Re: The Spectacular Exhibition (S3G2) [Round 2: Space - Abridged]
09-20-2011, 07:37 PM
Originally posted on MSPA by whoosh!.
As reality coalesced back into being, Nemaeus found himself sitting on a plush chair with pinstripe upholstery. The room this particularly fine piece of furniture sat in was impressively large, this size amplified by the gargantuan mirrors that hung on opposing walls. Several other couches and chairs sat neatly against the edges of the chamber, similar in quality and decoration to the one he sat in.
For a moment the wolf man didn't move, a little uncertain as to the nature of his surroundings. A fire crackled cheerfully in the grate, but he felt no more reassured by this as he did by the clearly opulent nature of the furnishings. He had a sinking feeling that he was trespassing in a place where people had less than zero patience for the trespassers in question. People with an army of servants and guards, all merciless and far too many in number to control with his powers of influence.
Nemaeus quickly stood, adjusting his pelt as he did so. A quick sweep revealed two windows, but they were rather disconcertingly barred. They were elegant and antique bars, undoubtedly, but they were still drastically reducing his chances of a quick and stealthy exit. Thinking that he could ditch the stealthy aspect as long as he could keep the quick one, Nemaeus began tugging at the window frames. This attempt unsurprisingly failed.
He had just begun to wrap the wolf pelt around his right side prior to taking a running smash through the window when he became acutely aware that someone was standing behind him.
Nemaeus turned quickly, spinning round on his heels. “Hello,” he began in what he hoped to be a jovial tone.
The false confidence quickly faded.
Standing in the doorway was a person draped entirely in midnight blue cloth, hiding all but the bottom half of their face (they were young) and a hand clutching the door: a hand so scarred by fire damage that not an inch of it was completely healthy.
Only one person, but with no eyes to look into. They also appear to be part of a cult or some other bullshit.
For a moment there was absolute silence between the two individuals. The person was smiling gently at Nemaeus, which was possibly encouraging, but not if they were crazy. Their state of dress was not helping to convince the wolf man that this was not the case.
“I'm sorry,” said Nemaeus, grasping for the words which would expel him from this place with complete politeness and speed. God, he hated people.
“I'm not entirely sure of my surroundings or even how I got here, so-”
“No.”
The act of the stranger speaking had stunned Nemaeus into silence.
It's a woman. Why am I surprised? It could have been anyone in there.
Not to be so easily defeated, he began talking again only to be cut off again.
“I know why you are here, Nemaeus.”
“What? No, no-”
With a peal of laughter, the woman slipped back through the door and shut it, the satisfying clack of metal signalling the turning of a key in the lock.
Nemaeus did nothing.
He only knew three, terrifying facts at this point in time: the woman had locked him in a room he had already tried and failed to escape, and that this same woman inexplicably knew his name. And he was scared witless by this.
He tried to door, futile as it was, but it didn't open. Fortunately, a Kyprian wolf's claw had no such problem.
To be truthful, Nemaeus had largely forgotten about the claw prior to entering this battle. He had kept it with him out of habit, consoled by its weight and familiarity. Now he turned it over in his hands, staring in undiminished awe at its sheer blackness. He had feared that it might have lost its edge, but lightly trailing it across the back of his hand had proved him wrong.
Brushing away the blood, Nemaeus gripped the claw and gently sliced away the hinges. The metal was unresistant, separating like butter. A small thrill raced through him. It was really a thing a beauty, a blade that could do something so incredible yet understated. It took only a moment, and a small push, for the double doors to come crashing forward into the room beyond.
He stepped out slowly, surveying the dereliction before him with a little trepidation, but that was quickly overridden by curiosity.
While the room behind him had been nothing short of in perfect condition, the walls here were cracked and dead ivy crawled all over it. Faded paint peeled. A sharp wind alerted him to the fact that the ceiling was largely missing, revealing a stormy sky. Thunder rumbled as if in response to his gaze. Nemaeus flinched as broken glass crackled beneath his step.
The décor here had clearly had been as fine as in his prison, but time and climate had taken its toll. It had a wistful feel to it, this place. The threadbare carpets and tarnished metal remembered better times, a golden era of carefree beauty, but you could almost hear them weep in their current state. The wolf man traced a hand over the furniture and the walls as he passed, mouthing his apologies.
