Alara glanced around, confusion haunting their thoughts and clouding them with a thick, deathly veil of mist- she was held in a cage with vile, weeping vines falling like teardrops from a mother's eye as she watches her child die, and cracks radiating out like mourners from a long-forgotten funeral. Her hands and legs quivering, she stood up, heavy breaths turning to icy fog in the air; the first thing she noticed, even in her blind mist of confusion, was the silence, stale and oppressive, that lay like curtains over the structure, blocking out light; the only thing casting out any light was a dim, intermittent candle that cut through the shadows feebly, just barely letting any light upon the scene. It was a sorry sight. The candles only illuminated the room ever so slightly, like a war of shadows and light; the soldiers stood, anger burning in their eyes and swords glistening with malice, and their stances were confident, only just covering their mask of terror with a thin veil of bravery. Casting their gaze out across the green, blank fields, they saw a similar sight on the other side, but their shoulders slumped, and their eyes were dull, seeming to be empty of will but still courageous, attempting to hide their knowledge that they were going to lose, however hard they fought and however close their swords scraped with the glistening blades at the other end of the field; it was as if they were over trying to hide their utter exhaustion, handing themselves over to the grim smiles of determination at the other end. With sure feet, the forces began to charge ahead, their battle cries ringing out into the starlight. Sword clashed with sword. Dagger clashed with bloodied dagger. Heralding the start of a melancholy melody of death and destruction, a bell rang; the time had come for rapiers to scrape in a dissonant tune against one another, and comrades to fall, evermore forgotten in the bitter lapse of time. It was a close battle, breaths exchanged like a lullaby sending all the fallen deep into the depths of the underworld; but some fought braver, much braver, than others- some did not give up even when their opponent had a glinting grin and malice manifesting in their eyes. Those who saw them fell to their knees, begging desperately in the way they met their opponent's eyes, only to be met with a cold glare with nothing inside it but detest; they fell then, forgotten. They did not wake from their eternal slumber, and their strength of face was met with a cooling curtain of blood pouring from their fatal wounds. Despite this, the wearier of the opponents still fought and fought- they would not give themselves up to anyone- they were not thriving in the crimson, not basking in the glory of success, but despite the odds they were surviving. Until, as the very few survivors cascaded like ragdolls into the earth, only two remained, grinding their teeth in determination, they were struck down without a second thought, and swiftly forgotten almost as soon as they were dispatched. Alara watched as the candles went out, one by one, and a hush fell upon the cavernous room. Wandering over to the people mobbed around one spot, she tapped them on the shoulder- but they only glanced behind them, weeping more.

"Please don't cry-" she begged, but it was too late, they had already excused themselves and left to weep outside. Through ragged breaths, they muttered: "she shouldn't have died this young. No..." Before she fled, wishing they would just turn around. Supposing that answers may come to her if she asked someone else, she scrambled in the dark, fleeing toward the gathered crowd, all wearing the darkest shade of black; she tapped someone on the shoulder, but got no response from them, and turned away, dejected and alone, hurt by their disdainful, fearful looks.

