12/09/20 Snippet, GHOST OF THE DEVIL-HORSE.

Odd device that should probably work out fine!

Hank had gathered us all together to show off — it’s hard to describe, actually. In outline it looked like a set of three tubes, fused together at one end, and… somehow indistinctly separate at the other end. And I mean ‘indistinctly:’ you couldn’t look at the other end directly. Your focus would just slide off, like the item was somehow so frictionless it affected your vision. Which is more or less what it was doing, I guess.

The experience didn’t bother me, and I could see that Barbara was also interested, not revulsed. But most of the humans avoided looking at the artifact for very long, and the two elves and one orc in the group both looked like they were ready to smash it on general principles. From Hank’s nod, he was expecting all of our reactions. 

“Don’t worry!” he said as he covered the item again with the cloth. “It’s called a spectral reverberator, and it’s harmless. The folks at the UNV High Magic lab came up with it last year while researching the interaction between clinical necromancy and deep psychometry; there’s nothing forbidden, nothing corruptive about it.”

Well, that was reassuring.