Soulguard
Sleepless I
Hands pressed against the cold, clear surface of the mirror, Marion Arc sighed as he feels the weariness of a hundred sleepless nights gnaws through his bones. The bags under his eyes hang like heavy anvils, bearing a weight that beckoned him to blissless slumber. Yet, a deeper pang of fear and guilt, like the screaming peals of a thousand chimes howled at him each time he dared to rest his head.
Stalwart, he chooses to remain among the conscious, long after the midnight bells have rung, long after all others within his house had found their rest. He was waiting now-matching will against the exhaustion that threatened to cut him low any moment—waiting until he finds certainty that his son, Jaune, won't burst awake with terrors too vivid and torturous for a boy's mind to , muscular arms snake around him from behind as Marion tenses and loosens at the soothing touch of his wife's fingertips. Jacqueline Arc draws herself close to her husband, leaning against him as much as he does into her, both keeping each other upright against the siren call of sleep.
In silence, they stand together in their darkened bathroom, feeling the cold numb their feet, the ticking of a clock interspersed with the occasional hoot of an owl their own accompaniment.
"I don't know how to protect him, Jackie," said Marion, breaking before the agonizing silence.
"We'll find help," said Jacqueline. "Sigmund said he would refer us to someone else. Someone with a better toolset more geared towards-"
"We both watched Sigmund collapse, stumbling out of the room like he was retreating out of a Nevermore nest. Sigmund. I remember my father telling me stories about the man, how he ventured around the four kingdoms after the war, helping survivors face down their demons without a hint of stress or fear!" The words come tumbling out of him in a harsh whisper as he turns, pulling himself loose of his wife's embrace and causing her to stumble forward. Catching her in his arms, Marion lowers his forehead with his eyes closed, swallowing. "I'm sorry. I shouldn't…I was—" The warmth of her palms hushed him.
"I know," she says as she presses her forehead against his. "I know."
"What kind of father am I that I can't even protect my boy? What kind of Huntsman am I that I can't vanquish a few nightmares?"
"A great one for the first," replied his wife with a small grin. "The second best that I've ever known to answer the latter."
"Second best?" said Marion, a half-smile appearing on his face. "Do I have to be worried about my position in this family?"
Jacqueline's face contorted halfway between discus and laughter. "Considering I was referring to my father, I hope not."
Eye's widening in surprise and late-horror at what he just implied, Marion Arc let slip as a single bark of laughter before Jacqueline held a finger up to his lips. For a few tense seconds, they waited for something to break loose. A wail. A scream. Something. When nothing came, they both broke down in shivering chuckles, shaking with suppressed mirth. When they finally found their composure again, Marion sighed as he locked eyes with his wife and ran his hand through her golden locks. Jacqueline, less inclined towards pleasantries, drew his lips to hers as they melted into each other.
Drowning in each other's embrace without a hint or want of air, they found refuge in each other that they so desperately desired, that they so desperately needed. Exhaustion fled at the onset of a new emotion, rising in them with desires to stay awake just a while longer and perhaps a little longer still.
"Mom! Dad!"
Ardor extinguished at the intrusion, the Arc's fixed themselves back to a state of modesty and left their bathroom refuge with haste. Opening the door, they found their second oldest daughter standing in the doorway to their bedroom, a worried expression held in her worried blue eyes. More alarming than her expression was the fact she had strapped her plate armor on and held her mace in one hand and a terribly scribbled note in the other.
"What's wrong."
Friday looked up, her lip quivering in worry. "Jaune's gone."
"What!"
…
A lone lantern defied parted the sea of shadows beneath a starless sky barely seen through the gaps in the branches of the thicket. The forest, rotten and dead since eons past, stands monument to a place lost to history. Gone is brown of bark and the skin of mold. Whatever is left here stands petrified and grey, like a corpse buried in a mound of winter.
