Le Chateau...: A RM fanfiction

by ~BethieMW

Le Château des Charmes
A Requiem Mask fanfiction by Bethiemw (Bethany Woody)

Raoul raised his eyes in stark puzzlement, gazing upwards at the imposing stone towers and accompanying parapets that rose far and beyond the lofty heights of an opera house roof. A heavy fog veiled the highest vestiges of the looming points, and cast an eerie pallor overhead.
Apologetically, he turned to Christine. “I must have taken a wrong turn. This looks nothing like the castle in the tourists’ guide.”
Christine smiled despite her disappointment. Chelsey had suggested that she and Raoul spend the day somewhere nearer the combined explorations of the collective group, “or at least in the same city,” but Raoul was confident of his navigational skills and insisted on full separation from the others.
“After all,” he’d said with some aristocratic pride, “I was practically raised on a ship.”
Never mind—Christine thought—the nauseating twists and sudden turns on the winding country roads Raoul took at dangerous speeds, or the repeated and emphatic declarations that driving a car was not in the least like watching the helmsman steer a ship, as was first supposed; nor did she mind so very much the sickening thump that sent her stomach lurching as Raoul hoped aloud that he hadn’t hit a rabbit. No, Christine was glad to be here—wherever here was—with her dear vicomte.
“A castle is a castle Raoul, and as long as we’re together, I don’t care which one it is.” Smiling still, she followed his quick step through the gaping expanse of the open archway, bravely struggling to ignore the distressed moans of the old, creaking drawbridge.

“Cremated crawfish! Are those vessels of humanity?!” A deep, crackled voice greeted the pair before their eyes had adjusted properly to the shadowed lights of the castle foyer.
Raoul caught first sight of the odd man who stooped behind a chest-high desk of battered mahogany. He was tall and lanky, sharp-eyed, big-nosed, and had more hair growing out his nose and ears than on his entire head.
“If you mean, are we human, then technically the answer is yes; although we aren’t exactly vessels of humanity, as our true bodies are trapped somewhere in the other-worlds of time and matter, and we—“
“What caused you coupled characters to come to this cursed castle of coastal curiosity, commonly called Coralline’s Consolation?” The man coughed at the end and grinned.
One of Raoul’s eyes grew notably larger while the other shrunk, and his mouth hung half open before he thought to conceal his impolite response.
“It’s cursed?” Christine asked tentatively.
“Oh yes,” the man replied, “And let me tell you how…”
Raoul and Christine exchanged glances, and the man began his tale.
“Long ago, when the fae and fee—or was it the fee and fae? I can’t remember—when they still meddled with mortal men, there lived a brave rouge who amassed a great fortune by piracy. No one knows what his mother named him, but as a direct result of his distinctly tapered features and fondness for snake dinners, he came to be known as The Mongoose Pirate!”
Here he paused for the well timed, though inexplicable flash of lightening that flooded the vast entry with bluish light, and gleefully he noted the stifled gasp from Christine’s newly paled lips.
“That’s right,” he went on, “The Mongoose Pirate pillaged and plundered until his wealth was so great, he had nothing left to do but retire. He bought himself a title, and this very plot of land with the treasure’s he’d procured, and built this beautiful castle for his true love and once-ship’s-cook, Coralline.
“Unfortunately, pirates find it harder to settle down than they usually imagine, and while he was good to his wife, soon The Mongoose Pirate felt the old thieves’ itch returning. Hard as he tried to fight against it, the relentless mental scratchiness at last caused him to steal from his own wife.”
Somewhere sounding deep within the castle, a score of violins strung out three rapid notes in synch.
“What The Mongoose didn’t know was that Coralline was a fairy, disguised as a woman for the purpose of marrying the strange pirate man she had fallen in love with. And Coralline the fairy-woman was not slow in her retribution. Not at all. The gowns and jewels were her dowry, she asserted, and he had no right to take them from her; no matter his reputation, their relation, or how utterly attractive she found him to be in ruffled shirts and russet cloaks. She cursed the place with a book of spells the fates had entrusted her with, filling the rooms and passages with confounding traps and misleading directions. When The Mongoose next tried to steal from her, he was taken aback by the amount of effort required to find anything of value. After a long while, The Mongoose Pirate had to admit defeat, and he stopped searching for the beauteous treasures that were not his own.
“The traps Coralline had set were so good however, that The Mongoose could not even find his way back out of the castle, and he died of starvation—all alone inside one of the cold, empty corridors.
“When Coralline found his lifeless body, she used her magic to enchant the castle even further: in her limitless grief, she vowed that if ever man or woman should pass even the first flight,” he pointed to the rising staircase, “they would not escape her castle, save that by some miracle, they possessed a bond of trusting, selfless love; the kind of love that alluded her and The Mongoose Pirate.”
The man nodded pensively when his tale was finished.
This time it was Raoul that coughed. “I don’t believe in curses,” he stated.
“That’s amusing, considering our present state,” Christine replied. She fiddled nervously with her fingers, “Maybe we should find another castle…”
“Nonsense!” Raoul exclaimed. “We shall daringly confront the hazardous passages of probable peril! We have nothing to fear, Christine, for we already possess a trusting, selfless love that would carry us safely through any danger this castle could employ! Unflinchingly, we go onward!”
They fairly sailed up the first flight of stairs—that is, Raoul sailed, pulling Christine behind him like a loose banner caught up by the wind—not stopping to listen to the extended warnings of the bizarre desk-man they left behind.

