Thy Wretched Mask

“You poor thing.”

I awake feeling… clean. The muddy clothes aren’t caked to my form, and my several wounds pain me‍ ‍—‍ they always pain me, my skin doesn’t heal right even when it’s not bearing a magical oath‍-​wound‍ ‍—‍ but now all those scratches and bruises are wrapped tight and tingling with mediciene.

“Who are you? Where am I?”

The only keeping me from panicking is that I do feel the warm, soft form of Valeri still curled up on my stomach.

A woman comes into view. She’s wearing the leathers of a hardened traveler. Or a bandit. Scars dot her face and arms and toned body. There’s an odd cool tint to her flesh, and dark triangles on her face, like flattened moles.

“Name’s Ghalena. You’re waking up where you went to sleep, half‍-​dead by a witch fire. Wrapped like a ragged mummy, sown up like a taxidermy, first I saw you I thought it was a corpse. I do hope you’re a bit more than half‍-​dead, now.”

“You’re trying to finish me off, then?”

“No! Wrong half. I meant, more than half‍-​alive! I tried to clean your wounds, disinfect them. Redressed your wounds‍ ‍—‍ whoever did it last was real sloppy with the stitches. Sorry about your modesty.”

I grin. “You could make it up to me.” My eyes trail down her body, catching tanned, hairy meat, so much muscle corded beneath. What did she taste like? Salty, metallic, of course, but would there be notes of roses or charred ash? Was she chewy?

Stupid thoughts. Maybe I’m tired. Haven’t had any morning tea yet.

I don’t drink tea. But I haven’t had it.

She takes a step back. Saw the leer on my face before I hid it and clamped down on the intrusive thoughts.

“You’re lucky I’m here, but not that lucky.”

I look elsewhere. I say, “That’s fine.”

Her gaze measures me for a moment, then she shakes her head. “Anyway, I can’t imagine it was good fortune that saw you collapsing in the middle of the shadowfen. Stronger men have lost their lives out here. Do you… need somewhere to stay?”

“What’s the price?”

“No price. I’d welcome you to spend a day resting in my cave. At least tell me your story.”

“In your cave, eh?” I say, wiggling eyebrows. She flicks me with a finger. Hard. And I shrug. “Not much story to tell. I’m a beggar in Emul’s Fall, and gave the wild my best shot. You see how it turned out.”

“A beggar with a raven familiar?”

“Is that what this thing is?”

“You’re a good liar, girl, but I know there’s more to your story. A simple beggar would be dead. You’re something else.”

“You’re that interested in me?”

“Only frustrated with your endless coy games. What’s it going to take to get a straight answer?”

“How about a kiss?” I thought again about how she must taste in the inside.

“You’re still trying? Do I look like a cheap whore to you?”

“Not a cheap one, no. You move like you’re worth a gold coin.”

She stares, hard, contemplating the bargain. At length, she says, “A kiss is all you get.”

She leans over to press her lips against mine and I throw my arms around her. My fingers quest to slip under her leathers, to squeeze her meat. Not her breasts, but the firm, fatty flesh of her stomach. My nails dig in. We were in the wild, hours away from town. I could tear her open, and there’d be no witnesses. The skin, the muscle, the blood. Why shouldn’t I take this whole body?

She’s breaking the kiss and my jaw explodes with her fist cracking against bone. She pulls away hard enough my hands scrap against her barding.

“Worth it,” I cough. Stupid thing to say, but my excuse is I just had the sense knocked out fo me.

“Rescinding my offer of somewhere to stay, over that. You’re lucky I don’t leave you worse than I found you. Take a damn hint.”

“You’d put a poor beggar out on the street?”

Her glare only deepens. “I suppose you’re out here for a reason, actually.”

I laugh. It was supposed to be a brief thing, a punctuation, but it keeps going. “You don’t know the half of it. You’re right to be wary of me.”

“But?”

“But what?”

“Is there some silver lining?”

“No.”

She had been looking down at me, lying there after she knocked me to the floor with one punch. Something in her face shifted, relaxed. It wasn’t mercy, or forgiveness, or pity. Maybe it was nothing more than seeing me as not threatening, just as pathetic as I was.

