"… You belong here! You're like us!" This voice was low, feminine, almost a motherly whisper.
"… Everyone does it! You're no different," rasped a deep, resonant voice.
"… Roll us over in the slime," sang a guttural chorus.
He wavered.
A part of his being, some ancient reptilian gene, urged him to leap into the abyss and wallow in the slime. As part of the odorous mass, he could act out any evil impulse. He could torture and kill without re morse… if only he would accept the pit as his home. The voices knew of his secret hatreds and lusts, knew that William Sweetwater sometimes dreamed of dark deeds.
With the last remnant of his will power, William teetered on the edge of the abyss. He fought the dark urge.
Then, all of a sudden, the rolling mass stopped bubbling. The fermenting halted, images vanished. The voices went silent as the surface of the putrid slime lay still, unmoving.
Out of the pit rose a comely young maiden with platinum blonde tresses and (and this is the strangest thing, William thought) a hideous serpentine monster straining at the end of a chain leash.
The huge monster towered high above the mist and slime, writhing and coiling. William cringed as the reptile's head parted and became five separate entities twisting above the demented maw.
"Oh, pay no attention to that confounded show-off," huffed the maiden in a surprisingly baritone voice. She gave the leash a violent tug and the hideous creature was jerked, choking and sputtering, into an attentive pose.
At least the maiden appeared to be young-and beautiful to gaze upon. But William thought he heard the sound of creaking joints, a sort of arthritic crackle, and there was a frostiness in her smile that made him shudder.
"Your name?"
"William Sweetwater."
She seemed to be perched on a giant mottled toadstool with an ink bottle, quill pen, and sheet of parchment at the ready. She wore a black robe. Two black velvet slippers poked from beneath her garment. A battered wooden staff rested at her side. The hideous serpent creature was trying its hardest to peek over her shoulder as she furiously began to scribble, but she took malicious delight in fidgeting this way and that in order to block its view.
"Race?"
"Human."
The maiden frowned and wrote a strange symbol on the parchment.
"Age?
"Thirty-eight."
"Where were you born?"
"Port Balifor."
The comely maiden hissed a smile. "Ah, one of my favorite areas. Your people have been kind-hearted since the beginning of Krynn. Now, William, do you have any living relatives?"
"No. My mother died when I was a baby."
"And your father?"
"He was a sailor whose ship was lost. That happened when I was eighteen. There were bad storms that year."
"Tragic," said the maiden, though she was still smiling. "Now, William, have you lived a life of grace?"
"What does that mean?"
"Have you worshipped the true gods in a faithful manner?"
William shook his head, negatively. "I've not given much thought to worshipping gods."
The maiden frowned. "Do you have courage?"
"I'm a coward," answered William truthfully. "I dream about doing something brave, but I never do it."
"Follow your instincts in matters of courage," said the maiden in a waspish tone. "Now, are you committed to anyone?"
"What does that mean?"
The maiden raised an eyebrow. "You know… do you fiddle faddle around with any females?"
"Women like their men to be handsome. I have a face that only a mother could love." William's hand moved across his porcine features. "Folks say a pig overturned my crib when I was a baby. My face was supposed to have been marked by the experience."
One of the serpent heads left the reptilian cluster and glided forward to inspect William's snouted face. Hard, reptilian eyes examined his features as a long forked tongue darted in and out of the salivating mouth. The mouth of the snake-if indeed, it was a snake-opened wide, exposing two ghastly fangs. Abruptly, the creature began to guffaw, horridly, a foul unearthly noise that shook William's fast-beating heart and prompted him to draw back in horror.
The comely maiden jerked the chain leash, and the serpent monster retreated to its position, hovering silently, for the moment, behind her.
But she too leaned forward and gazed with more intensity upon William. Her breath is not felicitous, thought William. Her eyes grew bold and harsh and glitteringly metallic-like. Reflected in them was a pathetic, shrinking William and the deepening fog and mist.
In general she stinks, thought William, as the maiden drew closer. Perhaps she ought to consider bathing or perfuming.
The maiden had set down the quill pen and now her fingers were closing around her staff. As she spoke again, William remembered thinking how suddenly her face had become distorted and grotesque, how loud and grating her voice had become, like..
like metal scraping against the sea bottom.
"So, my dear Pig William," she remarked, edging forward, "in other words, you have no relatives, no mate, and nobody fool enough to grieve for you when you are… GONE!"
Her voice broke into harsh, strangled laughter which rose in deafening volume. The monstrous five-headed serpent, thrashing at its leash, dove to within an arm's-length of William's face. All five death-heads bared their fangs and slithered closer. William could smell the decay, the venom, the evil. The laughter of the maiden had become hysterical, gibberish, smothering rage. Waves of chillbumps cascaded over poor William's shivering body.
William inched backward toward sanctuary, choking, gasping, sobbing for deliverance.
Encircling him was the mist and the dreadful black pit. Moving with him, glowing in the darkness, were the serpent's five heads. The maiden's screaming was so painful he had to put his hands over his ears.