There had been a noise in the chamber they found. It wasn’t loud, and Xen knew that he was probably the only one that heard it. He was young, and his ears were still sharp enough to outclass any other citizen race in Alzholme. Creeping back down the tunnel, his suspicions were confirmed as he heard voices talking. It took a while of creeping forward, but he managed to get around the bend enough to peer into the room. About three figures were moving around the room.

One of them was pointed down the tunnel, but was looking away when he poked his head out. As he pulled his head back in, he realized that he had found his target. A deep panic set over him for a few seconds, and he meditated, relaxing his breathing and heart. In his rest, he strained his ears to overhear what they were saying. When the male of the group mentioned leaving, Xen opened his eyes again and prepared himself.

There was a hush over the air, for a brief moment his heart started to beat faster. The noise was almost loud enough that he thought it might give him away. Before the panic completely set in, another sound drew over it. Birdsong, or at least a few notes of it, started filling the room down the hall. He peered over to be sure, and found Twenty-Two clutching her knees at the edge of the pool. Though her face was mostly obscured, he could tell it was her making the noise. He pulled back and stood upright.

He hadn’t noticed how long he was sitting, and the sudden jolt upward made him stumble for a second. The birdsong stopped and he could hear her moving around inside the room. When her footsteps stopped, he took a slow breath inward and remembered his decree for the mission. Stepping into view, he found Twenty-Two with her swords already drawn. She was shocked at first, but then a crazed look came over her. Her scarred lips curled into a grin, the raw emotional display being horrifically vulgar for an Erudine. Xen steeled himself.

“Agent Twenty-Two, without a name. You have been sentenced for your crime of betraying the Maskless. There is no chance for appeal, there is no quarter, and the punishment is thus death. Do you have any words you would leave behind?” He asked her.

“I’ve been wondering when they were going to send someone after me again. I thought they gave up last time. Did you know that I didn’t even get to fight him? He got convinced I was dead by my employer now.” Twenty-Two said and assumed a loose battle stance. “He was lucky. Come on then, try to take me down!”

Xen also readied himself for combat, but hesitated. “I won’t record those things you just said... for your sake. This monster that you have become is a disgrace to the order. When I kill you, I will let you fade into obscurity as all good servants of the law have before us.”

The grin on her face dropped into a deep frown. Her posture lightened and she approached the fellow Erudine with an unbroken stare. Xen moved forward as well, but stopped to raise one of his hands in the air and chop down in front of him. A wave of force emanated from the side of his hand as it traveled, and a barely visible current of air sliced across the room at a blinding speed.

Though it was aimed for her center of mass, Twenty-Two shifted her weight and dodged the attack without even a glancing blow. He tried again with a horizontal and quicker motion, but she ducked too fast for him and it missed again. She was gaining on him already, and he couldn’t keep up an offensive if he started to retreat. Buckling down, he let her get closer to him, and let out a sweeping kick as she got closer. She jumped over it like he expected, and Xen used his momentum to charge further down the tunnel and towards the room.

Once at the edge, he looked back to throw a quick chop, but she was already out of the way, her body too low for the sweeping motion to hit. Both of them were breathing quickly as the adrenaline began to set in. Beneath the wooden mask, Xen was sweating. Unable to trade blows with her swords, he tried to flurry his blows and keep her away. To his surprise, she let him gain some distance before laughing.

“I was worried they were going to send some new recruit with a power to counter me. Maybe someone with a long range tracking, or some kind of way to be undetectable to my own. You’re not anything special though, are you?” She asked him, flourishing her blade.

Xen bit his tongue. He refused to fall for her goading, and arched his arm back to deliver another strike. Unlike before, she hurled one of her swords at him like a spear, forcing him to duck and cancel his strike mid-motion. She barreled towards him and swung her blade in a wide arc back and forth. Though they weren’t hitting him, Xen knew she was just trying to keep him moving. He fell down into a crouching position and shot a fist out at her, hoping to gain some distance.

She bashed his hand out of the way even as she moved back. The pain shot over him, the blut side of her sword managing to strike right where the skin covered bone. He winced and clutched where it was hit.

“Look at you, throwing your life away like this. Why don’t you just run away and tell them I’m dead? Are you scared about getting removed from the maskless because of failure?” She said with a laugh and crouched down herself, meeting him at eye level. “No one is expecting you to survive to begin with, just hoping that you’ll keep me on my toes I’m guessing.”

“They wouldn’t send me out here just to fail!” Xen hissed back at her, emotion bleeding through the slits of his mask. “You’re talking yourself up to be some legendary threat, but you’re just a traitor with a strong ability. You have no convictions, no faith in justice... you are a walking corpse. My duty is to put you in the crypts where you belong!”

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She stood up and looked down at him in disgust. “No convictions? I have my...! No, you know what? I don’t need you to understand me. You’re just like every other Erudine, stuck behind that mask for safety.” She flourished her last remaining blade and raised it to slash his neck. “Just die already, I don’t want you here when the other two get back.”

“They walked without faces, broken and beaten, for the goddess had stripped them of that which made them our people. All of them were without souls, and the vices of our kind were laid bare and upfront with their naked uniformity...” Xen said in a hushed tone.

Twenty-Two recognized the passage. It was from holy scripture, and it was written on the wall above the main door where the maskless were trained from childhood. It was from the holy book of the Erudine, the Selum-Sah. The passage itself was from the beginning, detailing when their people had betrayed their goddess for power and long lives, and so she struck them with a terrible curse in return. She had made them all identical, with faces and bodies that were a weaker version of her own. It was the story of why they worse the masks in the first place. To not have a mask was to not have a soul.

