The hours feel like days to you as you languish, naked, in the cold, claustrophobic dungeon. An oppressive curiosity hangs thick in the air. Unlike the occupant of a magistrate's cell or an arena's cage, what hangs over you is not the grim peace of a looming execution; rather, hope and fear war in your chest for dominion over your soul.
A clinking noise echos throughout the dim halls, like that of a jailer's keys jostling for position on his hip, yet when you raise your head you see a woman, her lustrous white flesh reflecting the flickering torchlight as if she were sculpted of wet marble. Her wrists and ankles are adorned with ornate golden trinkets that clink and jingle as she moves. The woman regards you leisurely, as a lioness might regard a gazelle. Her pale skin and onyx-black hair announce her as a Shemite, yet her distinctive features lurk beneath a gold-etched mask of ivory carved in the image of a skull. The dark jewels of her eyes smoulder from within the shaded cavernous sockets of the mask, whispering silent promises of what beauty might lie beneath.
She is barely clad in a weave of silken straps as black as the black of her hair, crisscrossed about her lithe upper body until they plunge to drape freely from her voluptuous hips. They twist and writhe sinuously around her thighs like living things, threatening an immodest glimpse with her every step.
The priestess' lips part, and unlocking the chains bound to you, she drifts from the cell with a feline grace, beckoning you to follow her. She guides you through passages, the bare brick giving way to walls draped in shimmering red silks. Your eyes widen as the Priestess leads you into an opulent hall, dominated by a stone altar about which glisten a tangle of naked bodies, man and woman alike thrusting and gyrating in a depraved orgy of worship. Above the lurid spectacle, a decadent great golden statue of the goddess Derketo herself looms, depicted in the same garb and ivory mask her priestess wears.