The grim decor is further accentuated by mangled bodies in various positions – an eviscerated Naga draped at one corner, his entrails strewn over the floor. An Eeee with a torn throat and wings crumpled into small wads at his back. Another pair of humanoid shapes, bound head-to-toe in what looks like thick white thread, dangle upside down from the ceiling, their "cocoons" graced by streams of blood. The metallic tang and scent of the all-pervasive blood is so strong as to have a palpable taste.

A tall Eeee woman, rivulets of red marring her smooth white fur and short white hair, clad in white mail and awhite over-tunic, stands beside the altar, holding a knife in one hand. Ribbons of shredded white thread dangle off the altar to either side, suggesting that the body set on the altar was just cut free of them, though wrists and ankles remain bound. "Wake up, my friend," the woman croons to her victim. She puts the edge of her blade to his bare chest, and slices. Blood wells at the cut, and she leans over to lap it away with an incongruously pink tongue. "You cannot sleep through all my fun." A pair of demonic creatures – features mixed between grabbit and Eeee – titter, voices high pitched, at her remark. They pick their way delicately about the room, investigating the various implements on the walls.

Such are the sights and sounds that greet Elise when she awakens from the dream Morpheus just ended, and as she lies on the floor, disoriented and bruised, she wonders if she has merely entered some fresh nightmare. The sensation of dreaming is augmented by her seeming removal from the scene – she cannot see her body. As she grows more fully conscious, she realizes that she can feel it, however, and then she remembers, I am still invisible. With that realization, the disguised canine freezes her limbs even as she was considering sitting up. She remains prone, lying slumped on her side not far from the altar, body pointed away from it. The way her head lies, she can see the tall Eeee woman, though details about her victim are impossible to discern.

Elise, doubly disguised as both invisible and the Gallah Missy, resists the urge to gag as her senses fully return to her. It is such a strong urge that she must pause and for a moment do nothing but will herself against the urge, until at last she is able to manage well enough. She then finds herself wondering if she awoke at all, for while this room is familiar, surely it cannot have been changed so quickly. The thought of just how long she has been unconscious haunts her mind, but she determines there is no use pondering it and makes to focus more on the matters of here and now, no matter how revolting the now might be. To this end she, very slowly, begins to turn her head and try to get a better look at the woman at the altar and the room that surrounds her.

As the canine tries to orient herself on her surroundings, she is reminded of Fyiara's final debriefing to the teams before they were sent out to plant the disrupters. "The royal mages have been working on this spell for over five years now. That adds up to a really impressive amount of pent-up power. The devices I've manufactured are designed to take that power and channel it into a comparatively harmless venue, which will then expend it fairly quickly." Fyiara had pauses here, directing a sharp look at the team members. "When I say 'comparatively harmless', I do not mean 'safe'. I mean, compared to warping the minds of a hundred thousand Eeee to create controllable goddesses of death and destruction, like the spell is now – this will be harmless. On a limited and local scale, however, the side-effects may be very dangerous, even fatal, to the casting mages and possibly even bystanders around them.

"That's why you're to drop the damn things as quickly as possible and beat feet out of there. I can't be any more specific or detailed about the actual results if you're successful, because a lot will depend on what the mages are thinking of and the precise spot they're at in the ritual when the disrupter goes off. But my advice is: Don't be there."

The invisible woman's head stops, and her eyes begin to widen before she realizes the action and ceases it least such a small and sudden reaction give her away. The Shrine of Diphath … is this, Diphath herself? Or perhaps, how she was remembered. The reality shakes her, for she clearly recalls Fyiara mentioning Diphath was worse than the goddess that supposedly destroyed her, and now the disguised poodle begins to see just how much worse. Again she begins to slowly move and search the room, checking to see if she can get up without slipping on blood or hitting anything in doing so.

The chamber does not improve for being examined closely. It seems similar to the one she remembers prior to the dream, but now larger, as well as gorier. The ceiling is definitely higher now, and there were fewer instruments on the walls and torture devices on the floor before. But yet … when she looks at things intently, there seem to beodd gaps she can spot from the corner of her eyes. Places where worn flagstones show through the blood instead of slick granite. Here, on the wall, a flogger will change at one spot from spiked and gleaming to rotted and torn. Then she looks at it fully, and the illusion re-asserts itself. The blood all around her seeps beneath her body as though she did not exist, rather than puddling at her sides. She can feel it, smell it – taste it, there's so much – but it's clearly not behaving as it should, even with Stalker's spell on her.

