Somnolescence II
It was with a distinct, heavy feeling of heart-deep apprehension that Dorian came near the House's door, the rain's thundering doing nothing to douse his concern about the macabre appearance of the estate, with its dark iron frames and hinges. His recent encounters with vampires and werewolves only exacerbated the sensation.
His fist rose, clenched.
Then fell on a door which opened by itself, as if the strike had undone some final note of reticence. The exterior world's rain did nothing to illuminate the inside, but stepping in hesitantly, Dorian found the interior had plenty of its own light. A crystal chandelier cast a soft yellowish light on the hall within, at least enough to see by.
Inside was a foyer with classic checkerboard tiling, and beveled walnut balustrades demarcating a double staircase with a brilliant red carpet. Around the sides of the entrance hall, he found no doors, but ahead of him was one straight corridor adorned with headless statues to each side, as well as paintings. The upper level also seemed to have doors.
The architecture was reminiscent of somewhere he'd seen. He struggled to recall, then shook his head and decided to alert the inhabitants to his presence.
"Hello?" Dorian took a slow, pausing step further inside. "Is anyone home?"
Behind him, a sudden updraft of wind caused air from the interior to escape as if from a depressurized chamber; the storm raging outside demanding a sacrifice of breath. He corrected his footing enough not to stumble back, but the door of the House closed with a sudden, ominous, resounding bang that rattled him.
He'd never read those styles of books, but this event reminded him of something. He tried the handle and predictably some mechanism had fallen into place, locking it.
"...shit."
It seems I am destined to trespass everywhere I go.
"Hello?!" he shouted across the halls. "Is anyone inside this House?"
Then Dorian noticed a girl staring at him from behind the railing upstairs.
She was a child, maybe eight or nine years old, and wore a simple young lady's winter dress. However, the most puzzling and intriguing aspect was the presence of a mask: an off-white brow-to-nose with high ridges on the cheeks, as if to lend her an element of aristocratic alienness, or even a flash of masculinity. Disturbingly, he couldn't see any eyes through the holes, as if the mask's sockets were portals to sheer dark absence. He stood frozen for a moment, processing the girl's appearance, then opened his mouth.
"Hello?" he greeted again, questingly, overeager to finally find someone capable of answering some basic questions about this place - even a child. "Are you from Drethir too? That's a beautiful mask. I'm Dorian Croft. What's your name?"
She cocked her head to the side, as if baffled.
"Who?"
"Dorian-"
Then, as if she were a spooked rabbit, the nameless girl moved away from the railing and ran down a hallway, skipping quickly to escape out of sight.
"Hey, wait!" He held out a hand as if to stop her, but it was a fruitless action. She was already gone down the eastern hall, and Dorian felt it'd be rude to pursue, and even potentially able to be misconstrued as some act of aggression on his part. He was, after all, a trespasser, if an accidental and unwilling one. He needed to find the owner of this House and inform them of his presence, and ideally request some information on the nature of this place since none of this made even a lick of sense.
He sighed, hand rubbing his neck.
Was this a dream? He couldn't Reflect the girl's mask, nor did the Webweaver seem to do much here. It could've been some mirror of that world, Demimonde, his physical form currently slept on, if so. There was a definite aesthetic correlation, and the architecture was even similar.
That made the most sense. Dorian settled on the theory that he'd been drawn into some dream world contrivance.
Naturally, he proceeded to explore the House's interior.
The inside was perplexing and enormous beyond belief, as if construction had begun a thousand years ago, and never ceased, its creator unsatisfied with a merely gargantuan scope. It was almost as if some house-making deity had gone mad with boredom and decided to attain the most ridiculous feats of residential architecture it could.
He found a dining hall the size of a city courtyard, its tables set for a festive crowd, yet sadly bereft of people. There was a hallway of identical bedrooms, counting at least three hundred doors, but each successive chamber cycled one step further on the rainbow. He found a quadrangle with a patio containing a pedestal with a white pillow and five basements that contained ten-foot-tall marble statues of a coldly beautiful noble woman, each holding a differently-colored orb. He decided, wisely in his estimation, not to steal orbs or mess with the statues. It all smelled thickly of brine and petrichor, salts carried across the breeze even inside, where the House sheltered from the storm.
