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“ I’m going to regret this, im going to regret this, Im going to regret this, I’m—“
Rea shook their head,
“Fuck it, I’m going.”
They stood at the top of a cold, dark staircase descending down into the “who-knows-how-far-down” depths of Castle Ravenloft. They’d peeked around the, now cracked doorway, trying to see what laid behind the magnificent wooden door, but to no avail. The darkness shrouding the spiral stairway was thick, and the stone twisted down and down and down far beyond the limits of even the half-elf’s vision.
Like most things, Rea had spent much of the night teetering right at the edge of acceptable behavior for a houseguest, and toes over the edge of the rules they had been given. There was nothing wrong with going to the library, even as late as it was, nobody told them not to call on their host in the middle of the night for simple directions, and it certainly wasn’t forbidden that they trail the castle’s chamberlain out of morbid curiosity. The only thing they had been explicitly told not to do, was to enter any locked rooms.
And well, this particular room was no longer locked.
It had been locked before, locked when the meek looking accountant had shown them the way to the library, locked when Rea had caught the man attempting vainly to sneak to try the latch, and remained locked, to their best knowledge, after they had given the man a short lesson in how to quiet his footsteps (a useful skill, really, how could you call that suspicious in this economy?)
Truthfully, they couldn’t help but worry for the man. A servant, the Castle’s bookkeeper it sounded like, had piqued Rea’s attention during the night. They had made a point to talk to the man, at first, wondering what in the hell a mortal was doing on the opposite side of a very intentionally separated dinner table. Rea and Naenia had sat to one side, and every resident of the Castle (except for the host, who sat at the head) on the other…plus one of their traveling companions, Zaleska, and the castle’s accountant, Jesper.
Jesper seemed to be the only mortal at that side of the table, the reason for the distinction had become abundantly clear when Rea had noticed that their drinks were poured from two different bottles. Rea even found themself thinking that the two could become something resembling friends, if they played their cards right. They didn’t think for a second , that the man was here willingly, not entirely at least. He spoke more than once about the need for the trio to leave as soon as possible, and not to stay a moment more than was required to keep up appearances. They wondered if that was what had happened to him, curiosity getting the better of the man and such. For all his accounting work, Rea wondered if the man might have talked his way into a debt of some sort…they wondered if similar might have happened to them , had they followed their original course of action upon arriving in the strange land in which they found themself.
He had been looking for something. What , Rea did not know. In fact, they had gone quite out of their way not to find out. They knew nothing better than the look of a man who knows they’re doing something incriminating, and Jesper had a real case of it stalking back towards the door. They had helped where they could, instructing him on how to move quieter, but that was all.
Nobody could drag out information that had never been learned, after all. No, they couldn’t be responsible for what they might have seen if they had snooped.
That was good while it lasted.
Now, the door was open and Jesper was nowhere to be seen. Usually, this would mean that he succeeded in his little excursion, but there was one complicating factor Rea just couldn't get over.
When Rea had trailed the Castle’s chamberlain, Rahadin, it was because he had come from that door. Rea didn’t know where it led, or what might have been so interesting through the darkness, but Jesper had entered, and Rahadin had exited, wiping something from his chin.
They’d originally planned to forget about that aspect of it after trailing him, after watching him stop and narrowly avoid turning to face them. But Rea knew they had watched the man close the door behind him…and now the door was open. Open just a crack, but open all the same.
It was almost like it wanted the inquisitive half elf to investigate.
And who were they to refuse?
So they stepped just a bit closer to the door, already feeling the cool air seeping from the stairwell into the hallway. They looked carefully right, then left, checking to make sure the chamberlain hadn’t circled back around to them again, and then tucked quickly through the door, pressing it closed behind them. It plunged the room into darkness, thick and complete, further cementing how grateful Rea was that they could see in the dark. They remained there for a moment, heart pounding against their chest. They’d already gone too far, they were sure that this must count as trespassing in some capacity, so now they had to press onwards. They felt their heart slow, then pushed themself up, beginning to move slowly, silently down the staircase. Rea pressed their back to the wall, straining their ears to try to catch any movement above or below them. It stuck them, as they crept ever downwards, just how far down this stairwell seemed to go. They were on an upper floor when they had entered, having eaten dinner on the ground floor (as much of a “ground” floor that the first floor of a mountaintop estate could be.), but they only remembered having gone up one flight of stairs at the most. They had already gone at least double that distance in the opposite direction. The air had even started to change. The castle interior was warm and washed in the glow of braisers and oil lamps and great, beautiful hearths, but there was none of that warmth here, not anymore. It was cool. Not quite the freezing, biting chill of the outside, no, that was dry and it cracked and ate at the skin. The chill creeping further and deeper down the stairwell had moisture, was nearly humid, a weather pattern Rea hadn’t expected to feel in the biting cold that Barovia had provided. The ever-present mist that blanketed the ground was growing ever thicker along the stone, seeping into their clothes, chilling them all the way down into their bones. They wondered if they might have crossed under the kitchen at some point…but then wouldn’t the fog be upstairs , instead of underground? They had been walking for a good few minutes. Even at their slow pace, Rea thought that they’d have hit the bottom of this spiral by now, but no such luck.
