Post by tenedir on Jan 29, 2008 16:42:01 GMT -5
In the top room of a rather disorganized tower, a scruffy-looking human wearing a chalk-covered bathrobe sits, snoring loudly. His hair was once, perhaps, a copper color, but has since grayed and frayed, becoming unkempt, and it appears not to have been cut in years, but merely shunted aside and propped up in a ponytail with a piece of ragged string. His latest snore stutters, and he opens his eyes wide, yawning, before glancing out the window and scratching himself on the back of the neck.
"Another dreary day, mm? Well then, I'd best get started."
Tenedir smiles wanly before shunting a clutter of miscellaneous papers off his desk, nodding and yawning again as they collect in surprisingly organized stacks on the floor. He motions behind him, and the room clears, the disorganization so apparent previously more a reflection of the chaos his fitful dreams create than an indication of a particularly untidy mind. Smiling, he pulls a crescent pastry from the air and munches on one end absentmindedly while surveying the room with a rather chilly, clinical gaze.
Satisfied, he flicks his wrist once, and his robes clean themselves, the chalk upon them reassembling itself into a usable chunk, and he kneels down to begin drawing once more. The pattern is a simple one, at first; circles within circles, squares within squares, but at some undefinable point it becomes infinitely more complicated, lines that previously seemed clear mixing with others until the entire thing is a glowing, roiling, indecipherable mass of turquoise light.
He mutters to himself:
"Story of my life, innit? Hope this version works. I figure it'll be easier with real memories, but I haven't gotten illusions to work properly just yet..."
The sigil expands, taking up more and more room until it covers the ground, walls, and ceiling of the cylindrical room, lines etching themselves into stone and wood, ash and willow, netherweave and runecloth. The mage watches passively as the lines grow across his robe, his skin...
...And he finds himself, for the first time in many years, in Tirisfall Glade. Not the dark, acrid, corrupted place the attentions of the Scourge and Forsaken have made it, but a simple, beautiful place, where still the trees blow in the autumn breeze, and the seed-crops grow, sprouts pushing themselves from the ground, furiously racing to reach the sunlight. He falls back, landing spread-eagled in a field of grass and flowers, and his body seems to drift away into a mist, like a passing cloud that has been blown away by a blustering gout of laughter.
In the distance, the progenitor of this laughter becomes obvious: Three young children are running haphazardly through the marrow-stalks, the ebullience in their cries as pronounced as the snapping of reeds beneath their feet, the soft thumps of their footsteps like the patter of raindrops in a storm as they chase each other in broad, circling patterns. Eventually they stop to rest where the old mage until recently stood, and here they, too, fall backwards in a viscous heap, scrambling away from each other until each of them lies still, panting and staring into the now-cloudless sky.
"Another dreary day, mm? Well then, I'd best get started."
Tenedir smiles wanly before shunting a clutter of miscellaneous papers off his desk, nodding and yawning again as they collect in surprisingly organized stacks on the floor. He motions behind him, and the room clears, the disorganization so apparent previously more a reflection of the chaos his fitful dreams create than an indication of a particularly untidy mind. Smiling, he pulls a crescent pastry from the air and munches on one end absentmindedly while surveying the room with a rather chilly, clinical gaze.
Satisfied, he flicks his wrist once, and his robes clean themselves, the chalk upon them reassembling itself into a usable chunk, and he kneels down to begin drawing once more. The pattern is a simple one, at first; circles within circles, squares within squares, but at some undefinable point it becomes infinitely more complicated, lines that previously seemed clear mixing with others until the entire thing is a glowing, roiling, indecipherable mass of turquoise light.
He mutters to himself:
"Story of my life, innit? Hope this version works. I figure it'll be easier with real memories, but I haven't gotten illusions to work properly just yet..."
The sigil expands, taking up more and more room until it covers the ground, walls, and ceiling of the cylindrical room, lines etching themselves into stone and wood, ash and willow, netherweave and runecloth. The mage watches passively as the lines grow across his robe, his skin...
...And he finds himself, for the first time in many years, in Tirisfall Glade. Not the dark, acrid, corrupted place the attentions of the Scourge and Forsaken have made it, but a simple, beautiful place, where still the trees blow in the autumn breeze, and the seed-crops grow, sprouts pushing themselves from the ground, furiously racing to reach the sunlight. He falls back, landing spread-eagled in a field of grass and flowers, and his body seems to drift away into a mist, like a passing cloud that has been blown away by a blustering gout of laughter.
In the distance, the progenitor of this laughter becomes obvious: Three young children are running haphazardly through the marrow-stalks, the ebullience in their cries as pronounced as the snapping of reeds beneath their feet, the soft thumps of their footsteps like the patter of raindrops in a storm as they chase each other in broad, circling patterns. Eventually they stop to rest where the old mage until recently stood, and here they, too, fall backwards in a viscous heap, scrambling away from each other until each of them lies still, panting and staring into the now-cloudless sky.