Faceless Things

A guard was waiting for me as we left the training hall, he placed a heavy, gauntleted hand on my shoulder and pulled me to the side as the others came out. They gave me a strange look as they saw the guard holding me, “Calendis has asked me to bring you to him” he said in a gruff voice. His voice sounded echoey coming from within a metal helm as he stood in the full plate armour of the citadel guards.

“I’ll meet you back at the rooms” I said, looking back as I began to move my feet in order to avoid being dragged across the stones. The guard clanged as he walked, and we soon disappeared out of sight of the others.

“Where are we going?” I asked as we passed Calendis’ office without stopping. I didn’t receive a response from the guard, he simply continued walking and I was **** to follow. In the end we came to a stop by two large stone doors. It was a strange sight, nearly every other door I had seen in the citadel were made of wood. The stone was carved with arcane runes and visages of strange artifacts. The doors were so finely cut that the seam between the two doors was practically invisible.

The guard stopped by the doors and pushed one of them open, gesturing for me to enter. I obeyed and stepped into the dark room. There was no lighting within the room, and when the door came to a close once more, I was submerged in pitch blackness.

I looked around, unmoving as I was concerned about bumping into something or tripping over in the darkness. “Hello? Calendis?” I called out. A soft glow began to emanate from a crystal across the room, drawing my attention. I saw Calendis stood with his hand on the crystal, and next to him was… was something.

I stared at it as it was captured in the glow of the crystal, it looked human, it had two arms and two legs, a torso, and a head. In those regards it could easily be mistaken as a human, except for one thing. It had no face. Where a man’s features would normally go on anyone else, there was nothing, just a smooth blanket of flesh. It was unnerving.

I stared at the _thing _next to Calendis, it was wearing armour that seemed to be old but well cared for. A dark silver that shined in the light and was crafted in a skeletal design. It seemed to almost see me staring at it, I didn’t know how it could, but its face seemed to turn towards me with an upwards tilt of his head. Seeing me stare, it raised an armoured hand upwards and pulled down the steel mask of its helmet. The mask was designed in the shape of a vicious skull, the tip of it spiked upwards in the shape of a crown, the metal was scarred and tarnished with one particularly deep scratch running along it.

“Aucus, don’t gawp it’s rude” Calendis said as the crystal began to brighten and reveal more of the room. There walls were made of rough stone, unpolished unlike the rest of the citadel and a thick stone table lay in the centre, the crystal was inlaid in the wall at the end of the room. “This is Ishtir, he is one of the Faceless that were created to aid in hunting the remnant after the thousand wars. He is the last one of them that survived and now spends most of the time in a sleep, but he will be very useful for the reading.” He explained to me.

I was startled. I had read about the Faceless before, but they would be nearly a thousand years old by now, how could anything survive that much time. Calendis continued, “Given the methods used to create the Faceless, it is possible that they would have a connection to the power behind the dark spirits. Either way, his presence won’t harm the reading”

“Oh, er okay” I said as I stepped forward, “Hi Ishtir” I said warily, not getting any response from the armoured thing. “So how do we do this?” I asked as I came closer to the two figures.

“Yes, we’ll need you to lie down on the table and relax. Lower any guards that you have and allow us to read you. You may feel uncomfortable, but there will not be any real harm” he explained as the two of them began to move towards the table.

I obeyed his instructions and approached the table, lying down and looking upwards towards the ceiling. Despite the light of the crystal, it was still too dark to see the ceiling and I found myself looking into the darkness. Calendis and Ishtir came up on either side of me and placed a hand to each side of my head. I felt uncomfortable under the touch of the faceless thing, but I remained still and allowed them to do their job.

“Okay, we’re going to use our mana now. You might feel a tingle, just relax” I made a sound and they proceeded. Almost immediately I felt the familiar power of mana, though I couldn’t say what it was doing. As it coursed through me, brushing against my own mana wells my spirit emerged from my chest.

The dark purple of the spirit illuminated the room further as it flew upwards from my chest and beat its wings as it hovered above me. I waited for it to materialise into a physical form, but it simply remained as energy. It began to caw, the screech reverberating throughout the room. Its beak opened again as it continued cawing. I wanted to say something, to ask if that was normal, but I couldn’t move. The muscles in my body felt as though they had been pulled taut, I couldn’t even move my eyelids, they were transfixed upwards at the beating wings of my spirit.

After a few moments, I felt Calendis’ hand move away from my head and heard him hit the floor as he fell. The hand of Ishtir was also removed, though he remained upright in his stoic posture. As their hands released me and the mana receded, my spirit disappeared, and I could move once more.

I gasped for breath and sat upright, looking around as the effects of the reading began to fade from me. “What…” I gasped for breath, “What was that?”

I looked around and saw Calendis staggering back to his feet, Ishtir remained upright. The eyeholes in his helmet, seemed eery with what I knew lay beneath, or rather didn’t lay beneath. “Huh” Calendis panted as he got back upright, “That was certainly something” he said.

“Did it work?” I demanded of him, “I am not doing that again, I couldn’t move at all”

He looked at Ishtir, his brow furrowed and his face pale. He shook his head, “It was… something” he repeated himself, “I didn’t sense any malicious intent towards Gaedon, but… there was so much more in there” he looked back towards Ishtir, “What about you? What did you sense?”

I almost jerked back as I heard a voice come from the helmet, it was a strange voice with an unfamiliar accent and was distorted by the steel of the helm. “It was familiar” he said. Calendis looked at him with confoundment. “The last time I sensed something like that was when the last of the remnant was hunted down. It was similar, and yet…” he trailed off in thought. “It was different. Something else” he finished in a quieter voice.

“What do you mean?” Calendis asked, “He’s not a devil, how can he be like the remnant? Is it the spirit?”

My heart pounded at the question he posed to Ishtir; I was terrified of the answer. I looked from the skeletal face to Calendis as I awaited a response.

“No, not a devil” he said at last, “and yet he is, it’s as though their blood runs through him. But not their blood” he sounded confused as he spoke. “I do not know, it is something new” he turned his mask back to me, “What are you?” he asked

I shook my head, “I’m Aucus” I protested, not knowing how else to respond.

Calendis shook his head, “We already knew that he was different, this changes nothing” he said at last, “what about the spirit, did you see anything? I couldn’t get anything from it, it was as though it had its own guards in place”

Ishtir was quiet for another moment, “No, there was nothing” he said. I didn’t know how, whether it was something in his voice or an effect of my spirit, but I seemed to know that he was lying as he said that. Calendis nodded his head and made a disappointed sound, how did he not know it was lying? I thought to myself. He had his seer ability and still seemed to believe the words of Ishtir nonetheless.

Calendis sighed, “Well, I’ll tell Morrew that he shouldn’t worry about you. You should go back now, I think I should discuss what we saw with Ishtir”

“What? No, I need to hear it” I protested, but Calendis shook his head in response.

“No, Aucus. This is an order, you need to leave now” he said, his tone hardening so that I knew he wasn’t to be questioned in that regard.

I muttered something but walked towards the stone doors, pushing them open and stepping back out into the hallway where the guard was waiting. The doors shut behind me.