They could , on the other hand, make out the sound of something up ahead of them. It wasn’t people, not at first. They heard water . It dripped from the stone a little ways in front of them, slicked the walls where they began to coat with moss and mold. It fell into their hair, across their skin, leaving tortuously cold and clear trails across their body. The only thing that Rea could imagine lying this far down was a cellar or a stable or…
They decided that they’d go with “cellar”.
They could see the stairs begin to even out a ways in front of them, see the ceiling finally cease to slope downwards. What laid before them stopped Rea in their tracks. The final two stairs were covered entirely by a murky, freezing pool of water that lapped dangerously against the step above it. It was obviously mostly stagnant, a musty, rotting smell rising from the pool along with the layer of mist that laid along its surface. The water extended into a long, narrow hallway, capped at its end by yet another great wooden door. This one looked to be less ornate than the one at the top of the stairs, braced by iron bands and rivets. They couldn’t see around it, but it was about half open. They, once again, strained their eyes to try to see what laid before them, but without approaching the door itself, they couldn’t hope to see anything except the empty, waterlogged hallway before them. They took a large breath inwards, and slowly lowered themself, one foot at a time, into the water, praying that they wouldn’t slip and make too much noise. The water was freezing , and made their legs feel as if ice was creeping up their very bones. They crept forwards through the pool, ,approaching the door slowly and as silently as possible, dragging their feet close to the ground as to not disturb the water’s surface more than was necessary.
They began to notice something rising above the sounds of the water’s lapping and the occasional settling earth. They couldn’t quite make it out at first. It sounded all too similar to the shifting of the water around their ankles, to the pressing of wet dirt and algae along the stone under their feet, but as they drew closer and closer to the door, the sound was repeated, steady and independent of their movement. It was low, a little too far away to echo loudly, but it was wet and accented with horrible pauses like drawing breath. Above it all, Rea moved ever forwards, occasionally finding their foot hitting an uneven patch of stone, falling a little harder than they’d hoped, splashing small, but in a way that they couldn’t help but think sounded like an explosion against the near-silence. They reached the doorway, nearly having to pull themself to it on account of the shaking in their legs. They thought it was from the cold, hoped it was from the cold, but the pit in their stomach just kept growing. They had a horrible feeling about this, and that noise still just kept going and going and going. Rea leaned against the doorway for a moment, attempting to steady themself against the wood and iron before slowly, ever so slowly, peeking around the edge to see what laid ahead.
It made them retch .
They couldn’t see very far into the room, but what they could see was more than enough to freeze the curious half-elf in place. They could make out the harsh outlines of bars , cold and tall and iron , stretching from floor to ceiling. And the floors , they sloped steadily away from the center of the room, water creeping up the walls from about an inch in the center to at least a foot at the edges that Rea could see . They could make out heaps and piles of… something lying among the bars and the water…something moving , something alive .
There were only two things that could lay this far down…a cellar, and a dungeon .
Rea realized they were looking at the latter.
The noise, still steady, was louder now, coming from just ahead in the darkness, just past where they could see. They heaved, shaking their head and mentally screaming at themself not to do the thing they were about to do. But, against what they knew was in their best interest, Rea stepped forwards from the narrow hallway and into the dungeon. They slid towards the cells, watching their step carefully, ignoring how the color of the water had changed , ignoring the swirls of red that had begun to mix in around their feet. Rea nearly screamed as something grabbed at the leg of their pants, someone grabbed at the leg of their pants. The prisoner opened their mouth as if to plead, but nothing came out, they just gasped, eyes wide and sunken in to their skull, hands pale and bony with skin nearly drooping off of their frame. Rea yelped, shaking the person’s grip away from them easily and shuffling quickly away from the bars. They masked their own footsteps with the groans and cries of the prisoners, of which there were many more than Rea had first imagined.