Insanity but none of it compared to what he'd found at the end.
Dorian's heart froze solid as he entered an exact replica of his father's - and later, his own - workshop.
"What is this...?" he coldly whispered to himself, fingers nerveless.
Could it be some contrivance of the Warlord, a cheap secret trick designed to eliminate him? A Visceral parasite infecting Dorian's brain, eating away at the cerebellum and spawning realistic illusions to pacify him? The working of some frenzied mad occultist who'd noticed his ransacking of the city?
It was the same as he'd left it back on Drethir. A single, sturdy oak workbench underneath a dingy lamp, and a cushioned red seat. Countless chest-stored dowels of wood, stone, metal, and other materials from across the world. A vice to hold masks as they were carved. Knives for whittling, chisels for gouging. Grinders to remove excess material and apply smoothing, polishing, or faceting. And on the wall to the right... an array of masks, missing only the one on his face: the centerpiece of the show.
"This was where you spent most of your time," said the little girl from before, standing only a couple feet behind him, her voice hauntingly familiar. "It was where you worked and slept, and plotted vengeance. This one room out of an entire mansion was your sole living space. A House, but never a home..."
She offered him a sad look. "...wasn't it, little brother?"
He struggled to control the emotion in his voice, the raw hurt of an old wound dredged up. "Ada, is it really you?"
"Don't turn around, until I leave, Dorian," she instructed. "Dreams end when your eyes open."
"I missed you so," he said, finally letting out a broken sob, yet not daring to turn.
Phantom arms wrapped around his midsection.
"I missed you too, Dorian," she said. "But don't you think you should move on?"
"Move on?" He couldn't believe Adeline would be saying this. "Forget about you?"
"You don't have a House anymore," she whispered softly. "You're a traveler. Your real road doesn't lead back to us... it leads away."
"Then I'll stop traveling!" he declared with a loud yell, a hot tear running down his cheek on the interior of his mask. "For your sake."
"Don't," she said, and if he'd had any doubts this was Adeline, they dissipated at the firm iron of her voice. It couldn't have been anyone else, making that refutation. "You have no right to make that decision for me. No right to throw your life away in the name of something idiotic. You are talented, and were chosen for a reason. You mustn't throw your life away, mustn't discard its meaning like trash. Survive. Do more than that, and live well, if you can. Your House is gone, but your road continues on."
He was silent in the dark face of that proclamation, marking everything he'd done ever since their deaths as erroneous. The insubstantial arms slipped away from Dorian's torso, and with a sense of conclusiveness, disappeared from this world like imagination fading from the mind. He didn't need to look back to be able to tell she was gone.
Again.
He needed a moment to compose himself and stop crying and hitting the workbench fruitlessly, as if the repeated impacts might do something about the cruelty of fate. He needed to collect his wits and strength, the filaments of personality and confidence which created Dorian Croft, or perhaps the mask he wore ever since that terrible day where the Inquisitors seized his sister and father, and by the Emperor's ruthless command, put them to the guillotine. He needed to consider his sister's words, even if she was only a very lifelike apparition, rather than a true spirit. Once he was done, he slowly left the workshop.
Only to encounter a middle-aged man.
He was dressed in ancient attire, a chiton as white as seafoam. A vermillion-red shoulder cape covered one of his arms, bound with a golden seal displaying a cloud shooting a thunderbolt. He was short and rotund, almost pot-bellied, with graying and fading hair compensated by a garland wreath with bright summer flowers and enticingly violet grapes, ripe for plucking and consumption. In one hand, he swirled a pewter goblet filled with wine, engraved with floral and vine patterns on the handle. For his innocuous appearance, his eyes weren't human and instead showed a starry sky full of hopes and dreams, the brightness and infinity of nature.
"Ah! I've been looking for you all over, interloper," he said, with the tone of a friendly greeting, rather than accusation. His voice was jubilant, like fireworks or victorious thunder in a moment of glory. "You must like exploring, mortal! Don't most of you find the Silent House dreary and unwelcoming? I've heard something like that."
"I apologize," he said, shaking off the final vestiges of emotion from his encounter, "I was trying to find the owner."
