((OOC Warning: This is a VERY long post*L* So long in fact, the cork here would'nt let me make it all, in one post!*Mind boggles at that*L* So, I'll be making it in at least two seperate postings*LOL* Here's part one!
And I made it for no other reasons then the fact that I wanted to use it as a means to further the character development of Greg, and becouse it would not let my mind BE, until I gave in and wrote it, the images hunted down ruthlessly, to enhance the post itself.
So, for any of you who are not wanting a nice long read, then stop now*L* But if you like a good yarn so to speak, and the chance for a peek inside Greg's rather warped head*L* Then I hope you enjoy the reading, half as much as I did the writing of this*Heh*))
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He'd been successful...Escaping the memories and the nightmares that came with them.
Successful for a good long while now.
But...One can not run forever from the past. For you take it with you, like it or nae...Wherever you go.
And, as soon as your guard is down again......................
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*It's been awhile since we talked...*
Within the plauge of dreams that sometimes were -more- then just dreams...At least within his own mind...Gregorick tossed in his sleep. He'd take to sleeping, at least once in awhile, in the chambers that had been given to him, as a Count, here at the castle. He did it for propriety sake, more then any desire of his own. Normaly he slept better in truth, in the garrison with the men he was now one of those in command of, or up under the open night sky, on the battlements. But this happened to be one of the nights he was sleeping in the room he'd been given. A room he'd demanded stripped almost intirely bare of the oppulance they thought to surround him with at first. He niether needed, nor wanted any of it.
But, the large, ornate bed and it's sumptous feather mattress and pillows and bedding, he could do naught about. And it was upon that mattress he tossed now...within that bedding that his corded, lithe frame became wound up in.
~Go away! I've nae the need nor want to talk to ye!~
In his nightmare, which was, for him...Far more then a nightmare, he heard the Other...laugh. And slowly, the sinester gleam, crimson and demonic even, he could see shinning in the Other's eyes, from behind the Mask...
*Realy? If that were true, then we would'nt be speaking at all now...We both know that. Besides...You're losing focus. I think it's time we took a trip down memory lane again...*
~NO! God's blood, please...!!!~ His mental voice lowered, becoming riddled with horror and a pleading tone the man would have never given, to anyone but this Other...
But, it was too late. For the Other had no pity, not for anyone...including him...As it showed clearly now.
And the flashback, heightened by his own anguish for fourteen long, desperate years...Began again:
It had happened, only a month or two, after his return from his first visit back home of any real length, since he'd been sent to fosterage the year before. He was eleven, full of the vim, vigor and spirit that could posses a lad of that age. And so filled, he was also hungry almost all the time, as many growing boys are. Thusly, though he'd not yet known then, what it was that had waked him that night, some horrific nightmare he could not recall when his eyes opened...He'd slipped from his room, and looking almost like some child wraith, wearing naught but the long white linen nightshirt...Gone to the kitchen of his foster family's home, to sneak something to eat.
At least...That had been his plan that night. But...Fate had other things in store for the young orphan. That fact, something he discovered that night. Along with far more details of the circumstances behind how he'd been made such, then any child in any era, should ever find out. But find out he did...Passing by the servant's servery, where they sometimes gathered to socialise when off duty. And he heard the gruesome, devasting details of the facts beyond that which would be officialy explained to him the next morning.
But by morning, he'd already known...And not knowing that he did, or that he knew the horrifics of it all, had stunned and disturbed his foster father...By his tearless, near errie stoic state when the good man had told him of his family's death, the destruction and loss of the WaltheSeer estate and lands, to the final crushing border raid by Zackfare.
But you see, by the time he was -officialy- told...The damage had already been done.
Curious, as all children are, and knowing he was the son of an Earl, and if he got caught, then his foster father would not punish him too severely...Young Gregorick had paused to listen to the animated gossip that night, within the servery, as the servants, all that were not absolutely detained elsewhere, had gathered within, to listen with the sort of animated fascination that posseses people hearing of a great tragedy...For a messanger had ridden, carrying with him the only surviving servant of WaltheSeer Manor, thier old, faithful steward. And the steward, who was still in shock, and so old and palsied he had been able to do nothing but hide and bear witness, so that at least the truth of the horror that had happened would be known...Stumblingly, anguishedly, told the tale to Gregorick's foster family's servants, the messanger filling in pieces that the steward had not known, or were not to be found until after he'd fled once it was all done, to seek a rider to take him here....Here, where the only surviving WaltheSeer, was staying.
Of course the steward and the messanger had delivered the news first to Gregorick's foster father. But the man, knowing the sorrow would be laid on the boy's doorstep come morning, had decided to let the lad have one more night of peace, before learning the fate of his family, his lands and his title, all in one fell blow. But, as was said previously...Fate had other ideas for young Gregorick that night...
And in secret hiding, he'd trembled...Awash with a grief and terror and rage that kept him frozen even when he would have fled from the hearing of it all...The details burned into his mind via way of his ears that refused to go numb when he told them to...Via his eyes that refused to shut or look away from the teriable truth that showed in the eyes of his family's faithful steward, old even before he had been born, but ever kind and a favorite with he and his older sisters...And even named godfather to Gregorick's youngest sister, not yet even a year old...
