The eerie quiet of the castle is unsettling, but the fact of it looking so dire and abandoned had been the appeal from a distance — Gwenaëlle, riding hard through the night with only what she could carry on horseback, has not had the opportunity to hear tell of demons or monsters, has thoroughly human devilry dogging her heels, and has no desire to stop and speak with anyone in the nearest settlements to hear whatever they might tell. They might then tell of her,
and that wouldn't do at all. So she is hoping for a place as empty as it looks, as forlorn and abandoned. A risk to come through the front doors, in case it isn't, but surely ... surely if it wasn't, then it would be locked. Then she wouldn't be able to just walk in, gathering her cloak tightly around herself, moving cautiously.
The sound of — something? she can't tell. There is a sound, but she had seen the trees against the windows and the stone, knows the poor weather chasing behind her, and all of these things have reasonable explanations. Maybe it hasn't been abandoned long enough to be bereft of anything of value, and maybe she can make use of that...
“If you don't like something,” she mutters to herself, “change it.”
When he ranges nearer, there she is: a slight thing, mostly obscured by a heavy cloak lined with fur, fighting with a tinder-box to light the nearest lamp.
It'd be cruel to flap his wings and see the flame disappear before it can burn its way down the wick. Shadows scare him, although he uses them to travel when free. They both smother and offer him an open space to roam. He allows the lantern to be lit, but he doesn't attempt to see it put out yet.
Nikolai—or the demon, since Nikolai Lantsov much prefers to think of himself as a man and the demon as a monster who shares no tether—watches her quietly from his perch on the second-floor railing. His flight had been quick but slightly noisy, like the rustle of fabric in the wind, and now he sits like an owl incapable of fidgeting.
Until he does.
With a shift of his weight, the wooden railing groans beneath him. A flap of his wing makes an unnatural sound in the large open space. He's sheathed in shadows as he watches her.
A part of Nikolai is alive in the demon. The demon would never know how to be playful, let alone what tropes to heed to turn a dull story into one of horror. (He always liked his books. How he remembers those tales in this form is something Nikolai has yet to allow himself to analyse.)
The gust of wind that comes from disturbed air doesn't smother the flame she's lit, but it flickers as she wheels around, eyes huge, one darting from shadow to shadow and one unseeing gold. The hood of her cloak slips in the suddenness of her motion, thick, dark curls emerging, and though the tinder-box drops to the floor in her startle, she is swift enough to replace it with a long, thin blade pulled from somewhere hidden beneath the shadows in her cloak.
“What,” she says, to no one in particular, “the fuck.”
Maybe there's a reason no one has been in this castle. Her unease is clear, as is her bravado: the way she sets her shoulders, the way her eyes narrow. The fumbling way she reaches to grasp the lamp and take it from its place set down on a sideboard without actually looking sideways—
a minor miracle she doesn't just burn herself.
“I'm not frightened,” she lies to the darkness, her jaw firming as she holds the lamp out in front of her, moving forward.
Nikolai is—or was. Is he still Nikolai? When does the monster stop being Nikolai and start being something else altogether?
Remaining on the banister, the demon shifts his weight, causing the wood to groan again. It's intentional now. He likes the sounds the castle makes. It's like it's alive; the distant creaking is akin to a stomach rumbling, and the shaking of the walls is like a sneeze. The wind outside isn't strong enough to see the window panes shudder.
Despite wishing to swoop and attack, he doesn't. Some part of him doesn't want to. Maintaining his balance and focusing briefly on the ache of his knees and upper thighs from staying in such a position for too long, the demon doesn't move to alleviate it as he would. No, that's Nikolai, wanting to remain stock still and maintain his grip on whatever this is. (It's humanity.)
"Why not?" The voice is deep and hoarse, and surprises the demon.
stands still, gripping her lamp, staring hard into the shadows, narrowing down where she can hear that voice coming from. The sounds of movement. She can't see him, not yet, and part of her regrets the lamp altogether as the light blinds her to the nuances of darkness, but relinquishing it now seems like a much worse idea.
