Chapter Text
It was looking at me. I couldn’t see it, but I could feel it watching, waiting, learning. Those dead eyes were out there in the pitch of black, swathed in the bramble of the treeline somewhere and they were focused straight on me, the only question was how many eyes were watching. These things usually stand still and wait till you’re not looking to move, so long as I can spot the damned thing I can keep it in place until I’m far enough away that it gives me up.
I’d managed to get myself in a damned clearing, although the exacts of where I was, outside of a forest dense as tar, was completely unknown to me. The place looked foreign, it wasn’t like the forests around Orleans, the trees were a different kind, these ones were spiny and sharp. The moon was missing as well, which made everything far stranger than the situation already was.
I’d been spinning in circles for minutes trying to find it, I could feel the eyes on me but I couldn't find the thing at all. Wherever it was, I couldn’t tell if it was moving at all, the rainfall was intense and had soaked through the ground, the mud was like quicksand; it clung to me like little hands from beneath the ground..
A sudden lurch in the bramble to my right.
I spun to try and get a visual, but I couldn’t make out anything, I couldn’t identify the bramble that had moved, let alone any of the bramble at all.
Everything was still once more, sweat was pouring off of me, my breath was fastened and my heart was going at a mile a minute, I could barely think, everything was a haze when you could make out nothing. I was panicking and there was nothing to stop it with whatever it was out here. I could feel the sweat continue to cascade down my face, it had managed to get into my mouth, it tasted similar to vinegar, only adding to the nausea.
A lurch in the bramble again. To my right.
A branch snaps. Behind me.
I turned around, and there was nothing, at least at eye-level, then I made the mistake of looking up towards the canopy, and there I caught a glimpse of the head. It towered over me, its head well over double my height and from what I could tell glaring down towards me, the face completely expressionless, a void of emotion.
The urge to look away, to run or to cower, anything but stand in front of this monster and stare it down. But my body would not listen. The face looked like bone, nothing like a skull but more of a blank plate that covered everything that wasn’t the eyes and mouth. The things maw was giant, it stretched across his whole face, the scale of the mouth was all I could see in the complete darkness. It looked like it was smiling at me, the corners of the mouth seemed to sit higher than below where the nose would be. I didn’t think the eyes could be any worse.
The eyes were worse. Far worse.
The eyes were a pair of black pits, there were no pupils or irises or whites or anything, just two black lumps that gave off a little sheen. I could tell it was looking me in the eye, I couldn’t figure out why, but it had to be looking at me. I didn’t know what to do or how to get away, I couldn’t think anything through like normal, like I was acting on instinct. An instinct that had frozen in place right in front of what was pretty clearly some sort of predator.
It let out a bizarre, almost static sounding moan as it lurched forward at me in a jerky motion.
My instincts finally kicked into gear as I turned and darted off in a full sprint, it was all I could do, it didn’t matter what direction just whatever got me away from it. I could hear it wailing behind me, but it was slowly fading as I stumbled through the bramble blindly, barely able to keep my balance as I practically fell through the woods. Suddenly something caught my leg and I went to the ground like a sack of bricks, knocking the wind out of me as I wheezed from the pain. But the pain was the least of my concerns.
The wailing was getting louder again, I could hear a faint yet rapid pitter-patter of something sprinting at full-bore towards me. I tried to get up but I couldn’t, whatever had tripped me had tangled around my leg and I couldn’t get it off. I kicked at it a couple times but whatever it was, I couldn’t get it to budge at all. I started rolling on the ground, covering myself in mud and spines from the trees as I repeatedly hoofed my own leg. I tried to twist myself over again to get on my front, but when I went to put my left hand on the ground it was on a slope, my hand slipped in the mud and my chin collided with the ground, the blow dazed me and I needed a moment to get my bearings, but I didn’t have a moment.
(it wretched, stumbling after me,i pulled and yanked until i was tumbling down hill.))
There was no time to think, the wailing was getting louder and the pitter-patter was getting faster. The wailing had started to sound less like staticy groans and more the screech of an animal in a bear trap.
I drag myself through the mud, yanking at my leg and trying to get it free, but the slope is enough to pull me out of it. I figured the slope would go for a couple feet but I started sliding and couldn’t stop myself, it kept going for seconds. I was screaming, completely unable to comprehend where I was. I tried to swing myself around onto my back so I could see if that thing was following me. The screaming was deafening at this point but the footfalls had abruptly stopped.
I looked up to the top of the rapidly lengthening slope.
A bolt of lightning cascaded from the blackened sky and slammed into the ground somewhere on the ridge I’d fallen from, giving me the only light I’d seen since I wound up in this forest. I could see it clearly standing at the top of the slope. It was still staring at me, completely still in and hunched over. That wasn’t the problem though, I’d at least seen it before.
The problem was the dozens upon dozens of other things watching me.
There were a couple more of the thing I’d already seen, 3 of them in total standing on either side of the one that was chasing after me, those ones were standing upright with their backs almost arched backwards, staring down from above.
There were hundreds of smaller ones, I couldn’t make out their size but they were definitely a lot smaller than the other ones, these ones had red skin and lacked the mask but they were otherwise the same. Their eyes glowed in the light of the lightning, hundreds of sets of eyes glowing, scattered in the bramble, the tree branches, everywhere.
I couldn’t stop my screams.