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Hot tears of confusion streaming down her face, she stormed down the streets, seeing that the streetlamps were dull and unlit, and cursed; these roads were labyrinthine- down one alleyway you'd find blood-curdling screams of murder, and then turn a corner and you were met with windows, closed curtains behind them like a veil hiding secrets that you weren't meant to know. It was as if the looming buildings were a wall of a labyrinth, mocking her with disdainful, insidious glares; a lone woman walked the walls with panic in her weary gaze as she searched for someone to keep her company- a feeling of unease was slowly rising, its green-tinted fluid bubbling before subsiding, and then rising into a fit of fizzing energy that was trying to escape. She opened the lid of the pan and let it simmer away, continuing to run frantically, her footsteps transforming into a sprint- but she slowed; the rising feeling of unease crawling out of her skin must be of her own imaginings, despite what she'd been told by the newspapers. Safety resided in numbers, and it would rid her of this insidious glare that followed her through these red bricks. One heartbeat. A ringing pulse. Thrashing against furious, insistent forces. The woman began to calm as a friendly smile approached her; finally, the bubbling inside her and insidious eyes melted away into the shadows, slipping behind the walls of the crimson labyrinth as she slowed her steps, and gazed deep into the gentleman's eyes, relief engulfing her fears. He understood and led her away towards the direction of her home- but the shadows. They reached for her with withering eyelids and grotesque glares, and contained potent terror, insidious and unrelenting; this was no intermittent glare. It was cold. Stone cold as it leeched under her skin. More the strange man led her toward the shadows that wanted to lay their vile hands on her shoulder and grasp them tightly, dragging her unwillingly toward a bloody fate; the paths the two figures followed, coated in a curtain of darkness, became more and more insidious and intermittently her heart sped faster. But it was gone when she just held his hand tighter, and he flashed a smile at her. It felt somewhat like she was home, for a second; a short moment. Alara shook her crawling sense of fear aside and gazed upon the house before her: home. The place she knew all so well; mother would be here, and so would father, wishing that she stay a while and sit in front of the fire, regaling them with tales from the houses she worked as a housekeeper in, telling them all the gossip. They'd welcome her with warm hands- they'd be more than cold and unresponsive like the black-wearing mourners she'd tried to catch the attention of before, but failed, and felt only lonelier and more rejected; with a hopeful heart, she knocked on the sapphire wood and waited, patiently. No one came to answer the door, and so she entered by herself, a heavy sense of doubt clouding her- were they not at home? Was father not reading the newspaper in his armchair? And was mother not cooking dinner in the kitchen? She entered the living room, feeling her unease hike up again once more; a draught followed her, and she shivered; but her father, instead of greeting her, leapt up and looked around, nervous. As she greeted him, she felt his terrified stare like rejection tossing her aside; was she invisible? Melancholy grief overcame her, and she slammed the door, too exhausted to care anymore. She left that place through the back door, going past mother as she left, and mother only shivered as Alara walked past. Those stares were constant and insidious; even as she came forward in greeting heartily, her mother only scrambled away from her as if a vile, frozen hand had reached out for her and ran its fingers down her back. Alara succumbed, and left, trembling. What was wrong with her? How was she such a hideous beast that all who saw her only looked in horror?

                                                                  _ 

Her emotions becoming more and more of a tangle of thoughts, she raced out into the night, desperation letting loose all the worst thoughts; they trickled in one by one, leaving her to wait in grim anticipation for the next one to come crawling in, and as she walked the crime-filled streets, her fears came in faster and faster- more potent at each anxious thought trickling in; it was like a song. As each instrument joined and the melody became faster, the violins were the first to fall behind, leaving an out-of-place harmony to linger where a melodic, enchanting melody should've been. The melody developed an accelerando pace its pulse writhing against unseen constraints constantly; the violins were glancing around nervously, and then they stopped, leaving the dissonant sound of silence to fill in the empty gap- like owls calling into a cold, cold night, leaving the mice to scatter away in their groups, cowering and huddling in the shadows; faster and faster they played; it did not slow, it was relentless in its speed as it became faster, faster, faster. Those who had stayed were catching thin breaths from the air before playing their instruments once more, trying desperately to continue- or at least to finish what they had started; they had a glow of resilient determination in their eyes, but a dancer can only dance for so long, and next to fall was the harpsichord, ungraciously playing an incorrect melody while everyone else stayed pristine in their rhythm. The main part being gone, however, more began to glance around, hoping that someone could save them from having to face a disdainful audience; no one played something that could save this though; it was not it, they reasoned. Alara felt her mind overcome with all the fear she had fought to hold back with chains of distractions and responses; she had held it back, but it came crumbling down and dissolved into a vile dance of retorts and responses, before the chains fell decrepit and feeble to the ground, and the doubts came clouding back in- they were inescapable; and there she saw it: bloody footprints leading up a dark, dark alleyway, engulfed in shadow. She followed them, potent venom infiltrating her veins through the steely glares of paranoia as she wandered a path; they led up a rickety path of misplaced bricks, where the roads were never maintained, or perhaps just less than all the other roads in the area were. Crimson stains. They were lain out in a trail of carrots along the path, and she was the innocent rabbit following them to a wolf who would stalk her every step; her footsteps were muffled, but she did not doubt them- it was empty here, empty of all life, and the houses were surprisingly uninhabited despite the constant stream of house buyers looking for work recently. This was where she knew for sure something had to be very, very wrong- the candles went out from the windows as she passed, curling away from her as she passed through the winding alleys; the footsteps led out into a different path, leading her away from another, better lit one; the lights felt as if they burned her skin, and she scrambled away, trying not to think too negatively about the situation, but that alleyway would have seemed kind, like a mother's arms, compared to the horrors awaiting her down this path, perhaps. Her doubts manifested in every misplaced brick and every towering wall. They haunted every trail of smoke crawling away from a candle; there was no escape from the eyes that held their insidious glare on her at every turn in these narrow streets- when she turned one way, following the bloody footsteps and trail of knives, they peered around one corner and stalked the shadows, just out of view, feeling unsettled, she ran in the opposite direction, hoping to outpace their glowering eyes, but the shadows are a somewhat impenetrable disguise under the cloak of darkness. Danger could lurk in any corner, and a poor lady walking the alleys to get home would never suspect a single thing; even if you were claimed by the tentacles unfurling from the shadows, with grotesque arms clutching your throat so you could not scream, it was not a single thing to the outside, who may have seen it in broad daylight.

