Mask of Humanity

Cyberwarfare sunk spiritual claws into the thing and dragged it from where it had hidden, leapt at it and savaged it like a wolf, but the thing, which appeared as a little ball of slick, oily darkness in his Soul, struggled and resisted, trying to dig back into him.

Nicolai immediately turned the entirety of his Soul toward it, diving in to aid Cyberwarfare. He gripped the dark thing tight, clenching his Soul around it and squeezing it, holding it still while Cyberwarfare tore at it.

Relax, human. I’m merely here to aid you.

Paxolnaz? he asked, frowning, Cyberwarfare stilling in response, its claws drawing back—for the moment.

Who else? I left a tiny piece of myself with you. Where do you think the memories came from? A chuckle rolled out. And, I have more memories to share. At the right time. Leave me be, and I’ll help you… the little worm wriggled, pulling away from the clutch of his Soul, and immediately started to rebury itself in the stuff of him.

His eyes narrowed.

You dare, human? hissed the piece of Paxolnaz, as his Soul stirred around it, and Cyberwarfare circled, a hungry, spiritual wolf. The piece of the Demon attempted to back away, watching it warily. What you are considering is a very bad idea.

Cyberwarfare looked to him eagerly, requesting permission.

Nicolai snorted. Kill it, he told the Module, and his Soul clenched down again and Cyberwarfare leapt at the worm.

The tiny piece of the Demon screamed and thrashed.

I will not forget this, human. You will suffer! You will—

Cyberwarfare’s claws scissored, and the piece of Paxolnaz died.

He’d gained all the relevant information from the piece, anyway. He had taken the time to thoroughly pry through the memory it had left until there was nothing remaining during his conversation with Kleos, every piece of information extracted. As to these “additional memories” it hinted at? Maybe it was being honest, maybe it wasn’t. Nicolai didn’t care either way.

He saw no reason to leave a part, tiny as it was, of a very dangerous being within him. What it had been there to do, he wasn’t sure. The Contract decreed that the Demon couldn’t harm him, but doubtless there were plenty of things it could have done that didn’t fall under the umbrella of “harm” as Heaven defined it.

Only one last matter remained to him.

Nicolai drew a small rock from where he’d hidden it. The rock he’d found in the room in the crack above the Gauntlet, the rock with a Symbiote inside.

‘How should I go about getting the Symbiote out of this?’

‘You’ll need to try and work out what food it will eat, then ideally prepare an Oma infused bath for it. The Slow Water, once you get some, will be good for that. It slows down decay and damage, which will give you more time. Then you’ll have to carefully take it out—I’ll show you how at the time—and feed it until it has restored itself.’

‘I see.’ Another longer-term goal. Procuring Slow Water had been raised higher on his list. ‘How can I work out what food it needs?’

‘Best way is to try and send your Soul Sense inside, and just take the time to soak around it. Get the feel for it. Whatever it feels like… its food will feel a little similar. If you can memorise the spiritual imprint of the Symbiote, you’ll be well suited to recognising its food.’

Nicolai noticed Kleos was glancing at the bucket he’d replaced its old jar with, and the liquid within. ‘Bucket?’ he asked, and received an affirmation.

The head was clearly pleased to be back in its liquid, and Nicolai left it there as he spent half-an-hour before he slept doing as Kleos had suggested, working until he had memorised what the Symbiote in the rock felt like.

His last act before sleeping was checking on the progress of his gradually finalising lung Nodes. He had completed the Nodes in the very early AM of the current day, which meant the current value would show him roughly how much he could expect the Node to increase by in a day, minus a bit.

User Interface 376 | User #53,217

- Cultivation

Total Nodes: 1 Major, 2 Minor

Available unconstructed Nodes: 0 Major, 3 Minor

- Nodes in progress;

Right Lung (Finalising: 11%)

Left Lung (Finalising: 11%)

Completed Nodes;

Heart (Flawless) (100/100)

Eleven percent… This meant he could expect to have gained a couple more percent by the time he reached twenty-four hours from the moment of Node completion. Giving him a rate around twelve to thirteen percent a day, which meant it should take around eight days in total for a Minor Node to be completed. Not a long time, in the grand scheme of things. But a long time for Nicolai. In eight days a great deal could happen.

Putting the thoughts aside, he lay down and at long last he slept, ending the day.

###

That morning he spent a brief amount of time Soul Sense sparring with Beth. He’d asked Kleos more questions, and had some thing he’d wanted to try. He had confirmed that in order to use his Blue Hornet’s lightning from a distance, first he had to break the opponents Soul Sense. Likewise, Beth had wanted to test her Crawling Fire. They had both allowed the other to break their Soul Sense, and then felt at how they were able to “lock on,” in a way, to their opponent, how their Symbiotes, once charged, had grown active and ready, able to send something like targeting beacon or thread through their Soul Sense towards the opponent.

When the opponents Soul Sense was active, it was impossible to apply that targeting beacon. They hadn’t actually used their Symbiotes on one another. Nicolai had no desire to experience the touch of Beth’s crawling flame, merely to test how they worked.

He’d also learned something else which he’d found very interesting, grasped from a few offhand words from Kleos.

