Stolen Faces

**Stolen Faces** is the forty-eighth episode of Tales of Dikuda. It is also the twelfth and last episode of the fourth season.

## Summary

While a sick Yuw is taken care of by YiFung, a mysterious face stealer causes panic and fear in Dikuda.

## Episode in Detail

Yuw, having been surprised and taken out of action by a very sudden fever, is in her bed, being taken care of by YiFung. Being unable to find rest, the giant asks if the other can tell her a story. Upon hearing the request, YiFung decides on telling the woman of her past, when she was still living in a tiger village.

She remembers her parents leaving for a trip and never returning, with her and her brother being left on their own with no support from the other families. One day a wolf arrived in the city and stayed for a while, teaching the siblings martial arts. While YiFong became captain of the hunting pack, YiFung was forced to stay home, as was the tradition in her village. The old wolf stayed with them until his death.

A while later another wolf, accompanied by a little girl passed through the village. As he reminded YiFung of the older wolf that was their teacher for a long time, she offered the two to stay at their house for a while. After hearing the wolf's view of the world and people, she decided to leave the village together with the two, despite her brother's objections.

By the time YiFung finishes telling that story of her past, Yuw is fast asleep and finds herself in her mind, talking to Rutbouc, who uses the time to have a conversation with the giant in her mind. Unable to just remove herself from the conversation, Yuw finds herself having to answer one of the most pressing questions that has been bothering the redhead for quite a while.

Rutbouc states that there are some thoughts in the giant's mind, that even she can't access and if the tries to, they are too blurred and messed up by emotions to comprehend, so she puts her on the spot by asking her what Ryahno means to Yuw.

The giant replies with how she first met Ryahno and became friends with her during their time in school together and how Ryahno was a loner, but at least tolerated her presence in some way or another. She talks about how over time she wanted to impress Ryahno and tried to become just like her, while in the end losing track of who she was and what she actually wanted for herself.

Rutbouc comes to the conclusion that the obsession with Ryahno has probably caused more damage than it did any good and made the woman do "horrible things." She tells her that not only is Yuw denying it to herself, but to them both.

At the same time, Bayroff arrives in the FungGao Junior High School‏‎, having heard RuYi call for help in his mind due to their shared connection. He is met with people leaving the school in a panic and when he approaches the center of the chaos, he finds a slumped over RuYi with her face missing.

He confronts the one responsible, a black mist with a hulu danging from it. He approaches the face stealer with intents to attack him, who tries to threaten the spider away by telling him that the people that had their faces stolen will die if the Hulu happens to break during the fight. Bayroff however is willing to take the risk and the Hulu is broken, as he is sure that Falehi will intervene if things get too messy.

After the face stealer is destroyed YiFung approaches the scene, ready to take on Bayroff. The two have a very brief fight, during which she is wounded and it becomes obvious that Bayroff is stronger and faster than her. However, Bayroff has no intentions to actually keep fighting her, as he needs to take care of RuYi. After making sure that he won't turn on her, YiFung does actually retreat from the scene.

Bayroff then turns to RuYi's body on the ground, finding her killed just as the face stealer had predicted. Being able to see other planes of spiritual existence, he can however see her spiritual form that is now without a physical body. RuYi didn't even notice she died until Bayroff reveals that she now looks like a Huli Jing, a fox. It is revealed that this is her family heritage and after many generations her physical appearance and scent are completely human.

The episode ends with RuYi despairing over her lost future and what will happen now.

## Characters

The following characters appear in this episode (in order):

* Tenyu Eesh Yuw
* Hwong YiFung
* Bayroff
* *Gwadeweido (mentioned)*
* *Su HowYu (mentioned)*
* Hwong YiFong
* Faso ChiYo
* Faso Haru
* Dahvius Falehi‏‎
* Rutbouc
* Kuraz Ryahno
* LingDang
* The Face Stealer

## Trivia

* Originally, the episode was not planned to start with a sick Yuw in bed, but this was changed in order to make it easier to understand that YiFung's story took place in the past.

* Yuw talking about her past with Ryahno was written by Zeta in two slightly differing versions. One of them would have been just narrative text similar to YiFung's story, the other version, which was picked for the episode, has Yuw actually talking about it herself. The versions differ in some minor ways, such as Rutbouc reacting to what the giant says, as well as Yuw's word choice to reflect how she might hesitate to talk about uncomfortable topics.

* It was always intended that the "Man who steals faces" would make an appearance in Tales of Dikuda. However, it was never planned that RuYi would be the victim, until later when the episode was near it’s release. The reason why she was chosen was because her heritage and spiritual aura needed further exploring in the story. And to reach that point within a short time, she needed to lose her physical body.

* Bayroff is able to see RuYi in her new form, because he is spiritually on a higher level than most of the other characters.