A True Nightmare (RWBY X CRAWL!READER)

03- The Story of a Long Wait

He awoke. Alive, to his surprise.

He blinked sleepily and examined his surroundings as a throbbing pain in his head gradually made itself known.

He was secured to some sort of metal throne, with thick metal cuffs securing his hands and feet. A metal face guard clamped his mouth shut. He could see an empty room in front of him with little in it except for a smooth door without a handle, and a small box with a black hole suspended from the ceiling pointing at him.

A ghost of a sensation, much like when one becomes used to wearing a charm, only to lose it, hovered about his right temple.

He looked down at himself, finding that he wore simple white clothes and that the bandages covering his arms had been changed. He did not remember changing.

Actually, what did he remember? He could feel a stirring in his mind...

Something just beneath the surface, something dark, and endless...

Ah...

There it is...

Blue flames erupted from his hands, and his festering, stolen life surged with power. His eyes glittered with understanding, and he ran his tongue over his sharp teeth, a smile slowly growing behind the mask.

The horrors of the deep nightmare and endless halls came flowing back to him, and images of bloodshed and eldritch horrors flashed behind his eyes by the thousand. So many he had killed, only to be stuck for eternity.

But then...

As memories of that long silence washed over him, he became comatose, the magic in his hands all but vanishing, and he slumped over, dead to the world.

...

A while later, he stirred once more, as memories of daylight flickered in his mind.

He recalled his burning desire and his promise to never be slain again. He remembered clawing his way to the sunlit world above. He knew of the great land-fish that had followed him, and of its inevitable death.

And finally, those four girls he did not recognize, but held their ground against his suicidal charge against them. He hated them. He hated them for taking his freedom again.

He took another moment to look around his cell, for what else could it be?

He blinked as another thought came to him.

My cell... but who am I?

He thought to the earliest reaches of his memory, but that still only placed him in that great tomb. He thought about his motivations, his desire, his passion. He knew no name to call his own, but he knew what he wanted.

A passion for power, for that familiar hiss of steel through the air and tear through flesh, for blood upon the floor, for his treasures claimed from the deep as proof of his conquest, and for survival.

And to survive, and slate his bloodlust, he must escape. He must escape from this place reeking of unnatural cleanliness.

The restraints were in the way.

With a low growl and practiced ease, the acid burning inside him welled up his throat and pushed against the mask.

It squeezed around the edges of the mask, but it could not burn through it. The steel was enchanted or far too strong to be destroyed. Instead, it dripped down and burned a few holes into the shirt he wore.