Work Text:
You had never seen the streets this quiet.
The overcrowded, bustling city of Dressrosa was meant to be just that - populated, however it seems tonight, a different scene has been set on the stage. The play for tonight is overcast, illuminated with a pale stage light from the inken sky above. This arcane light creates new scenery to your wandering, almost trembling eyes. Athirst, immemorial shadows take the waning moonbeams by utter contrasting force, creating shades that are darker than the foreboding sky’s own coat of space.
There lay a stark contrast of colors to your open gaze - the ever sparkling surfaces of the city’s buildings and lamps, like the stars above in their bright ghastly beam, against the utter void of the suggestive shadowing ink that lay in wait along the folds and cracks of the stone architecture, and beyond. Light and dark, like a monochromatic lens, you feel as if you are in one of the museum's paintings, the ones that always filled you with such gratitude for your own comfort in liberating, abundant light. The paint’s ink seems to stretch out of the canvas and into your mind now, as you watch a shadow seem to sink, to drip along the nearby church’s wall. A moving shadow…?
Your eyes swiftly scan up, terribly quick, rapidly looking for this silhouette, hoping to set your eyes on the bell-ringer, his form bringing you the stability of another humanoid soul. The crustaceous bricks of the tower, once a pale blue, now cast out in graying, almost hoary shades. Your gaze, alas, reaches the top, lingering breathlessly on the sharp cut of a new shade, nested between the pillars and glass frames of the church's belltower; the brass bell itself.
The echo of what is before you suddenly wracks your very being, the silence broken with a singular wake of sound. The atavistic church’s confounded bell, it’s echoing gong an utterly cacodaemoniacal suggestion to your poor fearful brain. It comes directly after the realization sets in, hardly having the time to do so, still dripping down your mind. you could see nobody other than yourself on this night.
Someone should, no, someone must ring that terrible charnel bell. It has no beating heart like you, nor does it sweat as you have, soaking through your collar’s fabric. Perhaps the bell-toller stood on the other wooden beam, behind the swaying brass body. Or perhaps it had been automated, but the latter is a lofty concept entirely. But, such possibilities brought, with their foolish example, peace in your heart. Or at least an aid to reach such a place. Suggestions of logic that melt away the cyclopean structures of shadow and stone around you. These points help you remember the goal that lay past this loud roadblock.
Home. You have to go home.
It is too late to be out, much later than you had ever wished or desired to be. You did not know that morning, when you were preparing for work, that you would have ended up as you are now, stuck wandering hopefully for the possibility of familiarity. Your home is not on this side of town, nor are you, normally.
Your work never had been either, at least before now. It had been known before you even got the job application, that your goal as a delivery person was to deliver to where the customer is, and to not expect meetings at the most comfortable of times. However, today seems to be pushing it at the least. You had been instructed, just hours earlier, to bring a package to a recipient located near the edge of the city’s newer walls, where the style of masonry begins to change around you.
Dressrosa had been, decades before you were even conceived, under siege. An attack from the inside they said, by a once beloved King that had long since been buried in the recesses of your mind. You had not studied history since high school, or at least ‘The Night of The Mad King’, or whatever name they had given it. But some remnant of this memory has you recalling the reasoning behind the difference in the stone about you. Something that once pointed out, you cannot forget or unsee. The change from 900 years of cobblestone, to the newer brick and marble creates a distinction that does not normally occur in most cities. Such black and white, much like the shadows and the moonlight above, are always muddled with grays, much like the years spent between decades. However, Dressrosa did not get such a process.
It was given no time to heal, for the centuries that it took to create history had been erased in one sweeping night, leaving the suggestive rubble in this new world, its appearance alien to new design. Despite this, glimpses of the original city had survived. The houses and buildings that, by chance, were made with less wooden structures, and used other, stronger means of architectural stability stood ragged, but steady in the morning glow of the sun that day, and still are able to meet its light with worn, yet welcoming stone-faced walls. Those that survived were left to rot, along with the other remnants on the outskirts of the city. People included.
The woman you had delivered to today was nothing short of a noisome ghoul of a person, both inside and out. Her demands were met with your practiced kindness, however by the end of the night, you were beyond tired. This is what has led you to your placement on this shaded cobblestone lane, in a foreign part of a outre, long-dead landscape.
