The Moon Always Follows
October 23rd 2025
Speech: Bold #257379
Thoughts: Bold Italics
He couldn't move. That was the first thing he registered as he stood on the slope of the grassy lands. He couldn't move. Never mind how he got there or what he was supposed to do up there. He couldn't move, and that was that.
The fallen leaves felt like sludge at his feet, gluing his soles to the ground that already felt like it was ready to swallow him whole, cracks in the dirt, pitfalls in the mud and hollows in the undergrowth banding together to trap the boy in its bowels. One collective pull and he could fall to the centre of the earth, assuming they don't bury him under the surface before that happens first.
The whole earth held precariously still just for him to get a good long look at the man that stared wormholes down back at him from the top of the hill. He saw his eyes lifeless and missing any hint of sparkle. His broad shoulders were slouched forward like he had given up, or surrendered to something hidden beneath him. The elongated shadows that were twisted under his feet certainly seemed to support the latter, and only went on to prove it when they came alive. They bubbled around his ankles before snaking up his legs, until finally seizing his limbs in a web of tendrils. Once the man was ensnared, a much larger shadow devoured him whole, twitching and stretching until it settled into the man's shape.
He still couldn't move but it was at this moment that he desperately wished he could move now.
The shadow-engulfed man took a staggering step forward. Then another. Then another...
Until he came pounding down the side of the hill, hands morphing into claws, limbs bulging into fierce muscle, mouth overtaken with fangs and suddenly overcome with an intense desire to hunt.
He felt his heart pump faster than he could keep up with. He willed his body to move, yet he remained rooted to the earth. It wanted him to face what he was now contending with. He tried to scream, but something had robbed him of his voice. Was it the shadows, or his fear? He didn't know. That didn't matter now, so long as he was forced into place by the force that had him in this new creature's line of sight.
The creature barrelled towards him on all fours until right at the last second, it raised an oversized hand and swiped it across his vision. Everything turned to black.
*****
Casey awoke in a rage as he screamed his brother's name, sweat lashing off him like a fountain. He rasped while he chased his heartbeat down to a steadier rhythm. When he finally came down to the familiar surroundings of his dorm, his luggage laid strewn on the floor and thrown over the back of a desk chair, he fell back into the bed. The back of his head thumped hard against the pillow, his arms and legs shaking before settling down in weighted fatigue. The rage left his eyes and he was left staring blankly at the ceiling. Not long after, his eyes welled with unshed tears, tainted with the faintest trace of frustration as he flopped over to one side and buried himself into the blankets and pillow. His arm eventually found strength to reach over to his bedside table, patting the surface until his fingers found and curled themselves around a clear vial that had been placed there. Casey shifted when he uncorked it, throwing back a few sips before closing the vial over and putting it back on the table.
That was probably the worst version of the nightmare so far. At the beginning they were no more than his brother crying for help from some unnameable pit of darkness. They gradually got worse, more painful. Visceral. Flashes of some poor flesh torn open accompanied by vivid screams until nowadays it felt like being attacked by a malevolent spirit that was trying to destroy him from the inside out. Only the malevolent spirit was someone he recognised. Nick. And that was the part that Casey hated the most. It didn't go unnoticed by him that it meant something. Something that he knew was only one side of him and knew better than to buy into it. At the same time, no matter how big it was, the anxiety of it all was intoxicatingly powerful.
He was terrified of him. His own brother. And he despised himself for it. Casey raked a hand over his hair when he felt the familiar pang of a tension headache coming along. He didn't expect things to turn out the way they did in the aftermath of finding his brother. He should've known it wouldn't be so simple. His parents certainly weren't adjusting to it, now living with the fact that they have two sons again after believing one of them was dead the whole time. The only thing that was universally challenging for the whole family was that the newfound brother was now afflicted with one of Wizarding society's most polarising affliction.
The full moon was only a little over a week ago and Casey's stomach still curdled at the thought of what Nick would have just gone through. It didn't help that Nick had been contending with werewolfery for so long on his own.
And Casey had the nerve to be scared of what he would turn into on that one night of the month, no matter how much people tried to reassure him his feelings were valid and sensical. Casey groaned thinking about that too. He was locked in a cycle of pity before he found Nick. Now he was back again in another cycle because Nick came back different.
He cursed God Himself as his mind finally began to quieten and his body roused exhaustion. He slunk back down until he was flat on the bed, staring into nothing before eventually falling back into a slightly more comfortable and sound sleep.
Word Count: 1005
Stats: Stamina: 9 | Strength: 8 | Evasion: 7 | Wisdom: 7 | Arc Power: 7 | Accuracy: 8
Abilities: Fearless |Poison Resistance |Obnoxiously Strong
The Moon Always Follows
October 23rd 2025
Speech: Bold #257379
Thoughts: Bold Italics
Casey awoke in a much softer state when dawn finally broke over the mountain. He leaned over in his bed like a vulture, not quite believing he had slept a good few hours after his initial meltdown through the night. To him, it only felt like minutes. While the day was ready, he certainly wasn't. He dragged a hand over his tired face, a silent yawn robbed from his lips before he mustered whatever energy he could find to throw himself out of bed.
He looked back over to the bedside cabinet. The vial remained where he last left it, with the contents half empty after his last dose. With a resigned sigh, he uncapped the vial and took another few sips, reducing what was left to one last dose. A slow soothing wave travelled down his body when he went to put the vial back on the table. His body felt light, like a biscuit wafer, as he went to pick up his uniform off the floor where he chucked it yesterday, aside from a fresh shirt he fetched from his wardrobe. He lazily pulled everything on and grabbed his books.