The corridor of sorrow led him to a larger room. Two marbles angels stared at him with blank eyes. They flanked double doors, pointing the way onward. One of them had lost their hand, and it instead pointed back down the way he had come. He picked it up, stroked her hair, and ignored her warning. Without a faded carpet to cushion his steps, each fall of the foot rang out on the cold stone.
Within the confines of these two doors he found a gargantuan white room. It was almost perfect, but again the ceiling had been slashed away to expose that angry sky. Underneath it an oak proudly stood, but this was no organic creation. Dark veins ran through its white stone, like snakes wrapped around the branches.
This fantastic work of art would have been enough to stun Nemaeus, but coiled around the tree was a glittering black dragon. A drake, perhaps, would have been a more accurate term. It lacked the massive size normally associated with those hoarders, but it made up for this with a wiry strength to its shape, and an impressive length. Beautifully fragile wings, reinforced with long, elegant spurs put to rest any ideas that this creature was less than mythical.
And then, above it, embedded in the trunk of the tree, was a sword. Occasionally it crackled with tendrils of an odd blue light, but otherwise it was fairly normal. A tail as thin as a whip was wrapped around the hilt.
Nemaeus faltered in his walk at these sights. At a loss, he simply stared. Everything before him had an unearthly beauty: the contrast of black drake against white tree, the bursts of blue light reflected on gleaming black scales, the sheer perfection of those twisting branches and razor thin leaves. This was not a place where he belonged. This was... this was...
A fairytale. A legend. A story, waiting for a hero to arrive to slay the dragon with a sword sheathed in blue lightning, to free the cursed princess in the broken castle.
A hero who wasn't him.
He was determined that this would be the case.
Angel hand still gripped in his own, Nemaeus took the steps back to the hall. The corridor swept him past the door of the room he had appeared in, down through a labyrinth of courtyards and walls. In spite of the confusing nature of the architecture he felt himself leaving the white room behind; he felt the alluring presence of those unreal fantasies fading with each passing second. By the time he stood in a bare archway and stared out at the plains stretching forward from under his feet, Nemaeus' face was streaked with silent tears.
And so he walked out onto the flat plain of this world.
Lightning struck the ground metres away from him, the thunder crashing down around him instantaneously. Ears ringing, he hardly noticed as rain began to pound down on the ground and sting his skin with each hard drop. Winds sprang up and clawed at his clothes and hair, robbing his breath and smashing the rain into him with even greater force.
Disorientated and in disarray, he staggered backwards. Torn between reentering the house and staying as far away from it as possible, Nemaeus skirted around the walls. This afforded him a little protection – even so, the elements still continued their vicious assault. Still he edged around the crumbling building.
This barrage went on for some time. Nemaeus couldn't have said how long, drenched and blinded by the rain as he was. At some point he became aware that his hands were guiding him past rock and not brick. If he'd been particularly aware of his surroundings it might have registered that this was part of the rocky cliffs that the house had been built upon. As it was, the wolf man was completely unaware that the house now loomed high above him. It's unlikely he would have cared, if not for the succession of events that took rapidly took place in the next few seconds. They were as follows:
First, a planet that was careening through the wilds of space came to a rather sudden stop, at the cost of the planet that it slammed into. Second: throughout both of these odd worlds an earthquake rippled, splitting open ground and buildings alike, shaking and destroying all that it encountered with impish impunity. This had many consequences, but only one that would interest Nemaeus.
And it was this:
The earthquake rushed towards the castle crowning the cliff, and sped under it. The cliffs rippled like water, tearing apart the stoic building that had stood there for so long. In an instant it was torn apart and the insides scattered. The noise was so loud to be almost incomprehensible. In the case of the cowering Nemaeus, all he was understanding was that there was noise, and it was loud, and that was it. His brain refused to accept the judgement of any other sense.
At some point he may have screamed, perhaps just to test its strength against this paralysing cacaphony, or crawled a little from the cliff.
Regardless, there was a sudden tremendous crack that he wouldn't have noticed, and the upper half of a marble tree smashed into the ground beside him. Leaves tinkled and clattered as they leapt away from the branches in spontaneous Autumn, the craftmanship of a master destroyed in one moment of noise and devastation among a thousand others.
And then, once the quiet had returned as with the flick of a switch, from the splintered trunk of the oak, a sword fell into the dirt with a thwump.
It crackled.
Nemeaeus raised his head.
