Stars shone in the velvet that was the night sky. The moon, like some distant mother, stood watch over the landscape below. It beheld the sight of sweeping, gothic architecture that loomed over alleyways, streets, sewers and impasses. The gloaming concealed the figures of lost, futile vagrants that were stuck in this labyrinthine visage of spires and archways.

The streets were illuminated by some aethereal light that come out of everything and nothing, confusing and beautiful. Metal walls gleamed in ways that were unfathomable and deep in all concerns. Brick was an alabaster-red, a hue that dazzled the eye and tricked the mind.

One vagrant in the city was not lost, merely wandering the twisted ghoul-city. In one hand was grasped a round shield that became a blade at its edge. It sliced through the air as the man’s arm gently swung while he walked. His face was solemn, holding eyes that seen many battles and lived to keep them secret. His mouth was curled slightly at its ends, a whispering grin that showed he was care-free in most exploits. His gait was nonchalant and stepped with bare feet upon jagged vertexes that drew blood. Such pain was not noticeable within his expression.

Timaeus was at peace in this city. It was one he had visited many times on his errands as the Gods’ Messenger. The buildings leaped at the sky, tearing through several dimensions and rifts, folding in on themselves at impossible angles that made the Angel think in ways that made him calm and resolute. He felt the air unlike most did; He walked through the realm’s presence as one would wade through the swathes of some sea.

At the epicenter of the plane-folds there was one building that defied all logic. It danced into the sky to infinite heights, and yet managed to have a spire at its top and an ending at the bottom. Within, concealed by many angles of chaotic warp-metal, were rooms that ripped through each other in directions that could not exist, unlimited spaces of bleach-white walls that peeled and sagged in on themselves, squeezing through places that made natural law sick and disgusted to a point that it was almost lacked of entirely.

Towards this building Timaeus walked, scarping his bloodied feet in a continuous pattern. His journey took him past windows that revealed pale lights that were prominent against the dim backdrop of the city about him. Gargoyles hunched at the precipices of roofs, snarling in rage at the pathways below. Cold winds blew through the streets, billowing through physical substance and moving objects to new destinations. Clouds slowly began to ripple across the horizons, encroaching upon an empty space at the sky’s centre, a bullet-hole in the shroud.

As if in some kind of stubborn, half-witted refusal, the clouds, plump with rain, held their load tight within their stomachs, but only for a few minutes. Water began to fall from the sky, leaving almost now air between the drops that were thick and warm as freshly-oozed pus. Timaeus’ sods were placed in water inches thick, which sluiced around his legs like the aether-thick air.

He arrived at his destination, saturated. Like a rose, it shot up, thorny and spiked, with random blooms of twisted architecture jumping outwards from the irregular form of the base. Timaeus exhibited a relaxed, loving glance as his eyes strayed across the looming construct before him. It was the only place he had the capacity to call home. The light around seemed to be in lack on the figure of the building, as if the darkness clung to it with some fervent longing.

Timaeus brought his feet through the water and onto the dry, bent steps and sauntered up towards the threshold. As he stepped through the gargantuan, dark oak doors, he was welcomed by an ashy smell and an intense heat that made his skin crawl with pleasure and anxiety. The floor was a caliginous red marble, streaked with traces of grey. Gas-lamps hung on the walls, casting a sepia-glow across the room, and the air seemed to catch it also. The air was muggy and close, but stirred slightly by some inter-dimensional breeze. It filled his lungs, and he exhaled it with a new-found vigour. His blood pumped.

Then, in his peripherals, some dark, hazy figure ran through the half-light. His eyes tried to follow it, but for some reason unbeknownst to him, he could not. He chased it through a door; a room with alabaster walls; a stairway of infinite length; a brass and steel room; darkness. Darkness. He fumbled, fingers slipping across edges that were unfamiliar and made him start suddenly at every touch. He felt some lost emotion, like a light in the congealing dark. After much fumbling and knee-knocking, bending double after unknowingly crashing into concealed corners, he ascertained that the room had no exits. Blood. Blood.

He smelt blood. He felt the red.

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