I had to post this one now or I would be editing it forever. I don't think it's as depressing as the last one, but that doesn't mean its any less bizarre. I'm really working with creating a universe for the Golden Age and have some really cool ideas, or at least I think they're cool. Hope you agree.
Chapter Summary: On the ruined planet that once housed the palaces of the Golden Age elite, there is one mansion that has yet to be demolished. Pitch Black is determined to find out why.
Chapter Rating: Teen
Chapter Warnings: mentions of possession and possible schizophrenia
It was a large estate. He could see that between the old cast iron bars that made up the fence, guarding the tattered building from intruders. Large and abandoned. He didn't expect to find anyone here, on this rock at the centre of the Constellation Nebula, the planet that had housed the Tsar, ruler of the Golden Age, and his imperial court. Everyone had left a long time ago. It would have been foolish for anyone to stay. All that existed here now was darkness and desolation.
Darkness and desolation that distinctively ended at those ivy covered bars.
Pitch Black, the Nightmare King, glared at the vegetation, willing the delicate leaves to wilt. He was ruin and decay, shadow given form, no plant had a right to flourish in his presence. But the insolent foliage just went right on growing and spreading and doing whatever it is that weeds do, ignorant of the Bogyman's wrath.
Beneath him, Pitch's mount gave a nervous huff, uncomfortable being so close to the old manor. He wanted to reprimand the beast, tare it limb from limb for daring to allow fear to control its actions, but even he could not deny the unease bubbling up at the bottom of his stomach. With a sigh he dismounted and let the fiend, a monster that, when it was flesh and blood, once had three heads (one of a loin, one of a goat, and one of a dog) but since it had become incorporeal seemed to be stuck somewhere between all three, run off into the rocky ruins that surrounded them.
His Nightmare Men and Fearlings had been immaculate in their destruction of all that once proudly stood on this crystal inlay planet, crushing the gold leaf buildings to dust and obliterating the very notion that a grand empire once found its rest on this barren waste. Everything had been incinerated in glorious flames of black fear.
Everything except for one trivial estate.
He couldn't understand it, why such an unimposing building caused dread to ripple through his ranks, how his every horror and brute were filled with panic at the mere sight of a rusting barrier. And though their fear was delicious, the only terror allowed to rule his subjects was his own. With a sneer on his face and mad anger coursing through his veins, Pitch attacked the gate, claws ready to rip at the enchantments that kept his shadows back, tear apart any spells that prevented him from obtaining his goal and eradicate all sorcery that stood in his way. He steeled himself, readying for the burn of the barrier fighting back, for the flames of a white hot sun to scorch his skin. But when his long grey fingers found purchase on the cold black metal... there was no pain. There were no wards to keep him back, no enchantments obstructing his path, the only thing standing between him and entry to the abandoned courtyard was a sturdy metal gate… that wasn't even locked.
With an annoyed huff, Pitch threw open the gates, black bars banging against the brick posts supporting the entry way, an appropriately loud squeal of rusty hinges announcing his arrival. Still cautious, but mainly irate, he stepped past the boundary and onto the warn cobbles stones that led up to the old house. As he skulked up the drive, he could feel the shadows leave him, the beasts and horrors that clung to his skin and hid in his cloak, fleeing to the safety of the darkness beyond the bars. The only company left to him now where the monsters that shrieked and fought inside his head.
It was far too bright in this place, in the overgrown courtyard that still dared to hold a form of beauty despite having gone years without upkeep (almost as if the landscaper had meant for the greenery to grow wild and untamed). And though he could not locate a cause for the glow permeating the air, he swore he would find its source and extinguish all light that existed in this forsaken dwelling until nothing remained but pitch black. The entire planet would be eclipsed, even if he had to block it out by hand, he would see it done!