She said, “Tell me about the fucking raven. I let my lips touch your putrid flesh, this is the least you could do.”

“I left my meal untended one day, came back and she was eating the bread of my sandwich. I told her to get lost and she said ‘I don’t think I will, ma’am’ in perfect Ulvish, and I haven’t been able to get rid of her since.”

She crosses her arms. “Sounds like you just made that up.”

“It’s spiritually true.”

“So, she’s just some product of wild magic and you never bothered to investigate?”

“I’m sure she has a deep, dark life story but I’m keeping my questions to myself. She hasn’t ask me why we stick to towns without a kingly office, after all.”

“You two are just strangers, then?”

“Strangers till death do us part.” I grin, but it’s hard with how my jaw hurts.

“Are you worried she might be listening? Does she agree with your version of events?”

I shift, the and the bird slides off me toward the ground. Before she hits the ground, she’s awake, wings suddenly flaring and flapping. She’s squawking and Ghalena is flinching at the sound.1

“Rude to the core.” Ghelena gazes distance, then extends a hand to me. “Well. An enemy of the kingdom is an ally of mine, so I’ll give this one more chance. My curiosity remains at wars with my dignity. Keep your hands to yourself and we might be able work together. For now.”

“But doesn’t that mean it’s in my interests to keep your curiosity unsatisfied?” I poke my bird. “Hey Valeri, how long till she changes her mind? I’ll bet low if you bet high.”

She sings a yes. My lips twitch a smile for a second before Valeri leaps, perching on Ghelena’s arm long enough to bend it from the sudden weight and she pecks‍ ‍—‍ I hear it as a loud crack‍ ‍—‍ and Ghelena is screaming her outrage.

“The bet’s worth nothing if you rig it, Val.”

“You’re both awful. Get out.”

“But this is our camp.”

“Not anymore. I’m evicting you.” Ghelena stands up, and starts gathering her supplies. I think the subtext is that we’re leaving, and she expects me to come with her? She’s what, bantering with me now?

“So, what’s your beef with the kingdom?”

“Do you remember the dragons?”

“Can’t say I do.”

“The kingdom would like you to forget. Wants us all to forget. The slayers slaughtered them all, and who knows what’s next? The spirefolk? Witches? I think they ought to get some payback.”

“Interesting. Say, could I interest you in a dragon heartscale?”

Her eyes widen. She takes a step further. She’s a head taller than me, looking down intensely. “Give it.”

“Don’t have it on me, but I’m supposed to kill this guy who’s hoarding one of them. Some help with that, it wouldn’t hurt. Guy’s a merchant. Rich one.”

“A liar and a miser by trade, then. I could take joy in snapping his bones.”

“Take all the joy you want, so long as they ain’t my bones.”

“That remains to be seen.”

I sigh. “Of course it does.”

Ghelena’s all packed up now, so she starts walking and I have to follow after. Valeri takes a spot on my shoulder. I pick her up and move her to my head, because she’s gotten too big for shoulder‍-​perching; it unbalances me.

Staring at the big, muscular woman without her withering attention on me, I’m able to ogle her a bit more. My attention shifts to her skin, and I notice something that must be why she struck me as so odd and interesting.

The nails of her hands curve sharp like claws. Her eyes are pointed, in the way that makes your mind draw comparison with felines and serpents. But all of her is a bit off. Her skin has a faint blue tint to it, and light scatters off it in a way that I’m beginning to find suspect.

I had felt something hard, when I was groping her. Scales?

“Be on your guard, Beca. The Shadowfen may have more creeping threats, but the hills beyond strike with no subtlety.”

I nod, and we head northeast.

I’m already appreciating traveling on ground that doesn’t sink beneath my feet. The mud caked on my wrapped feet begins to flake off, step by step. (Ghalena may have healed and bandaged me, but it wasn’t a free bath.)

The wildlife almost puts me at ease. There’s a fox, fleeing our approach. Squirrels gathering nuts. Birds whose song Valeria tries convincingly to imitate. A frown thoughtfully. Was she a singer, or a singer?

I step over one fallen log, the wood crumbling at the slightest touch. Then another. We pass into a clearing that seems new, filled with fallen trees.

