Iron Quill ITDOTK - The Perfect Mask

[Mako]

This could probably do with some more editing and tweaking, but I've decided to put it up anyway. Hopefully it works as it is!

Oh, and the theme ingredients were 'becoming the mask', the soulstone necklace, and a brief hint of 'there are no coincidences' (mostly by accident that one!)

----------------

Matthias ran as fast as he could down the foggy street, his boots slipping on the slick cobbles as he took a corner too fast. He bounced off a streetlamp and careened into a wall, swearing as he felt the stone scrape along his cheek, blood trickling slowly into his stubble. He hated getting cut, his rugged features and piercing blue eyes had got him plenty of company in bars before. He hurriedly dragged himself to his feet to run again, but now in front of him stood his pursuer, breathing with a ragged wet sound in the still of the night. Matthias backed away slowly, fumbling in his coat for the hidden pocket that held the fruits of his thievery. With a triumphant cry, he pulled a soulstone free and brandished it at the advancing figure. Who stopped, head turned to stare at the stone as if entranced.

Matthias drew power from it, and as the glow swelled, he saw his pursuer's face for the first time. His curse this time was a coarse yelp of fear as he stared at the pulsating and gangrenous muscles that coated the featureless head. He gently swung the stone back and forth, and the sightless head turned to follow it. It craned its head forward, and the rotting muscles untwisted, revealing a cracked and misshapen skull that seemed to weep black oil. Startled, Matthias dropped the stone. The creature sprang at him, catching the stone in midair and reaching out to press it into Matthias' forehead. Matthias screamed as he was borne to the ground, lances of pain like ice and fire tearing into his face as his sight faded away.

"Another one?" Captain Yannick sighed as the morgue attendant nodded, leading the two guardsmen into a side room. Their breath misted in the cold as they approached a laden gurney covered by a heavy cloth. The attendant pulled back the cloth, allowing Yannick and his new rookie to see what was underneath. Yannick watched out the corner of his eye as the young guard turned away swiftly, scrambled across to the sink, and retched noisily into it. As he turned back shamefaced, Yannick felt a pang of sympathy. "Don't sweat over it lad, I didn't make it to the sink first time I saw one of these." Being careful not to get too close, he inspected the corpse as best he could.

This one was roughly five foot ten, average build, and just like the others showed no signs of trauma or illness except for on the face. Or at least, the front of the skull. Where the features had been, there were only strings of corroded and rotting muscle, with the skull poking through in places. The atrophied tissues had reshaped to seal over the eyes and mouth of the skull, cracking the lower jaw in half as they did so, leaving an almost featureless head even before the rot had spread down to the bone. But no further - the neck was untouched, as was much of the back of the head. And embedded in the corroded forehead was a drained soulstone that the attendant assured him was most likely put there moments after death. Yannick puzzled over this impossibility as he ushered his miserable junior out of the room, nodding his thanks to the attendant. In his hand he held the unfortunate corpse's personal effects - some scrip, a couple of soulstones, and a travel permit in the name of Matthias Rowthe.

Yannick sat in his office in the Elite Division headquarters, flicking through his notes on the victims. A noble, a miner, one of the girls from the Star, and now the thief, Rowthe. He racked his brain for something to connect them. For the fifteenth time, he took out their personal files and the list of their effects and stared at them. There were some oddities. Every single victim was in the habit of carrying soulstones, but only one was ever taken. And why was someone embedding a drained soulstone in the heads of people they killed? For that matter, how was it still drained if it was there when they died? All the little oddities began to add up in his mind.

"It isn't a coincidence, it's their own bloody stones!" He shouted suddenly, gripping the papers so hard his knuckles whitened. Guards outside the office's open door stared at him, as did his old friend Jon who was lounging in a chair on the other side of the desk, waiting for the rookie to reappear with a fresh pot of tea.

"Care to elaborate, Yann?" He asked, grinning at the outburst. They had known each other since their first weeks Malside and Jon was used to the sudden, often loud, insights his friend was prone to.

"It's not that he's stealing a stone and leaving a dead one, he's draining their stone. Whatever he's doing, he needs the stone to do it. It's not robbery, it's murder. We just don't know the motive yet. But if he needs stones, I think I know a good way to bait the trap." Yannick pushed the day's newspaper across the desk so his friend could read the headline: A Most Precious Gift - Lady Wynter's Rare Soulstone Necklace On Display.

***

His vision was fading fast, the people nearby mere blurs of faint light stepping around him on the dusk shaded street. Their souls glowed dully to his eyeless sight, and here and there the bright flare of a soulstone was a constant seduction. As they always did when he needed to hunt, the memories became confused. He could see the man he remembered as the maker in his white coat, short unkempt hair framing the thin, birdlike face. He couldn't remember who the man was, but he could still feel the needles sinking into his jaw, and the others around his face, all linked to a network of tubing. The creator's voice was hoarse from fumes, but still nasal when he spoke.

"As we agreed, I will give you the perfect mask. A blank canvas that can become any face you choose, so you can walk unseen even in a crowded street." The creator had continued talking, but the words had faded beneath the searing pain as the black oil oozed down the tubes and spread under his skin. It still burned to this day, the blackness oozing beneath his skin in squirming veins that seemed to flex and shift.

His face was now the mask he had demanded, but the price had been high. His lust for the glowing stones had become a craving, an insatiable hunger that stripped away everything but the predator within. And yet he could not keep them. He wanted them more than air, and would never be able to hold them; that had been the price. Frustrated, he wished he could still weep. Then, walking past him, went a light so beautiful and bright it flung every other thought from his scrambled mind. He turned, following it through the streets, oblivious to everything else around him in his hunger.

Yannick's rookie grumbled as he plodded down the street with the necklace on under his coat.

"Cheer up lad, no one can see it, and we've got our man it seems." Yannick could see the shadowy figure following them out the corner of his eye, and they turned down a side alley towards their backup. They turned to confront their pursuer, but he was already on them, smashing Yannick aside and grabbing for the rookie with frenzied fingers. Yannick was stunned - the face, though seeping and misshapen, had unmistakably been that of Matthias Rowthe. He heard the rookie scream and saw black rot spreading across his face even as the creature grew new skin. Yannick fired his pistol and the thing fled before Jon and their backup could close in. Ashen faced, Yannick turned to Jon as the rookie was rushed to the medics.

"I was wrong. It was robbery. He was stealing their god damn faces, Jon." In silence the two collected up the broken necklace and headed off with guard escorts, Yannick to the medics and Jon back to headquarters.

***

Yannick sat at his desk, reading reports from the night before to avoid thinking about his own experience. His rookie would recover, but both him and Jon had been summoned to explain the fiasco to the Governor's Secretary. He looked at the half of the necklace that was on his desk. This was not going to be a good day. Jon wandered into his office as Yannick picked up the next report, and noticed a familiar address at the top of it.

"Hey Jon, this is from your street. Everything ok last night?" He glanced up at Jon and saw he had strangely waxy skin. In horrified realisation, Yannick fumbled for his pistol as Jon's face began to peel open from his right eye down to his lip. Yannick was still trying to release the safety as Jon snatched up the necklace pieces as he lunged.

For Yannick, the world dissolved into pain.

Edited December 5, 2012 by Mako