The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. At other times, it must be carved with runes of enhancement.

  ~Thomas Jefferson

  As soon as Eirene entered the safe house, Sarah gave her a big hug. It had really worked!

  She was so thrilled to see Eirene safe, so relieved that she was free. Riding the high of the moment, she wrapped her arms around Tomas’s neck and gave him a big kiss. He actually kissed her back. The day was definitely looking up.

  “You really did it,” she gushed.

  He smiled. “Piece of cake.”

  She turned to ask Eirene a question, but the words died on her lips. Gregorios and Eirene stood close together, not speaking, but joy glowing in their eyes.

  He held her face cupped in one hand and she closed her eyes. They just stood like that for a moment, radiating love without having to move.

  After a long moment, Gregorios removed his hand and she cupped his face in like manner while he closed his eyes and leaned a little into the singular embrace. Only after she dropped her hand did they finally kiss each other.

  Sarah squeezed Tomas’s hand. She felt privileged to witness the tender moment.

  Then she realized they’d been holding each other’s faces exactly the way they would had they planned to call upon their powers and remove each other’s soulmasks.

  Tomas took her arm and pulled her into the kitchen.

  “That gesture . . .“ she began.

  “We probably should’ve left. That was a private moment.”

  “It was more than just a caress, wasn’t it?”

  “You’re a quick study. It’s a sign of complete trust and devotion, a surrender to another facetaker. It’s how they renew their bond.”

  So romantic, she thought. She gave him a sly look. “So what do you non-facetaker enforcers do to renew your bonds?”

  He grinned. “First, we go out tonight to see some of the sights.”

  Sarah kissed him again. “I agree. Let’s celebrate!”

  There was so much to see. She was just getting really excited about all the possibilities when Gregorios and Eirene entered the room, holding hands.

  “How’s the perimeter?” Eirene asked.

  “Stable,” Tomas said. “But given our proximity to the headquarters, there’s risk. I’ve taken precautions.”

  Eirene seemed satisfied with the vague answer and motioned them all to sit around a high wooden table. She explained some of the bizarre experience in the council chamber, and Sarah agreed that the modified machine Mai Luan was using sounded a lot like the ones used at Alterego.

  “What did you mean that someone was driving your memories?” Tomas asked.

  “Like she was controlling what I saw.”

  That was freaky, and nothing like what the machines were used for at Alterego. Then again, Sarah and the others who submitted to the machines without knowing what was really going on were always drugged prior to the transfers. Had Mai Luan and her assistants sifted through Sarah’s memories while she slept?

  She didn’t think so, but the idea disturbed her at a fundamental level. Just thinking of such a violation of a person’s inner self left her feeling dirty.

  “Mai Luan was in your memories?” Gregorios asked.

  Eirene nodded. “It felt like she was looking for something.”

  “For what?”

  She shrugged. “Nothing I saw in the ones she focused on would be useful to her.”

  “You said that she told the council you were the trial run,” Tomas said, his brow furrowed as he considered the puzzle. “But she concealed from them the truth of what she was doing in your mind.”

  Gregorios said, “In that case, it sounds like she plans to search their memories too.”

  “I think she plans more than that.”

  Eirene explained about the runes in the helmet and showed the photos to Gregorios, who frowned over them. “I’ve never seen runes like these either.”

  “According to Mai Luan, no one’s seen them for millenia.”

  “What does that mean?” Sarah asked.

  Tomas had said the occultists used runes to steal life force from victimized souls, but that didn’t sound like what was going on with the machines.

  “Either she has access to secrets hidden from most of the world, or those runes were only recently rediscovered,” Tomas said.

  Sarah was getting lost. “But what do they do?”

  “Runes are symbols of power,” Eirene said.

  Sarah took Tomas’s hand. “This is different than the runes we talked about after the hotel in New Orleans, isn’t it?”

  “Yes. Runes can be used in different ways by hekha with higher level rounon gifts.”

  “Or cui dashi,” Gregorios added.

  “Right,” Tomas agreed. “Some hekha can bond runes to sacrificed souls but not need to remain in contact with them to fuel their enhancements or other types of spells. Those hekha have C-rank Spirits, and are known as Channelers.”

  Eirene said, “The runes were on the machine, the helmets, and also on the harness connecting the soulmask with us. They drained its life force to help power the machine. Coupled with Tereza’s nevron, it provided Mai Luan access to my mind and control over my memories.”

  Even with everything Sarah had already seen, she struggled to accept everything she was hearing. “It sounds like make believe.”

  “Make believe often starts as truth,” Gregorios said. “Lots of fables start that way. For example, where do you think the child’s game ‘got your nose’ really came from?”

  That was more than a little disturbing.

  “Don’t get him started,” Eirene said, rolling her eyes. “He loves discussing how legends date back to actual events.”

