“‘safe’?” Streke repeated. "No offense, but when the collected showed up, we stood in it’s face telling it t leave you alone. "
He thought a second, then added, “granted, you did sorta make up with it for a while, but, still.”
Dakron eyed Clad in curiously. He pulled out a piece of paper and wrote on it, “You do not approve of us?” He showed it to Vladin.
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“I don’t mind helping you with that first” Era offered referring to the dirty dishes.
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By this time The collected had apparently finished his work, having set the… darker mask to cool, and retrieving the odd… plant like one before he suddenly snapped out of his previous state of unfocused focus.
Staring around in apparent confusion before he looked down at his hands and the mask held in them… and straight after began screaming as he quite literall threw both himself, and the mask away from each other.
It was, well… rather horrifying. A mixture of voices screaming incoherent words, and indeterminate vocal cry’s of a mixture of hatred, fear, pain, and confusion. As if he no longer carried the memories of why this was being caused, but still retained the instincts.
Throughout the garbled mess of words and noise small, clumped phrases could just barely be picked up due to the seemingly repetive use of them.
Ranging from singular words ‘CursedDangerousAliveEvil’, to near full phrases such as, ‘Stole from UsHurt usHurt himMusn’t have itMusn’t keep itMusn’t see itCan’t be here!’, ‘What is itWho did it takeWhy do we fearhatewant it goneWhat is itThe maskThe dangerThe evilKill itHide itHow is it hereRemove it!’, and a number of other, similar combinations for both categories.
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Blaze, having been startled by the sudden outburst, brought out his hammer in a knee-jerk response to the perceived danger. However, he didn’t make any action to attack.
Blaze tries to see if he could get a good look at the mask Collected threw away, wondering if it was some kind of clue.
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The mask seemed to just be a mask, still oddly… realistic looking in it’s plant like texture, and it hadn’t really made the usual clatter a mask would when slammed on the ground as hard as it was, more a sort of… wooden-fleshy thump. Though the cause of that could’ve been The Collected’s screaming.
It was rather hard to hear anything through the garbled mess of distorted screeching, and underlying voices.
Following the Collected’s initial reaction he had quickly scooped back up the dropped hammer, his eyes showing a feral blankness as he raised it up, further revealing more of his patchy, black, rune covered armour, and prepared to essentially shatter the mask (and potentially the floor below it.)
Blaze could most likely retrieve the mask before The Collected shattered it, though he’d have to be quick, if he didn’t react quite literally immediately that mask was gone. Now whether or not such an idea was a good one or not, going by The Collected’s reaction to his own creation, was really up to Blaze’s own determining.
One way could prove to be as consequential as The Collected’s immediate reaction seemed to be indicating it would be, but with that also came the gain of any potential research and/or discovery of what exactly he was making and its function, whereas the other gave no potential chance of danger, but the consequence of the complete loss of any knowledge it could bring.
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“Please, wait!” He yelled as he ran towards the mask, his curiosity getting the better of him.
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While The Collected was far from being back into it enough to understand, much less even register Blaze’s request he could apparently still recognize Blaze and recall his apparent importance.
Twisting awkwardly with a suprised, animalistic yelp in an attempt to keep from crushing Blaze with the hammer, and subsequently absolutely ripping himself off balance, and crashing onto the floor with another yelp as the hammer went flying from his grip.
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Blaze scooped up the mask and tried to catch the hammer before it caused any damage to the workshop.
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Eh, I mean one could consider a hammer with one end embedded to the handle in a wall to be even a form of art if they viewed the situation from a specific angle… of course either way it was still stuck in the wall, having been tossed in the opposite direction of Blaze due to The Collected’s twisted fall.
The mask itself felt oddly… light, and… not warm, but not the metallic cold one trained such as Blaze became accustomed to.
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Blaze looks it over curiously, trying to understand each detail he could. He even considered putting it on to test if it had any sort of abilities.
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Atlas, noticing what time it was decides to leave the city of the Mask Makers.
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Well if he was going to attempt such he’d have to do it soon. While The collected was still a fair bit out of it following his… fall, he’d rather startlingly quickly begun to ‘sober’ back up upon seeing the mask in Blaze’s hands.
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Blaze puts it on, knowing full well the risks of such an experiment. He tired to see if he could activate any powers, provided it had powers to begin with.
