Mask of Humanity

A second gunshot rang out, washing over him.

Nicolai, crouched in the dark of the tunnel, recognised it as a high-calibre early-modern round, probably from a rifle. A relatively modern drone and an old gun, present somehow in this fresh world.

Interesting. He hadn’t been surprised to hear the gunshots. The drones movements and the simple fact of its existence had immediately triggered his wariness.

A surveillance drone was a good support for a sniper, and if someone had found a way to get a drone, why not a gun?

He crept out of the tunnel, figuring he should be safe from the sniper. Wherever they were, there was something between him and them that had blocked their shot. He knew so because otherwise they would have already shot him, no need for making their drone do that little dance. His eyes scanned the bridges.

He saw two figures laid out in pools of their own blood on a bridge some distance away.

He considered the places the sniper could have shot them from, then considered where the sniper had attempted to lead him to with their drone, and drew invisible lines between these spots and the bastion on the other side, taking into account the bridges filling the space between.

He sketched out four areas as likely locations for the sniper to be. Two of them were blocked from his direct view by bridges worming through the air. He moved a few metres the side and peered around an outcrop of worked stone. There. He spotted movement. A woman with a rifle on the other side of the chasm. She didn’t see him, busy moving. In a hurry.

Nicolai scanned for the drone, but it had gone. Doubtless she would use it to check her route while she went to loot the dead.

He wanted the rifle and the drone. He wanted to know how and where she’d gotten them, too. The simple fact of their existence—Earth tech in this new world—had significant implications.

But catching her would not be easy, not with her armed with a rifle and the drone to watch her back. He had no manner of ranged attack, which had just become a problem.

He settled down to wait regardless.

Some time later Nicolai saw her emerge on the bridge with the people she’d killed, approaching from the other side. He watched as she looted them. She was a slender woman with blonde hair tied in a ponytail. She wore clothes that could have come straight from Earth, some technical camouflage pieces, and had a handy looking backpack made from synthetic material.

Nicolai heard a faint buzz and the drone came into view, skimming above the walkway towards him in its sweep of the area. It spotted him and stopped, hovering motionlessly, camera aimed at him.

He stared at it. Then he stared down at the woman who had looked up and found him, their gaze meeting as she froze in place. He had a wall to duck behind so he wasn’t worried about her shooting him. She knew he had no way of harming her from the distance, could see that through the drone, but even so she hurriedly gathered her things and her loot and returned the way she’d come.

Nicolai offered the drone’s camera a nod, then turned and left.

###

Jo waited for her drone to return and check her route then hurried along, heading back to her home, her movements infected by the unease roiling within her.

That man had waited. He’d seen her. There had been something about him, something in his eyes and the way he nodded to her through the drone.

An air of predatory intent.

She made her way quickly up stairs, crept past undead guards, and entered a part of the castle where mouldering tapestries covered the walls. Here she found a specific tapestry and slithered behind it, towards the crack in the wall it concealed. She wormed her way through into a large open room dominated by a huge painting on one wall.

She paused before the painting and the image it depicted moved, a cloaked being with darkness under its hood that the light didn’t pierce, standing in a hallway.

‘You’re doing well, my bloodthirsty little creature,’ said the painted figure, its sibilant voice sliding and echoing around the room. ‘Two more Seeds for the sick bird.’ It chuckled.

Jo swallowed and turned resolutely away from it. She checked herself for bloodstains, finding some on her arms and wiping them off with water and rag, then she moved on, into a stairwell across from the painting. She climbed the tower stairs and reached the locked door, then pounded on it.

‘It’s me,’ she yelled into the metal.

She heard some faint noises within, then the clank of the bolt being pulled back.

Her sister, Beth, stood there wearing loose, dark clothes, smiling at her, features pale and wan. Jo could see the exhaustion in Beth’s trembling limbs, the hollows under her eyes. She’d lost more hair, her scalp half bald with strings of tired blonde hair emerging in scraggly patches.

‘Good day?’ asked Beth, opening her arms for a hug.

Jo crashed into her, hugging her sister fiercely before her face could be seen, holding her tight, supporting her. ‘Yes,’ she said, using a hand to dash the welling tears from her eyes before they could fall onto her sisters skin. ‘I’ve got you two more Seeds. You’ll be cured, soon.’ Beth tried to pull away, but Jo clung tight, trying to stop the tears, her mind full of the sight of two people dead to the bullets she’d fired, the smell of their blood, the emptiness in their eyes.

