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…We’re thinking of rearming the pit trap…
…I don’t think you have what it takes…
…No, no, please no…!
The smell of wet stone is the first to invade his senses.
A strange weight within his heart was the next.
The world around the monster spins, blurring his vision to a menagerie of unfocused stone and crumbling cobble. The darkness of the enclosed room he had found himself was stale, as if the shadows licking up the walls had been waiting for his return for a very, very long time. Weeping angels crying upon an open casket, their tears long giving away to raw chafing and an all too familiar ache in his muscles.
He tries to move, but finds his body screaming in protest. A twitch of his clawed finger sends a flash of lighting up his blackening arm, whitening his peripheral and only enhancing the darkness that seemed to thicken with each second.
Thickening, thickening, and thickening more. The corners of the pit sludged with a black tar that bubbled and hissed, oozing from the wound that had nestled itself into his heart. Burning flesh was the third stimulus to invade him. Snaking up his nostril and crawling into the crevices of his staggering brain, awaking it from its perpetual stupor with a harsh, unforgiving tug.
..You.. You guys, you wouldn’t…
His lungs fill with the sharp intake of cold breath. It feels foreign within this body of his now. The darkness around him stirs, pulsing in greeting of their new brethren. He breaths, or at least tries to, but what comes in and out of his airways feels as alien as the weight piercing his heart. He remembers what breathing is supposed to feel like, and it certainly doesn’t feel like that. Waves of cool air lace and weave with the inky shadows dancing along the pit, twisting and turning in a grotesque display not unlike the pull of an ocean rip, dragging all those who dare to get too close down under its crushing embrace, suffocating them with the weight of Poseidon's wrath. They seem to respond to the monster’s steadily spreading anger, matching the wicked thrum of the fury that spread hot through his veins. As dark and consuming as the shadow that suckled upon his skin and marked him with the canines of death’s hounds.
He remembers now. Oh does the monster remember the trickling purr of the sickly man, whose sweet words and fruitful promises of forgiveness and comfort turned as sour as the rotten lemons that life had handed the creature. The claws of the scholar still tingled beneath his ghastly pallor, the feeling taunting his shaky, trembling mind like a broken, uneven choir grating against his ears.
Actions a blur, stone crumbles as he claws his death hazed body out from the pit. Darkness hisses and dances around the monster, bending to the twitch and jerk of his fragmented soul. One moment the groping hands of the stone that doomed him to eternal slumber were holding him down, the next sun light’s warm rays welcomed the once cursed man back into life’s gentle embrace.
…Oh, no I actively wanted this life…
…I wore it better, but he does look good…
Something in the creature’s heart lurches as the drawl of an accent echoes faintly within his mind. Golden weaves within a sapphire needle stitching together the sanity that was steadily slipping between his fingers. A beacon of light within the darkness that had now consumed him. A name called out like a siren’s call, nipping his heels forward one torturous step at a time, dragging him down half buried paths and towards the crumbling altar. He whispers the name, the only name he seems to be able to remember, and only the crows echoing caws seem to answer him.
Scott. Scott isn’t here. The creature doesn’t understand how he knows that, but he does. Like a puzzle piece missing from the picture, creating an all too noticeable hole. His heart rat-a-tat-tats against his creaking, misshapen rib cage as if it could burst through the sinewy hole in his chest and find its way into his, mending the anger that pushed against the loose, clumsy stitches that held him together. The threads fray and knot along their paths, wrapping around the monster’s ankles and tugging him forward one harsh pull after the other. The thread morphs into something twisted and dark with each step, something ferociously hungry, something that can’t stop the strings of thick drool from falling from his cracked lips and drip drip dripping on the ancient soil. It tastes rich and smooth, gushing with the flavours of a town long burnt to ashes and dust. He can almost see them as the thread hauls the monster past the wood and stone ruins of what he assumed was some sort of scorched settlement - humans scrambling for salvation within the jaws of beasts that had already prepared their blood and flesh for supper.
He breathes in, the cool air less invasive than that of the pit, and more like a nourishing soup on a cold winter’s evening, trickling down his gulping oesophagus and settling comfortably in his aching gut. Flashes of memories reveal themselves, daring to bare their secrets naked to the broken man, and only finding the teeth of a desperately hungry shark. The taste of tension that lingers here, the smell of suffering and the pain that haunts the ruined walls runs viscous, satiating the monster one heavy gulp after the other until the noise that invaded his mind calmed to a gentle, background whisper, leaving now only that accented drawl to swim within the canals of his memory. A soothing balm to the weeping wounds his past life had left him - the sway of a turquoise lock of hair, the gentle prick of claws along his scalp, the aging fibres of a bloodstained cloak - jerks alive the thread that has wrapped around his feet and reignites the storm cloud in his mind the memories of the ruined town had just calmed. He snarls, the darkness lurking in the corners of rubble hissing with him, scurrying out of their hidey-holes and snaking up his form.
The thread jumps and surges him forward, past the skeleton of a town and into the vast plains and endless grass that rolled and rolled deep into the setting sun. As the light fades under earth's line and gives way to Nyx’s pitch dark veil, the growl in the monster's chest soothes to a low, determined hiss, matching the infernal orchestra that puppetted his crumbling, undead soul.
With a final tug from the thread, the monster’s heavy steps fade into wispy shadow, zipping across the landscape and to a voice that only his heart seemed to remember.