"Aha, no luck there, my interlopering friend!" Was that even a word? The man didn't seem to care, continuing blithely on, "You're in a bordermarch! Naturally the 'owner' wouldn't be found out here. Not that you'd wish to find him, mind you - waking him from sleep is a terrible, awful idea." The man laughed jovially and took a sip of wine.
"I am Dorian Croft, pleased to meet you...?"
"Seizing-the-Night, Marchwarden of the Silent House," he answered, checking the contents of his cup as if they were more curious than Dorian's entire existence. He fiddled with the goblet, tapping a finger on its side as if it were the enclosure of a tiger and he wished to see the wild animal rouse.
"I..." Dorian fell silent after the first syllable, uncertain if what he was about to say could be construed as disrespectful. He decided to risk it. "I have no idea what that is?"
Seizing-the-Night pried away his attention from the goblet for a second, to give Dorian a weird look. "The Silent House, a Marchwarden, or a night?"
"All of them except that last one?"
"Ah. That makes more sense," the man nodded. "Well, I probably shouldn't tell you!"
"Why not?"
"I am, as a Marchwarden, meant to turn away mortals such as yourself and guide you safely out," Seizing-the-Night answered with a - literally - bright smile, teeth casting light as if reflecting a constellation. "After all, you wouldn't want to get lost out here! We do our best to cleanse the halls, too, but sometimes a troublesome worm or such will find its way into some floorboards. Your human cognitions truly hold the darkest of demons, don't they? But nevermind that. What are you even here for, little human?"
"I am not sure," he answered straightforwardly.
That, if anything Dorian had said, appeared to draw out more curiosity from Seizing-the-Night. "You're not sure? How? But look at you. So confident, not dissipating within the currents whatsoever. You're even wearing your human accouterments! You have a saber. Such a strong sense of identity, preserved in the oneiric? So lucid, too!"
"I didn't exactly mean to appear here, or anything," he replied. "I fell asleep on my third world, and when I came to, I was in a courtyard right outside this House. I am a traveler of the Street if that means anything to you. I don't know if these happenings are somehow related."
"Hmm... you're interesting," said Seizing-the-Night. There was a shift in the man's tone, an abrupt sharpness as if the joviality momentarily revealed a different, more cutting style of brilliance: sheer wise insight beneath the mask of comical free-spiritedness. "'Dorian Croft,' was it? Very interesting. I see lots of mortals here. Assorted wistful dreamers, the occasional tenacious invader from the Conclave of Night, a tortured mind... but rarely someone like you. I think I might be tempted to invite you in."
"Invite me in? I am not certain what that means, Seizing-the-Night."
"Hmm. Yes, it'd be better for you to be educated first. Honed," the man said, as if that word meant something. "You're still rather confused about this idea of multiple worlds, aren't you? Confusion won't do you much good in a place where certainty is your best armor. Here. Take this with you." The man plucked one grape from the wreath.
Dorian accepted the grape and pocketed it carefully.
"After you make your way out of the House, if you'd like to speak with me again, simply get intoxicated and fall asleep. I'll consider the matter of inviting you when we next meet," Seizing-the-Night instructed calmly. Then broke out into the same flashy grin as before. "I'll also answer some questions before kicking you out, Dorian, because I like you! You seem to have a lot of potential to stave off boredom, whether my own or that of my mistress. Yours will be an interesting journey, whichever way the wind blows."
---
You've encountered someone, or perhaps something, called a Marchwarden - who asserts he must kick you out of the 'Silent House' - but offers to answer some questions.
Choose the questions you wish to ask, but stay aware that Seizing-the-Night might become impatient at too much questioning; how much information you'll learn is dependent on luck. Prioritize questions carefully.
[ ] "Why's it a bad idea to wake up the owner of this place?"
[ ] "Was that really my sister I just met?"
[ ] "How come you have my workshop in here?"
[ ] "What does your name mean?"
[ ] "What even is the Silent House?"
[ ] "Are you a human being or something else?"
[ ] "Want to trade? I have a workshop full of masks just through here."
[ ] "Do you know anything about the Street Where the Stones Speak?"
[ ] Explain your circumstances, then ask for advice on what you should do.
[ ] Write-in
