II-119A Night at the Theater (I)

The Realmbreaker, yeah, he’s not that bad of a guy. I mean, he’s got a bit of a temper, he’s got a bit of an ego, he yells a lot, he’s really insecure about his height, but he’s not that bad of a guy, all things considered. And I consider a lot of things.

You know, before he came here—before he broke that messed-up skill inside of me—I was running around everywhere for months. No one—no one even cared to say “hello,” or “do you need something,” or “are you hurt,” or “how do you feel, huh?” They didn’t even let me keep my own name. Everyone just called me “Games Master,” because some joker thought it was funny.

My name’s Bobby. It’s Bobby Ford. I was, literally, a car salesman, for Christ’s sake. My favorite show was The Office. Do you know that The Realm Breaker—this guy you guys are so scared of that supposedly runs around killing everyone, destroying worlds—asked me what The Office was? You want to know what he did? He asked me what The Office was. And I spent like three hours explaining it to him. I told him about practically half the episodes. He just nodded. And I had to explain everything because, you know, he’s not from Earth, right? But still, he listened. And he was interested by the end.

Now, did he get any of the comedy? Not really. He kept asking me, “Why don’t they listen to the head guy, because of his cultivation or something?” He also said that the guy was a bad patriarch because he wasn’t powerful enough and didn’t command respect. He sneered really hard when I… well, during the parkour episode. Anyway, that’s a whole thing.

But, all in all, not a bad guy, all right? I don’t know what you guys are talking about. It’s probably just because someone has finally started hurting you the same way they hurt the rest of us. And guess what? I’m here for it.

-Bobby Ford, the Gainsmaster

II-119
A Night at the Theater (I)

“Wait, so that’s it? That’s all you did? You just ran and people around you died? That’s all they had you do?” William asked.

Gainsmaster just nodded. “The guys up top were uh… well, they gave half-assed Office Space vibes, you know? You see Office Space before? Like, the scene with the managers? It’s like that. Super half-assed.”

The man was slimmer than they’d expected, not nearly as imposing. He wore a strange getup—some kind of velvety material that was bright and shiny, cupping his body tight and revealing his, well, not-so-imposing musculature. He had short brown hair, a narrow face, brown eyes, and generally looked decidedly average. There was nothing special about him other than his willingness to run for months on end, and his unceasing urge to complain about his life.

Of course, Wei could almost empathize. Running was not among his favorite means of conditioning, but he did it. Though, if someone made him run for months constantly—forcing him to forego sleep, meditation, and all other forms of refinement—Wei supposed he might be a little upset, too.

Right now, the Gainsmaster was briefly situated in a temporary residence made by the Forgebearer inside the Unblossomed. The other members of the Inner Council introduced themselves to him and welcomed him as a temporary Outer Disciple—with promotions pending based on his performance.

Rafael began talking about some kind of ideological thing and how much could be provided to him once he bought into the collective shares of the Drowned Sky Sect. Wei and the others didn’t care so much about the financial end of things, preferring to let Ellena and Rafael direct its development. Strangely, the Queen and the rebel lich were quite at odds about… well, everything.

Wei would probably need to talk about in-sect harmony at some point.

Today, after finishing his morning training with the rest of the Disciples—and incurring far fewer casualties than normal—Wei decided to reward a few with some extra shards. Soon, he and Agnesia were going to a theater within the bounds of Envy. There, the Lodge managed to secure a set of tickets for them to attend and partake in a very, very particular show: one featuring an individual known as the Facetaker. 

Apparently, this Facetaker invited Sinners into a live performance for all to watch as he hunted a few lucky Sinners chosen from the audience. If they won, they would become celebrities or some-such nonsense and earn a great deal of Sins. Additionally, the Facetaker’s significance would be ceded to them as well. However, the usual outcome was mostly just a lot of people getting hunted, maimed, and then slain. After which the Facetaker… took their faces.

Wei thought of this as a direct challenge. If someone was going to try to take his face, he was going to obliterate their skull and leave them without a whole corpse. But he was also curious in a strange sense. Mainly about why someone would choose face-taking as their defining trait.

“Do you actually think he’s serious about all that?” Agnesia asked, as she frowned at the ticket. It showed the Facetaker, dressed in a cloak of black, wearing someone’s severed face.

“About what?” Wei leering at his own ticket.

“The Facetaking,” she said, her face twisted in disgust as if she couldn’t comprehend what would possess a man to do such a thing.

“I’m not sure,” the young master admitted. “It takes a particularly twisted mind to take faces.” He paused, thinking back on stories his mother had told him. “Well, there was the False Head-Sect. They were skilled at using spiritual techniques in which they puppeteered bodies of people they’d dismembered and reassembled. It didn’t work very long, though, because of the smell, you see.”

