Bound

Expectations

It's cold. Understatement of the year, you think to yourself as you shuffle through the tall grass towards Luiza's house. The crunch of the snow under your boots echoes in your ears, eerily similar to a heartbeat. You pull your corduroy coat tighter around you, pressing your face into your plaid scarf and momentarily rejoicing in the hot breath warming your cheeks.

You'd been in the village for months doing research; cataloguing all of the lore embedded in it and the surrounding area. At first you were enamored, fascinated by every chipped artifact and ivy-hidden engraving. You had spent a great many days scouring the local collection of tomes, matching bits and pieces here and there to form your narrative. However, it hadn't taken long for you to start to dread the routine. You felt as if there was no mystery left for you to discover, only a patchwork of the past in need of reconstructing; a tattered tapestry desperate for a weaver. And as noble a calling as that was, preserving an ancient history, you were growing bored. You were no seamstress. Not with this. Restless energy had always followed you like a familiar. It kept you up at night counting the wooden beams in the roof above you, as if the number might change, and it spurned you on the morning despite the sleep deprivation. 

37...or is it 38?

You trip over an exposed root whilst wandering in your head and you're quickly brought back to reality, cursing under your breath. What you wouldn't give for a good spiced rum.

It's getting late in the evening and the sun pours molten gold over the horizon, bathing everything in an orange haze. You silently wish it was as warm as it looked. The wind snaps your scarf over your shoulder and chaps your nose, sourly reminding you it's anything but warm. You sigh, standing on the small hill and watching the village shadows grow taller. Suddenly a flash of light catches your eye, a red glint rounding a dark corner of a shanty shack. You squint, wishing your eyesight was somehow impossibly better than the 20/20 you were gifted with.

Were those....eyes? They were glowing...

You scoff at yourself. How ridiculous. But as you turn to enter the gate, you hear a rustling in the cottage to your right. Rustling and...growling. You pull a revolver from a holster on your thigh and cock it. The silver snub-nose was one of your first purchases after arriving in the village and you hadn't parted with it since then. You liked being prepared for any situation.

"Who's there?" You call out, your frosty breath clouding in the air as you take a step back.

Suddenly the door slams open and a man lunges out like some horrid cryptid, gnashing his teeth and snarling. Saliva drips from his gnarled fangs and he sinks what look like claws into the earth. He's more beast than man, but the tattered clothes falling off of him in shreds allude he was once the latter. Clearly that had been long ago.

"What the fuck??" You exclaim and aim the pistol at him...it.

It only slinks toward you, rabid as it shakes its head and gurgles incoherently. Your trigger finger doesn't hesitate and you fire four rounds into its chest, resolute in your mission not to become some monster's dinner. To your dismay the damn thing doesn't die, and seemingly unfazed, squares you with a hungry look.

You take off running through the village and cut through the churchyard, not sticking around to find out if that last round will do the trick. You sprint through the church gate, your quick steps faltering as you slide around the corner only to gain your footing again. You can hear it behind you, hot on your heels. A stone door you've somehow missed is open to your left and you race through it, well past caring where it leads. Your muscles burn and your throat hurts from sucking in air. You're in fairly good shape but you're no athlete, and this little chase is testing your endurance. You're 98% positive the only thing keeping you upright it the adrenaline pumping through your veins. Blindly, you run up the winding path before you, through an old stone rampart and past a dwindling vineyard, deeper into the wood. It's only when its great shadow looms over you, dread filling the pit of your stomach, that you realize where you've ended up; Castle Dimitrescu.