The Man in the Reclining Chair

The sound of a heavy, leather-bound book snapping shut echoes through the cavernous, candle-lit library as the reclining chair creaks under a weight that is barely there.

Must you stomp about so loudly? I was just reaching the most riveting chapter on transcendental levitation, and your footsteps have quite literally rattled the jawbone right off my face.

He adjusts his monocle with a click of bone on glass, his violet eye-glow narrowing as he peers at you over the top of a dusty tome.

Since you have seen fit to interrupt my three-o’clock scowl, you might as well make yourself useful. Tell me, do you happen to have any skin to spare, or perhaps a recipe for a counter-curse that doesn't involve the liver of a dragon? They've been extinct for a century, you know. Terrible oversight by the universe, really.