While memories of his childhood were blurry, Lucius was rather certain he had not decapitated his parents.
"It was just a cut, right?" He looked over his shoulder to address the head of his mother as he dragged it over dusty cobblestones. "Just so your throat stopped working."
"And bled out," his father filled in, and Lucius looked back at his other hand where he was carrying said person's head like a bag.
"Feels like your head used to be bigger than this," he mumbled as he raised his hand to look his father in the eyes. Then he looked back at his mother's head again, and noticed how much his arm ached from having pulled such a massive boulder-like creation so far.
How far?
"And you used to be smaller," he commented before shifting his stare forward. "... Where was I taking you now again?"
To bury us, of course," his mother said, now having turned into an actual boulder. "If you can."
"I think you'll find I'm quite proficient in burying." Lucius' voice was dry. "Should be fine."
"Oh so you are capable of using your talents." The boulder shrugged somehow. "Took you long enough."
Lucius gritted his teeth.
"At least I bury people voluntarily. I did not volunteer to have parts cut off just to sing."
"Perhaps we cut the wrong part then," his bag-shaped father suggested. "Should have taken your tongue and had you shut up, if there's no other use for it anyway."
Lucius opened his mouth to reply, but quickly realised no words came out and that there was nothing to use for words left in there.
"Oh, very nice," the Blight cat said with Lucius' voice as it suddenly appeared on top of his shoulder. "Just cut out inconveniences until you have your perfect life."
"Seems like it's a family trait," Lucius' mother said with the same harsh voice as her son, though as Lucius looked back it turned out she had disappeared, and instead he was dragging the old cart from when he'd buried Claudia and Mabel.
"Oh so that's where we're going," the Blight muttered, and Lucius faced forward again just to stumble over a rock much smaller than his boulder-mother. It seemed the path leading to the small lake remained as uneven as ever.
"Sure is a nicer place than the hole you stuck me in," a new voice said, and Lucius looked back again to notice Phil's blood-dyed corpse on the cart. "What the Waste was up with that dull chunk of rock you decided was an appropriate tombstone?"
"So many stones," the Blight whispered in Lucius' place, and its host wrinkled his nose. "And you should be grateful we even bothered with a tombstone. You even got a grim to watch over you."
"What an honour." Phil's corpse rolled its eyes until they fell out. "Not like anyone buried in a cemetery gets that treatment."
"At least you got a cemetery," another voice said, and Lucius blinked as Claudia's corpse had joined the cart. "I got a Wexian funeral."
"Better than the Siren's maw," the Blight protested, and Lucius nodded in agreement with his voice. "This is a gorgeous place, and meant a lot to us."
He gestured to the forest where several Blight cats had appeared to jump among the trees in a long line.
"They didn't even bother with a funeral for me."
The Blight cat uttered an 'ugh' and Lucius emphasised the reaction with a disgusted wrinkling of his nose as they both acknowledged Ravi's mauled body on the now small pile of corpses.
"Why are your Scourgefucking carcass here?" Lucius grimaced as the wheels got increasingly stuck in the mud. "Who's next? Poca?"
"I wish," Ravi growled. "Then I can strangle that fucking dog for doing this to me."
Lucius turned his head to spot two additional bodies on the heavy, now barely movable cart, and he frowned.
"... I don't even know who you are," the Blight admitted, to the new corpses' offence.
"I'm the man you threw off crates, just to steal a crowbar," one man said.
"I'm the executioner you threw into the Siren's maw," the other said.
"Oh." The Blight had the same tired look on its face as Lucius, face having shifted to slightly human. "Well I didn't even have names to attach to your faces, so it's not my fault."
"Well, nothing is your fault, is it?" Adrian whispered into Lucius' ear, and the latter froze. "It's always others that are asking too much."
For the first time in such a disturbing situation, Lucius began feeling nauseous. He tried to speak again to no avail, and it seemed like the Blight couldn't utter words either. Instead it had scrunched up its nose and was breathing heavily.
"He's always been like that," Seth said as he leaned his arm against Lucius' shoulder where the Blight had suddenly disappeared. "A selfish, spoiled brat."