The path ended at three short steps leading up to a small brick landing and a pair of heavy oak doors, each hand crafted out of a single piece of wood, stretching high above a normal man's height. Affixed to the ornate pieces of timber were two elaborate lion's head statues, large thick rings clasped in their jaws as they eternally stood guard over occupants who had long since forsaken them. The castings we exquisite in their design, each laying claim to its own features, yet together obviously a pair. The silver lining that had been meticulously layered over the snarling animal heads held the splotchy patterns and dirty brown rainbows of too much time past without polish, yet somehow each still managed to keep a dim shine. Nonetheless, the effigy on the left was already starting to show the cracks and flakes of the hoary metal wearing away, revealing the dark iron beneath.
With a sneer on his face, Pitch reached out to the splintered head and seized the weighted ring in its maw. He raised it high, then let it fall with a loud crash that echoed through the deserted halls as sparkling flecks fell to the ground, leaving only tarnished black iron in their wake. Smirking at the listless dark eyes blindly staring back at him, the Nightmare King swept past the feeble guards and into the manor's grand foyer.
The inside of the residence was much like the out (though thankfully contained less foliage), large and splendorous, yet showing the signs of disuse and neglect. The floors were polished marble, the double staircase meeting at the mezzanine a hardy wood covered in velvet carpet, and on the walls, where the panelling ended, wallpaper reached up to the vaulted ceiling. In the centre of the plasterwork hung a golden chandelier, meters of stringed crystals, as clear as the air after a light rain, hung in an intricate pattern that spoke of opulence and fancy, yet the tallow candles remained unlit.
The entire room was shrouded in a calm dusk, the strange light from outside making its way paste the thick satin draperies that covered the leaded windows above. And though Pitch generally found comfort in dim light, this place was in no way pleasant. These shadows contained no fiends of torment to do his bidding, no slaves of discord he could bend to his will. The only dismay that existed within these halls was his own.
His sight shifted about the room, searching for the source of his unease. There where doors on all sides of him, the right leading to the Library and Tea Room, the left arriving at the Billiard Room and eateries, and, if one travelled beneath the stares, they would find themselves in the mists of the Great Ballroom overlooking the Grand Terrace and a splendid Garden. Not much liking any of these options (and not pausing to dwell on how he knew what lay behind closed doors), Pitch took to the stairs and the second story landing.
At the top of the steps he found himself in a similar situation as to when he was at the bottom, for on both sides of him stretched a great hallway, littered with doors. Taking off in no particular direction, Pitch began peering into rooms at random. The first door led to a bedroom of fine furnishings and silk sheets, soft carpet floors and linen curtains, all soaked in calming shades of blue. The next door led to another bedroom of equal luxury, but this time bathed in a hideous orange, and the next door led to yet another bedroom, but this one toned red, then yellow, then violet. It was a relief when the ingress at the end of the hall opened on a small Dining Chamber with a demur colour pallet, and not another oversaturated, colour-soaked hall.
Entering the room he examined his surroundings. There was not much to this space, especially in comparison to the lavishness of the bedrooms he had just suffered through, but it did not appear to be merely servants' quarters either. This room possessed one thing the others had lacked: personal touches, those little objects that people leave around to mark a territory as their own. Looking down at the dinning set, he could tell the tablecloth had been crocheted with love by hand and taken many years to complete. Running his fingertips over the intricate pattern, he could tell only the finest silk had be used, but not to marvel or impress, merely because the crafter had wanted the best for the ones she loved.
Hastily drawing his hand back, Pitch moved away from the table and over to the cabinet on the wall. Inside he could see trinkets and treasures: a porcelain dog kept out of the reach of small hands, a dirty rock found on a summer's walk, a chipped tea cup retired from use but too precious to be thrown away; all things that someone had held dear. Taking a moment to linger, he marvelled at the useless things people kept around before moving on to explore the rest of the room. He noted the blueberry stain on the carpet and the small drawing at the baseboard of the wall, all the little intricacies that made the room truly unique.
