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Post by francisschiller on Dec 6, 2011 22:31:31 GMT -6
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Post by ireland on Jan 8, 2012 22:23:29 GMT -6
The world behind Francis’ eyelids had gone cold and dark. A darkness that seemed to reach out towards the dreamer, as if to draw him into its depths so he would never again see the light of day. A sound almost too low to hear thrummed through the background, like the last tolls of a great bell as they faded into nothing. Something bad was coming; it was in the air, in the ears, in the way the shadows swirled around the dreamer.
And then the voices began. At first, they were mere whispers, barely audible over the persistent hum. As the voices grew louder, closer, stray words became audible. ”Coward,” came the whisper in the dark. ”Weakling,” hissed another voice, loud enough to hear the derision in its tone. ”Traitor to your kin,” another spat, this one sudden and much closer than the others had been. Others took up the call, whispering from every possible angle in the darkness. The whispers grew in volume, first to murmurs, then almost to shouts as they surrounded Francis.
The voices morphed, slowly, until only four were left. One was the high voice of a young girl, suffused with an unnatural revulsion. ”Criminal.” Another, the more melodic tone of a grown woman, twisted by hatred and disapproval. ”Disappointment.”A third, the deep bass of a grown man, ringing with authority and condemnation. ”Failure.” The voices of Francis’ estranged family repeated their denunciations until they suddenly fell silent, replaced by the loudest and most hateful voice of all.
”Pathetic.” [/i] sneered the last voice – that of his one-time fiancé, killed years before by Francis’ hand – from directly behind the dreamer. The darkness receded suddenly, revealing the basement room of Francis’ family home. The room where Valerie had been killed. Her body lay on the floor where she’d fallen; then, slowly, the corpse rose from the ground. Her face was exactly as it had been in death: covered in blood, her lips frozen in a horrible rictus that might once have been a grin. An eerie giggle escaped her as she stalked towards Francis, pale hair matted with blood and pale eyes gleaming in the dim space. ”Pathetic little fairy,” she taunted, ”Where’s your big, strong boyfriend? Has he gone and abandoned you? You know it’s all you deserve.” She giggled again, the sound echoing eerily off the walls. ”What’re you going to do, coward, huh?” She reached out and shoved him, hard, before letting out an unearthly laugh. Behind her, on the floor, the silver blade of the rapier Francis had killed her with glittered invitingly. Your choices...- Get the rapier and kill her again. It’s what she deserves.
- Defend yourself: she has no right to say such things.
- Ignore her and look for a way out of the room.
- Do nothing.
[/b][/li][/ul] [/blockquote] |
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Post by francisschiller on Jan 22, 2012 21:48:00 GMT -6
 Well. Here was a scene that had haunted his nightmares for years. Her. It seemed that he couldn’t go to sleep without seeing her horrible face anymore. Sometimes she was a bloodied, moving corpse as she was now. Sometimes, her face appeared superimposed on the faces of the crew he supposedly trusted—hiding, watching, waiting to kill him. Sometimes she stood over Tyrin’s body, her rapier plunged into his still-fresh corpse. Yet other times she waited for him at the altar in a wedding dress, or led him in chains back to his childhood home, or cut him as she had when he was a child.
But the fact that he had dreamed this dream many times before didn’t make it any less frightening. He knew how this dream would end. He would run, run, run as fast as he could down the halls of his childhood home (transformed by his frightened mind into a dark labyrinth of fear, tripping him up and getting him lost despite the fact that he’d grown up in the mansion and knew every room and hallway and alcove by heart) until he was finally able to wake up.
Secretly, he feared each time that he wouldn’t be able to wake anymore.
He was tired. Tired of running. Tired of never being able to face his nightmares. She was dead, and she needed to stay that way.
“No, Valerie,” he responded firmly. “My ‘big, strong boyfriend’ has as a matter of fact not abandoned me at all. Currently, he is waiting back in our cabin on our ship. And by the way, he’s not my big strong boyfriend anymore, he’s my big strong husband. Who loves me very much, and would never abandon me. So if you don’t mind, I’m going to go back to him right now. After all, I see no particular reason to stay here for any length of time. This isn’t my house anymore, and the people who live here are no longer my family. And you, Valerie von Rheinholdt? Let me clue you in to a little fact: YOU’RE DEAD. You’re dead, and I killed you, and guess what else? I don’t regret it. Not at all. I’m glad you’re dead. Now stay dead and get the hell out of my brain.”
He was surprised that he had been able to say all of that to her. He wasn’t sure where this strength was coming from—sure, he was still scared, but not the way he had once been. He could stand up to her now.
Choice: Defend yourself, she has no right to say such things. |
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Post by ireland on Feb 1, 2012 23:37:10 GMT -6
The specter’s horrible grin never wavered as the brunette delivered his speech. If anything, it widened a little bit, the already too-stretched corners creeping ever farther and farther to the sides. The corpse’s head tilted to the side slowly, eerie pale eyes continuing to stare at him without so much as a blink. When he had finished his tirade, the specter merely laughed, her high-pitched giggle piercing through the air around them, and clapped her hands together in fiendish delight. ”So the little fairy found himself a backbone! How darling~.”
