#ismark is a golden retriever boyfriend

[ashslayswrites]

Into Unmapped Darkness

A Curse of Strahd Fic Doru x Ismark x OC / grump x sunshine x gremlin Prologue excerpt Progress: 20k/ 50k

The undercroft has rough-hewn dirt walls and a mushy clay floor. Ismark moves cautiously, giving his eyes time to adjust and preparing for attack. He’s terrified of what he’ll find. When he reaches the bottom stair, he ducks quickly behind one of the rotting wood pillars that strains under the weight of the chapel floor. He clutches his stake in two shaking hands, breathes in deeply, and tries to don courage as if it were a cloak.

Chains rattle in the damp dark.

Then, he hears, “Quit your simpering, Ismark. I know it’s you. I can smell you.”

Ismark swallows and emerges from behind the pillar.

Light slicing between the floorboards cuts the darkness into ribbons. Against it, Ismark can just make out a gaunt shape slumped against the church’s back wall with nearly skeletal arms bound in silver chains. An arc of dry flaking blood is smeared across the clay floor, indicating just how far those chains extend. Thin white bones are littered through the miasma. None of them appear human—rats, just as Father Donavich said.

Ismark draws up to the apex of the arc, and the figure lifts a heavy head. A half smile draws back to reveal a mouthful of fangs straining against greying gums.

“Come to gloat?” Doru Lukavich says.

Ismark nearly chokes. It’s easy at first to see all the ways the curse has warped his friend. Doru’s wide, deep-set eyes—normally as gray as the Barovian mists—are red and radiating a hunger Ismark can tell he’s struggling to maintain. His ears have been fashioned to points, hands and feet are bent and twisted into beast-like claws, and his skin is so devoid of color it appears almost blue. But more disturbing are the ways he hasn’t changed. There’s still that mop of black hair Doru would purposefully mess up as if defying order were a style, and those dark brows that were always slightly raised into a look of perpetual wonder.

“D–Doru? Is that really you?”

He laughs darkly. “It’s that bad, huh?”

“I… no— it’s just that—” Ismark truly has no idea what to say.

“Well, what was it you called me before I left—a mist-addled pox?”

“I’m sorry.” Ismark winces.

Suddenly all the accusations he hurled back then seem too cruel. Where Ismark has hidden his dreams behind stone walls, Doru wore his openly on his sleeve. It was no wonder that when the black-robed wizard came into town—displaying magic the likes of which no Barovian had ever seen—Doru took up a pitchfork, while Ismark cowered behind his father, who cursed adventurers for fools.

“I really did want you to be right,” Ismark says. “I really hoped that wizard would be the one to save us.”

“Yeah?” Doru drops his head against the wall. “Well, be careful with that. I have it on good authority the devil doesn’t like it when his playthings hope.”

That cuts Ismark deeper than anything else Doru could’ve said. All he can manage through his tear-strained throat is, “I miss you, Doru. Every damn day. The world is so dull without you.”

“It’s Barovia,” he snorts. “It's dull with me, too.”

“Not like this.” Ismark shakes his head. At least then, it wasn’t so lonely.

(just posting little excerpts for dopamine hits until the story is done, then will post on AO3)