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Hank closed his eyes for a brief moment of rest before facing the billowing clouds once more, but immediately opened them again with a start. He had a sudden strange feeling, as though something sinister had surprised him in a parallel dimension. It was as though... time had jumped, and he somehow felt as though nearly two months had passed in the last few seconds, but he could see that everything was just as it had been a moment ago. Could be an effect of the dark forces, he thought, but probably nothing.
He filed this thought away regardless, as strange things had become more common in the days leading up to the attack. Just two days ago, the postal service, one of the few government agencies still at full strength, suffered a bizarre incident where a full quarter of the capital's mail became laminated seemingly on its own, creating the worst of headaches for the postal administrator, Geromy. He had to explain the delay in delivery, which was unprecedented, to the public on the state-run news radio, which made him break out in all manner of bodily secretions. He was never a man for public speaking, and it was frankly a mystery among the entire post office how he had come to be the administrator in the first place. Some people are just better at interviewing, I suppose.
At any rate, Geromy was nervous as a rule, and all this business about impending attacks and dark lords or whatever made him wet himself nightly. He had taken to wearing diapers to bed, but they never seemed to quite hold it all in. He had been hoping that they seers and scientists were all wrong, that it was just a weather balloon or something, but now it looked like it was coming right to his doorstep. He stepped onto this very doorstep this day and promptly wet himself again.
"Shit." Going to have to change again, he thought to himself. A child who had been playing with some rubble and broken rebar across the street stared. Geromy quickly went back inside and toward the bedroom but was suddenly interrupted by a loud crash down the hall. It was impossible for someone to break in, his house being wedged between the walls of two other buildings which were made of brick. Could one of the cats have fallen off the play-swing...? He hustled over to the end of the hall, but upon looking through the door, let out a sigh of disbelief, and also a soft brown log.
There had appeared in the center of the dining room a wide whirling vortex of greenish dust, sinking down into what should have been the floor, but looked to be an incomprehensible expanse below. It seemed to at once be a field of stars, a pool of quicksand, and New Orleans during Hurricane Katrina. Geromy, being a man of reason, resigned himself to the unseeable forces dragging him into the vortex. He clearly had no skills or tools that could prevent whatever was about to happen. As he slid down into the swirling madness below, he looked behind him to see one of his cats looking at the brown streak he left behind with disgust. The cat retched and strode away as Geromy fell into unconsciousness, and also the vortex.
Geromy awoke to the stench of what must have been the most putrid dungeon he could possibly imagine. Opening his eyes, he saw it was actually a rather charming private library.
"God, you smell like shit," someone said nearby. "Sorry about the travel arrangements, but I couldn't risk revealing my location."
Geromy looked over and saw that the speaker was none other than the Capital's resident mad scientist, Kejardon. He tried to speak but all that came out was a guttural groan and a little pee.
"You'll be alright in a few minutes, don't worry. Although you're going to have to clean yourself up. I'm not going near that.
"While you're recovering I might as well tell you why I've brought you here. I've been doing some research and as it turns out, this attack we are currently experiencing has been foreshadowed for many years. I had to go back into the oldest of the POS archives to find the details, but the very same thing happened over nine thousand years ago in this very same region of POSspace. The war raged on for generations, but it finally came to a head when the two leaders fought in single combat. The name of the leader of the dark forces was never mentioned, but I was finally able to track down the kname of the knight who struck him down. Geromy. You are the direct descendant of this knight. You are the one who must take on the forces of evil and deliver us victory if we are to defeat these clowns of darkness. What do you say to that?"
Geromy opened his mouth to say something, but only drooled as he passed out again.
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