Mask of Humanity

Two days later, Nicolai stood once more in the tunnel before the chasm, eyeing the dim red light of what he felt sure was the heart, across the way. He tapped his Mark and grinned at what he saw.

User Interface 376 | Player #53,217

- Cultivation

> Seed Progress

Soul: 86%

Oma: 86%

Almost there. The thought gave him a dizzying rush of joy that poured through his body and plucked at his limbs, sending him spinning and dancing across the room, revelling in being alive as he had upon first being reborn, laughing like a child.

Today was a good day, and not only because at long last he’d almost completed his Seed.

There came a scraping from behind, and Harold, puffing and panting, limped into the tunnel, dragging a few ropes behind him with his good arm. Below Nicolai were the rest of the ropes, which he’d carried in himself.

They’d found them at the site of a destroyed crane, and though Nicolai wasn’t sure he’d trust just one of the ancient ropes, he reckoned all of them together should be strong enough. Amongst the ropes and clattering along behind Harold were numerous metal hooks they’d found in a refuse area where the undead dumped bits of old equipment along with bug corpses.

Digging through the stinking dead bugs in search of more hooks had prompted a great deal of groans and moans from Harold, which, surprisingly, hadn’t bothered Nicolai. His mood was buoyant and excessive, tolerant and gentle.

‘Will this work?’ asked Harold, gazing into the darkness beyond the tunnel uncertainly.

‘We’ll see.’ Nicolai picked up one of the hooks and the rope he’d coiled alongside it, gave the end of the rope to Harold, then started spinning the hook. He threw hook and rope both, and they watched as it all disappeared into the dark, aimed right at the dull red glow of what they hoped was the heart.

He tugged on the rope, and heard a rattling, and then the hook was pulled into the chasm. It fell and the rope jerked. Nicolai reeled it in and threw again. After a few more tries, the hook got caught good on something over there. Harold tied their side off the rope off on a spur of rock that stuck out from the wall of their tunnel.

Nicolai wasn’t willing to leave things to chance, so he threw more hooks over until there were an unnecessary number of ropes stretching across.

Then the time came and Nicolai paused in thought. Harold couldn’t make this crossing, not with the broken arm and torn leg. If that hadn’t been the case, Nicolai would have done his utmost in terms of wheedling and pressuring, and even outright physically forcing, to have the other man cross over instead of him.

The reason was simply that he disliked putting himself in risky situations, and this counted as one such situation. But, with the injury, Nicolai knew Harold would not be able to make the crossing.

This led to a dilemma. By crossing, Nicolai would have to trust that Harold would not betray him.

He had a good understanding of Harold, now. He truly didn’t believe that Harold had any intention of betraying him. There was no reason to do so, at least until the moment Nicolai was coming across, the heart in his hands. If Harold were to ask him to throw the heart over then, he would know the man intended to betray him.

Nicolai liked Harold, or at least he thought he did, but he didn’t trust Harold. Although he had been practising at being human, and finding some success—even experiencing what he thought were human emotions and coming to “like” Harold—still, he didn’t trust Harold. This was simply because he didn’t and he couldn’t trust anyone. But he did trust his own estimation of the man and his certainty that Harold would not betray him in this moment.

Finally, he felt that he had wormed his way into Harold’s confidences. If there was trouble with the ropes, Harold would help him.

Decision made, Nicolai tested the firmness of the ropes. Then he gathered a few that were close by one another, wrapped his arms and legs around them, and hung below, the ropes bending and taking his weight. It seemed firm enough.

He extended his Seed’s Soul Sense out across the chasm, reaching for the far side. Nicolai began to crawl beneath the ropes, moving out from the tunnel to hang over the dark depths of the chasm. Halfway across he heard the quiet crackle of stone moving, and looked back at Harold.

‘That you?’ he hissed, his Soul Sense tendrils creeping over everything in range but finding only the ropes, the hooks, and cool rock.

‘No,’ said Harold, staring past him with worry, eyeing the dark.

After a moment Nicolai continued. When something needed to be done it was best just to do it, that was what he told himself. He reached the other side and climbed up from the rope. It was dark on this side, and he would have struggled to find his way around without his Soul Sense which he ran carefully over everything around him, checking all was safe in response to his paranoia. He felt nothing but stone.

He made his way carefully over slews of sharp, ragged rock, toward the red light pulsing further in. He felt it, now, as it drew within range of his Soul Sense, a spark of ominous energy. After scrambling up and down a bit, he was there, looking down at the source of the light. It was a heart, a heart made from twisted black and red, more stone or crystal than flesh.

His Soul Sense played over it, feeling it closer. There was a dark, malice-filled air to it, one that nagged at him oddly, familiar, causing a small stirring from something within him. He touched it with his Mark and thought examine, and his Mark flared with golden light.

Nicolai didn’t read what was written, because the flare of light from his Mark had revealed something.

Something that was staring down at him with a nightmarish grin. Something that was large, and chitinous, and looming. Something that as far as his Soul Sense was concerned had just been rock until a moment ago.

But now those rocks had come alive and where his Soul Sense brushed it he felt as though he were cutting himself on knives, and with a reflexive spasm his Soul Sense retracted, narrowing his world to what his eyes could see and his ears hear.

A pale, rotted head rose, mouth opening and closing. ‘Hello again,’ said the Centipede, and the awful squeal of its deranged, gleeful laughter boiled into the air.

Nicolai snatched the Heart and threw himself frantically away. He scrambled and fell down the slope towards the ropes and the chasm and Harold, everything moving and shifting around him as the Centipede rose from hiding, its insane laughter rising and rising and rising.

Something flashed out from the dark and cracked into his legs and Nicolai fell, tumbling down. He felt it press close over him, felt something worm around the Heart in his grasp.