A young boy holds the lantern aloft with a shivering hand, the other clutching a plush doll close to his chest, as if a little father keeping an infant safe. "Don-don't worry, Eder," stuttered the child to his doll, muck and mud staining its cotton armor and yellow hair—taken liberally from the family dog—patched into the chin of the little guardian, "we'll find the castle soon. I'm sure. That's where my dreams told me it would be. That's where we'll find the flying skeleton head and the lady of the stone!"
The cotton warrior doesn't reply. The silence echoes deep into the boys soul as his confidence shudders and wanes. Jaune can hear the raking of claws against the rock-like skin of the threes, red, rapacious daggers glaring at him unblinking from beside the contours of distant tree trunks. There is no path back now. He had long since abandoned the clarity of roads and safety when he ventured into the greyed thicket that his mommy and daddy warned him never to go, that his sisters told each other horror stories about.
More importantly, however, Jaune knew, even as young as he is, that he had to face his nightmares. He had taken the first step of the journey and he had to see it through. Despite his parent's best efforts, no doctor could properly understand what tormented him. Nor could the therapists explain how the boy could see apparitions with such clarity and detail that he would even be able to recall their history.
With each passing year, the dreams bloomed, blossoming from vague images of beasts that could be excused for a night terrors of a timid, frightful young boy—something quite understandable in a world of existing monsters—into images too visceral and detailed for the mere imaginations of child and glimpses at people long thought dead. The monsters remained but they were now joined in fields of battle by humans and humanoids, different from the faunus but something alike altogether.
One thing was certain in Jaune's tumultuous little mind: the nightmares were scary and rough but the hardest thing was hearing mommy and daddy argue and knowing it was his fault. Good boys shouldn't make mommy and daddy worry. Jaune knew he had to be brave, the way great-grandpa's ghost-twin told him that time after they went to great grandpa's "going away party." Jaune didn't quite know how grandpa could have a ghost-twin while he was lying still in the wooden case in front of everyone but Jaune was sure happy to talk to him again, even after daddy told him he wouldn't be able to anymore.
"True bravery, boy, is meeting your nightmares head-on, not being unafraid of them. All warriors fear death. All fear the end. That is natural. It is the meaning of our existence, our struggle to live. But to be consumed by the fear is not life, but meaningless existence. Face the demons boy, and bring your fear to bear as you would a blade against your foes."
Conviction triumphing over doubt , the brave little explorer carried on, unaware of the crimson eyes watching him, clambering ever-closer along the sifting shadows. Behind him, he could hear the growls of the pack draw ever closer. Jaune's grip on Eder held as strong as his pudgy little hands could. He could see the bridge ahead. He just had to make it across. Heaving with every breath, lungs ablaze with sweltering pain, he pressed forward with all that he had and dared no look back.
Across the bridge, his little rainboots squeaked, two feet of yellow squelching through brownish mulch. Near the end of the crossing, Jaune found himself unable to hear the noise of his own boots anymore. His ears with filled with the pounding of something far heavier than a grown man with snarls too deep even for a wolf.
He's so close now. He could feel like. This was the right path to take. Through the darkest path of the forbidden woods, past the old grey trees, across the crumbling bridge, and through the invisible wall that the monsters can't get through. Only then would he find the castle between places.
Boom.
Jaune stumbled to a halt but the beasts of the Grimm hold no such inclination. All they hold is avarice and glutton. The void cannot be filled. Yet it must. Claws and teeth bared, it descends upon it, uncaring of the shrilling whistle squealing through the night air.
A sickening splat jolts Jaune back into action, motes of ruptured beast spilling against his cheek and disintegrating away. More booms echo from within the darkness ahead, turning to whistles before the echoing was done. The sound of trunks shattering apart and blasts of force jolted Jaune's ears and made them ring. With each impact, each thunderous blast that vibrated through the rubber of his boots, Jaune shook and whimpered.
Still, he carried on.
Deeper into the black and nothing did Jaune run, his little lantern dancing up and down. The boy couldn't hear anything but the ringing as the last few blasts roared too close the tolerance of his ears. Still, he could feel the vibrations lessening and ceasing. Gasping from breath and fighting a rising nausea, Jaune capitulated to his urges and looked behind.
