Mask of Humanity

Nicolai sat hunched in the uncomfortable chair, illuminated by the orange glow of the torch, and stared down at his latest completed Soul Trap as shadows crawled over the walls around him. Moving with false calm he picked up an Oma crystal and placed it over the siphoning rune.

Nothing happened, except that the shadows surged and twisted. He felt cooped up, constrained and stuck. He’d never done well when unable to move and act. The injury to his arm prevented him doing what he wanted. He was sure that if he were able to freely use both hands, the Soul Trap would already be completed.

‘Fucking archers,’ he muttered, and as though the words broke some kind of barrier he felt something boiling through him.

In an eruption of movement he snatched the helmet off the table, spun in place and hurled it to crash into the wall. He stared at it a moment, and frowned. He’d just lost control. The thought made his teeth grit, jaw flexing.

He sat back down, throwing himself into the chair with unnecessary force that made it creak, and saw Kleos’ eyes flick from the helmet he’d hurled at the wall then to him and back. Nicolai’s hand pulsed with pain, an irritating ache which had developed through his wrist and fingers after the force and precision he’d been applying through it for hours.

Why am I angry? ‘Calm down,’ he snapped, but the words just fanned the fires. Kleos was frowning at him and he caught its eyes.

‘What?’ Nicolai snarled.

‘How old are you?’ asked the head.

‘Over four hundred years.’

‘Don’t act much like it.’

Nicolai sneered. ‘Shut the fuck up.’ His skull pulsed with a headache that had begun some hours ago.

Kleos looked away from him. ‘Put me in my jar,’ it said.

Nicolai leaned close to the head, putting his mouth by its ear. ‘No,’ he hissed, and the rage that now burned through his veins pulsed with dull, malicious satisfaction at the words. He wondered what the inside of Kleos’ skull looked like.

No, I need him. Nicolai snarled and rose to stalk about the room, feeling like a beast trapped in a cage, trying to calm himself. The four walls pressed close and stifling around him. The air he breathed was fetid with the stink of his fleshy form.

Calm down, calm down, he thought, increasingly worried of what he might do, even as the rage wound through him, tight and demanding, feeding the darkness and the madness. One of his knives glittered in his hand. He didn’t remember picking it up. His eyes turned once more to Kleos and his lips pulled back in a savage grimace as he twisted the knife.

The head stared at him without fear. ‘Remember our Contract,’ it said. Its eyes flicked up, to the ceiling. ‘Heaven is watching.’

Nicolai bared his teeth, but the head was right, and the rising swell of rage roared through him to crash against the implacable wall that was his drive to survive, then shifted into something else that lingered, pressing, close and cloying. The dull orange glow of the torch flickered, and vague shadowy shapes twined over the walls, coalesced into figures. Nicolai laughed and the shadows laughed with him. He wasn’t angry anymore.

Nicolai, they whispered. God hates you.

‘I know,’ he said, watching the light glitter on the knife. A knife ought to have blood on it. He pressed the blade against the back of his arm and dragged it over his flesh, the pain a chorus. He gasped at the sensation, watched the blood well and pour, licked at it with the knife, painting a pattern of cut flesh and bright blood.

God betrayed you.

‘Yes.’

You must kill Him.

‘Yes.'

The head keeps a secret.

‘What?’ Nicolai’s gaze snapped over to Kleos.

Inside.

‘What are you hiding, head?’

It stared at him with empty eyes. ‘Nothing, from you,’ it said. It was lying. ‘You cut yourself,’ it added.

‘I know,’ he said.

‘Why?’

Nicolai frowned down at it. He’d drawn closer. Nicolai, whispered the shadows, urgent, pressing. He shook his head like a horse bothered by a fly, trying to dislodge the whispers. ‘No,’ he muttered, staring at the bloody wound on his arm, a sense of wrongness percolating through him.

‘Fuck.’

He pivoted, strode to the wall, rocked his body back then slammed his skull into the stone.

###

Nicolai groaned, coming slowly to.

He was on the ground. He remembered everything.

He lay there on the floor for some time, the pounding in his head and the stars spinning in his eyes slowly fading. Eventually he rose, sat down on the chair, wrapped his arm in a clean bandage, and put the bloody knife away somewhere he couldn’t see it. For a time his mind was empty and quiet. He tried to fill it with happy thoughts but they wouldn’t stick.