When the light faded I twisted myself back onto my front, trying to figure out where I was, but the mud was collecting on me and i was getting thicker and slick, I couldn’t even get any idea of get a hand free from the mud that was surrounding me, I was going down the hill faster yet I was getting covered in more and more of this muddy sludge. I was struggling to breathe with all this gunk on my face and I had to dedicate most of my efforts into coughing up mud and bits of sticks that I was getting swamped in. I panicked again, flailing my limbs in a desperate attempt to get my face away from the mud that was rapidly suffocating me.
The slope finally flattened out and I stopped sliding, stuck in some sort of ditch that didn’t seem to be particularly deep, a couple feet maybe. I managed to get all the mud and other junk that had festered on me as I went down the slope, even if it took what felt like an age and I couldn’t get all of it off, the stuff had practically stained my skin and this mud was beginning to harden in the cold, it’d get hard to move soon if the rain didn’t get rid of it for me. I managed to roll back onto my front and try to get back up, but my hands came into contact with what felt like clothes. I started padding around, still partially blinded and struggling to breathe from the mud that was still covering me in a now thinned veneer, hoping to find out whatever the hell I was grabbing a hold of.
I had to take a hand and clear the dirt out of my eyes again, they’d started stinging which made me far more desperate, clawing at my eyes while I whimpered.. Once I could finally see, I squinted down at the clothing I’d landed on. I could make out that it was some sort of yellow hoodie or sweater. I figured that additional clothing would help me survive the cold and the rain out here so I started trying to pick up the clothing but it was taut, as if it was wrapped around something. I started padding around the hoodie to figure out what it was attached to.
Trousers at the bottom of the hoodie, and something that felt squishy at the top. It was ice cold.
I scrambled to get out of the ditch, screw the hoodie; that was a dead body I had landed on. I barely managed to get back up because of the mud on the ground. I slipped a couple times trying to get the foot that had previously been tangled upright to stand. I managed to finally get on my feet and turned to look at the body.
There were dozens of bodies in the ditch.
They all had the same clothes, a yellow hoodie dirtied greatly by the environment and faded from age, and brown trousers similarly tattered.
Every single body was the same, a blonde fop of hair that was muddied and tangled into an abject mess, a pale-skinned face marked with scratches, cuts, burns and bruises.
The faces were all the same as well, worryingly familiar.
They were my face. They were wearing my clothes. An unending sea of me, myself and I.
I didn’t even have time to panic before the forest was coated in a dim yet sickly orange hue, coming from directly above me. My breathing was too fast to keep in check, the sweat pouring from my head was clotting together with the mud into a disgusting stew. I could barely work up the courage to look up.
The light came from the sky, but there was no moon.
It was something else.
A colossal orange fleshy mass pulsed above me in the sky, larger than the moon and the sun. I wasn’t sure why, but I got the feeling it was looking at me like the monsters from earlier, however the implication I got from this being was different though. The monsters back at the ridge stared at me like a wolf would stare down its prey, they viewed me as meat, a morsel to devour and move on from, just another meal that would change nothing for them.
This was different.
It almost seemed to be…
Mocking me.
I blinked, and it blinked back.
“Jaune!” A voice that I could vaguely remember called from the void, desperate yet agitated.
I blinked again, and I was somewhere else, a homely and familiar room of plain meringue walls bathed in a yellow light from above me. A figure hovered ahead of me, equally as familiar but nowhere close to as homely as the room surrounding us, although in the haze of the moment it was difficult to focus on the exacts of who I was being accosted by.
“Jaune! Listen to me!” the figure growled out with a snarl, contempt seemed to rise like bile from their mouth as they bemoaned me from above. They shook me as they spoke, not a violent thrash nor a gentile sway but something middling. “Whatever you’re seeing, it’s not real! Are you even listening to me?” The voice uttered again, this time the anger seemed to fade into exhaustion, however the contempt directed towards me remained all the same, if thinly veiled in a veneer of tiredness.
The haze faded as I remembered where I was. Who I was.
I was Jaune Arc, a child of a warrior dynasty stretching far back into the depths of time, well beyond the tracked records of history. I was in my unremarkable and mundane room, atop my unremarkable and mundane bed on a well-worn mattress adorned with stains and scuffs of time. Across from me was my mother, Ophelia Anterra-Arc, the matriarch of our family and belligerent parent of 8 very differing and complex children; myself included as the runt of the litter.
“There we go, awake at last Jaune… You really gave us a fright son. Were you having a bad dream?” She asked, the tone she used was strange; it was a confusing mix of emotions that culminated into something I couldn’t quite make out, it seemed happy on the exterior but something about the little details gave away that she was hiding how she felt. This was the same act she always pulled, a well rehearsed one I had yet to decipher, although that wasn’t due to my own failure to breach the veil, I just dreaded what was truly under the mask she wore.
It took me a few seconds to get my bearings before I tried to speak, my heart was hammering in my chest, I was covered in a cold sweat and the twitching wasn’t helping. I tried to speak but immediately I wheezed out a dry cough, it felt like I’d rubbed sand on my tongue and left it there for hours. When the coughing passed after a few heaves, I managed to get a few words in. “Bad… The woods…” I shuddered out.
“Aw, honey. Is this about the woods again? If you don’t tell me about it, I can’t help you. You know that! Tell me, now!.” She demanded while shaking me again albeit a bit more forceful this time, keeping that strange tone that held deeper meanings, contained emotions I could not yet understand and did not want to understand.
