As much as he regretted over-packing, when he had made the long hike to Chuleigh, Beckett was extremely grateful that he had packed more than enough food. He had not exactly planned on living off of dried fruits and cheeses, this close to a village, but if he had to do so, he had enough here to hold him over for... a few days. Perhaps a week. Longer, if he skipped meals. That was something he was loathe to think about. Not because starvation was bad, but because it would imply he would be naked, the entire time.
He wasn't going to think about that.
He wasn't.
With a bit of food in his stomach, he proceeded to get a tally of the other things in his bag that might help. There was the large tome at the bottom, his graduation present from the University. Inside that was a primer on the fundamentals of magic, an introduction to ritual casting, and a history of magical traditions. Given what he had experienced, he couldn't help but feel it was a knife in the face of a Great Wyrm, but who knew? Maybe if he was lucky, he could find a way to break the enchantments on the drapes. It would serve that cloth bolt right. Unfortunately, that would have to be a project he tackled later. He pulled a ring of keys out of the main pocket and rose to his feet, pulling the bag and fitting the straps over his shoulders.
A rogue thought occurred to him. Dierdre hadn't taken his rucksack. It was made of cloth and leather. If he could fashion it into some kind of... he shook his head. He wouldn't risk it. If she stole his clothes, she could steal a bag just as easily. Besides, she might enchant it like she did the drapes. He stared off into the middle distance. Then he removed the thought permanently from his mind.
For a few hours, he stalked through the home, hands between his legs and keys dangling down from them like old metallic tassels. In his haste to tear through the manor, yesterday, he had forgotten to mark which doors were locked and which doors weren't. This meant he had to do the circuit once again, testing doors and then testing keys on whichever ones didn't open for him. It was a long, awkward process, and at first it did not yield much. He found the kitchen and pantry, which at this point were so barren that even the vermin had long since moved on. There was a second bathing area, up on the second floor, much larger and more lavish looking than the one downstairs. It too was completely empty. Also on the second floor was a large chamber, larger than any he had seen thus far, lined from floor to ceiling in glass on two walls and gaped at the ceiling with enormous skylights. He did not set foot in this room. The light was too bright, the midday sun having almost nothing to blunt its power. Too bright, too open; Beckett felt like he might as well have walked out the front door and into the courtyard, for how exposed the room made him feel. There wasn't anything of note in the room, anyway, and he wasn't interested in double checking to see if he was wrong about that.
Towards the back of the servants' quarters, at the very end of a series of small and spartan cells, was a lone bedroom of modest size. This was still furnished, with a sturdy bedframe and a warped dresser that, once upon a time, was no doubt as handsome as a servant could hope for. No matress, unfortunately. At least, nothing that could even be said to resemble a matress, among the time-worn tatters of cloth that lay between the slats of the frame. Barring that, and the fact that there was only a single wood-paneled window for light, Beckett found himself thinking that this room was better even than the quarters he'd had at the University. They had to be reserved for an especially treasured assistant, especially when compared to the smaller offerings leading up to it.
Despite everything, idle curiosity possessed him to try the dresser drawers. It was a matter of fussing around, trying to negotiate the thing open with one hand. He might have given up, but when the first large movement of wood against wood carried with it the clattering of many hard objects, his curiosity was buoyed enough to finish the job. A moment longer, and Beckett was looking down at a collection of jewels and baubles, rings and necklaces, studs and buttons that survived the mouldering clothes many of them were still attached to. The contents of a noble's entire collection of metals and gems, all squirreled together in a servant's dresser drawer. His curiosity growing more grim, he wiggled the second drawer open. He found clothing in this one. Not just clothing, but finery. Moth-eaten, gossamer-thin, faded, all but crumbling in his paws as he dug through them, but once upon a time they were fine velvets and linens.
Beckett had two questions. The first was what manner of servant was so treasured they wore clothes as valuable as their liege lord's? The second question was what cruelty of the gods would give me a dresser loaded down with clothes, all of which were too rotted to wear? The second question could be answered by the cruel and merciless passage of time, and the answer to the first may have been found in the stiff, cracked journal he pulled from the bottom of the second drawer. He felt a smile creep up onto his lips. A mystery in front of him, and a journal promising either answers or at least an interesting look into the court of his ancestor? It was enough to make him forget about his troubles, if only for a brief and blessed moment.