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The cobbled streets were her maze and her prison, trapping her in melancholia and dread-every thought was a dagger, carving her mind open and taking out all she could enjoy, leaving only the grim, grotesque thoughts of murder and treason; she attempted, tears streaming down her face, to throw of the knives carving up her ghostly corpse for a feast. But there lay a sacreligious pool of crimson drying on the rickety bricks at her feet. The realisation was an unbearable process; the information leaked bit by bit like a confessing murderer in a courtroom; they'd let slip- an incriminating mistake, and at once their mind swam with excuses. They were at first reasonable, and fit together with the story they told before- they;d left their house at dawn to do grocery shopping. They'd gone to meet a friend. Those were the ones that perhaps could've saved them from dully shining steel bars, and red hands gripping them so hard their knuckles were pale; they felt a shift after the first few. It had been holding back the truth from slipping out of the mouth to lie; but soon they got more and more stuck, feeling constrained in their thinking by sticky cobwebs that they thrashed against, but to no avail, and found themselves halting on their words, stuttering to utter a single, incriminating word. That was where it happened: a single bit of truth slipped from between their two lips, and though they tried to grasp it, it was too late now to take back their words- under the pressure, it had escaped; under pressure, anyone would have snapped and the whole, unedited truth would have fallen onto the shoulders of the court. This one mouth can only tell so many lies; it flooded out as if a dam had broken, and the sewer grates had burst: Alara began to know- a grim thing, knowledge can be; it gives you the power to show the world just how much they haven't found- just how much they could be; so much power! Enthralled, you can splutter and cough until more comes out of your mouth. But it is so double-dealing in its ways that, through sly tricks, it can make you say things when you shouldn't; there is such thing as saying too much. Alara flinched at the thought- now she knew. She knew. She knew everything. The why, the how. And then she paced, seeing the blood on the floor in the vague, familiar figure of a human; her. That person was her. The cobbles soaked in red: she knew. She wished that she could just go back to the way it was before, but now it was staring her in the face with cold, cold eyes. Fury seething beneath her skin in a slithering mass of worms, she paced into the dark, further down these cursed streets; who had done this? She sped up, began to run through the dull, winding roads and windows of her home- knives were laid out in a trail of rabbits, decaying quickly as the bear kept following them; this predator was not in a rush. They stopped to eat, and they ambled, their aplomb prosperous through every bite and every step; everything about them was slow and confident; Alara felt alarm pulsing through her veins, adrenaline throbbing in a viscous, fast flowing river through her- then as she ran the windows had relit their candles, and the smells of all she missed were wafting through the streets; time sped by in a miserable lake of inescapable, dreary ticking of clocks, but she could only imagine that the dinner was cooking in that household there, and that she could smell it even from outside another house- she was a poor ghost, and that was all. But even colder than her hands as they reached for the shoulder of her mother, or a small child were the hands laying on her shoulders the entire time, a sapphire glow in a world of black and white; it remained through the times when the sky turned black with smoke, always there to provide a touch of deathly cold to her vile life after life- all that time and she never found her murderer- not once. She was desperate for that one man to fall before chains and bars, but he always left without a trace, no remorse to warm his blood. Knife to flesh, and no guilt to show for it every time.