Aiden Shepard [ Abraham Van Helsing ] (arcere) wrote in bellumlogs,
Aiden had never been one for dreaming. On the rare occasions that he did, they were strange, fleeting, and uneventful, and by morning he tended to forget them. There had been a period of time where his dreams had been nothing but nightmares - eight years ago - but after a prolonged period of insomnia they went away. And in any case, he'd never been a lucid dreamer. There were better things to do at night than run around inside yoru own head. Working, for one.
So when he passed out at his desk late at night (or early in the morning, if you looked at it that way), he didn't expect to start walking. He didn't expect to be ... coherent even while he knew he was sleeping. For a while, things were faded gray and silent; under his feet, the ground crunched like it was dusted with snow and frost. He smelled smoke. Something burning, following him.
Then the grayness darkened, sharpening into shapes - long, thin, cylindrical ... trees? Aiden paused and put a hand against one, feeling bark under his fingers. Yes, trees ... then what? Where was he dreaming about? Above him, some of the leaves gave way to a dark, starless sky.
-- and then he was at the edge of the trees, looking out over a valley with a castle in the center. He didn't know the castle, but someone else did. Someone whispered the familiarity in the back of his mind, and a cold feeling settled in the pit of his stomach. It was made a thousand times worse when he took one step forward and was suddenly on the castle grounds, at the edge of the courtyard, which was filled with --
Jesus Christ!
-- No, not bodies. Mannequins. Long-haired ones, impaled on massive spikes. Just like ...
The chill in Aiden's gut spread to his entire body.