A/N: Well well…another chappie! YAY!
I'll give you a cookie if you spot the Alice Cooper reference. Really.
Long shadows. Dark words. The chill of the night. Mystic waves of stars lit the boulders around the castle walls. The moon batched the dark castle, the only lights from the east end where the sounds of riotous laughter, music, singing and sin were heard.
The people that were cast aside, there were many hiding in the shadows of the city. They felt hardly safe, exposed in the cold of the caves, dousing the light of their cooking fires. They knew death would come. He would come, and he would kill them all.
Men, women and children heard the echoes of the castle above them on the mountain crag. They looked out the holes and windows, keeping warm and listening to the masquerade. They hoped the Red Death will take the monarchs first.
Everyone was on their guard. The abandoned city was all dark, with only a few rats pawing around and the lonely chirp of a cricket.
Soon that too stopped. All was deathly silent, with shadows everywhere from the moonlight and making everything even more ghostly.
The only sounds were the sea and the hundred living people breathing.
Then there was the sight of a man.
The main path to the city gate east was closed and locked. The road was paved and tiled, a beautiful testament to pavement.
Shambling forward to the gate, in bright moonlight was a tall man…in a red funeral robe.
All the people gasped, silently drawing back into the dirty caves that were their homes. The women trembled; their children not truly understand that him, The Red Death, might head over to them and kill them all.
But The Red Death kept moving. He kept shambling at an even pace to the door. His heavy wrinkled robes left a trail of blood behind him. The hood over his face hid the menace that was him. No mist came. It seemed he was not issuing the plague…yet.
He stood in front of the tall, stone gate. Its shadow was immense, bathing him in completely darkness. The people could not find his form within the shadow. Fear doubled.
The Red Death looked around, seeing those trembling people watching what he would do with the gate. The embodiment of fear and terror seemed get a rush from their frightened emotions.
No stone could him.
The people watched and prayed all would be silent, so as to not draw his attention. The Red Death…had turned into a strange creature…
Of mist, with a vague form of a bird. And it flew high and red, slowly flying over the crumbling stone and into the sky.
Its shadow was hideous as it flew; making it's way up the mountain to the castle.
The people watched. They watched the great bird of death land and morph back to the form of a robed man.
Now he was alone out in the cold.
The smell of sweet meats and feasting and wine came to his senses. The sound of life, however sinful, was drawing him to its warmth. How he longed to quench it…
The stone turrets and gargoyles were ornate and flowery. It was easy for his clawed hands to grip as he crawled up the steep sides. No one was outside at this side, and so as mist he seeped through the balcony doors.
No interest he took as he slinked through the rooms. The abandoned rooms were already collecting dust upon the wasted finery. He stalked through the halls, past the fruit and the gold and the furniture and satin. The darkness only made this place of bright life into a grim desolate place.
The wind whistled. Tonight, he truly felt the Guardians watching him. Guiding him, his powers being strengthened as he readied to do what he had always wanted.
The doors he would reach soon. The East wing was ready to be destroyed and it inhabitant's into puddles of blood.
The god paused, looking around.
There were old, dusty paintings on the walls, aged tapestries, stonework and the architecture…
Oh how he's changed it…its all painted blue. He sighed, pausing under paintings of kings and queens and princes and princesses from years past.
It will be red by midnight.
The dark, cold hallow place was empty. Only he, he who burned with a dark fire in him was the light in this place. The moonlight made his robes pale.
Memories. They came in a flash of white and red. Like blood, the faces of his past suddenly flooded his vision.
Not now. Not now, when I must exact my revenge. He scowled in his head. The door to the hall and the Seven Rooms was heavily barricaded.
But as mist, nothing of the physical could stop one who was not of that plane.
Vengeance. Vengeance. Vengeance. He chanted as he seeped into the light of the other side.
What I want. What I need. The mist saw the dancers moving, oblivious to the red mist along the sides.
Vengeance is mine.
A/N: Alas, I must leave on Monday…for a long while, maybe a week. And so, I shall return, with plenty of chapters to upload. :D
Be warned: this is near the end! AT LAST!!
Shoys.