158

You peer into the wild fire at the slanted, inhuman eyes. They are closed; their penumbral grey lids a vague, tinted outline. Slowly, lazily, as if awakening from a deep sleep, they open revealing two great pools of impenetrable darkness; vast, eddying whorls of eternal shadow. The eyes beckon with a hypnotic stare, a cloaked welcome to hell’s darkest and most desolate chamber.

‘Who dares?’ demands a slithering, deathly voice. ‘Who dares to knock upon the door to the Pit of Eternal Pain?’

You stagger back as a blast of colossal psychic power, a will of great violence and malice makes your head reel and your thoughts tumble. A burning beam of thought is thrust painfully into your mind, searching, probing, searing.

‘Who? … Who? … ’ hisses the disembodied voice. The desolate eyes are tinged with red. Savage laughter rings in your ears. ‘Can this be?’ the voice crows, scornfully. ‘Oh! but this is the sweetest, the richest, of ironies. It is the Shianti slave, is it not? Upon the errand of fools, treading the path of the foolish? And that worthless bauble of theirs, you have found it? Yes, I see that you have.’

As the voice mocks, its power over you lessens. You know that you must resist now before you are enslaved forever.

If you have 2 WILLPOWER points and wish to use them to resist the mastery of the being in the portal, turn to 167.

If you do not have 2 WILLPOWER points, or do not wish to use them, turn to 176.