(no subject)

i. nightmares;

( a ) cw: dead bodies

[The setting is dark, desecrated. It is, unmistakably so, the interior of a throne room, as evidenced by the steps leading up to a seat of obvious power. A wall adjacent to it lies crumbling, revealing the night sky. There is nothing peaceful to be felt from the sight; the stars that hang in the sky will not provide anyone with their usual ethereal calm, but only a strange, discomforting sense of something being wrong. The darkness is bleak. Suffocating.

This is the aftermath of… something. This isn't only evident by the way everything has been abandoned, or the strange, glowing crystal that hangs above the throne, washing the room with an eerie blue glow. There’s something far more noticeable — corpses, chained up and hanging from the tall ceiling, like marionettes on strings. They twitch, they laugh. They cry and they shout things unintelligible, voices reverberating in the cavernous, empty space. Their faces are blotted out with something dark, their forms unable to be made out clearly. Three men, perhaps, and a woman. It’s hard to tell.

Maybe you’re seated on the throne, given a clear view of this sight. Maybe Ardyn is, and you’re craning your head up to look at him, wondering why he’s overseeing such a dreary place, with bodies twitching above your head. Caught in a circle of dark swirling out of the ground, like wisping smoke, heralding something about to happen. What it is for now remains a mystery.

Either way, Ardyn is the first to speak, breaking the silence.]

What do you think has happened here?

[A strange non-lucidity brought on by dreaming incites this strange question, reasonable as it might be.]

( b )

[Eventually that nightmare melts away at the edges to reveal something different. An empty street, with people milling about. The where doesn’t matter — it may be Recolle, it may not be. It might be from a world far away, it might be nowhere at all. Ardyn stands next to you, and he looks as if he wants to say something, when a faceless person walks up him. They grasp at his sleeve, pleading with him, Heal me, please. It hurts.

Something dark cracks along the stranger’s face. They might shift into someone recognizable (that of a loved one, someone from your own memories?) or it could remain the face of a stranger. But one thing is unmistakable — a crowd is slowly forming. All of them, asking the same thing over and over and over again. Heal me.]

ii. the fog;

[It wasn’t a particularly good idea to walk through the fog at night, but Ardyn had been certain he could manage it. It wasn’t far to his car, and he was hardly the type to be disquieted by a still, eerie atmosphere. But it’s a miscalculation on his part, because a shortcut down an alleyway turns into something altogether different: cold, dark corridors. Leading to somewhere unseen.

Naturally, this gives Ardyn pause, causing him to frown. A spike of adrenaline surges through his body, felt in the faster tempo of his heart rate. He hisses something like a curse under his breath, looking back the way he came. The view is the same, and no more promising.

Breaking the silence, loud and stringent, is a voice over the crackling PA system. It’s familiar, and it startles him. It’s his voice, twisted with a facetiousness that borderlines on cruel.]

Lost, are we? It’s best to keep moving, or else you'll be met with a nasty surprise.

[It sends a chill up his spine, it makes his skin crawl for long, lingering seconds. All that distracts him from that voice is the sound of clattering in the distance, and he turns his head to see who — or what — it might be.]