The Oriental Puzzle Box: From Nikki Little's "The Second Sword" Chapter 28
The instant I stepped out of the portal the heat and steam of the Sixth Circle sent me to my knees. Ahead of me I saw all of the senators choking and gasping for breath. Great clouds of reddish steam rose from deep pits spattered everywhere in the Circle. The odor of fresh blood sickened me. Columns of fire shot through the floor of the Circle everywhere I looked and spread out against the ceiling of the Circle. The entire "sky" of the Sixth Circle was a raging boil of flame. Large flakes of burning ash floated down in a dense, slow downpour giving the illusion of being enveloped in a swarm of oversized fireflies. The flakes burned briefly when they landed on my head and skin, but mercifully they did not ignite my clothing. Everything was in shades of red, orange, and gray. This was the Hell of childhood nightmares. I felt dizzy, and it took all of the energy that I had just to stand up. I felt drunk. To think that Alice had fought dragons in this place. The walkways had gaps where the stone had been blown away. I thought of pictures I had seen of Berlin, Germany in 1945. Ahead on the walkway was a dragon that had had its neck severed from its body and its eyes gouged out. Vine-like strands reached from the head to the body and ever-so-slowly pulled the head toward the body. Behind us Alice's puzzle box gyrated wildly with a plane of strands beaded with sharp diamond-like hooks reaching out about seven feet from the puzzle box in all directions. Because the axis of the puzzle box rotated, the plane of hooks appeared as a sphere of flesh-ripping cords. Small pieces of dragon flesh sticking to the wall dripped all over the walkways. Chunks of dragon flesh on the walkways oozed liquid and put out thin threads that dragged them toward each other. The fact that the puzzle-box weapon was still here told me that it was time-unlimited and that Alice had never raised her hand for its return. Perhaps she was unable. Cooking down on the floor of the Circle lay a third dragon that had been chopped in half. Dragon blood sizzled on the rock everywhere around it.