To his past, now was a forest cracked asunder. Craters and snapped trunks littered the ground. The shadowy motes bled out of the ambiguous forms of the beasts that had been chasing him, melting into the shadows as they gasped their last, many with iron-balls still lodged in their chests or their frames torn and ripped like a wet burlap sack. Slowing, but not stopping, the boy carried on at a more tolerable pace drinking in much needed air to fuel his aching body and calm his nerves.
"I-I told you, we would make it, Eder," said Jaune, lip quivering despite his best efforts. But he couldn't cry. He had to be brave. Otherwise, Eder would get scared too. He couldn't do that to his friend. "The c-cannons of the castle will keep us safe. I knew they would."
Trudging forward, Jaune felt the ground beneath his feet turn from the slippery slop of mud to a tessellated path of what appeared to be a smooth jade-like material. It was then that Jaune realized he could see the light above.
Illimitable flickers of light drifted along great rivers of energy that pulled at Jaune's very soul. Distant whispers from scatted gems of light above licked at Jaune's mind in a chorus of inane babbling, like a symphony of the mad composed through eons of stillness. Looking out further, he could see hundreds, no, thousands more of these rivers, with fainter pulls and whispers but all still there.
Coalescing in a conflux of deltas, the rivers blended together in woven strands of fate and energy, casting a dim light an old rusted pillar of inanimate crystal, clear and silent like a sentinel in the night.
As Jaune's eyes descended from the crystal, his breath hitched and his heart fluttered. Great walls of steel yet gleaming despite obvious years of disuse and damage. Rows and rows of cannons protruding from ports within the walls. A grand structure long forgotten to time, with ancient words and scripts engraved deep into the stone and glass that buttressed the weight of it all. To the center, down the path that Jaune was on, the is bent open beyond repair, leading to the doors of the castle.
All as the boy's dreams foretold.
"Whoa," said Jaune. A grin spread across his chubby cheeks. "Castle. Castle! We found it, Eder!" Lifting the doll up in the air to show him the vast castle in the distance. "I told you there was nothing to worry about." Pushing ahead in a merry jaunt, the boy made his way past the gates and down the smooth stone path, each step lighting the ground, unbeknownst to him.
The doors to the castle as cracked and rotten as they are vast. Looking up, Jaune gives the imposing blockade a tentative prod with his lantern at the prompting of a feeling coming from deep within. With an aching groan, the doors shudder and open, as dust and ash scatter into the air. Coughing, the boy ventures forth into the darkness.
"Hello?" he asked the darkness. "-Is anyone there. K-keep close, Galahad. I-I'll keep you safe." Venturing forth into the darkness, the boy recalled the words of his mother in times of fear. "One step at a time. That's how I'll find my way."
"As all simpletons do!"
With a startled, Jaune falls on his rear, lantern clattering aside, out of reach. Pressing his doll into his chest as if to protect his friend from a grisly sight, Jaune shuffled back as quick as he could, fleeing back from the glowering eyes that drew ever closer. Through the shadow, a terrible skull with burning eyes emerged, held aloft by some unseen power. Breathless, the boy and skull stared at each other, wordless, each examining the other with narrowing eyes.
"I am Conce—"
"You're Concelhaut!" said Jaune. "I know you. My dreams said you would be here."
"Inde—"
"You're my pet skull!"
The fire within Concelhaut's hollow eyes burned with unbridled fury. "I see that I'm going to hate this incarnation of you as much did the others."
"No you won't," said Jaune. "My dreams told me to be prepared to encourage you to behave."
"And how, boy, will you make me, Concelhaut, behave."
"Here," Jaune said holding out a cluster of small candies. "These are for you."
The fire within the skulls eyes blinked briefly and then rolled somehow.
"Well, don't just hold it out in your hand, open them, you simpleton," said Concelhaut. Opening the candied wrapper with as much as his tiny fingers would allow, the boy lifted the luminous pellets up before Concelhaut's mouth. The lich recoiled "I said open it up, not feed me. I lack digits, not movement boy. Furthermore, I have no desire to lap up the filth that stains your fingers from your dalliances with the outside."
