Professor Hagberg stood by the shore and watched the world in front of him turn to dust. Trees, plants, rocks and even animals dissolved into a black, coarse powder as an invisible hand combed the horizon. Not even the water stood a chance.
A normalised world, he thought.
He pulled up his left sleeve and inspected the scar tissue on his pale arm. Crude cuts that while healed now still formed a paradox in the symbolic language of grammar magic. He ran his fingers over the markings; like visible veins empty on blood, or hollow sculptures that lost their meaning.
The grinding crept closer, and left a silent landscape of black powder behind. The grass in front of him transformed as the inevitable came closer. The grinding was all about its by-product; if it wasn't for the terrible fact that it turned you into a powder, you wouldn't ever notice it.
It swept past a rock (turning it into dust) and continued onto his foot.
Nothing happened. Not even a tickling feeling.
I must admit, he thought as the grinding went over him and turned everything but him to dust, I'm a bit disappointed. It could've least tickled.
As the grinding continued on behind him, he burrowed his feet into the ground. Like a shovel, he lifted a patch of black dust into the air and let the wind catch it.
Fascinating. Tiny particles. Little entities. Just like she said.
He gazed over the black landscape that once was both water and hills. Though dust, it had kept its elevation so the silhouette of the area remained.
Let's see if these little entities remember anything, he thought and raised his arms. As he vocalized the strange symbolic language behind grammar magic, the millions and millions of dust particles in front of him slowly regained their previous colours. They started to lump together into bigger and bigger shapes.
Fascinating, he thought as the landscape returned to its former shape. It worked. It even rebuilt that poor fisherman over there, eye-patch and all.
(To be continued.)
The Pipeworks
1 day ago