The Faceless man and Kai's bloodlust

The sound within the inn's hall tuned out when their eyes met.

Kai broke the eye contact immediately, but if what Item-M had told him about these Byagoona's priests was true, then it was too late, anyway. So, Kai did something which he had put on hold for a long time.

The Advance Emotions Manipulation not only allowed him to suck out the happiness from the surrounding beings, trading it for despair and depression, but it also allowed him to lock his emotions within him.

That's why when the Dementors had approached him before teleporting out of the Harry Potter world, they couldn't do anything to him. And that's why the emotion-sensitive Pokemon, Poliwhirl, had been apprehensive about him just after his arrival at the Pokemon World. The only reason for Kai to not keep his emotions always in a lock-down state was that he had figured out it somehow affected his Charisma. Now that he didn't need his Charisma for the foreseeable future, it was better to let his face become a statue rather than letting a Faceless man take advantage of his emotions.

Item-M noticed the change and imperceptibly looked around. It was a mistake. Before Kai could even warn her, she found the Faceless man looking at her too as if he had already predicted the old woman would try to look at him stealthily.

Item-M snapped her head back towards Kai, forgetting the part of an old hag she was supposed to play. Her fingers curled into a shaking fist, and blood ran down her knuckles, making them look white. She looked into Kai's eyes, asking for a command, and Kai saw her determination. At this moment, Item-M was ready to risk anything to kill this Contestant, he knew.

Kai wasn't some ex-priest before, and so he didn't share the monstrous river of inexplicable hate running between all the Temples. Nor was he a mindless killer. Every small or big kill needed him to have some benefit. Killing any random thing with no reason went against his principles. Principles that he required to follow unconditionally if he wanted to remain sane and not lose his rationality.

-/Sit tight,/- Kai told her, his voice sounding mechanic. -/Let's see how it goes. Worse comes to worst, I will kill him later to increase my Traitor Title Status, but only if he would give me a reason. Am I clear?/-

Item-M nodded with her eyes.

The Faceless man walked towards them, looking and behaving as normal as anyone. He was wearing a light brown shirt over black pants. And his gait presented him as a foreign but a frequent trader. It was a Braavosi face, Braavosi body language, and when the occasional words came out of his mouth, they were Braavosi too. Kai didn't understand the language, but Item-M had listed out a few things that were common to these Contestants.

Soon Kai found the middle-aged man standing by their side, a small, playful smile dancing across his face. Kai suddenly recalled how much he hated that smile. Though, as his emotions were locked, his face didn't reflect what he was thinking. He couldn't control his facial expressions like the faceless, he had learned, but using Advance Emotions Manipulations, he could mimic the effects.

Kai had taken pride in all this before the man let out his first words. "You have become ready sooner than a man had thought, Blood Demon," the Faceless said. "If it was someone else, you might have pulled one over on them by hiding your emotions. No response? Are you waiting to hear the code word, Sea-Dragon?"

Kai's mind rumbled. 'How does he know my Code Name?' He asked to himself. 'I remember all details from my Initiation mission and nowhere the System had mentioned Arlen's Code Name, I am sure. Then how? Unless…'

Kai's eyes suddenly flashed with uncontrolled bloodlust. Item-M was the first to face the brunt of it. She gasped, almost throwing herself off the chair like a chicken about to be slaughtered.

Then came the turn of the common people. Some shivered as if a gust of chilly wind had swept over them. Some vomited out the booze they were about to swallow. The worst were the dogs who were running here and there, trying to get some uncleaned piece of bone. All barked in Kai's direction, backing up, snarling under their throats.

This bloodlust was almost tangible.

The thing to mourn was that neither Item-M nor the Faceless man knew what all these reactions signified. Much less needed to be said about Kai, who was the least experienced among them.

-/Who sent you?/- Kai asked telepathically in a steel-like voice. -/One wrong answer and I will let you know what it truly feels like to be a faceless./-

The sun rises from the east. Water is colorless. Earth is not flat.

All were universal truths, and so was Kai's threat.

He meant it, as well as he had once meant to kill Brock Valeheart. He had already made the attempts of the High Priest of the Temple of Hastur to fail by turning Priestess Margrethe into Item-M. And Kai would never tolerate an existence that was trying to harm him. He didn't worry about the Telepathic exchange, either, for its effects could easily be replicated using a Skill or Item. Who would in their right mind relate this Telepathy to an Ability, when Abilities were among the rarest things to get in the Primordial Tower.

The Faceless man must have got the gist of things, even though his words lacked any fear. "Who sent me?," he said, looking at Item-M, and smiling knowingly. "No one. A man has been waiting for too long for you to ask for a team. So when a man saw the opportunity, he took it. Although our Temple is not blessed with as much wealth as our dear friends, it still has exquisite Items worthy enough to be sacrificed for a potential Priest."

'What's happening?' Kai thought. He was quite bewildered. When he saw this "Simon" a few moments before, he had thought the Faceless man became a team member by mere happenstance. Now things felt different and more complex than his conjectures. Simon's every word was placed meticulously in his sentences, it seemed to Kai. -/Sit,/- he told him icily. -/And don't make me ask every single question. You should pour out everything by yourself for your sake./-

"Let me wet my throat first, then," the Faceless man said, dragging a chair and sitting by their side. "Your bloodlust almost made a man piss his pants. You must know, though, that a man does not fear Death. All men must die, eventually."

Kai winced as the Faceless man smiled again. That hideous and loathing smile.

With one gesture of the man, a serving girl came and ran off after filling three large mugs with wine. Another serving girl appeared right after the first and placed three plates in front of them, giving each plate a rub with a soiled cloth. The first girl then returned with hard bread and three bowls of warm, spicy stew, steam dancing up from them like ghosts.

Kai felt the hunger, and a trickle of saliva went down his throat.

*******

AN: Wait for the next chapter to be published tomorrow in case of any doubt related to the Faceless man.