The sick, squelch ing sound from earlier was louder still, hitting a place in Rea’s brain that struck familiar. It was like meat , like a ripping and tearing and squeezing of meat . The creatures bent low on the road to the castle played at the back of their mind, as did the discarded peasant’s dress they had seen a few feet away. They continued moving only by instinct, only by pure will did their feet continue to rise and fall. Rea’s entire body was trembling. Jesper had come down here, why?
Where was he?
Then, as if to answer their question, a figure they had previously believed to simply be another ghostly body behind the bars began to come into focus out of the darkness. They crept forward a few inches, straining for a better look, then froze .
The silhouette was tall, draped in a loose and heavy cloak lined with furs. It was familiar .
Rea felt their blood run cold as they felt the mist swirl around their ankles, thick and cool so far into the dungeon, only thickening as it approached the man. They knew who this was, the man had sat only a person away from them for most of the evening. How impolite would it be to forget the face of one’s host so soon?
Something hung limply from Strahd’s grasp, he was turned mostly away from the intruder, a slight bend in his shoulders towards whatever laid across his arms. Rea now knew where the noise was coming from, it emanated from the man in front of them, timed perfectly with the slight rise and fall of his shoulders, the careful tilt of his head, and the loose jolts from the figure in his arms.
It can’t be it can’t be…it isn’t, he wouldn’t have been so stupid, he…he-
In one sudden, swift movement, the man pulled away from the figure in his arms, followed by an awful tearing as teeth broke from flesh. Strahd cast his gaze towards the man, giving some sort of nod before dropping him from his arms, sending the figure collapsing in a heap onto the ground. His head landed towards Rea, giving them a clear and perfect look at the exact thing they feared they would see.
There, lying half covered in crimson stained water, eyes glassy, skin pale as death, was Jesper, not moving, not breathing.
He was dead…Rea prayed he was dead. No sooner than the man hit the water, hands grasped and pulled and tore at the man. First his clothes, then his flesh, devolving into a chorus of ripping and biting and—
The hands were bone-thin, pale and rotting, nails jagged and yellowed as they quickly became stained with red. Rea stumbled backwards, seeing the full, unadulterated horror before them as Strahd simply watched what became of the kindly bookkeeper. He raised a hand gracefully to his lips, presumably, wiping whatever viscera remained from his face, before turning smoothly on his heel. His gaze rather immediately found the place where the half-elf stood, hopefully shrouded by darkness. His eyes pierced into their chest, felt like cold daggers where they fell, Rea wanted to scream, to cry, to throw up, but they could barely even move . Even worse, there was a stark, noticeable trail of red below the lord’s bottom lip.
That was it, of the prisoners, of the noises , of the death of a friend, the blood of it all had sent the bard over the edge. They walked backwards, staring steadily into the place where the lord of the castle still stood, where he still stared, praying that they had somehow gone unnoticed. Their pace picked up the further and further from the man and the body and the things that they got, eventually turning and nearly running after they re-crossed that wood and iron door. As they turned, they heard what would haunt them for…who knows how long.
“ W-wait! Please, please don’t! No! N–”
They pushed through the man’s pleas, much too far away and he much too far gone to do much of anything. Tears streaked down Rea’s face as they ascended the stairs, thankful with each stair that Jesper’s agonized cries had been cut short behind them. They rose up and up and up and up back to the, still closed doorway that had started this entire mess. They rammed through the door, sprinting with wild abandon through the bright, warmly lit halls of the castle, through the corners, through the twists, back to the room they had been provided, bursting through that door too and locking it firmly shut behind them. They slid down the doorway, sobbing into their hands as they hit the floor, screaming when the smell of blood covered them and crawling to the window opposite the door.
They heaved and retched and threw up every bit of the night’s exquisite dinner into the courtyard below, for once, grateful for the biting cold of the air.
Rea reached for their journal once they had gotten themself to their bed, only managing the energy to jot down two, broken sentences before falling like an anchor into the covers, pulling them up over their head and sobbing, as dehydrated as they found themself, until they fell asleep.