In response to a challenge...

Torches kindled to life on either side of the great hall, throwing flickering shadows over the solid gold floor, the bejeweled walls, the vaulted and frescoed ceiling, but most of all upon the paintings lining each wall. Some seemed prosaic, a bastion of normality in a place where strangeness roamed free; some geometric, a beautiful series of interacting polyhedrons from floor to high ceiling; some excised, as if the painter had used colors the mortal eye could not percieve; some horrific, as if to view them for too long a time would cause the shackles binding a man's sanity to slip and let madness run free...

::Lord Zhilbar appeared without fanfare in the entryway, along with His guest.:: He offered her a seat, and they prepared for the contest that lay before them...