Masks. Any good masquerade starts and ends with the mask you wear. The deception they offer warm and inviting; they sit flush against skin like a smooth hug of warming metal and plastic. It's easy to lose oneself behind them as the night sings and people spin on the dance floor, drifting away from the polite fictions and attachments they cling so tightly too in their every day lives. Sometimes, the masks can even be comfortable enough to take root.
The mark of a perfect masquerade is living the lie so fully that you can't take the mask off without peeling away layers of the person wearing it.
Some masks are bigger than others. Some barely cover a part of a face, offering an aesthetic instead of anonymity. Some crawl and stretch to cover entire peoples, whole societies. Those masks are worn with pretexts of tradition and expectation, where the truth of things are only known to people who know better than to spread it. It doesn't particularly matter why people wear the masks they do. What matters is the process of losing it.
You, like Gavin Wilder, have stared a carefully constructed mask in the face for every day of your life. It's a well-crafted one to be sure. It hands down science and rules and order with such imperious certainty and opaque complexity that they serve as the perfect obscurant for the truth: the world is not what it appears to be.
You have gone your entire life without ever grasping the existence of the supernatural. The world has so much to offer beyond the mundane vision granted to those not already in the know. One constant is that every last person who learns of the supernatural without having been born into it can recite for you the story of how they did like it was burned into their skull.
This story is likely how most of you will learn of the supernatural for the first time. That leaves only a single question. How does taking off the mask feel for you? Does it hurt? How thoroughly has the cold metal of the lie buried itself into the fabric of your being? Does the mask come off quietly, with nothing but the subtle whisper of deception against flesh as you accept a true reality? Or, more probably, does the mask come off with a bang?
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It was a beautiful Wednesday afternoon. Warm rays alighted on Gavin's skin like the gentle nuzzle of a fluffy family pet. It was the kind of pleasant afternoon weather that, upon looking out the window, a person would nod and comment on with surprise at having such fantastic weather this close to the start of winter. Blue skies, fluffy white clouds, and a bright sun that warmed the air was hanging in the early afternoon sky. It was a day for picnics and soft breezes and pleasant quiets.
It had also been an exhausting day for Gavin. Stuck inside by a test he hadn't studied for quite enough that had left him shifting in his seat the entire exam period with his head cradled in his hands as he frantically tried to recall information he just knew was in his notes but he'd forgotten to review the night before. The whole experience had left him nursing a nasty headache that had made even the pleasant sunlight of the day a tad too bright, and was only just letting up now that his day's activities were over.
He felt much better now as the warmth leeched into his muscles helping his anxiety and frustration melt away from him onto the lonely sidewalk. It was a peaceful quiet, with the street empty and still, waiting patiently for people to come along and fill it in the inevitable rush that would come in a few hours. It was on this fine afternoon in late November that the question of how the mask came off was answered for Gavin. For him, the mask came off with a bang.
It happened impossibly fast and like it was in slow motion at the same time. The street was located in one of the older neighborhoods, one of the roads the brick and mortar apartment buildings that lined either sides that had old designs, but were far too pristine to be that age in truth and you knew they were probably built within the last decade for some property developer to pass on. Not that he was paying much attention to that. He was much too occupied by the relaxed melody playing from his headphone in one ear when a column of fire blasted through the brick wall on the other side of the street.
The shockwave hit him first, a nearly invisible wave of pressure that left his ears throbbing. The shrapnel of the blast hit him next; fragments of brick lancing through the air to cut open his cheek, brushing thin red lines across his skull and sides. They were fast and shallow enough that he didn't even feel the pain in the moment as adrenaline kicked up into a furious roar of blood in his ears.
He stumbled back from the explosion, hunching over in pain and reaching a hand out blindly for something to steady him. The blast had been loud. The act of hunching saved him when one of the causes of the explosion burst bodily through the wall and sailed right through where his head had been seconds ago.