And then, suddenly, the rapier that had been on the floor behind her was in her hand, the point as unwaveringly steady as it had been before Francis had broken her sword hand. She held the blade up in front of her, tip towards the ceiling, the tarnished metal glinting dully before her eyes. A predatory gleam entered their pale depths as she looked past the thin blade at Francis, her lips pulling back from teeth stained red with old blood. ”Pretty words, hateful words,” she sing-songed to herself, ”But all wrong. Wrong!” She twirled the rapier in her hand, never taking her eyes off her murderer. ”The fairy thinks he’s so clever, but he’s just so very wrong.”
Abruptly, the specter vanished from in front of him. She loomed up behind him, her voice abruptly losing its sing-song quality and returning to a more taunting tone. ”You did kill me, Francis. Stabbed the sword right through me, like I was just so much meat. But that was then, and this is now. And here I am, whether you like it or not.” The rapier tip, as real as it would have been outside this dream, prodded him in the back sharply. ”And your precious Tyrin Schiller isn’t coming to rescue you this time.” She slipped around in front of him, the horrible rictus returning. ”So if you want me to leave, you’re going to have to make me.”
Your choices...
- Run.
- Attack her.
- Try to reason with her.
- Assume she's bluffing and look for a way out.
- Do nothing.
[/b][/li][/ul] [/blockquote] |
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Post by francisschiller on Mar 5, 2012 21:38:36 GMT -6
Francis felt for his knives. As terrible as this nightmare was, he half expected them to be gone, back in reality where they belonged—one on his bedside table and the others underneath his pillow.
But to his surprise, the arm-sheath, the waist-sheath, and even the thigh-sheath where he kept his spare were all filled. Cold steel met his touch as the pirate quickly drew both of his twin fighting daggers, holding them before him in a ready, tense stance. He had never fought her head-on, unless you wanted to count a brief struggle one time he and Tyrin had encountered her in the marketplace, and he knew the battle would be a difficult one. Her wounds seemed to do nothing to hinder her; she moved with the feline grace that he had once admired so greatly. And her weapon had the superior reach—his knives were limited compared to her rapier
But he’d fought many others with weapons far longer than his own, including innumerable practice bouts with Tyrin. Though he’d bested Tyrin only a handful of times (usually, if the pirate captain ended up pinned to the wall with one of Francis’s knives at his throat, it was for no other reason than because he wanted to be in that particular position) he had won many other fights against many other pirates who wielded swords, axes, halberds, and even lances.
Few so skilled as Valerie, however. Even in death she was a master of her craft, a true predator who—had she lived to inherit the von Rheinholdt family name—would have intimidated many a lesser merchant into deals which heavily favored her using only that deadly little blade. Yes, he was well acquainted (too well, if you asked him) with the things that woman could do with a sword.
But he saw no other choice, he reasoned as he looked for an opening in her impeccable posture (grateful that, though the nightmare-Valerie moved as quickly and lithely as ever she had in life, he was also not slowed or restrained by his current status of ‘asleep in the real world’). There were no exits to the room that he could see, and running wildly would surely land him with nothing but a rapier wound in the back. So fighting it would be, and if she bested him—well he could always hope that wounds accumulated in the realm of one’s nightmares did not transfer into the waking world.
Choice: Attack her
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Post by ireland on Apr 26, 2012 19:41:38 GMT -6
The grin frozen on the specter’s face almost seemed to inch its way wider as Francis drew his two daggers from their sheaths. If he was scared, he was doing a pretty good job of hiding it; the fighting stance the former merchant had taken up was a little stiff, but showed none of the obvious signs of fear. Valerie’s head tilted ever so slightly to the side, raising her rapier as she slipped smoothly into a fighting stance of her own, hers more evocative of the sort of formal fencing merchants were often trained in than the all-out brawling style of pirates.
Her face took on more of a cruel smirk, stained red teeth matching the red blood stains where it had dribbled from her mouth. ”Going to kill me again, fairy?” she taunted, beginning to circle him as her cold, colorless eyes looked for an opening. Something in those eyes promised Francis that, if she got her hands on him, she’d be only too happy to put him through exactly what she had in the past. ”Are you really as tough as you’re pretending to be, hmmm? Or is it just an act, trying to fool me into thinking you finally grew a pair?”
And then, as she completed her first circle, the specter suddenly laughed and tossed her sword aside, spreading her arms. The red stains of blood all across the front of her body seemed even more vivid than before. ”Kill me, then, Francis. If you can~.” Behind her, an open doorway gaped in the middle of the wall. The space beyond it was too dark to see into; a black void, offering escape, but into what?
Your choices...
