Mask of Humanity

Nicolai snatched his glove from the ground and tugged it on. Immediately he felt it, connected to it, and the same blue lines as always crawled through it as he injected Oma into it and shaped the Art.

‘Curved,’ he murmured, focusing intently, and the shimmering disc of energy appeared. He twisted it critically, checking it over. Still not as curved nor as pointy in the centre as he wanted. But, it was significantly better than his last try. His ability to shape these Arts had improved with the gaining of a Soul, though he still had a great deal of room to improve.

Nicolai dismissed the shield and it dissolved into Oma. His eyes widened. He could feel that Oma in the air, a small cloud. It was dissipating, like usual, but far more slowly, lingering as long as it could. He reached out to it with his Soul Sense and pulled at it, raising a hand. It was drawn towards him and it clustered around his hand, slowly being absorbed by his flesh, even as it continued to thin on the edges. Nicolai frowned, realising he could regain it, now, a difference to before, but he was still going to lose quite a bit with how slowly it entered his hand. He shoved his head into the mass of Oma and breathed in, sucking it into his lungs.

From there, he felt his heart Node rapidly refilling. By lung he was able to regain the Oma significantly more quickly and with less loss than by hand. Made sense, he supposed. Lungs were designed for breathing in the atmosphere and filtering what was useful from it, whether that be oxygen, the colourless energy which his Node turned into Oma, or Oma itself.

He wondered whether it might be worth eating an Oma crystal, or a small piece of one, but some thought on that led him to suspect it would not be effective. His lungs were connected directly to his heart, where his Node was, surely that was why it worked. He had no Nodes in his stomach, at least not yet.

Studying the Oma as it returned to him, he felt he understood why he was now able to grasp it from the air, when before he couldn’t. It wasn’t so much because he’d changed, as because the Oma had changed.

As he’d noted before, this was his Oma. Even once it had left his body, been shaped into an Art, and then the Art had collapsed when he dismissed it… it remained his Oma. Thus, he maintained control over it and was able to recall it. Even so, once outside of his body it had begun to slowly dissipate, so it would be best to collect it quickly whenever he let it out.

He moved his focus to his Node, and found it was already drained by a third, even with the Oma he’d regained. This surprised him. It seemed his Node actually held quite a lot less Oma than his Seed had contained by the end. Though, it definitely held more Oma than his Seed had been able to send out without becoming strained. He determined that overall it was actually a decent improvement; the vast majority of Oma in his Seed had been unavailable due to the issue of strain, kind of like a piggy bank. With his Seed, the only way to get all the Oma out would have involved damaging or even breaking it. In contrast the Node could send out all its Oma without any noticeable issue.

Opting to continue practising, he pulled on an Oma crystal to restore his Node. Then he took the Swollen Eye amulet, Pegasi ring and Searchlight ring and put them on, too. He was still naked, but that was no bother. Why waste time putting clothes on, when there was magic to be practised with? It wasn’t like Kleos cared, so far as Nicolai could tell. He also took the Quiet Turtle Statue, but feeling at it with his Soul he found it didn’t work quite the same. He didn’t seem to be able to activate it properly, it seemed he was missing something.

‘How’s this work?’ he asked Kleos, showing it the Quiet Turtle Statue.

‘That’ll be for later. Once you can Cultivate more actively. I imagine you’ll need more Nodes for that.’

Shrugging, Nicolai put it aside, too excited to bother with the mystery behind it. He took a pair of Oma crystals and a deep, calming breath, though the grin still danced around his mouth.

He connected to the Pegasi ring and shaped its Art. His feet left the ground and he floated. Next the rapier shimmered with its lights and rose from his hand. He moved his finger in a slow circle and the rapier began orbiting his body as he floated there. He raised his other hand and took a moment to charge the glove, then shaped its shield which shimmered into life before him.

Now his brows were lowered in concentration. It was difficult to maintain so much at once. The Oma in the Imbued items was rapidly being consumed.

With another breath, he activated the Searchlight ring and light bloomed from his hand.

His focus reached a peak as he made himself float slowly forward, sent the rapier and his Soul Sense out in a snap, spun the weapon until it was pointing towards him, then pulled it back while raising the shield. The rapier glanced off the shield and slid by him, Nicolai letting out a grunt as his mind struggled to keep it all working. Oma was rapidly draining from the glove to reinforce the shield.

He performed the same act again, and this time also sent out a stream of Oma from his Node which flowed towards his gloved hand with the aim of refilling the glove.

Nicolai hissed, a pulse of pain rolling through his mind. The rapier wobbled mid-air. The shield wavered. The light from his ring flickered. ‘No,’ he hissed, and firmed his will. Obey.

The light grew strong once more, the shield solidified, the rapier spun in circles around him. Nicolai had almost floated to the wall so he lifted his feet and pushed gently off it, floating back the way he’d came, laughter bubbling from his lips.

The Oma in the rapier was about gone so he drew it back and it slapped into his palm, then another stream of Oma wound through his body and refilled it. It made him think of a strike craft landing for a quick refuel before being sent out once more. At the same time, he was drawing on the Oma in the two crystals he held, refilling his Node. The mental load reached a new peak as he pushed and pulled Oma in multiple directions, from multiple places, and his eyes grew unfocused, his teeth gritted. Control. He clamped down, he kept it tight, and the Oma moved in tight, directed streams through him.

