05 🍎 No sight of solid ground and never look straight down

[sauntervaguelydownwards]

[Open spam (starters?)]
[The livery stables are disgusting. As if it wasn't enough to have huge, stinking live horses around, they have to deal with their inanimate remains and bulking spectral forms. He was happy to leave them but displeased to find himself in the Guardsmen's Tower, though luckily it seems diversions work as well with ghosts as live people. He tarries for a bit in the Banquet Hall, unable to resist spooking a few of the ghosts (if you'll pardon the pun). The ballroom proves trickier, and the crowd fights him before he gives in to the dance.*

It's in the Menagerie that he really loses his nerve. He thought it was filled only with particularly evocative statues, but that was before noticing the life in their eyes. That's when he decides to leave -- made more difficult by the swarm of astral serpents and the thump of approaching footsteps.

This is all too oddly familiar for comfort.]


[Video]
[When Crowley broadcasts it's from a cell in the guest rooms. Behind him the Stern Woman reads aloud from her book, intoning his sins. Not all the speech is audible: "lies," "temptation," "corruption," and "damnation" are repeated. He seems entirely unconcerned by this, even relaxed.]

Right, that's it, I'm throwing in the towel. I got past the guards, the overexcitable diners, the dancers**, and the spectral worms and giant robot in the freakish statue gallery. [He grimaces; that was one of the more disturbing places he's been.] Why is it always giant robots with you people?

This place is safer than anywhere else I've seen. I'm staying here. [He powers up his iPod and puts on a pair of earbuds.] I'll go back to the Mezzanine later. Text me if I miss anything.



*It's not as stupid as it sounds.
**This occasion marks the first time since 1886 that Crowley was grateful he knew how to waltz.

Comments

[sauntervaguelydownwards]

Are you telling me all I'd have to do is throw a slip of paper in its mouth and it'd leave me alone?

[forsaken_queen]

[There's a brow raise.]

What world are you from, that has such weak magic, that bits of paper can undo it?

[sauntervaguelydownwards]

That's how you command it, not undo it. How do you control a golem here?

[forsaken_queen]

You build it yourself and bring it to life. Unless someone else is able to interfere with your magic, or you're just a poor mage, then it will obey your commands always.

[sauntervaguelydownwards]

Someone should be able to interfere.

[forsaken_queen]

The mage who made that particular guardian is not likely to have an equal among the Barge denizens.

[sauntervaguelydownwards]

How powerful do you have to be to make a golem?

[forsaken_queen]

Do I look like a member of the Kirin Tor? Ask Arthas, he used to sleep with a mage.

[sauntervaguelydownwards]

I don't have time to ask all the things I need to in order to understand that sentence.

[forsaken_queen]

Then languish in your ignorance.

[sauntervaguelydownwards]

No. Honour me with your knowledge, o wise one.

[forsaken_queen]

No.

[Sarcasm gets you only one thing. A dead connection.]