Old Hat

Tairais: Curled up on a chair in the corner of the library, and being as he was, Richard disregarded the sounds of menacing hooves as best he could, fingers digging into the halls of the Chateau d'If as the sound grew closer. He finally relented when the sound paused to a halt in front of him, looking up with a glare in his eyes only to freeze as the stag's crimson eyes bore into his. ''He could feel the breath of the stag at his back, cooling the blood that now coated it, and the rest of him, black in the moonlight. He turned around and stumbled, the sounds of whooping soldiers in the distance a dissonant, screeching melody against the backdrop of yet another burning home. Their homes were always taken from them, they only had each other. They had only had each other, and now they had no one, several miles, several years, and six feet of earth between them. ''He let out a ragged, hoarse shout of rage and grief, falling to his knees. The library had become a forest made of shifting, writhing shadows, calling to him, mocking him. A gasp for air tore his gaze from the stag, heart pounding in his ears, bile rising in his raw throat, tears trickling down his face. Snarling, he tore two knives from within their compartment on his leg. Filled with rage and hurt, he rose to lunge at the great beast and- ''He slammed into the ground, using the body of the man he had been fighting with. A bubbling gurgle escaped from where his throat had once been, and he fell silent, eye lolling into the back of his head. It was beautiful, he mused, the brutal savagery that gave way to art in the eerie moonlight. There was a single shift against the cobblestone street, and H-'' His mentor- mentors, there had been two of them- ''stared at him blankly, the faintest flicker of pride in the depths of maroon eyes from one, admiration for his savagery in the other. He felt ALIVE. "Look at this, Ričardas. It is your art. Enjoy it, Ričardas." ''His breath clawed its way out of his chest, leaving it hollow and empty as he hunted the stag through the library. He ended up backed against a railing, the stag suddenly turning to lower its head at him, driving him back. He growled, clutching at weapons that would be of little use against the thing. The stag stilled, raising its head to nudge pointedly behind Richard. His heart plummeted in his chest as he heard familiar voices, memories overlapping each other in their haste to torment him. He didn't have to turn around to picture each one, clear in his mind as the day they had happened. They weren't in order- they never were.

~*~ "Thank you, darling Ričardas. Lavender is my favorite flower. What vase should I use, do you think?" His mother, seconds before she slipped away. He had turned away to place the flowers on the window, and in that moment of inattentiveness, she was gone. An almost peaceful corpse, were it not for her own blood staining her lips. "I'll be all right, Ričardas, just take my coat and go!" Jack, attempting to buy them time to right something that was entirely his fault, lying crumpled on the ground, blood trickling from the single wound like watercolor wings emerging from a single point. His kind, handsome face white with steady lack of blood and contorted in horrendous pain: Elise had shattered part of his back, but he could still feel. He would die watching him run, but never see the conclusion. Perhaps that was a small mercy. "Richardas?~ Look at me, mano numylėtinis. Look at me!" Elise, hovering over his battered body. He had been screaming since he caught sight of his left side, missing an arm and covered in knife wounds. His voice gave out, and then he was screaming wordlessly, liquid fire poured over him. As it began to bubble and eat away at the skin beneath, he fell unconscious, body covered in the red sheen of his own lifeforce. "Ričardas, I believe I have angered the wrong peop- My God, what happened to you? What have you done?" Benediktas, barging frantically in to his room to find him in a pool of his own blood, scratches gouged into his one good hand in penance for the great crimes he had committed and would continue to commit. "Nononono, Ričardas, please, don't do this, you're better than th-" Lillian, a broken, bloody mess by the time he had been pulled off her by Jack. Her arms torn from their sockets, eyes caved in by merciless thumbs, a Glasgow smile carved for all to see. She could no longer see to do harm, and she finally had the joy she had never had in life. His overwhelming hatred of himself as walls slammed into place, and the sickening realization of just how wonderful it felt to right a horrid wrong. No, that wasn't right. How wonderful it was to take a life, to make art out of the meat left behind. It wasn't Lillian. Elias, terrified and bleeding before him. It wasn't Lillian. The urge to tear open Elias like a clock, to find out what made him tick. It wasn't Lillian. The fear of acting on those urges, and the fear of falling in love with something so fragile. Elias' body faded from view before long: The memory was too recent to want to claim his attention at the moment. ~*~ The bodies behind him kept bleeding, and then so were the walls and the floor. Everything burned, the scents of copper and smoke reaching past his throat to dice his lungs into ash and grit. He stared fearfully at the Ravenstag, who now watched him with cold indifference. It bellowed again, the sound thrumming in his chest like a gong. Darting off, it left him to turn and stare down at the corpses floating and bobbing like so many pieces of driftwood in a sea of blood. The area around him burned, the platform beneath him slowly crumbling. His knives clattered to the floor below him with a sickening 'gloop' as they pushed past the surface of the sea. Choking out a furious, panicked sob as wood crumbled into the sea around him, he leaped into it, crawling back onto the couch he had abandoned, which was now floating with corpses that reached for him with hungry, accusing eyes. Blood coated all things, including himself: All he could see and feel was a sea of red and black, the colors muting and warping the longer he stared. Silently, to gods he didn't believe in, Richard prayed for an end as searing pain laced through his forehead and back. The antlers of the Wendigo carved their own path to freedom through him, reaching and tearing through the sofa to raise him above the blood as it rose. Thankfully, there was still a single path- more of a well-worn dock than anything, really- through the library. Thankfully- But was it thankfully that someone could walk in on this display? At the growing amounts of blood and corpses that manifested as each memory and nightmare he'd ever had claimed a space in the room. Let it end, he thought, let it finally be the end. Of what, he didn't know. The past would haunt him forever, and he simply just couldn't keep running. He just wanted it to end.