‘Well done.’ Her sister patted her on the back. ‘Where’d you find them?’

‘Oh.’ Jo tried not to sniffle. ‘Same place as always. Just lying around.’

‘You smell like gunsmoke,’ Beth said, pushing her back, frowning.

Jo looked quickly away and stepped past, working to fix her face.

‘Did you get in a fight? Did something happen?’ asked Beth, following close behind her.

‘Just some zombies,’ managed Jo. ‘You know what it’s like out there. Nothing I can’t deal with.’

###

Nicolai made it through the gauntlet with practised ease.

His thoughts were on the sniper. She was a problem, but also a prize. If he could get his hands on that rifle, his position would greatly improve. Better yet if he could get the information out of her of where she’d gotten it from. All he needed to do was get close enough, and she would tell him everything he wished to know.

Nicolai could be very persuasive.

But with the drone, sneaking up on her wouldn’t be easy, and with her lurking in position to shoot those crossing the bridges, he couldn’t risk going out and crossing again. Not unless he knew she was occupied or away. He was lucky she hadn’t shot him when he crossed earlier. She must have been a little bit late into her position, or taken too long to ready her rifle.

He’d been very lucky, and the thought annoyed him. He disliked the knowledge of his own powerlessness and the heavy impact fickle chance could have on his survival.

He put the thoughts from his mind as he checked the banquet hall for signs anyone or anything had been there, then the crypt, which was now utterly rank with the stink of decomposing corpses, then silently climbed up to his safe place. He moved into it ready for an ambush, as he always did, and checked every room thoroughly before locking the metal door and removing Kleos from the jar, greeting the head.

‘Good day?’ asked Kleos.

It had been a good day. Nicolai smiled. ‘I have the ritual,’ he said, showing the book to the head. Now that he had books to read, a device to fashion, and magic to learn, he was happy to lock himself away in the room while his arm healed.

He told Kleos how things had gone while checking on his arm. It had been aching ever since he’d thrown the chair off the balcony, and he found the scab had torn, the bandage bloodied. He took a gulp from the water bottle, poured more water over the wound to aid its healing, then heated water to clean his used bandages, and finally re-applied a bandage then the sling.

‘Maric…’ Kleos muttered in response to Nicolai’s question as to whether he recognised the description of the skeleton or its name. ‘Never heard of him, but it’s been a long time since I talked to any other undead. Did you find a way up to the higher levels?’

‘Seems the route is blocked by locked doors, I’ll have to find a key. Maric said I might be able to do so in the prisons.’

‘I see,’ Kleos frowned. ‘Well, fine. That’s likely where you’ll want to go next, anyway.’

Nicolai tapped his mark.

User Interface 376 | Player #53,217

- Cultivation

> Seed Progress

Soul: 15%

Oma: 12%

His Seed had been at seventeen Oma, the last time he’d checked after practising with the polearm and then recharging it. It had gone down by four percent after all his floating around with the ring. That added up to about two and a half Oma crystals. Not much of a loss, considering what he’d gained. He opted to leave it like that, for now.

###

Nicolai spent the next hour reading. He only interrupted this process for a moment, when he discovered he would need something roughly bowl shaped, which he could scratch symbols onto, and which would be sturdy enough to accompany him without risk of breaking in a scuffle.

He opted for helmets, of which there were plenty scattered amongst the bones in the banquet hall. After gathering a few of the least rusty and most conveniently shaped ones he could find, he returned to his safe place and continued reading.

He only fully read some portions of the book on Soul Rituals, and skimmed the rest as much of it was quite involved information on ritual theory. Though interesting, these portions clearly expected him to already have a pretty decent understanding of ritual theory, an understanding they would build upon. Unfortunately he had no such understanding so most of these portions were largely meaningless to him.

After some time, now possessing an understanding of how to go about constructing a Soul Trap, Nicolai set the book aside.

He looked over to Kleos. After their conversation the other day, he’d decided it would be worth investing a little time where possible to learn some more personal facts of the head, and deepen their “bond.”

‘Where did you grow up?’ he asked, figuring it a good question. Many people enjoyed talking about their childhood and where they’d grown up.

The head stared at him. ‘Our agreement states I should answer any question you ask truthfully, except for irrelevant details of my past. To be clear, I don’t want to talk about that.’

