The Tiger’s Den

Ek tries unsuccessfully to pistol whip the priest. The priest swings his club clumsily and also fails to do harm.

Taylor knees the fellow and he goes down sprawling. The mace rolls on the temple’s stone floor.

The large double doors to the altar room swing open. The temple’s final guardian appears. An immense creature slides sinuously into view. Scaled and poised like an immense cobra, as tall as the room. A wave of supernatural terror spreads from the creature.

The huge snake, dreadful and beautiful, has a serene human face! Vikram knows that the being is a naga, a guardian spirit set to protect a temple…

Bear cannot help but gasp in awe and terror at the naga. In his sight, the creature seems to fade, if not completely vanish, and the room is filled with a strange hiss like the static of an untuned radio.

Vikram's experience is different. For him the naga remains fully visible. Impossible , but fully real. She fixes him with her serene, serpent-like gaze. Her eyes are multi-hued jewels, brimming with divine wisdom.

She is unable to communicate with Vikram in words. Her langauge is the ancient Hindi that was spoken when scribes first set down Sanskrit. Instead, she conjures images. The twelve pictures in the wall frieze vanish. In their place, new images appear. Each is intensely detailed , blazing with colour. Whereas the original pictures in the frieze described events from ancient mythology, the new images explain the events concerning the temple that took place during and after the war, including the present expedition...

Picture 1. A patrol of US soldiers searches the jungle for a crashed aircraft and discovers the temple.
2. Temple priests rebuff them and order them to leave --the soldiers obey
3. the tiger devil (hidden within? under? 'beyond'? the temple--his location is not clear) senses the soldiers' intrusion and creates an illusion to encourage their return --treasures of gold, jade and jewels.
4. The astonished officer departs but writes a report, describing the marvelous treasures, which is sent to HQ in Bombay.
5. In Bombay, an Indian clerk intercepts the report and secretly communicates its contents via spies to the Indian Japanese Army, the anti-British allies of the Japanese.
6. The Japanese master spy, Suzuki Keiji, reads the report, delighted to have discovered the legendary Tiger General's prison.
7. He leads a mission to the temple where they fight 'guardians', ogre-like monsters. Many solders are killed.
8. Suzuki forces his way to the altar and comes into the presence of the tiger devil. The general (blesses? possesses?)him and Suzuki departs.
9. The few surviving priests are furious at the breach and activate the temple's few remaining guardians.
10. Later, a party of adventurers--Taylor, Bear, Ekaterina and Vikram-- depart on the mission to the temple in their two jeeps.

Further, shadowy images depict the party's arrival at the temple, the current encounter with the naga (!) and some vague projections of a future journey to Japan to confront Suzuki.

The new images fade, the old pictures return to Vikram's view. The naga now vanishes, even from Vikram's view....

Taylor rises from the floor. He rises sheepishly, having swooned away during Vikram’s communion with the guardian deity.

"So you are going home, Bear? Back to rainy old Newcastle? You won’t stick there long. I’ll give you my contact details. We’ll go out on adventure again some day."

He looks at Vikram, sensing somehow that he has been enlightened as to the nature of the temple and its history.


"I don’t know what happened, but it looks like Mr Singh here has sussed out what’s going on. I admit that I knew more than I was letting on. It was just that…I didn’t think you’d believe me…"

After Vikram has filled in the party about the naga’s revelations , Taylor nods.

"Sounds like this devil has fastened onto Suzuki somehow and escaped the moon prison."

The two priests are also recovering from their recent knock out blows. Raising themselves to their knees , they show no further hostility to the adventurers.

"The Guardian has spared you," one says approvingly in Burmese.

Minutes later the two soldiers return. They turn out to be Japanese. They have removed the IJA tags from their ragged uniforms to show they are no longer combatants.

"When the war was over, after Japan’s surrender, we decided to remain here and defend the temple," one explains, in halting English.

Survivors of Suzuki’s ill-fated patrol, they wished to undo the harm they caused to the local people.

When the ex-soldiers learn that the Tiger Devil has escaped, occupying Suzuki, they hang their heads in disappointment.

"So the devil is not here. The Tiger is in Japan*, " the English-speaking soldier says….