They were tall, muscular and unmistakably masculine, thick muscles faintly stretching a dark suit across massive shoulders. He looked for all the world like an elite bodyguard for some billionaire who'd just clocked off the job. Hell, Gavin thought he would've fit right into the president's security retinue if not for the shattered blade he held in his hands that, despite being clearly broken and fragmented, was still somehow half his full height and thick as his torso.
What the actual fuck, was the first coherent thought to pass through Gavin's mind. A huge man with sword and explosions? Holy shit I'm going to die, was the second. The suited man twisted in midair, his feet striking tiny glowing runic platforms that popped into existence that he kicked off against in succession to slow himself down. The man hacked up a lung as he leaned on the hilt of his shattered weapon, eyes scanning the street for further threats. His eyes darted to Gavin, his sword, then back again before he spoke. "I'm really sorry about this, but I don't have many options right now."
"Wha-" The man appeared inches from Gavin in a blur, carried forward by a howl of azure wind. Gavin's untrained eyes honestly couldn't tell if he had moved faster than his eyes could see or if he'd dispersed into the wind that flowed around them. It looked like a bit of both, but it was ultimately moot. The man pressed his fingers to Gavin's temples and thumbs to the center of Gavin's forehead before chanting in a voice that rang with an unfamiliar resonance. "Thy soul and flesh I bid thee part. Educ Animam."
Gavin felt spiritual hooks sink into a soul with senses he hadn't even been aware of moments ago as he was torn from his body with a sickening pop. It felt wrong wrong wrong as his newly discovered spirit-self scrabbled for a handhold in his own body. He was helpless to do much of anything as he felt his soul be forged into a new shape like putty before ossifying into a huge blade.
He could still see, and though Gavin wouldn't really say his perception was unaltered the difference was subtle in a way that was obvious and hard to describe. It was like he could see more, a color spectrum invisible to him for his whole life. Magic and spirits shifted along invisible currents before getting blasted away by the force of the two combatants.
IT could have been said that the form of the sword was ugly and brutal, almost as thick and and tall as a grown adult with a wicked teethed edge that looked like it was meant to bite into stone and crush and tear it's way trough anything in front of it. The sword also wouldn't have been out of place as the centerpiece of a collection in the Louvre. It glowed with an inner light, a gemstone body of royal purple that flowed into a wide hand guard that looked like the head of an ancient beast.
If not for the raw sharpness and weight the blade radiated that made it feel like it would cut and crush you to pieces if you stood a bit too close, Gavin would have fully expected to see it as the centerpiece in some private collection.
The suited man stared at the sword in his hand for the briefest moment before picking Gavin's empty shell of a body and tossing it down the road, cushioning the landing with another gust of wind. "I am sorry for this. I swear that once this is over I, Maxwell Smith, will find a way to make this up to you."
Maxwell stood, twirling the massive sword like it was weightless and flooded it with a burst of Aether, summoning powerful winds to swirl around him and lend him their strength.
The monster he had been fighting crashed onto the street after him. It almost hurt to look at. It's form was grotesque, blighted purple flesh stitched together with fleshy dark goo and knotted tendrils of thin vein-like webs that were worked by inhuman hands into a tentacular monstrosity whose piercing screech crested the edge of human hearing.
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Maxwell's sturdy features firmed into iron. One calloused hand reached into his pocket and withdrew a thick scroll of animal skin that he tore, dropping the fragments as they turned to ash.
The engagement that followed was horrifyingly deadly. Tentacles contracted and snapped; putrid whips that scattered technicolored acid in every direction whenever Maxwell severed a limb instead of deflecting or dodging through the strikes. He danced his way closer, flowing towards it with supernatural grace. The monster intensified it's assault, and Maxwell roared with effort as he severed four tentacles in a single overwhelming strike that opened a path to the body of the monster.
The monster launched a few of its tentacles backwards, drilling them into the concrete and using them as anchors to yank its body back. The form of the body distended, stretching the creature's unnatural flesh like putty as it accelerated under dozens of G's before screaming once again. A visible cone of force to tore its way through the concrete towards him from the unhinged maw of the wolflike beast.
