Florui
Disclaimer: All Clock Tower 3 characters included herein belong to Capcom. Lucifer belongs to everyone and no one, as does the storyline of "Beauty and the Beast". Please, enjoy.
Prologue
Brierfell lay quiet in the snow, sleeping under its blanket the ponderous slumber of enchantment. Drifts grew thick about its walls and crept upon the gate; the thick white crust expanded slowly, icing occasionally, and beneath lay a carpet of leaves. The gardens spread thick and tangled, unkempt and strange with no human hands to tend them. The forest crawled ever closer, inch by inch as the years went by—first vines over the outer wall, then seedlings dropped over by the wind and rain and precocious branches. Slowly it reclaimed the edges of the manor grounds, erasing from sight the touch of human work upon the landscape as surely as the inhabitants of the manor had gone from local memory.
A few things remained the same. The hedge maze, though unruly, kept its paths and byways, its twists and turns and false ends—even the easily-missed shortcut to the very heart of it, though the fountain had stopped running, too clogged by leaves and roots and weeds to produce clear water. The walls of the manor house itself remained sturdy, no door or window breached, as though the touch of nature could not quite set its diaphanous hand upon its stones. And in the circle just before the door…
The roses always bloomed—or rather, at no point during the year were the bushes and canes completely devoid of life. In summer the circle of thorned plants grew riotous with color, every one imaginable for a rose, and the scent lay thick and heavy on the drive. They bloomed early and persisted late; only the withering touch of winter could truly tame the Brierfell roses…but even in its coldest depths, a single plant clung tenaciously to vivid life and color. Most of its buds proved an ivory white, shamed by the snow but lovely nonetheless. There was, however, in the very center—at the top—a single red, red rose which seemed to bloom eternally. It never dropped its petals, never shriveled or drooped; it proclaimed its defiance to the skies in snow or sun, accepting dew and ice alike upon its face.
For eighteen years Brierfell lay sleeping under sun and snow, that single rose defiant above the rest and the cold iron gates locked and chained against all comers—though no one came. Somehow, in those short years the world forgot the manor and its grounds, the people who lived there and the tragedy which ultimately closed its gates. It lay both pristine and wild behind the intricate iron and the rose crest, its picturesque beauty never interrupted by human figure—nor beheld by such.
Lacking witnesses, there was no one to see the shadow on its grounds, no one to hear the angry screams or the splashes of blood and gore upon the grass or autumn leaves. The single inhabitant of the grounds roamed them restlessly and alone, never still, never sated, always angry. The whispers in the house could do nothing to assuage its rage and impotence, locked as they all were in the manacles of the enchantment which lay thick upon them all. Sometimes it came in; often it did not, abandoning the twisting passages to stalk the encroaching woods and enclosed grounds for days on end. How it filled its days then none of them knew; when inside it only paced and clawed.
For eighteen winters, it left only footprints in the snow. Then, inexplicably, the chain fell from the gate and things began to change.
Author's Note: If you don't like OCs, don't read this. It's half drabble and half serious idea—not meant to coincide at all with the CT3 mythology…an 'AU', if you will, a semi-original crack fiction from my head and from those of my friends. I'm uploading it here for formatting reasons, nothing more. If you were looking for a serious CT3 fic, please look elsewhere because this definitely isn't it. That said, thank you for reading…and here's to hoping I can actually finish something for once.
