A/N: I wrote something based on a similar idea to this a while ago, before I'd finished the game, and I said that I'd come back to explore it again later. Now I've completed the game, I'm revisiting the theme based on the thoughts I had while playing it. From early on in the game I was reminded strongly of H.P. Lovecraft's The Outsider, and given that the only part if Daniel we ever see is his left arm, for a while I expected there would be a similar twist coming at the end. Turns out there wasn't, which does make sense to me considering design practicalities and how the story played out, but it's still an idea I'd like to explore. This perhaps goes against the canon version of events slightly, but could still make sense assuming Daniel gets the 'good' ending (Alexander defeated but Agrippa not saved). It gets a little graphic towards the end, but nothing worse than the game itself.
Disclaimer: I don't own Amnesia: The Dark Descent (although I would dearly love to work on a project with Frictional Games someday).
The Harsh Light of Day
Words cannot describe my elation when I finally left Castle Brennenburg. As I stepped out of the great wooden doors into the daylight, the purest sense of relief washed over me. There I stood, blinking in the sun, an almost forgotten sensation to me after what seemed like days in the dark. But now, at last I had done it. I had got out. I had defeated Alexander. I was free.
Realisation and acceptance of this fact filled me with joy, as I stood on the flagstones in front of the castle entrance and allowed myself to bathe in the sun's rays. The air was still cold, but it was fresh and crisp unlike the damp chill I had felt underground. I welcomed the light as it fell on my skin, bringing with it a more gentle, ambient warmth than the candles and torches I had relied upon. It awakened the world around me in vibrant colour, allowing me to once again see clearly. The dappled light, shining through the pine branches that swayed in the breeze, caught my eye. I could see the sunbleached grey stones beneath my feet; the bright, clear blue of the sky; the shining glint of daylight on metal...
Metal.
As I realised what was so wrong about that, my moment of joyous relief was harshly punctured. The all too familiar ripple of fear ran down my spine. There should be no metal out here, beyond the castle walls; only trees and earth and stone. But as I looked for where I had seen it, it was gone. Could I still be hallucinating? I knew already that the memories of the bladed arms and fingers of the Servants would not cease to haunt me for some time. Yet surely they no longer hunted me? Their master was gone and I was no longer in the castle. They had no purpose to pursue me.
No, it was merely an illusion; my fragile mind playing tricks on me. I was safe. There was no longer reason for me to anticipate danger at every turn. Whatever I had seen was nothing more than a trick of the light, amplified by my overstimulated imagination.
Trying to calm myself, I breathed deeply and looked down at my hands, which I could still feel shaking. It seemed they had not stopped trembling from the moment I had awoken in that God-forsaken place, but now I knew I had nothing more to fear.
Except...
Even as I tried to reassure myself, the more I couldn't shake the feeling that something was wrong. As I tried to focus on my hands my vision began to swim, blurring and warping as if I were looking through a distorted lens, but this time I knew I couldn't attribute it to an effect of the shadows. The cold sense of dread that I had carried with me throughout Brennenburg, so recently abated, began to rise up again.
I was standing in full daylight, that had eradicated all dark places where danger could hide, so why could I still not see clearly? Why was it that my fingers appeared to warp and change before my eyes, seeming long and narrow and glistening as I tried to focus?
However, as the image sharpened, I realised that actually, this must be the first time I had seen anything clearly in a long while.
Three of the fingers of my right hand were missing. The thumb and forefinger remained, but the three other digits had gone and were instead replaced by what appeared to be knife blades. From my wrist to my elbow, razor blades protruded from beneath my skin like spines, seemingly grafted into my flesh and bound in place by the razor wire entwined around my forearm.
The sight was enough to make me want to scream, or gag, yet I found I had frozen. The same terror that had gripped me deep inside the castle's walls, draining my sanity and sapping my strength such that I was barely able to crawl away from my enemies, had again set in.
I wished I could convince myself this was just one more hallucination, yet I instinctively knew it was not. I could no longer deny it. At last I saw the truth, and I understood.
Alexander. It was his doing. When I had finally refused to continue with his... endeavours to extract Vitae, I was no longer useful to him. So he must have found another use for me. I still could not recall it clearly, yet I knew what he must have done: changing me, the way he had created his Servants. Using me as a source of Vitae. Punishing me for turning on him, before expelling me from the Inner Sanctum and the deeper chambers of the castle.
As realisation set in I felt my legs begin to tremble, and unable to support myself, I collapsed to the floor. On all fours, I found myself staring at my legs, and again felt the urge to retch. My feet had gone; my legs severed below the knee, and instead, pieces of metal were grafted onto the remnants of my calves.
