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The compulsive need to destroy the castle's occupants was ridiculous. Even a phantasm as ghastly as the Red Death knew this—there were whole other nations to ravage, continents, even the entire globe. And yet none dared to stand in such willful defiance of the oncoming storm of blood and bile as those who locked themselves inside their walls of stone, feasting and reveling as if nothing at all was amiss.
(The Red Death did not know that their celebrations were fueled only their participants' desperation, unable to convince themselves of the safety they so desperately sought.)
The bringer of doom gave the prince's troupe time, yes they did—torturing the rest of the once-prosperous region, bringing destruction on country and city alike. The gates of the castle stayed stubbornly shut. The Red Death told themselves that those walls were not worth cracking, but at the end of those long days was an unavoidable conclusion.
No one, no matter their riches, should be able to escape the scourge that was their due.
And so the Red Death set to work.
They couldn't hope to starve the revelers out—the castle's provisions were too well-stocked, and even the most vicious of plagues would eventually reach the end of their seasons. And so they would have to steal inside, somehow seeping in through nonexistent cracks and raining death upon the occupants when they saw fit. When they grew frustrated with their lack of progress they were comforted and spurred on by the vicious rewards of the task ahead.
The gate was locked. It was locked the first time they tried it, and the second, and the third; they should have stopped trying, they knew, but somehow the wretched insolence of locking out the one and only Red Death fueled them with a rage that kept them rattling and banging away. Eventually, though, they had to admit that the struggle was useless.
The walls were high, so high—perfect cliff-faces rising to the clouds but bolstered by a very earthly strength. Their faces were as smooth as builders could make them, leaving no path of cracks and crevices that might lead all the way to the top. The Red Death moaned and groaned with failed exertion, the sounds filtering inside as particularly violent gusts of wind.
(The Red Death did not know how the revelers trembled at the sound of that accursed wind—as if something was trying to force its way in, they whispered, not knowing how right they were.)
Finally, the Red Death dove into the moat. It was filthy, full of dirt and debris with nowhere else to go—in other words, the perfect stew for a deadly plague. They swam through the water, unraveling and spilling out into the muck. They washed into every crevice and cranny, content for now to fester in the moat, even if nothing else could be achieved.
And then they found a crack in the castle's defenses—a literal crack, as it turned out.
Many years had elapsed since the castle's construction, and even though excellent craftsmanship had been carefully maintained, the water had worn at least one small pathway through the masonry where even the Red Death could not. A few drops of water slowly dripped into a dark and deserted dungeon. The Red Death wasted no time in following.
It was excruciatingly slow going. The Red Death was accustomed to speedy carnage, but the mere thought of breaching the castle was sufficient to teach them patience, at least for now. They were pulled inside the stronghold, the supposedly unconquerable, the place of mistaken safety one droplet at a time. They inched inside the crushing walls of stone, the eroded walls of their tiny tunnels closing in from all sides, before spilling into freedom once more and dropping to an earthen floor packed hard by uncounted years of despairing feet.
They pooled. They collected. They plotted.
(The Red Death did not know that the puddle they had followed in had been inspected merely the day before and pronounced upon and worried about. It was as if they were foolish to even try to keep out the outside world, the courtiers had remarked.)
Eventually their whole form had seeped in through the walls, and they began to reform into a cohesive unit again and inspect their surroundings. The dungeon was almost completely enveloped in darkness, but a sconce in a nearby corridor provided the smallest bit of light.
It was then that they noticed they were not alone. In a far corner lay a huddled form. It moaned softly, and fought in vain to pull its disintegrating clothing into some semblance of shelter. A man, then, noted the Red Death, practically forgotten by his jailers and miserable beyond belief.
The Red Death moved to end the man, to trap him in a cloud of pestilence and blood as was their custom. But no, that would not do—the Red Death could not conquer here, not when death would bring nothing but long-sought relief.
And so they left the man where he lay, slipped through a doorway and between forged iron bars, and out into a corridor. Flame-filled sconces flickered in drafts pulled down from a stone spiral staircase at one end of the corridor.
From there it was simple, really. All the Red Death had to do was follow the noise—oh, the noise! The music, and the gaiety, and the patter of dancing feet and of mouths with little to do but talk incessantly. The Red Death shuddered, but remembered their task and began to steal up the stairs, around and around, until the air was less dank but still drafty.
They stayed on the staircase past the floor from which the most hubbub seemed to emanate, and found they were gliding up a tower. The stairs ended in what looked to be private chambers, lavishly decorated with burgundy fabrics and dark woods. The Red Death spied a letter carelessly tossed on a table with the Prince Prospero's name at the top of the first page.
These were the Prince's quarters, then. The inner sanctum of the one who thought he could outlast death—the Red Death, no less. It would be glorious, except of course that the Prince was off feasting and dancing and so was not immediately available to receive his comeuppance.
