Open it now

Whatever lies on the other side of this door may be just what Cassia needs to recover, there may even be something that can help you make your way through the catacombs and rescue Eudora, but on the other hand it might...

You open it and then step back with a firm grip on your pole arm excavating tool, ready for anything that might come bursting through the door. What you aren't ready for is the burst of light that shines through the door. It is almost as bright as the blinding flash that had emanated from the blue stone and seared the demons riding you not that long ago. After hours of creeping through the undercity with only the half light of the bluestones the brilliant light that flooded from the sealed room blinds you for a few seconds. When your vision returns you see what looks like afternoon sunlight pouring out of the chamber and onto the dusty floor of the great outer hall.

Blinking a few more times helps a little and you peer in through the round doorway, inside you see a bedroom with a large round bed near the back of the room and a collection of matching furniture tastefully arranged between the bed and your position. The light source is a great glass window that appears to look out on a distant mountain range. How can window deep underground look out over a scenic view? Yet this is clearly not a picture, when you step closer to the clear glass pane you can see movement in the clouds that drift through the blue skies and a half-dozen drakes circling over a distant meadow. Pushing the impossibility of the window for the moment, you pick up Cassia's **** form and step into the room.

This room looks as fresh and clean as any room used every day, a vase of green glass is full of fragrant flowers and a bowl of mixed fruit sits on the table without a sign of rot or decay. Even the air is clean, almost as though the window let in the mountain air free of dust, or the stench of the city above.

Everywhere are signs of wealth and luxury - a large gold rimmed mirror hangs on the wall; the silvered glass is smoother than a pool of still water - not even you mistress had such a fine-looking glass; the fruit rests in a silver wire basket and the table and chairs are inlaid with mother of pearl that shimmers with a luminescence against the dark fine-grained wood of the furniture. Moving past the table and chairs you approach the bed, like the other furniture in the room you sense how different this room is from what you are used to.

Not just because of its circular shape or the carvings on the golden panels that encircle the mattress that depict scenes of demonic orgies, the starburst pattern of the bed covering is unlike anything you've ever seen and even the feel of the fabric is unlike anything you can remember. Every couple feet, coils of braided silver chain hang in neat loops from the carved hooks, if really made of silver, those finely crafted chains alone are more valuable than anything you've ever seen in your young life. You lay Cassia's limp body gently on the bed and step away to examine the rest of the room.

There is a small wooden platform; on the wall rising from the floor behind the platform are curved blocks of woods hanging from hinges and it takes you a second or too to realize that the sensuously carved wooden blocks are actually stocks that were used to fasten a captive by the throat, wrists and ankles. On either side are a collection of lashes, switches, barbed clamps and hooked goads; suddenly the dark specks on the wall and platform take on a very sinister note. "What kind of people were these?" You ask but the **** Cassia has no answers for you. The grim reminder of just how these demons mistreat their captives keeps you from relaxing; and you carefully searched the rest of the room to make sure you were really alone in this enchanted room.

A soft moan from Cassia draws your attention back to the great bed and your companion. The sight that meets your eyes is alarming, horrifying and at the same time wildly exciting.