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A Time Of Monsters - Main

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Grey

Dialectical Hermeticist
Trysday 4th of Hearthlight, 572 After Foundation
GREY
> Port D'Erbor
The house is dark and silent; the spire of a church two streets over is cast through the window, keeping off what weak Winter sunlight might find its way in. Outside the sounds of the mob are muffled but not gone. Not over. They seem to move away and then return, never entirely leaving your awareness. Like a dream that hasn't quite had time to fade from memory.
Soft creaks of settling boards sound closer, more real. The drip of water from somewhere just out of sight. In the guttering candlelight you can see only rafters, vague shapes of hanging clothes, furniture, the end table where a basin of water had sat when Ellen tended your burning fever. The shadows, rich and dark like velvet. They seem to throb and shift before your gaze.
And Ellen's doll, sat on a dresser, watching you with empty eyes.

You smell only blood. Yours, you're sure. As your skin seems to burn and your eyes weep, you feel something in your chest - a sloughing sensation, ineffably wrong. The coughing follows and your vision goes black as you hack and convulse, until your throat burns along with everything else. Blood flecks your chest, along with shreds of flesh that you will not permit yourself to identify. You must have thrashed the cover away.

The certainty of your impending death washes over you like a brief and blessedly cool wind.

BONE
The end is nearly here, thought Viktor. I fear it, though I shouldn’t. I have nothing to carry on for. No one to carry on with.

Still, to die here like this... Alone. Forsaken. I’ve made mistakes, behaved shamefully, but I’ve done nothing to merit such a pitiful fate.

So what does that prove? That a decent life doesn’t entitle a man to a decent death.
With a pained effort Viktor wiped his rheumy eyes with the back of his hand. When his vision eventually cleared he searched for and found Ellen’s doll perched on a nearby dresser. Maybe decency is only intended for children?

Resolve. Cunning. Ferocity. These are the only virtues for men. And if that’s true — and I now believe it is — then I have never truly been a man. God forgive me; I was ignorant.

What tragic irony: I only learn how to live when I’m out of time.


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GREY
"Don't cry."

If you had the energy, you'd imagine you'd start at the voice.
"Don't be sad yet," the voice continues. A girl's voice. Ellen?
...No. But so close, if she'd had a little sister, you'd believe she would sound like this. So young, sunny, the hint of a lisp.
As you focus you realize it's the doll; the head suddently tilted to meet your eyes, the mouth impossibly curved into a guileless smile.

BONE
Viktor squeezed his aching eyes shut and then blinked rapidly. A fleeting hallucination, he thought. A fever dream. Ellen’s doll, which he had been gazing at, had just moved by its own volition. Its soft pink, normally relaxed mouth had suddenly smiled — at him.

Worse, it had spoken to him.

When Viktor looked back at the doll, he discovered its expression was still wrong. So, thought Viktor, I am firmly in the grip of madness. He accepted this without resistance; he no longer had the strength for resistance. Besides, what was one more indignity to suffer before his end?
I’ll even play along, he thought.

“And why should I not feel sad?” His voice a strained whisper. “If I shed tears before you, rest assured that I’ve earned them. I’ve earned little in life, but I’ve earned those.”

“But then agai—“ Viktor was interrupted by a fit of violent coughing, after which he cleared his throat. “But then again, what’s the point of arguing 'earned' in this despicable world? Let the devil take it.”

GREY
There is silence, broken by the doll's sudden giggle - a light and airy sound, pure joy wholly at odds with the moment.
You realize that though the room remains dark, the shadow through the window is now a bright shaft of silvery light. Moonlight? Did you pass into sleep without noticing? There is an eerie quietude hanging over you, over the whole world, when the laughter subsides.
"We should go outside," the doll says. "They want to see you."

Sweat, gritting his teeth, Viktor hauls himself to his feet. Out of the bed with unsteady legs, the room seems to sway and the darkness pulses like a breathing thing. As he stumbles to the door, half-dragging his feet, the doll squeaks in protest.
"Don't forget me! You have to bring me! Don't leave me alone."
There is indignation in her voice, yes, but it seems intended only to mask a desperate undercurrent of misery.
Grunting, he scoops the doll into his arms and tries again to leave. Winces as his lungs burn and stray splinters prick his feet, pauses to hack more blood and lung lining onto the boards, until he finally makes it to the cool cobbles outside.
And he realizes he is no longer home.
To be sure, streets familiar in the daylight can be strangers in the dark, but this place is wrong.
The building opposite isn't made of the plaster and wood found across the city; stone blocks the size of a man, finely cut, form a crude dwelling.
Left of that something resembling a shop front is build from bricks so small a child could have made them yet built for grown men.
And strangest, to the right, is a huge and grim structure that seems like the stone was poured and allowed to dry.
All is still as the grave, not a sound but for a faint creaking like a iron gate in the wind.
Instinctively he looks up; an eclipse hangs in the empty sky. Yet it seems as if the light is impeded by something other than the moon - no, the light is more like moonlight, and Viktor can faintly perceive towers and walls in the form of the thing blocking it. A vast and opulent palace, so immense, impossibly hovering in the air.

