Mask of Humanity

‘Nicolai! It’s ok!’ Kleos was yelling. ‘I remember now! There’s a way, there’s a way you can do it!’

‘How’s that?’ hissed the Dark, paying little attention to the tiny voice.

The Dark had returned to find itself changed, altered by whatever the body and the mind had been doing. It found itself stronger. The body its Soul was contained in was too small and from its limbs bulged shadowy spiritual claws.

It had located the Soul Sense, a useful new tool, and was spreading through it, sending the tendril creeping. It was black and red and writhing with hunger, crawling over the walls and out into the hall and over sleeping forms, sensing their weakness, judging them worthless.

It found one awake, one that was absorbed by the centipede that was suspended by Oma before her, which she was attempting to break. She turned in shock, sensing its touch, struggling to maintain her attack on the centipede. It grinned at her and faded away. Soon enough that would be its centipede.

There were creatures outside the big door and they reminded the Dark of itself but weak, nothing but food, and it pressed through the door and grasped for them and they squirmed and fled, fleeing back down the stairs, back into whatever had birthed them, and it laughed. Lightning began to crackle over its body, another new part of it responding to its desires.

The little voice, the little head, was speaking again. ‘You can practise building the Node, outside of your body. You can form it in the air. Once you’re better at it, you can do it inside. So, you don’t have to risk injury.’

‘A waste of Oma.’

‘It’s fine, you’ve lots of crystals, right? You can start right now, practise, get better, and build your first Node in a couple of hours!’

That’s true, said something inside of it, and the something grew and rushed and they collided.

Nicolai’s body snarled and ripped at the air, staggering around the room, tearing at itself. What was the point of all this work to make them useful if I let you kill them? said the mind, grabbing at the Dark, wrestling with it, trying to put it back in the cage.

But the Dark would not be held down, not this time, not now it had finally slipped the bonds, not now there were so many targets around it, such fun to be had in the blood and the screams and the breaking. It laughed and pushed back as the lightning surged, and it was winning.

Then something grabbed it from behind. A Mask, cracked all over, glued back together, something that should have been flimsy but it was burning bright with a furious determination of its own, one driven by something the darkness loathed.

‘No…’ The Dark was pressed to its knees, falling, fading, and the cage opened behind it, seized it. It tried to force its way back out but the Mask and mind slammed into it, and with one final scream of rage, it fell inside.

‘Get back in there, tool,’ snarled Nicolai, as he and the Mask pushed and shoved. Over his body he saw strange shapes, where his Soul was bulging and twisting, turning into something inhuman, and he felt how this was a transformation that needed to be stopped now before it went too far. He pressed with his hands, shoving it back into him, and then he turned his attention to the inside of him, gathering the dark and squeezing it into the cage. But the cage was broken, now, and it was not easy. He followed after the dark, entering the cage.

And there he found something strange. There was a hole in the cage, a hole that seemed a part of the darkness. The hole was pouring fresh energy out and into the dark, feeding it.

What is this?! Was it a part of him, like the dark? It seemed different, and the stuff that poured out of it, that fed into the dark, was an endless barrage that didn’t match him, that differed from the original dark which had until now resembled a strange mirror of himself. No, this was something other. A problem, one that seemed to be somehow infecting the dark within him, twisting it even further from his control. He didn’t understand it but he knew he needed to seal it.

Control. His mind clamped like a vice, reinforced by the Mask and even the thrill from behind, a sudden rush, locking the dark up tight, grabbing at the pieces of the cage. Just another fight. It seemed that the cage had once held this hole closed, though he had a feeling the closure had never been perfect, no vacuum seal. He drew the cage and worked to build it stronger, worked to close the hole.

It took time, and significant, gruelling effort. But working together, he and the Mask got it done, as best they could. He sealed the hole, at least. The cage was not perfect, in fact it was far worse than it had been before, but his energy was spent. This was as good as he could do.

Nicolai sucked in a great breath of ragged air and erupted into coughing, the pain returning as his mind regained awareness of his body. He fell into a sitting position and stared into the oily dark, wiping the sweat from his eyes. The chill in the air had faded.

‘I won,’ he told himself, made himself believe it. ‘I won.’ He cancelled the lightning Art before it vented. The dark was still struggling to re-emerge from the cage which was all but broken. He sighed, and got back to it. It was his will and the Mask more than the cage, that held it there. They worked together, keeping the dark trapped, restoring the cage as much as they could. It wasn’t easy, but the more he worked at it, the more he improved.

