[color=00F8FE][center][h1]Callum[/h1][/center]
[b]Time: Sola 21st Late Night[/b]
Location: The Slums - A house of ill repute[/color]

[center]TLDR; Callum has a bunch of weird nightmares and then gets tossed out of an opium den/brothel establishment.[/center]

[hider=A non-necessary post/read.]
[center][url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VfnU7xE-zJo]Angry Chair - Alice in Chains[/url][/center]

[color=9FA1A4]The backroom was dimly lit by lanterns and candles that softly flickering. Hazy, sweet-scented, smoke filled the air, mixing with a variety of rancid scents that tainted the stale air; fresh vomit, old piss, thick sweat. The bodies of those who indulged lay sprawled out on the floor of a tightly packed backroom. Pain and sorrow were exhaled in soft murmurs and loud moans as faces twisted into expressions of peace and bliss. 

Cal, who was firmly not going to be Prince Callum Danrose anymore, made exceptions when it benefited him. His ideals hide behind the shadows of his desires. Callum, who had no money, looked like he’d crawled out of a gutter, covered in blood and fresh bruises, was not someone anyone wanted to spot a bit of opium. Most addicts knew better than to trust other addicts when they promised to pay you back tomorrow. But the prince was persistent; if his name earned him entrance, it would also be just enough to get him what he wanted. It had worked before, it would work again. 

It was a long night spent begging, pleading, and groveling, for anyone to spot him for the night. 

He had to not only wait for someone who sort of knew him, but someone he knew not well enough that he’d already pissed them off one way or another. His savior finally appeared in the form of Ralph, a local drunkard, an unclaimed bastard of a minor noble family, whose long years of addiction had begun to rot him from the inside out. Dirty fingers scratched at open sores and his yellowed eyes stared off into the distance, only a fading glimmer of awareness; Ralph was more like a ghost than a person these days.

[color=00F8FE]“Ralphie.”[/color] Callum crooned and wrapped an unwanted arm around the grizzled man’s shoulders. [color=00F8FE]“You know me right? It’s Callum, Prince Callum, you know, like the tavern.”[/color]

[color=B8DC04]“Cal-lum?”[/color] Ralph repeated the name slowly. 

[color=00F8FE]“Yeah, yeah just like the tavern, got my name on the sign and everything. We’ve drank together, you know me.”[/color] 

[color=B8DC04]“Oh. I know you.”[/color] Ralph nodded along. 

[color=00F8FE]“Yeah, Callum. Your friend, Prince Callum, we should smoke together.”[/color] He offered, and Ralph nodded through his confusion. 

[color=B8DC04]“I’m friends with a prince?”[/color] Ralph asked, pointing at himself, struggling with his memories. 

[color=00F8FE]“Best friends,”[/color] Callum added, and at that moment he meant it. [color=00F8FE]“But I’ve got nothing right now, so next time, I’ll get you back, alright?”[/color] Cal nodded nervously but Ralph did not. Ralph seemed to be thinking the offer over so Callum sweetened the deal. [color=00F8FE]“And, and, I’ll cover your tab at the tavern, whole month. Good deal right? You know I’m good for it.”[/color] 

Finally, Callum convinced someone to take him up on his offer. 

It wasn’t long before he too lay upon the rarely cleaned floor across from a bleak premonition in the form of empty yellowed eyes and a face too tired to care, both men dimly lit by the light of a lantern. Floral smoke filled his lungs and took the sting away from his wounds. A beautiful warmth spread through him, everything lightened and relaxed. All things that hurt melted away as he sank deep into an impossibly soft floor wooden floor, a puddle of bliss. 

Puffs of smoke sunk Cal into the abyss. Heavy eyelids closed and dreams came more vividly than ever before. 

Cal soon felt lost, floating in an infinite void. No light. No hope. Nothing but the void. He felt the hollowness without and within. 

[color=040000][i]“When you gaze into the abyss, the abyss gazes into you.”[/i][/color]

As Cal fell into the abyss, it indeed looked back into him. It saw all things he didn’t want to see. It forced him to gaze. 

His eyes opened and closed so slowly, and dreams came so suddenly, it became difficult to recognize the difference between reality and dreams. Any distinction between the two hardly mattered. 

Cal heard a voice in the void, almost familiar but distorted, a haunting sound barely heard like a whisper carried on a breeze. It sent cold shivers through him.

[color=017A76][i]Afraid to go home? To see monsters in the dark. You can barely face them in the light. Just give up, accept what you are. Selfish, like your father. Cruel, like your mother. Stupid, but that one’s all you.

Stupid little plans, that get people hurt. But it doesn’t matter, if you get what you want. You’d cause less trouble if you just went off to die in the gutter. [/i][/color]

Lost in another alleyway. Somehow this one looked worse. Everything was coated in a dingy light and grimy fog, he couldn’t tell if it was day or night. He couldn’t even see the sky. But he could see the bottle in his hand, almost slipping through his fingers. 