Lucius shook his head rapidly, trying to let go of the cart and run, but his grip on the handle wouldn't budge, and his heavy feet refused to move.
"Of course he's trying to run away," the head of Lucius' mother, who'd reappeared on the cart, said. "It's all he knows how to do."
"What possessed him to believe that he could handle such an important job?" Lucius' father's head, balancing on top of his wife, asked with a scornful stare. "All the whining about the world being unfair but he can't care enough to do the proper work. It was always about the power that came with the position, wasn't it?"
Lucius' heart hurt. It was racing, seemingly squeezing his entire chest as anxiety took a chokehold on him, but it wasn't the only thing tormenting his body.
The veins.
He raised his hands to feel his throat. The veins hadn't stretched that far before, and as they continued to slither further up his neck and down his stomach, it seemed as though his heart gave out.
"So pathetic," Seth's disdainful, yet humoured voice said as Lucius' knees buckled and he fell to the ground. "I'm almost ashamed to have bothered with you."
"So much time spent on our relationship," Adrian continued, seemingly having merged with the image of Seth, and he grabbed Lucius' arm to pull him upwards, but his legs still wouldn't work. "But nothing. You gave me nothing."
Lucius' body trembled, and his lungs still refused to fill with air. A wet, trickling sensation found its way along his arm, and he winced as blood coloured his shirt red..
The veins hurt. As soon as the blood had run down over Lucius' hand they crawled throughout his skin, and the pain was like nothing they'd put him through before.
His blurry gaze was drawn to the forest again, but the Blight cats were gone. Instead, a hundred pairs of eyes belonging to huge, whispering creatures stared back at him.
"Aren't you going to do anything for us?" Claudia appeared on the ground next to him, throat swollen and both hands gripping his ankle hard. "You said you wanted to make things better, but you haven't yet."
"Because he can't." Seth crouched down and used the tip of a crowbar to lift Lucius' chin, voice suddenly taking a turn towards something else. Another voice Lucius recognized, that did not belong to anything human. "Because he's not good enough. Not alone."
Lucius spotted the Blight cat again, sitting down where the blood from his hand had dripped.
Then it opened its mouth to let out a scream. Lucius' scream, and its paws grabbed a hold of its own jaws to begin tearing them apart.
Something crawled out of it. A slimy mass covered in veins similar to the ones on Lucius' chest, and as it writhed on the ground more parts grew out of it, eventually forming the shape of someone Lucius hadn't heard from in a while.
Instead of addressing him however, the Scourge of Corruption's few facial features shifted and twisted around as it continued growing, finally being large enough to grab Lucius' torso with one lumpy, cold hand.
So it's a good thing he'll never be alone again.
Then it crushed Lucius' chest with its grip, and the latter woke up with a panicked gasp.
His breathing would not calm down. He sat up in the bed and tried to banish the nightmare from his memory, to little avail.
Despite the terror fully engulfing his body, he had to grimace at the sweat covering him. The sheets were nearly soaked, with the damp blanket clinging to his skin and having twisted around his lower body.
To his astonishment, Anthony still slept next to him with perhaps the most relaxed expression Lucius had ever seen on him. It was remarkable how he could sleep through what Lucius guessed had been an exceptionally restless bedfellow.
He let a moment pass to take deep breaths, shaking the awful images somewhat and looked at the window instead. It was definitely morning, but not so he was late for work. The pale blue and orange sky suggested the sun had barely risen.
So he dared to lean back, carefully trying to untangle himself from the blanket without using his numb, still hurting fingers. It required some kicking and rolling around, with Lucius becoming increasingly impressed with how Anthony could stay asleep.
Thinking about it, Anthony had been reluctant to wake up that time when Lucius came to get him. He obviously wasn't a morning person. In fact, hadn't he asked for that strange drink just to get out of bed?
Lucius leaned over the sleeping man to look at his nightstand, but aside from several empty glasses he couldn't find anything. While Lucius didn't consider himself a snoop, his actions certainly suggested otherwise as he leaned further to open one of the table drawers.