The boy's face scrunches up in confusion. "But…you don't have a stomach. How do you eat anyway?"
"How do I—taste, boy! I eat candies for the taste!"
"But you don't have a tongue either!"
"I—you—" A stillborn rant perishes within the skull. "Insufferable. Simply insufferable. Come along," Concelhaut said, scooping its lower jaw across the candies in a quick swipe. Violent crunching ensued. "Don't dally behind, either. It wouldn't do for you to be lost in the dark and starve or crack your head against something preposterous and die in the way only a child could."
A shiver ran down Jaune's spine as he quickened his pace to match that of the floating skull. "Don't worry, Eder. I'm sure Concelhaut's just pretending to be mean. If we get lost in the dark, I'm sure he'll come back."
Concelhaut promptly snorted in disgust.
"See, Eder," said Jaune. "That's the sound he makes when he has to do something he doesn't like."
With each step they took, torches spark alight in aged and thoroughly engraved braziers, glyphs and marred in a tongue that the boy found himself vaguely capable of comprehending. Arcane fires of blue and violet cast light upon rows and rows of bookshelves coated with dust and regiments of inanimate juggernauts of rust clad in steel and iron on the second floor above. A sensation came over Jaune, like a thousand strings tugging within his chest, each traceable back to an individual suit of armor.
"Conci," said Jaune.
"Do not call me that," hissed the skull. "I did not become an archmage and ascend beyond the touch of the damned wheel to be referred to as 'Conci' by some half-wit child! Concelhaut. My name is Concelhaut. You will refer to me as such."
Jaune blinked as he shuffled his feet. "Okay. How long do we have to walk because…"
"Well? Spit it out boy."
"I need to pee real bad. Is there a toilet in the castle?"
"No," said Concelhaut. "There are no working latrines in this eons old, long abandoned, dilapidated hovel I am forced to suffer within."
"Ok," said Jaune, slightly sullen. "I'll just hold it, I guess."
Down a long, tattered carpet left grey beneath a skin of building dust, the indentured lich led the boy, out of the main halls of the castle, into a chamber brighter than all the others. The base of that grand, luminous crystal seen outside protruded from the center of the room as great copper hoops and grinding gears held it in place in a complicated mechanism. Globes spiraled on needle points of copper, connected to long spinning arms that arced around the loops that encircled the crystal.
Around the base, Concelhaut led the boy, toward the a stone bust left upon a barren stand with naught but a few torches to keep it company. It was sculpted to look like an old woman, her features noble, warmth emanating even through aged stone. The Steward of Caed Nuad.
"I found the boy, Steward. May I be excused to continue suffering the stink from the endless mounds of rotten hagfish that you refuse to dispose of."
"But I have, Concelhaut," snipped the Steward, the words from the thick stone spreading a smile across Jaune's cheeks. "With the castle in such disrepair and with few custodians still functioning, why, it must fall on the Steward and her only maid to commit to the cleaning. So why don't you hurry along and do just that, maid."
Grumbling, the floating skull left with a litany of curses to forgotten gods under his breath.
"Bye Conci—I mean, Concelhaut," said Jaune. Concelhaut, swearing vengeance as he had always done, departed from the room undulating through their air as a balloon would on the end of a rope. Turning the to the Steward, Jaune gave a big toothy grin as he stepped up close to meet the stone lady once thought to be little less than a figment of his dreams. "You're the lady of the stone! You're real! You're really real! I knew you weren't just a dream! See Eder, I was right!"
Laughter warm like porridge settling the basin of stomach chimed from the Steward. "Hello, Watcher. It does me well to see you among the living again."
Jaune blinked. "Watcher?"
...
A/N: So, I been playing a lot of Deadfire. Yep. Couldn't help it. For those of you that are interested, my other recently inactive stories will find movement soon. Graduating and shifting continents does a number on free time though. This one is in part an attempt to get back into writing and in part an act of stupidity due to the amont of things that I already have going on. We'll see how this goes.