Rounding the table he came to a stop in front of an additional door leading out of the chamber. Suddenly the anxiety he'd felt on passing iron bars was back, the calm tranquillity that had briefly overcome him while surveying the room was gone, replaced by a gut retching uneasiness. He looked at the door, nothing but a harmless piece of wood, yet when he thought of reaching his hand out to grasp the crystal knob, he had the urge to release his stomach contents onto the floor (how long had it been since he last bothered to eat anyway?). It was then that the demons in his head chose to start acting up, screaming and crying a cacophony of noise in his mind, banging on his skull and scratching at his heart. He fled from the room, bent in half as the pain ripped through his torso and sent stars to dance around his vision. He crossed the hall, wrenched open the nearest door, and fell into a soothing embrace of darkness.
[Page Break]
When the voices died down to a mild roar and he regained enough control over his limbs to pull his body from the floor, Pitch found he had stumbled into a closet. No... it was too big for a closet, a Dressing Room then. As the lights faded from his eyes he could see the armoire and bureau across the room along with the chaise lounge in the corner next to an old trunk. He stumbled to his feet and tripped across the small room until his hands found support on the handles of the wardrobe. Forcing himself to stand tall, he yanked the grips back, curious as to the contents of the wooden box.
Clothes... ordinary clothes.
Of course it was clothes, what else did he expect to find in a wardrobe. He almost laughed at how common it all was: dress shirts and coats never worn, neckties and vests still pressed from their purchase, the contents of any proper lord's attire. He pushed the doors closed once more, and still feeling weak, staggered over to the sofa for a small reprieve.
As he lay on the plush upholstered chair, he looked down to the simple trunk at his feet. While the other furnishings of the room held a degree of lavishness, the chest was so simple it almost looked rugged in comparison. The lid had been neatly closed and the entire thing tucked away, as if the owner hadn't anymore need for what was held inside, as if he never planned to come back for it. Reaching his thin grey hand down, he unfastened the leather straps holding tight and wrapped his long gnarled fingers around the great latch on the front, slowly pulling the lid open.
Now this was more like it. The chest was filled with army uniforms of all shapes and sizes; some with braided ropes and little brass buttons polished to shine, others with tears that cut clean through both sides of the fine cloth and dark brown stains that would never be washed out. There where uniforms for all needs and occasions. Thick wool coats for climbing mountains and light cotton shirts for crossing deserts. This rubber jacket had been used in a campaign that took the troops deep into a tropical rainforest at the height of monsoon season. Those trousers had been wore to an early battle when the cadet's graduation ceremony had been interrupted, thinning the newly formed ranks.
Pitch examined each article, poking his fingers through arrow holes and claw mark, running his palm across embroidery and tangling epaulette fringe. The medals had been removed; those ribbons and cords intended to show honour and bravery, bestowed on men who gave their lives fighting for a deluded notion of good. No doubt the man these articles belonged to possessed an obscene number of those trinkets, probably a whole room somewhere in this very building dedicated to displaying them in golden frames behind plate glass.
Who was this soldier, this General so beloved by his nation, so revered by his troupes? It would be an honour to face him on the battle field, to test his wits and skills before thrusting him into darkness and watching as the shadows consumed his heart and forced his mind to twist and break as he plummeted into the depths of insanity. Oh it would be sweet, seeing him struggle to resist, fighting against what they both knew would be the inevitable outcome. The devils haunting his mind delighted in the image of a man lying prone on the rocky ground of a prison cell, shadows covering his body, blocking out the gleam of the ornaments on his pressed ceremonial garbs.
On a meal like that, he could survive a millennia.
Sniffing at the lingering drops of a strong man's fears (who wouldn't make it through the night this time... when were the battles going to end... is she even safe) still clinging to the cloth like a decoration, Pitch regained his strength and rose from the seat, now determined. He threw down the costume in his hands, not bothering to straighten the heap of fabric on the floor, and marched through the door opposite from whence he entered.
He spent little time inspecting the Bath that lay past the archway, and even less time in the Bedroom beyond that. Both were as sparse as the Guestrooms he had suffered through earlier, excluding the ragged weapons proudly displayed on a wall near the bed, well within reaching distance should something attack. This time he was vigilant to avoid the exit leading out of the General's Bedroom, one that threatened to leave him in a similar state as to that accursed door back in the Dining Chamber.
