𝔽𝔸ℂ𝔼𝕄𝔼𝕃𝕋𝔼ℝ

The ceremony begins. We sit, nine of us in a circle. In the center it awaits. It is passed from one to another, where it begins and where it ends is inconsequential.

A drink from the cup, the bowl, the urn. The taste is bitter and unkind on its way down the throat, it burns and struggles to escape, our bodies insisting that this is something that should never be consumed. And yet we do, for we know no other way. This is the choice that we have made, and we will see it through.

I glance at the faces around me. They display an array of emotion; some are afraid, some are somber, some are even joyous. There will come a time soon when none of this will matter, when each of us will no longer recall just who we are or where we come from, and we will embrace this. For we have performed this ritual many times before, and we will do it many times more. This is what we have chosen, and it is why we have gathered.

My eyelids flutter, a searing heat starts at the top of my skull. At the same moment the colors around me intensify, the shapes of our shadows flickering in the candle light appear as intricate patterns on the walls. My breathing changes, my lungs fill more completely than they have since birth. I feel the ground beneath me pulsing to the ancient heartbeat of the earth. The hands I hold in my hands become my own, perhaps they always were. We are one, we are the same. There is nothing between us.

I feel the first drip escape from my cheek. It falls and splashes in the basin below, where it is followed by many more. Red and brown and pale and dark, more and more of these colorful droplets begin accumulating at our feet.

The skin is melting from my face like candle wax, falling and melding with the faces of the others, who are now just as much I as I am them. The screaming, the madness, the agony. It will all be over soon, it will all be worth this sacrifice in the end.

We stare across at one another, faceless, as the very last drop is collected.

The vile substance bubbles and froths, steaming before us. We wait patiently for the first face to take its form. The first of us lays on the ground to receive their new face, and it is placed over the skull. They look at us from behind their new disguise and smile with their new lips. The next face appears, and the cycle continues, until we have all received our new identities. Finally, the ritual ends.

We leave in silence, going our separate ways for now. We will disperse across the earth, we will spread our malign influence- with our plagues, our famine, our pain, our fear, our lies…

For our faces may change, but evil never will.