Punishment

[burnburnburn]

Who: Dilandau Albatou, the inhabitants of house 15 and Raphael's indirect influence.
Where: Dilandau's room in House 15
When: Night time of day 81
Warnings: Nightmares containing human experimentation.

When Raphael decides to administer his punishment it doesn't come in the form of a beating. It's more subtle, but far harder to bear. He strikes at Dilandau's weakest time, as he drifts into dreaming about his home.

In Dilandau’s dream he’s in flight, soaring above Gaia’s forest in his guymelef as the two moons shine down upon him. His men are in formation behind him and it’s glorious, the best soldiers in the best technology flying to bring destiny onto its proper pass. Dilandau banks and plummets sharply, hurtling towards a shining lake and whooping at the adrenaline rush.

An eagles plunges down, snatching a fish from the water, and suddenly he can’t stop his fall. The controls are frozen and no matter how much he tugs his limbs he can’t budge them. His men’s screams echo through his ears as he slams into the surface of the lake.

He doesn’t wake up, but now he’s upright in his cockpit again. He can see a sickeningly familiar battlefield through his eyepiece and the screams are getting louder. The Dragon is leaping across the battlefield, finding his men despite their invisibility cloaks and crushing them one after another. However, the screams don’t die out as each man dies, but stretch on, one over the other, so loud that he can’t even hear himself shrieking with them as he realises what a terrible mistake he made when he chose to lead them on this hunt. The chrima his body is immersed in ripples as the fish within it swim around him.

The Dragon finally turns to face him and all the screams peak and cut out. The Dragon steps forward and Dilandau leans back, as if pulling his eye away from the eyepiece will make his enemy disappear. The back of his cockpit is solid against his back until suddenly it’s not and there are hands grabbing him from behind and pulling him out of the equipment. He thrashes and screams, but he can’t break their grip. He’s pulled into the darkness and everything goes black.

He opens his eyes, but not to awakeness. He’s now lying on his back, looking up at the glass tubes of the Fate Alteration Engine as looming figures in black cloaks come nearer, talking indistinctly about particle densities and alteration trajectories. The words don’t make any sense, but the meaning behind them is obvious. They’re ominous, threatening and no matter how loud he screams he can’t drown them out. There’s a flash of fins as a fish swims through the liquid fate bubbling above and one of the cloaked figures plunges a needle into his arm.

He jerks, but doesn’t wake up. There’s a horrible pain in his chest, and now he realises it’s because they’ve decided to try a different tactic. He’s caught in a vice-like machine and Garufo himself is turning the handle, staring at him coldly as the fish swim through the pipes behind him. Dilandau tries to beg for mercy, but he can’t draw his breath because he’s being crushed, just like his boys were in their guymelefs when The Dragon decided to kill them all. This is his punishment for his arrogance and he doesn’t want to deserve it, but his men aren’t coming now matter how he whimpers for them to save him.

He finally manages to draw his breath and screams out their names, finally waking himself up. The pain in his chest doesn't subside, nor does the terror that's making his heart race. He curls up on his belly and tries to draw a large enough breath that he'd be able to stand up and get out of his room. Pride be damned, he can't stand to be alone like this.

Comments

[blackmagus]

Fortescue doesn't sleep heavily. She keeps herself more or less on a hair trigger, in fact, as back home she had been through several attempts on her life in the middle of the night. When she hears Dilandau scream, she nearly jumps awake, heart racing, as she tries to figure out if it was a dream or reality. In the end, she decides it's best to check.

After all, if horrible monsters are attacking, it would be good for the rest of them to know. She pulls on her shirt and boots, taking her gun with her as a precautionary measure, and carefully navigates out of her room. Fortescue sticks to the shadows as she makes her way to Dilandau's door, knocking with her other hand on her gun. She knocks softly but firmly, every muscle tensed; ready for anything.

"Dilandau?"