“I’m here for you Jaune and I’m trying so fucking so hard for you right now… Damnit, you need to tell me, now Jaune!” she demanded again, her tone rising as her eyes seemed to start bulging out of her sockets as the force of her rattling got worse. She seemed frustrated at herself for swearing at me but I didn’t see the point in that, we all heard what dad and the older sisters argue about most nights. Or at least the nights when he’s here, which isn’t a lot.
Something in the back of my mind was screaming not to tell her. To tell her nothing in the slightest, to clam up and keep my mouth shut, but I knew better. She wouldn’t leave until she was satisfied. She never does. She needed to learn something new about my dreams, but I can’t tell her anything that even matters. Fuck, this was never going to have a pretty outcome, but spitballing something on the fly I could convince that little voice in the back of my mind was acceptable for her to know, so she could begin to even consider trying to understand what was ‘wrong’ with me, was something I was plenty used to. I never understood why she seemed so desperate to learn it in the first place; she never remembered what I told her by the time the next nightmare came the following night, she never seems to be capable of looking below the surface of what I tell her I saw.
She can’t know about the creatures, nor what was in the sky, that nagging urge in the back of my mind won’t allow it; it’ll have to be something else, something that could be related to the real world around us.
The forest could work, after all it didn’t match the forests of Orleans and I had never left the village in the first place to see anything different. It was perhaps the only thing she might have something useful to say on, she’d travelled the world before I was around; damn well makes it clear enough with how often she talks about it.
“The woods… not like ours… wet, muddy… dark.” I ground out, the dryness of my throat was getting worse the more I spoke.
“Well obviously, the woods around us don’t have any lights in them, you... ” She stopped herself, her tone was more forced than prior, my response seemed to anger her but I didn’t know why at all, I don’t think I said anything particularly rage-inducing or offensive. I had to clarify before she got out of hand.
“Trees were different, mom. Not ours, spiky.” I wheezed out again, the dryness was beginning to pass but talking was still difficult to handle for more than a few words at a time.
She seemed to pause at that, her face freezing for a second as she thought through my words.
“Spiky? Like… Conifer trees?” She questioned, her eyes narrowing at me, as if she’d just unlocked a piece of a puzzle. I didn’t know what conifers were, but if she knew what they were, maybe she knew where they came from.
“I don’t know what that means, mom. But if its got spiky leaves it must be them! ” I exclaimed, trying my best to seem happier than I was a moment prior, like I hadn’t awoken from yet another harrowing nightmare not a minute ago.
Her face lightened and her eyes widened a little, but that quickly faded into a firm scowl and a rigid, oddly stilted glare. “Jaune! How could you possibly not know what a conifer is? Wish the damned school wasn’t so far away so I could leave you in it.” She bemoaned, all the while prodding at my stomach, perhaps an effort to keep my attention, or maybe she was trying to control her anger. She stopped prodding me and her face stilled as her eyes closed. She took a deep, slow breath and held it a few seconds.
My eyes wandered off while she was doing that, mom’s breathing routine was something she usually did for a few minutes at a time before she would start talking again. I looked to the wall across from the bed I was sitting on and idly looked over the walls contents, or rather the lack of contents. Blank meringue walls, chipped and speckled with small marks from years of ignorance and devoid of any signs of care beyond the bare minimum, and despite the room being well-lit and clearly lived-in, I couldn’t make out personal belongings, mementos, or anything beyond the basic requirements of a bedroom, at least on that side of the room.
I glanced to my left, where the rooms singular window rested, the shoddy, damaged blinders that were supposed to separate us and the outside had rather obvious gaps in them, allowing the black of night to leak through.
Then I glanced to my right.
The same thing, a lack of anything personal, the bare minimum and nothing more.
It was always like this, I only noticed it so often because none of the other rooms in the house looked like this, only mine. I didn’t want to know why, asking would rarely work out well for me.
I noticed I was getting prodded in the stomach again. The time had come to continue the conversation, and the dread I had previously believed to be remnants of the dream set back in all the same, a cold chill that scuttled down my spine like a centipede on the forest floor.
“Jaune, look at me!” She exclaimed rather loudly, repeatedly poking at my core with a sharpened finger, her other hand coming up to my face and coddling my cheek and forcing me to face her in the eye. The dread rose in intensity, the cold sweat was rapidly becoming more of a cold waterfall at the rate I was drenching my clothes and thoroughly soaking my own hair.
“I’m looking, mom.” I muttered, I couldn’t maintain my tone with her eyes boring holes into my own.
She quickly replied “The only conifers anywhere near Orleans is very deep in the forest, a few kilometres north of here…” She seemed to stop herself, her eyes seemed to sharpen with each passing word. It was as if I had wronged her somehow by giving her what she wanted.
“Jaune, the only way you’d know about those trees is if you’d went all the way out there before, and that place is infested with Grimm, we wouldn’t dare take you and neither would your bigger sisters…” She ground out, anger seemed to bleed from her words for reasons I couldn’t figure out, however her face rapidly morphed into something a lot happier than the scowl she was sporting prior, as she proudly proclaimed “My little angels wouldn’t dare do something so rash…” Her tone, and subsequently her expression returned to what they were before her brief patch of pride.
