Sense Donation

[*Taurus Daggerknight]

The following is submitted to the Private Sensorium.

You feel exhausted. Not in the way one feels after physical exertion, but from a night of festivities. The sound of the minstrels drums and strings continues to play silently in your head, and the smell of incense and spice has not quite left your nostrils.  Although the feast itself wrapped up hours ago, your night is not quite over. Nights like these come only once a year, and you intend to make the most of it  with your friends and kinsmen before you return to your lands the day after tomorrow.

You  make your way up the stairs of the old villa, being careful to silence your steps  so as to not wake the elders of the house. From the top, you continue down a hall, hearing the others chatter away with less regard for those who chose to sleep the night away.  The door makes a loud and echoing creaking noise, which only seems to get louder the slower you open it. You feel convinced that the door has a mind of its own, and is deliberately trying to thwart you. Regardless, you join the others.

You notice that some of the girls have also joined the group. This strikes you as unusual, though hardly surprising.  You momentarily muse over the kind of volcanic reaction the grown ups of the families would have if they caught wind of this as you approach the apparent circle formed in the centre of the room.

One of the boys in the group motions you over, calling your name. The others are focused on something being passed between each other. Some look curious, some are laughing hysterically.  As you get closer, you see a large and heavy looking book. It looks old... very old... definitely something out of the estates fairly large library.

One of the boys in the group takes the book, stands up and starts a mock recitation. He strings together a bunch of gibberish words, but does so with the expression of an angry priest lecturing a prankster. You join the others in laughter at his surprisingly accurate depiction. Yet despite the amusement, there is something nagging at the back of your mind. In a strange way, you almost -feel- the weight of the book just by looking at its distantly familiar cover and pages.
The tome is casually tossed into your arms. Those gathered seem convinced that you can pull off a better priests performance, and insist that you read them a sermon. Ignoring the  minor disturbance, you re-open the heavy cover and flip to a random page, eyes taking in the bizarre writing.  A sense of surprise overwhelms you, both at the text not being written in Civic (which the memory seems to relate to Common), and the fact that you can none the less make out its meaning.  Without any special effort, you began a dramatic reading- not with the gibberish words of your friend, but actually reading out the text itself. 

The sequence of events becomes more hazy now, but two sensations remain constant; confusion, and more prominently, fear.

You can't quite place how or when things happen, but you simultaneously hear the same laughter  accompanied by terrified shrieks, smiles and smirks with sneers and bloodshot glares, all from faces familiar and unknown. You feel as if your skin is on fire, yet you are shivering as you fall off a height without your feet ever having left the ground you are standing on.

The world continues to spin and twist, fading in and out of your sight, until it suddenly stops and quite literally hits you in the face.

Your body aches for a moment, but the pain fades surprisingly quickly.  Something is in front of you.... gray, grainy. Too close for you to move much, but nothing is behind you, so you have room to move your arms back a little and push at the mass. Your hands contact a slightly wet spot of the surface, and you manage to push your upper body away from it.

As your vision re-adjusts, you realize it was a pavement, your hands having landed into a small puddle.  Your ears regain use with your eyes, and you  hear  hundreds of voices around you.  You look up, confused, and if your heart skips several beats. There are make shift stalls around you, filled with strange looking objects, jewels, exotic fruits (at least they look vaguely like fruits) you haven't heard of... and weapons. So many weapons! Yet it isn't the goods in these raggedy tents that hold your attention, but the patrons and owners...

Demons! You are surrounded by demons!

You scamper backwards, unable to stand just yet, looking here and there across the area. To your left is a robed figure, its oddly shaped head crowned by white hair awkwardly standing up. He isn't walking, but floating! You blink, convinced it's some trick of the senses, but no! This man is floating above the ground!

The other monstrosities in this place- this market- don't seem to have a care for the floating man. Nor, for that matter, each other. Armoured men adorned with blood caked spikes and  wicked looking masks seem not at all distracted by the barely clothed women sporting wings and horns. The fiery eyed lady with obsidian skin seems not at all disturbed by the -thing- with the head of an octopus casually wandering past her shop.

Almost forgetting to breath,  you tremble as you continue to scan your environment. It's not just the creatures around you... the sky! The sky is like you've never seen before... its colour is more alike to a painted canvas than any morning, afternoon or night you have ever known. There is not a cloud in sight, nor stars nor moon, but instead a massive half ring reaching from the horizon. A gigantic archway reaching so far  past where your eyes can see. It seems warped almost...

The sight disturbs you, so you return your gaze back down to sights that you're not sure are much better. Further away, you see an actual, real life minotaur! Like the ones from the murals! Again, none seem to pay heed, none nearly as alarmed as you feel. The beast is locked in a pen, as if it were cattle, with another one of those octopus headed things on the other side.

You realize you are still on the ground, but can't decide if you dare rise or simply crawl to some hidden place where these monsters might not yet see you.  A small amount of reassurance comes as you spot human beings in the crowd. Warriors from the looks, not in the same horrific mail as the other figures, but still their clothing is strange. The closest you can relate it to is that of the  northern barbarians with their leggings, but there is still something off about it.

You reluctantly begin to rise. No one seems to notice, so you nervously take a step back. Big mistake! You bump into a massive, hulking, green skinned beast of a man (if that is what he is). He looks almost like a real life version of the most mocking depiction of a barbarian. His glare, however, pushes any humour this might draw out of your mind, and sends you scampering away, closer into the heart of the market place, where you trip over a basket. The accident, and your obvious state of panic, elicits jeers from the many denizens of the area. You make out the word "clueless" being muttered by several, including the short dwarf of a man from the stall you just bungled into.

You crawl up to one of the tent poles, barely getting to your feet, and find yourself surrounded by monsters and misshapen men, women and beasts. Laughing, smirking, snarling... you are an afternoons entertainment for them. Humiliated and terrified. 

At the moment, a horrible realization that you have died and been condemned to the Underworld begins to sink in.