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It, uh, was, well… an experience.
For a moment it did activate, and when it did he could sense… everything. All of the plants around him, throughout the city, mayhaps even further.
The life force flowing through them, the whispers of… something, something indecipherable and ancient, yet instinctively recognized and known, if nog understood, flowing through the plants, the trees, the fungal webs below them.
He was the roots of the trees holding entire mountains together, the blades of grass spread across the island, below the ice and snow, within the soot filled cracks, hidden with the oasises lost within the sand, and further, the moss of caves both known and hidden, yet to be revealed and opened, if they ever would be.
He was the island, and the island was him.
It was amazing, breathtakingly beautiful, and an experience unimaginable. The only problem as he would’ve then noticed is that he didn’t know how to make it stop.
Then the pain began.
The sensation of the mask, the feelings it brought had changed, now it was… not hungry, not cruel, but… impassive, still as ‘loving’, if it could truly be called love from this alien entity, as before, but now also… needing, wanting, wanting him, his body, form, and mind. To make him ever further a part of it.
And that was but the mental-inner subconscious portion of the change. The physical aspect was here the pain truly came into play.
It was as if something was attempting to tunnel into him, through his eyes, ears, nose, pores, and anywhere else that was, and could become open, and with it came more of the want, the whispers he knew were at some level a part of him, yet that he wasn’t supposed to understand as he did now.
They were whispering to him promises, so many promises, that they would love him forever, that he would forever be able to bask in their sensation, that he would never have to worry again, do nothing but be a part of them, and telling him of how much they loved him, how happy they were that he’d be a part of them, that he could be a part of them.
He was just as suddebly torn from the sensations and their whispers. Finding himself forcibly yanked into a sitting position as The Collected, now recovered, ripped the mask from his face.
The thing niw monstrous, its interior overgrown with sharp tipped vines and tendrils, each dripping with blood, its eyes sealed and grown into a pair of writing, inward pointed spikes, its exterior twisted, ‘wood’ rotting and withered, it’s leaves decayed, drooping, and dripping with rotted slime, and screaming to an intensity and unnatural sound matching that of The Collected’s own as he struggled with the writhing thing. Keeping it from latching to himself as he continued to scream an endless writhting mess of incomprehensible noise, and repetion of, EvilEvilEvilEvilEvilEVILEvilEVILEVILEVIL!"
Throwing in a final scream of, “KILL IT!” that was barely heard over the things writhing, impossible, eldritch screamings of pain as he threw it into the still blazing forge, and held it in with his own hands as it struggled to escape.
Not releasing it until the final tendrils slowed their struggles, collapsed, and turned to charcoal beneath his palms, and tore his hands out of the flames, each blazing white with heat, and sizzling with a strong smell of charred meat, yet somehow intact up to the runes themselves, and practically drowned them in the bucket of cooling water with a cloud of steam, and near whistling hiss of hot air.
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Tempting as that offer was, he did not find the pain very welcoming and tried to fight off this power, resisting it with all the strength he could muster.
Blaze was in shock as he laid on the ground, still experiencing the pain he had felt from that mask and trying to fight its influence. Guess the old saying of “curiosity killed the Rahi” isn’t just a metaphor.
He remained on the floor, twitching and groaning as the pain continued in his mind, slowly fading with time.
A mask of either Healing or Regeneration would help him recover faster.
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The Collected didn’t seem like he’d be any help, quite literally collapsed over the top of the bucket, the water still bubbling, steaming, and hissing, albiet much less, as he rambled both incoherently, and animalistically in a quite quieted down tone.
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Blaze, feeling the pain fading away, tries to find anything that could stop it quicker and heal his injuries.
He also made a mental reminder to never try experimenting with masks Collected makes without immediate help on standby if he made that mistake again.
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“Agree in what sense?” Vladin asked, confused.
Then the Collected episode happened.
Vladin ran to the scene, but he was too late.
“What happened?” he asked Blaze.
@BlackBeltGamer98
“I can wash them myself.”
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Considering this is the City of Mask Makers, there were plenty of houses nearby. Some were new compared to the others, though one house stood up like a sore thumb. It was the newest house and on it was a name plate reading Kokinos.
@Toa_Vladin
“Yes, we do have guckos.”
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Dakron wrote below it, “The way you speak to us… you think we are silly, careless adventurers.”
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