Spectres & Skin: Exodus

by RJ Creed

  “The last thing you want to do right now is make a scene,” I said softly, and found myself locking gazes with the guy who had spat on the floor, and he bared his teeth at me. I broke eye contact and looked at the floor instead.

  Moro had no idea what was happening, apparently, and just sniffed around the bar stools, off in her own little ghostly world.

  I wondered what would happen to me if she was killed by Maledictus.

  I imagined it would be nothing good; she was a part of my soul, after all, right?

  “Do you think it’ll go alright? Whatever Roark is doing?” Ryken asked me, prompting me to turn back to him.

  “I have no idea,” I said with a shrug. “I don’t see why not. He’s just proposing a deal.”

  And because the universe has a sense of humour, that was the moment the fight broke out.

  A bottle went sailing past my head, and Ryken managed to duck just before it would have surely knocked him out cold. Our hands went to hover by our daggers, just as the other men in the bar pulled out their own various small blades — because ours were just a little deadlier if they were still sheathed.

  Two men lunged at each other with animalistic growls and I hovered on the sidelines shifting from foot to foot, waiting for it to involve me. Ryken did no such waiting, and as one of the men staggered backwards and slammed into his shoulder, Ryken gave him an almighty shove and screamed, “The fuck are you doing?” I couldn’t help but notice the excitable glint in his eye.

  So it was unavoidable now. The man smacked Ryken’s arm away mid-shove and Ryken responded appropriately … actually, nope, of course he didn’t. He snatched his stiletto from its sheath and stuck the pinprick tip right into his drunken assailant’s armpit. The man screamed, frothy spit flying from his lips. A friend of his leapt to his side and began to swipe his sword threateningly. But the teenager was sober, and therefore had a lot more going for him in this fight. He ducked and weaved with a fairly furious ease, but an ease nonetheless.

  “Ryken, quit it,” I snapped. Not only were these people supposed to be our future allies — our associate was in the other room sweet-talking one of them into a deal that was incredibly bad for him and incredibly good for us. We needed to keep everyone on our side as much as we could. “Ryken.”

  The kid was tripped by another man, snickering from a bar stool, and fell with his entire weight onto me, so that we sprawled out onto the floor. I smacked the back of my head on the concrete and my teeth clacked together painfully. With a groan, I got up again, expecting there to be absolute mayhem that I would have to dodge if I wanted to keep all of my extremities.

  Instead, what I saw was the frankly pretty amusing sight of Ryken being held up by the back of his leather jack by a tall, well-muscled man in a cloak. A man whose face I couldn’t see.

  “Boy, you come down here and scrap with the sneakiest, most underhanded men in all of Dawnspire?” he demanded, and I knew that voice — it confirmed that this faceless man was in fact the same Faceless from Roark’s store. I pushed myself to my feet, wincing from the ringing in my ears.

  “Piss off, get off me!” Ryken screamed, and then twisted and kicked the man right in the crotch. Faceless didn’t even flinch, but he did drop the boy and start to laugh.

  “Such tenacity. You’ll fit right in if you learn to hold your dagger longer than you can hold your tongue.”

  At the sight of him, the other men seemed to have calmed down, and after a couple of angrily exchanged words between them — I wasn’t entirely sure that they even knew who they were fighting with and why — they limped off clutching at their various sore areas.

  “Matthew Blake,” he said and nodded deeply as he saw me. I nodded back.

  “Mr… you,” I said, rubbing at the back of my head.

  “How goes the pursuit of purpose?” he asked, and I wondered what exactly he meant, but chose not to get too existential. Ryken was huffing and crossing his arms over his chest, glaring from Faceless to me and back again.

  “This is Ryken,” I told him. “I, uh, don’t know who you are, though.”

  “No, not many people do,” he said cheerfully. “What brings you down to The Pale Light?”

  “Roark had some business with someone down here, based on a lead we gave him,” I told him, remaining vague but truthful.

  “Wonderful.”