The question, when she considers its content instead of the fact of it, surprises her in turn. So, too, does the way she answers honestly a moment later:
“I've decided not to be.”
Right now—
every step that has led her here. If she allows herself to be afraid then she will be sick with it, frozen in indecision and uncertainty, then decisions will be made for her. She can't afford to be afraid when she needs to keep moving, and that hasn't stopped being true just because there's something rumbling at her in an abandoned castle. Maybe it's even more true, now.
Asserting it aloud steadies her, somehow. Reinforces her. She is not afraid. She has decided not to be.
If it weren't for the lamp, he wouldn't know where she was.
Though, that's not entirely true.
If he were to listen—and he's fantastic at listening, even though that's Nikolai, not the monster (but the monster is me, and I am the monster)—he'd know where she is without the help of the light. He can see through shadow, for he's part shadow, even if it's trapped inside a man. But the man inside the monster doesn't know how to navigate darkness without a light to glow the glass of his compass, and so he's thankful for it. She looks like a little firefly all the way down there.
Perhaps he should remain quiet. The monster hasn't had any visitors, always playing the role of visitor as he finds a loose hinge or a door opened by the angry wind and visits the farmlands to the east or taps on the windows of the village to the west. With that fact in mind, he chooses to speak again.
"Why?"
And then, because he is Nikolai at his core, curious and impulsive (and perhaps the shadow embodies a part of Aleksander Morozova the Darkling lost some time ago): "I can't sense your fear."
Isn't that what characterises all monsters in the stories? A sixth sense— fear is their North Star?
If they were in a story, perhaps she'd react differently— lovely and stubborn and brave. What actually happens is that irritation twists her mouth and she takes several quick steps forward, as if spurred by sheer contrariness, snapping before she's even thought it through:
“Good! That isn't your business!”
—might not be the point of what he'd just said.
(And she is those things: lovely, stubborn, brave. And a few others besides: mulish, contrary, sharp-edged.)
It takes effort for her to control that fit of pique, and even from a distance, the way she exerts herself to do it is clear. The way she paces, and turns, and stops; the hand that isn't holding her lamp pressing flat to her chest, counting her own breaths. Be smart. Be swift. Be calm, before she gets herself into something else she has to wriggle out of again,
Does it surprise the monster to speak? His even, raspy tone doesn't give anything away.
Shifting on the railing, it groans loud and long beneath his weight. Rising carefully to stand, the shadows continue to embrace him as he balances carefully. The idea comes from somewhere distant; he'd once stood on a ship, the wind in his hair, the spatter of the True Sea against his skin. That memory doesn't belong to the monster. The little light gives him a shield. The monster isn't afraid, but he does like to lurk in the dark, embracing what he was made from like it's a cloak.
"It's far away from any proper road."
Far from any village a sensible person would find themselves burrowing away within.
His wings beat once, twice. The hollow sound echoes high within the ceiling's dome.
He knows the space he moves through; the landing, the stairs, the dome above them. The shape of the room that dissipates only into gloom for her, squinting past the circle of thin light that surrounds her, and the sounds of his motion make it actively more difficult to discern—
above her, maybe? Or is that only the echo.
The thing about fear is that it's never the only thing she feels, when she's afraid. Both reactions she swallows, making herself take a breath, calm the racing of her heart, and take several more purposeful steps deeper into the castle. Stairs come into the circle of her light, and the ruined runners upon them, and she casts a glance back toward the door she'd come in through. Unlocked. About as far from her, now, as the stairs might be.
Her spine straightens. Prey runs. She says,
“Yes, it is. You can't need the whole thing, for only a night—”
Some of the boards are missing. The step she sets her foot upon doesn't threaten to crack, but the next one will.