Jekyll1886:  Lewis had gone to the Society's library to better familiarize himself with the history and current state of occult and scientific knowledge of this realm, hoping something would explain the recent spate of living dreams. He had sequestered himself unobtrusively in a corner, several large, obscuring stacks of books laid out about him. He had been deep in concentration when Richard had entered; given the dim lighting, it was possible neither man had noticed the other's presence. The changing environment, however, had been much harder to ignore. He'd clung to the shadows instinctively, trying to figure out what was going on--he'd thought he'd been the only one in here!--when he'd spotted Richard. And the stag. The dreams--or, more's the truth, nightmares! he'd realized. He had thought he'd be in the clear once he'd dealt with his own, but such was not to be, apparently. Richard's presence assured that. It occurred to him this was a fantastic opportunity to learn more about both the nightmare-memory phenomenon and Dr. Prince. He watched the ensuing scenes with eager fascination, a succession of expressions flitting across his face in turn: satisfaction, wistfulness, surprise, pity, recognition and ruefulness, inner laughter, shock and sadness and a wisp of regret. Understanding. Then, as the blood-dimmed tide began to rise, concern. Concern for Richard, as the wood burned up around him. Concern for himself, as the crimson sea closed in and swallowed him whole. Oddly, Weir found he could breathe. He wondered why that was. Formulating a theory, he tested his luck. As he did in his own dreams, he willed himself to the surface, and came to rest gently upon it. The view which greeted him was not what he had expected. Prince looked to be in agony, perhaps mortally wounded. And the man--or figment of a man--Richard had injured earlier was back, staring at the gory tableau. Lewis wondered what he signified. He shook himself clean in one fluid, head-to-toe motion. The dark liquid flew free more by his desire to have a spotless waistcoat than by actual physics. He strode over to Richard, leaving ripples where he walked on the sea of blood. "Pardon me," he politely addressed the lofty patchwork Prince. "May I proffer a suggestion?" Decipherer:  For the record, it had been Richard's cry out that had initially claimed Elias' attention. With a concerned grumble and a brief question of where Artemis could be at this time, he set off through the halls in search of the source. At the bellow of the ravenstag, while he had still been seeking out the person who had yelled out, he stopped in his tracks. All around, the walls, the floors, everything warped and shifted from the warm tones of the Society to stone walls and tundra and fierce jungle, anything and everything to get him to pay attention to the world around him as it crackled with history, his history. But still, he stormed on, with a far stronger determination than he'd had before. And he found it; he poked his head into the library, and his stomach churned. The bodies, and the blood, and the stag- Elias desperately wanted to help Richard, but that need was rapidly snuffed out by the sick feeling that was creeping into his chest and throat. He couldn't help him, and he wouldn't dare try, but still he hung in the doorway, gaze fixed on Richard solely because, despite the man being coated with blood, he couldn't afford to look anywhere else.

Obtained From
Nightmare, or Reality?

Nightmare, or Reality cont.