BONE
Bile inched up Viktor’s throat while he attempted to makes sense of his impossible surroundings. This is no mere hallucination, he thought. I’m actually here, standing, suffering. But where is here?

He was clutching something — Ellen’s doll. Viktor stared down at it dumbly for a moment before lifting his cadaverous face towards the uncanny sky. I think I understand; I’ve past on. He then mustered the courage to look directly at the palace looming far above him. This proved a poor choice.

A feeling of dread suddenly snatched hold of Viktor so monstrously he nearly screamed. He recoiled and shut his eyes and tried his damndest to recover from the onslaught of terror.

He squeezed the doll until his knuckles turned white. Sweat sprung out across his fevered flesh.

"What now?"

GREY
"Look, look!" the doll cries, excited. When you open your eyes, you swear for a moment one tiny arm is outstretched, pointing to your left. But no, the doll remains a doll. Which speaks.

You turn your gaze as bidden; the road descends after a few feet, so this vast unreal city unfolds before you. Architecture clashing in a frozen riot of styles, many of which you have never seen or heard of, many which seem as if they cannot possibly support their own elaborate designs.
And there, on the horizon, looming over all of it - a great tower or steeple, rising into the blank sky for miles. You think you see staircases, and windows, and balconies feathering the immense exterior but you blink and it seems utterly smooth. You blink again and see a wholly different configuration of crenellations and garrets. It's falling, slowly collapsing under its own weight. It draws the eye like a lodestone and you realize no matter where you look, it's always there at the edge of your vision. Always falling, but never fallen.

The doll giggles.
"They like you," she says. "They want to help. They'll heal you, if you ask."

BONE
Heal me? A mere moment ago Viktor had drawn the formidable conclusion that he was dead. But he must have erred, for the dead cannot be healed, only resurrected.

Yes, he thought as he collapsed to his knees, I’m still alive. I know this because I’m in too wretched a condition to be anything other than alive. I haven’t even the strength to crawl back to bed.

Viktor released the doll he had been carrying and brought his hands before him for inspection. They were skeletal, their flesh almost translucent, and they ached cruelly just like every other part of his body. His ghastly appearance, along with his quickly evaporating vitality, warned that he would die here, on this very spot inside this surreal realm, or...

He peeked at the Tower splitting the horizon and was immediately transfixed by it. It was an immensely daunting, incomprehensible structure which radiated a soul-trembling power. It would restore Viktor, but not for free. Somehow the dollmaker understood that. The Tower did not offer a favor; it offered a bargain.

Like a sail untied from its mast, Viktor toppled onto his side while blood trickled from his nostrils, yet he never took his eyes off the Tower. "I accept," he eventually whispered. "I wish to live."

Tears welled in his bloodshot eyes and in response he shut them. But inexplicably, as clearly as if he stood helplessly before it, he could still see the Falling Tower.

GREY

You feel the dark earth turn beneath your feet; a powerful vertigo. The Tower is the axis and all spins about it.
You sit up suddenly, in the bed you had thought you'd left. You feel like a new man, rested and vital. Grey dawnlight filters through the window.

The doll is lying beside you.
 
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Moonday 1st of Sunsheight, 572 AF

Your hand no longer feels like a part of you. It moves with purpose, by sheer will, but it's as if you watch it from far away.
The last of your blood spread in intricate lines upon the paving stones - please, let your colleagues find it. Let the inquisitors fail to see. Or let them see, perhaps...
What were you thinking? It's so dark. Only the icon remains, perfect. As you watch with laboured, shallow breaths the lines seem to resolve into greater precision. Even the spatters of your blood, thrown off the mark by your trembling fingers, seem part of the design despite the lack of intent.
Perfect.
You're so cold. Was this the cold that Rage Against Heaven felt, when she stood at the edge of the world and cursed the gods?
You breathe one final time, as it all fades to nothing and your heavy eyelids slip closed. And then-
You feel oddly aware and alert for a dead man. A sensation not unlike trying, and failing, to sleep despite fatigue.
After a time frustration and boredom surprise you, and you open your eyes. Time seems frozen, and the world is stark white like a blank page; the spaces between the stones of the alley and bricks in the wall remind you of a friend's sketches, black as ink. Defining nothing as something by their concrete depiction of emptiness. This thought feels important.
The only colour is the logogram in your blood, vividly red and pulsing softly with an inner light.

