Re: MORITURI TE SALUTANT!! [S!4]
04-13-2012, 02:47 PM
Originally posted on MSPA by Agent1022.
“Anyone?”
The plaintive voice drifted through the old, abandoned halls of the manor, lightly shaking the cobwebs, rippling through the motes of dust hanging in the occasional moonbeam. Where it could through the rippling sky, moonlight shone down onto Shrewdish Manor – into Shrewdish Manor, through holes in walls and ceilings eaten and smashed by the elements, by decades of storms and chaos. Luna’s soft white reflected light played on the worn wooden floors, worming into crevices and illuminating their microscopic chasms, a million bas-relief shards of black and white fraying the world into momentary checkerboards.
It played blandly on Sam’s face as he peered up at the moon through the crack torn through the ceiling and wall, and refracted through strands of messy hair as he looked away, his attention consumed with the creaking floor and the voice he followed.
“Is s-someone there?”
A storm cloud blew across the moon once more, pitching the manor back into its night unnatural, punctuated only by the mysterious glow of its ever-burning, unreal lamps hung in nonexistent brackets where no walls remained. Sam stopped to examine one, passing his fingers through the immaterial flame, and felt instead of pain only a piercing coldness down to his heart; a cold that screeched of death and unlife, of the cursed, discarded and broken functionaries of a hateful universe. He tore his hand from the burning image, and ran, pell-mell, down the corridor…
“H-help…”
The voice was louder; a young woman’s, calling out with a forced effort that marked fatal injury, or a slow, agonizing death. It grew like a miasma as Sam ran, melding with its echoes and peaks and becoming more than a sound, changing the air about him into solid, endless requiem for death and grievance.
“Ahhhh!”
The cry was an old one – it had rung for years, loud and miniscule in this schism of a world; it had been worn into the wood and brass of the walls, of the furniture and doors, warping them ever so slightly into strange and twisted forms – forms that suggested to the curious, wandering eye that they, too, were screaming in unison, in chorus with the pearlescent ghost that stood in the doorway. She wore the clothes of an explorer, Sam saw as he barreled forward, arms flung out to break his fall, worn khaki uniform and broken-in boots. He landed, roughly, amid the ghost’s whimpers and cries for help.
“Miss?” He cringed – it seemed so demeaning to call any woman ‘miss’, in this day and age (though what day and age he was in seemed as fluid as the origin of that feeling; a memory teased the corner of his consciousness, but on reflex he flicked it aside) “H-hello?”
The ghost whirled on her central axis, and turned on her visitor. For a moment her eyes focused – but the next it was gone; her form fading slowly as she floated away – and Sam clambered to his feet, and followed.
The boots had not worn away, nor had the tough khakis, but the explorer’s skeleton still lay prone where it had fallen. Her ghost quailed incoherently above it for a moment, then slid away without another sound – fading into the dust and substance of the air. He stared at the clothes for a moment, hesitating between respect, curiosity, and safety – and curiosity won out, as it usually did with him.
As he slipped out of his corduroys, he felt the strange cognitive dissonance that he always did (as well as the stirrings of memories he fought to quell, like forcing vomit down back down to its hellish, stinging source), and pulling on the uniform brought with it the same – only of a different brand; every person’s clothes gave a different set of uneasinesses and discomfitures, tailored to their beings. There was also the fact that he was pulling on a dead person’s clothes. At first the clothes hung and squeezed unfittingly on his frame, but in a swift moment
things
changed
Sir Gregory Sarfassian was born in 1910 to cruel parents, who had wanted a boy. Using her name to fool clerks across the world, she had become an explorer for the Crown – an explorer to show them, a successful explorer to spite them, and a treasure hunter to outdo them. A slew of profitable yet exhausting forays into the jungle brought her eyes closer to civilization, and to her ears came the story of Shrewdish Manor; the story of its treasure untouched for twenty years.
She had been cocky to think that old manors would be easier than ancient temples. She had shrugged off stories of other treasure seekers that had never returned from the manor on the tarn, waved them away like so much rumor and myth – nonsense!
The uniform oozed that arrogance and confidence; it had soaked it up from her being, in the same way it had soaked up her blood as it flowed from her wounds – she had gone alone before, why would a ratty old mansion be any different?
Because mansions were not temples; traps in mansions had not had a thousand years to wear out and erode; mansion-builders had had access to much better technology and it was perfectly plausible to set racks of spring-loaded arrows ready to fire at those who made a fatal misstep.
twang
Sam fought his way through Sir Gregory’s memories as a set of arrows buried themselves neatly in the wall beside his head; instinct (perhaps not his) propelled him as he lunged low, keeping his body tight together, a minimal target – only to hear an almost imperceptible, dismaying click.
twang
A section of planking rolled back, neatly, as arrows unfurled from their still-operational springs – metal-tipped shafts of lethality singing a song of death-
Only to burn up on their way there; their ashes lightly sprinkled her face. Looking up through the smoke, Sam glimpsed a strange figure, pointing the gauntlet on his arm where the arrows had been.