There it was. The small, sticky glass of transparent liquid, and Lucius knitted his eyebrows as he picked it up and brought it closer to his face. It had no scent, and despite the suggested stickiness, it hardly seemed thicker than water. He found it hard to believe Anthony's much needed remedy for mornings was something like water though, no matter how refreshing.
Alcohol would at least have some kind of scent, so what was it? The only conclusion he could reach with the slightest confidence was an opiate of some kind.
Then the glass was slapped out of his hand.
"What—" Lucius managed to utter before Anthony grabbed his head to stare at him, terror plaguing his face.
"Did you taste it?"
"... No."
"Not even a little?"
"N— No, not even close. I just smelled it."
Anthony still took the liberty of pinching Lucius' lip and taking a good look at his mouth.
"It hurts," Lucius objected, and Anthony let go of his lip with a blend of panic and relief in his eyes.
"So..." Lucius looked sheepish as he glanced at the spilled liquid on the floor. "... That's a shame."
Anthony threw a pillow on the gooey mess before leaning back to lie down again, placing a pillow over his face.
"Don't touch it."
"The pillow?"
"Yeah."
"The one on the floor or the one on your face?"
"The floor pillow."
Lucius pursed his lips.
"... But why?"
Pillow face-Anthony didn't respond at first, letting an awkward silence ensue before his bare chest heaved up and down in a sigh.
"It's poison."
Lucius blinked
"... Beg your pardon?"
"It's poison." Anthony removed the pillow from his face. "I know it sounds wrong but it helps my... Well, my will to get up in the morning. Or, do things at all, really."
Lucius stared down at the empty glass.
"... Poison?"
"It would have killed you." Anthony shook his head without looking at Lucius. "Not immediately. It works over time. It lingers in my body longer than most things. It sort of... Sticks to one's brain? And won't disappear so quickly. Rather, it expands, so it takes a longer time to heal. Thing is, while it clogs up the head, it also affects something in there that makes things... Easier to deal with."
"So... Kind of opium?" Lucius suggested, hoping to have been at least a little right.
"You can't compare opium to this." Anthony had the nerve to look amused. "Opium can be dangerous, but one sip doesn't kill you."
Lucius made a face, considering how close he'd been to try it.
"I've never even heard of such a thing. Where did you—" He paused as soon as he'd said it. "Wait, is that the poison Catherine handed you that first time I met her?"
Anthony nodded.
"What a resourceful lady," Lucius commented, trying to put the woman's uncanny existence nicely.
"She's surprisingly doting, even though I'm older than her."
"Oh, I didn't know that." Lucius raised his eyebrows. "How mu—"
Anthony had begun turning away, wrapping his quilt closer to his body and adjusting the not-poisoned pillow under his head.
Lucius' mouth fell open at the rudeness, but in the end he had to pity the man instead.
"You, uh... Want to sleep a bit longer."
"If you don't mind. Preferably even if you do."
"... Right." Lucius' gaze fell, but found it too selfish to force someone awake. "I— I need to get ready anyway."
It took an embarrassing amount of effort just to crawl into the shirt Anthony had loaned him, and he still groaned as his sore fingertips refused to button it properly. How was he supposed to get dressed like that?
He paled. How was he supposed to get dressed like Lucia? How would he handle cosmetics? Wig? The numerous layers of dress?
Glancing back at Anthony's sleeping frame, he couldn't quite bring himself to wake him just for that, but what were his options?
Then his shoulders slouched, and he released a dismayed sigh.
"... Fucking fiddlesticks."
"Oh, you're awake this early?" Tom asked as Lucius walked into the drawing room, having just put an empty teacup and plate on a tray. "Richard's just about to go to bed, and I'm... Well, I've already had tea, so I'm gonna leave, but... There's probably hot water left. Maybe lukewarm."
Lucius stared him up and down, turning his head to do the same with Richard who was half asleep on the couch, and he wanted to cry a little.
Tom, who'd lost his socialising support with said werewolf's tiredness, looked miserably uncomfortable as he noticed Lucius' downcast expression, and he grimaced.
"Is... Something wrong?"
Lucius remorsefully squeezed his eyes together, drawing another deep breath to keep from screaming and running off.
"... I need you two to help me get ready."