With the flap of wings obscuring the sound of his movements, the railing groans loudly as he leaps off it. Bare-footed, his landing is soundless. The monster moves quickly, disappearing into shadow.
When he speaks next, his voice comes from below beneath the stairs, but he doesn't stand in the open foyer she'd occupied moments ago. It's almost like he's playing. He can be anywhere and everywhere—this castle is his.
“Because you sound bored,” she says, and she's about to elaborate on that —
that it's not lost on her that she's being toyed with, even if it's less clear to what end or how threateningly (not none, of that she's certain), that the manner in which she is being toyed with implies some degree of honest curiosity, and that while she's prepared to allow for the possibility she's misread this, it feels to her as if the tenor of his interest would be different if he weren't alone.
The castle feels abandoned, darkened and strange. Even inside, it's still cold; the storm outside shut out, but the storm within little more welcoming. There could be others here, and she could be making a series of (new, exciting) terrible mistakes, and anyway, those things don't exactly depend on each other to be true or not true — she thinks she's right, though.
(She often thinks so.)
The second stair creaks dangerously beneath her weight; she makes it halfway up before one gives, breaking beneath her in a sound half-lost in her shriek, the smash of the lamp when she loses her grip with such momentum it crashes into the banister, and a series of thuds.
"Watch your step," he says belatedly, voice slick with a tinge of amusement and now appearing from off to her left and down a dark, almost endless hall. This castle is a maze; Nikolai Lantsov intentionally chose it for that sole reason. He doesn't seem to help her; despite it existing as a knee-jerk reaction (Nikolai would, but Nikolai would have also warned her about the stairs and informed her of another way to navigate to the second floor), he stays where he is, in the shadows, watching.
A soft grunt echoes gently, and the flap of wings remains heavy in the air. The monster disappears from her left, leaving the area cold and empty. A crash sounds in the distance—large metal pots and pans tumble unceremoniously to the floor, where he leaves them—and then—
Light bursts from the second floor. The lamp is a little bigger than hers, rounder at the bottom. It sits on the landing, right by the steps, and illuminates enough of the landing and staircase that a flap of a wing is spotted disappearing behind a pillar. The sound of claws scraping stone follows as he seems to disappear.
Or someone else disappears. Is this all a ploy to make it appear that she's climbed into a nest of wasps?
Probably she's climbed into a nest of wasps. It would be just her fucking luck.
Gwenaëlle doesn't immediately move, sprawled with a decided lack of dignity on the bottom of the stairs and her heart hammering in her chest, listening to the clatter and crash above her and thinking about what it might mean. She considers her predicament, and how stupid it is, and how stupid she is, and that the world won't end if she swallows her stupid pride and just makes a dash for the doors
a thing she is contemplating when lamplight fills the space, yellow and thin, dissipating into grey that doesn't completely hide the scampering beast. Who is, if she's to judge by this display, definitely alone in this castle. Probably she's right about him being bored. Do mad monsters haunting abandoned castles get lonely?
Doesn't everything? Nothing isn't haunted.
When she tries the stairs again, it's more carefully; she clings to the banister, barely setting her weight on the stairs themselves where she can help doing so, testing each stair before she trusts it. It takes her what feels like an absolute age to do, and she aches where she fell, and she hasn't totally dismissed the idea that the decision she's just made could be head injury based. But at least—
at least it's a decision. She can say, even if it leads her into trouble, that she made that choice.
“This is going to be such a stupid way to die,” she says, mostly to herself, though without any particular care to say it quietly.
Intentionally remaining in the shadows, the monster's now perched on the third floor's railing. He likes his heights; it's advantageous to be up high, in the crow's nest of a ship or on the balcony of a castle overlooking the town one is meant to protect. Those are thoughts that don't belong to the monster, even though they do belong to the monster at the same time.
Height is advantageous. Shadows blanket his face. He can leap back and disappear during the time it takes her to locate the next staircase, climb said staircase, and locate the bannister overlooking what seems to be the heart of the castle.