She leaned in closer, we were almost nose to nose. “I know you’re stupid Jaune, we’ve seen more than enough to know that by now, but you weren’t so boneheaded that you went out there yourself, did you?” she whispered, her anger seemed to steel into something more physically tangible as her face dropped into a neutral blank stare and her grip on me tightened, squishing my cheek uncomfortably while her free hand came to rest on my shoulder with an arguably tighter grip.
The dread was getting worse. I could feel the tears coming before they started leaving my eyes.
“No mom, I don’t even know where it is, please I haven’t been there!” I cried out, desperate for her to understand, to believe, to comprehend.
She never did.
“I can’t believe you Jaune! How could you do this to us! To me, your mother! I love you gods damnit Jaune, you need to get your head on straight and stop… fucking around with your own life like this! Are you trying to get yourself killed, Jaune!” She wailed at the top of her lungs, her expression taking on an expression that seemed to closer fit the term ‘enraged’ rather than sad or disappointed like I’d expect from anyone else, but that’s how mom operated, and everyone else in the family as well.
“Mom please believe me! I haven’t been there!” I cried out again, I knew in the back of my head this was futile, but I was desperate, craving for something, anything other than to be misunderstood again.
I knew I’d get nothing out of it.
Mom sniffed and fiddled with her nose as her scowl deepened. “You can’t convince me Jaune, I know you’re lying. I can’t believe you, lying to your own mother! Where could you have even learned this, my angels wouldn’t dare lie to me and neither would your father, so WHERE!” Her wailing reached the peak, an almost howling wail of a dog that had stepped on a nail.
I knew already where this was going, it always went this way and I was already well beyond the point of no return.
“That’s it… A month in the black room, Jaune.” she sighed out, trying to convey disappointment through the veneer of anger that bled through so clearly.
I couldn’t stop my wailing, my crying, my begging. I never could. The black room was a hell like no other, a place that contained nothing.
Nothing but my own thoughts and the infernal, unending dark that my eyes could not adjust to.
It’d been 10 days in the black room. I could have been off, no way to know for sure, but the family had gone quiet and the sliver of light that bled from under the door had abruptly disappeared 9 times, meaning today had to be day 10. I could hear three voices squabbling incessantly somewhere in the house, close enough I could make out individual voices but not close enough to let me make out what words were said. It had been going for hours. There were 3 voices, a man and multiple women. I could make out 2 distinct voices but my elder sisters all sounded very similar, it could have been more of them talking in turns for all I knew, for all I cared. The man had to be my father, we lived far enough out that there wouldn’t be many visitors besides mom’s huntress friends and they were all women as well. Dads friends used to come over all the time; they’d go to his private room filled with books on shelves and weapons in glass containers displaying their pristine condition in their fully deserved glory, a room dedicated to the history of the Arc family, their weapons, their blood, their mettle scrawled down by ink. But dad hadn’t had a friend come to our home in years, and those friends were respectful enough to never argue with the women of my family, after all; nothing was worse than the scorned women of the Arc dynasty.
It had to be him, there was no-one else it could possibly be. As for the other voices, one was very clearly the banshee-like whinging of my mothers sharp and aggravated tone, while the other was at least one of my elder sisters, perhaps more. It wasn’t worth mulling over, I wouldn’t be able to ever figure it out and prodding any further than just hearing it would likely wind up with me back in this… this hole in the damned wall.
The darkness was overwhelming. All I could see, all I could hear, all I could think, was of those things I saw in the woods. Over the last 10 days the thoughts had changed, the curiosity had overcome the fear, although that’s not to say the fear was any less; only my curiosity had always taken priority in the past and I expected no different this time. I was never able to understand why, although I hope I can figure it out in time.
My thoughts had stretched away from the whats and whys of them, and more onto what made them.
What was the material that made up that mask? Some sort of bone? Or perhaps a bone-like material like cartilage or ivory? Why did only the dark and tall ones have the masks? Perhaps its a show of age, or a mark of leadership, there’s no way to tell without further study, and it’s typically a little difficult to study something that exists purely in a dream.
What were they made of? It appeared to be some sort of flesh, it moved like muscle but it seemed far more like large strands tightly wound together rather than the muscles I’d seen in the diagrams at school.
Why did they move so strangely? So twitchy and uncanny, like a spider sneaking across a room.
Questions that couldn’t really be outright answered, however they could be thought about, theories considered and options weighed. Not like I had anything else to do in this blackened hole.
Learning to overcome this fear was, I feel, crucial to my survival. I’d always been scared of anything that made itself out to be a threat to me. My sisters, school bullies, authority like teachers, my parents, police officers and the like.
If I could somehow convince my brain that these creatures of nightmare that seemed freakishly realistic and believable in a world of Grimm, well…
…Nothing could truly stop me but myself.
I’d lost count of how many days had passed in the black room. 20-something, maybe. I’d lost count in the late teens and it was hopeless to bother from there. I could hear them. The laughing, the cheerful conversations and intimate moments, the smiles oozing from their words as they happily chittered away and got on with their daily lives.
Together. Without me. Their brother. Their son.
The resentment was bubbling within me, writhing. I’d been accustomed to this for so long now, I couldn’t remember it ever being different to now, the black room was a cursed place reserved for me and me alone. I’d never questioned it before, but I had all the time in the world to think, and sleep never came easy when time seems locked in a standstill.
