Threads Interlude: Faceless

Once, there was a child who lived in the roots of the great World Tree. In the wondrous city of dreams, ruled by the Lord of Heavenly Lies, they lived in base reality, in dirt and muck and blood. They lived in the dark in chains of coin and paper. Owned, they were. Used, they were. In the lowest roots, there was only cruelty and the laughter of petty little gods.

Once, there was a child, but unlike the countless others, they heard the dark, and the dark heard them. They welcomed it, they loved it, and in the dark, there was no more pain. They fed it blood, they fed it memory, they fed it their face, and in return, they were given power.

The first pleasure in their life was the feeling of a brightly colored man’s throat breaking under their fingers. O, how the man’s fists had once hurt. O, how useless the man was, flailing against the child now. They took the color, they took the light, and both the faceless child and the dark hungered for more. This, thought the faceless child, was justice.

There was no time in the dark, no light in the roots to track the days. In the beginning, they were drawn to little flesh peddlers like the colorful man before. They learned to stalk, to skulk, wrapped in the dark. They studied, they searched, and they picked off the men, one by one, drop by drop, feeding on fear and paranoia. The men hid, babbling, crying, and dying. The faceless child’s fingers found their throats every time. There was no mercy for the children, the men, or the women in the dark. Why, then, should there be mercy for monsters? This was justice.

The dark grew in them, and its hunger grew too. The faceless child grew tall and strong. They began to take more than the colorful men, the flesh peddlers. They sought their masters, the paper lords, whose ink brushes wove the chains. They sought the alchemists whose hunger for reagents exceeded even the lusts of the peddlers. They sought the lord’s enforcers who made new laws in their minds for each victim of their violence.

They hunted, and they grew. The cruel ones in the rootways began to know fear. People began to leave offerings and signs of thanks. Their whispers told them of those who deserved justice.

Then, the day came when they had drawn the attention of the high ones. The faceless faced a lord of lies, descended from heaven to discover what the commotion among his servants was.

It was the end. They were caged, chained, and bound once more. The faceless wished to scream with a voice they no longer had. They had not been strong. They had only been an amusement for the lord, now kept in bondage.

But one day, after a day of terrible sound and fury, their captor had not returned. The cruel ones were in chaos, and with none maintaining their cage, the faceless slipped free. They were hungry and weak, and so they slipped out to hunt and feed once more

But it was not to be. A star descended into the dark.

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.

The star had many hands, silver metal and plumed in white. The flesh peddlers burned. The alchemists boiled. The paper lords were bound in their own chains or cast down among their victims. The enforcers’ skulls lined the streets. Nightmares of the liar lords melted under the star’s light.

This was justice.