I should have seen it before. The natural affinity I had to the mud once I had my disguise was the first clue. I had wondered how the Barony could possibly have managed to defeat mudmen on their home turf, and the answer was: they hadn't. They thought they were oppressing the mudmen, making them live in squalor, but that was exactly where the mudmen wanted to be.

For all I knew the mudmen liked the beatings and the 'reenactments' as well, they seemed hardy enough. I stopped cold.

"Oi!" I shouted at the squabbling pair, "this here keepboy wants to capture me for the Lady Elskia, so give us yer shirt and ya can avoid the bit of 'grievous injury'."

Bart looked coldly at me, forgetting Hugh—who had successfully made himself utterly inconsequential in the corner.

"That's what all this is for then isn't it? You want to be a rebel leader aye?" he stomped up to me and began to jab his thick finger into my chest with every sentence. "Well you'll wait yer turn! Look at me, I’m hidebound as it is,” he gestured angrily at his girth, “I’ve needed a shedding for months, but noo, they haven’t had the stones ta do a proper reenactment with the Baron ill!"

I felt nauseous. They liked the beatings. They hit themselves in the heads with rocks to have quarter hour drowning sessions, of course they liked the beatings. They were a convenient way to loosen the excess skin they apparently shed—the mystery of the leather walls solved in a moment.

Elskia was going to preach her little heart out. Promising all the things that the mudmen absolutely abhorred: better food; equal status before the law; and access to sanitation. My plan to fake a surrender into her loving embrace would sent every mudman rebel running for Roderick's fists.

I didn't know what to do. There was no way I could take his clothing by force—not when the mudmen were such resilient specimens—and I needed it, with his cooperation. I could feel intuitively that the disguise skill wouldn't replicate the red mark of the rebel.

I resigned myself to do the one thing I had absolutely promised myself I wouldn't do: I was going to tell the truth, heroic implications be damned.

"Right. You're absolutely right. It hasn't been good times for the mudmen of late, but I know how it can be better. I know how beatings and grubs can be as common as the mud. A world where a mudman can't walk down a road without rotten scraps being thrown upon them; where youths with sticks stalk the night looking for the unwary. Right now the people of the keep struggle to determine their succession, but the only one who can bring you the bounty I've described."

Harry's eyes had grown wide at my description, and he tugged on Bart's shirt in excitement, as if to say: take it off Bart, take it off.

Bart was eyeing me very suspiciously now.

"That lass Elskia doesn't have it in her. None of the Baron's gumption, or her mother's for that matter. That Roderick now, with his boys Grim, Grum, and Grom, I personally has been beaten by 'em on no fewer than three separate occasions. Good strong lads. That girl now, she's a real danger she is. All kinds of trouble. Tried to implement a bathday she did—horror o' horrors. She's unsuitable for the Barony and that's the truth."

I was back into comfortable territory. I saw the path forward, and within it, lies.

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"I can see how you'd believe that, but Elskia has never made her character properly known. I have seen it--the cruelty that lives within her. An ambition just beneath the surface, one that drove her to seek out dark forces...beings unnatural in this world. Is that not enough proof of her suitability?"

Bart laughed and laughed, Harry joined in hesitantly with a confused look, but enjoying himself just the same.

"Dark forces! What dark forces has that slip of a girl contracted eh?"

I smiled. Sometimes the universe offers, and you must accept.

"Namely, me."

I reached up and pulled my face off.

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Hugh watched as the entity—the shapeshifter—tore the flesh of his face with one hand even as he tore off the crude robe he'd acquired from the hovel dwelling mudman. Before the shocked eyes of the mudmen his body began to ripple, shrinking in on itself, features morphing and fluxing even as the flesh he'd pulled loose turned to mud in his grip.

Then there was merely a youth, plain featured and pale. He would draw no remark from anyone were it not for his expression—the arrogant sneer of one who knew the world bent to their will. Hugh fell to his knees.

"You would deny her? She who has made compact with me? I am the Facestealer, Oreh the Nightmare, the Bane of Peace, the One Who Stayed. You know not my true name, for you are not yet mad," he halted then, and considered the three before him, "but I know yours."

Harry wailed. Bart shook in silent terror. Hugh looked on, and the Third Layer hummed.

"It is only by thy Lady's forebearance that I do not take everything you are," he pulled back then, resolving his expression into something plain and humble, a facade so much more terrifying for its credibility. "But I will settle for borrowing your visage, and take your oath that you will observe the Lady's address, and judge her worthiness then."

The pair of mudmen prostrated themselves and begged forgiveness, as they should. They even promised to pressure the other rebel leaders to resist the allure of Roderick's men's fists until they heard Elskia’s potential.

And Hugh's mind stretched.

His life until now had held to a rigid pattern. Just as the stone corridors of the keep shaped the movement of the people within them, allowing certain paths and disallowing others, so he had thought his entire life was already bound. He would always be a kitchen boy. He would always be driven, and never drive. He had lived within those stone walls his entire life, thinking them invulnerable, knowing that things could not change. In these last days he had seen Hero, or the thing pretending to be him, sneer at those walls: and the walls moved.

Hugh couldn't help but wonder what other walls might fall. No, he thought, not wonder—but anticipate.

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After my performance I took the rebel shirt with good grace. Bart and Harry continued to grovel, but with an enthusiasm that I found somewhat...uncomfortable. I slipped the shirt on and, after looking critically at my own slim form and Bart's voluminous one, got the pair of them to gather a bundle of skin-leather-shed for dark purposes (stuffing my shirt). I hinted vaguely that my dark powers required sacrifice of flesh as justification, which had them both blushing and stammering.

I activated my skill, and felt uncomfortably on display as they watched me shift into an approximate semblance of Bart. This time three sets of eyes lingered heavily on me—et tu, Hugh?—and I hurried out with Hugh in tow, desperate to gain some distance from them before I started to get requests for an advance on the promised beatings.

I managed to squirm to the hole entrance, plagued the whole way by thoughts of the biological parallels of moving through a fleshy, lubricated tube. I had only just popped my arms free when I heard a squelch behind me.

I wanted very badly to turn my head, but I realized that, in this disguise, that was a process which really required an investment of my entire body, and not just the neck.

"iss un've 'em den?" asked a voice that, charitably, could be described as lacking mastery of language. And more accurately: lacking the rudiments. I mentally translated that stew of undercooked noises into meaning, "This one of them then?", and resigned myself to an ongoing process of clarification.

"ees 'ot de 'ed 'ark 'asn'tee? 'ow 'it 'imm!" (He's got the red mark hasn't he? Now hit him!), another voice replied.

"Grom," (Grom), said Grom.

"eyet Grom, 's yer 'urn t' 'it. Aym 'orry" (Right Grom, it's your turn to hit. I'm sorry).

I only just managed to parse that last sentence when I felt a sharp pain at the back of my head, and the world cut to black.