She tossed her weapon to the side this time and leapt at him. Xen tried to take advantage of her fury, but she was too quick for him. He managed to slice the air again, and struck her side, but it wasn’t enough to make her back off. She pummeled and kicked at him, striking the arms and legs repeatedly. He let out gasps of pain towards the end, feeling one of his bones fracture as she continued. Eventually he could barely move, panting heavily from the pain. His heart was beating so loud the room sounded like it was lined with drums. Panic set over him as he waited for death.

Instead, he watched he pin down his left arm with her foot as she picked up her blade again. She dragged the back of the blade over his arm and he tried to squirm out from under her. He raised a hand to chop at her again, but she knocked it to the ground and the pain dazed him. It was only when he felt her grip the hard part of his mask that he was brought back to full attention.

“What... are you...?” He tried panting out.

He could feel the fabric connecting to the mask lift past his chin very a split second and she swiftly brought down pommel of her weapon. The wooden mask broke, the piece near his chin napping off as the upper portions struck into Xen’s skin. Cold fear unlike anything he’d felt before washed over him and panicked energy flooded his limbs as he started flailing beneath her.

“No! What are you doing?! Don’t take my soul!” He pleaded with her.

“It’s just mask you idiot! Why can’t you see how idiotic you look? Sit still or I’ll make this worse!” She shouted back down at him.

Another swift blow broke off more of the mask, reaching up under his left eye. As she yanked the piece away, she could see the tears streaming down his face. The Erudine face looking back at her through the broken mask was not like hers, scarred and torn from past injustice, but it was broken. Xen was weeping openly now, something that was almost unheard of for an Erudine adult, let alone one of the maskless. He had broken the standard of profound and quiet emotions, the fear and pain driving him back to naked expression of his despair.

Twenty-Two hesitated, mesmerized by his expression. She pressed her thumb down onto his cheek and wiped at some of the tears. Without warning, she was forcibly shoved off of him towards the pool. She managed to roll over to one of her blades and picked it up, the daze before wearing off almost instantly as she looked for what hit her.

A human and an Urchski were now standing between her and Xen. She licked the tear off of her thumb and stood up. For a moment, the hum of the machine was the only noise in the room.

“You’re Xen’s target, aren’t you? My name is Saul, I’m a detective for the merchant’s guild of the human section. I’m afraid it’s not really my justiction to bring you in for trial, but I’m not gonna stand by and watch you kill somebody.”

“Would you rather die with him? Humans should stay out of Erudine business.” She hissed at him.

“Tell you what, why don’t you drag your partner out of her and get him some medical attention. I’ll let you leave without any further violence, and we can put this all behind—"

“Don’t... listen to her...” Xen said, struggling to cover his face and push himself up on one arm.

“You stay quiet.” She said to him through grit teeth.

Saul took a step towards her while pulling his weapon back in case she needed to strike. Twenty-Two locked eyes with him, watching for the first attack. Instead, Saul was stopped in his tracks. He let out a grunt of confusion as his body shook in place.

Twenty-Two turned around to see Jason with one hand extended, freezing the other human in place. “Seems like we’ve gotten into some trouble.” He said calmly as he circled around the pool, Olivia nowhere to be seen. “Mind if I ask who you people are? Because it seems as though you were about to attack my friend here.”

“My name is Saul, and this is my guide Plafluf. Your friend was assaulting Xen here when I arrived.” Saul replied, stumbling as Jason let go of him. “Given that she also seems to match the description of who my friend has been looking for, I’d say he was just try to apprehend her himself. Did you know that you were abetting a criminal?”

“The maskless aren’t allowed to arrest or interfere with the other races unless they’re attacked first. Since I’m human, that’s fine, isn’t it?” Jason said with a shrug.

“Maybe on a technicality... but I’m with the merchant’s guild as a detective. I don’t take kindly to criminals, nor the people who help them out. This place does seem to be owned by an Urchski noble, so I could place you under arrest for trespassing.”

“Could.” Jason replied with a calm look.

Silence fell over the room, only masked by the heartbeat in their ears mixing with the hum of the machines. Xen’s breathing had picked up again as he tried to get up onto his knees. Twenty-Two looked at both her swords lying on the ground and finally looked over to Saul’s sword in his hands. She gave Jason one glance before bounding forward and twisting her whole body into a kick. Her foot managed to hit its mark dead on his hand, forcing him to let go of the sword and make it fly off to his right.

Plafluf closed his eyes and blinked above Twenty-Two’s head with his dagger ready. Only barely able to react in time, she dropped to the floor and socked him in the side. Though Plafluf was knocked away from the blow, she was forced to take a hit on her arm from Saul. Jason froze him in place and tried to rush forward to help, but Plafluf teleported back into the fight, landing on his back and driving the dagger deep into his shoulder. Jason yelled out in pain before grabbing Plafluf and throwing him away as hard as he could. The Urchski spun through the air but was caught by Saul in time. He was dazed only for a moment before he teleported back in front of Jason and went for his throat. Twenty-Two gave another quick blow to Saul while he was distracted and grabbed one of her swords. She dragged the blade up and went to swing into Plafluf’s stomach.

“Don’t touch him, you rat!” She shouted, drawing their attention towards her.

Her ability was focused intently on Saul and Plafluf, and she made sure before she even jumped that neither would be able to hit her. In that fine focus, she was unable to predict or dodge any other attacks. Her weight shifted as she was jumping, and time seemed to slow down. She twisted to the side as best she could, knocking into Jason and having them both stumble to the ground. The room went quiet, even the hum of the machine turning off for that frozen moment. Twenty-Two’s eyes were hazy and unfocused, though she didn’t know why at first. Only when she looked at the pool did she figure it out. A scarred and pale right arm rolled softly into the pool of black liquid.