My sisters had done far worse than allegedly wandering into the woods, Saffron was a lesbian and mom hated that about her and despised her wife, Terra, for it, and yet they’re still able to have happy conversations with one another, she never saw consequence beyond incessant nagging. My eldest sister Cheri had dropped a candle in dads private room once when she was my age, before it was even a private room and was instead the ‘family study’. The fire wasn’t too serious in terms of the house but the fire had damaged one of the weapons on display beyond repair, it was the last memento of dad’s closest friend and he never truly forgave her for that, and while he was able to eventually set that aside, it took him years to get over it, not surprising considering the importance the weapon had to him, whatever weapon it was. And yet, while dad needed years to get over it, mom never gave a fuck. Those two had been far more like sisters than mother and daughter, their bond seemed to only get stronger after this, which seems to me like it was done to spite my dad, someone who cared deeply for her and never once wronged her.
I didn’t understand it, I likely never would but I didn’t care, that wasn’t the important part.
Why is the black room my curse to bear, and only mine? Why did my sisters never have to experience the hell of isolation for so long, let alone at all?
Further thought was required, but I’d started crying at some point during this train of thought, and I couldn’t seem to stop. Although I didn’t think it was entirely due to this… revelation made.
There was another concern… I was getting worryingly used to being alone in the dark for this long. It had happened too many times now. It was too frequent, too long each time, each sentence issued was at least a week, but it felt at least a decade longer each time.
Fine… If they truly didn’t want me, then I don’t need them. I’ll make my own damn path, my own damn family, I’ll become far more than these ungrateful, narrow-minded children think I am. I know I am capable of overcoming these odds, Saffron was a stay-at-home wife who’d never worked a day in her life, Cheri was rapidly approaching 25 and was still unemployed, Claude was training to be a huntress but she’d been failing in every class in her hunter training besides physical fitness for years, and was coasting by purely by her name. And that’s not to mention my twin, Catherine.
Catherine, a wretch spoiled so absolutely and completely that she was rotten to the core by my mom’s overbearing hand to the point her damned teeth had rotted from her mouth. She had such a ‘refined’ palette that she could only eat cakes and sweets, refusing to eat meats, vegetables, grains, seafood, anything that wasn’t a pastry or a cake she’d flat-out refuse to eat. She got everything she wanted while I got nothing, she was a petulant child who had a temper tantrum like no other any time she didn’t get her way and my mother would always cave to her whining the second it started, she’d fought tooth and nail even as a toddler to get things that were meant for me, she was why I had nothing to call my own, nothing for me. All for Catherine. Always.
Catherine’s favourite pastime was losing, damaging or flat-out destroying whatever she could get her chubby jam-coated grabbers on in private, and then running off to mom to blame it on someone else so she could see the fallout.
Mom only believed her when it was me that she blamed. I was the only one she could get away with blaming, and she took advantage at every opportunity she could find. Her sick, twisted pleasures and my mothers inexplicable disdain for me combined into this fate, this curse, this… unmanned torture chamber of a room.
Blaming them was fine, hating them was more than fine, it would be strange if I didn’t, forgiving or forgetting would be a mistake as well, while everyone has the capacity to change, they’ve done too much to me. Nothing can fix this. I will get out of this place, one way or another, I will live on my own terms away from them, and if I’m truly as incompetent as they believe me to be, then I’ll at least fail on my own terms.
Better to fail free than to succeed chained.
A knock on the door, a few rough clangs against the cold iron of the door. The first direct attempt at communication anyone had made since the night I’d been thrown in here, I’d seen the light of day a couple times, but only when someone brought food and water which was… must’ve been every couple days, give or take a day or so. As for bodily functions, well… There was a bucket in the corner I could use for that. It was a struggle to find in the dark, but the smell was more than enough to get to it usually. As for hygiene, that was a no-go. Taking care of my teeth, my skin, my hair, anything really wasn’t an option. Even if I begged and pleaded at the door for days, nobody would listen anyway. Mother made sure of that, at least if Catherine’s taunting was to be believed.
“Jaune, your time is up.” A voice called, familiar and shrill. The tone held no sympathy, no sadness, no regret, nothing but boredom.
My mother.
I opted to ignore her, being in here and out there, it made no difference to me at this point, mentally they were interchangeable, although the access to food when I want would be nice.
The banging got louder.
“Jaune! Listen to me!” My mother cried out again, screeching in that familiar wail I was so used to by this point. I suppose listening to her may be worthwhile, so long as it keeps her quiet… well, quieter.
“What do you want?” I asked.
The banging had stopped. Everything had stopped, if only for a moment. It seemed mother was contemplating something. A sigh came from the other side of the door as a series of familiar clanks occurred in a familiar pattern.
A clink, a jingle, a clunk, and a second long grind.
The latch, the jingling of keys, the lock, and the heavy duty padlock.
The door began to open, slowly. The fresh air was what I looked forward to the most.
The light spilled into the darkened room, so much light I was practically blinded by it, I needed a few seconds to adjust to the light. Once I had managed to adjust, I blearily looked up to the figure glaring down at me.
My mother, with that familiar scowl she always wore when I was around. I’d never seen her without it.
“How dare you speak like that to me! I could leave you locked in here again, do you want that Jaune?” She bemoaned, clearly pissed at me.
