Your curiosity demands it

Whatever lies on the other side of this door may not directly help you make your way through the catacombs and rescue Eudora, but on the other hand it might...

"We have to at least look." You say watching the young acolyte carefully for her reaction, "don't we?" Her eyes are wide and sparkle with excitement, she is as excited as you are. Cassia takes a deep breath and bites her plump lower lip before nodding. A ring at the center of the round door turns easily in your hand and the door cracks open slightly as the centuries old seal is broken.

"Ready?" Cassia takes your hand in hes and nods again in response to your inquiry. "You open it and then step back." You mouth silently and get 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 demon 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.

"Look Adonis!" Cassia is tugging on the leather armor sleeve; unlike you she had stepped away from the door as she opened it and her eyes were quicker to adjust to the brightness. 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, the pair of you 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 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.

It is impossible to look at that great bed and not wonder what it would be like to lay Cassia on her back and take her again. Especially after what she had done earlier after the harrowing encounter with the demons, you can still remember how soft her lips had felt; for that matter, you have not forgotten Cassia's soft cry of pain as your pressed into her on the black rock of the ancient gate to the catacombs...

A startled gasp from Cassia brings you immediately to her side. She is standing before a small wooden platform; on the wall rising from the floor behind the platform are curved blocks of woods hanging from hinges; it takes you a second or too to realize that the sensuously carved wooden blocks are actually stocks that could be used to fasten a captive by the throat, wrists and ankles immobilizing them against the wall. Sitting on a shelf right between where the captive's legs would be locked is a jewel encrusted gold and ivory dildo fashioned with amazing realism, and hanging on both sides of the stocks is 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 Cassia has no answers for you. The grim reminder of just how these demons mistreated their captives kept you from relaxing; and you carefully searched the rest of the room to make sure you were really alone in this enchanted room.

Once you are truly satisfied that you are alone you close and lock the round door behind you. Only then do you feel safe enough for the two of you to shed the leather armor. Wearing just the padded cotton tunic and leggings Cassia continues to move restlessly about the room, but you choose instead to relax on a love-seat with a high carved back and a plush cushion. On the table to your left is a small rod of polished black material about the length of your hand; four brass rings are evenly spaced on one end of the heavy rod and you twist one of the rings absent-mindedly as you try to understand everything that you see. As the roughened band begins to turn you are surprised to see the window looking out on the mountains flicker and the view changes dramatically.