Mask of Humanity

Paxolnaz, True Demon of the 9th Circle, Renegade member of the Unwinder’s Host, corrupter of Kings and devourer of Ascended, swam through the Interior.

A broken mirror of the Material, the Interior appeared as a twisted dream of the very same castle in which its efforts were currently focused.

The Warp energy here was weak and diluted, and it was a constant struggle to draw enough to sustain itself, requiring a significant effort of will. An effort that could not be stopped. To a human, it would have been like being forced to breath through a tiny straw. Worse still, the energy was lacking the spark of the True Endless. Gradually, bit by bit, the True energy inside of Paxolnaz was being turned False.

Regardless, it was better here than in the Material. It could only sustain itself for short bursts there, where the Aura and Spirit of the world ground at its form and the eyes of the Guard watched its every move. If it wanted to spend more time there—necessary to accomplish anything meaningful within this realm—it would need protection.

A Skin.

That Skin would come with other benefits, too. More important benefits. A physical form to hide within would allow Paxolnaz to far more easily resist the orders of its pitiable master.

This was the reason Paxolnaz was currently swimming towards a rippling, buzzing, frothing disturbance within the Interior.

The human’s psyche.

A cluster of beings surrounded the disturbance. Each of them had extended pieces of themselves, reaching into the human’s mind, pushing and pulling. Other parts were held ready, tubes and mouthpieces, eager to drink at the madness and chaos and bloodshed the human’s actions would feed through into the Interior, energies magnified by its Black Gift. They would suck it up, growing like ticks. They were always pushing, trying to encourage the human to generate more for them to consume, trying to gain more influence in its mind, using its Gift as a road into its Soul.

They sensed Paxolnaz drawing closer and drew reverently aside, a school of fish sensing the approach of a shark.

Paxolnaz watched them as it moved closer, circling the disturbance. They disgusted it. To a one they were all native to this place, formed from the Warp trapped inside this Bubble. Warp that was weak and diluted. None of them had even a trace of the true Warp, the Outside, the Endless.

It always felt a desire to simply kill them all and scatter the worthless remnants they would leave. But these beings had a purpose, one they’d been at a long time. One they were reasonably good at.

They were at work on the human, always, forever. Gradually twisting it. In this regard, they were doing Paxolnaz’s job for it, helping twist the human into a perfect Skin. Of course, they sought to make the human a Skin for them to ride, not for Paxolnaz, but it mattered little. Progress was progress, and this progress was occurring more easily than ever. The human had made itself a Soul and the start of a system, and as a result it was now much easier for them to reach into. Now the human was truly fitting and ready to be made into a Skin.

Settling itself around the disturbance, Paxolnaz peered through to the other side. The human was intending to work on what passed, for such lower reality beings, as its internal system. Today, the 9th Circle Demon gathered from the human’s thoughts, was a big day. Perfect.

It gazed at the creatures surrounding it, all of them staying well back. Come, it commanded, and parts of itself whipped out, extending towards them, latching on, pulling.

They hated and distrusted it, but they came. They had no choice. Within Paxolnaz was a piece of the true Endless, not this pitiable trapped version. They felt it, and they could not deny the 9th Circle Demon.

They would be its tools. Tools that were well suited for forging the human into a proper Skin. It gathered them into one, a unified mass of energy, and prepared them for insertion, which was a simple matter. It would simply press them toward the human and bid them to do as they always did, only in a more organised and effective manner. By this indirect method it avoided the Contract’s clause that it was not to harm the human. After all, Paxolnaz wasn’t the one doing the harming.

Then it watched, and waited for a good moment. Based on what it had learned of the human, this wouldn’t take long.

###

Nicolai locked the door of his room, pleased to find it had a draw-bolt, and spread his Soul Sense out, checking on the others before he got back to Cultivating. His Soul Sense struggled to reach far enough, but it was just able to reach under some of the further away doors, allowing him to view within.

Sara had taken mindership of Katie and they were sharing a bed; Katie asleep, Sara staring down at her and stroking her hair, her typically sour demeanor turned surprisingly loving and protective.

Perro was staring up at the ceiling, and his room was close enough that Nicolai could blanket the boy with his Soul Sense. He detected pulsing waves of nervousness and worry from the boy, something he’d learned was typical. Meanwhile in the next room, Azure was snoring away, completely at peace.