Merely another skill to master. Nicolai was not sure what the hole and the strangeness within the Dark represented, what it was. But he was going to find out, and he would continue to pursue his original aim.

The Dark would be mastered, brought wholly under his control.

As he worked, he considered the Mask. It had been a great help to him in this moment. He wasn’t sure he would still be in control if not for it—he might instead be busy turning people inside out.

It seemed that the Mask was of more use, more importance, than he’d imagined.

###

The collection of entities spilled out from the human and fled to find some holes in which to rejuvenate themselves.

Paxolnaz drew back, observing. The human’s various odd little parts, alongside its obsessively controlling nature, had fought back.

Fought back hard. Surprisingly hard.

Paxolnaz had performed this process before. Most of those with the Black Gift, the Naturals, fell easily. It wasn’t sure it could even remember any past Gifted that had been quite so difficult as this human, certainly not one with so much potential.

The slow progress wasn’t due to any lack in Paxolnaz. The major problem was the Contract between them. That Contract was the reason it was forced to utilise roundabout methods like commanding the minor False Demons to act as its tool in this attempt, and directing the human to the Blade.

Otherwise, it would have simply dove into the human, which was the method it was used to utilising. An individual with such a powerful Black Gift and yet such a weak Soul would have been very easy for Paxolnaz to take, the easiest it would ever be. Plus, as the human was already somewhat Demonic in nature, doing so would have drawn minimal response from the Guard.

This wasn’t the first time Paxolnaz had laboured under limitations. The Demon had always been good at finding ways around such obstacles. It had expected to succeed in this, its first true attempt. But the human had surprised it, proving unusually difficult to break. This seemed to be a trend within the creature.

Always it resisted. Fought back. Refused to give up.

It was astonishing, really. The human didn’t even know what was happening. It couldn’t tell the difference between its own naturally demonic nature, the visions and bloodlust that came with it, and the urgings and influences of Paxolnaz and other entities.

Whatever place it had called home before being pulled by Heaven into this sandbox must have been almost entirely spiritually inert, a real backwater even by the standards of this reality. That, plus the lack of a real Soul, was the only way it could have maintained its sanity for so long in spite of its Gift. Normally such an individual would have been mutated or Skinned at a young age.

It looked to have been undergoing a gradual, slow transformation, one that had for some reason stopped partway, meaning this being had somehow maintained most of itself, instead of being carved out by the entities feeding off of it. Some kind of process that led to a significant change in its body, Soul, or mind must have occurred, allowing it to perhaps even lose some of the Gift, which had since been regained.

In spite of all of this, it seemed to have been, in a small way, making the power of this false Endless its own, drinking it in, and it didn’t even know it was doing so.

As a result it shone to Paxolnaz and those like Paxolnaz. Gave off a buzzing beacon, practically calling out, pulsing through the Interior. A solid, unshakeable link to the Material. If it kept growing, it had the potential to one day reach even through the Bubble.

Unfortunately for the human, it would not have the time to grow to that state. Paxolnaz needed a Skin to hide in before the nearest piece of its master gained freedom. Otherwise, it would be too late.

The master, the Unwinder, was only here in part, a tiny portion of its true self. But even so, once that part of the Unwinder gained freedom Paxolnaz would not be able to resist it. It would be dragged along, slaved to assist its master on the doomed push for freedom. A push that had failed many, many times before.

No.

This time, Paxolnaz had a better route available.

The Imperial agent. An individual who had contacted Paxolnaz prior to the start of this latest Iteration of Heaven’s torturous Game, and offered a deal.

Naturally, the Imperials couldn’t be trusted, but it was still worth trying. What they wanted was quite simple, after all.

Kill the Lizard, and Paxolnaz would be given freedom. It had imagined this might be quite a time consuming task, as the agent had not said where the Lizard might be found, and there were many worlds within the Game. However, this had changed when it first encountered the human. The human was searching for the Lizard, had been told by someone that the Lizard was on this world. Following this, Paxolnaz had performed its own checks, and had sensed the Lizard. It looked like it would be able to complete the task far faster than anticipated.

As such, taking the human would be doubly beneficial. It seemed that the power struggle within Heaven had drawn some minor focus onto this human. The True Demon felt it would be quite satisfying to foil whatever plans those distant Angels and Denizens had made, considering all that Heaven had done to it.

Its gaze returned to the disturbance and the human it represented. Struggle as it might, Paxolnaz was going to grind the human down, transform it into something to which their Contract no longer applied, and then the Demon would be able to wear it as a Skin.

