§105 Behind the Mask (Patreon)

I miss the noise of common folk, 
their joys, their toils, their simple cares. 
In fall, I don my deepest cloak
To stalk unknown the season's fairs.
— Erkenbrog the Decimator

Taylor — Wenfold

Taylor sat on his hilltop and watched a battle between the Army of Darkness and Dogeneh's Praxium Brigade. The field of battle was a remote area in Wenfold, mostly open ground with scattered trees, twenty miles from the nearest road. Each army had a four-foot-tall obelisk to protect, spaced a few hundred yards apart. Their objective was simple: destroy the other team's totem.

Since they were summoned spirits, they could, and did, fight to the "death" and returned to Twilight. Darkness had far more casters, and most of them could use ranged weapons. The Brigade, with its nearly exclusive focus on frontline fighters, and without any natural cover, was doing most of the dying. There would be a lot to unpack when it was all over, but even Dogeneh understood he needed to diversify his forces.

Taylor's main job in all of this was to watch, while expending enough mana to keep both teams on the field.  He was also practicing his own magic by wrapping distant objects into spatial bubbles. Rocks, mana stones, bushes, anything. They vanished at a wave of his hand, and then reappeared minutes later. The hand motion wasn't necessary – most of his magic was both silent and still – but it was a nice theatrical flourish. He was getting pretty good at it, too. He could vanish a sphere of space two yards across, from forty yards away.

But that wasn't the interesting part. The interesting part was that the space ceased to exist in Aarden. If the boundary of the sphere intersected something, plants, for example, then the extra parts were cut off, and zoomed toward each other before dropping to the ground. In the absence of obvious debris like severed branches, one had to look closely for signs that anything was missing. Matter around the subtracted space had to curve and stretch to fit the altered reality, and any patterns in the ground were disturbed. When the vanished space returned, everything went back to normal except for a faint line through any object that had been cut off from reality. When he noticed that, Taylor stopped experimenting on bushes. He might be ruining their roots by severing them.

Strangest of all, if the vanished area contained mana, he could drain it. That's what had happened to the mana gem in his inventory: he had unwittingly been feeding from it the entire time it was there. It was a surprising aspect of his inventory, and something Premi had never mentioned during their training. But it was even stranger that he could draw mana from vanished space, even though it wasn't part of his inventory. 

The word vanish implied the object was present but couldn't be seen. But this new effect temporarily deleted space from existence, so Taylor named his new effect Elision. He was still discovering its nuances, but it was too good not to include in his arsenal.

The day's game ended with a resounding victory for the Army of Darkness and valuable lessons for the Praxium Brigade. After a debriefing that lasted longer than it should have, everyone agreed to do it again in three weeks, at a place of Taylor's choosing.

In Celosia, Donbrook & Pearl welcomed Taylor with open arms, a sack of gold, and crates of goods destined for Twilight. The crates mostly contained luxury foods and alcohol, but D&P even procured a modest number of weapons for his armies. It took an hour to tally everything, update records, and move boxes in and out of his satchel. As promised, Prudence handled most of the details on the mortal side of the business.

Every box headed for Twilight was labeled with a code for a great spirit. Instead of traveling madly to every corner of the spirit realm throughout the week, Taylor would hand the pile of sealed boxes to Wen-Ra-Turi. His realm was centrally located in Twilight, and he had good connections to every other great spirit. He didn't transport the goods himself, but held the boxes until the other greats' couriers could retrieve them.

Jalil was a surprising amount of help in the venture, and handled Taylor's commercial correspondence with the great spirits. He enjoyed the role of "Dux Twilight's Trade Emissary", and Taylor was glad to let him take on the work. There was a second benefit to Jalil's involvement: what his presence did for Prudence's attitude. She was constantly annoyed at Taylor, except when Jalil was in the room with her. Then, she was all smiles. He was a fine, dashing hare spirit and took the extra attention with good grace.

In appreciation for Donbrook & Pearl's fine work, Taylor gifted the firm with a figure of the goddess of commerce. The gift wasn't half so generous as Messrs. Donbrook and Pearl made it out to be. Taylor made divine figures daily, sometimes three a day, just to do something with his divine mana. He could shift most of his mana between attributes with reasonable efficiency, but divine mana was much harder to permute downward into the other types. The easiest way to get rid of it was to use it, so Taylor made as many statues of as many gods as he needed to, out of whatever material was appropriate and available. He sold most of them through Dwergbank branches, since they knew the buyers and wouldn't sell to mere collectors, but Taylor was constantly dealing with the inventory. Dropping a figure on D&P was them doing Taylor a favor.

After the work was done, and Jalil disbanded to his home, Taylor finally had time with Cecilia. They sat in a park eating street food for dinner in the oblique evening sun. She picked a spot at the far end of a long park along the riverside, where they had some privacy. The nearest people were boating on the water.

She carried herself taller than she used to, and wore her pink hair differently from the last time he saw her. It was short, slightly curled, and a bit of a mess. She had ditched her linen dresses for a sturdy walking skirt and a thin top that clung closely to her skin, topped with a leather jacket. She looked like an entirely different person from when they first met. Her wrist still bore the token he gave her: a tiny bronze medallion on a braided leather thong. It looked out of place on the old Cecilia, but felt right at home with the new one.

The last time he was in Celosia, she was in the Hunaphu Mountains, observing double-headed eagles. "Just small ones," she assured him, "not the titans they have in Garem-Da. You can watch them from the mountain next door through a telescope, and they're glorious. The parent is surprisingly gentle with the chicks. And the heads don't fight each other at all. You'd think they would, but they're very united in their purpose. And when one head sleeps, the other stays awake." She was full of interesting details about double eagles.

