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Once settled nearerish the wall, you channel your deep magycks, enhanced by such matters as being in an actual cave, and your god-blood, and of course your pure heart. You envision yourself on one of those better-illustrated book covers: sword in hand, gilded hair whipping about, gilded cape also whipping about (God, you need a cape), surrounded by your magyckal energies, wearing a fierce-but-not-too-scary expression. An intense expression. A <span class="mu-i">cool</span> expression. You'd be attempting to make the expression, but you don't have much in the way of a face, so you just envision, envision, draw upon your brimming well of power—
«Wait. What exactly are you—»
<span class="mu-i">—execute.</span> Your well of power empties in a woosh, and the ground shakes in turn. It shakes! Ha! Suck it, Richard, firstly, and secondly—
"Shit!"
The wind is knocked out of you before you can comprehend much of anything: the wind is knocked out of you, and you are sideways and achy on the ground, and Richard is crouched in an odd way above you, and you're in your body again, and there is a <span class="mu-i">lot</span> of dust in the air. You process these things in this order, and take shallow gasping breaths as Richard stands and brushes a coating of rock shards and gravel bits off his sweater. His sunglasses are opaque with dust, and he shoves them in his back pocket. He squints down at you again. "You're unharmed."
It's a statement, not a question, and as best as you can tell it's true. You pick yourself up after a moment and stare out at the wall, or wall-remnants, as it were. You've collapsed it the whole length between the bend in the tunnel and the vending machine, spanning some dozen feet. "Oh."
"I'd rate your delusions as sufficiently powerful."
"My magyck," you say.
"Same thing." He stares out into the office, and you follow his gaze. It's still murky with dust, but you see enough to know it <span class="mu-i">is</span> an office— there's desks in it, and you know offices have desks. Admittedly quite a lot of the desks (and some chairs) are piled up as some kind of barricade in the back of the cavern, and a few more are lashed together to make an elevated platform of some sort, but they're definitely desks. There's wide yellow banners on all the walls, and some with odd paint splotches on them— is that a paint-covered target on the right wall? Hmm. There's also a yellow piece of fabric suspended by rope right up near the ceiling. A flag, maybe? Do offices have flags?
(3/4)
