It was while Alter paused to think over his reply that the serving wench from earlier knocked on the door. In her passing whisper, Iarei had asked the woman to bring up the tray after a little while. Realistically, it was so that if Iarei hadn't liked Alter she could use the interruption as a means to getting him kicked out of the inn (as an imposter, of course), but now she accepted the mug of indistinguishable clear liquid and stew with a graceful smile.
Alter was muttering something non-distinct -- assurances about good behavior and how he was certain that the stipulations offered were no trouble, no trouble at all -- when Iarei noticed that the odd and regular pounding noise she was absentmindedly paying attention to was not, in fact, from the footsteps of the wench who'd delivered her tray. "Shht." She offered by way of explanation to Alter's queries after her attention, holding up a finger with a fierce frown.
She was sitting on the cramped edge of the bed, tray perched forlornly in the middle, and she turned her head to look at where she perceived the noise was coming from, which was closer to the outer edge of the window. She sat still, and it was in that glance that she noticed the tray, full of stew and the mug of liquid, was doing its own little dance in time to the noises. Iarei looked to Alter quizzically, even as the man got up to pace over to the window and look out at what might be happening.
Iarei had a brief moment to consider the possibility of warning Alter that it might be better to go back downstairs to see what was up before getting too near to the window, of which its shutters were vibrating at intervals quite visibly.
Then all hell broke loose.
One Creator
Re: One Creator
"Left! LEEEEEEEEEEEEFT, ye daft bugger!" Regibald's raving could barely be discerned over the gyroscopic tumult of machinery being strained to the limit. Small trees and shrubs succumbed to Gizmo's oppressive weight, throwing their arms up as the massive blue furball pressed them into the ground. Unfortunately, they had run out of large trees to brake their progress some time ago... Now, the only thing left was the inn. Again. Goldurn brakes...
They had abandoned their stations long ago, having grown dizzy and nauseous from the constant spinning as Gizmo surpassed every safety spec it was designed with, and resorted to leaning left and right on the gyroscopically leveled Living Room platform on the mechanical beast's equator. This move, though it seemed wise at the time, now left them without any safety harnesses. They struck the inn wall at gale force, and all three gnomes flew from the Living Room platform into the inner wall of Gizmo. From outside of the ten foot furball, three dull thuds might have been heard following the wreckage-begotten halt.
The three now lay at the bottom of Gizmo in a dazed pile. Regibald was moaning and groaning, and his son and grandson were both knocked out entirely. "Bloody useless, ye both are," he muttered as he tried to free himself of the gnome pile, without great success.
Alter, whose face had been practically pressed against the glass, was just on the other side of the plate Qasar was lying on, dragged down by the collapsing floor and crushed beneath Gizmo after getting his face mangled horribly by the shattered window glass. His lips were torn outward, as were his eyebrows, and his nose looked like a gory bulb of snot, giving his face the gruesome look of a flesh flower in bloom. The entire lower half of his body was flattened from the hips down, pushing the contents of his legs and pelvis up into his thorax and giving it the look of a hippo foetus that had been pumped full of blood until its soggy membrane was near bursting. All in all, the gnomes should have been thankful that they couldn't see it.
They had abandoned their stations long ago, having grown dizzy and nauseous from the constant spinning as Gizmo surpassed every safety spec it was designed with, and resorted to leaning left and right on the gyroscopically leveled Living Room platform on the mechanical beast's equator. This move, though it seemed wise at the time, now left them without any safety harnesses. They struck the inn wall at gale force, and all three gnomes flew from the Living Room platform into the inner wall of Gizmo. From outside of the ten foot furball, three dull thuds might have been heard following the wreckage-begotten halt.
The three now lay at the bottom of Gizmo in a dazed pile. Regibald was moaning and groaning, and his son and grandson were both knocked out entirely. "Bloody useless, ye both are," he muttered as he tried to free himself of the gnome pile, without great success.
Alter, whose face had been practically pressed against the glass, was just on the other side of the plate Qasar was lying on, dragged down by the collapsing floor and crushed beneath Gizmo after getting his face mangled horribly by the shattered window glass. His lips were torn outward, as were his eyebrows, and his nose looked like a gory bulb of snot, giving his face the gruesome look of a flesh flower in bloom. The entire lower half of his body was flattened from the hips down, pushing the contents of his legs and pelvis up into his thorax and giving it the look of a hippo foetus that had been pumped full of blood until its soggy membrane was near bursting. All in all, the gnomes should have been thankful that they couldn't see it.