Becoming increasingly more out of ease, he made his way back out to the hallway, not bothering with the rest of the Southern Wing. Again he came to a halt at the top of the stairway, desiring to proceed back downstairs, but hesitant should he be forgetting something important on this floor. Resting his hand on the top of banister newel, Pitch stared down the foreboding unlit corridor leading to the Northern Wing.
This was getting ridiculous. He was the personification of Fear, he rode with Terror and Fright by his side. He would not allow for a simple house to hold over him what was rightfully his. Turning resolute, he marched down the hall, daring anything to try and halt his procession.
At the end of the passage he found the Trophy Room he had known would be on display and scoffed at it in distain. Strutting past the polished chamber, he came to a small corridor jutting off from the main hall. At the end of the passageway sat yet another entrance, but unlike any of the other ones in the building, this door had a large flower depicted on its front in golden paint.
Pitch approached the ingress with caution, but when the terrors that haunted his mind didn't react he swiftly proceeded through the portal. On the other side of the entrance resided a room as green as the gardens outside. The walls and ceiling were buried in paintings of flowers and vegetation; each carefully detailed so as to appear lifelike. Peeking out from behind the plants were all forms of animals: little furry ones, winged feathered ones, and even a few of the tiny creepy crawlies he would to send after grown men to make them cry. Yet the colours of this fantastical scene where dim and faded, as if the very essence of the room had been shrouded.
But the foliage wasn't retained just to the walls. Actual plants littered the room, some in planters, others creeping through the cracks in the vine-cloaked glass on the greenhouse-esque half of the chamber. None of the vegetation was dead or wilting as it should be, instead the thriving foliage was giving off a gentle warm glow.
Well that explained where the strange light outside had come from.
Pitch surveyed the hall, doing his best not to touch any of the luminous greenery. Aside from the unsettling plants, toys of all sorts littered the chamber. There were several porcelain dolls sitting on a shelf, and behind chairs and dressers he kept finding bottles of acrylic and brushes, indicating the walls had been decorated by the little hands that once occupied them. By the time he had been round the room once, Pitch had a good armful worth of painting supplies, and as soon as he realized he was tidying up a room he had plans to destroy, he promptly dumped the materials into the chest at the end of the small bed, where they belonged.
Glancing about the room again, he noticed the shrub adjacent to the four poster had the beginnings of a blossom sprouting from between its leaves, the first actual flower he had seen on the property. As he stepped closer, he recognized the bud as the same variety painted on the entryway door: a large golden-yellow bloom of delicate sharp petals. He watched as the blossom began to open, transfixed by the strict contrast of the vivid blades in the dark green room.
"Daddy?..." a voice echoed through the chamber (or perhaps only his mind).
Pitch had a moment of startled confusion before the demons attacked at his consciousness again and he was sent scurrying out of yet another room, slamming the Chrysanthemum Door behind him.
He kept running through hallways and past alcoves until once more he found the familiar comfort of his ever present companion darkness and collapsed to the floorboards, this time in a dead faint.
It would be several hours until he was no longer completely numb to the world.
[page break]
When at last he did awake, Pitch was immediately assaulted by the newly familiar feeling of dread. The shadows who lay claim to his body where now vehement in their insistence of his departure. They shouted and screamed at him to get out NOW, to not stop running until he reached the other side of the planet, and then once there, never to return. He clutched at his head trying to silence the monster's shrieks and raised himself off of the floor.
Looking about his surroundings, Pitch found he must have run downstairs without even noticing, as now he stood in the mist of the Great Library. All around him the high walls were lined with expansive leather bound books, each designated in a minute silver font; and immediately before him were the tall backs of two plush chairs seated before of an ornate fireplace. Above the hearth a large portrait hung, but the contents of the canvas were hidden by a great sheet of fabric draped over the frame. Ignoring the claws scratching at his brainstem, Pitch slowly walked forward to investigate the hidden image... except he became distracted by a glint at the corner of his eye.