- Take the opportunity and kill her.
- Lower your weapons and see what she’ll do.
- Make a run for it through the open doorway.
- Attack her, but nonlethally – show her the kind of pain she used to inflict.
[/b][/li][/ul] [/blockquote] |
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Post by francisschiller on May 22, 2012 9:46:34 GMT -6
“Why are you doing this to me?” Francis practically spat the words at the Valerie-thing, not expecting a response. It wasn’t like he hadn’t relived this exact scene in many nightmares before this—though this one was a little different. She didn’t usually talk this much, and that weird black void DEFINITELY hadn’t been there before.
Her stance at the moment was open, loose—he could kill her again now, if he wanted. She was inviting him to do so, as a matter of fact. But wasn’t that exactly what she (or it, as he was beginning to suspect that this thing that wore Valerie von Rheinholdt’s face was more along the lines of some sort of nightmare-demon than an actual visit from his long deceased ex) wanted him to do? Or he could run for the door, but where would that take him? Into an endless chasm, maybe? Or into the den of yet another nightmarish demon, this one taking the form of one of his parents, perhaps, or his sister, or one of the crew, or (gods help him, anything but this) Tyrin.
A voice echoed in his head. A clear, confident voice, one that Francis had come to trust and love. His voice.
“No, and that’s good,” For a moment, the invisible Tyrin speaking to him somewhere inside his head didn’t seem to be making any sense. “It’s good that you take no pleasure from the act.” Wait, now he remembered. This particular conversation had happened the night after a nasty battle. When Francis had awoke, sobbing, in Tyrin’s arms, tormented with the faces of those he had killed, he had asked Tyrin if the other man liked killing. He had been extremely relieved when Tyrin had said no.
“Do I regret it? No, never. But that’s because I don’t kill for sport. I kill because I have to. And so do you. And so do all of us.” The Captain, never long-winded, had stopped talking after that, and told Francis to go back to sleep. And he had. The words had comforted him, told him that he wasn’t wrong to hate killing, while at the same time reminding him that the life he had chosen required it.
Lunging forward, he drove his sword into Valerie’s bloodied chest before she could react. He didn’t say anything—no screams of “Die” or “Take that” like the heroes in his childhood stories had done. He was killing her because she needed killing, because if she wasn’t dead then more people would suffer as he had suffered at her cruel hands.
He took no more pleasure from it the second time than the first.
Decision: kill her
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Post by ireland on Jun 2, 2012 6:57:59 GMT -6
The specter’s hideous grin never wavered, her body making no attempt to move out of the way as Francis lunged forward and drove his sword through the center of the bloodstains on her chest. With a sickening wet sound, blood once again began to flow from the wound, some of it running down the sword and staining Francis’ hands as though it were dye, turning them a mottled dark red. The specter leaned forward, sliding further onto the sword, and grinned wider as blood burbled out from between her teeth. ”You’re going to wish you hadn’t done that, fairy,” she hissed, the words twining around him like snakes. ”I’m not the worst thing waiting out there in the dark.”
Her voice trailed away. The grin remained unwavering as Valerie’s corpse toppled to the side, taking Francis’ knife with her. As soon as her body hit the floor, the darkness waiting beyond the door exploded into the room, reaching out and enveloping Francis, plunging the young pirate into darkness. For a long moment, that was all there was. Darkness all around. The whispers faded in and out of the background, far quieter than before, their insults and jabs only understandable to one who already knew what they were saying.
And then, abruptly, the darkness cleared again. This time, it revealed a scene far from the opulent mansion that had once been Francis’ home. This time, it was a small, dingy kitchen, the only light the weak sunlight that managed to eke through the heavy coating of dust and grime on the window above the sink. The sink itself had only a couple of dishes, though the counters and table were covered in empty bottles of alcohol. It was quiet at first, almost eerily so. A faint buzz was the only noise, coming from an equally dim doorway off to the dreamer’s right.
Then, the quiet was abruptly broken with a yelp and the crash of a body colliding with a piece of furniture. A light blazed on in the doorway. ”You think you can talk t’me like that, you ungrateful piece of shit?!” a drunken voice roared. A boy’s voice shouted underneath the end of the sentence, and a tiny form shot through the doorway into the kitchen and bolted up the stairs in the corner without seeming to see the dreamer. ”Get back here!” the drunkard roared.
A small body, hunched in pain and limping slightly, moved into the doorway. Silver hair, cut short and ragged, showed a dark stain as blood seeped from a wound on the side of the head. ”Leave him alone,” the younger Tyrin said, glaring at something out of sight of the dreamer. Though his prepubescent voice was strong, his legs shook as he fought to stay upright. Heavy footsteps sounded, an angry rumbling growing closer and closer as the drunkard approached.
Your choices...
- Step between the younger Tyrin and the threat.
- Grab him and make a run for it.
- Leave him and follow the other child upstairs.
- Do nothing; wait to see what happens without interfering.
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