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Joseph
And every day you’re in this place
you’re two days nearer death.
But you goooooooooooooooo!
Music. Silence. A scream. A shout, a defiant and shouted assertion of right and claim. Silence once more. And then the beating of drums and the chorus of many voices singing as one. And drawing closer. “Two days nearer death,” he laughs quietly, “we’ll be a lot closer than that if the kid don’t find that damn candle soon.” Of course, he doesn’t need to stick around for all this......
To think that oaf would have carried me!
His outward bearing is that of a tired man simply climbing a set of stairs. Inwardly, however, he bristles at the thought of such a potential indignity. Physical comedy! That sort of bush league crap might be all right for the kid, but there’s been more than enough of the absurd, the foolish and the poorly considered about this whole affair. ~ It would be interesting indeed to do the sensible thing and simply leave these three to face their foolishness......
He removes an ivory tube from a hidden pocket in one of his sleeves. While Larry pauses in scrutiny of the shadows, he turns his own eyes to the gem stoppered seal upon the tube. With a whisper and a gesture he dispels the warding enchantment over the seal – a guy can’t afford to take any chances with magic like this – and then unstoppers the tube. His slender fingers withdraw a tightly coiled sheet of vellum which he holds carefully while he replaces the cap upon the scroll case and returns it to its concealed location.
The kid begins to mutter, finally catching what seems to be the correct tone of voice for the correct syllables – that damn language of power again. Of course it would be an imperative construction, these obscenely powerful despotic types are all the same that way. Command. Demand. Command again, and give a few extra orders for good measure. Is a little genuine art too damn much to ask? He sighs and then braces himself against the wall as he unrolls the vellum. The elegant script upon it is his own. Simply preparing the ink for this scroll was a long and expensive process, and the labor of writing such precisely formed and arranged characters...... But all great art demands such cost and such labor. He smiles.
The warrior steps forward and opens a great wooden door – apparently Larry found some way to bypass the door. Interesting. But there are more important matters to worry about than the kid’s awkward use of shadow related power, namely making sure the labor invested in this scroll is not wasted in a flawed casting. First things first however. Even from this position, a bit removed from the opening, the hoard within the chamber is breathtaking and he pauses a moment himself to indulge his eyes.
There is movement at the entrance to the chamber below.
He smiles. Options. The scroll has an enchantment of great power upon it, an enchantment that might either seal off this stairwell from the obviously hostile and dangerous force that has gathered below and provide a fitting signature to the art he has worked this day at such great cost...... Or it might separate this strange little group which has unaccountably survived so much in spite of inadequate planning from the stated object of this little mission. ~ Of course, the retrieval of a candle was never my object. ~ The irony of this would indeed be poetic, a thing of no small art should it be done well. He smiles at the thought.
Options.
His speech is soft and his cadences perfect and as he reads the words of he has scribed with so much effort and expense vanish one by one. Something gathers about him as he reads, a thing subtle and profound and perhaps it is not simply the great quantity of bejeweled and gilded objects within the vault that has caused the very air to shimmer with such a delicate beauty......
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