain. He’d wanted the archer’s armour, too. They had good armour and he could’ve cut the bigger parts free and fashioned them to fit himself. Not to mention the hook and his polearm.

Perhaps his pursuers would have ignored the dead archer, left it. But even if they did, then by the next morning it would have reanimated, and he couldn’t risk another trip until he’d at least removed the arrow from his arm.

The reminder caused a throb of pain from his bicep. Nicolai placed the ring aside, still smiling at it, barely able to pull his eyes from the thing. But he had to, so he did.

He started a fire then he hung a metal bucket he’d found from a frame; he formed it via two chairs either side of the fire with a rusty sword over the top which the bucket hung from. He poured some water from his replenishing bottle into it, and placed his cleanest rags within to boil them further clean.

As the water heated, he re-applied the tourniquet then set to work with his sharpest remaining knife, whittling at a piece of dry and brittle wooden sheath that had once been made to hold a dagger. It wasn’t easy one handed. Nicolai had to keep it trapped between his knee and the floor to hold it in place, and he realised after a time that the job would take him significantly longer than he’d anticipated so he removed the bucket then settled down to continue.

After far too long, Nicolai had formed the wooden sheath into two lengths of slender wood, slightly cupped on one end. Towards the end of the job he’d replaced his bucket of water on the frame over the fire, which was now boiling, and he dropped the pieces of wood into the water alongside the rags. He held the end of the rapier in the flames until it had heated enough to kill any bacteria.

The bucket had almost boiled dry, so he removed it and set it on the stone to cool before fishing out the pieces of wood and and hanging the hot, wet pieces of cloth on the edge of the bucket. Meanwhile he waved the rapier through the air to cool it.

Once it had cooled enough he positioned himself and his required items below the torch on the wall for maximum light, and began the surgery. It wasn’t as hard as it could have been, because the arrow had hit on the inside of his arm so the wound was at least easy to see and he had a good angle to use his free hand as he worked.

He started by tightening the tourniquet then sliding the rapier into the wound, tugging and pulling at the flesh the arrow had torn open, carefully working the point inside, holding his arm up to help the blood drain out the wound and clear his vision. The length of the rapier made the task difficult, but it was the best tool he had for the job. He gritted his teeth at the pain as he tugged red, raw muscle aside, and then he saw the glint of metal. The arrow’s barbs. With the tip of the rapier he pried his bloody flesh away from the barbs on one side as much as he could, teeth clenched tight at the stabbing pains this generated, then bit the rapier’s blade with his teeth to keep it still, the rapier holding the wound open, his neck and jaw tense and tight with the strain.

He remained frozen as he picked up one of the lengths of wood and slid it into the wound, wiggling and poking with it.

The aching pain of it made his arm tremble, but he told himself it was nothing compared to the pain he’d experienced pushing one of these same arrows out through his midsection. He told himself the pain was meaningless, nothing but weakness, and that he was not weak.

He managed to get the curved piece of wood on one side of the barbs, sliding it along the rapier, pushing it as deep in as he could bear, until it wrapped that side of the arrowhead.

Then he turned his focus to the other side, leaving the chunk of wood inside of him. He repeated the process with the rapier, teasing his flesh off from the barbs, then once again holding the rapier in place with his teeth, and he slid the piece of wood inside. It was harder from this angle. His jaw and neck were aching and sweat was running down his face. It was difficult to make out what was happening inside, everything a mess of blood. The rapier shifted slightly and he realised one of the barbs was back into his flesh and he was unable to push the piece of wood past and the rest of the way into his wound. He felt a vague urge to say fuck this and just rip the arrow out, but he recognised this as moronic and shut it down easily. Instead, Nicolai used a free finger to prod the rapier around while holding the wood in there. Finally the flesh was freed from the jagged metal and he got the piece of wood over the barbs.

After carefully retracting then tossing aside the rapier, Nicolai gripped the pieces of wood tight, his knuckles whitening, until he was sure the wood must be touching in the wound, locked around the arrowhead.

He slowly pulled. There was a sucking noise and sensation alongside the radiating pain, and blood dripped from the wound, but the arrow didn’t move. A groan of pain made its way through his gritted teeth as he gently wiggled everything and kept pulling, then he felt it moving, pulled a little harder, and with a spurt of blood the arrowhead was out of his arm.

Nicolai panted for breath, tossing the arrow to the ground and wiping the sweat from his face. Moving slowly, he found his blue water bottle and poured some of the water into his wound. The examine description said it was good for healing, and he hoped that would prove true. Then he wrapped his arm tight with the cleaned rags and sat there holding his hand tight against it, waiting for the bleeding to stop. His arm was numb from the tourniquet.

After some time the rags were soaked in his blood, so he removed them and replaced them with more, glad he’d cleaned quite a few. This time when he eventually removed his hand, there was less blood. The bleeding had stopped, mostly. He moistened the area with a little of the blue water, then drank everything left in the bottle which wasn’t much, and finally untied the tourniquet.

Nicolai settled slowly into the chair beside Kleos, who looked at him without saying a word, wearing an expression Nicolai couldn’t identify. Not seeing any point in breaking the silence just yet, Nicolai busied himself using a long stretch of cloth making a triangular-sling for his arm. He hooked it around his neck then placed his forearm and elbow inside, pulling it tight enough to keep his arm largely immobile. Keeping his arm still would help it heal faster. Then he took one of the sections of the sustaining fruit, broke it open with a knife and started eating.

Finally, after everything was as done as could be, Kleos spoke.

‘That looked painful,’ it said in what he recognised as a low-effort attempt at a sympathetic tone.

Nicolai suspected Kleos, the Seven Winds of Torment, cared just as little about the pain of others as he himself did, but he nodded in thanks regardless.

‘I retrieved this Pegasi ring from the archers,’ he told it, showing the ring on his finger. ‘Tomorrow I will attempt to reach the library and find a book explaining how to create a soul-trap ritual.’

The head thought about that. ‘Good,’ it said. ‘Should be on the first floor, somewhere. Look for the section on rituals, then hunt for anything about basic rituals.’

‘Anything to watch out for?’ Nicolai asked.

‘There are some guard poles. Big metal poles with a crystal on top. If they see you, they’ll animate furniture and such to attack you.’

‘What do you mean by furniture?’

‘I mean like that chair you’re sitting on. They’ll attack you.’

‘And I should be… worried by this?’

‘I’d take them seriously if I were you. The furniture can fight, in the library.’

‘Anything else?’

‘If I remember something, I’ll let you know.’

There was still some time before nightfall. Nicolai now focused on a task he’d been looking forwards to. He remained in the chair beside Kleos, both of them silent, and took his Seed from his mouth, placing it on his palm alongside the ring. He connected to the Seed, and found it calm and recovered from the strain he’d put upon it the day before when practising with the polearm.

This relaxed state transferred to Nicolai, calming him. Teeth he hadn’t realised he’d been gritting unclenched while tense muscles all over his body loosened. He realised the chair was uncomfortable so he rose to lay down in the nest of rags he was using as a bed, his hand with the ring and the Seed on his chest, his other still in its sling over his abdomen.

Through the Seed he was able to feel the ring, a similar sensation as that of the polearm. This time, Nicolai didn’t try to push any energy from the Seed into the ring. He simply allowed his consciousness to permeate through the Seed and the ring, mentally exploring it.

He found the switch, as he thought of it, which could be fed Oma to activate the ring. This seemed graded, capable of being activated with more or less power. Just as with the polearm, that was about all there was to it. It would come down to his ability to shape the effect once he’d fed it Oma. He lay there for a while, until he was certain he had fully explored the ring and wrapped his mind around it.