Even in a dream, he wanted to bring that bottle to his lips but he had no control here. A passenger. A voyeur. He could see his own yellowing skin and caught sight of the reddened tip of his drippy nose, as he walked, stumbled about, with no direction. His hand finally moved but not to bring that bottle to his lips. Finger scratched at open sores, the sound somehow so loud it was deafening. Then he was stumbling. Falling. He looked up at a sky that couldn’t be seen through a grimy fog.

Now his body saw fit to provide the satisfying sting of liquid courage. The bottle at his lips…

Choking. Couldn’t breathe. The booze taste like bile, fighting, clawing, its back way out. Violent coughing until out from his throat flew a fly. He could feel his insides rotting, he felt more flies knocking around in his stomach, crawling, buzzing, but unable to escape. The one that had escaped crawled across his face; there was no desire to swat it away. He thought he could hear the fly chewing as he felt the ground shoving at his back. 

[i]Shoving?[/i]

His eyes briefly opened, and he stared up at the ceiling. There was Ralph, patting his back and shoving him back onto his side. He saw a fly buzzing around the soft light of the lantern. 

[color=B8DC04]“Gonna choke if you sleep like that,”[/color] Ralph warned, and his broken smile held the same warm light that flickered from the lantern. 

Callum, half asleep, nodded and used his sleeve to wipe bile from his mouth. [color=00F8FE]“You’re a good friend, Ralphie.”[/color]

[color=B8DC04]“Best friend.”[/color] Ralph briefly reminded him.

[color=00F8FE]“Very best.”[/color] Callum agreed as heavy eyes closed again.

[color=017A76]Friend? Who’d be friends with you? No one if you had nothing. Drunks if you buy them a drink. You’d be friends with anyone who’d buy you a drink and let you forget. 

Even your own family doesn’t want you.[/color] [color=DDB775]“Ah look at my beautiful blonde-haired sons. Sons I’ve created.”[/color] It spoke in Edin’s voice for a moment. [color=017A76]Not you though, not a son, only a blight. Why do you think you’re always so alone?[/color]

Callum wandered through a hallway in the palace. Here everything was too bright, overexposed, and nearly blinding. Even though it looked like every other hallway in the palace it was unfamiliar. The unwelcoming feeling of the hallway, however, felt exactly like his home. He opened a door and walked into Wulfrics office. He laid down across a couch and argued with his brother. Familiar words left his mouth. He stormed out. He tried another door and walked through the tavern. He argued with Anastasia. He looked into familiar hurt eyes. He left again and tried another door. Behind every door was a fight he’d started. It felt like an eternity. 

He walked through a door and felt small. Edin was there too, like a great tall beast, shouting at him for ruining dinner. He was crying but he knew he didn’t do that in front of Edin anymore. Not like he did when he was a child. 

[color=DDB775]“What’s wrong with you?”[/color] Edin’s face contorted, and his mouth opened into a maw that resembled a lamprey. Edin’s neck stretched and moved like a snake, slithering the maw of jagged, wicked, teeth closer and closer. The Edin-like creature hissed familiar insults as flies flew from the maw with each familiar word. 

Raw primal fear kept Cal frozen in place. He was drenched in a cold sweat as his eyes looked from the bulging eyes of his father to the hundreds of flies that now landed on his skin. They burrowed into him, his skin giving no resistance. Callum felt the buzzing in his veins, in his gut, and inside his head. [color=DDB775]“What’s wrong with you?”[/color] The Edin creature shouted again as the maw snapped forward ready to devour.

[color=C68829]“What’s wrong with him?”[/color] A different voice asked as cold water splashed across his face. 

[color=DD6D51]“You’re causing trouble.”[/color] A quiet, stern voice spoke. 

He shot up in a cold panic. Drenched in sweat that mingled with cold water and the dried blood on his face from earlier. One eye wide with panic, the other too swollen to open fully. It took him a moment to realize he was screaming. He looked around for his friend but Ralph was now gone. 

[color=DD6D51]“You can’t stay here. Out.”[/color] 

[color=00F8FE]“Wh-”[/color] Too hard to stay awake. Sleep called again. Or maybe it Orbitus. The abyss cradled him once more.

[color=017A76][i]Rotten fruit, rotten tree, rotting away. Drawing in flies, that's what you're good for.[/i][/color]

Callum sat in front of a massive dark tree with twisting branches. Gnarled and twisted bits of bark wore the faces of regal ancestors. Their mouths all hung open, spewing forth a constant shrieking of their various crimes. He opened his mouth to scream for them to stop, his hands desperately pressed against his ears. No words came out, only a swarm of flies left his mouth. Thousands of flies poured from his mouth covering much of the tree but none of the faces. So many pairs of eyes bore down on him, judging him as the flies gnawed on the tree. He could hear rotten bark crunching inside thousands of tiny mouths. But their screaming stopped, voices barely heard over the buzzing of flies then spoke to him. 