Roughly two hours, twenty-three minutes, and forty-seven seconds later, Raoul and Christine stood before a door like no other. On it and the walls surrounding was depicted a graphic painting of the high-sea conquests of The Mongoose Pirate. Christine stopped to look closer at one striking battle scene in which the opposing ship had been decimated into splinters. The ship’s cargo—a hold full of sheep sent across the sea as an intended gift to the Pope—was flying through the air, thrown out by the blast-induced force of destruction. Christine marveled at the extraordinary sight and the apparent effort the artist had taken to capture the frighten faces of the airborne sheep.
“Holy flying sheep in a shipwreck,” Raoul breathed when he saw what Christine was looking at.
Together, they pushed open the heavy, paint-laden doors, and were forced frozen by pure amazement.
“There is no doubt,” Christine said, “That these were the lady Coralline’s greatest treasures.” For there, in that very room, stretching from one wall to the other, and standing over ten feet high, was the largest acquisition of unopened European chocolate Christine had ever seen. It was so beautiful, that it brought tears to her soft, blue eyes, and she almost wished they were a deep brown, just so they could properly reflect the delectable sweets before her.
“Oh Raoul! Daddy Daae has sent me my Angel of Sweets at last! Oh my angel,” she called into the room, “Where are you hiding?”
Raoul gripped his side where his sword should have been, knowing that when it came to Christine and her angels, danger was nigh, caution was key, and a strangling was most likely afoot. But his belt was empty.
“Felonious Phantoms! I knew I was forgetting something! No matter… If someone is here, I demand you make yourself known at once, or else I shall seek you out and sing Auld Lang Syne until your ears bleed like a vampire-bitten hemophiliac!”
As there was no reply, Raoul knew they were safe.
Impressive as the spectacle of chocolate-heaped-to-mountainous-proportions was for Christine, Raoul was not quite as taken with it, and soon his eyes had alighted upon another article of interest.
“But what is this?!” he cried, running his hands over an ancient book. The volume was bound in blackest leather, ornamented by a labyrinth of intricate scrolls running up and down the edges like a tangle of gilded vines, all vying for dominance in one another’s embrace. “The Book of Spells,” he read, and opening to a random page in the middle, he spoke one of the enchantments aloud:
“Tahn loket engac me corpa hay.” Raoul blinked in disappointment. “Nothing happened. I should have known this old, dusty book would be a letdown. Just like that cheese soufflé I could never get to--“
“Raoul!” Christine did not explain her outburst in words, but pointed with a trembling finger at him, her eyes wide and pupils tiny with horror.
Raoul ran to the nearest mirror—having the good sense to take the spell book with him—and surveyed his reflection. He was not, nor could he ever have been prepared to witness the ghastly image staring back at him; for instead of his deep conditioned, sandy locks of silky perfection, his head was growing golden cobs of corn.
“NOOOO!! This cannot be! I will not allow it to be!” Raoul raised his fists over his head in utter despair.
Christine put a comforting hand on his shoulder. “It could be worse…”
“It could not be worse! Not unless Erik himself became King of all France and established a government comprised entirely of one pickle-obsessed demon agent who purchased ladies’ virtues for moose pelts and sold men’s souls to his rat brethren!” Here Raoul paused. “Even then, there might be hope, unless the economy collapsed, and as a result, I could no longer afford hair products.”
Frantically, he combed—sadly, too, for it was something he thought never to be able to do to his hair—through the book of spells for one of undoing. “Aha! To reverse a spell’s affects, one must recite the original spell backwards: Yah aproc em cagne tekol nhat.”
Instantly, his hair was returned to him, and all was right with the world once more.

On their way out, the odd desk-man stopped them.
“Leaving so soon?” he asked politely. “I hope you enjoyed your walk.”
“So soon?! We couldn’t be gone soon enough! It was horrific in there!” Raoul fingered his head in concern.
“Oh come now, we put it back,” Christine soothed, nibbling on a piece of chocolate. “And we really had no trouble finding our way out. Our love must be very selfless, indeed.”
The man grunted. “Actually, there are no curses on this castle. I get bored up here with no one to talk to. Figured it might be interesting to mess with your minds.”
“He sounds like the Phantom,” Raoul muttered under his breath between clenched teeth.
“It’s not kind to trick people like that.”
“Oh, but you should have seen your face, lady! And you, my good sir, got all worked up over nothing.”
“But my hair really did grow corn!”
“You must have found the spell book. Well, keep it if you like. I don’t need such entertainment when there are people as gullible as you around. Ha, ha, ha…” The man doubled over in intense laughter, and the couple turned towards the exit to save what dignity they could.
“Macho wille ubce eb mintol scramb,” Raoul said low and quiet as he escorted Christine outside. Behind them came the sudden and confused cries of the desk-man.
“Leeloo?? Leeloo, is that you?”
“Oh dear, I’m not sure I like these dates,” Christine sighed as they crossed the bridge once more.
“Don’t worry, my love. We still have the whole of a long drive back to look forward to, during which time, you can tell me all about… Christine?”
Raoul looked beside him, but Christine was not there. He looked down. She lay in a swooned heap on the dirt road.
“Not again.”