Chapter 6: The House of Morningfall
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Morning-fall manor.
A door appears on the plains of soft black grass and whistling trees; the mask steps out with his son, Theodore, who has recently fully recovered from his battle against the nightlight master, whose trigger ability granted it complete control over bones and their various properties.
Theodore turns to his father and looks at him with a confused expression about what this place is, then asks in a quiet tone of voice:
"Father… what is this place? I sense traces of your hollow energy, scattered all about the area." Although it's very faint, its presence is still evident. The two continued walking through the grass, eventually making their way up to a set of steps.
The manor was massive, towering high above the onyx-colored trees that brushed quietly around it. Theodore and the mask walked up to the front door of the house, Morningfall, and slowly pushed the large doors open, leading them in.
When they entered, a mixture of hollow energy wafted past their noses, filling them up with the stench of burnt candles and bloody wood that permeated the halls.
Theodore looked around the manor and noticed old oil paintings of his father's family, and that one of the main family portraits still showed one of the masks alongside his mother, Marie, older sister Lilith, and younger brother Lucien.
Yet what perplexed Theodore the most about the painting was two main things: one, his father's face was the least visible and most obscured despite him standing in the middle of the painting & two, the father of these three children was nowhere to be found at all, and he quickly noticed the same thing for all the other paintings and memorabilia that still lingered today.
Theodore turned to his father with curiosity, hoping he could answer a question or two, but saw his father's comedy mask as indifferent as ever. Then the mask twisted upward ever so slightly, and he walked up to the painting, placing his hand on the face of his younger self with a look of sadness and deep sorrow.
He turned his body to the side, looking at Theodore with his hand still laid gently on the painting, and spoke in a calm, even tone of voice to him:
"The truth is, my son, I know nothing of a father. I noticed your curiosity about why the paintings looked the way they did and can't explain it myself. My mother raised us without one, and my older sister never bothered to explain to me why that was the case, except that if one thing was certain, it was that if he was around, he either didn't care for our existence or died alone."
Theodore's expression shifted to a slight frown as he thought to himself about what to say next.
" I mean… don't you think that's kinda sad? To die alone at least and not know whether the family you had even knew that you existed in the first place."
The mask stood there for a brief moment, lost in thought at his son's question, then continued speaking to him:
" …I think that the existence of someone like you would be deemed sad from the viewpoint of the mundane, but in our world of assassins I'd say he got off lucky if he truly was around at all, and besides most people from our family line were either killed in a deadly battle, or eventually reached an age where they began imparting their knowledge & experiences onto the next morningfall head to follow in their footsteps."
The mask lifted his hand from the painting and walked back toward Theodore. He outstretched his hand, gesturing for him to follow upstairs:
"Upstairs are more pieces of knowledge for me to show you, and primarily about what the morning fall name meant to me at a time, during my childhood, although I want to trust that you'll be open-minded. And honest about what you are feeling from the things I will be telling you & trust you can ask me any questions about my family's long history that you feel need to be said."
Theodore nods, following his father upstairs
to the bedroom area of Morningfall Manor.
As he looks around, he sees some rooms locked off and others completely collapsed from age.
"So, Father, what was it like being trained by Grandma anyway? I know you only told me a few things here and there, but was life as an assassin as hard as you've been training me up until this point?"
Mask thought on the question, then answered bluntly to his son:
"The truth is… my mother was quite hard on all of us, especially me, as she saw me as the next head of Morningfall House, and because of that, the training was never easy. Even when we had breaks, I was constantly battling for survival against unknown threats of all calibers and potential dangers, or I was being taught arduous history lessons on our family lineage and that of the other noble houses, or of various races that existed throughout our universe at large."
The two continued their walk down the many rooms until they made way into a much larger room on the north side of the house, where the mask was trained extensively on the use of compulsion words and silent steps; Theodore saw that certain training dummies were placed at specific distances to see the limit of how far the compulsion words' effective range would be.
Some had holes through their chests around where their heart would be resting, and others within their heads. Theodore guessed it would test how quickly one could achieve a kill while still in silent step before it deactivated.
Mask sighed slightly and walked inside the room, seeing all the battle damage that remained.
"These used to be active fighter dummies similar to the ones I employ for you in training. Although your grandmother raised them to much higher threat levels than the ones I've given you, as the ones she employed were always aiming to kill me no matter the circumstances as a means of elite combat
How about I see if I can raise one or two of them back and test the experience you've gained from fighting the nightlight master?"
Theodore looks around at the destroyed dummies, then steps back and snaps his fingers as white flames ignite, bursting along his body, forming Roko's skeletal hand with his right arm.
"Test me, Father, and I'll show you what I've gained."
The mask smiles softly, then places his hand on the ground as his hollow energy spreads through the damaged dummies, repairing them and quickly fusing them together into a single deadly entity with six powerful arms and a three-faced head, red eyes burning with a deep aura of rage locked onto Theodore.