Awakening VII

I rise slowly, a little shaky after the blast. I look down at myself; I am, miraculously, unharmed. The lockbox rests open in my hand, the switch now open. I look at it for a moment, and then close it very, very carefully.

The room around me is scarred and blackened by the device in the lockbox. The piles of gold and gems are fused together into one gigantic, useless heap - the chests and paper money are nothing but ash. Looking at the door to the giant's cavern, I expect to see more ash where the robed figures stood - but no! There they stand, frozen in place, surrounded by some sort of red-and-white energy. I look at them, put my hand near one of them - there's no perceptible heat - and then touch it. With a pained shout, I withdraw my hand immediately. Looking at it, I can already see a blister forming.

I look at the robed figures further. Tenatively, I take off my robe and throw it on one of them. Smoke begins to rise; then the robe bursts into flame. I decline to experiment further and walk back to the corridor beyond the giant's cavern.

No-one is about. Seemingly, all the inhabitants of this cavern were in pursuit of me when I used the device. I look around the corridor. I already searched all the rooms... except the dining hall, which was occupied at the time. Entering it, I find it deserted as the rest of this place - did the giant call it a 'bubble outside reality?' There's food about, but I'm still full from the bag lunch - besides, I'm not that much of a hamburger fan. Behind the counter is the most interesting thing in the room - a great big metal bar. I look at it, and decide to take it with me. It's a bit heavy, but a metal rod is a useful thing to have.

On leaving the dining hall, I look at the door at the end of the corridor - with the metal wheel and metal plating - and realize what the rod must have been kept there for. I take it and begin turning the wheel, not without difficulty. Slowly, two plates slide back from the centre of the door, and a key-hole presents itself. I take the giant's key, slide it in, and turn it. The entire door at once falls into the floor. Immediately, I am greeted with hopeful cries: "Oh, thank goodness, someone other than those robed monsters! Please, you must help me!"

I take a moment to get my bearings. The room beyond the vault door is fairly large and circular. Strange equipment (some of it resembling telescopes, or perhaps microscopes) is spaced around the circular cage in the centre of the room - the sole occupant of which, a very attractive girl, is currently plastered across the bars, looking at me pleadingly. "They've taken me here and locked me in for days. They haven't even given me food!" the girl said as I walked closer. "I don't know what they're going to do to me, but I'm afraid to find out! Please, just unlock the cage door, and we can escape this horrible place!"

I have my hand on the giant's key and am about to do just that - and then I remember something. The giant said to me, And then they took this daimone and locked it safely behind steel and ritual... I wonder. Where would a demon be kept, except here? The girl - or 'daimone', perhaps - does not recognize the expression on my face. "Please! What are you waiting for? Those men could return at any minute!

With the state I left them in, I doubt that - though the worry now comes to me that the red-and-white energy might disappear unexpectedly. I push it aside - I can always use the device again, if it comes to that. I have the time to do some testing. I tell the girl - daimone? - "You're a daimone. What will you give me for freeing you?"

The daimone sighs aloud at the failure of her (?) ploy and leans back from the bars, coincidentally giving me a very distracting view. "Even if I'm no human, what I said still holds true. Once you free me, I will help you escape. And I can help in... other ways," the daimone said, flexing suggestively. "Here's one," she said, reaching out with one finger to just within the bars. Nervously, I touched it.

I scream in agony - this is not a good day for my hands - and fall back to the floor, probably bruising myself in several places - but the damage is done. The robed figures charge, knocking my girlfriend and I down - and out. When I awaken, I am bound hand and foot - my girlfriend much the same, next to me. I am in - a throne room? It's huge - over two dozen robed men standing to each side of a great throne, richly decorated, gold and jewels everywhere. (Where does the money come from?, a part of me thinks. What? I'm tied up by strange men, and I'm thinking about the decoration?) The man on the throne - dressed in a business suit! - points at me accusingly. "You came too far, and saw too much. You are not the first, and you will not be the last - but this will be your last trespass." To a man to his right, he says: "Take them to the Cells of Forgetting - double the dose for the first seventy-two hours, as usual." As I am dragged away, he has already forgotten me - not much of a personal touch, there. (Why do I keep thinking about these little details? I'm being dragged off the cells, for God only knows how long! What's going on?) My captors drag me back the way I came, through several turns - I try to memorize the route - and back past the same heart. (It's rather distinctive.) I see my girlfriend tossed into a cell. I'm next. The door opens, and I'm flung in, sprawling on the floor.

Then- nothing. Blackness.

I awaken. The daimone watches me. "See? I restored your memory, just like that. You can remember everything now, right?" It's true. I remember my girlfriend's name, now - Rebecca - my house, my parents, my life. Everything. Whatever they did to me in the Cells of Forgetting, it's gone now. The daimone continues, "I'll do much, much more for you once you release me from this cell." She doesn't need to say anything more about... herself... her whole body does that for her.

I am very, very tempted - in both senses. I'm still not certain how I'll get out of here, since the way I got into this 'bubble outside reality' doesn't really work the other way. (Falling tends to be like that.) And... well. I ask the daimone one last question: "If I do release you, how could I be sure that you won't just kill me and leave on your own?"

The daimone laughs. "You have whatever you used to deal with the, the robed men, right? Whatever you used on them will be more than enough to destroy me - they captured me in the first place, after all. Besides," she asks, "Why would I hurt you after you free me?"

The daimone's appearance isn't quite enough to make me forget the giant's cautions. They summoned a great daimone - a creature of tremendous strength, and greater malice. With horrible sacrifice, they bound it tightly... If the giant was telling the truth - and after he transcended reality itself with purity, I'm willing to bet that he was - this daimone would not only be willing to kill me after I freed it, but very able to do so, unless I was able to muster some 'horrible sacrifice' to match the robed men's.

Still with no little doubt, I turn away from the daimone and begin walking back towards the bunk room. There has to be some way out!

The daimone calls cheerily, "I'll still be here when you decide to free me!"

I leave the vault door open behind me.