ooc: bah!
[sblock=thorn]
IC: Thorn looks into the room. The book now looks like a shimmering coalescence rather than a solid book. She can see what look like a floating ball made of hundreds of python-sized worms or snakes, embedded in the same space as the book itself.
below the dias and walking on the walls are numerous humanoids, like fish-men with long claws and green scales, webbed fingers and large gills on either side of their heads. they sort of shuffle along as they walk, and they walk up and down the walls as if gravity depends upon their wills: the walls and ceiling are as floor to them. Their yellow saucer eyes occasionally look up and at you, and a number of them begin moving from the walls towards the dais, to pull themselves up onto it and get at the book.
In the air above the scene is some kind of flying skeletal creature, likewise out of phase with the rest of the room. It's some kind of dragon made of bones, circling and spinning this way and that, and watching YOU as you look through the gem. Glowing energy swirls in its ribcage.[/sblock]
Xanfire: you make your way to the book and see nothing around you. However, the entire area seems filled with one vast magical aura. There's something here, you just can't pin it down.
The book floats before you in place.