This time, the lamp light at least throws shadows upon him. It's clear he has knees and arms, and wide, black wings. Are those shadows wisping around him like smoke?
"Is that what you want?"
His voice remains a rasp so unlike the voice of the man the monster is. He's silent for once; there's no wing flapping, no groaning railing. The castle doesn't even creak; the wind outside doesn't bat the trees against the windows.
Gwenaëlle very nearly says something very acerbic about making a leap, but being as they are now dangerously close to one that would kill her — she takes a prudent several steps back from that banister, instead, taking in the shape of him that the shadows allow. He could take that height, she supposes, a pragmatic first thought to have on such an impression,
but she could not, and ought not tempt her fate.
“Your social graces,” she informs him, straightening, “could use work. As host, it's generally frowned upon to ask your guests if they crave death.”
This isn't exactly an answer. But what answer might she give? Yes, sometimes. No, not tonight. If she'd wanted to die so fucking badly she could have relinquished herself to the fate behind her, outside of this castle, let it choke and smother her until she'd seen no other way out. A hundred opportunities have been provided to her, over the years, through her own doing or not—
she had been forced, in the recognition of desiring to master her own life, that she might also actually want to live it. It's just going to be incredibly stupid if admitting that, finally, is what gets her killed after all that she's survived.
Given the demon has never spoken to anyone when awake, his social graces are murky like a thin streak of grey cloud over the moon. They're there, but terrible. Nikolai would never ask if someone craved death. He'd ask if someone craved adventure, or the wind in their hair, the sea spray splattering against their skin.
But the demon isn't Nikolai, and there's nothing but cool air, the midnight noises, and the raging storm outside to inspire him.
He watches her, remaining still for the moment.
"Should I instead ask if you crave life?" And then, as if somehow slipping into the man he wears, he adds without thinking, "That sounds like a rather boring topic."
Her head tilts as she squints into the gloom, wishing she could better make out his face; struck, abruptly, by how little she can imagine what his face might be, attached to such a body and speaking with such a voice. All the same— the shape of his conversation does, she thinks, rather bear out her assessment so far. He is, she's increasingly certain, alone here.
She checks herself; there are a lot of reasons that could be true that she shouldn't get bold about.
“I think that depends on the life,” she says, instead. Probably someone with a boring life would still be as desperate to hold onto it as an adventurer. How many people sit around shrugging off the idea that they might as well die, for all that their story's worth? Even still. “And the capacity for imagination in the listener.”
It's hard to find absolutely nothing of curiosity in a person. Not impossible—
difficult.
“Generally,” she adds, “neither are hospitable small-talk.”
He doesn't reveal his face—he never does, not unless there's a high chance that the person seeing his face won't be able to recount it later. Instead, he uses the shadows to his advantage-after all, that's what he's born from. Still sitting perched prettily, the demon has a sense to… establish something.
This is the longest that anyone's spoken to him before.
Granted, this is the only time anyone has spoken to him. Others have cried. Many have screamed. No one's held a conversation with him.
"It's unfortunate he's not available to speak to."
Who's he? Him. The other him. The one who's a great conversationalist and can turn any small talk into riveting stories. The demon, while being him, doesn't seem to possess the skill. Perhaps he intentionally doesn't wish to.
He who is the obvious question — is on the tip of her tongue — but if it was a slip of his then maybe she shouldn't, at once, draw his attention to having done so. So,
instead,
“It isn't that I don't wish to speak to you.”
Although she is inclined to think she'd be well within her rights if it were.
Her shoulder aches where she'd landed on the stairs. She is tired, and it is dark, and cold, and she is difficult for the sake of being difficult. Maybe to leave her own clawmarks behind, I was here, even if she's remembered most of all as an inconvenience. At least, she cannot be ignored.