Your eyes land on a flickering streetlight, the only one within your sight for countless meters. The overhanging humidity has been chilled by the lack of sun, and now floats aimlessly across the stoney ground like some kind of amorphous animal. The lambent glow is just as pale as the moonbeams that drift across the tiles of mossy stone, and gambrelled roofs, making it difficult to maintain your gaze. Beyond the light posts lies an unseen street, with more lights, all glazed with the encroaching mist. Getting home seems like a dream rather than a reality anymore, and the comfort from earlier now sinks like the clouds at your feet.
Another sound suddenly breaks the silence once more, however it was not the clanging of metal this time, the sound still echoing in your own belfry. No, this sound was nowhere as close to being as loud to the world, but, its tone is what makes you stop your steady trot to the next pool of lamplight. It is loud in your ears, perhaps even louder than the bell… The sound of a fluttering bird, or the shuffle of a spider across a dirt floor. The sound is odd. Not expected, and not at all welcome. But your legs disobey your fear, or perhaps they are too flushed with it to even run.
Either way, your body stands still, as stiff as the lightpost behind you, and just as silently cold. A drop of what could be sweat, or humid dew trickles down your shirt from the curve of your neck, more following in slow succession. Your eyes do not suffer from the same paralyzing curse, and instantly, you begin searching for that same comfort you derived from the earlier toll of the bell. A reason. a rational explanation. A cause, any cause at all for such a sound, be it a monster, or even a simple pigeon. Anything to blame it on because, if it could not be accounted, or credited to a source, then.. It was somehow even more terrible indeed.
The figures you glimpse are all but shades; simple shadows that have hunkered down in odd, twisted forms around the dark crevices and holes of the buildings. Such swarthiness is swiftly contradicted by the blinding, streaking light of the moon’s rays, but this only creates a greater contrast in hue. This should make finding someone easier, but if something were to use the darkness as a cloak, it would be utterly impossible to peel apart and discern. This thought causes your stomach to flip once more, the muscles in your neck beginning to ache from the tension. Your desperate searching directs your vision towards a nearby house, its slanted roof casting odd shadows down below, reaching across the alley that runs to the next street. If someone were to stand there in utter silence, you do not doubt that you would have missed them with a fleeting glance. However, tonight is different.
There is purpose in your gaze, and it continues, leaving the empty path to the cobblestones of the building above. The stygian church stands there, foreboding as it had ever been,unchanging, and silent. Your eyes swaft over it again, searching for any sign of life. Any sign of.. Anything! A jutting stone casting small dark shapes onto the faces of the stones below. A patch of moss, the greenery standing out against the shimmering stones. So many small blemishes, and marks… it is hard to discern what could be of importance, and what is nothing but shadow. Your eyes land on another outcrop of stone, frantically scanning over the tanned moss that engulfs its peak. The next stones beside it sit in the perfectly lined darkness, contrasting between the light and shade.
Your gaze moves on before you realize what you had just seen. Your breath hitches, eyes frantically scrambling back to the discoloration you had glimpsed. It hadn’t moved, somewhat difficult to see from so far away. The shape becomes as foggy as the air around you, however it is clear what the suggestion of the tanned shape is.
A hand.
A human hand, almost too large to be even considered human, clutches the stone idly.
It feels as if the sound of the bell has struck your body once more, the resounding echo of the impact hitting your nerves in a whirl of cold fetid fear. All hope you once had plummet down to the bottom of your belfry, hitting your stomach like all the discarded old rubble of Dressrosa at once. Paresthesia knocks at your mind’s door, but your shaking, almost seizing eyes continue onwards, beginning to creep up to the next part of the form attached to the hand. The wrist begins, then utterly vanishes under the shadow of the stones above, the belltower casting its own swath of darkness across a full third of the building. You desperately stare, pleading for your eyes to adjust to the dark of the night. After a few seconds of concentration, they cooperate, the adjustment exposing more soft suggestions of detail across the stone’s face. It's hard to accept what the adjustment reveals.
