A night in Vallaki
8-10-2022
Contains graphic violence and body issues
It is their last night in Vallaki. The four of them are getting ready to sleep in comfortable silence. There is a sort of resignation in all of them, Julius thinks. The tragedies of yesterday have been accepted and anticipated on today, and despite the fear of knowing what Strahd is capable of, and the uncertainty of what will happen now, they are all still alive with a new goal on the horizon.
Tomorrow, they will leave Vallaki behind to sort out her own affairs. But just for tonight, they are still part of it.
Ireena and Valmine are exhausted and crawl into bed first. Dred gives Julius a knowing look when the two girls find solace in each other’s arms.
It would be nice, Julius thinks, to trust so warmly and freely, to find comfort in each other. He only has his rituals to soothe him.
As always, he puts his gloves away to wash his face and hands, and prays. He hangs up his coat, kicks off his boots, folds his waistcoat, unties his scarf. He’s still covered from wrist to ankle, but he feels naked.
Dred is resting against the wall with her hat over her eyes, and Julius lies down beside her at a respectable distance, pulling the blanket over himself to feel less vulnerable.
And then he waits.
Dred and Ireena fall asleep quite fast, but it takes longer before he hears Valmines breath even out too. For good measure he waits a few moments longer, but then he gets up and heads to the washbasin again. It is around a corner in the room, partially obscured from the rest of it but still very open. Julius hides all the way against the back wall before he unbuttons his shirt.
Even with is companions asleep and out of sight, he feels deeply uncomfortable when he bares his upper body to wash his scars. They are fully healed by now, and infection is no longer a risk. But it is not for medical reasons that he does this.
It is just the feeling of being unclean that creeps up on him whenever his mind is under strain. It is as if the sin represented by these scars seeps out every once in a while, staining him and demanding to be washed away.
So here he is, in the middle of the night, looking away from the mirror as he drags a wet cloth over the ridges on his back. The structure of his skin nauseates him, yet he cannot stop running his fingers over it.
Cold water droplets run down his spine as he scrubs himself. It makes him shiver, but it has to be done.
When he decides he’s finished and finally puts on his shirt again, he feels peace return to his body. He is clean. He is covered. He is safe.
When he curls up under his blanket he drifts away within seconds.
Sleep comes over him heavily and immediately, like he drops down into a deep trench. And then he dreams.
It’s the same dream he’s had before, the one where he is in a stone hall, hearing Strahds footsteps approach from behind as he tilts his head to allow him to feed on him. It’s a frightening, shameful dream, but somehow also a very cathartic one.
But today, it is different.
As always, he hears the footsteps approach, and he feels the strong desire to bare his neck.
He doesn’t know if it is because he has performed his cleaning ritual before going to sleep, or because he watched Strahd kill a man before his eyes just yesterday. But unlike usual, he fights the urge and turns around.
Strahd towers over him, his strong features framed with a waterfall of black hair. He looks beautiful in a startling way, as if one could go blind from looking at him too long.
‘’Stay back, fiend’’, Julius hisses.
Strahd seems unfazed by his sudden rebellion, and his facial expression is blank when he takes the last step closer.
‘’You dare disobey me, priest?’’, he asks, and Julius answers by spitting him in the face.
He doesn’t get any time to think before Strahd backhands him across the cheek. It sends him crashing to the floor with a force that seems impossible for the simple gesture. Julius manages to get up on his knees and sees the serene smile on Strahds face before he kicks him in the stomach and sends him down to the floor again.
And it doesn’t stop there.
Again and again Strahd kicks him, looking completely unfazed as he caves in his ribs, kicks his stomach until he’s coughing blood.
There is something horrifying in knowing all the ways in which Strahd could hurt him or make him do what he wants, and yet he chooses a method so simple and so barbaric.
No weapon or trick or spell is needed to break him.