Unreal. An illusion, though undoubtedly a deadly one. As she considers the lethal nature of the strange time-torn room, she notes the bodies as species similar to those that were present when the disrupter went off. She finds their deaths disturbing, unnecessarily vile even for those who assisted in the ritual. There is also the thought that there is nothing she can do for them now, so she reasserts her focus on what to do and slowly begins rising to her feet in the manner she practiced when last she was conscious. While doing so, she tries to locate her sword, and get a better look at the torturer.

A layer of blood and the tag end of the Naga's entrails cover her otherwise quite visible blade, a foot or so out from her current position. The process of getting up without making any quick moves is tediously painstaking as well as slow, but the chittering spider-demons convince her that she would certainly be seen were it not for the spell. The Eeee woman seems intent on her victim, who wakes screaming, a high-pitched, painful wail that hurts Elise's ears.

Gritting her teeth at the sound, the invisible woman continues to rise. With her sword beyond her reach and field of projected invisibility, she decides against retrieving it for the moment, and instead tries to determine if she can exit the room without alerting the demons or their mistress. As much as she might like to confront the woman at the altar, a nagging feeling reminds her she may well be as real as the blood, but much more deadly.

As Elise finishes standing, the woman finally places a hand over the Eeee's mouth, muffling his shriek. She chuckles, her voice low and almost melodic. "Awake at last, little enemy? You will make a fine lesson. Tell me your name." She removes her hand.

"Azto," the Eeee man says. "Kindly One, please don't, I'm sorry," he says, his words rushed, breathing ragged. "Please, I'll do anything, just don't kill me."

"Oh, Azto," the white Eeee says, running her the edge of her knife down his chest while he hisses with pain. "You'll do anything. Then I'll kill you." The spider-demons laugh again, scuttling around the room, their footsteps swishing through the blood. No one seems to be blocking Elise's path out of this hellish place … but the doors are all closed.

For the moment Missy just weighs her options, considering if she may well wish to take her chances running from this place as fast as her feet will take her. But, the halls are dark and twisted. Certainly she remembers the way out, but she wonders if she could even find it safely while running in the pitch blackness. She decides against it for the moment, reserving escape for when her invisibility begins to fade. If it is true that the ritual energy is being expended quickly then she considers that her invisibility may outlast the grisly scene, and so she begins edging towards the door that she might be near it, but with no intention of leaving just yet.

"What were you doing here?" the Eeee woman asks her prisoner. She uncurls an odd device of leather straps and carved gears, and starts hooking it leisurely around the spines of one of Azto's wings, while Elise approaches the door with measured steps.

The Eeee captive whimpers. "Serving the mages, my Lady. They said it was for Your glory. We meant no – "

"You shouldn't lie to a Goddess," the woman interrupts, brusque. She turns a crank on the device, and there's a crack that echoes through the chamber, followed by another agonized scream from the Eeee.

A Goddess? This must be Diphath, reincarnated from rapidly dispelling magic. The idea that this may well be Diphath's memory made into a solid spirit-form by magic bothers Missy more than she recalls her encounters with the dream goddesses ever did. It is perhaps the realization this is occurring in the real world, and she can be certain the victims this time are flesh and blood that creates this thought. And, indeed, her own presence so close to the grisly scene only adds to the feeling. Carefully she tries to locate her dagger and draw it while stopping every so often to return her gaze to the scene.

Her dagger remained sheathed at her side where she left it when she switched to sword earlier, and the canine eases it out while Diphath asks, "Why did you think you could defile my shrine and not suffer for it?" Azto's pitiful, pleading reply is drowned by his scream after a crank on the device cracks another wing-spine.

As gory as it is, Missy finds the information gathered somewhat useful, though the manner in which it is gleaned she surely cannot abide by. Unwilling to act while many things remain an unknown, Missy continues to watch the scene, dagger at the ready in case it is needed. She tries to ascertain if the woman is truly a phantom and only touched by what she wills, or if she is more solid and thus capable of being injured.

If the goddess has any weaknesses, they're not obvious while torturing a helpless bat. She places a finger to his lips. "Again. Tell me."