‘You didn’t think it could be so easy, did you?’ said the Centipede as it wrenched the Heart away from him. He saw Harold turn and run. He knew that he was going to die but he forced himself to his feet anyway and kept running, only to be tripped again by the monster as it laughed. It was playing with him.

‘Come back Harold, come back!’ it howled towards the tunnel. ‘Don’t leave another to die!’ More insane laughter bubbled up, rising into a jagged shriek.

Nicolai threw himself into the chasm, toward the ropes, and he landed on them and twisted and tumbled, gripping tight, thrashing and pulling himself onwards, teeth grit, moving as fast as possible.

A sharp chitin blade flashed behind him, snick, through every rope at once, and then he was falling. He managed to brace himself and get a good hold on one of the ropes as it went taut, jerking in his hands. The wall came quick towards him.

He slammed into unyielding stone, air exploding from his lungs, praying that the rope would hold where he and Harold had tied it to the spur of rock. He pulled himself up, horribly aware that he had only come this far because the Centipede was letting him, that this was all part of its play, that he would not escape in the end. His lungs and arms burned with the effort of hauling himself up towards the ledge and the light above.

He was almost there. He reached for the ledge, and a blade of chitin lanced out and sliced the ropes just as Nicolai grabbed at the stone. He dangled from the ledge one-handed, heaving breaths and straining, getting his other hand there and clinging by his fingers. I’m dead. I’m dead. His lips drew back to bare gritted teeth. After everything. Like this.

Pitiful.

Something came close to the side of his head and he could feel it there behind him, the weight of it and the smell of rotten meat and the stinking strength and power of something that should not exist. There came a click of alien teeth, then it spoke in his voice.

‘Help! Harold! Help me!’ it cried out, and chuckled, low and quiet so only Nicolai could hear.

###

‘Help! Harold! Help me!’

Harold’s limping run slowed and he put a hand to his face, his breath catching as the words rekindled memory. That’s what she had said, those were the exact words, and now Nicolai said the same, pleading just as she’d pleaded.

‘Harold! Harold! Please!’ Nicolai’s voice echoed down the tunnel, and he remembered another tunnel, a different voice, the same words. He’d ran then. She’d died, the Centipede had taken her. He’d told himself he wouldn’t let it happen again.

And now, it was happening again. He took fast, tight breaths. His hands clenched into fists.

Harold turned around.

###

There came a rustling and cracking of chitinous talons on stone, and the Centipede was gone into the dark, but Nicolai could feel it, all around, waiting. He gasped for breath, his fingers losing their grip. Then he heard footsteps from within the tunnel, and moments later he saw Harold’s face come into view above, tight and terrified, looking over the ledge at him. Harold extended his good arm and Nicolai lunged, grabbing at his hand, and Harold pulled and Nicolai kicked with his feet and he went over and rolled onto the ground.

‘Run,’ he managed, doing his best to crawl away and get to his feet, stumbling on shaky legs and falling, then he heard a wet, fleshy crunch.

Rolling onto his back Nicolai saw Harold suspended in midair in the chasm beyond the tunnel, hung like meat on a hook of black chitin. The nightmarish face of the Centipede loomed behind, grinning like Satan himself, and it held the rotting pale head of the dead woman up in front of Harold.

‘Haroooold!’ it screeched, using a limb to make the limp mouth move. ‘Haroooold! Please Harold! Don’t leave me Harold!’ the Centipede screamed with laughter that bounced and writhed off the walls, echoing and booming.

Harold’s mouth gaped, lungs empty of air to scream.

‘I told you Harold, I told you I’d catch you,’ bubbled the Centipede. ‘We’re going to have such fun, so much fun you and me Harold such fun in the dark and the depths just you and me and her Harold, forever and ever Harold, me and you and her, her and me and you, together forever Harold.’

Its voice was something sick and evil that crept in through Nicolai’s ears and smeared blood and filth on the walls of his mind.

Nicolai stared at the Centipede and at Harold and in Harold he saw a great man who had saved him, who had done something Nicolai himself would never have done.

Nicolai would have kept running.

Part of him thought Harold the greatest, most pitiable of fools, but simultaneously Harold seemed almost to glow like Jesus on the cross there where he hung, impaled, hands pulling at the chitin that had punctured through his chest.

There came a flurry of movement in the dark and Harold and the rotting head were gone and only the Centipede’s awful visage remained.

‘Your mask is crying, little demon,’ whispered the Centipede. ‘Let it fall and break, laugh with us and tear Heaven asunder. You are one of us, I can feel it, I can taste it.’

There was a flicker of red light and something was launched from the dark and Nicolai caught it reflexively, feeling it hum and writhe in his hands.

The Heart.

It had given it to him.

‘Take that to our father. It is time he returned.’

Nicolai frowned. He wasn’t like Harold, not as Harold had been in those final moments. Noble, self-sacrificing. But he wasn’t this monster either.

‘I’m not like you,’ he said, and told himself it was true.

‘The future echo of your soul is black.’ It laughed once more, then with a tearing of talons on stone and savage writhing movement it was gone and Nicolai lay there in the light of the torch, the slow throb of the Heart pulsing through his hands, staring into the empty dark.

He rose to his feet and stumbled out of the tunnel, right into a group of skeletons who turned to look at him. The vestige of rational thought in him said they might attack me if they see the heart, and he waited silently with his empty gaze affixed on them to see if they would but the Heart writhed in his grasp and there was a strange darkening around him. The skeletons turned away. Carrying it with him he made his way out of the tunnels and up to the pit where he sat on the edge, staring up at the blue sky through the gap, as Harold had liked to do.

He ran his hands over the Heart and told himself he was grieving.