If You're Reading This, It's Too Late - Original PDF
نویسندگان: Pseudonymous Bosch
خلاصه: he torch pierced the darknessThe torch slashed through the darknessThe torch beam sliced through the darkness like a swordThe torch beam darted – yes! – across the dark hall,illuminating a wondrous collection of antique curiosities.Finely illustrated tarot cards of wizened kings andlaughing fools . . . glistening Chinese lacquer boxes concealingspring traps and secret compartments . . . intricately carvedcups of wood and ivory designed for making coins andmarbles and even fingers disappear . . . shining silver ringsthat a knowing hand could link and unlink as if they weremade of air . . .A museum of magic.The circle of light lingered on a luminous crystal ball, asif waiting for some swirling image to appear on the surface.Then it hesitated on a large bronze lantern – once home,perhaps, to a powerful genie.Finally, the torch beam found its way to a glass displaycase sitting alone on top of a black pedestal in the middle ofthe room.‘Ha! At last!’ said a woman with a voice like ice.The man behind the torch snickered. ‘Who was it thatsaid the best place to hide something was in plain sight?What an idiot.’ His accent was odd, ominous.‘Just do it!’ hissed the woman.prologueGrasping the heavy torch tight in his gloved hand,the man brought it down like an axe. Glass shattered in acascade, exposing a milky-white orb – a giant pearl? – sittingon a bed of black velvet.Ignoring the sharp, glittering shards, the womanreached with a delicately thin hand – in a delicately thinwhite glove – and pulled out the orb.About the size of an ostrich egg, it was translucentand seemed almost to glow from within. The surface had ahoneycomb sort of texture comprised of many holes of varyingsizes. A thin band of silver circled the orb, dividing it into twoequal hemispheres.The woman pushed aside her white-blonde hair andheld the mysterious object to her perfectly shaped ear. As sheturned it over, it whispered like an open bottle in the wind.‘I can almost hear him,’ she gloated. ‘That horridmonster!’‘You’re so sure he’s alive? It’s been four, five hundredyears . . .’‘A creature like that – so impossible to make – is all themore impossible to kill,’ she replied, still listening to the ballin her hand.A small red bloodstain now marked her white glovewhere one of the glass shards had cut through; she didn’tseem to notice. ‘But now he can escape us no longer. TheSecret will be mine!’The torch beam fell.‘I mean ours, darling.’Beneath the shattered display a small brass plaquegleamed. The Sound Prism, origin unknown, it read