He would have tucked the book under his arm and moved on, but around that moment he noticed something sticking out from behind the dresser. Putting the book down on the bedframe, he pulled the dresser away from the wall (an act that was much easier than trying to open the drawers, even with only one hand. When it was far enough away, he bent down and pulled out an almost immaculate square of canvas, stretched across a wooden frame. It was a blank painting, modest in size and without a frame. Twine was lashed around it, forming a grid of squares that held down an old piece of parchment pressed against it. Beckett squinted at the words scratched onto the paper in a rushed but practiced hand:
Do Not Hang
Lord Maiselle has declared that he no longer wishes to see the visions of the future that this painting produces, when he looks upon it. It shall be stored out of sight until such time as we can determine what is to be done with the thing.
To Whoever is tasked with carrying this: keep the front of the canvas away from you. Do not look into it. Do not allow it to point at anyone for any length of time. Doing so may cause the painting to render a vision of your future, or someone else's. The painting is magic and should not be trifled with.
-O
"Magic?" Beckett wondered, aloud. "They stored magic artifacts in a servant's room, as well? Did Duke Marseille simply not believe in a locked chest?" He frowned at it. For a moment, he was convinced that this was some kind of mistake. There was no way something this valuable would be tucked away and forgotten behind a dresser. But then, as he rolled it around the fingers of his non-modesty hand, he could not help but notice how... new it seemed. How fresh the canvas looked, compared to the crumbling twine and yellowed parchment that had been attached to it. Objects keeping their luster, even after long stretches of time, was one of the more reliable indicators that one had an enchanted item in one's hands. And if it was magic, and not just a blank canvas, and if the note attached to it was to be believed, checking was about as simple and safe a prospect as anything involving magic could be.
"Visions of the future," he muttered, biting his lip in thought. "I could see how that would be useful. Or edifying." Slowly, he set the canvas down, pulling the twine off with one hand and no shortage of hesitancy. "Unless all it does is show you how you die. That's not quite as useful. No, no, of course not. If it did that, then the Duke would never have had the thing hung up, in the first place. Clearly..." He paused, whispering vague half-curses at the string as he tried and failed to pick it apart. Eventually the old fibers finally gave, and he continued. "...clearly it must show a more immediate future. Perhaps it will even show me a way out of this mess." Beckett did not quite believe what he was saying, but by the time he had the canvas completely free, any concerns were drowned out in the giddy, boyish desire to see a genuine magical artifact in action. Despite the gravity of the situation, he could not help a little smile as he put himself in front of the canvas, nor could he stop the little puff of excited laughter as the first hints of color began to emerge.
It was, as far as magic was concerned, a very low-key affair. No flashing lights or arcane sizzles, no portals carrying the smell of the Great Empyrean opening in mid-air. Instead, paint seemed to materialize on the canvas, bleeding through the fabric like a font of morning dew on a window. It formed an image in reverse, starting with shades and highlights that gave the barest hint of the picture's shape. Then came color, large blooming swathes of tawny blondes and dark grays. Beckett's boyish giggle was, at this point, unable to be suppressed. He stared at the emerging image with wonder and delight, already forming the first of what could easily become a million-and-one theories over the mechanism by which the thing must work. But then came the lines, the final clarifying feature of what was being created. As Beckett's focused shifted from the magic of the image's generation to what the image actually showed, that wonder and delight was replaced with confusion.
The mass of blonde, as it turned out, was Beckett and his fur. The painting depicted him, still naked as the day he was born, bent over a wooden table. He was forced down, a strong gray-furred paw clamped around the back of his neck. The second of those gray paws was raised over the dormouse's plush backside, open as if preparing to give him a swat. The detail of the painting was such that Beckett could see the pattern of mussing of the fur on his backside, evidence that whoever owned that gray paw had already brought it down to strike Beckett several times, by the moment the painting depicts. The perspective of the image was such that, shamefully, the savagery being performed on Future Beckett's rear was in cruel focus. However, Present Beckett could not help noticing the look of his future counterpart, in the upper corner of the frame. He seemed obviously distressed, pained and fearful... but there was something in that look that suggested that he did not find the experience to be entirely unpleasant.
He turned away from the painting, horrified. Not that it would save him from the image, which by that point was thoroughly burned into his head. His cheeks burned, and he clutched at his jewels all the tighter. It would be a moment or so before he had regained enough composure to form coherent thoughts. When he did, he settled into his familiar pattern of flattering delusion. "A mistake," he said to himself, half-heartedly. "A trick of the light. I must have misunderstood what I was seeing. No, no, I shall look back upon the painting, and it will be different. Quite different." Morale sufficiently buoyed, he turned around.