[color=040000]“This is one of ours?”[/color] A disappointed voice asked. 

[color=040000]“Look at him, that’s a liar's face if I ever saw one. Certainly one of us.”[/color] A proud voice answered. 

[color=040000]“He almost looks like George.”[/color] 

[color=040000]“I don’t see it. Looks weak.”[/color] 

[color=040000]“Got more of a coward’s face if you ask me.”[/color]

[color=040000]“Look closer, he’s got rage rotting away at him.”[/color] The eyes all looked to stare at him, fixated on something below his face.

Cal looked down following their gaze. He saw the rot. An opened cavity that was his abdomen, shattered ribs like fingers curled against the edges. The skin around the void in him was rotting and necrotic, a collage of muddied greens, grays, and black. But not nearly as dark as the void. No heart, no guts, no liver. Empty, barren, and continuing to pour out and spread to the rest of him. Consuming him. 

He reached his hand inside and it brushed nothing but felt like ice water. He reached further, tried to touch where his spine should be and his arm kept reaching. His back curled forward until his forehead was nearly on the ground, still only feeling the emptiness. Until he fell forwards into the void and was pulled upright. 

Until he stood on nothing and the floating stopped. 

Everything hurt again. 

A pair of cinnabar-colored stars shone in the void. They looked at him with such immense judgment that he fell to his knees. He felt his heart pounding against his chest. It was a struggle to breathe. The stars shone brighter and brighter until not only did his eyes sting but he could see that the stars were also eyes. Eyes that lit up a golden scowling face that looked like a mask with pair of horn-like appendages that almost formed a crown. Draped in shadows, He watched. 

[color=00F8FE]“Mighty Claro.”[/color] Cal addressed the vision and understood what was happening. He had asked for chaos on this night, and his night had not ended in an alleyway. Chaos had followed him, even invading his dreams. 

The scowl became a smile that also might have been a snarl and disappeared in only a second as the golden mouth parted as if He were about to speak. Only flies poured out. 

Flies swarmed into a humanoid shape and began walking toward him until the sound of it become deafening. Callum closed his eyes and tried to remember this wasn’t real. He covered his ears until the cacophony of buzzing stopped. He opened his eyes and stared back at himself. The flies were gone. It was just him, in the darkness, looking back at a mirrored image of himself.

[color=017A76]“Like what you see?”[/color] The other Callum asked. With eyes locked all Cal could see in eyes that matched his own, were all those things within himself he hated. So Cal closed his eyes, shook his head, and hoped this disappeared too. 

When his eyes opened again he found himself again lying on the street just outside the brothel. A single fly buzzed around his ear before eventually leaving him alone.[/color][/hider]

[center][img]https://i.imgur.com/ONd4lpK.png[/img][/center]
[color=00F8FE][b]Time: Sola 21st Late Night[/b]
Location: The Slums - Another Alleyway
Interactions: Stratya [@CitrusArms][/color]

[color=9FA1A4]Discarded like the rest of the refuse that littered the streets, Callum again stood on shaky legs and wandered. He didn’t know where else to go, only that he didn’t want to go home. Anywhere else was better. He checked through his pockets as if he might have a flask he’d forgotten about. Nothing. Only disappointment and his mouth was dry and his throat hurt like he’d been screaming all night. He realized he’d probably been kicked out for screaming in his sleep. It wouldn’t be the first time. 

Cal found himself sinking to the ground in another alleyway, or maybe it was the same one as before, he couldn’t tell. It didn’t matter either, the alleyway seemed a welcoming place to sleep until morning because at the very least it was far from home. He laid back down, rested his head on one arm, and covered his face with the other. The night’s air was cool enough that he shivered in clothes soaked with cold water and sweat, and it kept him from falling deep into sleep. Maybe enough so to keep the nightmares at bay. 

"[color=peru]Here ya are, aye?[/color]" A new voice only added to his confusion.

[color=00F8FE][i]Barry?[/i][/color] He wondered if that guy just lurked around alleys all night. He then questioned whether that had all been a dream too.

"[color=peru]Alright, lad, let's up and away. Can ya walk, are ya awake?[/color]"

[color=00F8FE]“Just resting. Fine here.”[/color] He moved his arm and looked up to see who was speaking to him. There was a hint of recognition but he couldn’t quite remember. [color=00F8FE]“Do I kn-”[/color] Then he realized why he recognized her. [color=00F8FE]“Oh fuck.”[/color] He mumbled once he recognized the face of the high-ranking knight.[/color]