  “I actually had to ask you something, too,” I said, brushing the dust off of my brand new untarnished leather. He looked as interested in what I had to say as a man without a face could look. “Yeah. So I might have a fight coming up. I would prefer to conceal who I am until I’m at a higher level. Could you, maybe, let me know how you did that face thing?”

  “The face thing?” he asked.

  There was a silence while I glanced at Ryken. Did the guy really not know what I meant?

  “Um, yeah…” I trailed off.

  “Dude,” Ryken said bluntly, “did … you not realise you didn’t have a face?”

  Faceless reached up and touched the black void where his features should have been. “I…” he began softly, but then he laughed. “Of course. Yes. You’d like to harness the same powers?”

  “Yes,” I said. “I think it’d give me an edge against anyone who knows my face.”

  He nodded to Moro, who was sitting, rubbing at her ear with her hind foot. “What of the dog?” he pointed out. “Anyone who knows of the prophecy will immediately know who you are.”

  “I can’t just pass for another member of the Collective?” I checked, though I knew the answer already.

  He shook his head.

  “So, hurry up and do the face shit,” Ryken interjected, impatiently glancing towards the door where Roark had disappeared. “We don’t have much time.”

  “You can bless any cowl with an Aspect of Ceshal,” Faceless said. “It’s a fairly simple blessing, but you won’t be able to learn it.”

  “Why not?”

  “You’re born under Votorius-Khan. I wouldn’t normally be able to tell but it’s clear by inspecting your spectre.” His obscured head tilted in thought. “You’ve never received the blessing of Ceshal, I imagine.”

  “No,” I said, realising how time-consuming all of this was going to be. “I really have a deadline here. I need to save my friend from torture. Because, obviously, torture — but also because she might give up something important, and that’ll mean that the Falchion could take Dawnspire.” These were no longer just buzzwords to me — I noticed as I was speaking, and getting a little worked up about it, that I actually kind of cared about this whole mess.

  “Right. Well, as much as I dislike the Collective, I dislike the Falchion more.”

  “Seems to be the consensus.”

  “And you believe that the Aspect of Ceshal would assist you in keeping the wolves from the door, if you’ll pardon the inappropriate allegory?”

  Ryken shot me a very unsubtle look and I was completely sure that he had just decided he hated Faceless.

  “I know it,” I said as confidently as I could. “You can confirm this with Roark; he knows everything, I think.”

  He tapped his nonexistent chin. “It’s no skin off of my nose to bless a cowl I have lying around — I will just require a day of rest afterwards — but you must understand that I’m not in the habit of giving people things for free.”

  “I do understand,” I said. “Anything I can give to you in return, I will. I just need you to know that we’re under time pressure. In the next few minutes would be ideal, really. When Roark reappears, we’re leaving. And then I don’t know if I’ll see you again before I have to…” I cleared my throat.

  “He’s got to sacrifice himself or some shit,” Ryken added helpfully.

  “Yes, if the prophecies are to be believed,” Faceless said. “And who are we to dismiss those who commune with gods?”

  “Right,” I said, uncertain.

  “Well, come with me.” He turned and swept away and I followed after him, feeling a little foolis
h. “Just one thing…” He half-turned so that I could just see the wrinkles in the material of his cowl, and the dark shadows that just about outlined some of his face. Somehow that was more chilling than seeing nothing at all. “...if I find out that you are taking advantage of me, and the city is in no threat, I will take back what’s mine from you. And more.”

  “I … really have no intention of fooling you,” I said quickly, and truthfully.

  “Very well.”

  He led me to a hallway, a spiral staircase, and then a small room. Behind a couple of broken, rotting crates there was a chest that I never would have found myself. He unlocked it with a small silver key, and then pulled out a black cowl that actually almost matched the dark shade of my leather, just without the faint bluish glow in the light.

  Faceless dipped his head, laid out the cowl, and said a few words. I managed to inspect the cowl while he whispered frantically.