"Th – they wanted to m-make th-the Sisters mm-more powerful," he gasps, shuddering. "Be mm-merciful, Kindly One."

"And my daughter? Rephath? They wanted her, did they not? Not me." Another crank, and the only answer from the Eeee guard is a scream.

At this point, the door opens, and a grabbit-Eeee-demon enters, dragging a man-sized thread-wrapped bundle behind it. "My lady, I found another of your enemies trying to escape," it tells Diphath, bowing.

The question that suggests Rephath may well be Diphath's daughter intrigues Missy, and were she in better circumstances she might well take some time to investigate the claim and its historical significance, but now is definitely not the time. The door is now open and presents a clear path of exit, so Missy quickly considers her chance of escaping. She sizes up the grabbit-demon, and the exit, seeing if she can leave before he walks out and if she can, if he won't run into her even should she press herself against an outer wall.

The demon drags his bundle further into the room, smearing the sticky coat of blood around as he does so, but he seems to be in no rush to close the door. "Very good, my Greve," Diphath tells him. "Put it with the others." She gestures vaguely to the ceiling, her attention still on Azto.

Seeing that the coast is clear, Missy edges on out the door, moving so as to press herself near the wall closest to the hinge where she might hide and listen, but have a better chance to escape if things go awry. She still doesn't trust the idea of dashing through the halls invisible, especially when demons walk the darkness.

Foxfires light the path even outside the main chamber, though their illumination proves fickle as the canine slowly advances along the corridor, the screams of the guard echoing in the chamber behind her. The far door is also open, and she slips through it and turns right, retracing her earlier steps. The corridor seems more open than before, but perhaps that's just the benefit of light.

The light beyond the torture chamber is a welcome relief, and it allows for Missy's continued escape. Otherwise she may well have felt the need to remain within the chamber and endure the torments that are wrought there for longer than she cares to consider. The plan of remaining is abandoned, for she finds her life more valuable than whatever information might be spoken. So she edges down the halls, keeping herself pressed against the wall and using the light to judge when she can move faster or if she need slow or ever stop due to a demon's presence.

The canine is almost to the doorway of the trapped corridor when she sees another shape flickering in the foxfire glow, and comes to a stop. This figure is different from the others – instead of a grabbit and an Eeee mixing, it shares features of Aelfin and Eeee, with demonic touches, like a vision of corrupted innocence.

Missy tilts her head slowly, and finds she is unable to proceed further when confronted with the demon. Never has she heard of an Aelfin-Eeee combination, not even in the lore of the Seven Sisters and the myriad of lesser gods. She cannot help but wonder if this demon is somehow connected to that Aelfin she saw earlier bound to the X-shaped slab. For the moment she simply observes it, unwilling to get closer and somehow taken by not knowing its origins.

The creature moves slowly, knees bent, and hunched. She seems almost to be sniffing at the air, or the walls, as she paces through the narrow corridor with its oddly tiled floor. Whatever magic had been there earlier either is gone now, or doesn't effect the four-eared demon. She pauses, looking in Missy's direction, and sniffs again, her ears swiveling about like short antennae.

The fact that the strange demon now turns towards her gives Missy significant cause to worry, for she fears that while she may be invisible to sight and sound, scent may no longer function as it should. Or else being unnerved by this place has given her cause to smell of fear. To test if the demon notices her, she begins to move again, slowly edging against the wall and seeing if its sniffing follows her.

Blue-violet eyes track Missy as she advances, though they do not seem exactly focused on her. The demon spreads her wings to block the corridor, a cruelly pointed spar of bone on each joint aimed forward. Grotesquely elongated fangs, dripping blood that stains the edges of her mouth, are at odds with the Aelfin's child-like, foreshortened muzzle. The combination is almost enough to distract from the demon's words, spoken with the breathy voice of a young girl. "Who are you?"

Missy doesn't answer at first, fearing she may well give herself away. However feeling that if she does not speak she may well invite alarm or an attack, she does respond, though in a slow and deliberate whisper that echoes like the voice of a ghost. "A … med-dler … in … ri-tu-als … not … meant … to … be," says she.

When she speaks, the Aelfin's eyes lock onto her, seeming at last to focus, and narrow. She crouches into a semblance of battle stance, her elegant, long-fingered hands tipped by claws. "What – " Her words are cut off by a groaning sound, coming from deeper within the dungeon, like stressed rock creaking under pressure. The foxfires all flicker out at once.

