Dampness hit my face like a wet rag. Low ceiling, cracked plaster, a lamp smoking so heavily that the soot settled on my tongue as a bitter residue. The ropes on my wrists weren't just restraints—they were stabilizers.
I was sat on a stool. Opposite me was Orin. Pale, terrified, with that same birthmark near his temple. Between us stood a man. He had the dispassionate voice of an accountant and a knife he held as confidently as if he were carving a final draft rather than a life.
This damned torturer knew, or suspected. He felt that I was a Changeling. That my skin was pliable wax. But my mother’s voice rang in my head more clearly than Orin’s screams: "Hide it, son. Never, do you hear? No matter what happens—do not show them what you are. Or they will never let you go." And I hid it. Even as the steel entered my flesh.
"Your nature is chaos, Faurgar," the master whispered, the steel touching my cheek. "Why endure this knife? Give in. Change. One impulse of will and the pain vanishes. Become him, and I will remove the blade."
I remained silent, clenching my teeth until the enamel cracked. I wasn't "The Function" yet. I was a terrified child clinging to his mother’s command like the only anchor left in the world.
The torturer began his work. He didn't just cut—he "harmonized." A knife strike across my cheekbone—and an identical incision on Orin’s face. He methodically removed what distinguished us. The curve of the jaw, the shape of the eyebrows, the line of the chin.
"Come now," he muttered, leaning into my ear. He smelled of vinegar and stale meat. "See how he hurts? You can stop this. Just flow into his shape. Do it yourself, without my help. Save him."
It was the most terrible torture. My body, born to shift, instinctively yearned to heal the wounds, to "trace" Orin’s features to stop the bloody nightmare. My cells itched, demanding morphology. But I held them in check. I remained myself while the knife sliced away my identity, layer by layer.
Orin held on as long as he could. But he was a real, fragile human. He lacked my hidden nature, capable of absorbing trauma. The torturer’s knife "wrote off" the excess from him, but along with the excess, his life departed.
"Enough..." I gasped as bloody circles swam before my eyes. My face was a raw mess, but I still hadn't changed "on my own." "Please, enough..."
"No, Faurgar. We are almost finished with the blueprint," the master cradled Orin’s head like a favorite doll and drew the final line along his throat.
Orin’s blood struck my knees in pulses. He stopped clinging to the air. His eyes glazed over, reflecting the lamp and my mutilated but still "human" face. The master grimaced in dissatisfaction, wiping the knife on his leather apron.
"Stubborn pup. You never opened up. Well, this bloody sketch will suffice for the imprint."
At that moment, the door was kicked open. Blue Cloaks flooded the room, filling the cramped space with the clatter of steel and the scent of wet metal. The first man to enter froze.
In Alexander Trudius’s eyes, something turned cold forever. He looked at the corpse of his child lying in a pool of blood, and then—at me. At the living, breathing copy looking at him with the eyes of his dead son.
In that second, he understood everything. He saw that my flesh, mangled and mutilated, was still trying to maintain its true essence despite the master’s demand to "flow." He saw the Changeling in me. And more importantly, he saw a creature that preferred inhuman pain to voluntary surrender.
Alexander didn't just value my appearance. He valued my will. In a world where everything breaks, he found something that withstood the Guild’s press. He approached and tore the ropes from me.
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"Alive," he barked to his men. "This one is alive."
He lifted my face by the chin, forcing me to look directly into his steel eyes. There was no fatherly love in them, only the icy calculation of a high judge who had found the perfect tool.
"You did not break under the knife," Alexander said so quietly only I could hear. "You have a will capable of bridling the chaos of your blood. Your mother taught you to hide, but I will teach you to serve."
He let me go, and I felt an invisible chain settle onto my shoulders.
"From now on, your name is F. The Function. Your chaos will become my Order. You will wear this face, you will execute my commands, and you will become the sword that knows no doubt."
I stepped through the third door in the white room, and the void was replaced by the heavy vaults of the Blue Cloak headquarters.
Alexander sat at his desk—straight and motionless.
"F," he said. "The final nest. The old house on Clocktower Street. Council remnants and their hounds are inside. Squeeze them. Extract information. Burn it to the ground."
"Are prisoners required?" I asked. My voice already sounded like an echo of his own.
"Those who know numbers and names—yes. The rest are of no use to us. The city must understand that the game of hide-and-seek is over. Remember: you are a Function. A tool does not argue with the task; it solves it."
The house on Clocktower Street stood like a rotten tooth.