“I’d prefer not to, you can see the state of me” I replied, my tone numb.
She looked at, and her scowl twisted into something that resembled confusion. Her face kept twisting between confusion and anger before ultimately settling on confusion. Her glare softened, and her lips parted slightly.
I looked away from her, I realised that I’d never seen what the black room looked like in the light. It was a horror show, the walls were raw brick and mortar showing clear signs of age, little chips had fallen to the wayside and scattered all over the floor. The room was small, maybe a couple metres long and wide in total, just enough to lie down suitably. That bucket I’d been using for the last month was rusted to all hell, a far cry from the silver sheen it likely once had.
The floor was what concerned me. There was blood, dried and congealed on the floor, stained yellow over time. This blood was old, very old, not mine either as I didn’t seem to be bleeding, and I don’t recall leaving the black room bleeding at any point in the past.
Where the hell had it come from?
A hand grasped at my shoulder and spun me around violently to face the door again.
“Jaune… get in the shower, you reek.” My mother muttered before staggering back with an even stranger expression than before, one I couldn’t put together into words.
I remembered where the main bathroom of the house was, it was roughly a stones throw away down the hall to my right. I hobbled out of the black room, finally free of its containment, only to realise I'd been in there so long that walking felt unfamiliar, disjointed.
I staggered to a wall to support myself and began dragging myself towards the bathroom, and took a look down the hallway. The walls were adorned in a plain green wallpaper, various photos and items adorned the walls, all in matching dark wooden frames. It stretched a fair bit further than the room I was going to, with multiple doors on either side that led to various rooms, and the door at the end of the corridor, fathers private room.
I shimmied my way down the corridor towards the bathroom, stumbling over my own feet and struggling to keep balance for the moment. Suddenly, Catherine’s puffy bright red face poked out of a doorway on the left of the hall, the door to her bedroom if I remembered correctly. Her face twisted into a familiar grin, however that quickly whittled away when she smelled me. She wretched, and shuffled back into her room, as slowly as she usually does.
I made it to the bathroom, a relatively lavish bathtub-shower combo with a generic sink and toilet, various toiletries scattered around in various hues of pinks and yellows, all contained within the white tiled walls one would expect of a bathroom in any home. The shower was all I cared for. I practically fell into the bathtub, stripping off the pyjamas I’d been wearing for weeks on end and kicking them away. I reached a hand out and twisted the knob.
Water had never been so relieving, but it reminded me of the rain from the dream. I laid there in the tub under the constant and loud clatter of water shooting down from the shower head for a few minutes, just… taking in the light of the room. How bright it was, how much I could see, the detail in it all.
After a few minutes of basking in the freedom of being able to see, I looked down at my body. While my physical appearance was typical of a teenager in terms of size and shape, the thick layer of grime coating my skin was definitely not typical of anyone outside of wild animals and grimm. It was a thick, dried coat that was covering my arms and my legs, from the calves down. I began wiping it away with my hands but it was far more difficult than expected; the grime clung to me just like the mud from the dream, refusing to budge for the most part from mere hands alone.
I grabbed a sponge from the edge of the bathtub, and got to work on the arduous task ahead.
The shower was refreshing, however it felt like nothing would truly wash the grime away fully, like the weight of it was still clung to me. I cranked the water off and stumbled out of the bathtub, still struggling with being on my feet again. I warbled over to a cabinet on the other side of the bathtub and yanked it open far more violently than intended, thankfully the door wasn’t damaged. I yanked a white towel, one of the cheaper ones that were old and worn. I considered using one of the many yellow towels that the females of the house were allowed to use as they weren’t several years old and tattered, however that meant a week in the black room, and that wasn’t a risk anyone would be willing to take over something as simple as a towel.
The towel scratched against my body as I wrapped it around myself, uncomfortable and itchy as it irritated every part of it I touched. I stepped out of the bathroom and looked around, the hallway was once again empty.
I needed to get new clothes on, they’d be in my room. I went to take a step forward to walk towards my room, however a terrifying revelation freezes me in my place mid-step.
I couldn’t remember where my room was. I could remember what it looked like inside, albeit vaguely, however the hallway it was connected to escaped me entirely. I tried to think of other rooms it was nearby, rooms it was connected to and other features of the house nearby. To my horror, I once again came up with nothing. I started sweating again, and things seemed to blur as I struggled to keep focus.
I tried to recall anything about the house at all beyond the hallway I was standing in, and I couldn’t think of anything. I needed help to get to my room, help from the same family that had allowed me to remain in what amounted to a rather childish version of solitary confinement. It made my stomach turn.
My sisters seemed to hold a similar grudge to that my mother had, so they were a no-go, particularly Catherine. She’d find some twisted way to wrangle the situation to her favour. That only left one person, a man I hadn’t talked to in over 3 months.
My father, Aurelien Arc-Allard.
I knew where he’d be if he was in the house, he was always in one room if any. The study, his private room, just a stone’s throw down the hall. Father was strange, he’d been distant for as long as I could remember but he had gotten considerably worse in the last year, locking himself away in his study for the most part whenever he wasn’t out on missions, which was where he spent the vast majority of his time.
I marched to the door, making use of what little confidence I could gather from within myself in the moment. I got to the door and raised a hand to knock, but found my hand wouldn’t move to knock it no matter how hard I tried. I looked to my hand and noticed that it was fully clenched and trembling violently. I didn’t know when it had started but it was a worrying sight, certainly not the norm. Perhaps the month in the black room had caused more internal damage than what I thought?