  Support creative writers by reading their stories on Royal Road, not stolen versions.

  “So how do you know what the runes do?” she asked. “I mean, for sure?”

  She yearned to ask about what they thought of the path that had taken over her life, but there was already so much uncertainty. It didn’t feel like the right time.

  “That’s the question,” Gregorios said. “Each rune has a specific purpose, or sometimes more than one. There are many runes, but quite a few have been lost over the centuries.”

  He explained that in ancient history there were powerful runes lost during times of upheaval of great empires dating back to Rome, Greece, and all the way to biblical times in ancient Egypt.

  “Those were some strange times,” Eirene muttered.

  Sarah stared. How old were they, really? She didn’t quite dare to ask.

  “Perhaps that’s what she’s looking for,” Tomas suggested. “Other runes.”

  “Perhaps,” Gregorios agreed slowly. “But if she already has access to lost runes, does she need more, or is she looking to mine secrets from the council members’ minds?”

  “Why are they allowing it?” Eirene asked. “They’re looking old, but they can’t be senile yet.”

  “That bothers me as much as anything,” Gregorios said. “I’ve only ever known facetakers to actually grow old when they’re hoarding lives.”

  “The machines help prevent mental dissipation,” Eirene said. “Sarah, you’re living proof of that.”

  She nodded. Tomas had explained how multiple transfers could destroy a soul.

  The machines had helped block most of the weird memories from the bodies she’d inhabited, although she’d made enough transfers by the end that some shadows of memories were starting to slip through.

  “No mortal can handle very many transfers,” Gregorios said. “Guaranteed. But the dangers are more extensive than simple mental dissipation. That’s the gradual loss of identity as the different hosts begin breaking down your mental stability. The resulting holes get filled with bits of lingering residue from the hosts’ previous owners. But even with your mind intact, you should’ve suffered severe soul fragmentation.”

  “Can you explain more about that?” Sarah asked.

  “Every time a soul bonds with a host, part of its essence is spent establishing the connection. Each transfer costs a little more life force, and more is left behind with each subsequent dispossession. Mortals with F-ranked Spirits lack the depth to manage more than a few. The machine must somehow shield the soul from that fragmentation.”

  That helped clarify a few things. Sarah shuddered to think what Mai Luan had helped do to her and the other donors. The cui dashi terrified her, but for the first time her fear was tempered with growing anger.

  “The problem is that the council are already clearly suffering sufficient levels of soul fragmentation to fear another transfer,” Gregorios continued. “I guess preventing it from getting worse is still a big win.”

  “Perhaps Mai Luan’s convinced them the machine can actually reverse the process,” Eirene suggested.

  Gregorios nodded. “That’s the first thing that makes sense. It’d be a miracle, a promise they couldn’t ignore. The only thing any of us really have to worry about is soul fragmentation and mental dissipation from living too many lives.”

  “So facetakers with A-ranked Spirits are just more resistant, or does the higher rank mean their spirits are deeper, so they don’t run out as easily?” Sarah asked.

  “It’s the power of or Spirit, which ties to our nevra core,” Eirene explained. “Our soul force is far stronger and we control it exponentially better than mortals. We can prevent loss of nevron during transfers because we recognize the danger and possess the tools to combat it.”

  “We can delay the inevitable,” Gregorios said. “But if the machine could reverse the degradation, facetakers could live forever.”

  It sounded like they already lived pretty long to Sarah.

  “You might have it,” Eirene said.

  “Let’s see if we can get any confirmation,” Gregorios said. He fetched the face coffin holding the imprisoned souls of Dalal and the other man he called Curly.

  “Now that we know better questions to ask, let’s see what we can learn.”

  He popped open the face coffin and peered inside. With an exclamation of surprise, he drew out the two soulmasks. They were closely locked together and he had to pull hard to pry them apart.

  Dalal’s soulmask glowed brighter than before, almost as bright as the LED-like lights that blazed in facetaker eyes when they called upon their strange powers. Curly’s soulmask looked small and gray, more dead than alive.

  Gregorios lifted Dalal’s soulmask high and his eyes glittered with power. The brilliant rainbow streamers of her soul gripped his lower arm, and for a moment Sarah worried the woman was going to hurt him.

  Dalal’s whisper-voice came stronger than in the past. “You will know pain.” The streamers of her soul power pulled their way up his arm.

  Gregorios’s eyes burned brighter, and whispers of purple fire rippled along his hand. He growled, “You’ve stolen much of his soul force, but you cannot defeat me while dispossessed.”

  Dalal shrieked in high-pitched frustration as the advance of her rainbow tentacles slowed, ending with a shower of brilliant green sparks that left them convulsing. The brilliance faded as the rainbow streamers retreated and Dalal’s living mask dulled to a normal shimmering translucence.