Agnesia just stared at him. “You’re not joking.”

“No,” Wei said. “The Iron Tortoise Clan eradicated them some two hundred years back, I believe.” He shook his head. “Again, fleshcrafting is disturbing and terrifying, but non-cultivator bodies decay very quickly. I can’t imagine wearing a face-mask for long unless you treat it like leather. Even then, it defeats the purpose of wearing a face as a disguise. It cannot be just for intimidation. I have killed too many Counts to be afraid, and you have a draconic avatar that can enshadow a mountain. This is not for us.”

After all the horror they’d experienced, Wei held out his hands as if imploring an invisible deity—perhaps a bit miserable, considering how Mepheleon was probably watching their every move. “I just do not understand the appeal—or even the threat. He’s not any more fearsome than most people we’ve faced.”

“The way Intelligence puts it,” Bishop said off to the side, “he’s just pretty sneaky. There’s a tendency to pop up behind people and finish them.”

Wei stared at Bishop. “That’s it?”

Bishop shrugged. “It works on most motherfuckers, kid. He’s really good at sneaking up on people.”

“How is that a threat to me, with my omniscience? How is that a threat to Agnesia, considering her current toughness?” Wei asked.

“I don’t know,” Bishop admitted. “I guess you’re gonna find out soon. From everything I’ve seen, his live shows are all about ambushes, stealth, popping up where people don’t see. I think he might even have some kind of teleportation or body-splitting Skill. But, with all that said, I don’t think he’s much of a danger to you—not even a little.”

Wei leaned back and stretched. “Fine. Let’s be done with another of these challengers. Then let me start bargaining with the great powers of the Circles. I am grateful they are allowing me to keep the initiative so.”

“They’re reacting rather slowly,” Bishop warned. “It takes time to get organizations that big to move. But you really don’t want them to set up a heavy blow. You might be riding high after killing a Count and attacking some of their forces, but you ain’t that big, and they could get pretty mad. If some of them come together, or even if a whole Circle decides smashing you is their main goal, it won’t end well.”

“You won’t obtain the status of Vanguard through brute force alone, anyway,” Bishop continued, sighing. “Too much entrenched interest, too many people from the Circles with relations to power players who can be plied and played with. Ultimately, you need these bastards to come to the table and deal. So after bloodying their nose, you’ve got to butter them up a little.”

“And that,” Wei said, “is something I do not look forward to. So I will comfort myself by killing another one of their champions.”

***

The theater, much like anything in the Claimed Hells, was packed—so many people all surging to so few places. It felt like a slaughterhouse, a pigpen—somewhere everyone could be trapped and butchered in an instant. Wei suspected that was exactly the intention for some of these places.

The theater today was called Gallow’s Eye: an aptly named structure that Rafael described as “a little too gothic for gothic architecture.” The large eye fused at the front of its entrance was, well, a literal eye—flesh, blood, and all. It even blinked. Along the sides of the large structure with far too many spikes and stone gargoyles were a few thousand flayed faces plastered over the windows.

“Again, how is this bloody necessary?” Agnesia asked, waving her hand at the faces. “It’s like someone’s trying too hard.”

Indeed, Wei agreed. They stood at the highest balcony, looking down as hundreds of thousands streamed in below. Yet on their floor there were only a few hundred—a few hundred Marquises and mostly Counts—each of them eyeing Agnesia and Wei, noting who they were. The young master ignored them; the princess simply glared. Wei, however, found himself more interested in the class hierarchy on display—such an extreme separation.

“Was this what you were talking about, Raphael?” Wei asked, narrowing his eyes. “The oppression of the masses, as you said.”

“Correct,” Raphael replied. “The separation of essence and the segregation of power has created an extreme hierarchical imbalance here. We have the potential to make things better. You,”—he placed a hand on Wei’s shoulder—“especially have the potential to make things better. With your system and your skill, we can redistribute and make things more equal for those who are deserving.”

Wei nodded. That was already partially his plan—but he wasn’t sure how he’d fit over a hundred thousand people into the Unblossomed. Truthfully, he didn’t even know how he’d fit a thousand. Still, he thought, one hundred thousand in my sect… one million… more. How would I even run that? Could it even be called a sect by that point?

“Come on,” Agnesia said, pulling him by the arm. “Let’s see you kill the poor bastard and then head off to do something else.” They stared into a wide-open set of doors so vast that someone could fit another small building through them. Inside, dim lights hung from above in the shape of glowing blades.

“Some kind of metaphor,” Wei posited, “of a threat looming just overhead.”

There, at the end, another set of doors waited—surrounded by staircases where the esteemed and privileged could look down, protected from the masses.

