Mask of Humanity

Standing outside the cell, Nicolai checked his map and took the time to mark the tunnel he’d entered from, and the prison cell with Forgotten in. He moved off, continuing in the direction he’d been going.

After a time he saw a dark opening in the wall on his side. Not a cell. Stairs. Nicolai squeezed in through the gap, down the stone stairs as they twisted and turned, and emerged on the ground floor where he headed across the tunnel to the far side, went forwards a bit as it curved around, and found a great rend in the wall where a new tunnel pressed inwards deeper into the prison area.

Winding his way through the tunnels, he encountered a few more Wardens but none of them noticed him. Time slid by as he trekked through the quiet, dim tunnels with cells all around.

After almost an hour he was still following Forgotten’s directions, and from his map he could see that he was continuing towards some kind of centre. But he was beginning to realise just how huge this place was, miles and miles of dull tunnels under the ground.

It was with some relief when after almost two hours of walking, he spied light and activity; he’d made it to the centre. Lurking in an area where the tunnel walls had half-collapsed, Nicolai peered out into the central area. It was a very large place. The prison could almost be considered a circular maze around the centre.

In the middle there was a gigantic gaping hole delving into the earth, with a great opening above. Light poured down through the opening and into the pit, and peering up, Nicolai could see the walls of the castle up there. It was as though the castle above just opened around the pit.

Nicolai could see many teams of undead pulling carts up from a ledge that corkscrewed around the hole. They took the carts to one side of the area where thousands of undead worked breaking stones. There were Wardens everywhere, as well as squads of more standard looking, armoured and armed undead. Hulking knights, archers, spearmen, a few wizard-types.

It was a great, busy host of undead, and the most numerous of all were clearly the skeletons who seemed to be miners, dragging carts, breaking rocks, carrying pickaxes. They moved in expansive, bony crowds. From where Nicolai watched, the undead seemed like some strange kind of ant colony.

There were quite a few buildings carved from the walls near the entrance to the pit, all of them nexuses of activity and presumably serving some kind of purpose.

The click of shifting stone pulled Nicolai away from his observation, turning to scan the crumbled rock around him.

He saw a face, a human face. Pale. Bloodied. Topped by a crazy-frizz of fetid black hair. The eyes stared off in different directions. It was grinning at him.

‘Hello,’ said the face in a voice like twigs scratching a window, and it bobbed down into the darkness of the rocks. He heard the sound of something moving and then it popped up again, closer, the dead grin grown wider.

‘You look lonely.’

There is an instinct in all humans, one that tells them to be afraid of the dark on a night with no moon; of the depths of ancient, unexplored forests; of strange and sickly creatures. At this moment these instincts screamed a discordant, terrified warning within Nicolai, one that ran all through him and jerked him into motion.

Scrambling and skidding, Nicolai burst out from where he’d lurked and over the rocks and downwards, away from whatever-the-fuck-it-was, and he heard it moving behind him in the click and crack of rock.

‘I’m lonely, too! I want Harold. Bring me Harold!’ screamed the voice and he heard the clacking thunder of hundreds of inhuman legs. A glance over his shoulder revealed something moving in the dark and it was vast and insectile and horrific, and the pale flesh of the beheaded human head danced above it, impaled on a spike.

Writhing tentacle-like things scythed towards him and Nicolai ducked behind a rock and sprinted, dove out into the light, tripped on something and rolled on the ground, thrashing frantic to his feet. As he rose he saw dozens of undead twisting to stare at him. Any other time he would have stopped and ran in the other direction, but he knew with bone-deep certainty that while the undead might kill him, the thing chasing him would do far worse.

He heard something and turned and saw some kind of limb with a chitin blade coming towards him and he leapt into the air just in time for it to pass under him, and as he landed he saw on either side of him the undead charging.

The nightmarish thing that he still couldn’t really make out, just a darkly glittering creature that was very large and all wrong in so many ways, let out a screech of rage and dark limbs with barbs and spikes and chitin blades snapped out and crunched into the undead who tumbled and broke.

The undead were not deterred and continued forwards. Heavy undead knights, skeletal footmen, and the weirdly tall Wardens with their cloaks of living chain, all pressing towards the monster.

The monster let out a furious hiss then turned and skittered away, crawling up a shadowed area of ceiling, its body stretching out and out and out, and as Nicolai and the undead watched it go he felt it resembled a centipede.

A body of many segments, with many limbs; but they were not all even and neat either side of it, they emerged seemingly randomly from it and were all kinds of strange shapes, legs or blades or tentacles or just plain weird. It had a tail ending in two big spikes, and it looked to have some kind of head—a real head, not the one on a spike—but turned away from him and in the dark he couldn’t make it out.

His gaze was blocked as beings shifted in close to stand above him, and he peered up at them.

Undead surrounded him, all of them staring down blankly, skeletons grinning, zombies gaping.

What’s it going to be? Death, or capture? A grin pulled at his lips, the thrill rolling in his gut.

###

They didn’t kill him. Two Wardens took him, wrapping him tightly with their chains and dragging him between them. The chains dug into his body painfully, but they didn’t damage him. He let out a few faked squeals of pain anyway, to see if they could be encouraged to loosen the chains. They ignored him so he stopped.

They hauled him to a nearby building, one he’d identified as a sort of administrative centre, towed him through the entrance and dumped him in the midst of an expansive floor of smooth white stone. Their chains ran over him and pulled the metal baton from his hands and wormed under his clothes looking for anything else he’d kept hidden. Nicolai raised his arms and sat placidly as they searched him, calm and relaxed, as he believed in acting as harmless as possible until the moment came to act.