Maxwell's eyes narrowed in clear focus, his aura sharpening as fiery sparks burst into existence before condensing into a white hot sheath around his sword that trailed sparks and a brilliant light. He swung vertically, parting the oncoming destruction with an arc of white fire carried by blades of wind that slammed into the creatures body with apocalyptic force.
It took the blow hard, crashing back through the wall of the building it had come through which groaned under the force of the impact. Maxwell launched himself through the new hole after it, eyes glittering with magic as he tracked his quarry. He came to a stop roughly in the middle of the room, sword held at the ready as he focused.
Maxwell seemed to have lost track of the beast as it hid amongst the unpredictable shadows and shapes cast by the dust and smoke of their conflicts. Maxwell exhaled repeatedly in a short rhythm as he tried to sus out the hiding spot of the monster. After a few moments of silence Maxwell's head snapped around to an unseen target and he launched himself forward. Fire and wind blackened the dust and room's surfaces as the dull roar of his incredible power released at full bore shattered the stillness.
The beast let out a scream of pain. It still hurt to hear, but this time Gavin could tell it wasn't an attack. Maxwell smiled, recognizing the creature was on the back foot, relaxing infinitesimally as he dashed towards it while avoiding the slippery patches of blood and gore from an eviscerated corpse clad in rune-lined robes. That was his last mistake.
The beast lunged at him out of the smoke, body crumbling in on itself into a ball of not-light that defied description. It was an energy beyond hunger, beyond darkness. If it was anything, it was an end, born from a suicide attack of whatever that creature had been.
The not light had a color, somehow. He tried to put words to it but it felt impossible. It was dark, but not like a room is dark. Dark like nothingness. Dark like death. Dark like rot and decay and corruption bubbling and grinding and festering as it danced to a rhythm of infinite silence that drowned every voice that screamed into it. Maxwell, so agile and steady during this fight, found themselves unable to dodge as dark purple wards sprouted up from the ground he had stepped on.
The beast was intelligent, Gavin realized in horror. Though it's eldritch form had obscured that fact with its animalistic growls and inhumanity, it had clearly baited Maxwell in with its injuries, tricking him into stepping into the circle of glowing runes on the floor. Likely the very circle that had likely called the void monster into this world before the summoner was reduced to the gorey smear to their side.
Maxwell's last words were gruff and annoyed, devoid of the fear that Gavin would've expected and was currently thoroughly dissociated from. "Fuck, rookie mistake. Sorry kid."
Gavin felt the spell binding him into his blade-form relax as Maxwell hurled him away. The circle on the floor flashed brightly just as the storm of nothingness made contact, wiping Maxwell and the magic runes on the floor out of existence as they banished Gavin away from this realm.
In the end, Gavin's spirit disconnected from his body fourteen seconds after seeing the supernatural for the first time.
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Gavin drifted. Unmoored and unbound to any earthly sense, he floated as a lone spirit in whatever this place was. In the minutes or decades he had spent here- he wasn't sure, and he didn't think he wanted to know- he had taken to calling it the Between. What else was there to call it? Limbo? The place wasn't an afterlife for certain, as there was altogether too much of a lack of anything to have been somewhere people were meant to remain. Is this where everyone went after they died? He really hoped not. How long had it been?
His universe shrunk down to his own mind. Awful anathemic strangeness grinded away at him. He couldn't even look at the nothing to distract himself, as there wasn't even a space for him to stare at. Straining his focus outwards (or as close as he could figure), he searched desperately for something to latch on to, and failed to find something as tiny as the glimmer of a distant star.
It wasn't the same kind of nothingness that had killed Maxwell and almost killed him though. That was something more focused. Concentrated nothing, if that made any sense. He could feel the difference easily. One was severely uncomfortable, and one was a dull burning that throbbed outwards from where a shard of the same energy that had killed Maxwell embedded in his soul.
The experience was an unfamiliar pain. He would have guessed his soul would've been more like the brain, if you pushed him. That is to say, he would've guessed there were no nerve endings or other senses to feel with. It would've been nice if that was true. The fragment writhed in his soul, tearing and biting and scratching away at every part of Gavin it could reach, a tiny fragment of wrath and gluttony hungry to end everything it touched.