His Node was full. His rapier rose into the air. Nicolai pumped his hand as he floated, sending it out in strikes at imaginary enemies, meanwhile he was repositioning his gloved hand to block imaginary projectiles, and slipping through the air to maintain distance from imaginary pursuers. He laughed, the thrill purring through him, loving the sensations of control, loving how natural and right it all felt, loving that he’d won.

###

Kleos observed the human as it floated through the air, fighting the shadows. There was a look of rapturous joy on its face, and it had hardly stopped laughing since it had begun. It was using not one, not two, but four Imbued items at once, three of them very active in nature, and until a short time ago it hadn’t even possessed a Soul. Hadn’t even been truly alive.

Had he still possessed a body, Kleos would’ve shivered. He could still remember his first few tries at controlling multiple Imbued, under the gaze of the Clan’s battle master. After some practise, Kleos had managed to control three at once. He’d been very clumsy, the third one straining his will until he could barely even keep it all together. Two of them had been passive types which required little mental effort, like the human’s ring.

The battle master had been very pleased. From that day forward, Kleos had held a higher position and had been fed more resources, a prodigy within the clan.

The human was using four at once, like Kleos might have used two back then. He felt reasonably sure the human could stretch to five with some practice, perhaps six with even more. On top of that, it had dealt with the Blue Hornet, a particularly tricky and aggressive Symbiote, with ease. First timers were normally given far, far gentler Symbiotes to grapple with.

Its potential, its talent, was monstrous. Kleos was no longer sure that things would go as he originally expected, if the human managed to restore him. When they’d first formed the Contract, he’d in truth considered it a shot in the dark. Most likely, he’d thought, the human would just die and he’d be stuck there alone again. As a result he hadn’t put much effort into the Contract, a fact he now regretted as it had become clear the human had, in contrast, put significant thought into the wording, showing a surprising degree of familiarity and competence with Contracts.

Then he’d seen the capabilities of the human, seen it come back bloodied but alive time after time. It had gotten to the library, and its method to do so had been taking down a Pegasi archer. This had been when Kleos had begun to hope, and began to think further afield.

He’d thought then that once restored he could leverage his experience to take control, to make himself its master. The human would be a useful tool. But as he'd began to get to know the human better, this view had changed.

By the time the human was strong enough to get him a body, he now thought it very unlikely he would be able to deal with it. It was growing too strong, too fast, taking to Cultivation like a fish to water. Beyond that was the fact that it was smart, wary, dangerous, and utterly devoted to increasing its fighting abilities.

It acted like they were friends, and Kleos even thought that a part of it, at least, thought they were. But there was an endless paranoia within it, a fundamental unwillingness to trust. He could see it considering everything he said, looking at his words from other angles.

It was clueless about Cultivation, yes, but even if their Contract hadn’t prevented him from lying… Kleos felt that attempting to spin a web of deceit around the human would be dangerous. Very dangerous. Above its calculation and its wariness and its devotion to battle, there was something else within the human. A demon that lurked behind its eyes.

There were moments where it showed some weakness, like this “mask” it spoke of, and its attempts to be more like others of its kind, a possible route for Kleos to manipulate it. But “mask” seemed a fitting term, as Kleos was sure that when push came to shove, it would discard anything that got in its way.

Including him.

How was it possible, he wondered, that a creature that didn’t even have a Soul at first, which had to use some strange, roundabout method to build a Soul for itself and Infuse its body, could have such talent? Were all humans like this?

Can’t be. Kleos chewed at his lip. That would be ridiculous. There were outliers in every race; this human must be one such. But even so, he suspected the average human must have a higher talent than was normal, because Nicolai was an outlier amongst outliers. He was very curious as to what the human's Aptitude was.

The human was letting out little grunts as it thrust with the rapier, blocked with the shield, floated and spun through the air. It looked at peace, possibly the happiest he’d ever seen it. A mind built to fight and kill.

If it survived, it was going to go far, very far, Kleos was sure of that. He was starting to think his best move was to try and hold onto it, do his best to work with it in truth, as an ally, a partner even. Playing games with this individual would not be the right move. Its mental state was too quick to shift, impossible to predict. Paired with its obsessive paranoia, aptitude for Cultivation, and skill at combat, the human was exceedingly dangerous.

The one point in Kleos’ favour was that it did seem to be committed to controlling itself. As a result, Kleos felt that so long as he was fair with it, it would therefore try to be fair with him. Try, of course, being the operative word. He still remembered that time it had failed to construct a Soul Trap and… well, Kleos wasn’t sure what he’d witnessed, but it hadn’t been pleasant. Even with their Contract, he had been deeply worried the human would kill him.

Kleos let out a tiny snort, trying to put the thoughts to rest. It did apologise, though. And at the very least, I made the Contract with someone who should be capable of getting me a body. Better a dangerous, unreliable partner who was capable of getting him a body, than a weak, controllable partner likely to die before getting anywhere close to fulfilling that goal.