InsaneJournal

Vlad's dreams had never been particularly pleasant, but over the past few months they had become even worse: Dracula's influence began to seep into the territory which had once been his, and sometimes he wasn't sure if what he was experiencing was an actual memory or something fabricated by his imagination. It was a world of unending darkness, marred by the sweet stench of death underlain by syrupy-thick blood, and he did everything he could to ensure that Helena would never be able to receive even a whisper of what went through his mind during the night hours.

Tonight was no different. He was in the same gothic-style castle that appeared in numerous dreams, built of unfeeling stone meant to last centuries. The windows were nothing more than rounded openings in the walls, yet he had a perfect view of the landscape below from where he stood, regarding the (his) land below with a sort of cold calculation that wasn't entirely his own. It was almost beautiful in the sense that the view was breathtaking, rolling hills and vast expanses of flat ground as far as the eye could see, with the magnificent outline of mountains in the distance. Not even the carnage could take away from the wonder, and if anything only added to the visual sharpness. Impaled upon countless stakes were bodies, some long since dead and others still twitching in the throes of death.

In the blink of an eye the entire scene melted to nothing and reshaped itself, too quick for him to focus on for long. Now Vlad found himself outside, close enough to the impaled bodies to see that they were actually mannequins instead. None of them had any faces - thee was only smooth blankness where features should have been - and they were clad in a series of bizarre bloodstained outfits. Only the long-haired wigs indicated that they were meant to be female, and he cursed the building and its influence on his dreams. Even though he'd left that room and its riddle behind, it seemed he wasn't going to be allowed to forget about it just yet. His castle had vanished as well, leaving only himself and the impaled mannequins to fill the empty landscape.