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Prompt 3: In the dark of the night, evil will find you--and this is the worst kind. This is the kind you did to yourself. Before bed, between one tired, fluttering blink and the next, you see a figure in the darkest corner of your room--a ghastly silhouette hovering. You lock eyes with it--and then it hits you. A wave of regret, pulsing and unyielding. The combination of something embarrassing or horrible, or a regret nagging at you for an unfinished deed, or remembering a failure of yours--you are consumed with the thoughts of something you regret. It feels like an eternity passes as you're wracked with guilt and grief and regret; you don't remember falling asleep, but when you wake, the figure is gone. If you're lucky, the regret is too.
It was safe to say that Regula's sleep schedule was not the best in the world anymore. Between what he had experienced at Halloween and its residual effects, the constant patrolling and the need to balance his own work and other hobbies to avoid suspicion, there was very little time too sleep. Yet this evening he had managed to finally lie down, granted he was still fully closed but given his current state it was a wonder he'd managed to get his shoes off to begin with - tired didn't quite cover how he felt and the condition he was in.
Perhaps it was simply good fortune on his part that on this occasion, as the magic swept into his home and sought him out, that he had mistaken it for the usual signs of exhaustion. That didn't mean the officer was immune to its effects, only that the overwhelming fear that might result from some of it simply wasn't there. You see, when one was sufficiently tired they tended to hallucinate and this included both vision and auditory; and when that eerie silhouette crept into the room, a shadow rising monstrously from the floor to loom over him, a small part of him opted to remember that this might very well be normal.
He even knew what it was and felt the familiar dread that came with it.
That beast from the village, that which had kept them imprisoned for weeks (and yet not) and the one that had brought him to his knees and revealed he wasn't quite as resilient as he'd once thought. He'd been captured, beaten and finally broken. In the grand scheme of things it had been humiliating and he was now in the position to acknowledge that this humiliation had paved the way for much of the beast's success in breaking him to begin with. What he hadn't been able to acknowledge was that he had been entirely unable to find strength in his friends or the will to protect them.
He'd abandoned them.
In their time of need he had simply surrendered and fallen to his knees again. It had only been when another magic had taken hold, a lighter one, that he had come to his senses and found some semblance of courage again. Suffice to say that he had not been impressed with himself since then and in the end he hadn't been able to forgive himself for his considerable reliance on that magic to drive him on. He had thought himself better and yet he wasn't. Instead he was nothing more than the simpering men and women that he judged rather harshly for their inability to do anything.
The looming presence was a reminder of this, an obvious attempt by his psyche to press the issue further. After all, one couldn't hide from their demons for long and given his were particularly insistant it was only a matter of time before they managed to catch up to him. He couldn't really be surprised that they had picked this time, it certainly made sense...and yet even though the emotions flowed through him freely and the images coursed through his head, it seemed that on this occasion he didn't feel the need to run.
He wouldn't remember the moment that he finally drifted off to sleep, but when he eventually woke up, he was likely to remember at least a small portion of what had happened that evening. How he would process that in the morning though? Well, only time would tell...
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