John and Cait were fucking, which didn’t particularly surprise him. They’d been doing their best to hide the fact of their relationship, but with his skills and his Soul Sense it was obvious. However, he found that Karl and Elena were also fucking which confused him, because he’d been sure they hated each other and had seen zero signs of any change in that attitude. He supposed they’d had some kind of momentary encounter while he’d not been observing and that hatred had taken a sidestep into lust.

A primitive impulse, a kind of morbid lustful curiosity, led him to watch John and Cait for a moment with his Soul Sense before he pulled away.

As he was leaving he ran into Beth’s Soul Sense and realised she’d been watching too, which his Mask and even Nicolai found very funny, seeing them both caught by the same primitive curiosity. Her Soul Sense rapidly retracted, leaking horrified embarrassment.

He followed, finding the sisters in the room they’d moved to. Jo was asleep, Beth was sitting there staring down at the centipede, clearly preparing to break it in. She must have opted to go and have a quick look around before doing so. She resolutely ignored him, as though entirely focused on what she was about to do as she gripped the centipede, lifting it and squeezing at it with her Soul Sense to stop it using its fire. He could feel how she was anxiously waiting for him to leave her alone so she could stop pretending she didn’t know he was there. He left her to it.

Old Ben was tossing and turning in the throes of some nightmare, some wretched phantom of his past that Nicolai might have drawn closer to observe, only his excitement to build a Node quickly overrode the brief curiosity.

He settled his Soul Sense around the door to the outside, checking outside, and there he noticed something new.

Phantoms of a dark and endless clawing hunger clustered around the door, and they stirred in response to the touch of his Soul Sense, reaching out and trying to grab hold of him. He felt their claws sinking into the stuff of his Soul Sense and he rapidly retreated, striking back to knock their grips off of him as he slipped back behind the door.

He lingered there, eyeing the door warily with grainy soul vision, but there was no more than the standard knocking and whispering. He’d just encountered the night-time clean-up crew, as Kleos had called them. They weren’t attacking the door despite Nicolai giving himself away, for whatever reason. Perhaps it was solid enough to resist them, and they knew that? Or they didn’t understand his Soul Sense emerging meant there were people behind the door they scraped at?

Leaving his Soul Sense tendril in the entrance room, willing it to alert him of any movement, he resettled back inside of his body and opened his eyes. He grasped one of his bags of Oma crystals and placed it on his lap, leaving it open, the crystals in immediate reach. He took a deep, slow breath, then another. Slowing his heartbeat and relaxing his body.

Once more he closed his eyes, and this time moved his awareness through his Soul, towards his Node.

It was full of Oma, his stores passively regained simply by breathing and allowing it to do what it did.

Nicolai tugged on this Oma, and a thick river began to pour from his Node. He directed this flow of energy to his right lung, and found that it was easiest to do so by moving it through his blood vessels. It didn’t seem to interfere with the movement of the blood, instead moving through the walls of the veins and arteries.

His body seemed to know what it was doing with this stuff, or perhaps it was the other way around, the magic understanding the best places and ways for it to go within his body.

Once the Oma had arrived he directed the river to form a pool of Oma that floated aimlessly around the place of potential, the spot where it felt right to build a Node.

For a moment he felt a vague unease emanating from his paranoia, aware that he had never done this before, had no real experience, but his eagerness quickly moved him past it and he set to work.

Nicolai worked to press and mould the Oma into a thin, dense strand. Kleos hadn’t said how dense to make it, but if this was to crystallise, he imagined it should be very dense and simply continued to push Oma into the strand even as he lengthened it. The more Oma he fed into it, the harder it became to keep it all constrained in the strand, the more he had to focus and apply constant willpower.

His awareness of his body, of everything, all of it began to fade. All that remained was the strand which he gripped tight, squeezing more and more Oma into it. He felt his Soul Sense retracting as he focused, his mind unable to spare the energy to keep it outside, and it relaxed into the passive sphere around him.

