A/N: This one was another challenge, based off of a picture I've linked in my profile. There might be one or two minor edits here that I didn't catch before posting the tumblr version.
The characters in this story are from Tales of Vesperia and do not belong to me.
The raucous screams of crows filled the still courtyard that fronted the imperial palace. Their flapping created an unending echo of movement, a call to feast. The hoarse laughter of their calls mocked Flynn as he walked slowly through their ranks.
Plish.
Plish.
Plish.
Puddles were unavoidable. The fighting here had been particularly vicious, and the once-shining white paving stones were now islands encroached upon by a red sea. It was leaking into his boots, but he couldn't feel it for the numbness that had taken him over, couldn't think about it for the dread certainty that kept him walking forward.
Plish... Plish... Plish...
He couldn't look at the olive and brown lumps strewn to either side of his path. Dulled silver glinted, calling to his attention, but he kept his eyes resolutely forward. A cyclopean crow shot out of the darkness beyond the gaping doors of the palace, and he froze as the thing darted straight for him. As the creature flapped past, close enough that its feathers brushed his ear, Flynn saw something red and wet trailing behind it, and he realized it hadn't been a monster, but just another carrion bird with a choice morsel in its beak.
The steps were a series of sluggish, dribbling waterfalls. The crows fluttered and splashed as if in a birdbath. They jeered as he climbed past them, unafraid of his presence in the middle of their festival. Flynn tried to concentrate on simply lifting one foot after the other until he reached the landing.
There had been a concentrated attempt at defense just outside the doorway. He could tell by how thickly the bodies lay piled there. The sight of a roiling mass of black, feathered bodies atop what had been a person made his flesh crawl. He quickened his step.
Plish. Plish. Plish.
Inside, the air had merged with the shadows. It wrapped him in a rank, humid embrace, slipping in against his skin and trickling down this throat, thick enough to choke him. It felt as if he was walking through a warm fog, and he tried not to breathe too deeply.
The signs of battle were sparser in the dimly-lit hallway, though they remained apparent. Tables and potted plants had been overturned or smashed. Paintings and tapestries had been torn down or left stained lurid red by splayed, clawing fingers. A confusion of dark, tacky footprints provided a macabre map of the progression of the fighting. Every now and again, there would be a dark form crumpled near the wall, motionless.
A golden pillar shone at the end of the hall. Light, the light of the setting sun, beckoned. Flynn walked on toward it, drawn dumbly, inescapably. The light was his fate, his doom. He would know what lay in store for him there if he would allow himself to think of it. Fear swelled in his mind, filling all the spaces where his thoughts should be. It increased with the growing numbers of the fallen, clothed in red now and numerous enough to flood the hallway. The river crept toward Flynn and flowed around his boots, seeking the ocean where crows feasted on the shores.
Plish, plish, plish!
The light called to him even as he felt a growing repulsion for what must await him within it. He knew that evil could cloak itself in light, in honor, in righteousness. Evil waited for him at the end of the hall, and he was rushing headlong for it. There was no turning back, no turning aside. He couldn't delay, couldn't stall, had to hurry, had to keep going, had to reach that taunting glimpse of gold...!
Plish!
Flynn burst through the double doors into the receiving room of the palace. The place was a battleground. Corpses littered the floor: people he recognized, people he worked with. Their faces had been changed by the agonies of death into twisted and horrifying masks. They had been slashed, stabbed, beaten, broken, tossed aside, trampled down. Their identities flashed into and out of his mind as quickly as his gaze raked over them and moved on.
Sunlight poured though the towering stained glass window, broken up by the rays of a shining star. A throne sat before it, pierced by arrows that had missed their mark, and flanked by swords and spears that sagged like simpering courtiers from the bodies of the victims they impaled. The throne loomed with unsettling potential amid the deathly stillness, swallowing up the light that would otherwise have fallen upon its occupant. Flynn grasped for his sword, but it was no longer in its sheath. He saw it in the hands of the only other living being in the room, its familiar hilt caressed by equally familiar fingers. Unable to deny the truth any longer, Flynn took in the sight of Yuri lounging on the shadowy throne, a velvet cloak draped over his shoulders, a crown sitting crookedly upon his head.
"I kept it warm for you," he said with a smile. Standing, he took a step forward, offering Flynn the pristine sword.
Words wouldn't come. Shaking his head, he stepped backward and tripped as his foot came down on something soft. He fell with a splash, and found himself staring into the wide, dead eyes of Councilman Ragou and Captain Cumore. They'd been speared together through the heart by Yuri's bloodied sword.
"I did it for you," Yuri said. Flynn's sword flashed down before his eyes, cutting off the sight of death. "Look. Not a spot on it."
Horror rose like bile in Flynn's throat until he couldn't hold back his scream.
Thrashing, he threw back the covers and sat straight up in bed. His ears still rang with his shout, and he couldn't catch his breath. Shoving the blankets away, he welcomed the cool night air that replaced the swampy heat of the dream and left him shivering.
Movement beside him had him reaching for a sword that wasn't belted to his side. Bundled up in the sheets, and still mostly lost to sleep, Yuri rolled over and sighed.
"Flynn..." he mumbled. "Whassa matter?"
He stared down at Yuri's face, peaceful and composed, devoid of the terrible, delighted ruthlessness of his nightmare counterpart. Flynn forced himself to breathe deeply, needing to calm down just as much as he needed to escape the sickening horror of his dream.
"Nothing," he managed. His voice nearly broke on the whisper, but he still added: "Just a nightmare. Sorry to wake you."
With a soft groan, Yuri hooked an arm around his waist and snuggled in close to his leg.
"Knock it off," he commanded tiredly.
"That isn't really how dreams work," Flynn muttered.
He tried to settle back down. The covers were still too warm, and the moist puffs of Yuri's breath over his shoulder as they situated themselves against each other made him shudder.
"Yuri, can you—"
"Go back to sleep." The arm he'd flung across Flynn's chest tightened ever so slightly. "Dream about me."