Surprisingly, the painting was quite different, when he looked upon it a second time. No longer was his future self being held down and spanked by a pair of large paws. Instead, he appeared to be on all fours, on top of a marble dais, bathed in moonlight that streamed in from large windows. His back was arched, hindquarters thrust out to some unseen observer. His expression was now no longer one of fear or pain. A lingering current of distress could be seen, and Beckett clung to that current, because otherwise he would have to admit that the look on his future self's face was one of sublime, sensual rapture. Not helping matters was the clear and obvious erection that hung down between his legs, which the artist captured with such a disturbing level of fidelity Beckett could almost swear he could see it twitch and leak.
"Th-the message must be wrong," he said, desperately. "This painting doesn't show the future. It can't do that. Such a thing isn't even possible. Clearly, whoever wrote that note did not understand what he was looking at, and this painting is just some sick imagining from... from a..." The words died in his throat, as he saw the colors subtly change. More paint bled out onto the canvas, covering the image with a brand new one. Dread siezed at him, as he pleaded with the object. "Please, no... not another one. I don't need to see another... Oh, Goddess..."
He tried to keep his eyes off of the subject, the center of the frame. He noticed that the background had become a riot of moon-dappled greens and yellows, a palatial estate strategically overgrown by plants of exotic, otherworldly make. It truly was a masterful composition, if one looked exclusively at the periphery. He marveled at the many colors of the roses that bloomed throughout, many of hues he did not know where possible. He marveled at the light that suffused the scene, too silvery to be moonlight but too pale and nocturnal to be anything else. It colored everything; the greens of the shrubs, the blondes in his future self's fur, the black-red of the massive cock that bore its way into his future self's well-stretched asshole...
Once his eyes fell on the bulk of the image, there was no pulling them away. Future Beckett being bent over appeared to be a constant theme. Now he gripped onto the cloth of a marble table for dear life, held in place by the giant hands that clasped around his hips. Of his assailant he could see very little, not enough to hazard a guess as to his furstock. He was massive in every respect, the frame only sufficient to capture him from mid-thigh up to the bottom of his muscular pectorals. His short fur was something either red or brown, and a thin whippy tail emerging from above his toned rear suggested he might be bovine in nature. All Beckett could say about this creature was that he was large, powerful of build and, judging by the cruelly thick tool between his legs and the large, sagging balls that hung beneath it, he was grossly, unmistakably male.
Here in the present, Beckett was mortified. He tried to look away from the strange giant, but upon looking at the version of himself in the image, he found nothing to bolster his resolve. He did not recognize this Beckett. It looked like him, certainly. Every detail of his body was faithfully preserved, from the sweep of his long fuzzy tail to the whiskers at the end of his rodent snout. However, the character of the beast that he saw was alien to him. This Beckett was shameless. Eyes drooped like a beast drunk on the sweetest of wines. Mouth open in a wordless cry like a drake hen in her season. Hips thrown back to accept his invader, greedy and delirious for still more. The cloth beneath where the two were joined was, even now, stained with the leavings of his lover. No, not merely this lover. He had no doubt the giant had seed to spare, but there was no accounting for the stains that suffused the trembling mass of silvered yellow fuzz that was his future self. It leaked from his ass, forced out by the giant's rutting. It streaked the fur along his flanks. It dribbled from the tip of his own cock, half-hard and clearly spent. Present Beckett could even see it leaking from his future self's open lips, mixed with the shameless drool of a creature possessed, who even now panted for more, still more...
Beckett put the painting back against the wall.
He slid the dresser back over it.
He left the room, slammed the door shut, and locked it up tight. If there had been anything suitable to use, he would have barricaded the door, as if scared that the accursed thing would try and escape.
Only then did he let himself breathe, a shuddering exhale, as his body trembled with a thousand warring thoughts and feelings. "A mistake," he muttered to himself. "It was a mistake to trifle with such a thing. I..."
Belatedly, he realized the sensation that tickled at him, underneath his paws. With something between horror and disbelief, he peeked under his palms.
There he saw a clear, strong and unambiguous erection.
He scowled at it. "I shall think no more of this." Defiantly (or as defiantly as one could while trying to hide one's privates), he stomped down the hallway. Answers to his problem needed to be found, and they would not be found here. Once he broke whatever curse he labored under, he would laugh at this fun little diversion. And then he would prepare a special pyre to burn a painting.
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