Slight misjudgment on my end, but no matter. ‘Then don’t worry about it.’ Nicolai paused, thinking. ‘Tell me a story,’ he said.

‘A story?’ Kleos was wearing its characteristic frown.

‘Some fable of your people, or this world,’ Nicolai said.

‘How about you tell me a story of your people, so I know what kind of thing you’re after?’ asked Kleos.

A skilful deflection. ‘Okay,’ said Nicolai, and plumbed his memories for the tales he’d absorbed over his life through a process of cultural osmosis. ‘Let’s see…’ He sat up straighter. ‘There were once two children, living in a small village bordering a woods. People said a witch lived in the woods—‘

‘A witch?’ Kleos broke in.

‘An evil old woman who practices dark magic.’

‘I thought there was no “magic” on your world?’

‘There isn’t, but we pretended there was.’

Kleos let out a little snort at that. ‘Okay,’ it said.

After a short pause to see whether Kleos would continue, Nicolai resumed. ‘One day, these children, their names were Gretchen, or Hilda, and… Karl, I don’t know, something Germanic. Let’s say Gretchen and Karl.’ Kleos looked bored already.

Nicolai cleared his throat and did his best to inject some life and certainty into his voice. ‘They were walking in the forest, gathering firewood—people did that a lot, back then—when they came across this path made from sweets and chocolate.

‘Now, you or I probably wouldn’t eat sweets and chocolate that were lying on the ground, because that’s a good way to poison yourself. But these children were born in a time where people had a limited understanding of bacteria and hygiene and contamination, so they ate away, following the path. In due time, they came across a house made of gingerbread.’

‘What’s that?’ asked Kleos.

‘It’s this biscuity thing that tastes like… well that’s supposed to taste like ginger, I suppose, but it doesn’t really, it’s more spicy and sugary,’ said Nicolai.

‘It was a house made of biscuits?’ Kleos was frowning harder and harder.

‘Yes,’ said Nicolai. ‘Gingerbread, and… icing, and more sweets, all that sort of thing. So Gretchen and Karl go up to it and start eating the house.’

Kleos snorted. ‘Disgusting,’ it muttered.

Nicolai agreed, but that was how the story went, or at least roughly how it went. I think? He wasn’t at all sure, but he’d started now so he had to finish.

‘As they’re chewing on the house, the door opens and this old woman comes out. She’s obviously upset they’re eating her house, but she invites them in. The kids go in and it’s all more sweets, and she gives them a big bowl of lots of sweets. They eat those, too, and then they start getting sleepy, and then they fall asleep.

‘When they wake up, they’re both hanging in cages made of gingerbread, and she’s preparing the oven with a hot fire, cackling evilly. She says “I’m going to cook and eat the two of you because I’m an evil witch,” and then she drags Gretchen out and towards the oven.’

‘Was the oven also made of gingerbread?’ asked Kleos.

Nicolai considered that. ‘Probably not,’ he allowed. ‘That wouldn’t make any sense.’

‘Nothing else is making sense so far,’ observed Kleos.

Nicolai shrugged. That was likely due in large part to his faded memory and lacking skills as a storyteller, but he’d always believed this fable didn’t make much sense anyway so he felt he couldn’t take all the blame.

‘Anyway, the boy chewed his way out of the cage and then the kids shoved the witch into the oven and she burned to death and they lived happily ever after.’

Kleos gaped at him then exploded into hails of disbelieving laughter. ‘Why would she make the cage out of sweets?’ it howled. ‘Why is her house made of biscuits? Why didn’t she just cook them while they were knocked out?’

‘Well…’ Nicolai began, wondering if he ought to be offended. He decided he shouldn’t. Actually, this was good. He made himself laugh, joining Kleos, and told himself they were bonding. After laughing with Kleos for a moment he actually started to feel like it was funny, and that he was enjoying himself.

Finally, Nicolai gave Kleos an expectant look.

‘Right, right, my turn,’ it said. ‘Let me think…’

Nicolai waited patiently, then Kleos began.

‘My people lived atop a mountain, one of a great range, known as the Fifth Spine. Amongst the clans there was a story, or perhaps a warning.’ Immediately Nicolai could tell that Kleos possessed more skill as a story-teller than himself, the head’s words containing a certainty and flow his own had lacked.

‘Long ago, there was a young man called Yolnet. He is no longer known by that name. Now, he is simply called the Beast. This is his tale.’