Xanadu Weyr - Candidate Barracks
A long, low ceilinged room opens off the entrance hall to the arena. One wall is slightly curved, set against the outer wall of the arena itself. Cots are set in two rows along the length of the room, each with its own small press at the foot for personal belongings. Wide windows are spaced along the outside wall, letting sunlight in, while other lights are available for the night time hours. It's always warm here when there are eggs on the sands, and candidates seldom need more than a light blanket.
« I HAVE HEARD THE TALE OF THE SOUND THAT NOBODY COULD IDENTIFY. SOME HAVE SAID IT TO BE A CREAK IN THE NIGHT, A WHISPER OF A NAME, A SCRITCH-SCRITCH-SCRAAAAAAAATCH THAT NOBODY CAN QUITE AGREE TO THE ORIGINS OF. SOME HAVE DISMISSED IT AS THE HOWL OF WIND, THE FALLING OF LEAVES, THE RUSTLING OF TREE BRANCHES AS THEY SHIMMY AND SHAKE AND MAKE GROTESQUE SHAPES THROUGH THE CURTAINS OF CLOSED WINDOWS. I THINK SPECULATION IS A FORM OF DENYING YOUR INNER BADASS. YOU COULD HIDE UNDER YOUR COVERS, OR PRETEND IT'S THE EMPTY COT BESIDE YOU HOLDING A BODY THAT WILL NEVER FILL IT. YOU COULD EVEN ASK ME TO BE SILENT FOR THE UMPITY-TEENTHIEST TIME, BUT I THINK THAT YOU SHOULD GO FORTH, MINIONS, AND PROVE TO MY ILYSCAETH AND MY XERMILTOTH THAT YOU ARE FORCES RECKONING-IFIABLE ENOUGH TO IMPRESS SOME OF THEIR BABIES. SO GO FORTH, PUT ON YOUR MEANEST FACES AND DO WHAT THE GUARDS HAVE CLEARLY FAILED TO DO. INVESTIGATE EVERY MYSTERY, AND DON'T GET KILLED IN THE PROCESS. »
That's right! There is a MYSTERY OF SOUNDS ABOUND, a spine-tingling, you're-not-alone-in-this-room-despite-the-emptiness-of-it that keeps taptaptaping and raprapraping on your brain. It's hard to say where it's coming from. Your bed? Your window? Your nextbed neighbor's incredibly infuriating sleep habits?
Blood.
Then the funny dripping sound heralded the appearance of a too rapidly growing spot by his knee. It was much, much too soon a sticky puddle. He had been… What had he been doing? Filing. He had been filing. It had been going well.
He couldn't seem to flinch back fast enough as his eyes searched well-known surroundings that were somehow too vague compared to their usual crisp lines. Something's wrong, Stefyr's mind told him unhelpfully as the trickle of blood widened into a waterfall down the shelves and drawers until the ceiling, too, was saturated and dripping.
Dripping on him. He bolted for the door, panic driving his heart to reckless speed, his breath coming in too shallow, too shocked gasps. He was just to the door just when it creaked and began to open. He could hear laughter behind the door. Laughter from two voices he knew and cherished.
"Don't come in!" He was sure he had shouted it at them, but in they came all the same, laughing together. Risali and R'hyn. "Rhody, don't!" She had to be that next figure at the door and he lunged; if he couldn't protect his leaders, his friends, his touchstones, from whatever the incipient sense of wrong really was, maybe he could at least save Rhodelia?
Only the body he collided with wasn't Rhody's. It was big, mean and ugly. It sneered from somewhere deep and distant that chilled him to the core. He saw the knife just before the man… The monster… Pushed through him knife ripping and phantom flesh doing naught.
Stefyr screamed. But not aloud.
He jolted upright in his cot, so distant now from the majority of the candidates. He scrambled out of his bed as a too close, too vague to be identified noise reached him and he stared dumbly and panting at his tangled sheets in the relative dark.
It was a dream. It was just a dream.
He felt the urge to turn and run down the aisle, still only half awake, meaning to seek his mother where she was surely already starting the day's baking in the kitchen just down the hall. Couldn't he hear her humming if he dared close his eyes? No, this… here… It wasn't the farm.
Stefyr stared at his cot, blinked himself slightly more aware and with shaking hands reached for the sheet only to jump back when a set of reflective eyes appeared just as he made his move. He stood frozen in the kind of panic that locks down every muscle.
"Meow?"
He laughed, not joy nor mirth, but relief, sinking to his knees beside the cot, head going onto it's edge.
This was, obviously, an opportunity and not one to be missed, so paws found the short blond hair. Weight settled lightly on his head as surprisingly strong little digits kneaded into his head. He stayed there some long moments, pulling forth the memory of the time one of the barn felines had decided to make his favorite shirt into the cozy place she birthed her litter. She'd probably found it already there in the dim safety of the underside of the bunk beds that he shared with brother and cousins. Kittens were good nightmare repellant.
He felt like he could hear smallest kitten mewls now, in the barracks, but it was something scratchier, something… shriller, stranger. Even as goose flesh pimpled skin that should have been too hot to offer a good response, he rose and looked down the rows of cots. Taking a breath, he moved into the aisle and walked a distance with too careful, too timid steps. He was big, but he knew he wasn't really scary.
He made it half way down and aisle when he stopped. Nothing else made more than the usual middle of night murmur of movement in the barracks and so, he decided… Well, he'd come far enough not to think himself a complete coward for not finding those noises. The walk back to hsi bed felt like it took no time at all (perhaps because he was taking double the size steps) and found his visitor gone He shook out his sheet and settled back in. He closed his eyes and was nearly asleep when…
Scraaaaaatch.
He rolled over and sighed. It was going to be a long night.