This story idea just came to me all of a sudden. This is probably going to be max two-chapter, three-chapter Drabble, but I hope you enjoy it regardless.
Prologue
The first time they met was in Salem.
Ritsuka Fujimaru noticed how strange the other boy was almost immediately.
He wasn't strange in the conventional sense, as ironic as that might sound, but rather he was bizarre in how…out of place he appeared to be in the Singularity.
Of course, he thought it was pretty ironic coming from him, a "traveling troupe ringmaster." Not like he was fitting in any better with his Chaldea mystic code and heroic spirit companions. Heck, he had been getting mistrustful and sometimes downright hostile gazes from many of the puritan villagers who were all less than happy with the sudden appearance of the "foreign traveling entertainers."
But the other boy was strange in a much more casual way. And it was this casualness that was one of the things that was so off putting about him.
Even when compared to Lavinia the boy was clearly the more bizarre one, and Lavinia Whateley, with her long white hair, albino complexion, and penchant for muttering about witchcraft, was definitely a person that Ritsuka Fujimaru was wary of.
Honestly, when they had first Rayshifted into the forest outside of the strange town, he had thought that it was Lavinia that was the reason for the singularity, due to how foreign she seemed. The strange chants she would whisper didn't help.
And then "Randolph Carter" showed up.
Now, Ritsuka wasn't stupid. He was also not illiterate. He'd read his Lovecraft, so he was very much aware of the horrible implications of being in the same place Randolph Carter was in.
He had felt an icy chill crawl up his spine the moment that he heard those names. He wanted to Rayshift back immediately. To run screaming back to Chaldea, hide in his room, and ask one of his Caster servants to wipe his memory so he could go back to blissful ignorance.
But he was the Last Master of humanity, and he had to stop the singularity from expanding. So he said nothing and simply let Abigail's uncle escort them to his house. Nothing happened. Mashu seemed happy, and none of the servants suspected anything at all either. In the end Ritsuka figured that the names were probably only coincidental as both Lavinia and Randolph were quite different from the ones he read about.
The next day he went exploring the town. He'd taken Mash with him, and the two of them went around the streets of Salem, "preparing for their play." It was a cold and dark morning. The sun hadn't risen yet and the thick overcast clouds only exacerbated the feelings of unrest.
It was then that Ritsuka saw him.
The other boy that was so casually strange.
The first thing he noticed was that the boy was dressed in all red.
The outfit wasn't red like Mordred's casual clothes were, with their black and yellow trims, but red completely and utterly. There were no different textures or shades of red, not a single thread of any different color. It was a monotonous crimson. Like freshly spilled blood.
The second thing was also related to the strangeness of the outfit, but it was also related to how casually strange the boy was, for the outfit too, was casual.
It was a hoodie and sweatpants, with sneakers on his feet. Something belonging to a mundane city of the twenty-first century and so painfully out of place in the seventeenth century town.
The boy lounged under a tree, his back to the trunk, his arms behind him, and legs stretched out, observing everything with a slightly amused expression on his face, seemingly uncaring of how unnatural he appeared amidst the rest of Salem.
And that was yet another peculiarity. The boy was too casual. Salem was an oppressive, tense place. None of Ritsuka's servants, nor he himself, had felt even a moment of relaxation since they had rayshifted. The atmosphere just felt wrong. The citizens too were tense as well. There was no laughter or joy anywhere to be seen. People wore nothing but serious and grim expressions. There wasn't even a hint of normal human relaxation. There was always a sense of impending danger, of an inherent sickness.
And yet the boy lounging under a tree appeared unaffected. No, it was more than that, it was like he simply didn't care about the darkness of the singularity. He acted like a high schooler skipping classes, uncaring and seemingly unbothered. Perhaps he didn't even notice it, and that was even more unnatural.
The smirk on his face was a bit strange too, for it emphasized the boy's features, and those features were alien to those of Massachusetts. In fact, the longer Ritsuka looked at the boy, the more he realized that his features were alien to any single region of the planet.
Ritsuka, throughout his journeys in the singularities, had seen nearly every part of the world, and so he knew for certain that this boy bore none of the traits.
His skin was pale, almost porcelain, but not quite.
He had brown hair, almost black, but not quite.
His eyes were dark, almost abyssal, but not quite.
He wasn't from any European country, nor was he from America. He clearly wasn't African or middle eastern, but he wasn't Asian or Japanese either. He just didn't belong to anywhere Ritsuka knew of. He almost could, if you didn't look carefully, but not quite.
In fact the longer Ritsuka looked at him, the more he was sure that there was something inherently incorrect about the boy's features. They were just too placid. Too…uncaring.
Then their eyes met.
A shudder lanced through Ritsuka as he looked into those eyes. There was something…off about them. Yet he couldn't place it, no matter how hard he tried. Something about those crimson orbs that gazed at him with an unblinking, unmoving intensity was telling him that the owner of these eyes was something that should not, could not, exist.
Their gaze was something difficult to look away, and something about those eyes staring at him felt invasive. The face of the boy was a strange distortion of the human form, nothing obvious or something one could see without paying attention to it, but just enough to catch one off guard. It was not sufficiently inhuman, but neither was it human enough. Too unmoving, too flawless. Lacking the many minute physical imperfections that every human had. And it was on that almost human face that the red eyes gazed at him.
