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The tanned guy palm landed on a wide smiling mask on the actor's face. Error knew how fake this smile was. He looked into the actor’s eyes, hidden behind the thin slits in the mask, expressing his compassion with his gaze.
Only recently he was able to see in these slits pain, pleas for salvation, pleas of death. Only when spotlights that Error was controlling voluntarily, standing at the console stopped to blind him. Only then he was able to see that actors stopped leaving the theatre, that they stopped taking off their masks. Then he started hearing voices praying for help. But it was already too late to help them.
His fingers clenched, digging their tips into the magic which formed a mask. Bright blue cracks appeared at the tips of his fingers and began to spread across the surface with a distinct sound. The mask broke almost silently, crumbling to the ground, and then turned into a pile of dust. After that the actor's exhausted body fell into the Destroyer's arms, with only bones visible where his face should have been.
There was no help for them. The magical masks slowly but surely grew into their faces, replacing their muscles and skin, and even growing into their bones. Behind these masks, the actor's true identity was hidden. So hidden, in fact, that over time, each actor became a silent puppet, completely under the control of the puppeteer. The person who directed the play, pulling the strings. The person who stood behind the scenes, ensuring that everything went perfectly. The one who put on all these masks.
"You're a real asshole, Ink," Error said as he carefully placed the dead body next to the other actors, who all looked like dolls made of thin sticks and had no faces.
This was the last one.
Amber eyes looked at the row of bodies with regret, and then looked resolutely into the depths of the long corridor, at the end of which was the founder of this theater himself. Error needed to have a good chat with him.
Destroy and create. Long enough they were perfect partners. Ink with his magic of creation and inexhaustible inspiration again and again was making up something large-scale and colorful. While Error was his own brake. Only he could destroy his mate’s creation with only touch, could promptly stop him from pointless ideas and could abandon an obviously failed idea. And it always worked.
It worked until Ink started chasing after imaginary ideals, and Error became blind. He himself had agreed to take his place at the control panel of the theater's stage, which was headed by the Creator himself. He himself did not express displeasure when a magical mask appeared on his comrade's face, expressing emotions much better than it’s creator's glass eyes. However, he did not agree to wear the mask himself. And for good reason.
Otherwise, he certainly wouldn't have noticed how the actors spent so much time rehearsing the play that the Destroyer himself would fall asleep at the controls, or how the actors stopped leaving the building, or how Ink refused to remove the actor's mask with a familiar smile. However, now that he had turned away from the bright lights and looked behind the scenes, he was able to fulfill each actor's request.
“What the fuck, Ink?” Error stormed in something resembling an office.
“Is there anything wrong?” The Creator's voice was muffled, and the mask on his face gave his former friend a bright and carefree smile.
Bright, but chillingly fake.
“What about everything? Did you think I'd just go blind watching your performance? You used living people as weak-willed puppets, depriving them of any life, and for what?” Error's palms slammed loudly and sharply on the table where Ink was sitting. “You've gone too far, and it's time to stop you.”
The mask on Ink's face frowned. Only in the mask of his former comrade could he not see the eyes, so well the slits in it concealed the iris of the owner. But it did not seem to bother Ink himself.
Error's palm rested on Ink's mask, and his fingers dug into the surface. The magic used on the Creator himself was extremely strong, and the blue cracks crawled across his frowning face unusually slowly.
"To achieve perfection," Ink replied with surprising firmness.
In the next moment, a piece of the mask that covered one of his eyes fell off. The bare skull of his former comrade was frightening, and his cold and emotionless gaze, which looked even more eerie in comparison to his highly expressive mask, sent chills down his spine. His mask had long since replaced his face.
"People aren't perfect, they don't always obey the puppeteer accurately, and they don't always convey emotions correctly," Ink said, staring at Error with his unblinking eye. "And I've eliminated this imperfection. I've removed everything that was getting in the way."
"You've crossed the line, Ink. It's time to stop you. And this time, it seems that the owner will have to be destroyed along with his magic," his fingers tightened on the mask, which strangely smiled back at him. He accepted defeat. After all, he was not strong enough to put the mask on his friend.
Blue cracks covered the entire mask, causing it to shatter and its creator to collapse lifelessly onto his desk.
The amber eyes took one last look at the body of their former comrade, and then their owner left. Step by step, he slowly but surely approached the familiar control panel. His fingers gently caressed it, in his last glance.
— It's time to end this performance.
Error easily found the right button and briefly pressed it, causing all the lights to go out.