The next couple of hours after the Military Exus Leader had left, I explored the room I had been left in. On the far end of the room where the domed window ended there was a control board, a pilot’s seat and a joystick. On the other end of the room there was a bolted shut door that led to the stairwell and elevator platform. In the center of the floor was the elevator platform that had brought me up.
As you can tell, there wasn’t really all that much in that room. After my several hours in the room ended, the Military Exus Leader and several ductopi came and took me down several levels on the elevator platform. We went down farther and farther and when we came out I could see a catwalk above us. In front of me was a ring of large gears and a blue glow.
I was back in that room when we had first left the containment area. The Military Exus Leader and the ductopi walked me around the ring of gears until we came to a space where the volcano of blue light was visible. One of the ductopi walked away for a couple of minutes and came back with a pair of goggles for me. The Military Exus Leader flipped down sunglasses from the bottom of the bill of his military cap and the ductopi shielded their eyes with their feathers.
It was hard to see through the goggles but it got easier to see as we approached the volcano of blue light. We approached the edge. I was about to ask what we were doing here when they tossed me in.
The last words I heard from the ductopi were, “you should be glad we gave you the goggles.”
I hit my head on the wall on the way down and was knocked out for what I presumed to be at least an hour. I woke up to something wet and scratchy on the top of my forehead. My eyes were blinking a bit and for a couple of minutes I couldn’t see well. The blurry white form that had been licking me retreated to the shelter of a black circle.
When I could see clearly, I could see that the black circle was a hole in the wall. The area was well lit due to the volcano of blue light above, which, for some reason did not stretch all the way to the bottom of the pit. I went over to the hole in the wall and peered inside. It was shaded from the light by a small overhand at the top of the entrance, so I couldn’t see all the way in. From what I could tell, it was maybe thirteen to fifteen feet long, just a tube that didn’t lead anywhere- kind of a den.
Den. That reminded me of something. What had one of the ductopi said when they had first let me understand what they were saying?
“He looks like Ringo”
“what is he doing here”
“We should feed him to the . . .”
No. I couldn’t remember- not then, anyway.
I toyed with the idea for about an hour when I passed out from sheer exhaustion. When I woke up (again) I saw a form in the den that I had seen earlier. It looked gray in the dark, but I could tell it would be white if it came out of the den into the light.
SNORT.
A spurt of flame came out of the den.
SNORT.
A tremendous fireball.
SHHHHHHHOO!
A huge blast of blue flame spurted out of the den and blasted up out of the pit, creating the volcano effect I had seen above. Plumes of smoke came out like rhythmical breathing. Too startled to move, I could only watch as a tremendous white shape came out of the den. The tremendous shape that was in the den was a lion- a white lion- an alabaster lion.