A pair of zombies wearing robes stood from where they’d been sat staring at the walls and shuffled over. One of them carried a slender metal rod that had a shimmering, glowing little orb attached on one end. The zombies stepped close to where Nicolai lay, and he stared up at them. One of them made a vague gesture to the Wardens, and the chains loosened from around him and clinked over the floor as they retracted to crawl up the Wardens’ legs.

One of the zombies looked as though it was about to speak, then it started coughing, big wretched bent-over hacking coughs that spewed out foul smelling dust. Nicolai grimaced and tugged his ragged shirt up to cover his mouth as the zombie blasted lung-dust at him. Finally it stopped, and stared at him with withered eyes.

‘Stand up,’ it croaked, and Nicolai’s Mark tingled. The one standing beside it had its mouth gaping open and it stared at the ceiling.

Nicolai considered pretending he didn’t understand, but he concluded that they were going to do whatever they wanted to do regardless of whether he cooperated or not. He couldn’t escape from the two Wardens and the hundreds of undead, and that was that. So he rose to his feet and faced the talking zombie.

It gestured to its friend, which held the metal rod in one hand as well as a mouldering clipboard in the other. That one didn’t move.

The talking zombie let out a dusty sigh then took the rod from the other and began playing it over Nicolai’s body. The experience unearthed ancient memories of being scanned by hand-held metal detectors at airports. Nicolai had always disliked travelling by plane and had avoided it wherever possible. Too much security and too confining.

It went over and around his legs, behind and in front of him, over his arms, all over his body. Nothing happened. Then it passed over his face, and the orb on the end of the rod changed colour, pulsing with a bright yellow light. It had passed his mouth where his Seed was. It would be understandable for someone to react with unease and fear at this moment, so he did, letting himself tense up and eye the glowing rod uncertainly.

‘Cultivator,’ said the zombie. It didn’t sound surprised, excited, nor anything else. It made a weak flick of a gesture to the other zombie. ‘Write that down.’

The other zombie let out a vague groan, still staring at the ceiling, then held its clipboard up with one hand, and with the other it made gestures as though writing something.

The talking zombie eyed Nicolai. ‘What’s your name?’ it asked.

To lie, or tell the truth? Nicolai doubted it mattered, but he wasn’t keen on the idea of leaving any kind of trail behind him.

‘Vikrum,’ he said.

‘Write that down,’ said the zombie again, not bothering to look at the other as it turned away and started moving off. ‘Follow me,’ it said. Its companion stumbled after it, randomly scrabbling at the clipboard. Leaning slightly to peer over, Nicolai saw that there was no paper on the clipboard, and the zombie held no pen. No words were being written, but its arm jerked enthusiastically regardless.

The Wardens clustered close to Nicolai, their chains rising like snakes to sway around him. The message was clear. He followed the zombies.

They led him through an open doorway into a hallway. After going some distance they turned into a larger room full of small shelves and tables. Standing just inside the door were a pair of huge undead knights which bristled at the sight of Nicolai and those accompanying him.

‘What?’ grunted a knight.

One of the Warden’s chains rose, and it held Nicolai’s baton, proffering it to the knight. The knight looked at the baton, grunted, took it and showed it to the other knight which also grunted, then the first tossed the baton to clatter on a table nearby.

‘Write that down,’ groaned the lead zombie, turning to leave. The other zombie flailed at the clipboard. They moved on.

As Nicolai followed after them, his mind was filled with an image of what he’d seen in the room. It had clearly been a storage room, presumably for the belongings of prisoners. Most of the shelves and tables had been empty, but Nicolai had seen a few things lying around. Some pieces of jewellery. Bags and pouches. A glove and a rapier.

Nicolai had the very strong impression that at least a few of them would be Imbued items. Not a lot he could do now, but he wouldn’t be forgetting about this place. He looked the knights over thoughtfully as he left. One of them saw his glance and through its visor he saw it show rotten teeth in something that was not a grin.

‘Hope to see you again,’ it grated.

Nicolai didn’t reply. Instead he hustled after the lead zombie, reaching its side. These things were lucid enough to talk. That meant he had more options.

‘Tough job you’ve got here,’ he said. ‘Seems you manage it all by yourself. Unreliable co-workers, eh? I know what that’s like.’ Nicolai chuckled then twisted his face into a friendly smile and held it on the zombie.

The zombie paused and turned to stare at him. ‘Shut up, Cultivator, or I’ll have a Warden shut you up.’ It resumed walking.

Shrugging inwardly, Nicolai followed. It didn’t seem likely he’d be befriending this undead.

After being taken a short distance down the hallway he was led into a new room, through a small doorway which the Wardens had to bend over to get through. Only one entered, and it entered slowly. This led him to consider escape but he could see no way to leave the room other than the opening they’d come in through.

The air in the room was hot. The dark stone floor sloped down, getting wider further in. There were no torches but a dull fire burned in the darkness. Once the Warden had risen, the lead zombie led Nicolai and the rest towards the fire. As they came closer Nicolai began to work out what it all was.

This was a forge. There was a huge block of scarred metal, some kind of anvil with a blocky metal hammer that must have weighed eighty pounds, at a minimum, atop it. Multiple open furnaces lined the back wall, though only one of them was lit. A vast array of metal tools hung from loops and catches on the walls around them.

Sitting in a great chair beside the forge, staring into the flames, was a giant.