Gavin only existed because the fragment destroying him was a tiny fraction of a sliver. And maybe it was terrible of him but he was starting to wish it was a little larger. If it was larger he wouldn't be stuck here in this nothingscape as his soul was torn apart with agonizing slowness as the interminable nothingness dragged on to infinity. He hated it. He grew to hate a lot of things, in the Between, before he pushed the hate to the edge of his soul where the fragment was buried and watched it as the reddish black was devoured bit by bit. He couldn't bring himself to hate nothing.
He had been floating for somewhere between a millennia and an instant when he finally stumbled into something else. It was another soul, humanoid, unlike the vague blob of his own soul. It was vaguely masculine but also textureless, like a department store mannequin. Still, the being was beautiful, and Gavin's mind ached with relief at the presence of something else real.
The being was faceless, their form was woven from tapestry of colors that danced around more of the same Void energy that was stuck in Gavin. The largest wounds extended from shoulder to hip in huge clawmarks that seemed to bleed . Still, the soul beneath was made of yellowish sunlight, lush green grass and steady brown earth. It was warm and paternal, regal but not divine.
Gavin's unstable mind conjured the image of a storybook ruler, an impossibly noble figure who could only exist fantasy, where good would always triumph over evil with the power of their character and heroes embarked on perilous journeys for the sake of his people armed with nothing but the need to protect.
Gavin would've cried for the being if he could. Horrible wounds of the uncolored darkness scarred the being all over, rending it apart and staining it filthy not-color. The only pure parts of it left were in its right arm where they held divine spear that glowed brilliantly, banishing the corruption that approached it.
The creature tapped the sharp end of the spear to the center of its forehead then softly against the same point on Gavin. There was a faint burst of light and Gavin's panicked and fraying ego was grounded by a supernatural calm.
"Greetings, child." The being did not speak a language Gavin recognized, but he understood it all the same. Their voice was strong, like a coxswain or general, but had the steady slowness and calm that came with great age and wisdom. It was a little bit like what Gavin would've expected from an ancient warrior philosopher if they were to have missed a few nights of sleep. "May I call you by your name?"
"Of course," Gavin found himself saying. It was strange how easily he fell into their magnetic charisma and his newfound calm. It was easier than the rest of this experience here had been.
"Thank you Gavin," the being's soul flashed with shades of warmth, "May I ask how you found your way into The Gap Between? I do not wish to presume, but curiosity takes me as it is wont to do."
"It's alright, I don't mind." Gavin did not know why he trusted this being so readily. He could sense it wasn't from his world, but could tell with equal certainty it would not harm him. They could see the very fabric of each others mind and soul after all, and what else could he trust? "I was heading home from college- that's a form of advanced school-"
The being chuckled lightly, soul warming to bright yellows and deeper reds that crackled like a warm fireplace in winter. "I can guess. This spell communicates intent, not language, and I have seen a great many things in my life. Speak your mind and I will understand."
"That's convenient," said Gavin, stalling as he mashalled his thoughts and confidence, "Sorry if this is rude, but are you in pain? Those injuries look awful." He spun his soul form around to show the tiny fragment that had wriggled it's way into his being. "'Cause this hurts like a bitch, and it's not even a fraction of what you're dealing with."
"It is kind of you to ask, but not to worry. I have borne them for three millennia yet in this place and could do so for another two at least," the being laughed again at Gavin's shocked expression, "I have wandered The Gap Between for a long time, child, and have lived far longer than that. The advantage of magic, I suppose. Not that it has done me much good here."
"Are you-" Gavin hesitated here, "Never mind. Dumb question."
"Please, ask it anyways."
"Well, I was gonna ask if you know a way to get out of here, but it seems obvious that you can't or you would've already."
"I've many a way, but none that suited me until now."
"Something to do with me?"
"Yes. You need not flinch away from me child, I mean you no harm. Likely any other in my place would, but I have always been more foolish then my contemporaries. Come, let me show you something. You will have need of my knowledge soon."