Ghelena seems surprised‍ ‍—‍ is she unfamiliar? Odd, given the advanced stage of decay of these logs.

“This isn’t a good sign, is it?”

“Is there a good reason to be surprised in these hills?”

“In other words, you have no idea what’s going on here?” I ask. “How well do you know these hills? You’re new in these parts too, aren’t you?”

As soon as I touch the log, I flinch away. On my head, Valeri chirps concern, and Ghalena glances over, eyebrow raised.

But I felt something. Something sleeping, dormant, shifting.

I start clawing through the rotten wood like it’s dirt. The deeper into the log I get, the more the wood turns to fibrous mass of fungal filaments. But I feel those roots humming with something more.

I’m reminded of the witchfire, but where those glowed with magic, this is the opposite of a glow, a queer darkness. Threads of a night in broad daylight.

There’s a fruit growing in the center of the tree. A mass that might one day emerge as a mushroom, but again it feels dormant. Resting. It seems so vulnerable. That seem urge to tear it open creeps up on me, not unlike my nails tearing at a corpse’s flesh, impulses away from dressing myself in a man’s skin. I can’t dress myself in this (unless I weave those filaments…), but the urge is different. I don’t just want to my shell to touch this. I…

“Think I’ll die if I eat this?”

“Why would you eat a strange dark mass you pulled from a rotting log?”

“Maybe it’ll make for a funky trip.”

“I’m beginning to understand the sense of self‍-​preservation that left you collapsed beside a witchfire.”

“I guess I wasn’t really asking.”

I open my mouth, and—

A hand is placed on my shoulder, squeezing me. Ghalena leans toward me, face knit in concern. Her teeth are sharp. “Don’t. Please have sense.”

“I want to. I… have to. C’mon.”

“Fine. But not here. Wait till we get the cabin, and I can treat whatever new plague you invoke on yourself.”

Moments before Ghalena does, I sense something’s wrong. The air feels different. It’s dark, like a smoke drifted in. I would say a cloud passed in front of the sun if it hadn’t been cloudy all day long.

Ghalena coughs.

“Shit.” I put all the pieces together. “Spores. Ghalena, let’s run.”

She tries to say something, and just coughs again. So she nods, and we start moving.

But Ghalena slows down after a dozen steps, coughing. This time, it’s mucus with a red tint. I rush to her side, slapping her back. People do that when they’re choking, right?

“Let’s take it slower. Can you still walk? Can you breathe?”

“Yes,” another cough, “I can fight through this. Just get me to the cabin, I can cook up‍ ‍—‍ something.”

“I’ll take the led. We’re heading northwest, right?”

Not venturing another word, she nods.

Ghelena tries to breath slowly, drinking greedy sips from her waterskin. She sips a vial that smells strongly of something, and it seems to invigorate her enough; her steps get steadier and steadier as we go on.

The sun winds above us, and we’re genuinely making progress.

“C‍-​climb that hill there.”

There’s a rising bit of ground on top of which a dead tree tends with all its branches broken, just a wooden spire rising.

“We can rest here for a moment. Look. We want to climb up that hill. Can see the next stretch from here.”

We had truly left the swamps behind. What lay in front of us now was an undulating land, carpetted with trees.

“Feeling any better?”

“I feel like you rubbed death ivy leaves over my lungs and every breath is a mouthful of thorns.”

“That bad, huh?”

I throw an arm around her soulder, pulling her against me. She smiles for a moment, then steps away. “Let’s get moving.”

I hear the rushing of water. A flicker of dread. Had the bog made that much of an impact on me? I shake my head.

There’s a crossing up ahead, the frosty white waters of a river dancing over stones far enough below us that if I fell down the chasm, I’d break something at the bottom.

There’s a bridge, a strange one. Rather than a rickety rope‍-​drawn planks or some kind of stone arch, it looks like the earth just… grew a connection.

“Do you have a coin on you, Beca?”

“Who’s asking?”

“I am. It’s a simple question. Look, there’s a bridge here, see? But it’s safer if you have something to offer before your first crossing. Preferably something metal, and valuable.”

“And if I don’t?”

