The dungeons were drowning in red.

They bled it everywhere, like the slit wrists of the palatial underbelly. It trickled out of every corner, cranny, crevice. It seeped from every pore. It stained the polished metal surfaces a pervasive, sickly reddish brown. It lingered in the air, mixing iron with formaldehyde. It skittered and chittered and skuttled through the walls and just under floorboards, threatening to pour out and over its unclosed Pandora's box.

Red like blood. Red like death. Red like the lovely, lovely times not even decades past...Why oh why did they have to have come to an end? It was so much fun, then.

Red still splatters the cold, medicinal steel now, warming it with crimson life as it transmutes the vivisection table into a dissection one. Red is a wail of pain - gurgling and pathetic, turning on itself as it rises in pink foam from the patient's - subject's - mouth.

It was just as well. What a relief that the convulsions had finally ceased, at least - they were starting to rather vex the good doctor.

....Dull, thudding steps iterrupt their crimson idylly. It is inevitable - news of arrival travel fast along the cavernous intestines of the dungeons, echoing off the cool stone walls no matter how quiet the intruder may fancy themselves. It's merely another way in which Valdemar always Knows.

They feel irritation bubble up to the surface, as red as everything else. Who would dare intrude on their work?!. If it is yet another idiot nurse who comes to them only to tell that he 'cannot bear' working 'under their tyrannical reign' any longer and who is 'sick' of 'their torture methods which masquerade as medicine' (a thing that someone had the cheek to say, to their face! Unbelievable!). . . . They shall like to 'admit' another 'patient' into their 'care'.

Mortals do have the pesky tendency to expire.

And yet, as the footfalls draw closer, their irritation inexplicably ebbs instead of rising, seething down to a simmer.

Such a familiar gait this intruder has. Such a peculiar breathing pattern - they can tell.

Which is why they are wholly unempressed when you do come to stand in the operating theatre's entrance. You're rather late, you know, they almost say. The symphony had ceased about half an hourglass' turn ago.

They do not, however: half because they, perhaps, cannot be bothered, and other half because it's no real loss - even less so one worthy of wasting words upon. Neither do they turn to face you, nor make any effort at acknowledging your existence in their space, instead carrying on in their grim, self-assigned task. The patient had veritably blossomed by now, flabs of skin unfurling like flower petals against the gray metal -- but Valdemar was more interested in getting to the marrow. The patient had reported, prior to their unfortunate expiration, some trouble that they thought to be a consequence of faulty bone structure.

In a way, to not acknowledge your presence is among the highest compliments they could give: they simply are this comfortable around you. That counts for something, doesn't it?