The Red Death knew that trapping the Prince by himself was hardly necessary to carry out their dire deeds. There had just been a certain dramatic allure to the thought of descending on the Prince while he was all alone except for his terror, and then slaughtering the rest of his party once they were left without a ruler to guide or reassure them, however futile such reassurance might be in practice.
(The Red Death did not know how little use any attempts at princely wisdom would be even only in the minds of some in his court: there had been a growing tide of whispering that to make such merriments, rather than simply hiding away, might be more than unseemly.)
But then the Red Death noticed something else lying across the table. It was a piece of dark, tattered cloth, at odds with the finery of the rest of the room. As they moved closer to inspect it they saw another item behind it: a pale and grotesque mask styled after a corpse, with a degree of detail that would have evoked revulsion in most people beyond the Prince's own irreverent group.
It was a costume, then, and another mockery of the grave. The Red Death, however, was too busy contemplating how they might turn it to their advantage to be too offended. A dramatic costume for a dramatic entrance into the party was certainly an idea, but one that would likely go completely unnoticed if a masquerade filled with other ghastly costumes was already in progress. Somehow they would have to invent something even more repulsive.
Ah, they thought. That was it! They wouldn't appear costumed as the result of any miscellaneous death, no no no—they summoned some of the blood they were so adept at manipulating and let it spatter all over the costume.
They would appear as none other than themselves, of course. The embodiment of the Red Death.
They donned the garments slowly, savoring the bulk and rough texture of their vestments. They slipped the mask into place, and with one last gleeful look around the doomed Prince's chambers began to descend down the stairs once again.
(The Red Death did not know how the revelers had been somehow awaiting a terrible fate, freezing as they did at the mournful chime of the ebony clock each hour. The chimes began again, and this time, this time, something lurked at the end.)
The Red Death savored the relative quiet of the staircase before stepping out into the suite where the night's masquerade was taking place. The silence seemed to follow them in: the clock's eerie chime had silenced much of the group, and at the appearance of so dreadful a character as the Red Death in costume the hush seemed to settle in, seeping into the corners of the rooms. Even the flames in the braziers that lit the area appeared to flicker and fade.
The Red Death found themselves in the very same room as the Prince, which the former considered an excellent coincidence and the latter most certainly did not. The Read Death read the Prince's reaction carefully, feeling a red-hot sort of satisfaction as the Prince visibly shook with shock and fear. At last the Red Death had arrived. The moment hadn't fully sunk in for them, yet—this culmination of so much effort and, indeed, the entire conquest of the Prince's nation. Now it did, and they were as happy as an embodiment of the antithesis of happiness can be.
The Prince's anger that followed was similarly satisfactory. These were mortals—absurd, silly mortals—and yet they still convinced themselves they could stand against the unbeatable foe. They found these attempts admirable, the Red Death knew, but the effect simply exaggerated their weakness and folly.
The rest of the crowd was not so emboldened, and so the Red Death slid through their midst. Ahead, through the rooms decorated in various colors the Red Death found far too ostentatious, lay another chamber almost devoid of occupants. From here they would watch the carnage, they decided. It was dark, dark as doom, cloaked in black velvet. A room befitting the Red Death themselves.
They turned, and positioned themselves below that dreaded clock. They gazed out at the stricken crowd.
The Red Death did know fear—fear in all its forms, in all its variations, and the sort of paralyzing hysteria they all ultimately became. They lived on it, and they knew nothing better than the terrified expressions of each member of the crowd.
The silence reigned for a moment longer before the Prince decided to make what use he could of his feeble courage, grasped his dagger, and stormed towards the Red Death.
It was a useless attempt, and it would end with a useless death. The Red Death regarded him coldly.
And now, they thought—now it begins.
The man below who had been tormented for so long by the dungeon's unyielding walls had little to do but to sleep the indistinguishable days and nights away. He barely acknowledged any more when the guards unlocked the door to place some maggoty bread and sour water inside.
Except this time—this time something was different. There was no second clang and click, no quick withdrawal and locking of the door once meal delivery was complete. In its place was a rather pronounced thump. He rolled over to see what in heavens could be going on.
A jailer was sprawled across the doorway with something pooling underneath him. The customary jug of water had spilled during the fall, of course, but even in the dim torchlight the prisoner could see that the expanding puddle was of a decidedly darker color.
He had no inclinations, though, to investigate the mysterious origins of his good fortune. He stole out of his cell and up the staircase, initially hesitantly and then with increasing confidence as he met and heard no one. His joints and atrophied muscles ached with the effort, but at last he dragged himself out and onto the floor where the masquerade ball had been held.
Each room was filled with the Red Death's victims, contorted in their final agonies. In the darkest room lay a vacant, tattered cloak and pale mask, although of course the prisoner knew nothing of their importance.
He simply stared for a while, nodding slowly. Eventually he pulled himself to his feet once more and began to pick his way towards the castle gate and freedom.