There, resting on the short table between the chairs was a book laid open on its spine, and next to this book sat a golden butterfly glittering in the muted light. Pitch reached down to snatch at the insect and grimaced as the demons cried out their protest. Defiantly he brought the creature trapped in his grasp up to his face and opened his palm to discover the pest was not in actuality a butterfly, but merely a sheet of golden paper folded to look like one. Unimpressed with this discovery, he threw down the lightly crumpled figure and returned to his advance on the painting.
The shadows where now furious, beating on the inside of his skull and constricting around his heart (luckily he had long since surpassed the need for such feeble bodily functions), but he had become determined to learn the purpose of this mansion. Who had lived here? What person had created such a place that could so easily leave him defenceless? Reaching up his hand he clutched the drape tightly in his fist and with one hard pull revealed the portrait beneath.
Pitch toppled over in pain.
Never before had the demons fought so hard to control him. Never before had they need. But he had seen it. He had seen the portrait of the family who once resided within these walls. He saw the young woman's smile, so sweet and loving it made his stomach turn in regret. He saw the little girl sitting on her lap, the perfect child who's soft curves and gentle curls filled him with the urge to fight. And he saw the Lord of the estate, the Noble who had briefly resided within these halls, the General who had worn all those uniforms and won all those metals. The Man who had his face.
Pitch stumbled backwards, tripping on the sheet that now lay at his feet and crushing the folded figure discarded on the floor behind him. He staggered back as the shadows roared of his shortcomings, of his failings as a warrior... and as a father. They hollered and raved, showing him his every fear, his every sin, his every defeat. They tore at his insides and stomped on his soul.
An eternity of seconds later his back forcefully came in contact with the ledges of a towering bookshelf, colliding with such force the entire contents of the unit where vigorously thrown from their holdings and came tumbling down about him. As the barrage hit, he drove his eyes open to discover tiny golden specks floating down amid the heavy tomes. The pain blurred his vision, but when he finally was able to compel his eyes to focus, he realized that the specks were not merely bits of light. Instead hundreds of folded butterflies rained down upon him, emerging from between the pages of every book.
It was dazzling, like watching celestial bodies fall. Even the devils of his psyche were quiet in the presence of such majesty.
This was all wrong. These rooms, these objects, this place shouldn't—couldn't exist. He was the Boogieman, born of people's most intimate fears, deep in the icy heart of a supermassive black hole at the centre of the galaxy. He didn't have a home, a family. He was completely alone and always had been. It was just him, and the brutes rotting around in his soul.
Again Pitch ran. But this time he did not stop.
He dashed down the vast hall and forced his way out of the great double doors. In his haste to flee, he tripped over the warn cobblestone path and jutted past the swinging iron gates. He sprinted through the rocky outcroppings of the ruined empire, not caring to search for the whereabouts of his monstrous steed, and escaped shear off the face of the decimated planet. He raced through the void of the cosmos, extinguishing stars and hunting the last remaining vestiges of the Kingdom of Light. He ran until his heart was pierced with a crystalline spear and his limbs would no longer obey his commands. But even then his mind fled, always trying to evade thoughts of an empty mansion cloaked in light and the implications of the man with his visage, frowning in a portrait hung in a stranger's home.
And as he ran, the estate stood, tall and proud, never dimmed by a fearling or shade, forever guarded by a pair of lion's head statues, one of tarnished silver and one of blackened iron, eternally waiting for their master's return.
I kind of wrote this entire thing just for that last scene.
I hope everything made sense and the foliage wasn't too peculiar, I may get to explain exactly why they need luminous vegetation in a later story. I always thought that Seraphina would have been obsessed with nature, especially plants, every since she was a child and I chose the Chrysanthemum to be her flower since its a symbol for hope and the sun, yet it is also used at funerals and grave sites. I also really liked that it's name means "golden flower" and Seraphina is the daughter of the Golden General, so... ya.
A later headcanon which comes from this story is that, in the future, when Pitch is on Earth, he unknowingly designs his lair to look like the mansion. So somewhere in his little hole in the ground you will find every single room that was in the estate, but because of his insanity they are all jumbled around and none of them are in the proper places.
I don't know when I'll be able to write the next story, I really need to work on my main story, but keep posted for updates.