I lowered my arm to grab a hold of it and try to figure out if there was an injury I had missed while in the shower, and after a thorough look nothing appeared to be wrong, much to my frustration, it made solving this issue far more complicated than it really needed to be.
I went to raise my hand again before a sound rooted me back in place.
The squeak of a chair releasing tension, and a series of heavy footfalls from behind the door, getting steadily louder.
I steeled my resolve as best I could.
The door opened, and my fathers blank, emotionless face greeted me. His head slowly tilted down with a noticeable shudder, as his eyes came to gaze at mine. I may have been using all of my confidence to look my father in the eye, however that was nothing compared to the deadened stare of my fathers listless eyes. I couldn’t keep my gaze, lowering my head as I shrunk in on myself.
My father was a tall man, with raggedy blond hair that wasn’t in its usual shaved style purely due to his lack of care for it, an equally haggard thick stubble matched the hair, despite his raggedy appearance that made him look far more outdoorsman than hunter was not matched by his face, which was remarkably unaged for a man approaching the end of his hunting career. It was clear father hadn’t been home from a hunt for very long, maybe a day at most. Further evidence of his recent arrival was made clear through his clothes, he was still in his hunter gear, a simple thick grey jumpsuit with pieces of golden armour in a white trim, the Allard insignia engraved into the armour over his heart, and the Arc insignia on the belt buckle that kept his jumpsuit appropriately attached to him. His gear was simple, but effective, and his weapon matched it, a simple sword and shield combo, Crocea Mors, the yellow death, attached to his belt. His skin was typically abnormally pale just as my skin was, however his face was noticeably reddened, meaning he’d gone on another mission to Menagerie, just after a 2 month mission there. His condition led me to believe he had literally just gotten back from his trip.
He exhaled from above me, and rumbled out in a deep growl “What is it, boy?” My fathers tone was one I still remembered, even after his absence of 3 months, a combination of my time in the black room and a particularly long-distance, long-term hunt somewhere called Menagerie, a place that mother told me repeatedly that father was close to, a place he swore to protect with his life and the place we were originally going to live before mother strong-armed him into staying in Orleans with her extended family.
“I can’t…” I whimpered out, the words wouldn’t come out of my mouth, it felt like I was choking.
“Speak, boy.”
“I… I can’t remember where my room is.” I finally managed to claw the words from my throat, the words came out with a shudder that father definitely noticed.
Father sighed, and moved around me and began marching away from me. He stopped a few steps away and turned his head slightly back towards me. “Are you coming, boy?” He questioned, his tone slightly less stressed than before. I meekly shuffled behind him, unsure of what else to say.
We walked for a few minutes, it made me recall the scale of the house, it was more of a mansion than a house at this point, father and the few friends he had in Orleans would come together to add new rooms and sections to the house whenever a new child was on the way, made of the local bois-wood trees Orleans was known for, from what I’d been told the trees were the most valuable commodity that Orleans had, the trees around here that were logged were treated and sold on to Vale and Mistral for constructing housing, it was about the only wood that could effectively prevent grimm from just breaking through your houses walls, frontier villages also used them to create their walls if they could afford it; father had mentioned once that the wood was very expensive outside of Orleans, and even more so outside of Vale.
Come to think of it, Father had to build the last section himself, his friends mysteriously hadn’t helped him at all for that extension of the house, I’d asked father about it before but he refused to say anything at the time, I remember his face twisting into a strange expression, it looked like he was angry, but too tired to act on it.
We finally reached a door at the end of the oldest wing of the house, the only section of the house that wasn’t made from bois-wood. This was where my room was, I could tell from the temperature dropping as we entered. This section of the house was made as a place to house guests, its position at the centre of the sprawling house was as secure from grimm as it could be as it was completely surrounded by other wings of the house, making the bois-wood unneeded for protection and therefore construction cheaper, and easier according to father.
It came with a drawback that nobody else in the family had noticed except for me, because nobody else had stayed in there, like I had. Orleans was cold at night, far colder than most of Vale, the proximity to the northern coast placed it within the windpath of the Atlesian winds, an issue that was far more of an issue for the island of Vytal to the north of the coast. Standard wood was far less insulating than bois-wood which was incredible at keeping the heat in.
My father froze when he got through the door, presumably because of the cold. He turned and looked down at me, a far softer gaze than before greeted me, one I could face undeterred for once. “Why is it so cold in here, boy?” He asked.
“It’s always this cold in here, it’s the wood I think, its not as good at keeping the heat in.” I replied, a sliver of pride leaking into my voice, pride at my ability to maintain eye contact with my father for the first time in my life. It meant the world to me.
His lips twisted into a snarl. “Damnit, Ophelia.” He muttered.
I thought back on the way my mother treated me in the past, and I felt that this may be the only opportunity to ask a question that had haunted me for as long as I could remember.
“Father?” I requested, his gaze narrowing slightly.
“Yes, boy?”
“Why… Why doesn't my mother love me?” I asked, my voice shuddering as I struggled to keep the negative emotions flowing out of me hidden from his sight. I don’t know why I bothered really, I could tell he could see right through me, his snarl fell from his face, it warped into disappointment as he grumbled with his throat.
