He was crying—but not from emotion, not from fear or pain or sadness. Water was simply flowing from his eyes, pouring down his face in rivers, soaking his collar, streaming down his chest.
"What's happening to me?" His voice rose to a scream. "Why can't I stop? Why—"
He pressed his hands to his face, trying to staunch the flow, but water poured between his fingers. It ran down his arms, soaked his sleeves, dripped from his elbows. The more he tried to stop it, the faster it flowed.
Captain Kael's face was wet now too. Water streamed from his eyes—not tears, just water, endless water. It ran into his beard, dripped from his chin, soaked the front of his uniform. He raised one hand to touch his face, and water flowed from his palm too, from his fingers, from every pore.
"The mask," he said, his voice steady despite the water pouring down his face. "It's the mask. It's pulling—"
"My mouth!" Petran's words came out gargled, distorted. He coughed, and water spilled from his lips—not vomited water, not swallowed water being expelled, but water flowing out of him, streaming from his mouth like a faucet. "It's taking the water from inside me! It's—"
His eyes widened in horror as understanding struck.
The human body was mostly water. Blood was water. Cells were water. Flesh was water held together by other substances. And the mask was pulling that water out.
Petran's hands were streaming now—water pouring from his palms, from his fingertips, from every square inch of skin. His face was a mask of water, features barely visible behind the flood flowing from his eyes, his nose, his mouth, his ears.
"Captain!" His voice was weak, gargled. "Help! It's taking—it's taking everything!"
Mardek fell to his knees, water gushing from his body in torrents. His thick arms, his barrel chest, his legs—all of them streaming, pouring, emptying. The water that emerged from him was tinged pink—blood water, cell water, the moisture that had kept him alive.
"I can feel it," he gasped. "I can feel myself... drying. Everything inside me... it's being pulled out. All the water, all of it—"
His skin began to change. The healthy brown color faded to gray, to ashen, as the moisture was drawn from his flesh. His cheeks hollowed. His eyes sank into his skull. His hands—those thick, strong hands that had held Eliot down for execution—began to look desiccated, mummified, the skin tightening over bones as the water fled.
The nervous-eyed militiaman's screams turned to croaking gasps as his throat dried out. Water poured from every orifice—eyes, nose, mouth, ears—streaming down his collapsing body. His uniform was completely saturated, heavy with water, but the flesh beneath was shriveling, shrinking, turning to leather and bone.
"Stop!" He reached toward the mask, toward Eliot, fingers clawing. "Make it stop! Please, I don't want to—"
His hand was nothing but skin and bone now, the muscles dried to strings, the fat vanished. The fingers looked like a skeleton's fingers wrapped in thin parchment. Water still poured from them, the last moisture in his tissues being extracted, pulled toward the mask by invisible force.
Petran collapsed, his body hitting the wet floor with a sound like dropping a sack of sticks. Water continued to flow from him—from his skin, from his mouth, from every part of him—even as his body withered. His face became a skull covered in tight gray skin. His eyes sank deeper, then deeper still, the moisture in the eyeballs themselves being pulled out, leaving them collapsed and dry in their sockets.
His fingers twitched, scrabbled weakly against the stone. His mouth opened and closed, trying to form words, but his tongue was leather, his throat was dust, and all that came out was a thin wheeze.
Then even that stopped. His body lay still, completely desiccated, a mummy made in minutes rather than centuries. Water continued to seep from the corpse—the last moisture in the bones, in the dried tissues, being extracted and pulled toward the mask.
Mardek was on his side, curled into a fetal position, his body contracting as it dried. His thick muscles, built over years of labor and violence, were gone—just cords of dried tissue stretched over bone. His branded face was unrecognizable, the scar tissue pulled so tight it split open, but no blood came out. There was no blood left. Only more water, seeping from the crack, flowing toward the mask.
His chest rose and fell, rose and fell, each breath weaker than the last. His body was still trying to live, still trying to function, even as it was hollowed out from within. His heart was probably still beating—a dried muscle squeezing in a dried chest, pushing no blood because there was no blood, only the memory of circulation.
Then his chest stopped moving. The dried husk that had been Watchman Mardek lay motionless, every drop of water extracted, every bit of moisture pulled away by the mask's inexorable hunger.
Only Captain Kael remained on his feet.
Water poured from him in sheets—from his hands, his face, his body. His uniform was drenched, heavy, sagging with moisture. Beneath it, his flesh was beginning to shrivel, to tighten over his bones.
But he didn't scream. Didn't beg. Didn't try to run.
He simply stood, watching Eliot, watching the mask, as his body dried from the inside out.
"Twenty-three years," he said, his voice rough but steady. Water flowed from his mouth as he spoke, running down his chin, but he kept talking. "Twenty-three years I served Her. Twenty-three years I sent others to this fate. And I knew. I always knew this was how it would end."
His hands were withering now, the skin pulling tight over the bones, the fingers curling involuntarily as the tendons dried and contracted. Water streamed from them still, pink-tinged water, blood water, the last moisture in his body being drawn out.
"The covenant must be maintained," he continued, his words becoming slurred as his tongue dried. "The water must flow. The settlements must survive. That is the law. That is the price."
His face was collapsing—cheeks hollowing, eyes sinking, nose becoming prominent as the flesh around it vanished. But he kept his gaze fixed on Eliot, those calculating eyes witnessing their own destruction with terrible composure.
"Serve Her well, boy." His voice was barely a whisper now, his throat too dry to produce proper sound. "Serve Her better than I did. And when your time comes—when another touches the mask—die with dignity."
His legs gave out. He sank to his knees, his body no longer strong enough to support even its own drying weight. Water continued to pour from him, pooling around his kneeling form, but the flesh was leather now, the muscles were gone, the fat was vanished.
He swayed, nearly fell, caught himself with one skeletal hand against the floor. The hand left a print in the water—a skeleton's handprint, barely any flesh left to mark the stone.
"She is real," he whispered one last time, his dried lips barely moving. "Remember that. She is real, and She is hungry, and She will never stop."
His body collapsed fully, folding in on itself like discarded clothing. The water continued to seep from his corpse—from the dried tissues, from the bones themselves, from every part that had once held moisture.