Then a shadow falls over you, not black or grey but red as venous blood. You can sense someone there, standing just behind your head.
The shadow shifts - they're kneeling. You feel soft, slender fingers on your neck checking your pulse. Nothing else. They're like the bright and singular moon in the darkness of your senseless form.
They withdraw.
You cannot move to look at the visitor.
You cannot explain how, but you have the absolute certainty this stranger is waiting for you to give them permission to save your life. As if the thought arrived in your mind from outside.

Random Word Random Word
 
"Is this..." Lucien pauses. Falls silent. Considers. Tries again. "Is this... the world beyond?" It is the great adventure to the undiscovered country. The answer to that one great mystery so easy to find and yet so difficult to communicate to one's peers. It looks nothing like the accounts of the church fathers and the ancient mystics. This is, perhaps, to be expected. The symposia on the nature of the afterlife here will no doubt be slightly better informed, and hopefully the more edifying for it.

He pauses again. The silence draws on. "Tell me spirit, why would you spare me? What is there left to live for? The prince has turned from the cause. The great work will end. The inquisition will see to that. Should I live, it will be only to see the inside a cell, briefly, before the chopping block." He falls silent again. "If I should counsel you on virtue, I must be brave enough to say the merciful thing may be to let things play out. I am detritus washed upon this far shore, and I must make the most of it."
 
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For Lucien

You feel a sudden surge of... pity. Not yours. Then frustration, mild like one might feel for a child refusing to eat, tempered with care.
A vision of a yawning void assails you, an all-encompassing antithesis to existence. A warning, but not a threat.
 
Lucien bristles slightly at the patronising... tone? No. That's not quite right. Something is off. He considers. Taps the stark white cobbles, cold against his fingertip, for the better part of a minute before he identifies the niggling thought. Sound. It's not making any sound. It doesn't speak. He internally pats himself on the back for this observation. So! The emotional state must have form after all, to be transmissable so. Perhaps, in some far distant plane, there is a connection be- Ah. The frustration intensifies.

Lucien coughs. Clears his throat. Adjusts his spectacles. Ponders the nature of nonexistence. The longer he ponders it the more he finds it to be somewhat... lacking. It leaves a certain something to be desired. "The void. Yes. Well. I should... I should like to continue my work. In whatever form this strange shore allows. I am acquainted with stories of daemons and faeries. I have no desire to become a cautionary children's tale. Do you... seek something from me, spirit? What is the price of my life?"
 
Warm approval washes over your mind - strongly reminscent of your grandmother's voice the first time you outfoxed her in a game of chess. Strange how that grand old dame never seemed to succumb to age, her razor intellect never dimmed, until one night in her sleep... Could the rumours have been true?

And then your own thought recurs, as if from without; "continue the work."
 
Lucien traces bright blood over the cobbles as he considers. He adjusts his glasses. Again. "So." He pauses. "You are familiar with our work?" The tracing of his finger accelerates, "And you wish it to continue? Then...." The finger hesitates, stops. "We are on to something?" His thoughts do not race, never race, but meander down the garden paths of possibility laid out before him. There is a certain set to his jaw and a glimmer in his eye as, finally, "Very well. I accept. Let it never be said I turned away an honest patron of the work."
 
Approval, and something like... gratitude.
Your numb form is rolled over, and you briefly behold the blank and infinite white sky, the edges of the rooftops like charcoal scratches on paper.
Then your head lolls further, and you see your benefactor.

Somewhere, in a deep, animal part of you, a powerful impulse emerges; you must scream. There is no other response, no more sane action than to scream your throat bloody. You can't.
Mercifully your eyes slam shut, involuntarily, like your whole being knows to look for even a moment more invites madness. The image will not fade, though.
Hands. Hands upon hands upon hands, a seething multitude of all sizes and colours, human and not, grasping and flexing and gripping each other to form larger hands still. Hands and hands and more hands and two of them, slender and long-fingered, red with fresh blood. Somewhere in the vision is a humanoid shape, but that too is...

Your chest feels strange. Then warm. Then agony, as your heart beats again, sending hot blood coursing through empty veins. Your skin seems to burn as capilliaries are forced rudely wide and feeling returns. The entity is pumping fresh blood right back into your heart.
When the pain subsides you feel... good. Strong. Vital. You realize as it closes that your chest was open, parted like smoke, and your ribs bent like warm candles. Long-fingered hands tenderly seal your wounds.

It loves you. Whatever it is.

And then you feel cold, surrounded and weighted down by cold things you don't immediately recognize, a stench of burning hair in your nostrils, voices calling incomprehensibly somewhere nearby.
 
It's entirely an instinctual response, driven by horror and the ache of newfound strength to be exercised. Arms surge, legs flail before feet find the cobbles, and Lucien begins to run, eyes wild with fear, unthinking. If not obstructed his feet may guide him out of habit to a nearby coffee house he has been known to frequent, breathing hard, scarcely remembering any unfortunate passersby he collides with on the way.
 

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