No, not red. They weren't red. And neither were the clothes of the boy that Ritsuka was beginning to believe wasn't a boy. Red was…too little, too mundane of a color to describe them. Too weak of a concept to describe them. Their color was…Ritsuka wrinkled his brow. He couldn't quite come up with the right word. Crimson? Vermillion? Maroon? None seemed right to him. And yet…and yet…
"Senpai?" A questioning voice came from his side.
The reverie broke. He turned toward Mash, and met her, much more human, lavender gaze. The demi-servant looked at him with concern, and Ritsuka felt happy knowing that at least in her eyes, he could see emotion clearly.
"Are you ok?" she asked him.
"I'm fine Mash," he lied. "I was just…distracted for a moment…" he trailed off. The image of those haunting eyes flashing in front of him again.
"Um, senpai, do you know that person?" the shielder asked him, "you were staring at them almost like you recognized them from somewhere."
Ritsuka looked back at the boy in red. "No I…" he paused, "this is the first time I've ever seen them."
Perhaps the boy heard them talking about him, or perhaps he sensed them, or maybe it was the mere physical act of conversing about him that brought his attention. However he held up his hand and waved at them, before patting the ground next to him.
A strange chill lanced through Ritsuka, and for a tiny moment a feeling of primal instinctual terror washed over him, drowning him in the ancient abyss, full of subconscious horrors. Ghoulish, nightmarish things swimming through a bleeding, bottomless ocean beneath the thin facade of sanity. At that moment he wanted nothing more than to run. To hide behind anything that would protect him from this thing in human form.
To his further distress, Mash didn't seem to experience it. The demi-servant simply looked at him for guidance, once more expecting him to take the lead, trusting him to make the correct choice as she had done so many times before.
"Should...should we go meet him senpai?" Her innocent question was damning.
They approached him, and he shifted amicably to make some room under the shadow of the tree. As the two sat down next to him, they were treated to a view of the cliffs looking out at the ocean, and the slowly lightening horizon, signifying the approaching sunrise and the beginning of a new day. It should have been a sight that brought peace and hope, and it seemed like it did for Mash, as she smiled slightly, but Ritsuka only felt a knot of unease tie itself in his stomach.
"So, you guys are here to fix this mess of a singularity, eh?" The boy spoke casually, directing a questioning look at Ritsuka, causing the master of chaldea to jolt in a mixture of surprise and something darker. He barely suppressed a shiver
Beside him he heard Mash gasp, and he knew she had a panicked expression on her face. "Th-the singularity? Um...we're just a passing troupe..."
The thing in the guise of a human looked at Ritsuka and deadpanned. It deadpanned. Something that should have looked so natural on a high school boy in a hoodie lounging under a tree, and yet was not.
"Are you serious, do I look like one of the Puritans to you?" He shook his head mirthfully and chuckled. Ritsuka was reminded of the baying of hyenas. "I'm not dumb, I can tell what's going on here."
This time, no matter how hard he tried, how desperately he attempted to hold himself together he could not suppress a shiver. This easygoing manner of speech, this relaxed look, this veneer of relaxation that looks so human in any other scenario, and yet in this place, with this thing, it was wrong. no, more than that. It was an amalgamation of everything that was distorted.
He blinked and almost screamed.
In that tiny fragment, that fraction of a second during the closing of eyelids he saw it. Red. An Infinite mass of squirming something. A crimson tide, full of teeth, Alien pulsing eyes gushing waterfalls of vermillion, each drop biting and clawing, sprouting hands, reaching for him, wailing in horrific ecstasy. Writhing flesh, grasping tendrils ending with carnivorous maws screeching forth a ghoulish song. A hymn to horror. An ode to…
He blinked. The boy in the red hoodie tilted his head.
"So, how much have you figured out so far?" His tone was genuine, yet something about the way he said it implied that he already knew the secret.
Yet Mash was all too happy to answer. As she began to explain their meeting with Randolph Carter, Abigail, and the strange spell that stopped them from going into spirit forms, Ritsuka couldn't help but stare at her in confusion. How could she not see it, how could she not sense it? Did Mash lose her sense of caution? Was she blind? What was wrong with this stupid girl?
He reeled back, closing his eyes for a minute, before reopening them in panicked horror. Behind the eyelids, he once more saw nothing but a writhing mass of crimson. What was wrong with him? Those thoughts were all wrong. Where did such a sense of spite come from? Why did he think of Mash as stupid? What was happening to him?
Mash finished her explanation. The boy nodded thoughtfully. An inhumanly wrong gesture on such a human-esque mask. "Yeah. You're right on the fact that Abigail is related to everything that's going on here. I haven't met that girl yet, but it is true that everything is connected to her."
He laughed suddenly. It wasn't a friendly laugh. "I guess you could call her the key."
A chill wind blew across the clearing. This time both Mash and Ritsuka shivered. The way the boy said the word "key" was strange. Almost as if seven voices spoke at the same time.
"Well, I'm sure you'll figure it out eventually. But for now, let's just enjoy the sunrise eh?" He gestured at the dawning sky.
"Day is about to Break after all…"
And suddenly Ritsuka knew the color that he was missing. That shade that eluded his mind. Or perhaps, a traitorous part of him whispered, he was simply too afraid to allow his conscious thought to find the correct description.
The sun rose, and just like the clothes of the boy, it was Scarlet.
I hope you enjoyed it. I will now go back to writing my other stories. Chapter 10 of Fairy Prism is almost done after all. As usual, give thoughts, reviews, follows, etc.
Goodbye.
