Gǽst

[pendraeg]

Who: Uther and Chase (what, again?)
What: Monster plot!
When: Night
Where: The castle yard
Rating: C for creepy, possibly actually scary
Status: Private, complete (!)

Comments

[chaseandoldlace]

It was an odd thing to be wary of, open space, but, when Chase had more than a moment to think about it, that was what unnerved him most about where the castle was situated. He wasn't always aware of how uneasy his environment made him, but there would be moments, singular moments when the openness of the sky or the vastness of the grounds would send a lance of terrible and utterly irrational fear straight through him, leave him shivering and seeking the warmth of a deeply banked hearth fire, where he could warm himself and listen to the coals crackle like delicate, broken glass

[pendraeg]

A shadow passed over the stars, a dark shape whose only property was that it obscured the pinpricks of light. Then the obscurity found its edges, it took on form, and filled space, and then it had a face, so dispassionate it seemed for a moment to be made of wax. It looked down at him and even in the half-light Uther could see that it never blinked.

Confusion washed over him; the uncertainty of self that hovered always at the periphery of his consciousness wavered so that he did not know if he was Uther the young king, Uther the old man, or Uther, the boy whose image had stepped out of the mirror to reflect him.

The pain in his ankle started suddenly, and in his disorientation Uther experienced it as a noise that drowned out all other noises.

[chaseandoldlace]

Chase's irrational terror took form as the shadow did. He knew dark magic, knew what it felt like; knew what it meant to, as he dubbed it to Nico 'pull an over-sized splinter out of your soul.'

Most of the time, the splinter didn't take the form of your younger self though. Really, the child could have been either of them: small, lithe, blond, but the eyes were wrong in that even on his worst days, Chase couldn't remember looking at the world so devoid of...

'Life?' It was more than that, the wrongness went deeper. It was malignant, it sought to destroy.

'How do you know that?' He didn't, but he shifted grip on the wrench anyway. Uther was hurt, the closer Chase got he realized that, and from their positions it almost seemed as though the child had appeared out of nowhere and pushed Uther into the mud. A schoolyard bully picking on someone well over their own size

[pendraeg]

The pain in his ankle settled into the not unfamiliar sensation of a torn ligament. Uther could not withdraw his gaze from that of the apparition, but he extended his hand into the air, and when Chase reached down, Uther clasped onto his friend's arm so together, they hauled him onto his good foot.

"Can't stand on your own feet, Uther?" the child asked. "Can you do naught on your own? Are you thieving someone else's strength again?"

[pendraeg]

When the effigy released him, when it took Chase, Uther suddenly felt as though he had been frozen and hadn't known it. Suddenly, he was free to move and speak and act of his own accord. And he could think.

He did not like what he witnessed.

And first, it was a matter of role reversal, of the fight shifting, their foe turning its attention from one to the other. Good practice said he should now defend Chase, support him, and also take advantage of any opportunity to attack their now-divided opponent.

But this attack was one of words, and the words that Uther heard shook him. He wanted to understand, he wanted an explanation. This was Chase! Honorable, decent, life-valuing Chase, who was determined to believe that heredity was not destiny. Chase who had talked him through so much, even just now

[chaseandoldlace]

"It happened, jesus it was real." Chase murmured, pressing harder and harder in his eyes until they ached for light. "I wasn't sure...didn't want to be so I just tried to forget. Because if it was real it was my fault."

Back then, so much had been his fault: he wasn't smart enough, he wasn't good enough; he was the son his father was stuck with not the one he wanted.

And yet...

"They were going to burn the world for you, they loved you so much... and you burned your world once. You succeeded where they failed." The child said to Uther. "And you say you can face that? That'll be a first." It's face had shifted again to accommodate aspects of both of them, a grotesque, continual morphing. "Prove it."Burning. The world shimmered around them, a narrow shadow falling over them-- Chase could feel it before he saw it, the soft chill of shade casting over him and he finally looked up

[pendraeg]

And now, Uther's memories. And now, Uther's dreams. The things he had tried so hard to deny had ever been real enough to have been things he had actually seen, things he had actually heard, and smelled, and felt, and done. Burning flesh is sweet, like pork, or mutton. Wool is acrid, and becomes indiscernible from human hair. Wood, straw, kindling, those are also the smell of the fire in the hall at night, keeping the beasts at bay. Over it all, bitter, stinging, sharp, the taste of char, ashes that cling to eyelashes and settle underneath the tongue, in the back of the throat...

What you never see in a painting of a martyr is what remains when the pyre is burnt out, what must be cut down, brittle and collapsing, to be buried, how soot covers everything, and after rain, is slick and gritty underfoot. How the water becomes undrinkable, and you have to send men out with barrels, wagonloads of water passing wagonloads of bodies on the rutted road.

The axe is quick; people scream when they are on fire

[chaseandoldlace]

"Nico!"

The smell was the first thing that hit him, before it even occurred to him whether it was real or not. It was real enough.

He sprinted to the pyre, climbing through--into-- the flames tearing at the binding rope that for some reason didn't burn away like Chase believed it should have. Though he knew he shouldn't have been able to hear anything over Nico's screaming, there was a scuffle in the yard where Uther and the child-monster-man stood