"You expected an abandoned castle to be abandoned." He doesn't ask it as a question. The demon doesn't even know why he does. Perhaps it's Nikolai coming through, his insatiable need to fill the silence with speaking—to talk about shit and not shit, and anything found in between—and his desire to connect. The demon rolls his shoulders. He doesn't like that one bit.
The floor creaks. He's lifted up and off of where he is and lands on the loose wooden panels of the floor—still shaded in shadow. The demon thrives in it.
Footsteps echo. The wooden floor is both empty and full. He doesn't move toward her, staying far away, knowing it's better for his survival… even though he knows he can attack. This sudden birth of a conscience prompts him to scratch at his arm.
Lightning slashes soundlessly against the dark, gloomy sky. The demon's human-like shadow (his wings are the only inhuman part about him) casts along the wall.
"The east wing's floors are caving in." He has no idea why he says it.
Probably if he intended her to go tumbling through those (as well), then he wouldn't have said it, so Gwenaëlle decides that whatever else he might have meant and why he might have said it, she can add to the things about him that she has observed: that he does not wish her to unwarily step through a crumbling floor. It's a low threshold, but a threshold all the same, and she decides to take her victories where she can get them. Better than to be ungrateful, and miss any altogether.
“I'll bear that in mind,” she says, gathering her composure and her dignity about her, tattered things but essential all the same.
Her life hasn't gone the way she envisioned it. None of the ways, even; her worst fears came to pass and she'd had to invent new ones. She has persevered, and persevered, and persevered, and now she is here and when she looks behind her every step had made sense and the sum of them all is—
clutching everything she'd managed to carry, alone with a monster in a storm.
Or: still here. With someone who had rather she not fall through a floor. If you don't like a story, tell a different one. She tacks on, “Thank you,”
and when she is relatively certain that she's oriented east and west, starts to move again, quietly determined. At the very least, she can wait out the night.
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and that wouldn't do at all. So she is hoping for a place as empty as it looks, as forlorn and abandoned. A risk to come through the front doors, in case it isn't, but surely ... surely if it wasn't, then it would be locked. Then she wouldn't be able to just walk in, gathering her cloak tightly around herself, moving cautiously.
The sound of — something? she can't tell. There is a sound, but she had seen the trees against the windows and the stone, knows the poor weather chasing behind her, and all of these things have reasonable explanations. Maybe it hasn't been abandoned long enough to be bereft of anything of value, and maybe she can make use of that...
“If you don't like something,” she mutters to herself, “change it.”
When he ranges nearer, there she is: a slight thing, mostly obscured by a heavy cloak lined with fur, fighting with a tinder-box to light the nearest lamp.
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Nikolai—or the demon, since Nikolai Lantsov much prefers to think of himself as a man and the demon as a monster who shares no tether—watches her quietly from his perch on the second-floor railing. His flight had been quick but slightly noisy, like the rustle of fabric in the wind, and now he sits like an owl incapable of fidgeting.
Until he does.
With a shift of his weight, the wooden railing groans beneath him. A flap of his wing makes an unnatural sound in the large open space. He's sheathed in shadows as he watches her.
A part of Nikolai is alive in the demon. The demon would never know how to be playful, let alone what tropes to heed to turn a dull story into one of horror. (He always liked his books. How he remembers those tales in this form is something Nikolai has yet to allow himself to analyse.)
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“What,” she says, to no one in particular, “the fuck.”
Maybe there's a reason no one has been in this castle. Her unease is clear, as is her bravado: the way she sets her shoulders, the way her eyes narrow. The fumbling way she reaches to grasp the lamp and take it from its place set down on a sideboard without actually looking sideways—
a minor miracle she doesn't just burn herself.
“I'm not frightened,” she lies to the darkness, her jaw firming as she holds the lamp out in front of her, moving forward.
It is entirely possible that she should be.
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Nikolai is—or was. Is he still Nikolai? When does the monster stop being Nikolai and start being something else altogether?
