Sheepeater Cliff the haunted palace

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The participants have indicated the following reason(s) for this warning: gore/blood/insanity

merrick's step was an inexorable plod.
he was swift after avicus, never deviating nor speaking. his travel would be —
saints blood saints blood saints blood blood blood blood
his breathing became the mantra, the sound of his paws upon earth a talisman, a prayer from the deepest part of him that his raven be returned to ursus, perhaps bearing more scars but vitally alive. they had always returned from their most dire wounds, he and she, he and the blackbird queen by which he had been spared.
she had killed for him, at the crucial moment when merrick might have been beyond hope. she had killed with him in a glossed and feverish memory that still struck into all nerves of the battletorn man an iridescent flame of purest keening delight;
the corvid had parried with merrick in the great and arcing, shrieking climax of motherblood and sonheart tangled together in snow and in love and in desperation and in murder; she had breathed merrick back into herself, and had held that image writ across the surface of her purpleglint eyes in bloodstain and sacredness.
the nightshade had renewed a greater world than bearclaw had been, and in that place of remembered milk and remembered pain, she had given him children, granted ursus and the bear the first dutiful reminder of their zealotry.
the scent of her blood was familiar; it was cloying and had the soaked-burgundy character of a wine glass spilt into darkening earth; the bearwitch could not wait and sped ahead of his son and his daughter, searching; searching —
merrick discovered first a tuft of her fur caught in the cold and mountainous earth; the single fire of his eye searched in growing and echoing swings of his head; merrick looked at the story of massive paws in the earth and the splatter of blood torn from their bodies, and the quickening gout where it widened into thicker ribbons that fed a pool —
the sound of his breath cracked and skittered against the air.
astara had been torn and gouged and cracked by heavy teeth. in her own and upon her lips was testament of her own skill as warrior and defender — but it had not been enough;
merrick suddenly sent a single and unwolf sound into the air, a dismal, billowing, hoarsened snarling cry of something indistinct;
and there were no words within his mind nor his skull. the dirge poured on and on and on until his voice —
snapped;
thread-like and scoured to nothing in his aching throat;
and merrick simply did the same
snap snap snap mommy i am coming to find you again
only a low, stuttering croon remained. merrick pushed his crown against the obsidian fur soaked in a hateful merlot, turning until carried as much of it oozing and staining the cream along his hackles into black-red;
merrick would bear this standard of her for the end of his days; he meant in each beat of his heart;
over over over over over 
gone;
he gathered the poor and teeth-cut flesh of his lover to his breast; merrick sobbed coarse and painful salt into the air and felt the cold bite at the wetness new upon his blood-smeared cheeks. he did not care who might see. the bearwitch's lamentation was as loud as his ruined chords might allow them to be. 
but when the ocean had run out merrick, it left behind the hard and glittering rocks of madness, crystalline and jagged in his single eye.
the bearwolf had always been the right hand of his god. and his god had removed the last true tethering to the world from merrick. to his bosom he had taken astara, and so merrick had given thankfully, gratefully, worshipfully, to the rolling and simmering murk that began to rise and bitter his gut.
the man raised his head at last to his children, and slowly;
ever so slowly;
merrick forced himself upright and back and back and back and back;
one two three four;
steps away;
"remember this place."
malevolence poured bile between each word. merrick looked at each of them in turn.
"we will take her home to ursus."
but this wretched aerie; he would not let it be forgotten. he would not allow it to be scraped and washed away. leave her blood. leave the tanglings of black and white and brindled fur; no, no, no;
merrick turned away, stooping to gather what was left of his beautiful beloved blackbird queen.