The front doors of the castle open smoothly and silently; blackened rust slides off them like old snake-skin in great, tumbling waves. They hit the marble walls on either side at the apex of their swing, and more ruined metal cascades down, leaving the doors as two decrepit skellingtons of their former selves.

A white boot follows after them, crushing the rusty flakes of metal into a thick, red dust beneath its heel. Another boot follows after it as a figure steps into the room, bordered from behind by an archway looking out onto the ruined remains of a once great city. Its head arcs and curves about as it examines the surroundings.

        
The figure is in the shape of a man clothed in a bulky white suit; its face is masked by a blackened curve of glass that shines and glimmers as it reflects the ruddy colours of the sunlight. Its left arm waves slowly about, the metallic device clasped at the tip pointing into each and every corner of the room.

Up it points, angling towards the decayed rafters of the ceiling—seemingly ornamental if the gaping holes left in the tiled roof are any judge. Down it slopes, following a pitted and faded marble column onto a floor littered with debris and the tattered remains of a once scarlet carpet. Over it flicks towards the fractured remains of a series of stained glass windows, the few shards that remain showing untarnished scenes of strange and alien creatures. The device remains pointed at the latter for far longer than it has any of the others, but, eventually, the figure lowers it and steps fully into the room.

        
Occasional glimpses of the outside shoot out at the figure as it enters, each showing an expanse of dark, star-clothed skies that are tinged red in places by the twinkling light of a decaying sun. Empty window after empty window passes the figure by as it walks through the room, the device in its hand now levelled firmly towards a door placed in the hallway's end. Faint flickers of a yellow light dance out from the cracks along the door’s edges, framing it in an otherworldly look.

        
The figure pauses upon reaching it, and its right hand runs smoothly over the door’s surface. Unlike the other, this one’s seemingly untouched by time and the figure finds no handles or other visible methods of opening it. Aside from the hole cast into its centre, and faint traces of a once gaudy decoration splayed across its face, the door is unmarked. Clean. Unbreakable. The figure kicks at it once; it doesn’t move.

        
The figure delays in front of it, head occasionally shaking from side to side as its arm presses for all it’s worth against the door. It takes a step back and raises the device up, an invisible line stretching from tip to target pouring over the door. After a few minutes of waggling the device back and forth, it stops, lowers its instrument and, with a shake of its head, turns to leave.

        
It pauses mid turn, shakes its head and then twists slowly back, front leg still poised to leave. An arm gestures angrily, palm flat, towards the door before bunching up into a fist. As if grudging every inch, it creeps up towards the door like a slothic version of an uncoiling snake, before carefully rapping against it.

Knock knock.

One half of the door cracks open; the yellow glow of sunlight pours out into the room. The figure takes a step back, hand opening wide, before the device in his other shoots up and points into the room. And then, cautiously and carefully, it walks towards the door, arm stretching before it as its hand clasps onto the open edge and pulls it out into an unsealing swing.

        
The room beyond the door is masked by a shimmering, opaque curtain of yellow that hangs just beyond the door’s frame. The figure waves its device over this shining barrier with slow, purposeful gestures before stopping and pushing the metallic tip of its instrument forwards and through the barrier. The device breaks through the skin of it, causing ripples that spread freely along its surface before a backwards tug dips the device back out, unharmed. The figure’s legs stiffen as it braces itself, and then its free arm reaches out, fingers flexing as they pass in and out of the barrier. A few moments later, the hand tightens into a fist. And the figure steps into the light.

        
A bright red carpet cushions the fall of its foot landing heavily, firmly and—more important than any of them—loudly; the echoes of their collision break through the silence that had, up till then, pervaded the castle. Small waves of dust billow away from the figure’s boot.

        
The device in its arms is quickly up and moving again, running in great sweeps round a room from out of another time. Bright paintings hang on every wall and great, white curtains trail down from brass hangers fitted onto the ceiling. Some of the perfection is marred, however; a few curtains have slumped down and gathered into great piles on the floor, and a stand in the centre holds the twisted and charred remains of a once beautiful box. The device passes over it once and then pauses, midway through its arc. The figure brings it back to bear at the box once more, and then takes a single step towards it.

        
One of the rags moves, and in doing so reveals a yellow cone of light rising from out of part of it. The figure steps back, the tip of its heel pressing against the shimmering curtain, before the device switches targets and the figure levels it at the stirring, moving shape. With the occasional snap of unlocking bones, the shape unfurls itself, form hidden under the glow flooding from out its top—a glow that intensifies further until all the room is drowned out before it, and all there is to see is a white-hot shape wrapped in a growing aurora of near-blinding light.

        
That same glow, still visibly focused into a thick line on the shape’s tip, pulses once, and the figure drops the device suddenly, hand pulling back as a yellow cloud washes over the instrument. Halfway to the floor, the device explodes into a grey cloud of sparks and metallic fragments. The light shrinks back, the intensity dying down and revealing what looks like a white, hairless horse with a conical beam of light thrust into its forehead.

        
Tired, wheezing breaths shake through the whole of its body as they race out and into the air, freezing upon exit into fading clouds of mist. A sort of... third appendage attached onto the side of its chest stretches out pitifully, parts of it hanging off in dangling shreds of a lifeless grey. Its head, perched at the end of a long swan-like neck, turns towards the figure. Two slits open up on either side, the whiteness of its face giving way to two large, glinting eyes of a pale magenta.

        
The figure takes another step back as they drift up and focus; one of the figure’s legs has now vanished onto the other side of the barrier. And then the figure takes a step forwards, and then another, the magenta eyes following it as the figure gets closer and closer, hand stretched out to—

The light flashes again, except this time there’s no answering flicker anywhere in the room, and the hand flies back up to grasp at the figure’s head as—

        
The figure stumbles backwards, an outflung arm catching against the ruined box and knocking it to the floor as the alien’s eyes close over, and it slumps down, and—

The figure tears at its head, hands fumbling and pulling at delicate catches as the black pane separates off to reveal a bright-yellow glow coming from within, and—

The figure’s helmet clatters to the floor, rolling round in an uncertain circle as—

The figure screams, white-gloved palms covering its face as the fingers dig into the skin, and the yellow glow encasing it all intensifies into a sickly, creamy white, and—

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