The wrist is firmly attached to a discomfortingly long forearm. This terrible arm is hard to even register under the shadow of the tower, its color muted to an extreme. A color that barely even registers as human anymore, the hushed darkness soaking in all displays of singularity. The arm is bent at an upsetting angle; its posture uncomfortable, like the bent wing of a broken bird, twisted and hugging the surface. Around the heavy bicep, distortion begins, another kind of inhuman mass surrounding the torso with a dusty outline. It must be a coat, or a layer of fur, for no other form could be so amorphous, so inhuman. This pelt, for lack of a better word, runs down the body, coming to a stop near the figure's waist, apparent through the sudden dip in its form, just below its legs. And legs they are, jutting back out in the form of hind limbs, each so long they could be their own creature entirely. Even with such proportions, its species is terribly clear, and that lurching and flipping your poor stomach has been enduring threatens to heave over entirely, but only if your body could move once more, freed from its paralyzed prison. The rapping at your minds door only pauses for a breath, a blink, before beginning all over again. Your feet feel like cement bricks holding your body below waves of air, stuck within the vaporous clouded sea of the old city. The killer sits on the wall like a lizard on a pane of glass, it’s long, bony fingers clutching the two dislodged stones so hard it’s knuckles are white.
They seem… wrong.
Joints that normally have limits, seemingly broken to accommodate the weight of their master. The muscle that is ophidianically bound about the bones are also concerningly large, rivaling even the mighty gladiators you once saw sparring in the coliseum. It, no, he, based on design, was built to a standard you have not seen on neither a person nor any animal. It could hardly be considered of your blood, but somehow, it would be better to your feverish mind if it truthfully wasn't.
Another soft movement catches your eye; a glint, a faint gleam from the upper body. Red. Your gaze is met with a hue you were not expecting, making your heart leap once more. Color was not expected. It had not been expected since you began your trek home, the constant black and white of moonlit beams and shadows set the stage for a much older style of play, where no color permeates the humid air of the scene. However, this rule, now broken, startles you. The potential comfort of this sign of colorful life now squandered into nothing but liquid dread. This constant should not be broken, not to you at least. It is what made the rules people should follow. Take away those rules and constants, and man is nothing more than another terrified animal left trembling in fear of the next breeze, a thing it could never expect, nor control.*
The gleam of red is cast from a set of shimmering, almost glowing lenses. Or, the more upsetting option, radiant eyes. The gaze of the ruby glass shimmers across its exposed face like blood spatter, trickling down its tanned skin. From your stance, as hard as it may be to discern the details, you can see its face. It is illuminated in such a way, it almost seems like a glowing frame. Like a dull red stage-light. The crooked, painted grin that adorns the face’s flesh is one that does not sit well with your nerves. Another bucket of fresh pestilential paranoia douses your brain's very surface, seeping into the rugose membrane in a painfully slow drip. A smile should not look like what the man before you is doing. It has it ever felt like a primal threat to your very being. You have never felt such wrongness in all your life, a mental cacophony of screaming bells ringing and buckling your insides as a warning. A warning you must listen to. You must. Your brain tries once more to rationalize it at first, rushing before properly planning or thinking, to try and find an excuse. Any reasoning to the sight currently pinning you in place. It felt so utterly alien, so wrong, to witness the human shape in this contorted mockery of its true birthright. The human form. The physical being of what it means to be, what is recognized as us. This.. thing… is not like you.
A full minute between the two of you, a minute of twisted human connection that felt more like a charnel acceptance than a meeting of two souls on a lonely night. The feeling of being watched blares at you, screaming its warning as it has during the first few hours of you being there. You should have listened, however your legs remain locked in the same position on the cobblestones that line the miasmic, foggy streets. A heaviness that cannot shake off, no matter how hard you scream in your mind. Every part of you warns you to run, to flee from the lurking shade, but only the throbbing of your veins can be felt. A piece of you tells you in a silent suggestion, ‘It can feel them too.’
Another sound, this time illuminated in a different part of the act for you. Your eyes actively watch as the cause of your past anxiety is sounded once more; his chest heaves forward, a single insectoid leg pulling to his chest, the audible ruffling of his coat against the fabric reaching your ears, just before your sick stomach. Another knot forms inside of it, twisting your organs in another painful tug. Your eyes do not leave the figure.. They cannot, for the sinking fear of what would happen when left to the shadows, slipping into your blind spot once again, is practically deafening. Another ruffle, his lengthy leg stretching back out to another stone, the odd shape hooking about the worn edge of the bricks for stability. The way his heel bends into his bones is inhuman, being just another strand to add to his fearful visage. The head remains stabilized, locked downwards to face you like a gargoyle. You wish, with all of your being, that it would turn out to be just another one, an actual stoney carving, rather than the still-beating truth hanging on the church walls. That sound… you had heard it before. It was a familiar one, as it was something you had tuned out that evening, before making your delivery, attributing it to another flock of birds, or the billow of a hanging piece of laundry. A sound that was harmless, that did not threaten you as it did now. Another knot is added in your throat, blocking your shaking vocal chords in expected action. Your lungs ache, hugging your spine in shallow forced breaths as you bear witness to the beast crawling another slow step along the wall. Its own comfort for treading across the illuminated bricks stirs your heart into a fearful toss, a blisteringly loud suggestion of a greater evil beyond the visible shadows.
