Re: MORITURI TE SALUTANT!! [S!4]
03-28-2012, 07:41 PM
Originally posted on MSPA by Protractor Ninja.
The air in the mansion’s long-forgotten library crackled and fizzed as some sort of space-time disturbance thrust itself into being. As it forced a passageway through the more resilient dimensions of existence, aged floorboards shuddered below a host of shivering bookshelves while furniture rumbled across the room. Rampant temporal energy spread wildly, knocking an assortment of novels to the ground and dissolving others to dust, aging them thousands of years in what appeared to be mere snippets of time. Newly emancipated pages swooped across the room as a hellish howl, generated by the surging energy of pure aetherial force, grew in intensity. Suddenly, as swiftly as the disruption had began, a fantastic spectrum of colors - some never before seen by mortal eyes - shone through the chaos for a fraction of a second and the entire disturbance disappeared.
As pages fluttered to the floor, the gaunt, middle-aged man who had recently landed roughly in the middle of the room groaned and hoisted himself upwards. After a brief period of consideration, he dusted himself off, muttering “this is why I don’t travel” to no one in particular. It sounded like the kind of thing a hero would say.
Hector adjusted his spectacles, which had somehow survived the pandemonium unscathed, checked his belt - his assets were undamaged, although the squid was visibly agitated - and surveyed the room. What appeared to have once been an in-home library was now a decrepit mausoleum of books, a look only enhanced by the aftermath of the recent supernatural bedlam. Four of the room’s six walls were hidden by half-covered bookshelves - their contents had been spilled to the ground or simply turned to dust - whose individual shelves sagged lazily as if ready to buckle and collapse if given the opportunity. Three more disheveled shelves, surrounded by a selection of cushioned reading chairs, stood perpendicular to the wall opposite Hector’s arrival point, which contained only a doorway leading to a carpeted hallway. An ornate grandfather clock stood against the wall behind him, its pendulum still calmly swaying side to side.
It looked like a good time to do some reading.
The conditions of his arrival already starting to fade from Hector’s memory, he selected a small stack of healthy-looking books and sat down in a remarkably comfortable reading chair. After a significant amount of squid rearrangement, he settled in and began to read. Had he bothered to look upwards during his inspection of the room, he may have decided to do something else.
Above Hector’s head, the chain connecting the library’s dedicated chandelier to the ceiling finally gave in to the throes of time. Several links had become corrupted by the same energy that had destroyed a number of books, lasting a few minutes longer only due to their material and distance from the origin of the spatial rupture. There was a sharp snap, and the chandelier came down.
For the second time that day (or night - he wasn’t really sure), Hector groaned and pushed himself away from the floor. The fallen chandelier had crushed the nearest bookshelf, clipping his chair and sending him to the ground amidst hundreds of shards of broken glass, earning him a nasty-looking gash on his lower leg. Once more he found his spectacles, a few inches away, to be miraculously undamaged. Thankfully, he hadn’t landed on his tentacled companion nor the silkworm, although his satchel of gold dust had been torn open near the top, spilling a few pinches’ worth of shimmering powder across the floorboards.
After checking skywards for any additional chandeliers, Hector looked at the scattered remains of his short-lived reading session and sighed, the events of the past hour or so weaving their way back into his mind. This kind of interruption was not among those he particularly enjoyed, although it was undoubtedly better than some involving angry parents and screaming children. The racket may have attracted prying eyes - eyes he decided he’d most likely not want to run into - and the room no longer held his interest. Shaking away the image of what could have been a pleasant hour of reading, Hector stumbled out of the room and into the mansion beyond.
The air in the mansion’s long-forgotten library crackled and fizzed as some sort of space-time disturbance thrust itself into being. As it forced a passageway through the more resilient dimensions of existence, aged floorboards shuddered below a host of shivering bookshelves while furniture rumbled across the room. Rampant temporal energy spread wildly, knocking an assortment of novels to the ground and dissolving others to dust, aging them thousands of years in what appeared to be mere snippets of time. Newly emancipated pages swooped across the room as a hellish howl, generated by the surging energy of pure aetherial force, grew in intensity. Suddenly, as swiftly as the disruption had began, a fantastic spectrum of colors - some never before seen by mortal eyes - shone through the chaos for a fraction of a second and the entire disturbance disappeared.
As pages fluttered to the floor, the gaunt, middle-aged man who had recently landed roughly in the middle of the room groaned and hoisted himself upwards. After a brief period of consideration, he dusted himself off, muttering “this is why I don’t travel” to no one in particular. It sounded like the kind of thing a hero would say.
Hector adjusted his spectacles, which had somehow survived the pandemonium unscathed, checked his belt - his assets were undamaged, although the squid was visibly agitated - and surveyed the room. What appeared to have once been an in-home library was now a decrepit mausoleum of books, a look only enhanced by the aftermath of the recent supernatural bedlam. Four of the room’s six walls were hidden by half-covered bookshelves - their contents had been spilled to the ground or simply turned to dust - whose individual shelves sagged lazily as if ready to buckle and collapse if given the opportunity. Three more disheveled shelves, surrounded by a selection of cushioned reading chairs, stood perpendicular to the wall opposite Hector’s arrival point, which contained only a doorway leading to a carpeted hallway. An ornate grandfather clock stood against the wall behind him, its pendulum still calmly swaying side to side.
It looked like a good time to do some reading.
The conditions of his arrival already starting to fade from Hector’s memory, he selected a small stack of healthy-looking books and sat down in a remarkably comfortable reading chair. After a significant amount of squid rearrangement, he settled in and began to read. Had he bothered to look upwards during his inspection of the room, he may have decided to do something else.
Above Hector’s head, the chain connecting the library’s dedicated chandelier to the ceiling finally gave in to the throes of time. Several links had become corrupted by the same energy that had destroyed a number of books, lasting a few minutes longer only due to their material and distance from the origin of the spatial rupture. There was a sharp snap, and the chandelier came down.
For the second time that day (or night - he wasn’t really sure), Hector groaned and pushed himself away from the floor. The fallen chandelier had crushed the nearest bookshelf, clipping his chair and sending him to the ground amidst hundreds of shards of broken glass, earning him a nasty-looking gash on his lower leg. Once more he found his spectacles, a few inches away, to be miraculously undamaged. Thankfully, he hadn’t landed on his tentacled companion nor the silkworm, although his satchel of gold dust had been torn open near the top, spilling a few pinches’ worth of shimmering powder across the floorboards.
After checking skywards for any additional chandeliers, Hector looked at the scattered remains of his short-lived reading session and sighed, the events of the past hour or so weaving their way back into his mind. This kind of interruption was not among those he particularly enjoyed, although it was undoubtedly better than some involving angry parents and screaming children. The racket may have attracted prying eyes - eyes he decided he’d most likely not want to run into - and the room no longer held his interest. Shaking away the image of what could have been a pleasant hour of reading, Hector stumbled out of the room and into the mansion beyond.