No no no please no
How could I have not known? How could I have made my journey through the castle and not once realised? It seemed that I had had one more motive for taking the Amnesia potion. Even as my mind had struggled to cope with the events I witnessed in Brennenburg, it seemed that it had spared me the worst horror of all. My ability to comprehend the truth had been locked away with the worst of my memories. In the dark I had been able to ignore it, deny it, hide from it, yet now in the harsh light of day, I was forced to see what I had become. No longer could I turn away from the reality of what Alexander had done to me - or what I had done to myself.
As I realised that all my hopes of escaping and returning to Mayfair had been in vain, an anguished cry escaped my throat, yet the noise that reverberated through the mountains was not human. I was no longer human. I knew I could not return to Alstadt now, for they would no longer know me as Daniel of Mayfair, but one of the monsters they had told me tales of. And it was true. I was a monster now, all thanks to Alexander.
I wished I could feel anger. I wished for the bitter, burning fury I had felt as I entered the Inner Sanctum, giving me purpose and driving me onwards, but instead I felt nothing but an endless, empty hopelessness. Alexander was already dead. I had already claimed my revenge, and all for what? Never again could I walk among the world of humanity. Never could I undo the things that had been done to me - or the things I had done to others.
Tears began to fill my eyes, and I watched as they fell to the ground to stain the pale stone darker. I'm sorry, I thought desperately. Let this be undone. I'm sorry! But I knew regret for my actions would not undo the punishment that had been dealt me.
As I stared down at my mutilated body, the last remaining walls the amnesia potion had built in my mind crumbled away. I could remember it all: all the atrocities I had committed, all the people I had tortured to save my own skin... yet as I recalled Alexander turning the tables on me, I still wished desperately for a way to reverse this. Alexander was dead! I had defeated him! Was that not penance enough? Was my ordeal in Brennenburg not sufficient to redeem me for my sins?
But deep down, I knew the answer. Yet still I longed to regain the humanity I had lost long before Alexander had physically torn it away.
My left hand, I could see, was unaltered. It was the same familiar shape that had desperately gripped onto the lantern I carried through the labyrinth beneath Brennenburg. The last part of me that was still human, and I tried to focus on that. But yet I could not help my curiosity to see the full extent of the damage.
Fearfully, I lifted my bloodstained shirt and reached with my left hand to feel the skin underneath. My stomach knotted as my fingers ran over the coarse ridges that had been crudely stitched together, the flesh torn and then reassembled. A fresh wave of nausea swept over me as I realised how literal the stomach knot must be, the exterior damage hiding the further mutilations inside.
Not wanting to, yet feeling a morbid compulsion to discover what exactly had been done to me, I moved my hand higher to touch my chest. My fingers traced the scars of familiar lines I remembered cutting into others, and had now been etched permanently into my own skin. I could feel my heart pounding, yet the rhythm was alien. My breath seemed to be sucked in and out of me in the wrong places, as if my throat was damaged or my mouth displaced.
I hardly dared move my hand higher to feel my jaw, fearing what I might find, but I pulled it away and then placed it back on my neck, moving my fingers up towards my chin. I wanted to whimper as I felt the way the bone had been split, muscles and tendons cut vertically so that my mouth and throat gaped open, but the only sound that came out was a groan.
How was this possible? Surely I could still speak. I had spoken to Alexander, and Agrippa... but even as I tried to deny the evidence right in front of me, it dawned on me that I'd never said a word. The both of them had only ever spoken in my head. Even when I was talking to myself, it had only ever been in my mind. I truly was deformed and damaged beyond all hope.
Alexander had destroyed me. Every part of me he had cut and mutilated when I had refused to do the same to others, but unlike the other Servants, he had left my eyes. They were still the same, so that I could see what I had become, and still cry when I realised what that meant.
What was I to do now? Ever being among human company again was an impossibility, and without that, my continued existence would surely bring with it only misery and dread. I almost thought I would throw myself over the ridge into the valley and hope that it would offer oblivion as an escape, but whatever science or sorcery Alexander had used to create his servants, it unnaturally sustained their lives. I did not know what it would take to kill such a thing, or what may only bring me further torment.
Did I have any other choice but to return to the castle, and hide myself in the dark among the other Servants? Maybe if I were to drink of the amnesia draught again, this time it might leave my mind as blank and numb as theirs, and I would no longer have to suffer through the torment I found myself facing.
Yet whatever scenario I imagined, I knew I had no way to escape from the horrific reality of my situation. It seemed that the nightmare I had fled to Brennenburg to escape could not be as bad as the one I was now living.
With my last remnants of hope brutally extinguished, I lay upon the flagstones and wept, begging for the Shadow to return and take me after all.