Before you can make yourself sicker, your eyes open wide, almost to a tearing point, practically falling out at sight before you. The human, if it is to be granted that title, breaks into motion, leaping to the ground with a steady thud, landing like a cat jumping from a tree. Your legs, stone no longer, react before you can think, wobbling and quaking as they try to back up against the lamppost positioned behind you.
One step,
then another.
They are becoming more of a chore to commit to, along with your quivering breaths. The beast hardly registers what just happened, its head instantaneously facing back up to you, as if it had never wavered. The grin that spans from ear to ear remains as well, an expression with no possible positive connotation. That look is what you needed to finally snap you completely out of your cemented fearful posture. Your once shaking, icy legs now fighting over one another to clamber behind you. Your back hits the pole of a lantern, wobbling it, and its torch with a soft, but very apparent sound. Your eyes never should have left it, even if it was for just a second to see what you had bumped into. The moment your gaze falls back onto the abhorrent figure, it was already meters closer from where it had started near the base of the cobblestone wall.
Even from your position you can see it has gained an astounding height. It held itself as a man now, or at least something closer. Something about his body’s joints do not seem model. His gangly design brings forth images of a cacodaemoniacal insect, or perhaps a dying avian, with broken wings hanging limply at its sides. Its leg length is enough to keep its strides meters long Each leaping bound over the street’s curb is faster than a bat in the night, the bricks become cobblestone under his feet and the stones rising back to the sidewalk you're on, . He is coming right at you, barreling like a bull to a blood colored target. The sound of his heels slamming against the ground, the surrounding stones underfoot echo back, reverberating through the entire scene in an even greater volume.
The play being performed under the pale gibbous moon takes flight, the spotlight of the moonbeams staying on the two actors, a duet of the shades among the fog.
Whipping your head back around in a manic alarm, you grip the pole and shove. Using the extra propulsion, you sprint in the opposite direction, spilling back out into the empty, foggy streets. Your once frozen legs still wobble, softly aquiver, both from the aforementioned horror, and the sudden thrust of change putting pressure on your lungs. Your poor lungs have already begun panting, heaving in what air they can from the shallow breaths you can take in as you race across the sidewalk. The shades pass over your head as you dart under the balcony of a nearby home, the multiple story-tall buildings looming over the surrounding street. From behind you, another sound has begun; a tittering sound, like a suggestion of laughter, along with the multitudes of, what you now recognize to be feathers ruffling about in the wind that flies behind him. His clicking heels echo out, dissipating on the sturdy, moss covered stones of the nearby buildings, muffled, but still reaching your ears. Your own quiet foot-falls meet with his, all muddling together into an unearthly methodical chant.
Through the misty clouds that curl about your flailing legs, you can see another street lamp emerge in front of you. A beacon of sorts, to a path that should lead you to the main roads of the inner city, away from this noisome place. Racing past it, your movement leaves swirling foggy currents of air in your wake, the twisting, serpentine clouds moving like a parting sea. The smog’s slow, curling fumes are quickly dismissed and dissipated by the sheer speed of the other form coming close behind you. You cannot see him, only * hear * him, like a bullet shot from a gun. A predator chasing after its prey at a speed that would be impressive if not for your own, slower pace. Dodging another street lamp, you have begun a terrible rhythm, the pattern repeating every few meters. The collocate houses around you, through quick glances of your frantically shifting eyes, seem to be unchanging in their architecture, sending another fearful wave of nausea to your churning stomach. You have to be close, right??? You have got to be!