Remaining on the banister, the demon shifts his weight, causing the wood to groan again. It's intentional now. He likes the sounds the castle makes. It's like it's alive; the distant creaking is akin to a stomach rumbling, and the shaking of the walls is like a sneeze. The wind outside isn't strong enough to see the window panes shudder.
Despite wishing to swoop and attack, he doesn't. Some part of him doesn't want to. Maintaining his balance and focusing briefly on the ache of his knees and upper thighs from staying in such a position for too long, the demon doesn't move to alleviate it as he would. No, that's Nikolai, wanting to remain stock still and maintain his grip on whatever this is. (It's humanity.)
"Why not?" The voice is deep and hoarse, and surprises the demon.
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stands still, gripping her lamp, staring hard into the shadows, narrowing down where she can hear that voice coming from. The sounds of movement. She can't see him, not yet, and part of her regrets the lamp altogether as the light blinds her to the nuances of darkness, but relinquishing it now seems like a much worse idea.
The question, when she considers its content instead of the fact of it, surprises her in turn. So, too, does the way she answers honestly a moment later:
“I've decided not to be.”
Right now—
every step that has led her here. If she allows herself to be afraid then she will be sick with it, frozen in indecision and uncertainty, then decisions will be made for her. She can't afford to be afraid when she needs to keep moving, and that hasn't stopped being true just because there's something rumbling at her in an abandoned castle. Maybe it's even more true, now.
Asserting it aloud steadies her, somehow. Reinforces her. She is not afraid. She has decided not to be.
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Though, that's not entirely true.
If he were to listen—and he's fantastic at listening, even though that's Nikolai, not the monster (but the monster is me, and I am the monster)—he'd know where she is without the help of the light. He can see through shadow, for he's part shadow, even if it's trapped inside a man. But the man inside the monster doesn't know how to navigate darkness without a light to glow the glass of his compass, and so he's thankful for it. She looks like a little firefly all the way down there.
Perhaps he should remain quiet. The monster hasn't had any visitors, always playing the role of visitor as he finds a loose hinge or a door opened by the angry wind and visits the farmlands to the east or taps on the windows of the village to the west. With that fact in mind, he chooses to speak again.
"Why?"
And then, because he is Nikolai at his core, curious and impulsive (and perhaps the shadow embodies a part of Aleksander Morozova the Darkling lost some time ago): "I can't sense your fear."
Isn't that what characterises all monsters in the stories? A sixth sense— fear is their North Star?
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“Good! That isn't your business!”
—might not be the point of what he'd just said.
(And she is those things: lovely, stubborn, brave. And a few others besides: mulish, contrary, sharp-edged.)
It takes effort for her to control that fit of pique, and even from a distance, the way she exerts herself to do it is clear. The way she paces, and turns, and stops; the hand that isn't holding her lamp pressing flat to her chest, counting her own breaths. Be smart. Be swift. Be calm, before she gets herself into something else she has to wriggle out of again,
“I only need to see out the storm.”
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Does it surprise the monster to speak? His even, raspy tone doesn't give anything away.
Shifting on the railing, it groans loud and long beneath his weight. Rising carefully to stand, the shadows continue to embrace him as he balances carefully. The idea comes from somewhere distant; he'd once stood on a ship, the wind in his hair, the spatter of the True Sea against his skin. That memory doesn't belong to the monster. The little light gives him a shield. The monster isn't afraid, but he does like to lurk in the dark, embracing what he was made from like it's a cloak.
"It's far away from any proper road."
Far from any village a sensible person would find themselves burrowing away within.
His wings beat once, twice. The hollow sound echoes high within the ceiling's dome.
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above her, maybe? Or is that only the echo.
The thing about fear is that it's never the only thing she feels, when she's afraid. Both reactions she swallows, making herself take a breath, calm the racing of her heart, and take several more purposeful steps deeper into the castle. Stairs come into the circle of her light, and the ruined runners upon them, and she casts a glance back toward the door she'd come in through. Unlocked. About as far from her, now, as the stairs might be.
