It were several hours past high noon. At the summit of an endless aether the golden sun reigned supreme, radiating its magnificence boldly across the library and bathing the world in the light of day. From the heavens, delicate flakes of snow descended in a gentle and unbroken cascade, cloaking a vast city below in a shimmering white veil. At the library's outermost peak – twin ogreish statues crouched in eternal vigilance, their weathered forms now cloaked in snow with the coming of winter. The icy mantle lent an air of solemnity to their grotesque features, as the snowfall carried with it a subtle chill.
The library itself was a uncommon pyramidal structure, a towering triune of stone walls aligned in a triangular shape casting a sharp shadow to its left. Within were books to no end, stories old and new, famed and unheard, told and withered away in the voided black amongst endless other stories long forgotten. They stand aligned side-by-side like soldiers at war, stored between the wooden spaces of towering shelfs with their spines exposed and their covers hidden behind wooden shelter in a vast room of sixteenth century baroque fashion. The walls were paneled with mahogany, their rich grain catching the soft glow of the oil lamps. Above, a frescoed ceiling swirled with soft blues and vibrant golds while a crimson tapestry, its threads glinting faintly as it hung proudly by the hearth. An elaborately gilded settee stood in the corner of the room, its plush crimson cushions embroidered with floral motifs. The legs, carved like coiled serpents, seemed almost alive under the flickering lamplight vectored from chandeliers of gold-painted brass and crystal glass that bathed the inner library in a soft, flickering glow. Furthermore it was the opulent golden light streaming through stained glass windows adorned with scenes of mythic triumphs that basked the room in this prismatic veil. The many chandelier-held candles casted gentle light over a fashionable arrangement of scarlet-leathered couches. These elegant seats encircled a smooth-surfaced tea table, resting atop a walnut and pine checkered floor that gleamed like a polished chessboard. A grand staircase spiraled upwards in a sweeping curve, its gilded balustrade catching every flicker of candlelight. Against the wall stood a high-backed chair of dark walnut, its surface carved with the exploits of ancient heroes and the armrests ending in fierce lion heads. Above, the immense chandelier of crystal and brass cascaded like a frozen waterfall casting evermore prismatic glimmers onto the frescoed ceiling, alive with scenes of angels in tumultuous flight just as it did the furniture below. The higher atop what seemed to the eye as endlessly towering shelfs, the older the age of books thus the older the story, until at the mountainous peak of this pyramidal tower of a library, a single bookshelf contained manuscripts of torn and wornout pages with inked letters so old they may just tale about the genesis of the all-maker's creations.
But below, on the shallow ground of the grand library, seated at a lacquered table adorned with intricate carvings of twisting vines, feline paws and cherubic faces, was a figure who seemed insubstantial at a glance. His back slumped against an elaborate chair. Its high, curving backrest upholstered in crimson velvet with golden embroidery as his torso sprawled across the table's polished surface. Lost to a deep slumber, he drooled in an unbroken and steady stream onto the table's fine inlay of ivory and ebony, indifferent to the artistry around him.
Round glasses sat askew on his oversimplified face, their thin golden rims catching the flickering candlelight from the grand chandeliers above. He snored in equal rhythmic intervals, his breaths an almost musical contrast to the quiet stillness of the space. His hair, a pallette of pale white like the freshly fallen snow on the library's baroque sculptures, framed his face in disheveled strands. Dull grey eyes hidden behind closed lids would have mirrored the cold iron of a knight's armour had they been opened.
Beside him, a precarious tower of abandoned books rose as if all their contents had been studied, their embossed leather covers and gilded spines catching the glow of the library. Titles of long-forgotten wisdom and imaginative worlds seemed to have lost their taunt to him in their splendor. The opulence of the setting made his humble presence all the more jarring, a sleeping figure lost in the extravagance of a space built for scholars. The books towered with a slight leaning tilt and proclaimed boldly with their spines the following names from top to bottom in the given sequence: Letter From The Old One, Baasthion's Bible, The Book of the Living, The Necropandoreum, Fillmore's Old Testament and The Plutopian Codex.