Panting as you run, you hear another sound, like a broken record skipping over the same ululating thud. Another drum added to the discordant, clambering duet, like the march of an abhorrent spider, one disjointed leg after another. The feathered man continues his gaining pursuit after the fly. Through the pounding torrents of blood in your ears, you hear a consistent wheezing of the other’s own breath, the rattling of which signifies the humanity you so wished was shed away. It would be easier that way. A sudden clatter sounds from your left, your eyes catching the sight of an illuminated spinel hue barreling closer to your flank. In a tremendous show of utter force, the bestial form rakes a hand into one of the lamp poles, hitting it with such force that it rattles you to your core with a resounding clang. You cannot help it; in a foolish trade for speed, you glance over your shoulder, spotting the man sprawled across the shimmering street.The slimy verdant moss covering the cobblestones below, that you mindlessly leaped over in a panic, must have dislodged his footing. The black pole shines in the moonlight beams, casting a glow to the dark color. Oil drips from the heavily impacted pole like tree sap, pooling at the blonde’s side. His form is flat to the ground, legs sprawled out like some kind of roadkill.
The sight brings you a shiver of relief, like cold water over a nightmarish sleep, however, this doesn't last as long as you hoped. His spindly arms have already begun pulling his heaving chest off the ground, legs kneeling up into a canine-like stance. In a split second snap, his hunched neck stiffens out to you, cracking itself into position with an almost inaudible snap. Glowing under the crooked street light, in a radiant display of a hellish prosper, the devil’s eyes meet yours once more. His own are not truthfully eyes, let alone human, only blazing windows of crystalline glass that mockingly grins back at your running form. They laugh at your beating fear, mocking the very steps you are actively taking to escape, in a display of terrible confidence. You wish you could simply squeeze your eyes shut, away from that vomitous stare, still present even as you face away. You can feel it now, even as you run, burying itself into the back of your neck like the moonbeams do the fertile sea.
The eyes suddenly catch sight of a shape in the clouds above the ground, something too oddly shaped to be another cookie-cutter lamp post. Another pole, this one much thinner, with a couple of amorphous shapes on its top, jutting outwards like pointing hands. A street sign, and the end of the sidewalk, the cobblestones changing to brick. Brick…
Dressrosa… you are so close to the familiar sights of home, to the Dressrosa you know. Away, no, safe from the things in the shaded night, and back to the comfort of the light and day. To a world that seemed so long past, that you had begun doubting if you would ever return to its warmth and grace. You only had time to choose one to read, every second is another grain of sand in your fleeting hourglass. The first one pointed left, its white letters spelling out a phrase that sends another wave of fleeting relief to your exhausted mind. Left.
You leap off the curb, your shaking legs almost giving out right there, not prepared for the sudden change of direction. You do not have time to think this over, nor time to focus on the loud clang from behind you, where the man has pummeled into the street sign. It does not stop you, nor does it stop him it seems, for the sound of clambering, clawing limbs has begun once more. The promise of home now spins about your withering brain like a merry go round, flitting and dancing about.
The impish design of promise, of hope, can blind us however, as it has done for you now. Such desperation had blinded you to the sign at your chest before. The sign that read “one way.” Oh well. Through the clearing mist, you spot it. The unmistakable shape, and the undeniable fact of its oncoming presence; a brick wall. You had not noticed, maybe due to the smoke, or the chaotic nature of it all, that the houses around you had lost their minuscule yards. That the fences had changed to just brick.
You now stood before a barricade, placed during the new construction so many years ago, that closed off the old city to the new. The irony of such things brings forth a twinge of muddled emotion in you, and your mind can only wash you with your hopes once more. The sounds of running now have stopped completely, replaced now by only one set of steps, a creeping approach that is not of your own. The old stones around, you can only watch quietly, as the great terror looms behind your meek form. Their eyes on you, your eyes fruitlessly scanning the wall, and his back upon you; you were not going to leave this ally without them.
Maybe it was your brain’s attempt at mental preservation, or maybe, it was just acceptance, your eyes could only stare ahead at the bricks that were meant to welcome you home. You were no longer part of the innocent light, now burdened with the stygian knowledge of the moonlit city. Something that you wish had been completely covered over and reclaimed by the soil of the new kingdom. A lurking, suggestive darkness, that should have been snuffed out with the last King, like the tide over a flame.
As the final steps were made behind you, the curtain you felt brush on your neck was coming to a close. From your side, you could have sworn that you heard the tittering of deep throated laugher, muddled like the world around you now lay. You could not return to either, not knowing of each other. An innocence that the light held, and once was taken for granted. No, your befuddled mind was to lay with the stones come morning, mixed with the stones as it was found by police. This, along with the caked feathers of some foreign bird, that was not recognized as native to Dressrosa entirely.