And for a moment as quiet as a vacuum is empty, absolutely nothing happened.
Then, of course, the drake woke up.
As reality coalesced back into being, Nemaeus found himself sitting on a plush chair with pinstripe upholstery. The room this particularly fine piece of furniture sat in was impressively large, this size amplified by the gargantuan mirrors that hung on opposing walls. Several other couches and chairs sat neatly against the edges of the chamber, similar in quality and decoration to the one he sat in.
For a moment the wolf man didn't move, a little uncertain as to the nature of his surroundings. A fire crackled cheerfully in the grate, but he felt no more reassured by this as he did by the clearly opulent nature of the furnishings. He had a sinking feeling that he was trespassing in a place where people had less than zero patience for the trespassers in question. People with an army of servants and guards, all merciless and far too many in number to control with his powers of influence.
Nemaeus quickly stood, adjusting his pelt as he did so. A quick sweep revealed two windows, but they were rather disconcertingly barred. They were elegant and antique bars, undoubtedly, but they were still drastically reducing his chances of a quick and stealthy exit. Thinking that he could ditch the stealthy aspect as long as he could keep the quick one, Nemaeus began tugging at the window frames. This attempt unsurprisingly failed.
He had just begun to wrap the wolf pelt around his right side prior to taking a running smash through the window when he became acutely aware that someone was standing behind him.
Nemaeus turned quickly, spinning round on his heels. “Hello,” he began in what he hoped to be a jovial tone.
The false confidence quickly faded.
Standing in the doorway was a person draped entirely in midnight blue cloth, hiding all but the bottom half of their face (they were young) and a hand clutching the door: a hand so scarred by fire damage that not an inch of it was completely healthy.
Only one person, but with no eyes to look into. They also appear to be part of a cult or some other bullshit.
For a moment there was absolute silence between the two individuals. The person was smiling gently at Nemaeus, which was possibly encouraging, but not if they were crazy. Their state of dress was not helping to convince the wolf man that this was not the case.
“I'm sorry,” said Nemaeus, grasping for the words which would expel him from this place with complete politeness and speed. God, he hated people.
“I'm not entirely sure of my surroundings or even how I got here, so-”
“No.”
The act of the stranger speaking had stunned Nemaeus into silence.
It's a woman. Why am I surprised? It could have been anyone in there.
Not to be so easily defeated, he began talking again only to be cut off again.
“I know why you are here, Nemaeus.”
“What? No, no-”
With a peal of laughter, the woman slipped back through the door and shut it, the satisfying clack of metal signalling the turning of a key in the lock.
Nemaeus did nothing.
He only knew three, terrifying facts at this point in time: the woman had locked him in a room he had already tried and failed to escape, and that this same woman inexplicably knew his name. And he was scared witless by this.
He tried to door, futile as it was, but it didn't open. Fortunately, a Kyprian wolf's claw had no such problem.
To be truthful, Nemaeus had largely forgotten about the claw prior to entering this battle. He had kept it with him out of habit, consoled by its weight and familiarity. Now he turned it over in his hands, staring in undiminished awe at its sheer blackness. He had feared that it might have lost its edge, but lightly trailing it across the back of his hand had proved him wrong.
Brushing away the blood, Nemaeus gripped the claw and gently sliced away the hinges. The metal was unresistant, separating like butter. A small thrill raced through him. It was really a thing a beauty, a blade that could do something so incredible yet understated. It took only a moment, and a small push, for the double doors to come crashing forward into the room beyond.
He stepped out slowly, surveying the dereliction before him with a little trepidation, but that was quickly overridden by curiosity.
While the room behind him had been nothing short of in perfect condition, the walls here were cracked and dead ivy crawled all over it. Faded paint peeled. A sharp wind alerted him to the fact that the ceiling was largely missing, revealing a stormy sky. Thunder rumbled as if in response to his gaze. Nemaeus flinched as broken glass crackled beneath his step.
The décor here had clearly had been as fine as in his prison, but time and climate had taken its toll. It had a wistful feel to it, this place. The threadbare carpets and tarnished metal remembered better times, a golden era of carefree beauty, but you could almost hear them weep in their current state. The wolf man traced a hand over the furniture and the walls as he passed, mouthing his apologies.