He only stopped when the Oma strand reached a point where the moment he condensed and pushed Oma into it, other Oma would burst out, and he found he was unable to make it any denser. Then he moved the strand to the point of potential. It was difficult to move, the strand seeming oddly real and alive as it squirmed in his grasp, desiring to burst apart into a dispersed cloud of Oma.

He forced the end of it into position at the bottom of the place of potential. The spot was inside the flesh of his lung but that didn’t seem to matter. Then he began to turn the strand around this point, pressing it tight against itself, looping it as he gradually formed a disk, curving it as it widened until it seemed like the bottom of an eggshell. He held tight, pressing and pressing to keep it in position, continuing to layer the dense strand atop it.

Then he ran out of strand, and it was nowhere near finished. He started working to form a new strand, and he found that his Node had ran out of Oma without him noticing. He reached for a crystal but the moment his focus shifted for an instant the whole rickety construction burst apart with a savage shock of pain and his mind was knocked a spin.

He gasped in a reflexive breath and coughed savagely. He tasted blood and clutched at his chest as his lungs spasmed, a deep, gritty ache emanating from his right side. He reactivated his Soul Sense and found that the flesh of his lung had burst in the spot where he’d been working. ‘Shit,’ he choked out.

‘What?’ asked Kleos.

‘I fucked up and hurt myself,’ Nicolai managed between painful, body-wracking coughs.

‘That’s normal. Takes everyone a few tries. Oftentimes, a lot of tries.’

‘You didn’t say so?’

‘I thought it was obvious.’

Nicolai snorted, which made him start coughing again. ‘It—wasn’t—to—me.’

‘Ah… actually…’ Kleos’ voice was a little chagrined. ‘I hadn’t thought. I’m sorry. Amongst my people… when a Cultivator was growing a new Node, the clan Elders used Symbiotes that formed small shields inside, around the Node. And if there was any damage in spite of this, we had plentiful healing methods. I, uh, I’m not sure what other peoples did.’ Kleos frowned. ‘I’m sure there’s a way,’ the head added in an uncertain murmur. ‘Let me think.’

Nicolai frowned, sitting back, pressing a hand to his chest where the pain radiated, struggling not to cough. The wound, though painful, was quite small when observed in his Soul Sense, not leaking a lot of blood. So long as he kept the coughing to a minimum it should scab up soon and stop bleeding, so he wouldn’t need worry about drowning in his own blood. His lungs would clear what was there out in time.

But this was far from ideal, he couldn’t keep going, not like this. It was inevitable that he would fuck up again, and after a few more such mistakes the damage would start to rack up and put him in danger, not to mention weaken him.

‘I can’t keep going like this,’ he spat. All the eagerness and excitement he’d felt was twisting into a frustrated disappointment that filled him, and then began to be absorbed.

It was being sucked through the cage that sat inside his Soul, consumed by what lurked there. The cage was trembling. The thing within whispered and roared. Strands of it slipped through the cage which seemed to be collapsing all by itself.

He seized control of the cage and worked to firm it, but could feel how his efforts were making little difference. Still his emotions were pouring into the greedy dark and it was growing, rising, pressing against the cage. He needed to take control of it, of himself. His skin prickled as a strange chill filled the air.

He wasn’t ready. He hadn’t expected this. His hands clenched and his nails dug into the skin of his palms, his teeth grinding as the cage cracked and the dark began to pour out.

Nicolai sprung to his feet and paced around the room, breathing fast. ‘Kleos,’ he said, he begged. Help. Kleos said something but he couldn’t understand the words. The world was melting around him, shadows rushing over the walls, the cold in the air intensifying. The darkness snarled and spread and came alive, free from the cage, and it thought of the people sleeping around him, thought of how it hated the worthless, annoying old man, thought of how the lot of them constrained him and held him down and how satisfying it would be to tear them apart.

He was reminded of his Mask as it noticed the dark and it twisted, terrified, suddenly lunging through him in an attempt to aid him, to stop the dark, but it came too slow. His body flushed and erupted with nervous sweat, even as the dark laughed and surged through his Soul, painting it black, reaching for the Mask.

‘No,’ he moaned, sinking to his knees, pressing his hands to his face, feeling for his Mask, trying to press it on tighter, but his madness had torn it apart. It was swamping him, consuming him. The world faded around him, and something else rose in his place.