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    The Mask
    The Mask
    The Mask
    Ebook79 pages1 hour

    The Mask

    By Terrance Blackthorn

    ()

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    About this ebook

    The war was over. Two very different species who have never known peace now have to learn to coexist. It will not be easy, especially since they were once predator and prey.

     

    In the midst of this pivotal time, a small-time actress performs as an unflattering and monstrous caricature of her species' former predators. It was not an usual performance, one she had specialized in, but this night, the old enemy will be watching her. Now, she will have to confront her own fears and prejudices as she struggles to put on the performance of her life...if not her last.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherTerrance Blackthorn
    Release dateOct 12, 2024
    ISBN9798227998552
    The Mask
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      Book preview

      The Mask - Terrance Blackthorn

      The Mask

      a novella

      Terrance Blackthorn

      Copyright © 2024 Terrance Blackthorn

      All rights reserved

      The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.

      No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.

      ISBN: 9798342492270

      Cover design: Terrance Blackthorn

      Cover artist: Terrance Blackthorn

      Printed in the United States of America

      Content Warning

      This is a story about war, or rather that part of war when it is all over but the crying. As such, this work will contain depictions and mentions of violence; death; atrocities; blood and gore; suicide; racial hatred; generational trauma; physical, emotional, and spiritual abuse; and worst of all, at least to certain unmentioned personalities, the idea that all the mentioned above are intolerable tragedies.

      Foreword

      The planet where this story takes place, Jerez-Luklini, is slightly larger than Earth with a similar rotational period and is in orbit around a red dwarf star, with an orbital period of roughly 20 earth-days. The concept of years and months are effectively meaningless to the native species of this world, since one of their planet's orbits is less than one of our months, and their calendar consists of cycles of alternating 10-day weeks, a light week and a dark week, with the occasional leap day to keep the calendar in sync. Set in the beginning of what cosmologists call the Degenerate Era, when stellar formation has ceased, all that will be left are fading stellar fragments, and also cosmic inflation has carried these remaining objects outside of effective detection of each other, these species have no knowledge of their universe outside of their immediate solar system, consisting of their planet, their sun, a couple outer gas giants, and not as of yet understood ancient megastructure serving as the planet's artificial satellite. While none of these features have any great bearing on the story, they have been included here to clear up any confusion a reader may have.

      The Mask

      Did you hear? There will be demons in the audience tonight.

      The stagehand’s statement froze Ellura’s blood. It was the carelessness of the sentence that was the most upsetting. The airy malaise that had been in Ellura’s mind for about fifty of the planet’s semi-weekly solar cycles struck a wall of reality. It had been that long since the Eternal Crusade became not so eternal, when the demons had come down from their high cold mountains into the great shining capital city of Olunera under truce with claims of a terrible new weapon they had created, one that could burn cities and poison the land, and a plea for peace so that it would never be used. The Great Synod of the Church of the Burning Sun, with great contemplation, conversation, and consternation, had listened. The demons had returned to their distant home, leaving the Illitani people to ruminate on what peace after a war as old as history itself meant. The new reality had not settled into Ellura’s mind even a dozen weeks ago, when the demons returned to the city with a request to leave a contingent of their own to reside there, close to the Illitani seat of power, so the two species could communicate more easily. The Great Synod, with great contemplation, conversation, and consternation, had accepted.

      No one knew what to make of it. The two species had been at each other’s throats, quite literally the demon at the Illitani’s, for as long as they knew the other existed. However, in places like Olunera, deep in the plains and far away from the dreadful crags where the demons lived, they were just a story, something to scare chicks into staying indoors during the night and something the Synod would sometimes raise a new army to go into the foothills and fight. Crusaders would sometimes come back with tales of what they had seen of the demons and their strange magics. Ellura had been part of the generation that saw the invention of photography and so had seen pictures of the creatures, and had even seen the mangled body of one once. Yet, the demons had existed in Ellura’s mind only as a theoretical dread, like one imagines contracting a rare disease. It was true even after the Black Night, when the demons had struck at the Illitani’s heart with a daring raid on the Inquisition of the Church of the Burning Sun’s headquarters in the city. Ellura had seen the demon’s corpse  when she and many others had gathered to witness the ruination, crumpled unnaturally in the courtyard of what had been the Inquisition's base of operations. Its strange uncanny body, as well as the shiny fluid seeping from it, has apparently been black in the yellow light cast by the towering flames. All the demons in the assault had been killed, but they had succeeded in their mission, destroying the Inquisition’s headquarters, burning their archives, killing many inquisitors and their staff, and had broken the Inquisition’s power before the regular army had organized and crushed the raiders. What was left of the Inquisition had wailed and doomsaid about the end times and accused the regular army of conspiring with the demons against the righteous, but many Illitani, while distressed that the demons could reach so far, privately felt that no one better deserved to take the blow. Yet, even the dead demon had not impressed its reality on her mind any more than the photos did, for they both had no life in them, but now they were going to be here, alive, knowing, and watching her.

      Did you hear me, Ellura? The stage hand, Ikriak, challenged in his thin, creaking, avian voice. He was tall, and rather emaciated for an Illitani. He wore a religious medallion around his neck ostentatiously, as he usually did, but the medallion made his wiry frame appear even thinner. His yellow feathers were graying as he was getting up in age, and one of his meaty legs had its thick conical toes perpetually pointed to the side, a deformity he had since his hatching and which forced him to drag the useless limb behind him as he walked. His broken body wasn’t good for much physical labor, and so he was more of a custodian than he was of a stagehand, but his presence was sufficient for the owner of the theater’s purposes, that being boasting at the temple of his magnanimous charity. Since Ikriak was seldom burdened with more responsible tasks, such as handling objects that could be dropped and broken, he typically amused

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