drewtheline: (Default)
Artemiy Burakh ([personal profile] drewtheline) wrote in [community profile] towerofanimus2013-05-13 05:03 pm

In which the Haruspex awakens...

Characters: Artemiy Burakh and you
Setting: Room 2-10 and basically all over the dorm levels
Format: Starting out prose, will match
Summary: Artemiy wakes up in the tower, and needless to say, it's quite a stressful and confusing situation.
Warnings: Weird existential crises and prosey talking!

Artemiy could feel himself waking, the urge to open his eyes and roll out of his reclined position filling his senses. He could only manage to half-open his eyes, though, drowsiness overpowering him as though sleep were trying to drag him back downwards. When he managed to open his eyes more than halfway, white nothingness above him was all he could see, the intense light causing a prominent pain in his temples. Sleep was beginning to let go. As he attempted to roll over and push himself up, though, he found himself at a loss...

His body was limp, and numb, every limb filled with a weakness as though instead of muscle, his bones were wrapped with cotton stuffing. He felt like a doll, thrown and sprawled on the floor, unable to move without a child's hand and imagination directing his actions. The sensation stretched on for what felt like an eternity...

So, it was true then. The childrens' game had ended, and with it, his entire life and his hometown in the Steppe. He'd fulfilled his role as The Haruspex, and as much as he'd tried to deny it as horrible make believe, as a waking dream, an illusion brought on by the strange nature of the Polyhedron, he found the truth undeniable now. Artemiy Burakh, a child's toy, had been tossed aside in a stiff and lifeless heap, perhaps never to be played with again.

Rigor mortis, the Bachelor probably would've declared at his sorry state, all too happy to throw out one of his latin phrases, especially a medical one... He caught himself wondering if all of the others were finding themselves in the same position as him. The Adherents, the Inquisitor, the General and his toy soldiers... stuffed away in a toy box now that their entertainment value had run its course.

The Haruspex was just beginning to accept his fate, forever staring up into the nothingness that was left of his world, a lifeless doll forgotten in the sand and left to collect dust for ever, when suddenly control was given back to him.

He gasped for air as all of the heavy weight on his chest was suddenly lifted, his arms and legs curling inward as he shot upright, sitting on a bed. Artemiy was breathing heavily and coughing, patting his chest, trying to clear his lungs of the stale air that had filled him during his paralysis. After a moment, he found himself reaching up and touching his eyes, pressing his fingers into his eyelids. Those onlooking may have viewed it as an action of rubbing the sleep away, but his fingers were gentle and methodical, feeling them with the inspective touch of a surgeon. He was pleasantly surprised to find that his eyeballs were still in place; there were no buttons sewn into his eyesockets...

Had it all been a dream after all? But then, where was he? Why had he awoken in this strange place, a white room filled with four beds and an assortment of furniture? Some of the room looked rather inhabited as well. Looking at the night stand beside him, Artemiy noticed a few letters waiting for him, an all too familiar sight which filled him with... nostalgia? His time in the town somehow felt now past and distant, enough so that even just finding letters on a bedstand was enough to make him sick to his stomach with an empty sadness.

He read the first one:

"Your world has been destroyed. I saved you. Let's all be happy here."

It was addressed from no one.

The throbbing pain was returning to Artemiy's head, and he set aside the papers to grip at it with his gloved hands. He couldn't even be bothered to read the other letters, as the implications of that single phrase, "Your world has been destroyed," sent his mind reeling. He began to speak his thoughts aloud, a soliloquy for nearby spectators.

"So this preposterous claim of puppetry... it's the truth, then. My whole world was nothing more than a sand castle built from the earth, the Authorities not more than mere children setting actors in motion upon a stage... And the curtain has now fallen."

The Haruspex rose to his feet, taking a stumbling step forward, groaning with a dark and brooding voice. "More than ever, I could use a bottle of poison twyrine in my veins..."
greyerrant: (Default)

[personal profile] greyerrant 2013-06-23 02:49 am (UTC)(link)
"The only way a soldier's tale ever ends." He says, without elaborating further walking with Artemiy, and says, "Why are you unhappy about it having a good ending, then?"