A figure stirred and woke up in a room already cleared of the mystical swirling smoke that had permeated the area moments before. Rubbing its forehead with one gray-skinned, oversized hand, the groggy form found itself wondering where it was. It could sense the corpses laying about it, the bleeding and magically twisted remains motionless, draped hideously over stark tables and spartan furniture. Its own hand fell across its face, and jerked back in horror. A few moments later, both hands were scrabbling wildly at the pale gray, featureless expanse of what might have been a face, its shoulders shaking in silent sobs. The tiny chamber was completely silent, the bubbling of pots long since fallen still.
The few moments of mute mourning passed, the slumped shape felt around itself for something, anything to tell it why. Why it was subject to the torments of not remembering who it was, or had been. Why it was here. One hand fell on a shaped piece of wood, covered with an overlay of leather or skin. After a few moments of sightless examination, it came to the conclusion that what it held in its hands was a mask. On a happenstance, one thick fingered hand brushed against the runes carved carefully into the back of the mask.
In its mind's eye, the creature saw a young woman, thin and delicate, with curly golden hair shining in a pale light, and hazel eyes staring blankly out with a distinct loneliness and shyness. The girl smiled sadly, and whispered her name: "Mavis."
The creature pulled its hand quickly away from the runes, the glow it could not see fading into the surrounding darkness of the room, and quested in the area around itself for other items of interest.
It found another mask. Sitting up fully, it placed the first mask in its lap, and examined the second. Again, it was a woman in its mind's eye, dressed in a colorful entertainer's suit of red and yellow diamonds, with black hair pulled back into a loose 'tail, and deep blue-green eyes sparkling with a joyous laughter. A quick chuckle, and the woman introduced herself as "Julianna."
The figure searched for other useful items, finding a large sack that had once been full of herbs. It could still smell the minty fragrance from inside. Carefully placing all the masks she found into the sack, it also discovered a sharp scalpel laying around, which it palmed. Finding the door, it opened it carefully and "peered" out.
The hallway was clear, but the creature was uncertain as to where the exit was. It crept from the room anyway, feeling on the wall with its right hand, holding the thin, flimsy gown together with its left. After taking several turns and a stairwell down, it heard voices from the next hallway. Hiding as well as possible in an alcove, the creature sensed two people passing it, taking no heed.
"John, do you know what those crackpots are doing up in the lab?" asked the younger male.
"Shut up kid. Even if I knew what those finger-wagglers were concocting, I wouldn't tell you," sneered the older, deeper voice. "Besides, those magic types can't be up to anything good. Never are. Did I ever tell you the story about my father getting hexed by an old witch in the swamp?" queried the man, now loitering in front of the alcove, back to the huddled, shaking form that had taken refuge there.
Before the younger man had a chance to respond to the inquiry, the creature took the razor edged scalpel and shoved it forcefully down the front of the younger man's neck, twisted it, and ripped it back out. The boy turned, staring at the creature's smooth facelessness, and died gurgling and choking on his own blood. Before the first was wholly prostrate, the creature had snapped the neck of the older man. Sensing their deaths, the creature didn't feel anything. No sorrow, nor regret. No joy, nor unholy reveling in the pain and fear before the last spark of life fled from their unfortunate carcasses. Stepping over the still forms, the faceless being continued down the corridor.
More voices, and sounds of cackling and disturbing laughter wafted on the air farther down the hall. Reaching out with its senses, the creature discovered several people, each separated from the rest, in individual rooms. Keeping close to one wall, the shadowed form crept down the hall.
Passing in front of one door, it heard a woman crying and whimpering, whispering, "Don't... no.... Go away... don't hurt me... don't let them hurt me!" Her voice rose into a shrieking crescendo and fell into hysterical laughter that chilled the creature, as emotionless as it was. Could all these people be like that? The creature, vaguely disturbed, began to walk quickly, run, then sprint down the hallway. There were too many twists and turns for the creature to remember, and suddenly it was outside, basking in the wan glow of a crescent moon and the multitude of stars.
She, for the creature had soon begun to think of itself as female, sat in her small hidey-hole, reflecting on her situation. She was alone, amnestiatic, and she killed. Well, she wasn't regretting the last part. Either she killed, or she was killed. She took a pair of masks from the bag on the ground and examined them carefully.
Running her oversized hands across the deeply carved runes on the back of one, she fairly imagined a strong, muscular woman with hazel eyes that stared straight through her, and dark brown hair too short to be proper, almost like a boy's. She wore a fine set of matte silver and green steel chain mail with a dark grey cloak, and the most prominent feature of the outfit was the plain, leather-wrapped hilt of a sheathed longsword that dangled at her hip. One of the woman's slim fingered hands rested easily on the pommel, bespeaking years of experience with the weapon. Her eyes, showing sparks like steel-struck flint, rose as if to meet the eyes of the creature that stared at her in its mind's eye. Speaking with a voice with a knife-like edge, she said only one word: "Delwyn."
The creature paused, unsure of what to do with herself. The other mask contained Mavis, the sorry creature she was. Names. Names were important, or so it seemed. The nights she had sneaked around, trying to find a place to sleep, she had discovered that everyone had a name, but she could not speak the names of others. She did not even have a name of her own. Undefined, listless, and alone. She would give herself a name.
She thought silently, listening to the sounds of the night outside her makeshift den. A guard dog barked, warning a trespasser away from its home. A loon laughed, and soon after she could hear the flap of its wings as the bird flied off to richer hunting grounds. A number of crickets chirped their songs, and the frogs in a nearby swamp croaked to anyone who would listen.
She didn't know why she had the masks, but she felt they were somehow important to who she was, and what she could become. Her thick fingers played around the edge of Delwyn's mask. On a whim, she decided to put it on. Any face is better than none, and that is what she had. Nothing.
When she put the thin shaped wood up to what could have been her face, she felt a tingling sensation radiate from her head and travel down to her feet. She blinked and looked at one of her hands. Blinked? She had eyes! She could see! She put her hands up to her face, and wonderingly traced the outline of her mouth, ears, and eyes. It was a whole new her. She was Delwyn!
"No. I'm not Delwyn. Its like I'm wearing Delwyn's skin. But I'm not her," she spoke quietly. The voice sounded like Delwyn's, and her hand rested on the hilt of the longsword sheathed at her side with the same familiarity as Delwyn. She wore the same clothes, and it was in that moment of examining her new trappings she discovered the daggers, a thin, keen strip of steel in each tall boot.
It would be so easy to forget herself in Delwyn. Act like Delwyn. Be Delwyn. Delwyn herself was still in the mask, waiting to be allowed to run free. But she, the creature, who couldn't remember anything, should be in control. It was her body, after all.
But then, was it, really? From all appearances, it was Delwyn's as much as it was hers. But who was she, really? Would she always be wearing these masks of hers? Her masks... Where they really hers? Yes, she decided, they were. And so, she decided to take her name from her first and only possession.
She was Masque now. Not Delwyn, not Mavis, not Julianna, not anyone else. She was herself, and always would be.