Sanctuary

Nightmares Are a Kind of Dream, Remember

The haze of coming awake, a murky fog that renders everything cloudy, indistinct, hangs heavy all around. There is pain in my back, in my arms, a settled throb that rather annoyingly insists upon itself as a fact of life, rather than a fading attempted reminder. Oh, the smell, charnal house burned and rotted meat, despoilment of an unseen source, mixed with the ashen aroma of fires burned out or flickering their last. I can hear a faint wind stirring, and as I struggle upright to my feet, it blows around me, clearing a path ahead through the fog.

Creak of the enormous, gilded silver gates just visible ahead causes me to flinch; those gates are never supposed to be opened for some(thing)one like me. The fog obscures once more what lies beyond the gates. I compel my legs to move, ushering myself a step toward the gates; loose and filthy denim jeans below, faded black tee and black duster up top, frayed along the hem. Old coat, don't even own it anymore, so how am I wearing it now? Doesn't matter, smells like copper and feels damp.

Two more shuffling steps, and a curious surge of strength returns, egged on a bit by the ache in my body. I have exerted myself, clearly, but it feels good somehow. The fog rolls ahead of me, and now I can make out marble, a courtyard floored in marble up ahead. Familiar. Dangerous.

I should not be here, I don't deserve this place. Always it was locked against (creatures) people like me before, so why open now? This feels like a trap. Something scrawled on the marble just inside the gates, '2' and '6' drawn in what looks like glowing blood. There is a small pile of ashes beside these scribbled numbers, a quiet golden glow emanating from them.

"That was an angel, once," I croak aloud to myself. The sound of my own voice makes me think of a whetstone being dragged along the edge of a blade, quiet but harsh. My forearms throb painfully, and I hug my arms to myself, pressing forward in a half-crouch. The fog clears further as I reach the bloody numerals, and I can now see a courtyard lined in bricks of rainbow pattern, rows of alternating hues. It's beautiful, or would be, if not for all the blood spatter, ashes, and what looks like gossamer wings ripped from their owners and tossed aside in rumpled piles. 

The reek of blood is heavy. My arms cease to hurt, and I look toward a fleet of shallow steps that lead up into structure that looks built in the ancient Grecian style. The columns look cracked, scorch marked and pocked. Something deeply horrific came here and laid absolute waste to this place.

I know this isn't Heaven; I know it isn't Hell. It isn't exactly Earth, either, but some Between Place, a realm next-door to the realms we know, occupied and defended by a host of creatures more closely aligned with genuine angels than demons. Not that demons or monsters aren't welcome, if they but agree to terms and serve this realm. Somehow, this knowledge has filtered into my mind as I've made my way onto the first shallow step up.

I also now recognize that from here on, there is no shutting my eyes and trying to allow (transmutation) sleep to take me away from here. In for a penny, in for a pound. I clench and release my hands, which now feel warm; my fingernails feel like they've pushed further out of my fingertips. Can that possibly be right?

Can an eyeball blink its way free of a brick wall? In pursuit of a dream or a rainbow colored pancake, perhaps.

Don't mind me.

Atop the steps, I can see into an entry chamber that lies in ruin, concrete and marble flotsam scattered hither and thither. Unlike their angelic counterparts, the monsters and demons dispatched here didn't turn into tidy piles of ashes; their mutilated flesh is strewn about and underfoot. Gore coats everything in a scarlet film, and I feel a giggle arise as I smell the offal of their remains.

Gargoyles were history's first home security systems, but I can spot at least four of them broken over there by that toppled anvil. Their heads were dashed in with a metalwork hammer after each was systematically pinned to the anvil, their kin held at bay by the animated entrails of prior victims in the onslaught.

How do I know this? Why isn't it so much rote information, but something more akin to memory?

Tapestries along the eastern and western walls depict scenes of faery folk and supernatural creatures at their work and play, and they are curiously beautiful. They are also, oddly, free of damage. Whatever tore through this place had no qualms with the art or this place itself, but rather, the entities within, and their purpose here.

Something up ahead, dangling down from the vaulted ceiling of this long, wide central chamber. It's a net, dripping with fluids, filled with mangled bits of the other beasts that stood watch here. The sight of it makes me oddly hungry; there's some sort of oversized chicken beak in the debris there.

Nuggets. Pink slime. Not great to think about right now.

Skirting around this, I find the rest of the chamber largely undisturbed. Sitting on a pedastal is a human skull, one blue and one green eye rolling around before looking my way, leathery bat wings affixed to either side, a scorpion-like stinger tail wrapped about the pedestal to keep it centered. Heterochromia, I think; a genetic condition resulting in irises of different coloration.

"I won't spoil it for you," the skull-bat-thing says in a gravelly voice to me, seeming somehow to leer at me. How can a skull leer? No lips, how can I differentiate? No matter. He seems to know me. "Suffice to say, welcome back."

Best to ignore this imp for now. The chamber terminates in a narrowed archway, a pale scarlet light and dense, knee-high fog obscuring whatever lies in the back chamber of this strange structure. I press onward, the smell of cinnamon and spoiled meat hanging heavy in the fog. My arms itch again, hands throb, head hurts. It feels like something is trying to explode out of my skin, some deeper 'me' that I am terrified to acknowledge.

Stepping fully into the final chamber, I now see a wide, flattened staging area at the far end of the room, another set of steps leading up to it. In the center sits an angular but fairly simple throne, empty save for something sitting on the seat's lone cushion.

Climbing the steps and plucking this item up, I inspect it; it's a mask of gold, moulded in the form of a screaming skull. I know this face....

I have worn it myself, in my time. I think. I don't know, I can't be sure, but something about it seems so damned familiar.

Looking once again at the throne, I now realize that the whole thing is composed of hundreds if not thousands of fragmented and broken bits of bone, held together with gods only know what kind of bonding material.

"I have beheld the throne of Order, and it is empty," I hear myself mutter, feeling a mad grin split my cheek open, rivulets of blood leaking down my face. Purest agony explodes in every bit of my being, claws thrusting from fingertips, flesh sundered as oily black feathers festoon out from my person. I would howl at the pain, but gleeful cackling only escapes my stretching throat and sharpened beak.

And even as I take up the seat to corrupt it, tossing the mask aside as the unwanted thing it has become to this form, I weep inside. I do not want to be this loathesome creature that relishes in the memory of the wanton chaos and death it has wrought here.

Yet, here I am.

Ask me my name, and I shall straighten my tie and pull tight my checkerboard blazer, and tell you that it is Quoth.

And that all has been lost on a whim of claws and fangs and surrealist orgasm made manifest.

And that will serve.