The Letter from The Old One, as likely the most recently read collaboration of fictional texts, influenced an expressive passion within the boy whom had drawn onto paper what the Letter from Old One described with the first words written in dried, partly smoldered black ink on its pages. Thus the boy drew on his paper in form what he had extracted from the Letter from the Old One in words with a steady pencil. The Letter From the Old One spoke of creatures that poured down from under an arched ceiling built over an altar as inches beneath its cover opened a rift to reveal a black canvas, ever distant star-like lights glimmered in the midst of it. It were almost like a mere fraction of the infinite expanse of the night sky, cloudless, and colored dimly by the faint glow of faraway nebulas. The creatures could fit any obscure description of the uncanny. Alien, deamon or mutant - it mattered not what they were but they were many. Swarming in a downpour from the space-like expanse. Their bodies were serpentine in design, but spineless and composed of soft tissue cloaked under a transparent mucus. Boneless centipedal lumps of flesh sprouten from their sides, flexible like the tentacles of an octopus. Without eyes they somehow perceived their surroundings and opened what can only function as a mouth that were hidden under a slab of foreskin. Large, predatory teeth the creatures had flexed open and close through powerful muscles.
Painted with tempera over his delicate pencil sketches, the art piece before him was a collaboration of bright and muted tones that breathed life into the page, transforming it into a mythic mural. Each brushstroke seemed to give shape of a whisper of ancient tales and forgotten gods taken from the Letter From the Old One. As he slept ever so peacefully, the boy's current mission was to wait patiently for the paint to dry and the pigments to set before adding a new page to the unfinished manuscripts piled haphazardly atop the polished table. A glass paperweight anchored the twenty-one-by-twenty-two centimeter page – evidence of hours of meticulous artistic practice – keeping it firmly in place amidst the clutter. The table was carved with ornate flourishes and supported by lion-pawed legs and bore not just the weight of the sleeping boy, but also that of a string of finely woven deer gut, a needle and an assortment of minor accessories scattered as if abandoned mid-thought. The quiet harmony of the space steeped in golden light and suffused with the rich scent of drying paint was both serene and chaotic, a tableau of restless creativity frozen in time.
The hushing stillness that cloaked the library was soon shattered by the tumultuous rhythm of a whistling thunder cracked in a flash of crimson light beneath the vaulted ceiling where the hand-painted angels soared in eternal flight, with their forms frozen in celestial glory. Like an iron command the thudding crash bellowed with a bourdon's volume, stirring the boy abruptly awake in an unprovoked quaking disturbance. From the blinding flash a figure materialized whom at first glance was a stark contrast to the boy, now awake and at awe, blinded by the scarlet nebula that formed across of him. Her sudden feminine form was an angelic vision, her untanned porcelain skin glowing faintly in the chandelier's golden light and her naked body lay poorly cloaked under a veiled silken cover tracing her petite form as she was lost to a deep unconsciousness. Her breath paced with measured grace blew a gentle air, whispering against the polished checkered floor.
Her presence brought an immediate shift to the library's atmosphere, like a wolf stepping silently into a flock of helpless sheep. She settled gracefully across from the boy with cotton-white hair, reclined in a slumber gently against the uncushioned library floor that lacked finely padded upholstery. Her brunette hair cascaded as freely as a glimmering river as though under moonlight with its luster reflected in the soft glow of the surrounding oil lamps. Her lips were as red as freshly spilled blood and seemed all the more vivid under the chandelier's golden light, their fullness almost hypnotic.
The boy leapt from his seat decorated with the finest velvet upholstery in swift response, like a dazzling gazelle of caramel fur prancing out in the forest wild - and fixed his glasses in an the proper fashion to sit proportionate to his face. His tailored suit, crafted from heavy-weight fabrics, radiated vintage elegance and rugged charm. A charcoal-grey double-breasted waistcoat peeked from beneath a raven-black overcoat, paired with a matching flat cap he left abandoned on the table. His leather shoes bore no trace of snow or dampness and his eyes, dull and colorless, much like the muted tones of his attire - trailed the mysterious character and journaled her every feature. A soft, almost fading perfuming scent she emitted, reminiscent of the entrancing daisy flower - and that the boy hadn't fail to take notice of also as he visually inspected the doll-like mistress that had collapsed to the floor in a flashing bang.