Utterly Mad

After the incident, life around King's Court grew strange by degrees. It started simply. A pitcher girl carrying a large crystal decanter of water and a tray of fine glasses stepped upon a board in the hall not far from King's Chambers. This board, seemingly fresh, had uttered a single dull shriek as it's nails were pulled from it's mooring and toppled the pitcher girl onto her bottom. Her foot slipped through the newly opened hole, and to her horror something like a grey twitching tendril was snaking it's way up her leg. She screamed and kicked out heedless of the barb at the end of the seeking digit. She regained her footing and ran as fast as she could. The board clapped back down and was seemingly pulled back until it was flush with it's brothers around it. When the pitcher girl, Sarah, returned with not one but two guards in tow, they found no evidence of the offending tendril. She stomped on the board she had been sure had stumbled her. The guards retrieved a bar and pulled up a few of the floor boards, revealing only the empty crawl space beneath. Sarah begged and pleaded, but to know avail. She was brought before King and summarily fired. Much later, she would be glad of it. For now, it was back on the debt slaves block.

The damage was done though, and rumor spread fast among the staff and slaves. King's Court had a problem. Searches turned up nothing though, and within a week people had almost forgotten the incident. Until the dreams started that is.

Dreams in which the dreamer found themselves in a cold room with only a tiny whining object for company. In the dream, they would wait and wait for someone until deciding to try and sleep, waking only when the slender steel of a hunting knife found it's way into their hearts. The name on their lips as they died in the dream had not been of the killer, but of the killed. Rita.

The name bothered King in private, but in public he put on a stern face. After the dreams though, came the sounds. It was reasoned that a lack of sleep was the cause. The scratching and rustling being little more than a hallucination. This was the accepted reason right up until people started coming down with mycus infections.

A pall fell over King's Court, and the staff saw King less and less as he secluded himself to his room. Orders were issued, anti-fungus was passed out again and again. The one thing that was not done, was to cancel the King's Court portion of the fall cotillion.