A Breathtakingly Beautiful Woman

Lord Fred lost his head. He was excited to see a beautiful woman, and one impulse was a desire to know her better, which the usual mixture of motives that one finds in a spirited young knight. However, he was in a gloomy and dangerous cavern, and paranoia had set in. Lord Fred knew that beautiful women had no place in dungeons ... unless it were as a trap to ensnare the unwary. He would not fall prey to easy temptation! He shouted out, with the bravado of a spirited young man and the hubris of a lord of the realm, "You shall not entrap me, you foul succubus! I shall send you back to the infernal regions, to your master." With a flourish, he unsheathed his sword and closed. The woman just smiled, her deep brown eyes were wide open, her only motion being a slight shaking back and forth of her head. If Lord Fred had been thinking coolly, and had seen this woman in the marketplace of Camelyn, he would have thought her a little amused by some trick of a juggler or trained animal. Lord Fred did not see the shrug of the shoulders of Belboz. He did see the woman make a short choppy motion downward with both of her hands, held apart by about the width of her body. After that, Lord Fred paid little attention to the woman, which is natural enough when one cannot breathe.

Two steps away from the woman, Lord Fred knew that he was in trouble. While he still had enough air in his lungs to survive, it was so poor in oxygen that he felt pain. He felt that he was choking. He had heard of people dying in caves when they hit pockets of bad air. He ran back toward Belboz, dropping his sword and trying to loosen his shirt to free any obstruction from his throat. It did no good. Fred felt helpless. He knelt, and crawled along the ground. Something as simple as breathing was now of overwhelming importance. There had to be air somewhere! He gasped in pain. The woman he had attacked strode up to him. She had triumphed. "End it now," thought Lord Fred. "Make the pain go away."

The lady then made the same short, choppy motion with her hands.

1. Lord Fred could breathe again.
2. Lord Fred blacked out. When he awoke ...

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