章節 17: Assimilation
"Silence! I refuse to listen to your stupid voices any longer!" Gwen shouted.
The two men shut up, but not for long.
Mord grabbed a bottle of deep red liquid and handed it to Goleil. He had a conspiratory grin on his face.
"Here you go! Take a sip!"
Goleil nodded and brought the flask up to his face, and it clinked as it hit the mask on his face.
He froze.
"Something wrong?" Mord asked.
Goleil looked over to Gwen, pleading in his eyes.
She raised an eyebrow but said nothing.
"Mask in the way?" He asked, still grinning.
Goleil sighed.
"You guys have something more private? It's not that I don't trust you. I just have no idea how to take this thing off."
Gwen laughed. "You expect us to believe that? How is that possible? How have you been eating?!"
"Eating...?"
His eyes widened. He had been so busy that he hadn't noticed it yet. He had not eaten anything today, but he also hadn't eaten anything yesterday. The healers had been giving him nutrients while in the room, but that had stopped already.
He expected a wave of hunger to wash over him as he remembered, but it never came.
'I guess I don't need to eat? I'm sure it has something to do with the female voice from my memories, but how?' He thought.
Gwen sighed. She had mistaken his shocked silence for distrust. "Mord, give him your room."
He sighed as well. His ploy to see the Vrean's face hadn't worked. "Sure, it's just over there."
Goleil nodded and walked into a room identical to his own at the guardhouse, albeit for a few decorations.
Mord had hung a dozen swords to the walls, and old books were piled in the corner. Empty flasks lay around haphazardly, and their stoppers were strewn across the floor.
He closed the door and immediately began trying to rip the mask off.
'This damn mask! Why can't I take it off?! It was normal for them to be removable, so why is mine permanently fused to my face?!'
As he tore at it with all his might, he could feel his grasp on reality slipping. The floor beneath him shifted, and his body felt like nothing more than a vessel. The mask began to tear at the skin of his face, and he felt a searing pain deep in his soul.
He began to see hallucinations of people in the room with him that he knew weren't there. They were like phantoms, vague and shadowy.
Another tear, his blood began to boil, and his head felt like it was splitting. He dropped the flask of locraf in shock, and it shattered all over the floor, spilling all over the oak floorboards. The phantoms became more vivid, and he could see their faces, and they were familiar, like he had seen them in a dream but had forgotten after he woke up.
He screamed in agony, but only a deep beastly roar escaped from his throat in the place of his voice. Tendrils of golden mana emerged from the mask and wrapped around his face, instantly bonding the mask to his face once more.
His knees buckled, and he fell to his hands and knees into the puddle of locraf. The pain was gone, the shadows were no more, but they were still fresh in his mind.
Goleil felt a surge of energy and looked down to see his body was absorbing the locraf through his skin, slowly repairing his sore muscles and reforging them like a blacksmith would a sword. His muscles grew harder and increased in size by a minimal amount.
He stood up, and as he did, he could feel his bones becoming heavier, but his body felt lighter as his muscle density grew.
'What incredible discoveries I've made... First, I can't take the mask off, or those golden threads force it back on me. And second, that locraf is so incredible. Who knows how strong the others who use locraf regularly must be!' He thought to himself.
He shivered as he remembered the pain of trying to rip off the mask. He had almost gone insane. He still remembered the faces, and he felt a nagging in the back of his mind. He felt like he had a pit in his stomach. It was a dull but ever-present anxiety that simply sat there and weighed him down.
'Note to self... don't try to take the mask off if I don't want to go insane...'
As he left the room, Gwen called, "Everything okay, Goleil? You got a little loud!"
His eyes widened as he remembered the bestial roar he let out.
"I wasn't too loud, was I? My apologies. I was dealing with something."
They still all looked towards the floor.
"Is there something wrong?" He asked.
Mord looked up and looked surprised. "You've still got your clothes on?"
All their eyes shot up.
"What?! Of course, I do!" He shouted.
"Well... the first time is typically pretty intense; that's why we didn't rush in when we heard you scream like an eldritch..." He said.
Gwen cleared her throat. "Well? What was it like for you? All our first times were different, and it's kind of a tradition to share with friends."
Goleil's eyes widened, then relaxed.
'So, it's just like telling your old war stories then. That's not so hard, and these people seem nice. I'll just tell them what happened while I tried to take off the mask since nothing happened when I absorbed the locraf with my body. Also, Gwen called me a friend. I should share with these people. Even though Mord is weird, he means well, and Gwen is nice but kind of hard to read. Rick is Rick. A strange comrade is better than no comrade.'
"Well, I started to see people I can't remember; my head felt like someone had driven a sword through it, and I could feel my soul being unmade. How about you guys?"
He looked around expectantly but was only met with wide eyes and gawking mouths.
Rick cleared his throat. "Uhh, so we are just going to roll right by your soul being unmade?"
Mord shook his head and put his hands on his hips. "I'm still stuck on people you can't remember, how does that work exactly?!"
"Soul being unmade?!" Gwen shouted.
Goleil's eyes narrowed. "Is it that weird? What did you guys go through?"
Mord stepped back. "Weird?! That's ridiculous! I just felt exhausted afterward and a bit dizzy! We were talking about how strong you got!"
"And I got a slight headache!"
'I felt nothing... is that good or bad?!' Goleil thought.
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