<font color="#000080">“Are you all right, lady?”
Wait, lady?</font>
“Anyone?”
The plaintive voice drifted through the old, abandoned halls of the manor, lightly shaking the cobwebs, rippling through the motes of dust hanging in the occasional moonbeam. Where it could through the rippling sky, moonlight shone down onto Shrewdish Manor – into Shrewdish Manor, through holes in walls and ceilings eaten and smashed by the elements, by decades of storms and chaos. Luna’s soft white reflected light played on the worn wooden floors, worming into crevices and illuminating their microscopic chasms, a million bas-relief shards of black and white fraying the world into momentary checkerboards.
It played blandly on Sam’s face as he peered up at the moon through the crack torn through the ceiling and wall, and refracted through strands of messy hair as he looked away, his attention consumed with the creaking floor and the voice he followed.
“Is s-someone there?”
A storm cloud blew across the moon once more, pitching the manor back into its night unnatural, punctuated only by the mysterious glow of its ever-burning, unreal lamps hung in nonexistent brackets where no walls remained. Sam stopped to examine one, passing his fingers through the immaterial flame, and felt instead of pain only a piercing coldness down to his heart; a cold that screeched of death and unlife, of the cursed, discarded and broken functionaries of a hateful universe. He tore his hand from the burning image, and ran, pell-mell, down the corridor…
“H-help…”
The voice was louder; a young woman’s, calling out with a forced effort that marked fatal injury, or a slow, agonizing death. It grew like a miasma as Sam ran, melding with its echoes and peaks and becoming more than a sound, changing the air about him into solid, endless requiem for death and grievance.
“Ahhhh!”
The cry was an old one – it had rung for years, loud and miniscule in this schism of a world; it had been worn into the wood and brass of the walls, of the furniture and doors, warping them ever so slightly into strange and twisted forms – forms that suggested to the curious, wandering eye that they, too, were screaming in unison, in chorus with the pearlescent ghost that stood in the doorway. She wore the clothes of an explorer, Sam saw as he barreled forward, arms flung out to break his fall, worn khaki uniform and broken-in boots. He landed, roughly, amid the ghost’s whimpers and cries for help.
“Miss?” He cringed – it seemed so demeaning to call any woman ‘miss’, in this day and age (though what day and age he was in seemed as fluid as the origin of that feeling; a memory teased the corner of his consciousness, but on reflex he flicked it aside) “H-hello?”
The ghost whirled on her central axis, and turned on her visitor. For a moment her eyes focused – but the next it was gone; her form fading slowly as she floated away – and Sam clambered to his feet, and followed.
The boots had not worn away, nor had the tough khakis, but the explorer’s skeleton still lay prone where it had fallen. Her ghost quailed incoherently above it for a moment, then slid away without another sound – fading into the dust and substance of the air. He stared at the clothes for a moment, hesitating between respect, curiosity, and safety – and curiosity won out, as it usually did with him.
As he slipped out of his corduroys, he felt the strange cognitive dissonance that he always did (as well as the stirrings of memories he fought to quell, like forcing vomit down back down to its hellish, stinging source), and pulling on the uniform brought with it the same – only of a different brand; every person’s clothes gave a different set of uneasinesses and discomfitures, tailored to their beings. There was also the fact that he was pulling on a dead person’s clothes. At first the clothes hung and squeezed unfittingly on his frame, but in a swift moment
things
changed
Sir Gregory Sarfassian was born in 1910 to cruel parents, who had wanted a boy. Using her name to fool clerks across the world, she had become an explorer for the Crown – an explorer to show them, a successful explorer to spite them, and a treasure hunter to outdo them. A slew of profitable yet exhausting forays into the jungle brought her eyes closer to civilization, and to her ears came the story of Shrewdish Manor; the story of its treasure untouched for twenty years.
She had been cocky to think that old manors would be easier than ancient temples. She had shrugged off stories of other treasure seekers that had never returned from the manor on the tarn, waved them away like so much rumor and myth – nonsense!
The uniform oozed that arrogance and confidence; it had soaked it up from her being, in the same way it had soaked up her blood as it flowed from her wounds – she had gone alone before, why would a ratty old mansion be any different?
Because mansions were not temples; traps in mansions had not had a thousand years to wear out and erode; mansion-builders had had access to much better technology and it was perfectly plausible to set racks of spring-loaded arrows ready to fire at those who made a fatal misstep.
twang
Sam fought his way through Sir Gregory’s memories as a set of arrows buried themselves neatly in the wall beside his head; instinct (perhaps not his) propelled him as he lunged low, keeping his body tight together, a minimal target – only to hear an almost imperceptible, dismaying click.
twang
A section of planking rolled back, neatly, as arrows unfurled from their still-operational springs – metal-tipped shafts of lethality singing a song of death-
Only to burn up on their way there; their ashes lightly sprinkled her face. Looking up through the smoke, Sam glimpsed a strange figure, pointing the gauntlet on his arm where the arrows had been.
<font color="#000080">“Are you all right, lady?”
Wait, lady?</font>
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