"Time … is … short … cursed … one," Missy whispers as the building creeks. "Leave … with … me, to … your … salvation." Invisible, her voice is like the wind, echoing from an insubstantial source.

"I have already been saved," the demon's little-girl voice pipes, incongruous, as foxfires spring back into life. "My mistress… " She advances a step, as if to venture back into the dungeon, then her eyes snap back to Missy, and she holds her position, blocking the corridor. "She will want you, whatever you are." The blood that lines the walls vanishes for a moment, and the space seems to close in around them, returning to the proportions the canine remembers, though the walls and ceiling have new cracks in them, and flakes of rock peel away. Then the blood and breadth returns, hiding the other blemishes.

Missy abandons her slow speech in part, believing there is no time for it. "You, taken … promised … torment and … preserved by her, who came with … the light that … I brought." As she speaks she slowly changes to a battle stance of her own, left hand undoing her cloak that she might cast it as a makeshift net, should matters come to blows. "Will fade … soon, soon … I know. I … caused it."

"What do you mean?" The child-voice seems more plaintive now. Suddenly, her wings vanish, along with the other demonic and Eeee features, leaving only a battered-looking Aelfin in a torn tunic, recent scars marring her fur, along with dried blood. She shakes her head. "Wha – " and the demon-shape returns to her. "Do you serve my Mistress?"

"Not … directly … though this temple, renewed for … a time … is perhaps … a service," answers Missy, her voice tinged with what sounds like regret. The woman begins to advance. "I am … the one who … stopped the enemy's … ritual."

"I – " The Aelfin's body shimmers between demon and normal, and she blinks, looking disoriented. The walls shudder, pressing inwards around them, and a chunk of rock falls ahead of her. The groaning sound resumes, and this time it doesn't stop, just building. Deeper within the dungeon, they can hear crashing sounds.

"Time is short, child. We must leave, for this temple exists for but a short space of time, and I fear it will not survive the strain that has been done to it," speaks Elise in her normal tone. She quickly moves to remove her cloak, and holds it in her left hand causing her form to gofrom invisible to eye-straining blur. "If you believe her saving you is service, then yes I serve 'the Mistress', but now she wills us leave. Look to the walls and see her anger."

The demonic form drops again, and the Aelfin girl just blinks at her, eyes glazed. She sags back against the wall, and a section of the tunnel above the invisible canine rumbles, and comes crashing towards the disguised woman.

As quick as she can manage, Missy dashes forward and ducks as she goes, trying to move out of the way of the falling structure. She aims not simply to dodge it but to keep running right towards the Aelfin girl.

The blurry outline of the canine dashes up to the small, sagging form as the tunnel begins to collapse all around them, flakes of rock and dust filling the air.

Missy lets her dagger fall from her hand as she runs, and when she reaches the Aelfin girl, she forcefully tries to scoop her up and then make all haste out of the collapsing tunnels.

The larger woman manages to yank the Aelfin up and throws herself and the other forward, trying desperately to get out of the tunnel. As they reach the open door at the far end, the canine stumbles on the pitted ground. As she falls, face first, she shoves the Aelfin to the stairs. Her own torso manages to fall on the steps, but as the corridor collapses, a massive chunk of rock lands on her legs with an audible crunch, and she feels a surge of pain all along from her right leg.

Unable to manage even the hint of silence any longer, Missy screams when the rock hits her leg. For a moment she looks dazed and unable to focus, and even when she seems toregain her bearings she still looks shaken and uncertain. Dazed with pain, she reaches to try and push the rock from her leg with both her hands, fearing for her life. "Child … " she cries weakly.

When Elise twists around to push at the rock, she sees that the entire ceiling has collapsed onto her legs. An ache spreads through to her left, though it pales behind the agony in her right. "Miss?" The Aelfin's voice seems to come from a very long way off, as a haze closes in around the canine's vision.

"Help me," whispers the trapped Missy to the girl. Unable to strain against the rock any further, her hand falls weakly to the ground, followed by her head. The disguised poodle's face eases from a look of immense pain to a almost peaceful daze as she loses consciousness. Her other weakly tries to lift and reach for the exit, but the darkness claws at her consciousness and drags her down, her hand falling to the steps silently.