Her spine straightens. Prey runs. She says,
“Yes, it is. You can't need the whole thing, for only a night—”
and sets a foot upon the stair, deliberately.
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With the flap of wings obscuring the sound of his movements, the railing groans loudly as he leaps off it. Bare-footed, his landing is soundless. The monster moves quickly, disappearing into shadow.
When he speaks next, his voice comes from below beneath the stairs, but he doesn't stand in the open foyer she'd occupied moments ago. It's almost like he's playing. He can be anywhere and everywhere—this castle is his.
"What makes you think I'm the only one here?"
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that it's not lost on her that she's being toyed with, even if it's less clear to what end or how threateningly (not none, of that she's certain), that the manner in which she is being toyed with implies some degree of honest curiosity, and that while she's prepared to allow for the possibility she's misread this, it feels to her as if the tenor of his interest would be different if he weren't alone.
The castle feels abandoned, darkened and strange. Even inside, it's still cold; the storm outside shut out, but the storm within little more welcoming. There could be others here, and she could be making a series of (new, exciting) terrible mistakes, and anyway, those things don't exactly depend on each other to be true or not true — she thinks she's right, though.
(She often thinks so.)
The second stair creaks dangerously beneath her weight; she makes it halfway up before one gives, breaking beneath her in a sound half-lost in her shriek, the smash of the lamp when she loses her grip with such momentum it crashes into the banister, and a series of thuds.
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A soft grunt echoes gently, and the flap of wings remains heavy in the air. The monster disappears from her left, leaving the area cold and empty. A crash sounds in the distance—large metal pots and pans tumble unceremoniously to the floor, where he leaves them—and then—
Light bursts from the second floor. The lamp is a little bigger than hers, rounder at the bottom. It sits on the landing, right by the steps, and illuminates enough of the landing and staircase that a flap of a wing is spotted disappearing behind a pillar. The sound of claws scraping stone follows as he seems to disappear.
Or someone else disappears. Is this all a ploy to make it appear that she's climbed into a nest of wasps?
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Gwenaëlle doesn't immediately move, sprawled with a decided lack of dignity on the bottom of the stairs and her heart hammering in her chest, listening to the clatter and crash above her and thinking about what it might mean. She considers her predicament, and how stupid it is, and how stupid she is, and that the world won't end if she swallows her stupid pride and just makes a dash for the doors
a thing she is contemplating when lamplight fills the space, yellow and thin, dissipating into grey that doesn't completely hide the scampering beast. Who is, if she's to judge by this display, definitely alone in this castle. Probably she's right about him being bored. Do mad monsters haunting abandoned castles get lonely?
Doesn't everything? Nothing isn't haunted.
When she tries the stairs again, it's more carefully; she clings to the banister, barely setting her weight on the stairs themselves where she can help doing so, testing each stair before she trusts it. It takes her what feels like an absolute age to do, and she aches where she fell, and she hasn't totally dismissed the idea that the decision she's just made could be head injury based. But at least—
at least it's a decision. She can say, even if it leads her into trouble, that she made that choice.
“This is going to be such a stupid way to die,” she says, mostly to herself, though without any particular care to say it quietly.
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Height is advantageous. Shadows blanket his face. He can leap back and disappear during the time it takes her to locate the next staircase, climb said staircase, and locate the bannister overlooking what seems to be the heart of the castle.
This time, the lamp light at least throws shadows upon him. It's clear he has knees and arms, and wide, black wings. Are those shadows wisping around him like smoke?
"Is that what you want?"
His voice remains a rasp so unlike the voice of the man the monster is. He's silent for once; there's no wing flapping, no groaning railing. The castle doesn't even creak; the wind outside doesn't bat the trees against the windows.
"To die."
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but she could not, and ought not tempt her fate.