  Rugged Cowl

  Good Quality

  Defense: +1

  Very little of anything, really. I waited for him to work his magic. Or blessing. Or whatever it was. It couldn’t have been actual magic in this world because he didn’t have a spectre, and from what little I knew about skin magic he didn’t have any of that, either.

  He looked up suddenly and then said a final word. I hadn’t understood any of it — I assumed it was in another language, perhaps an ancient one that I had no hope of ever knowing. The cowl looked exactly the same to the naked eye, but I wondered if anything was different about it as he picked it up and carefully smoothed out the dark material.

  Blessed Rugged Cowl

  Fine Quality

  Defense: +1

  Stealth: +3

  Req: Dexterity 14

  The Dexterity requirement nearly freaked me out, but I was relieved to see that I already hit it. I reached out as he handed it to me and gratefully took it, for some reason giving him a small bow as I did so.

  My existing helmet gave me a bonus of +4 armour, so it was really a shame to take it off, and when I did I felt something else slip away and bitterly recalled that I was receiving a Fortitude bonus for a full set of armour.

  So with this cowl I got an extra +3 to Stealth, and my features — and inspection information, I assumed — were concealed to others, but I lost 3 defence and Fortitude, as well.

  On second thought, I swapped them back. I would switch to the cowl when I wanted to. As he had pointed out, there was no point in me doing that yet until I found out how to conceal Moro as well. But when I did, I was going to become a force to be reckoned with. If nobody could identify or inspect me, how would they know what I could potentially do to them? They could believe — as I did about Faceless and the Father — that I was incredibly powerful. Even though I was not.

  That in itself might be a bonus big enough to be worth swapping my helmet out for it from time to time.

  I thanked Faceless again and he waved a hand, as if bored of me. “I will figure out a way to pay back the White Suns,” I said, specifically citing the guild instead of him personally, and that did seem to win some points with him. I had noted that his interest in the guild might be the way to his heart before, and I believed that I was still right about that.

  When we got back to the bar, Roark was sipping on an ale with a smile on his face, so Ryken and I knew that it had gone well before he confirmed it.

  “Hook, line and sinker,” he said quietly as we settled in beside him.

  “What will happen to the Falchion presence in the city once we do this?” I asked. “We don’t want to mix the White Suns and the Falchion for long, after all.” If I were to live for a longer time than it seemed was likely, I should start to take an interest in things like that, I figured.

  “No, once the White Suns has a stronger presence we’ll be at liberty to pick and choose our members with a little more … discretion,” he said. “Are you ready to leave? We should get going as soon as we can. I’ve given him the map, but I copied it down roughly before I did. And we’ll still be the only ones with the statue. If it’s the key, it means we win.”

  “That’s great,” I said. “What did they say about Xanthe?”

  “They’ll meet us somewhere neutral. I let Artur hold onto the map — makes ‘em more confident about it if they can be with the item, touch it for a while. Doesn’t make it any more likely to bring him treasure, though.” He grinned, and I found myself mirroring it again. Damn, the guy really was charismatic.

  “So they definitely did have her?” I checked. “It was an educated guess, but it was still a guess.”

  “They have her,” he said. “He has a pretty loose tongue when he’s had a couple of drinks. Told me that they wanted the map. Said she told them, in the inn, what the treasure was. Artur thinks the item can help them control more Glitched at a time.”

  “Control them?” I repeated.

  “You can control followers like puppets using skin magic,” Roark said, taking another chug of his ale. “The number of followers is determined by your Intelligence score, which grows slowly. There are a couple of legendary-grade treasures that can change that, and the Falchion wanted to know if she knew any other way of controlling the Glitch. That’s what Artur said.”

  “Right,” I said, feeling … disappointed by this news. It was just as I had thought, after all: Xanthe was being held by total maniacs and was being pressed for information.