‘Of course,’ the head had said, ‘with your Imbued rapier you’ve got quite an advantage in these kind of fights; if you were to use it.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘You can push your Soul Sense inside of it, wielding it on the end of your Soul Sense tendril. You can then use it as a kind of direct method for piercing and cutting attacks, which will be stronger than normal. It allows you to easily make such attacks perfect, if that makes sense.’

Nicolai had tried this out, sending out his rapier and tangling with Beth’s Soul Sense tendril. As the head had said, it gave him a huge advantage (she had whined that he better not use it in every sparring session). He was able to very easily cut through Beth’s Soul Sense tendril, and he had the impression that directly attacking her body would allow for a kind of double attack; physical, and spiritual. A stab would likely break someone’s Soul Sense, at the same time as, well, stabbing them.

The only difference from how he’d used the sword previously was that now he had to work to force a portion of his Soul Sense into the sword, filling it, and having that portion of his Soul Sense take on the shape of the sword, rather than simply grasping the sword with his Soul Sense. As a result, it made his Soul Sense tendril slightly shorter, reducing his overall range.

In this session he had also found that Threat Analysis and Cyberwarfare gave him some additional Soul Sense combat benefits, now they were present in his Soul. They were able to form tiny tendrils of their own, little barbs that could complement his primary tendril, forming separate attacks. Threat Analysis was also very attuned to the ripples in the Aura, continuously informing him of what it sensed, while Cyberwarfare joined Nicolai in analysing and predicting Beth’s moves.

After all that he’d indulged himself practising with the polearm. The chair he’d used as a target had suffered greatly as Nicolai used bursts of winds to launch it around the room, laughing and laughing. He enjoyed it so much that he considered bringing the polearm with him from then on, but unfortunately he didn’t think it was worthwhile. He had guns now. The polearm was outclassed, and it was a bulky, heavy item. It wasn’t worth carrying such weight when he just wanted it as manner to use wind attacks; wind attacks which were quite close ranged, as they didn’t go further than a few metres.

He had tried strapping it to his back in a way where it touched on skin, wondering if he could wear it as though it were a very large piece of Imbued jewelry. But getting the most power from the wind attacks required him to hold it and make matching gestures with it as he launched them. Why would he do that, when he could just shoot people?

Nicolai had, regretfully, put it aside. Kleos had told him that it might be possible to extract the wind power from it, though warned that it wouldn’t be easy and likely wasn’t worthwhile, requiring tools and infrastructure he didn’t have. The head said if he really liked what it could do, he ought to just go and find the type of Symbiote which had been Imbued into it; and that this Symbiote would do the same thing but better, and would weigh nothing at all as it’d live in his Node. Quite appealing.

Following all that, it was time to go to retrieve the paintbrush.

###

Nicolai strode down a corridor. He checked his map as he walked, looking over one of the portion’s Jo had shared with him. They were almost there.

Behind him and Beth walked Jo, John, Cait, and Karl. All of them were armed and ready. After informing the others of the issues of the painting, and the threat her Contract posed to Jo’s life, there had been a big debate amongst the group over whether to help. Nicolai had found that his influence had increased, and with that plus an argument revolving around the fact Jo had kindly let them in to her safe-place, he had convinced them. He had a feeling they might have come to the same conclusion anyway, as already they were warming to Jo and Beth, but he’d opted to make sure.

From what Jo had told him, they would have a fight on their hands to get the paintbrush. As such he saw no reason not to bring anyone willing. The more guns shooting at the undead, the better.

He sent two of his four drones out ahead of him, swooping out of the sunlight-filled end of the tunnel they walked through, and a large, open area came into view.

Filling the bulk of this large open area was a small fortress.

A wall about three metres thick wrapped around it, forming a triangular shape. There were three squat towers on each tip, and three gatehouses with metal gates mid-way between the towers.

On each fortified gatehouse he saw a group of undead archers, around ten each, and on the ground in front of the gatehouses there were a few hulking undead knights and then more spearmen.

Within this walled area they protected there rose a blocky little bastion, and from the rising drones increasingly elevated view, Nicolai saw it had two entrances. Large doors, once more guarded by knights and spearmen, alongside two knights who stood out, one for each door. They wore more ornate armour and were slightly larger than the normal knights. Some form of leaders.

On top of each of the three towers at the points in the wall stood the fat-looking wizard-types he’d seen before in patrols.

In the expanse of stone tiles between these walls and the buildings looming around the square, there were a few statues of the People, and Nicolai also took note of a few ancient, ruined carts left to rot roughly midway between where he and the others stood, and the nearest gatehouse.

The drones continued up, high above, avoiding the notice of the undead below, and he sent the next two out to find other angles, sharing the drones feed’s with the others and giving them all a complete picture of the battleground from all sides.

One of the drones made its way into the building itself through an opening on the roof, sliding and sneaking. It encountered no issues, finding its way to a central room. There, an undead wearing a robe was in the midst of a painting setup, wielding a paintbrush against a canvas. Target identified.

That was presumably the paintbrush they’d need, to do as the creature within the painting asked. The mission then, was simple. Get in. Get the paintbrush. Get out.