A quick journey, kill the Lizard, and it might be able to get out of this awful place. Paxolnaz was exceedingly tired of the Great Game.

The two problems comprised the human's unusually strong resistance, and the difficulty of working around the Contract. Fortunately, Paxolnaz had found a way to solve both problems.

It had detected a powerful Symbiote nearby, a Heaven Path Symbiote. One that could alter Contracts. Whenever it had the freedom to do so, it had been working to find and seize that Symbiote. With that, it would be able to alter the Contract between itself and the human. Unfortunately it wouldn’t be able to alter the more fundamental clauses, but it would have room regarding some of the others.

It intended to use the Symbiote to force the human to get the Demonic Artifact, the Blade. As soon as it did so, the brethren True Demon Paxolnaz had detected in the Blade would do as expected, and the human would be warped and twisted. With that, the human would no longer be the same being Paxolnaz had formed a Contract with. The Demon would then be free to act directly, and matters would move forward significantly faster.

The Interior around Paxolnaz rippled, a wave moving through it, crashing into Paxolnaz and pulling the Demon from its thoughts.

FREE ME, MY HOST. FREE ME AND WE SHALL HAVE VENGEANCE UPON HEAVEN. FREE ME AND WE SHALL ESCAPE THIS REALM. COME, COME NOW, COME AND FREE ME!

As the message pulsed through the Interior and into Paxolnaz, the Unwinder’s Shard within it reacted, sinking hooks deep. Squirm and writhe and twist as it might, Paxolnaz could not resist.

With a final glance at the disturbance representing the human’s mind, Paxolnaz turned and dove through the Interior. The human, still entirely unaware of Paxolnaz’s presence and intentions, was left behind. It would return to resume its work another time.

Paxolnaz burrowed through shadowy walls and floors, deep down through the mirror of the castle.

After travelling for some time, it came out into a vast open area, in the centre of which there was a gigantic, bulging mass, a spiritual weight that encroached into the Interior. A great and complex cage, wrapped around a monstrous being that hissed and spat. The creature saw Paxolnaz as the Demon emerged.

FREE ME, howled the shred of the Unwinder.

Paxolnaz was well used to concealing the loathing it felt at the sight of its fallen Master, at the sound of its pitiable mewling. It pressed through the barrier between realms, pushed into the Material.

The True Demon emerged as a figure of boiling dark fire, stepping onto stone that began to corrode. It was surrounded by figures that turned to face it. The Aura of the world pressed against it, flaying the edges of its form, grinding at it. An endless, itchy, annoying pain, made all the worse for the knowledge that gradually, bit by bit, it was losing itself, losing the Spark of True Warp that made it superior to everything else in this realm. Beyond that was a sense of weight, an ominous regard from above. The Guard, keeping watch.

But both this weight and the pressure of the Aura was far reduced here, compared to anywhere else in the castle. The Unwinder’s Aura somewhat reduced the pressure, and even pulled the eyes of the Guard away. For this reason, Paxolnaz could far more freely use its full abilities down here; in the one place where it would much rather do as little as possible.

It had to get out of this place. It had to get free. It had to Skin the human before this shred of the Unwinder was released and dragged it, screaming and kicking, on yet another pointless rampage.

You return again, Father. At last, whispered one of the Centipedes, the one that was always carrying those two rotted heads, as they all knelt reverently before the True Demon.

Paxolnaz did not reply, nor did it bother to hide the disgust it felt as it gazed at the base creatures that it had unwillingly spawned, then looked past them.

The great space was filled by war. Paxolnaz stood amidst the Centipedes, the generals, looking out over a mass of bugs. The bugs were engaged in endless, clamorous assault against endless ranks of slaved dead, attempting to push through, to reach what lay in the centre of them.

Where in the Interior the piece of the Unwinder had been visible, in the Material there was now something far smaller in its place; smaller, but almost as dangerous.

The Castle Core was a great floating orb of shimmering crystal, sparking and seething and humming, wrapped in crackling green energies, corralling the dead around it. Floating around it were Artifacts, bound to its Will, and on the ground or in the air were its most powerful slaved dead, some of whom had Artifacts of their own. Where they went, bugs and even Centipedes died.

The endless battle kicked up a notch as one of them spotted Paxolnaz, and they prepared to receive the Demon.

Paxolnaz gazed at them grimly, feeling its masters Will pressing hard against it. It would take some time for the Will to wear off, for it to regain its freedom and be able to resume its true goal.

Back to work.