Exhaustion: Calaudrin's Sleep has started at Arx - Upper Boroughs - Crown Apartments - Lobby.

Room #5 <5> is now unlocked.

3 Grayson Guardsmen, Alejandra, a snowy white hound, Planchet, a young valet, 2 Iron Guardsmen leave, following Ainsley.

The world is hazy at the edges but sharp and shiny at the center. The colors too bright but the edges are all fuzzy. Calaudrin's head feels like it is full of syrup; like he's swimming through air too thick for regular movement. The summer night stretched out around him... as far as he can see... He finds himself...

In the Iron Guard Barracks, because Calaudrin never goes anywhere on vacation. But it's not the barracks of today, it's the one of a few years back. When Everard was still in command and Cal is a slightly younger yet just as grumpy version of himself, having just earned his officer's rank recently. He's tapping his case of smokes against his hand, over and over and over...

His hand is numb... He's tapping the case against his hand, over and over, but he can't feel it. He can hear it-- the soft impact of the metal against his hand. Thwad. Thwad. But he can't feel it. It's almost as if he doesn't have hands at all.

Which should be alarming and it is, he glances down quickly to check to make certain they're /both/ still there. And they are, but it all feels off. He makes the motion a few more times and feels nothing. There's a gradual knot of something building in his chest and he pushes off of the wall he's leaning against.

...Thwad... thwad...

That noise of metal against skin continues. Thwack. Thwack. The sound sharpens to something /so much worse/. There's a little wet splatter added to the sound now. Something mushy and liquid filled being hit with metal. It's not the case of smokes against his hand.

Calaudrin swallows back the taste of bile in his mouth, he expects what this might be. He doesn't want to see it. But he begins to walk anyway, like he has no control over the direction of his own body. His feet have him walking, heading towards another part of the barracks where he thinks the sound is originating from. He doesn't want to know, but he has to know regardless.

The sound of his own shuffling feet-- reluctant to move --are so loud in his ears. They combine with that wet thwack, over and over; a discordant song of dread. It pulls him forward beckoning him along. Into the barracks...

Where he finds the walls splashed with blood, dripping down and sinking into the stone and wood around him.

Bodies of Iron Guardsmen are strewn all over the ground. Some in their armor, some out of it. One crawls toward him a hand out stretched, but the life is already gone... His head drop the ground, blood pooled around him.

Thwack... thwack...

A man dressed in full plate armor stands over one of the large communal eating tables... An Iron Guardsmen stretched out and being *butchered* there.

The man and victim both look toward Calaudrin.

"He-help.." The person who is being cut to pieces pleads and he *knows* that voice, Calaudrin does...

And the man doing the butchering? He knows that face..

At first, cold fear runs through Calaudrin's otherwise numb body and he stops. His eyes get wide in terror as he takes in the sight of all of the blood. "No, no, no..." He mutters under his breath and rushes to the guard dying on the floor, getting his blood on his hands. Then he looks up to follow the continued sound of the thwacking. He locks eyes first with the butcher, disbelief spreading across his expression as he stares at Silas. Then it's betrayal, the full on heart wrenching shock of it. Without control he has to look at the person on the table. Thena. Being *butchered*. He's frozen in shock again. "Why? Silas, NO." The words are ragged and harsh as he tries to close the distance to push him away.

Calaudrin checked mana + investigation at difficulty 15, rolling 5 higher.

Ainsley GM Roll checked mana(5) + occult(3) at difficulty 15, rolling 26 higher.

A darkness spreads behind Silas. Haloed around him like an abyssal aura. The Lord Commander gives Calaudrin that cocky smile of his and continues to slam a butcher knife down onto poor Thena, who screams out. She would thrash-- but now Calaudrin can see that she is *pinned* to the table... her blood dripping down into many buckets.

"Ever had Iron Sausage, First Officer?" Wait... isn't Calaudrin an officer? Isn't Silas just... why is he wearing the insignia of Lord Commander?

Where is Everard?

"I make the best Iron Sausage, Calaudrin. You'll love it!" says Silas as he hacks off Thena's left arm.

You always move slower in your dreams. So slow and your hits are always ineffectual. Why is that? Calaudrin pushes against Silas uselessly. "What the fuck is wrong with you, Silas?" The insignia of Lord Commander crashes against the knowledge that in /this/ time, Everard is Lord Commander. And not a vile betrayer himself... yet? "EVERARD!" And then next of course, Thena shouldn't even be here. "What is happening? FUCKING STOP." He'll try to push at him again but barring that, he'll try to unpin her from the table. The talk of Iron Sausage makes him gag in his mouth.

Ainsley GM Roll checked mana(5) + occult(3) at difficulty 15, rolling 29 higher.

Calaudrin checked mana + investigation at difficulty 15, rolling 37 higher.

As if summoned by Calaudrin's anguished cry, Everard appears in the doorway... But he's *wrong*. This is all *wrong*. There is a flash where Silas isn't Silas-- he's a spindly looking man(??)-- all stretched out and wrong. Long, thin, and fleshed in abyssally dark skin with mottled green patched. Emerald eyes shine.

Everard's form shimmers and for a moment he also is this stretched out black and green mottled creature.

Thena's form too shimmers..

Calaudrin freezes as Thena begins to shimmer. His eyebrows lift up and pulls back in disgust and fear, the same kind of fear that stretches across his face as he looks at Silas. "What the fuck... what the fuck..." Then he spots Everard. All wrong. *So wrong*. He begins to step away from the table, away from the butchered Thena, away from the other-Silas and definitely away from the other-Everard. The only thing that would make this worse is if they all had buttons for eyes. "No." He starts shaking his head.

Calaudrin checked willpower + archery at difficulty 15, rolling 41 higher.

Ainsley GM Roll checked mana(5) + occult(3) at difficulty 15, rolling 20 higher.

Calaudrin denies this reality and the force of it ... shatters the dream.

He comes awake sweat drenched in his beat, and shaking. Feeling as if he has just run a patrol none stop in his plate armor *running*. Winded, sore, and definitely *not* rested.

Well this is bad. Calaudrin is just going to lay here and probably NOT fall asleep again for a long time.