  She shouldn’t have revealed her face, that she had worked with the game creators, that she knew all about the Glitch, and where she was going to be. And that stupid map. What had she been thinking? She’d gotten drunk and sauntered over to the enemy to tell them we had a way of grabbing treasure that would help them destroy our faction. That in itself was alright, maybe, but she had expected them to pay up instead of just snatching it from her.

  There was no way of going back in time and warning her of this, though, so I leaned back and pinched the bridge of my nose. “They’re going to drop Xanthe off with us, outside the city somewhere, in exchange for being able to keep the map?” I asked.

  “Yes,” Roark said. “It all worked out great.” He smiled wide, looking me right in the eye, and I felt at ease.

  “We’ll have a while before the meeting,” Ryken said. “I’m going to run some errands.” He nodded at me. “Matt, you have to go talk to Nickel about putting your ghost away at will. I know it’s possible. Probably just have to will it. Go ask him.”

  “Yes,” I agreed. I looked at Roark. “And you, uh…”

  Roark smiled at me. “I’ll do what I do,” he said. It was a pleasant enough thing to say, and he said it pleasantly too, but there was something biting hidden behind his words that made me reluctant to attempt to tell him what to do again.

  I nodded at both of them and stepped away, looking sideways at the wolf who trotted beside me. I would figure out how to conceal her and then I would go off to meet the team who were supposed to kill me.

  That wasn’t going to happen, because I knew that I had time to do one other thing as well. There was a library somewhere in Dawnspire, and there was a prophecy that supposedly talked about my impending death.

  I was going to find it, read it, and figure what the fuck I was supposed to do — according to the gods — to survive the next few days. At least.

  15

  Prophecy

  Name: Matthew Blake — Level: 6 — Progression: 6%

  Race: Human — Specialization: None

  Faction: Dawnspire Collective — Rank: Initiate

  STR: 14

  DEX: 14 (+3)

  INT: 8 (+2)

  WIS: 5

  FORT: 10 (+3)

  CHA: 9 (+4)

  Atk: 7 (+14) (-4 Dual-Wielding) — Def: 5 (+26)

  Alliances:

  Dawnspire Collective — Very Friendly

  Top Skills:

  Snickersnee (Level 5 — 0%)

  Speech (Level 4 — 90%)

  Dodge (Level 3 — 10%)

  Stealth (Level 2 — 15
%) (+3)

  Deception (Level 2 — 25%)

  Nickel’s advice had been pretty anticlimactic, to be honest.

  You just have to concentrate, hard, on putting your spectre out like a light. On sucking her in, back to your core.

  I had practised a few times, first squeezing my eyes shut and then just squeezing one eye shut, and soon I could just about make Moro’s physical form disappear if I concentrated really hard, and held my breath too.

  I alternated between blinking her in and then out of reality as we made our way to the library, and by the time we were there I felt like I could achieve that level of concentration without going a little bit pink.

  I had also tried to sell him that quartz imbued with fire energy, since he could have used it, but he had barely concealed his laughter. Of course, he already had plenty of simple Fireball spells. I felt dumb. Looked like I was hanging onto the useless gem indefinitely.

  The Dawnspire Library was huge.

  Really, really big. I pushed open the creaking double doors and looked around to see the kinds of towering dusty tome-filled shelves that looked pretty precariously like they were about to crush me that I had expected to see. I made my way around, touching the leatherbound spines of old books here and there as I went, until I found a man scratching something into a large ledger with a fancy blue and purple quill, and decided that he was probably the person to ask.

  First I nodded for the wolf to hide. She slinked behind a shelf and peeked out with glowing eyes, and I shook my head. The man still hadn’t looked up, so he hadn’t seen her. I didn’t, for some reason, want him to know that I was researching a prophecy about myself. It felt vain.

  So I concentrated hard on blinking her out of existence, just for a moment, and strolled as confidently as I could with my breath held and my cheeks rapidly reddening.

  “What? What is it? What do you want?” he demanded. I couldn’t help but stare. The librarian was glaring at me from over the largest nose I had ever seen in my life.