“I won’t lie to you boy, I’ve been asking the same thing for a long time now… I used to think she had her reasons to display such clear favouritism, however her treatment of you has only gotten worse… I don’t know, son.” he replied, his tone dropping most of the anger he held a moment before, his eyes seemed to go glassy as he spoke.
“I’m glad it’s not just me that doesn’t know.” I muttered, looking away from my father once again. “I think I can find my room from here, father. Thank you.” I said, letting some happiness bleed into my voice, I didn’t want to get my hopes up, but I’d always wanted to get closer to my father, but I could never make any headway when I was younger, especially since he became so reclusive.
Father shook his head slightly, and began walking past me, however he stopped before he closed the door to the icy section of the house we were currently conversing in. “Boy… I know it may not seem like it, but you can talk to me if you need it… my study is… open to you, if you wish.”
I was in shock, I didn’t know what to do or say as my arms fell to my sides completely limp, and my expression fell from the smile it had before. Nobody was allowed in the study after the fire, not even my mother. This was entirely unexpected.
I did my best to regain my composure. “I’d like that.” I mumbled, shuffling off deeper towards the cold, deadened and stagnant area of the house, devoid of lights beyond the dim light from the sunset gleaming through curtainless windows. Or was it sunrise? No way to really tell, I hadn’t paid attention to how anyone was clothed, besides my father at least.
I stumbled my way through the central room, a room with a table and chairs and not much else, decrepit and dust-laden. The table had been on its last legs for a while, it was safe enough to put food and drinks on, however anything beyond that weight would likely buckle the thing, or at least something of my weight. I’d made the mistake of sitting on it once, and I had to repair the thing using some spare nails that had been left behind from when my father had constructed the building. Honestly I likely shouldn’t have used those nails at all; they’d been left out in the rain and they had gone brown, I wasn’t sure what that meant but whatever it was, father told me that if it got in me I could get very sick, even die. However, the desperation to prevent my mother finding out about the damage I’d done to a table she likely didn’t care about in the slightest led me to use anything I could find.
The chairs were far worse, they were treacherous to look at, sitting on them was practically a death sentence for the chairs; the legs were still sturdy as they were made of the bois-wood the rest of this wing lacked, but the rest of it was brittle, I’d managed to break one by just leaning back onto it, and I couldn’t fix that one.
That mistake got me a week in the black room.
I shuffled past the table and chairs in the direction of the stairs leading up towards where I presumably slept. The stairs groaned like a dying whale as I fumbled my way up the stairs, step after step after step of blank wood of dark-brown hue, and eventually I reached the peak, seeing the corridor ahead.
It felt familiar enough, so it could be the right place. Ahead of me was a single window, once again blocked out by blinds allowing a sliver of light to slip into the room, illuminating the corridor in an orange hue. On my left were 2 doors, one close and one at the end of the hall, and on my right was a single door halfway down the hall, while the doors on the right were both the same dark brown as the floors, walls, and everything else in this wing of the house. The door on the left is different, painted in a white hue that sticks out like a sore thumb in the deadened room with a golden outline.
The door felt memorable, it felt right.
I shuffled to the door on my left and reached for the handle. There was dust on the handle, however not as much as there was anywhere else in this wing of the Arc home. It had to be right. It couldn’t be anywhere else.
I reached out a hand and pushed the door open.
It was the same as I could remember, or at least; what I could remember from the month prior. The blinds still sat in the same skewed manner they always did, revealing the tips of the trees beyond the house. It was a remarkable view from this position, the only point where this internal wing of the house could see out beyond the complex, ahead of this window was the southern wing, an overly large dining hall father had built for everyone to meet to eat together with, that was a couple years ago. Or at least, that’s what I’d heard of it; I’d never been in the room myself. Mother forbade me from entering, and from what I could tell father never entered the room either.
I’m noticing a pattern I don’t like in my mother, she doesn’t seem to be fond of me or my father. Strange, since she married him and made all of this place with him, or rather he built it for her, for us.
The walls were still as blank as I remembered, and the bed was in the same dark corner of the room it always was. There were ratty old clothes strewn about the floor of the room, I wasn’t sure if it was me that left the clothes scattered and unwashed or someone else in the family, as I couldn’t remember the floor of my room from memory, it wasn’t within my view at the time.
I staggered over to the bed and freed my hand from the towel, letting it drop to the floor around me. It didn’t land particularly heavily to the ground so it was dry enough I could leave it there. I snagged some sort of clothing off of the ground, a ratty brown long-sleeved sweater and matching sweats. The waft that came from the clothes as I lifted the sweater overhead wasn’t the most pleasant thing in the world, however I’d smelt far worse things before, this was just some sweat caked into the clothing, I’d likely worn these at some point before my latest trip to the black room.
The clothes felt slightly itchy on me, but it wasn’t all that bad, all things considered.
I laid down in the bed, and looked out to the forest through the window, the orange hue of the sun was dimming; night was falling fast.
Sleep was rapidly overtaking me as the mattress seemed to almost drown me in its warm embrace, it was an undeniably pleasant feeling as I melted into the comfort I had long missed.
My eyes remained focused on the forest as I approached sleep, however there was something odd about this night, something different…
Something in the back of my mind was clawing at my consciousness, nagging at me incessantly…
There was something in those woods, something far more real than a dream…
And it was looking at me, but I couldn’t see it.