It keeps going, and Julius knows this is a dream, but he also knows that he has broken every bone in his body and that he is in agonizing pain, and by Moradin, he swears he could actually die here. Right now he is not even human anymore, but instead feels more like a small animal of some sort, scared and whimpering, unable of comprehending what is happening to him.
All he understands is pain.
A sort of pain so all-encompassing, so blinding and stupefying, that despite all the injuries he’s suffered in his life he has felt a pain like this only once before.
And like that he is back on his knees in the Kirchhall church.
Strahds face melts into the face of his Father, his boot braids together with the whip, his own whimpering becomes the prayers of the priests. The pain and fear simply flow together, and he is in two places at once, past and present unified.
Just like before he prays for death, just like before his prayer is not answered.
And just like before, there is an end to the suffering anyway.
The barrage of kicks stills, and although Julius is sure his body is no longer a coherent unit after the excessive violence it just endured, all his limbs still follow him when Strahd lifts him up by the hair.
‘’Do you have any more objections?’’, Strahd asks, his voice sweet like honey.
Julius can barely see him through his swollen eyelids.
With the smallest possible movement he shakes his head.
‘’That’s what I thought.’’, Strahd says, and pulls him close. Julius feels like a ragdoll in his arms, completely limp as Strahd sinks his teeth in his neck. There is no resistance left in him.
This is the final marking, the one sin he can never recover from. To allow a fiend to feed on him is the lowest deed he could possibly do.
But he simply cannot fight anymore.
When the warmth of Strahds bite spreads through him, he lets his mind drift far away, surrendering completely.
It feels like an embrace.
He startles awake in a cold sweat, tangled in his blankets as the warm fuzzy feeling of the dream slips away and is replaced by disgust.
His clothes are sticking uncomfortably to his skin, and he is, not for the first time, reminded of how much he hates sleeping in jeans.
The faintest hint of daylight filters through the curtains, and his companions are still asleep. It must be early morning.
He feels filthy after the dream, and the strong urge to go wash himself again bubbles to the surface. He considers it, but the idea of even getting out from under the blanket, let alone undressing, makes him feel unwell. He cannot bear to see his body right now.
He finds his waistcoat in the dark and starts getting dressed for the day, collecting all his layers in a desperate attempt to feel secure again.
Even for the short walk to the washbasin he pulls his gloves over his trembling hands.
It feels strange to be able to stand up after the ruin his body was in during the dream. It was, after all, just a dream, but one that was so disturbingly realistic that he half expected to wake up with broken bones.
There are no broken bones, thankfully, but the filthy feeling does not go away.
He pulls off his gloves to wash his hands, and then rubs the water over his face and neck vigorously. It stings a little, and he wonders if he might have scratched himself in his sleep.
Gloves on again, the endless pattern of his days. He takes a moment to stare at himself in the mirror.
His eyes lie sunken in his head, the frown lines on his forehead deeper by the day. Although he is not even forty yet, he feels incredibly old.
He feels his thoughts drift away into negativity and despair, but he forces himself to think about the light through the window.
The sun will come up, for as far as it’s possible to speak of the sun in this place. But it will be day. He will have breakfast with his companions. They will be on their way again and leave the aching wound of Vallaki behind.
He cannot embrace any of them in the way he wants to, but at least he is not alone.
If he had walked away from the washbasin at that moment he could have lied down again, he could have had a few more moments of slumber before having to drag himself through the day. But something inexplicable draws his eye back to the mirror.
The frail surface layer of resolve he has built falls apart at what he sees there. His body wants to turn itself inside out in horror, and he knows no amount of prayer, nor any piece of clothing, nothing short of skinning himself and being reborn a new man could save him now.
Because on his neck, just below his jaw, he sees two needle-prick tiny wounds, neatly spaced an inch apart.
And unlike the broken bones in his dream, these are real.
Teeth gritted, Julius sinks down against the wall in the corner of the room. He folds his hands over his face and prays every prayer he knows.
But he knows it is not Moradin who hears him here.