“Your social graces,” she informs him, straightening, “could use work. As host, it's generally frowned upon to ask your guests if they crave death.”
This isn't exactly an answer. But what answer might she give? Yes, sometimes. No, not tonight. If she'd wanted to die so fucking badly she could have relinquished herself to the fate behind her, outside of this castle, let it choke and smother her until she'd seen no other way out. A hundred opportunities have been provided to her, over the years, through her own doing or not—
she had been forced, in the recognition of desiring to master her own life, that she might also actually want to live it. It's just going to be incredibly stupid if admitting that, finally, is what gets her killed after all that she's survived.
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Given the demon has never spoken to anyone when awake, his social graces are murky like a thin streak of grey cloud over the moon. They're there, but terrible. Nikolai would never ask if someone craved death. He'd ask if someone craved adventure, or the wind in their hair, the sea spray splattering against their skin.
But the demon isn't Nikolai, and there's nothing but cool air, the midnight noises, and the raging storm outside to inspire him.
He watches her, remaining still for the moment.
"Should I instead ask if you crave life?" And then, as if somehow slipping into the man he wears, he adds without thinking, "That sounds like a rather boring topic."
(Perhaps that slip will become useful later.)
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She checks herself; there are a lot of reasons that could be true that she shouldn't get bold about.
“I think that depends on the life,” she says, instead. Probably someone with a boring life would still be as desperate to hold onto it as an adventurer. How many people sit around shrugging off the idea that they might as well die, for all that their story's worth? Even still. “And the capacity for imagination in the listener.”
It's hard to find absolutely nothing of curiosity in a person. Not impossible—
difficult.
“Generally,” she adds, “neither are hospitable small-talk.”
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He doesn't reveal his face—he never does, not unless there's a high chance that the person seeing his face won't be able to recount it later. Instead, he uses the shadows to his advantage-after all, that's what he's born from. Still sitting perched prettily, the demon has a sense to… establish something.
This is the longest that anyone's spoken to him before.
Granted, this is the only time anyone has spoken to him. Others have cried. Many have screamed. No one's held a conversation with him.
"It's unfortunate he's not available to speak to."
Who's he? Him. The other him. The one who's a great conversationalist and can turn any small talk into riveting stories. The demon, while being him, doesn't seem to possess the skill. Perhaps he intentionally doesn't wish to.
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instead,
“It isn't that I don't wish to speak to you.”
Although she is inclined to think she'd be well within her rights if it were.
Her shoulder aches where she'd landed on the stairs. She is tired, and it is dark, and cold, and she is difficult for the sake of being difficult. Maybe to leave her own clawmarks behind, I was here, even if she's remembered most of all as an inconvenience. At least, she cannot be ignored.
“I wasn't expecting company either.”
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The floor creaks. He's lifted up and off of where he is and lands on the loose wooden panels of the floor—still shaded in shadow. The demon thrives in it.
Footsteps echo. The wooden floor is both empty and full. He doesn't move toward her, staying far away, knowing it's better for his survival… even though he knows he can attack. This sudden birth of a conscience prompts him to scratch at his arm.
Lightning slashes soundlessly against the dark, gloomy sky. The demon's human-like shadow (his wings are the only inhuman part about him) casts along the wall.
"The east wing's floors are caving in." He has no idea why he says it.
He intends to leave.
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“I'll bear that in mind,” she says, gathering her composure and her dignity about her, tattered things but essential all the same.
Her life hasn't gone the way she envisioned it. None of the ways, even; her worst fears came to pass and she'd had to invent new ones. She has persevered, and persevered, and persevered, and now she is here and when she looks behind her every step had made sense and the sum of them all is—
clutching everything she'd managed to carry, alone with a monster in a storm.
Or: still here. With someone who had rather she not fall through a floor. If you don't like a story, tell a different one. She tacks on, “Thank you,”
and when she is relatively certain that she's oriented east and west, starts to move again, quietly determined. At the very least, she can wait out the night.