"We take smoke, not fire," I commanded Anakis and Belbin. "Direct assault is a waste of resources. I won't waste our blood where chemistry will suffice."
We worked quickly. Barrels of wet hemp, sulfur, and oil. We didn't need flames; we needed a viscous, suffocating stench that breaks the will faster than steel. I struck the flint. The house exhaled in response—first cautiously, then greedily, choking. Smoke billowed under the ceiling.
"Get out without iron!" I shouted over the roar of the fire. "Hands empty!"
I watched the house on Clocktower Street and understood: This is Order. Faceless smoke flushing out chaos. I was part of that smoke. I was the tool Alexander Trudius had polished to a shine.
I emerged from the doors, and the darkness folded back into the room. Venice sat in her "chair-that-isn't-there." A thin scroll clicked between her fingers, appearing from nowhere.
"You need power, F. Your own will end exactly where the true music of this Island begins. I offer borrowed power. A contract. Clean, calculated, with clauses and commas. I don't take souls—that’s too boring. One condition: anything I may ask in return must not cause harm to Vellaris."
I studied the lines. Inside me, Faurgar—the boy who remembered the taste of salt and the price of freedom—rose up.
"Don't you dare sign it," he whispered. "The real price always surfaces later."
"The price is already here," I replied to myself. "Without this power, we will lose to those who aren't ashamed to use it. We will become ash on Clocktower Street, only for real this time."
I looked at Venice. She saw my internal struggle. At that moment, her face twitched, and blood gushed from her nose in a thick trail.
"You are wounded," I noted.
"It is none of your business," she snapped firmly. "Time here flows differently. And you have catastrophically little of it."
I looked at the scroll again.
"Sign it," urged F, the tool. "Take the resource. You were Alexander’s tool for years. What does it matter whose hand guides you?"
" 'Later' is a trap," countered Faurgar, the artist. "She is already imposing the rhythm on us."
I raised my eyes to Venice.
"What happens if I don't do this now?"
"You will still return to this door," she answered simply. "Only you will come after someone else has already made the decision for you."
I remained silent for a long time. Then, I carefully rolled up the scroll. I didn't hand it back; I kept it, clenching it in my fist.
"I am not refusing," I said, accepting the silence as a challenge. "I will think and come with an answer when my voice belongs only to me."
"That is a rare luxury," Venice smiled. "To be one's own voice."
The floor suddenly vanished. Darkness opened beneath me like a trapdoor.
"Who are you really?" I asked one last time as I fell.
"It doesn't matter who I am," the answer drifted from the fading light. "It matters that you remember who you are. And why you were made a Function."
The Refusal of the Leash.
Key Analysis:
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The Changeling Reveal: Faurgar isn't just a man; he’s a shapeshifter who was forced to mimic a dead boy (Orin) to survive. This adds a heartbreaking layer to his "identity"—he has literally been living someone else's life by order.
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Alexander Trudius: We finally meet the man behind the legends. He didn't save Faurgar out of kindness; he saved him because he found a tool that wouldn't break. This "father-son" dynamic is purely transactional and utterly chilling.
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Venice's Bleeding: Notice that Venice "glitched" just like Tyr did in Gellia’s vision. This suggests that the Island is struggling to maintain these simulations, or that Venice herself is under immense strain.
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Autonomy: By keeping the scroll but not signing it, Faurgar is asserting a will that even Alexander couldn't break. He is a Function, yes, but he’s starting to write his own code.
Questions for the readers:
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The Torture: Was Faurgar’s refusal to "change" a sign of loyalty to his mother, or an early manifestation of his obsession with rigid Order?
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Alexander Trudius: Do you think the architect of Vellaris actually cared for Faurgar in his own cold way, or was Faurgar truly just a "replacement" for his son?
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The Choice: Did Faurgar make a mistake by not signing the contract? Without that "borrowed power," can he keep up with an awakened Priorin or a possessed Flint?
?? SUPPORT THE JOURNEY & UNLOCK THE DM VAULT
Changeling "Morphic Will" mechanics or the secret history of the Blue Cloak Siege on Clocktower Street, join us on Patreon!
DM Vault for Chapter 18:
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Subclass Supplement: The Blue Cloak Enforcer. A rogue/fighter archetype focused on "Vector Suppression" and tactical smoke.
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Mechanic: The Morphic Will. Rules for Changelings who resist shapeshifting to gain temporary defensive buffs.
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Lore: The Trudius Archive. Alexander’s private notes on Faurgar and the "Success" of the Function project.
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