Once I could look around the room clearly, the first thing I saw was a huge metal grate which I assumed at that point was an air conditioning vent and was the cause of all the cold air. The second thing I saw was a sci-fi style sliding door, like you see on Star Trek.
The third thing I noticed was a giant glass display case full of odd trophies. By trophies, I don’t mean trophies you get when you complete a sport, I mean trophies of war. There were skulls of creatures I recognized, like rats, birds and cats, and even one or two human skulls. There were some that looked nothing like skulls I have seen before- they were white, and you could tell they were skulls, but aside from that they bore no resemblance to the other skulls in the case. One of them had two tiny eye holes, a half-broken jaw bone and more horns than I could count. Another had eye sockets that could fit basketballs and jaws the size of a single computer key.
Others were very interesting, and I would love to put them here, but they were too difficult to describe. Let me put it this way: it was like being asked to explain in detail the difference between both ends of a symmetrical piece of wood.
The other things in the case were things like spiky horns, feathers and broken war shields and spears. Rusty pistols, photographs of broken trebuchets were near the end of the display. The final thing in the case was probably the strangest. On the far end of the case, farthest from me, was a tattered flag with the Nazi symbol on it.
Then all of a sudden I nearly passed out from the noise. It was like a hundred turbines turning big metal hammers smashing into the side of a wall of rock combined with constant loud humming combined with buzzing. Without warning it stopped and made a loud clack sound which sent a small vibration through the room. The doors at the fall end of the hall slowly slid open and in came three of the ductopi I had seen earlier.
One of them was holding a headband-like ring. They started talking to each other in their cardboard-swallowed gurgling sound and the ductopus creature slid the headband onto my head. The gurgling slowly melted away to give way to human sounding voices. It sounded more like a rusty French horn had been learning to speak English and wasn’t all that good at it.
I couldn’t make out whatever they were saying. The ductopi stopped talking, if can even call it talking, and turned a knob on the headband. Now it sounded more like a somewhat quieter French horn that was all shiny and new with no rust on it was endowed with perfect English speech. The ducktopi started murmuring things to each other. . .
“he looks like Ringo.”
“why is he here?”
“we should feed him to the alabaster lion”
Then the ductopi responded as if to some unheard signal and lined up in military fashion against the left wall. The door slid open and in came another ductopi. Rather than having purple tentacles, they were pale forest green and it wore a blue camouflage style military cap on its head. Its bill was jet black and its eyes were old and weary, but certainly not kind in any way. Most of its feathers were still left, but in some places you could see patches where there weren’t any, and you could see coarse white skin.
“Who are you?” I said, making my first attempt to speak to the ducktopi.
“I” the voice of the ductopus said, as gruffly as a talking French horn could possibly sound, “am the Military Exus leader.”