"Prudence says there's no point to monster ecology. It's not like anyone will pay you to do it in the field. But it feels good to do something because I like it, and not because I'll get anything out of it. Do you know what I mean?"

"I do," he agreed. "If I could, I would sit around and do magic all day. Or fish."

"Why don't you? You could. How much money do you have right now?"

"Right now? I could live for a few years without working. Add the royalties for Permutations and related patents, and it'll probably be a lot. But being a high-level magician is really expensive. Anything I can't make myself costs a ton of money."

"So take some time off. Enroll in school, be my classmate! Live like a normal kid for a while."

"There are things I have to do."

"What things? Taylor, you can do anything you want to do. You have enough money. You don't owe anyone anything, and you're not in service to anyone. Settle down for a minute and just be my little brother."

"Yeah, I don't think I'm going to fit in with a load of normal teenagers."

"You could try taking off the mask," she offered. "You're not disfigured under there or anything, are you?"

"I can't take it off. One slip, and a room full of acquaintances will turn into enemies. You might never talk to me again. What are we going to do then?"

"But the curse isn't permanent. Don't people get over it? Curator Jane says that even when she got a face full of it, some time away is enough to reset."

"The problem isn't just that people get a temporary dislike for me. The problem is that some people get violent, and I have to defend myself. I'm not taking that chance."

"But you have your necklace. And your Riverstone pin still works as a backup. The only reason you wear your mask is because you're afraid."

"I have good reasons to be afraid."

"You had good reasons. Now you don't. Take off the mask, little brother. You'll live a better life." She looked around and saw nobody else was near. "There's no one else to see. Show me your face."

"That's risky."

"So? I want to see."

"And if my face curses you?"

"Then I'm cursed today, and I'll be fine tomorrow. Please? Pretty please, for your best big sister?"

Taylor didn't particularly want to, but it would probably be fine. She was right about it wearing off, but he didn't want either one of them to do something they might regret the next day. 

"You don't have any weapons on you, do you? Nothing you might stab me with?"

"Only if you count my pens."

"All right, then." After taking one more look around, Taylor slid the mask from his face, hesitant, watching Cecilia closely for signs of malice or disgust. 

Her eyes widened and, for a moment, he feared the worst. Every hope he'd ever had about them being friends and hanging out together was about to be destroyed. He should have listened to his fears.

"Look at you," she crooned, "we're so much alike. But your poor skin." She reached for Taylor's face, and he shied away, startled. "It's okay, I'm not going to hurt you," she sang.

"I'm not a baby animal," he groused, but he was relieved she didn't hate him.

"Of course not. Let me see the owies." 

"Now you're trying to embarrass me," he complained, but he let her touch. Cecilia's fingers traced the hard, smooth lines around the edges of his face, callouses from years of wearing masks. He kept the masks on with minor magic, but it still took a toll on his skin. 

"I thought you'd be paler," She squeezed his cheeks, "but you look good."

He had to talk through squashed lips. "I take it off when I'm with the spirits. They're not affected."

She sat cross-legged on the ground and scooched closer. She leaned forward to look at him some more. Taylor wasn't sure what to do next. Should he gaze deep and unblinking into her eyes? Stare at her nose? Ignore her? Cough, and ask what she wanted?

"Am I making you uncomfortable?"

"No. Yes. A little."

She tilted her head to see his profile. "On a scale of one to ten, how uncomfortable?"

"Maybe a two? It would be a lot higher if you were someone else. Walking around in public with a naked face would be a nine."

Cecilia continued to examine him closely.

"Are you looking for something?"

"Prudence said you would burst into flames if sunlight hit your face, but I'm not seeing any smoke. I see some pores that could use a good cleaning."

"Get out of here!" He shoved her back, laughing. "You're coming after my skin care regimen and trying to set me on fire? At the same time? You're one nervy sister."

"I've barely started. You have no idea, little brother. I have years and years of torment saved up for you!"

"Now that I believe. 'Come live in Celosia, dear brother! Let's be family!'" he mimicked her, "but it's all just a ploy, isn't it? So you can put rocks in my shoes and force me into tea parties with stuffed animals!"

Cecilia nearly fell over. "I used to do that," she howled, "with Simon. I put all kinds of things in his shoes to see how he'd react! Once, I filled them with tadpoles, and he smooshed them all. It was bloody carnage! When he saw his feet, he nearly threw up! At tea parties, I made him diaper the baby dolls! He hated it, but Otis made him play with me!"

Taylor had to let her wind down a little. "He sounds like a good sport."

"He was the best," she chuckled, wiping her eyes. "He looked exactly like Otis, but he was different through and through. He was a happy person. And he was good to other people. As soon as he made lieutenant, he got himself assigned to a different unit so he wouldn't be under Otis's command, but we still saw him every week for dinner. 

"Otis thought it was a betrayal, him going to another battalion. He used to shout at Simon over dinner, so loud the neighbors would come over and ask if things were okay. But Simon would look him in the eye and say, "Father, no one will ever take my accomplishments seriously as long as I'm under you. This is for the best, and you know it." And that was it. Simon was the only person he listened to who wasn't a higher rank than him."

Simon died when the expansion into Restoration failed, died heroically in fact, and Taylor never had a chance to know him. As far as he knew, the two of them were never in the same room together.

"What else do you remember about Simon?" he asked, and listened to Cecilia until the sun went down.