“I don’t think you’ve got the monster slaying skill to try that. Look, fuck this, I’ll give you something. Here.”

It’s a silver coin. I bite it, and my teeth chip it, but I don’t know what to do with that information, honestly.

“Just toss it in the river as you pass.”

“I kinda wanna keep this.”

“Fine, I’ll just throw you in the river.”

She growls the words, which is a bad idea, because it means she has another coughing fit.

I giggle a bit, when it starts. (Look at that, she got hoist by the petard of trying to sound tough.) But then the coughing doesn’t stop. The mucus goes from blood flecked to thick gobs of blood and black motes. Ghalena falls on her ass and she looks pale. Her eyes are thin needles.

I rush to her side. Her breathing is shallow, and getting slow, fainter. I said her face was pale, and it’s getting worse. The blood is drained but I just see black lines beneath her skin.

She coughs again. She mumbles gibberish, as if struggling to form words. When the meaning resolves, her words are faint, and it doesnt even feel like she’s talking to me. She says, “I. I remember. I am Ghalena.”

As I hold her body, I want to tear her open. I want to remove whatever is doing this to her. I want to kiss her, breathe for her, as if that would help at all.

The worst part is, there’s a reason these urges are so strong. I know exactly when the intrusive thoughts came on strongest. It had never been this extreme, even when I was groping Ghalena.

Corpses felt quite different, after all.

There had to be a sliver of hope left. Maybe her heartbeat is still there, just faint? The pulse is getting so terribly slow, but every few seconds I swear I feel a slow lurch of blood.

Valeri makes a sad crow.

“Don’t be sad yet, c’mon. She said she had potions at her cabin, right? She might… she still might make it. C’mon.”

I pick up Ghalena’s body. She’s heavy, bigger than me.

I’m holding that skin in my hands and oh my gods. I want to strip off her clothes and then her skin and bathe in her lifeless blood. I want to look at her lungs and see why every breath felt like thorns, lick all of the spores off it and then sew it all back in place and maybe that’ll fix her? Actually, maybe this isn’t a stupid urge but a sound plan I should give it a try, and‍ ‍—‍ no.

But I can’t resist it. I’m not in town, am I? There’s no one around to judge me. She’s dead anyway, isn’t she? I can feel that.

I can do it.

I feel like a virgin pulling off a man’s clothes for the first time. Where would I even start tearing apart a corpse? I sink my teeth in the throat. There’s still a part of me resisting. If there’s any chance she’s alive… but feeling that cooling flesh on my teeth, my jaw squeezes and I feel the blood ooze out of the artery. I’m so fucking thirsty. My lips are drenched, and the iron taste is so fine.

My hands pull at her leathers, but her armor is put together and in my mindless frenzy, the straps do nothing but frustrate me. So I just content myself with making out with her esophagus, turning her neck in a gorey food trough. My fingers start to reach up and grab her. Should I pull the face off at once? Or made I should widen her mouth, or scoop her eyes, and tear her face up strip by strip. No… that would be satisfying but it wouldn’t be right. I want to wear her skin, don’t I? I want her face in one piece, it’ll be a proper mask that way.

There’s a flinch, or spasm.

She’s moving.

Oh god. Oh god, what have I done?

I stand up. I look at the body of Ghalena, looking on the whole like a wild animal rip out her throat.

(Isn’t that what happened?)

I back up, legs shaking under me. What have I done? I killed her. But she was dead even before we left that clearing, wasn’t she? But would those spores have been in the air if I hadn’t torn up the logs like a fool? She was wary and I was careless, and now she’s dead and I… why did I get to live? She had a noble cause, a reason to live, and I’m plotting murder because some bitch with a big dick asked me to and I have nothing better to do.

There’s still the fruit in her bag.

Ghalena didn’t want me to eat it, but that was because Ghalena cared about me‍ ‍—‍ and look where that got her. She should have stayed away, should have abandoned me when I groped her. She…

(It’s her own fault, isn’t it? Her flesh was irresistable.)

I grab the dormant fungal fruit and give it one look. The spores alone killed Ghalena. A whole fruit body?

It’s exactly what I deserve.

I swallow the black, filamentous meat.