He could feel his mood shading once again towards black and knew of no way to prevent it. He’d had enough of his routines and his rituals and the head and the books and trying to make the Soul Trap. And yet, he didn’t want to sit there in silence, alone with his thoughts.

But there was no other option. He couldn’t risk talking to Kleos. That might only make things worse. What was wrong? Typically when faced with a task to do he simply did it, no matter how long it took, no matter the difficulties. What was wrong with him? He wanted something. He was missing something.

Time passed. The orange glow of the torch shaded into red and the shadows stretched out toward him. The walls had been wavering and breathing for some time. His thoughts turned, birthing sparks of evil memory.

The light of the torch dimmed further and fragmented. The shadows crawled over the walls and formed dancing, alien shapes. There was a loud knocking on the door and he flinched, twisting to stare at it, groping for a weapon. Where’s the knife? He heard someone whisper his name and knew then that there was no one there.

‘Hah!’ he yelled, throwing himself to his feet which half-shattered the hallucination, scattering the shadows across the walls, and he walked frantically around the room, trying to think of something he could occupy himself with. How long had he been sitting there? His eyes skimmed over the desk and saw Kleos, the head, a figure swaddled in shadow, eyes glinting with silent judgement. He looked quickly away.

‘Fuck,’ he snarled, unable to push down the rising anxiety. ‘Fuck, fuck, fuck,’ he chanted, the anxiety trying to twist into terror from whence it would spill into rage and then into madness. He considered working on another Soul Trap but his hand pulsed with pain. He needed to rest it or he’d strain his tendons.

The shadows writhed in the corner of his eyes, creeping back over the walls. He did his best not to dwell on the noise he’d heard or he knew it would continue and get louder. Long ago he would have told himself that it was all in his head but he’d learned that didn’t help. His gaze fell on the chair which had taken on a menacing, serpentine air, the wood seeming to writhe. He felt nauseous and took tight breaths to push it down, then attempted to connect to his Seed.

He managed it easily and felt a measure of relief. At least he could do that, simply close his eyes and practise. Such had always been his refuge when times were hard. His breathing slowed as he calmed himself and spread the tendrils around him, and they touched upon the walls and the shadows grabbed at them and held them tight and whispered his name.

‘No!’ Nicolai cut the connection, his eyes bursting open to see himself surrounded. His madness had infected his Soul Sense, too. There had to be something, something. He took quick, frantic steps and looked over the table and all that he owned, searching for something, anything.

His gaze fell upon the radio, and he paused, and the creeping shadows and the living walls and the whispering of his name paused, too. He had yet to even turn the radio on, having viewed it with a degree of suspicion that had unconsciously turned him away from it, associating it with phones which he associated with trackers.

He eyed the chair warily but it had returned to being innocent wood, so he settled into it, picked up the radio and looked it over. There was a large button with a power symbol. There were twenty small buttons labelled one to twenty. There was one more button which displayed a microphone symbol. There was a little half-wheel emerging from one side beside a volume symbol. There was a rectangular screen at the top.

Nicolai pressed the power button and a green light flickered on, and in the screen it displayed the number one.

‘—osen. We offer safety, food, friends. A future.’ The voice that rose from the radio was female, low-pitched, soothing. ‘Join us. You need only contribute your possessions, and you will receive far more in return. Look for us on the bridges, or approach one of our scouting parties. All hail Vikrum. He shall become God, and we are his Chosen. Join us. We will take over the castle, then this world. Our rise is unstoppable.’

Nicolai snorted. Was this a cult? He saw Kleos frowning at the radio, and he raised his eyebrows at the head, inviting its question. The shadows and the walls and the light were still, and the radio drowned out the whispers. It was an opening into a world of normality, a connection to other humans.

Kleos was giving him a strange, gauging look. ‘What is that?’ it asked over the endless drone of the woman on the radio.

‘A radio; a device used for communicating. I believe that’s another human speaking,’ said Nicolai. He considered saying more but didn’t. A wall had risen between them and he wasn’t sure how to breach it.