As Wei, Rafael, and Agnesia embarked inside, he felt a chilling ambience pass around him. There was something in the air, something of a spiritual quality. It tried to affect him, caressing his mind slightly—but he resisted it. He pushed it aside, and it burdened him no more. The chill faded; the ill feeling vanished. But the darkness remained, and his omniscience revealed many, many things: demons in the walls, unseen fiends hidden all around him, whispering, releasing breath across various necks and napes, whimpering to create a mournful air.

For a while, Wei thought it was all too much, all too ridiculous. Why would those with such power go through this theatrical nonsense? And then he realized: he was in a place of theatrical nonsense. Furthermore, this was a place of Envy—a place where people simply couldn’t let go of their inferiority.

“This is their nature,” his Shell whispered. “They despise others. They hate them for existing. They build their own power on desire, on being less than.”

“What a miserable way to be,” Wei muttered under his breath.

Ahead, a many-limbed demon lacking any facial skin offered masks and black roses. It held one out to Huey, a portrait of misery and tears. Huey sneered. “No. I am myself. I do not hide.” He pushed the demon aside—but then took a black rose. “But I will gift this to the artist.” For when he was done with the Facetaker, he would offer them something, and it wouldn’t be a face.

As some sinners climbed the staircases and others shuttled through side doors, Wei pushed past them. He gazed down over the rows and piles of people and the stage, its curtain still undrawn. He turned to Agnesia and Rafael and simply shrugged his shoulders. “I’m going backstage,” Wei said. “I do not like this place very much. Be prepared to respond if I call for you. But I do not expect this to last long.” Wei paused. “Perhaps we can go to a better show if I finishe early.”

“You want me to come backstage with you?” Agnesia asked. “Two of us might make this quicker.

He considered it. It would be educational—and her company would be appreciated. But she was more a storm of destruction than a careful blade. “Agnesia. You are… potent now, but I fear you may leave this place in ruins.”

“And that would be such a loss?” Agnesia smirked. It was quite a nice smirk.

“No. But you being sued would be.” Wei said. “I don’t know if I can beat a Tribulator, but I will be forced to find out if one comes for you.”

“Well. You’re getting more charming by the moment, Patriarch.” She laughed at Wei’s expression. “Go on, then. And don’t let him take your face. Or I’ll never let you forget.”

“As you command, knight of mine,” Wei replied.

Rafael looked between them. “I am… lost as to what is happening.”

Wei let Agnesia explain as he headed off to make this a short affair. He Essenceshifted, turning into a gust of glowing wind. He circulated along the edges of the theater, regarding the Sinners below with a mix of pity and derision.

What was it like—desiring to see someone else kill people and calling it art? What was it like to take in this macabre scene and think it had any substance? Was it just an indulgence of power? Way didn’t understand. He was never very… social, despite his mother’s best efforts. And today, he was likely going to murder their favorite artist. A shame, a pity, but nothing more.

Drifting between the folds of the curtains, he felt a veiled pressure—a layered protection trying to stop him. Yet with a final push, and a little help from one of his scythes, he came through without much difficulty.

Behind him lay a vast darkness, still drenched in mist. From the mist sprouted the first splashes of color: greenery emerging from the ground, trees rising in all directions. Then, Wei realized he had passed between a veil—a boundary that made the theater’s stage its own world. He rematerialized at the center of this world upon a world as trees shot up around him, as bushes surrounded him.

“That is interesting,” he murmured. “Perhaps a technique I should learn at some point. My Realm of the Harvest is rather similar in some—”

“You should not be here,” a low, calm voice said.

Wei blinked and found himself surprised. His Omniscience sensed nothing, but across from him stood a man without a face, wearing nothing but a featureless black facade.

“Ah, yes—you,” the young master said, drawing his Pale Fang and planting it in the ground beside him. It speared through wood in one moment, and in the next, soil and grass sprouted around it. “You must be the Facetaker.”

“And you—you are an intruder. You don’t belong here.” The Facetaker’s tone was offended. “Leave. Go back to the audience. I have not chosen you. I am not hunting you.”

“Correct,” Wei said. “It is the other way around.”

The Facetaker went still. “This is unwise and foolish. These are not the rules of the theater. Please leave before I invoke my lawyer.”

Wei grinned. “How about a wager? If you can cut me just once, I will let you start carving into my face—just one hit.”

The Facetaker watched him, silent. And then, suddenly, they vanished from Wei’s Omniscience.

The young master blinked. “Huh. Bishop wasn’t lying: He is very good at stealth.” Suddenly, the curtains opened and Wei sighed as he looked at the many, many masked audience members looking at him. “And now my hopes of a quick evening are dead. Well. Best go find my hidden quarry.”