The Dresden Files / Bob / #05. Abyss
Title: The Face of the Abyss
Author: Cyloran
Fandom: The Dresden Files (tv-verse)
Character: Hrothbert
Prompt: 05. Abyss
Word Count: 262
Rating: G
Summary: "If you gaze long into an abyss, the abyss will gaze back into you." ~ Friedrich Nietzche
Disclaimer: The Dresden Files do not belong to me; just passing through.
Table: Here There be Ghosts
Hrothbert had seen this tableau before; so many times, in fact, that he had lost count more than a hundred years ago. The faces were always different but their expressions of horror never seemed to change.
The latest victim had long since soiled himself, the smell of human waste overpowered by the more acrid, noxious fumes from the potions that bubbled around him. Turning his head, he looked across the laboratory with terror-filled eyes. "Help me!" he pleaded. "Please help me!"
Hrothbert stood as rigid as if he had been carved of alabaster but the spectral hands that he clasped behind his back clenched ever so slightly. "I cannot."
"You have to help me! You can't just stand there! You can't just … just let him kill me!"
"He does not intend to kill you."
"Are you kidding?" The vagrant strained against the rune-inscribed bonds that bound him, hand and foot. "I'm trussed up like a Christmas turkey! Of course he's planning to kill me!" Fat tears rolled down his grime-smudged face. "And I don't even know why! I've never even met the guy!!"
"It is not his intent," Hrothbert repeated. But the thaumaturgic experiment that his present master planned to undertake with his assistance would no doubt result in something far, far worse. Before it was over, this hapless man would beg for death.
Impossible though it seemed, Hrothbert felt a twinge of pity and regret. As he heard the chamber door open and the tread of his master's return, the ghost lowered his gaze and said softly, "I am very sorry."
Author: Cyloran
Fandom: The Dresden Files (tv-verse)
Character: Hrothbert
Prompt: 05. Abyss
Word Count: 262
Rating: G
Summary: "If you gaze long into an abyss, the abyss will gaze back into you." ~ Friedrich Nietzche
Disclaimer: The Dresden Files do not belong to me; just passing through.
Table: Here There be Ghosts
Hrothbert had seen this tableau before; so many times, in fact, that he had lost count more than a hundred years ago. The faces were always different but their expressions of horror never seemed to change.
The latest victim had long since soiled himself, the smell of human waste overpowered by the more acrid, noxious fumes from the potions that bubbled around him. Turning his head, he looked across the laboratory with terror-filled eyes. "Help me!" he pleaded. "Please help me!"
Hrothbert stood as rigid as if he had been carved of alabaster but the spectral hands that he clasped behind his back clenched ever so slightly. "I cannot."
"You have to help me! You can't just stand there! You can't just … just let him kill me!"
"He does not intend to kill you."
"Are you kidding?" The vagrant strained against the rune-inscribed bonds that bound him, hand and foot. "I'm trussed up like a Christmas turkey! Of course he's planning to kill me!" Fat tears rolled down his grime-smudged face. "And I don't even know why! I've never even met the guy!!"
"It is not his intent," Hrothbert repeated. But the thaumaturgic experiment that his present master planned to undertake with his assistance would no doubt result in something far, far worse. Before it was over, this hapless man would beg for death.
Impossible though it seemed, Hrothbert felt a twinge of pity and regret. As he heard the chamber door open and the tread of his master's return, the ghost lowered his gaze and said softly, "I am very sorry."