The day had only started and he already wasn't looking forward to it. Then again, what was there to look forward to when everything felt so wrong?
*****
On his way down for breakfast, Casey kept his head down so long he was mere feet away from kissing the floor. Much like the last week or so, he wanted to get away with zero interaction if he could help it. Including any talk with Cursa. For all the love he had for him, he just wasn't in the mood. At this point, Casey wouldn't be surprised if Cursa had clocked onto his behaviour. Made it all the more reason to shy away from him and any interrogation over his feelings this past while.
And speaking of feelings, Casey was ready to toss his morning letters from his parents out the window when the family owl came round for its routine deliveries.
Dropped in front of him was a carefully wrapped parcel and a large envelope. Opening the envelope first, Casey found inside pages of one long letter. Another one. Casey made it to the second page before he gave up.
"Worrying about you." As always. It wasn't even worth finishing the rest. Other than the nightmares, his parents' unrelenting fussing and worrying over him also contributed to his waning patience.
Inside the parcel were two vials, each identical to the one Casey had back upstairs in his room. Casey put one in his bag while the other was placed in his cloak pocket. Hopefully he could make them last for longer than two weeks, he thought. His father couldn't spend forever making him draughts to help him calm down when he had a business to run.
As much as he wanted to hurl the letter into the nearest fire, he shoved the lot into his bag and made his way to his first class. Potions. He liked that class. He was good at that. Shouldn't be too bad to start the morning off.
*****
Casey was painfully wrong about that.
The whole time Casey sat perched on his wooden stool at the table while the teacher continued prattling on about some draught or another, the boy felt disengaged and empty. When it came to practical work, Casey picked at the ingredients on the table like food he was trying to avoid eating. For a split moment, he very nearly thought he had to eat them before remembering he was in a Potions lab.
His eyes lingered on the Murtlap Tentacles and Flobberworm Mucus that were housed on shelves near his table. They weren't exactly pleasant to look at any other day, but they looked even more horrid than usual during this class. The colours made him feel flustered and uneasy. The sound of grinding pestles and mortars cracked through his ears as if someone was deliberately popping a balloon right beside him. His throat felt dry. He swallowed. Still dry. His heartbeat was so fast he thought it would dent his chest.
When class finally ended, he practically ran out of the room with all his things gathered up in his arms. He dodged his way through the crowd of students, avoiding them like the plague, afraid that he'd collapse instantly if he brushed so much as a hair against someone's shoulder.
He escaped back to his room, his school supplies dumped onto the desk before he keeled over where his bed caught him. He buried his face into the pillow. Slowly but surely, the profuse sweating and rapid beating of his heart began to slow. The uneasiness that shook through his system dwindled and soon he was a dead weight on top of his bed. He didn't want to move, basking in how floppy and relaxed he felt.
A lazy eye found the vial on the desk. Another dose would probably help. Then Casey groaned. It was too far away.
He curled into a ball on the bed, one pillow still flattened under his cheek while another supported his stomach underneath him. A soft breeze played with the wisps of his hair as he lied still. With the wave of stress and nausea lifting, he was left feeling wiped out.
He'd never felt so rundown in his life. This cycle of stress and anxiousness was enough to put that case of Tentacula ingestion to shame, and that was a whole different Hell on its own.
He dosed on and off for what must've been a while... Time was the least of his concerns when he only had a peppering of classes throughout the day. It had to have been around midday when he was startled awake by the screech of an owl that had arrived by his window.
Even with the weight of fatigue over him, he mustered enough energy to shoot the owl a glare before willing himself off the bed, shuffling carefully to the window where he plucked a letter from it's beak. The owl took off as quick as it arrived. Casey stared down at the letter, dreading at the thought of it being another overbearing letter from his folks.
He was relieved but curious to recognise that the writing to whom had addressed the letter to him did not match the handwriting of either his mother or father. It was too squiggly to be his mother's, but not too much and scrawny to be his father's.
He fell back onto the bed and opened it with tired fingers. The envelope spat out a single old sheet of paper with very little writing on it.
The letter fluttered out of Casey's hand. Though his stomach despised the sudden clenching of muscles, Casey couldn't help the humourless laugh that escaped him the second he finished reading the letter.Hey buddy,
Hope you've been feeling better. If not, sorry.
So... I've done it. I finally told them. I told them I'm okay. I told them about that day, and what happened over the summer. I asked them not to heckle you about it, but reassured them you were okay and that I'd answer all their questions.
- Your fashionably late older brother
This was going to be interesting. For a while, Casey had egged his older brother to tell their parents he was alive. Hell, Casey thought more than once to tell them himself. But Nick insisted he'd do it. In a way, it was for the better. It would've been much more believable for Nick to tell them. If Casey had done it, he'd probably be sent to the nearest psyche ward for the rest of his life. He was already thought mad for believing in the hope Nick was alive to begin with.
At the same time, Nick had been putting it off for months that Casey was starting to get impatient.
"You better mean it..." He whispered to no one. He jokingly thought to himself that the proof would be in the next barrage of letters from his folks. "What??! He's alive and a what now??!"
Three seconds later and Casey whined, setting off a chain reaction of uneasiness to the rest of his body.
Things were going to get a lot more weirder and hectic. He just knew it.
"For crissakes..."
Word Count: 1400
Stats: Stamina: 9 | Strength: 8 | Evasion: 7 | Wisdom: 7 | Arc Power: 7 | Accuracy: 8
Abilities: Fearless |Poison Resistance |Obnoxiously Strong