Dian, please write the new part so Rik's post isn't on the current page any more! Only YOU can prevent real life horror stories like this happening again....

SIIIIIIIIIIIIIGH

Because me not carrying on with this is the real problem with the forum as of late.

That's right.

Shall I recount the catalogue of terrors that ensued upon my exiting the cave?

To do so would be a futile waste of papyrus. There are some ordeals of mortal man which should not be shared; sanity is a threadbare thing, and it is never wise to tease apart the warp and weft of another's mind. Believe me when I say I have plumbed the depths of madness; I have drunk deep the heady wine of the Abyss; I have known the ecstasies of dead Sybaris, sampled in bitter cocktail with the agonies of Gomorrah. But suffice it to say that I eluded my fleshless pursuers, defying She who long ago made a throne room of oblivion.

The gods know that my own grasp of reality has been shaken to its foundations, and I would not wish a similar fate upon anyone. Tonight therefore I shall make final sacrifice to nullify the accursed jewel. Through my lifeblood may its wretched reign be ended.

I have left careful instructions that I am to be embalmed along with the stone. My organs shall be placed in canopic jars, and my chest cavity filled with the rich spices of the Orient. I shall be swaddled like the pharaohs in costly linen, and deposited in a deep shaft bored into the bedrock of the Sahara. The Ruby shall sit impotent on my forehead for all of eternity, even through the upheaval of oceans and the restless shifting of tectonics. And when the final fire consumes the weary homeworld of long extinct Man, then at last will there be an end to the Heart of Horus and its foul governance of lesser souls. I can only pray that my instructions are followed...