  Eirene fetched a hammer from a nearby cupboard and brandished it. “Shall I crack your defiance a little, my dear?”

  Dalal settled down.

  Sarah realized with a start that she no longer found it strange to see someone holding a dispossessed soulmask. She’d already slipped so far into their world, but felt like she understood so little. Dalal would have ripped off her face had she been the one to lift the woman’s soulmask from the coffin.

  What other unknown dangers had she not discovered yet? Would the next Path of Ancients tutorial help her understand more? Not that it mattered, since it wasn’t available to purchase yet.

  “What happened?” Sarah asked.

  Tomas slipped an arm around her waist and she leaned against his solid presence. “She tried to kill that poor wretch.”

  “Can she do that when she’s just a mask?”

  “It’s difficult, but possible given enough time,” Gregorios said.

  “Good thing we checked in on them when we did,” Eirene added.

  She gently took up the ghostly face of Curly and stroked it with a softly-glowing finger. Under her touch, the face began to glow and become more opaque, and the sickly mist coiled under it grew longer and shifted into subdued rainbow hues. “He’s deeply wounded.”

  Gregorios gave Dalal’s soulmask a shake. “If you want any hope of ever possessing a body again, tell me why.”

  Her helium-high whisper-laugh sounded like fingernails dragging on a chalkboard. “If I’d kill to keep a secret, do you think I’d willingly divulge it?”

  “Eventually,” he said in a cold, hard voice.

  Eirene cut in. “But since this fellow isn’t dead, perhaps he can shed some light on the mystery.”

  She regarded the soulmask for a moment, head cocked to one side. “Tomas, we’ll need a host for this fellow to help him recover.”

  “On it.” He strode from the room.

  Gregorios began questioning Dalal on what she might know of Mai Luan’s plans, but she refused to provide any useful information. Their conversation circled around several useless times without getting anywhere. Gregorios grew frustrated, but that only seemed to encourage Dalal to deny his requests.

  She tried to change the subject by congratulating him on recovering Eirene, but then taunted her. “Do try to stick around a little longer.”

  Tomas returned in less than half an hour with a dirty beggar fellow who was passed-out drunk.

  Eirene directed him to place the man on the floor.

  “You’re not planning what I think you are?” Sarah asked. Would they really just kill someone out of hand like that?

  “Only temporarily, my dear,” Eirene assured her.

  Tomas added, “He’s drunk enough that he’ll assume it was just a weird dream. He’ll never know the difference.”

  Sarah still didn’t like it. She had fought hard to retain her identity. It disturbed her to see them rip another person’s away with barely a thought.

  Tomas must have read her concern. “Plus, he’ll be thrilled to find a hundred dollar bill in his pocket when he wakes up.”

  That helped, but she still felt uneasy. “Just make sure you put him back.”

  “Why the sudden squeamishness?” Gregorios asked. “At Alterego you underwent more transfers than perhaps any of us have.”

  “I know, but I volunteered.”

  “We’ll be gentle,” Eirene assured her, then positioned herself over the sleeping man’s face while Tomas efficiently bound the man’s hands and feet.

  Sarah wanted to look away, but couldn’t. For most of her time at Alterego, she’d been fooled by the unique technology, never understanding that it alone could never accomplish the miracle of moving a soul from one body to another. She’d never really considered why her face swapped along with her consciousness.

  Now she knew the truth, had witnessed several transfers, including Gregorios’s self-induced transfer outside of New Orleans, but she still struggled to really believe it was real. The strange path that had taken over her life should have convinced her that she’d left normal way behind, but it was still such a leap to accept everything.

  She watched in sick fascination as Eirene wrapped glowing fingers around the jawline of the sleeping drunk. Her eyes burned like amethysts, and purple fire flickered along her hands as they sank into the skin of the jaw.

  Then she pulled. The face began lifting, starting at the jaw, with that wet, sucking sound that gave Sarah nightmares. It sounded like a boot coming free of thick mud, and she stuck fingers in her ears to block it. As the face lifted higher, flesh fell away to allow the shimmering soulmask to pull free of his body.

  Eirene lifted it high, but her expression reflected none of the ecstatic joy that Sarah had seen from both Mai Luan and her assistant when they removed souls. That helped a little.

  The skin of the abandoned skull flowed together and rippled like waters of a pond before settling into a smooth expanse, broken only by a tiny slit where the nose should be. The soulmask in Eirene’s hands flattened and shrank, the eyes compressed, and the rainbow smoke of his soul coiled just underneath.

  The entire process only took seconds. Sarah rubbed her arms and suppressed a shiver. She couldn’t allow herself to lose it over one face getting ripped off of its body. Hopefully Curly could tell them how to do the same to Mai Luan.