The corridor of sorrow led him to a larger room. Two marbles angels stared at him with blank eyes. They flanked double doors, pointing the way onward. One of them had lost their hand, and it instead pointed back down the way he had come. He picked it up, stroked her hair, and ignored her warning. Without a faded carpet to cushion his steps, each fall of the foot rang out on the cold stone.
Within the confines of these two doors he found a gargantuan white room. It was almost perfect, but again the ceiling had been slashed away to expose that angry sky. Underneath it an oak proudly stood, but this was no organic creation. Dark veins ran through its white stone, like snakes wrapped around the branches.
This fantastic work of art would have been enough to stun Nemaeus, but coiled around the tree was a glittering black dragon. A drake, perhaps, would have been a more accurate term. It lacked the massive size normally associated with those hoarders, but it made up for this with a wiry strength to its shape, and an impressive length. Beautifully fragile wings, reinforced with long, elegant spurs put to rest any ideas that this creature was less than mythical.
And then, above it, embedded in the trunk of the tree, was a sword. Occasionally it crackled with tendrils of an odd blue light, but otherwise it was fairly normal. A tail as thin as a whip was wrapped around the hilt.
Nemaeus faltered in his walk at these sights. At a loss, he simply stared. Everything before him had an unearthly beauty: the contrast of black drake against white tree, the bursts of blue light reflected on gleaming black scales, the sheer perfection of those twisting branches and razor thin leaves. This was not a place where he belonged. This was... this was...
A fairytale. A legend. A story, waiting for a hero to arrive to slay the dragon with a sword sheathed in blue lightning, to free the cursed princess in the broken castle.
A hero who wasn't him.
He was determined that this would be the case.
Angel hand still gripped in his own, Nemaeus took the steps back to the hall. The corridor swept him past the door of the room he had appeared in, down through a labyrinth of courtyards and walls. In spite of the confusing nature of the architecture he felt himself leaving the white room behind; he felt the alluring presence of those unreal fantasies fading with each passing second. By the time he stood in a bare archway and stared out at the plains stretching forward from under his feet, Nemaeus' face was streaked with silent tears.
And so he walked out onto the flat plain of this world.
Lightning struck the ground metres away from him, the thunder crashing down around him instantaneously. Ears ringing, he hardly noticed as rain began to pound down on the ground and sting his skin with each hard drop. Winds sprang up and clawed at his clothes and hair, robbing his breath and smashing the rain into him with even greater force.
Disorientated and in disarray, he staggered backwards. Torn between reentering the house and staying as far away from it as possible, Nemaeus skirted around the walls. This afforded him a little protection – even so, the elements still continued their vicious assault. Still he edged around the crumbling building.
This barrage went on for some time. Nemaeus couldn't have said how long, drenched and blinded by the rain as he was. At some point he became aware that his hands were guiding him past rock and not brick. If he'd been particularly aware of his surroundings it might have registered that this was part of the rocky cliffs that the house had been built upon. As it was, the wolf man was completely unaware that the house now loomed high above him. It's unlikely he would have cared, if not for the succession of events that took rapidly took place in the next few seconds. They were as follows:
First, a planet that was careening through the wilds of space came to a rather sudden stop, at the cost of the planet that it slammed into. Second: throughout both of these odd worlds an earthquake rippled, splitting open ground and buildings alike, shaking and destroying all that it encountered with impish impunity. This had many consequences, but only one that would interest Nemaeus.
And it was this:
The earthquake rushed towards the castle crowning the cliff, and sped under it. The cliffs rippled like water, tearing apart the stoic building that had stood there for so long. In an instant it was torn apart and the insides scattered. The noise was so loud to be almost incomprehensible. In the case of the cowering Nemaeus, all he was understanding was that there was noise, and it was loud, and that was it. His brain refused to accept the judgement of any other sense.
At some point he may have screamed, perhaps just to test its strength against this paralysing cacaphony, or crawled a little from the cliff.
Regardless, there was a sudden tremendous crack that he wouldn't have noticed, and the upper half of a marble tree smashed into the ground beside him. Leaves tinkled and clattered as they leapt away from the branches in spontaneous Autumn, the craftmanship of a master destroyed in one moment of noise and devastation among a thousand others.
And then, once the quiet had returned as with the flick of a switch, from the splintered trunk of the oak, a sword fell into the dirt with a thwump.
It crackled.
Nemeaeus raised his head.
And for a moment as quiet as a vacuum is empty, absolutely nothing happened.
Then, of course, the drake woke up.