Nor, would she ever see that day. He found that out, as he found out the other details...Of how the Zackfare armies had finaly breached the defenses and rigorous maintaining of the border, that WaltheSeers had overseen and led the defense of, for two generations before that of Gregorick's own. His father had died on the front, not even his great strength and those loyal to him as the Knight Earl, could stop the mounted attack that had the advantage this time, of the information leaked by spies...Zackfare was ever known as a nation of spies and assasins...And their spies of the amount of men and best avenue of attack on the border defense, had finaly been successful.
The story told by the old WaltheSeer steward and the messanger that had brought him here, was vivid of the armies swarming past the border, and from there, twas not far at all, to the WaltheSeer estate. Which they had ransacked and burned to the ground. But not before pillaging it...And it's people.
The old steward's weatherbeaten and wrinkle lined face had collapsed into anguished sobs, as he'd told of how he'd hid, hid like a coward in his mind, but there was nothing, nothing else he could have done...And somebody had to live, to tell the truth of that night...For the sake of Earl WaltheSeer's only surviving child, his heir...Thank God young Gregorick at least had been spared!
Yes, spared...But Gregorick himself had wished with all his might he had not been, that he had been there to try to defend his family...He was eleven by God, he could weild a sword better then some of the men of his under his foster father's command even! But...he had not been there...And that guilt ate him up alive now, guilt that he survived, guilt that he had'nt been there to defend his mother and his sisters...
Guilt...that was joined by absolute gut wrenching soul sick'ness and horrific visions that no son or brother, especialy of such a tender age, should have had to endure...As he heard the tale of how his gentle mother, and his older sisters, themselves only fourteen and twelve...Had been given a fate worse then death, and death granted to them, only when the Zackfare troops had tired of their rape and torture...
But...But it was not until he'd heard, how the foul beasts of Zackfare had crept throughout the whole manor, killing every man woman and child of the servants as well...And when they'd found the WaltheSeer nursery, and raped and slaughtered the nursemaid there...They'd gone to the craddle of his youngest sister, only eight months old...Sweet little Rebecka WaltheSeer, whom Gregorick had been the only one other then her nursemaid she'd let hold her, when she was colicy, and whom as the only one of his sisters he was older then, he'd developed a fierce sense of both adoring love and protection for. The only one of his siblings that had been born, like he, with the famed dark "WaltheSeer Eyes"...When...when he heard how they had...dismembered her body, hacked it to pieces...and painted the nursery with tiny Becky's blood...
NO! No, no no no no no...
The boy's mind could not handle that vision, even as the scene that was discovered that had been the truth of it, was told by the almost incoherent steard now, and the grave and somber nods added by the messanger who had seen the scene's aftermath, before the two had set off for here, as fast as his horse could carry them. And though he'd been sick to death or wished he would die that night, hearing what had happened to the rest of his family...It was the utter desecration of Becky's body, and the memory of the sweet little sister with the eyes that mirrored his own, whom he had sworn when he'd first held her, that he would protect, ever and always...It was that, and the soul sundering fact that he had not kept his oath to her, that he would never see her or any of his family again...And it was his fault, his fault, his fault....
HIS FAULT!
He, despite the fact that children matured much faster back then, they had to...Had been, still just a child...Eleven is old enough to feel the excitement and the begining of the weights and trusts that come with manhood...But it is still on that tremulous border of childhood as well. And, like some children thoughout mankind's history have always done, and always will unfortunetly...Young Gregorick WaltheSeer had blamed himself. For not being there. For not avenging his father's death on the battlefield, for not protecting his mother and older sisters from the horrors and deaths they'd been forced to endure, and for not defending to his dying breath, the baby sister he had sworn he would protect when she'd been born.
Horror. Grief. Survivor Guilt. Loss. Rage. And the soul-shattering belief that had he but been there...He could have changed it...Could have saved Becky at the very least!?!
The tidal wave force of the tempest of these emotions mingled and devastating, finaly over-rode the shock that had numbed his body, kept him rooted to the hall outside the servery of his foster home. And the boy had fled into the night. It was still spring, and the night air outside the foster manor was still cold, the grass beneath his bare feet dewy and chilled, the breeze carried an icy touch even now...He felt none of it.
He'd fled, weeping incoherently, damning Zackfare, the world itself, even God above...But most of all...He'd damned and cursed himself...As he tore through the woods that surrounded the foster manor house. Woods he'd played in and gotten to know this past year, woods he'd always felt peaceful in, calmed by somehow...
But even the balm of the forest could not stop what had begun inside his foster family's manor home. Soul-shattered was he. Aye...
And mind-sundered.
For something...snapped...Inside Gregorick WaltheSeer that night. And unable, unwilling...to bear the grief and the horror and the guilt and self-loathing alone...His mind had bowed to the decree of his soul and subconcious both...And created...The Other.
And that night, for the first time...He'd "heard and seen", this traumatised youth...
...Heard and saw the Other...Who, as there was no one else there, no one else that could understand or console...Had reached out to Gregorick...mysterious and enigmatic, offering comfort, escape and someone to share the horror within with...If he'd just give it up, give it over, let this Other in, and...
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((Yes, I know the "waltheseerhorror1" image is'nt working here, I have'nt a clue why, it works fine otherwise, so if you realy want to see it, just c+p the address into anouther window, I guess*L*
On to part 2!))
Fri Mar 14, 2008 6:55 am