‘We are the Chosen.’ The radio hadn’t stopped for an instant. ‘We offer safety, food, friends. Even goods from Earth, weapons and clothing and foods. Join us. Join the Chosen. Only Vikrum is capable of completing a Seed, and becoming God. All Seeds must be merged. Aren’t you tired of being alone? We can be your friends. Wouldn’t you—‘

‘Shut up dumbass! Fucking idiot! Bloody stupid bastard! Shut your shithole, hahahaha! Eat my dick you piece of shit!’ The barrage of insults that erupted from the radio caused Nicolai to jerk with shock, holding the blaring radio away from him, but it didn’t take the person who’d been going on about the Chosen and Vikrum by surprise.

‘Fuck off you moron!’ screeched the woman. ‘Stop interrupting! We’ll fucking find you!’

‘Yeah, yeah, come find me bitch! I’ll cut Vikrum’s face off and wear it, I’m gonna fry his dick and make you eat it!’ The person spewing insults sounded like a young male, likely a teenager by the way the voice cracked now and then, and the bubbling, immature laughter that rose up in between their words.

‘You stupid little fuck.’ This was a new voice, a man who spoke in a menacing hiss. ‘When we find you, you’re dead.’ Nicolai wasn’t sure which side this voice was on, but he felt it likely to be another Chosen.

‘Vikrum’s an ugly little soy-boy, and you’re all a bunch of pussy betas!’ squealed the teenager, and Nicolai spluttered out a laugh.

‘We’re tracking your radio, expect us soon,’ hissed the man.

Nicolai frowned at that, suddenly wary, but the teenager didn’t seem concerned.

‘That’s what you said last time, dip-shit! There’s no Network, idiot! We’re not on Earth, moron! Go suck Vikrum’s dick, loser!’ the teenager howled in return.

‘Get off our channel, shithead!’ screamed the woman, her voice distorting as the radio struggled to reproduce the full force of it.

Nicolai was laughing so hard he was crying, his mirth ringing off the walls. What is all this? He’d been missing out on a world of entertainment. Kleos wore an uncertain grin on the table.

‘Bunch of NPC’s,’ spoke a new voice, another young man, in a deeply smug tone. ‘Going on and on and on, on the radiyooooo. I’m out here power levelling, ya feel me? Power levelling and getting bitches! Ey, come hit me up, I’m by the Kill Me tower, I’m—‘

‘Loooooser, loooooser,’ droned the first teenager.

‘You’ve never touched a women in your life you trash, fucking kids, this is the real world!’ snarled the woman. ‘This isn’t a VR game this is real, we’re here trying to help people—‘

This latest attempt to engage and make some kind of point was drowned by a new wave of insults and laughter, which Nicolai couldn’t help but echo. It was utterly stupid but he found himself thoroughly enjoying it after so long in brooding silence.

After some time his laughter finally died, as unfortunately the teenager’s creativity ran dry and he ended up just yelling the words suck-my-dick over and over, while the others stopped talking after muttering something Nicolai couldn’t make out.

Nicolai was about to switch channel when he looked at Kleos, and he remembered, and instead he turned the radio off.

The childish insults were replaced by blank silence as he and the head regarded one another. Nicolai looked away, uncertain about what to say.

He had not behaved well towards Kleos. His actions had placed their relationship under strain which could impact their ability to work together. It might be that he should apologise, though he felt that would be trite and pointless.

A real apology implies an intention to correct oneself and to not perform the same transgression again. Nicolai wasn’t pleased with how he had acted towards Kleos, even less so the self-inflicted wound on his arm. But he couldn’t say that it would not happen again.

Even so, for humans apologies are important, and he had come to feel that Kleos possessed as much humanity as anyone from earth. More than Nicolai, at any rate. He carefully reconstructed his mask of false humanity, and tried to find the right words.

‘I am sorry,’ he said, meeting Kleos’ eyes. ‘Sorry for how I acted towards you. I have no excuse. It might happen again.’ He chewed his lip. ‘I regret it.’ He considered what he’d said, looking to see if there was anything else he ought to add, uncertain, and he studied the head to try and work out whether it felt it was due more. Kleos’ face was carefully, purposefully blank.

The moment stretched.