closed ◉ man me a sand

[sumptus]

WHO: Caius Porthmeus, Cedric Carsus
WHAT: Caius goes spelunking in a few people's dreams
WHEN: Idk how time works
WHERE: The Fade
NOTES: CW: surrealist gore likely. This is a catch-all for dream threads. Please feel free to drop in my dream sign-up post if you'd like a dream thread sometimes in the future. (No promises about when, tho, I try to limit the number of log threads I'm in at any given time to keep from being unbearably slow.)

Comments

cedric;

[sumptus]

[ He feels it in his teeth first. A dissonance. An ache up the line of his jaw. A juttering compression of space at his temple that makes him shake his head, wet hair flinging like a dog trying to shake off a whistle only it can hear. Only this won't shake; the droning thrum only compresses into something like a sound but not. Not made for ears.

So ears aren't what he follows. His aren't real here anyway, no more than his teeth or his bones, but it helps to remember what it feels like to have a body if he hopes to return to his. Blood, then, must be the thing that rushes through him freer and louder the closer he gets to the source.

Through the wall of a colorless room, the shadow of him folds into being. Darkness gains volume and mass, but not detail, a bleeding ink stain blooming at the edge of vision.

A young elven woman lies swaddled in blankets. She isn't alone. ]

cw gross body stuff thru thread

[dissolving]

It's very cold.

Impressions double upon themselves. He's a man grown, he’s a boy; perhaps ten and frozen in the far corner. Rot collects fever-sweet about the woman on the bed. Black stains spread from throat and cheeks and quilt and hand. She's been dead for some time. Her eyes gleam silver discs, his own dull. Wary.

If he moves, something terrible will happen.

"Da'len," Her jaw cracks stiff. Rigor. "Come closer."

Reluctance shivers down his face. Older, at once aware of some pattern –

It fades. The boy stands, pauses for the shadow on the wall. An aberration. Instinct reaches for his side, the hilt of some absent blade, but his hand only finds air. Curls onto a skinny fist.

Cedric frowns, puts his back to the bed, protective of the corpse within. The hum pulses, quickens. A glance over his shoulder:

"It’s gonna be alright," He promises. Swallows, "There’s nothing there."

They’ll lift curfew soon. Another day or two. Another day, and he’ll go for help. But if he moves now, something terrible will happen.

(Her swollen purple tongue lolls the air. Has she seen Caius? Something seems to sense him, stir for his presence.)

[sumptus]

He's a man; he's a boy. Da'len.

The darkness in the corner billows gently in answer, bends. From beyond it, as if through a cracked window, comes the distant patter of small, bare feet across stone. Swift, they skitter toward a stop, poised on the edge of a precarious pause, before— SNAP, a broom stick across countertop, a slamming door—

Bone white fingers claw from the shadow, bracing on its edges to push free a knobby limb. Wrists, elbows, shoulders curl from the dark, stumble free into being.

Older than the other boy, but not by much. Maybe a year, maybe two. Ratty clothes, sooty cheeks. Hair that falls eternally into his face, but eyes shining dark beneath. He shouldn't be anything here, least of all himself, but dreaming isn't so exact a thing as that. Feelings have their own shape. Maybe his will slot into memory — for better or worse.

This dreamer is only a child, now. And she — his mother? A foreign, dangerous weight, a deadly tether. The boy that will one day be Caius brings a finger to his lips — Shhh — and with the other hand open to the ceiling, beckons.

[dissolving]

Steps pound stone and he braces, tensed in the moment before impact; a fist into stone. It never comes. Cedric blinks against the sudden brightness of cave-skin, dragged limb by bony limb. A monster from the closet.

A boy. Skinny, human, but home as any here. He shouldn’t be: Something worms at the back of his skull, alien. Other. If Cedric moves, something terrible will happen, and perhaps the terrible thing is already here.

Caius presses a finger to his lips, but it's that doubt which chances a whisper,

"Are you..."

The bed creaks. The corpse lunges. Teeth snatch empty air, and then she's after them; furious and hungry, and Cedric's thrown them both forward, dragging Caius for a mad dash into the black.

[sumptus]

It's not so simple as running back through a door. Doors close, lock. Two boys run into the dark, and Caius can make dark a thing they can run into, inky black nothing rolling out like a carpet beneath their feet, the pinprick light of somewhere else flickering into being at the tunnel's end — but he isn't the only one with power here.

Teeth gnash into the shadows behind them and come up dripping, ripping free gobs of black that overflow from greying gums. Spindly fingers stretch and lengthen after their heels. Nails break, scramble, pull, and the light begins to spiral impossibly, helplessly farther until—

Gravity tilts. Tunnel begins to slant and pitch into well. And that circle of light they're running toward isn't moving farther away anymore — it's contracting. Shrinking. They won't make it.

"You can make it," says the boy, because belief is real as breathing here, but you, because Caius isn't here to save anyone from their nightmares. He's here to understand. Verify. Test.

A heel skids on invisible gravel. Caius goes down, ragged sleeve slipping out of the other boy's grasp. Falling. But Cedric can make it.

[dissolving]

Shadow snatches, path becomes pit, and the tall boy rockets down. Stupid, the eye Cedric turns to light; watching their exit vanish. You can make it.

Stupid, because that was never a question. Not really. Momentum carries him a pounding step past, only to sprawl sudden for the turn. Cedric scrambles on all fours, hands dug into the icy dark to grip him, towing Caius from tar.

"We can," He won't. "Be right behind you."

He won't be behind Caius. Belief is real here, and Cedric never makes it out of this dream. The thing that isn't his mother unfurls its jaw to the chest. There's no sword to reach for, no shield but his body to plant between them; a mirror to the bed. He lifts his fists, shoves an elbow back at the child behind. Urges: Go.

It isn't his mother. It would be nice if it was less of her. Recognition trails sunken cheeks, flyblown skin. The demon reaches one overstretched palm. His hands jerk, uncurl,

Reach back.

Teeth snap over wrist. In one wet crunch the demon twists up, swallows elbow to arm. Chews. Cedric claws the air, and when he screams, that fucking hum rises to meet it. Shoulder, now. Bone pulps, tendon tears; low and guttural and thick with saliva.

It doesn't last very long. It never does.