text: > look around
  The throne room where you've spent so much of your life this past decade...but as it looked to you the first time you saw it, as a child: rich and strange and big.
  
  The blameless attendant is watching you, wide-eyed with fear.
  
  Everyone else is watching you both with concern, wondering if you will indeed condemn this faithful servant to death as your first official act.
  
  > bow to the man
  Which do you mean, the better flail, your Royal Crook, or your Royal Flail?
  
  I only understood you as far as wanting to bow.
  
  > smash better flail
  Stupid flail! If a royal sceptre got broken, they'd have to bring another one, right?
  
  > Go west
  This small stone chamber is nearly filled by your nested Burial Shrines. The walls are richly (if hastily) painted with scenes of your recent funeral. A wide gap in the stone leads east; a passage to the south is narrow and guarded by two stern stone statues of yourself. The west wall is carved with a false door: a shallow bas-relief simulation of an inviting archway leading to the perils and rewards of the afterlife.
  
  > sing down under
  Voicelessly you voice Down Under.
  
  The false door opens, revealing a seemingly infinite series of arches leading west.
  
  > go to the east
  This chamber is dominated by a grim statue of Anubis, judge of the newly dead, in jackal form. Around it are arrayed a decade's worth of kingly gifts. Little of it seems to matter much now. On the other hand, your Canopic Shrine and Sceptre Case are here, too. A wide gap in the west wall is the only exit.
  
  > Inventory
  You are carrying:
  your Coronation Crook
  a Large Paternal Flail
  a Large Paternal Crook
  an Impolitic Spare Crook
  your replacement Coronation Flail
  a Book of Songs of Getting Through the Day
  
  > put large paternal Flail in Case
  You put the Large Paternal Flail into your Sceptre Case.
  
  > put all but the replacement flail into Case
  your Coronation Crook: Done.
  Large Paternal Crook: Done.
  Impolitic Spare Crook: Done.
  Book of Songs of Getting Through the Day: You are reluctant to risk damaging the Book: it seems both useful and beautiful.
  
  > go to the west
  This small stone chamber is nearly filled by your nested Burial Shrines. The walls are richly (if hastily) painted with scenes of your recent funeral. A wide gap in the stone leads east; a passage to the south is narrow and guarded by two stern stone statues of yourself.
  
  The false door carved into the west wall has become a real archway, leading west into absolute darkness.
  
  > go west
  You approach the arch that leads to the unknown lands west of life itself; but you hesitate. Looking around again at the somber paintings of this very moment on the burial chamber walls, you are suddenly homesick for mortality and kingship. You feel reluctant to leave your old life without some token, some remembrance...some talisman against the unknown challenges that lurk perhaps only a step beyond the arch.
  
  > go west
  With your best sceptres crossed protectively before you, you step out through the westward arch.
  
  ...for an instant you percieve the universe as an infinity of arches. Each step in any direction is a step through another arch, into another world...
  
  ...but even as the possibilities expand around you, the paths you have already walked fade away...
  
  ...you feel, more than see, a distant glimpse of paradise; but an instant later it is wrapped...no, you are surrounded in layers of obscuring mist that solidify one by one around you: huge confusing shapes, each smaller and simpler than the one surrounding it, until you find yourself inside the simplest shape of all, still enormous, and dark....
  
  You are in a large spherical vault of polished stone, black as night, though your feline vision reveals all. In the exact center a magnificent amulet of tremendous size hangs in the darkness: a spherical mosaic of emerald and lapis lazuli and brown jasper, perhaps thrice your height, and as far above you.
  
  Surely those gems lack their full glory in such darkness.
  
  A man-sized clockwork scarab is pushing a lacy metal ball east along the bottom arc of the chamber. As the scarab chugs past you, crossing the low arc and heading up toward the east side of the spherical chamber, you catch a flickering glimpse of some strange mechanism inside the golden cage.
  
  > About yourself
  Here beyond the false door, you feel much more yourself than you did in your tomb. Still dead, though.
  
  The sound of gears gets louder: now the clockwork scarab is pushing its lacy metal ball up the east arc of the chamber.
  
  > examine the cage
  The scarab is pushing a man-high, lacy ball through the darkness: a spherical cage woven of fine gold wire. A strange mechanism is barely visible inside.
  
  Now the clockwork scarab is pushing its lacy metal ball west across the top arc of the chamber.
  
  > examine the mechanism
  From outside the wire ball, you can only tell that some small objects are woven into the wire near the center.
  
  The clockwork scarab is pushing its lacy metal ball down the west arc of the chamber. (In a moment it will pass you again as it crosses the bottom of the chamber.)
  
  > look at the amulet
  The mosaic is a map: you perceive that the jewelled globe is a map of the entire world, although the part you recognize as your own kingdom - marked by a small white obelisk - seems impossibly tiny.
  
  The clockwork scarab is pushing its lacy metal ball east along the bottom arc of the chamber.
  
  > examine the obelisk
  A pyramid-capped square column, about the size of your thumb, carved from some fine-grained white stone. Fine inscriptions describe your nation's worth, but in no language you have ever seen.
  
  The clockwork scarab is pushing its lacy metal ball up the east arc of the chamber.
  
  > examine ball
  The scarab is pushing a man-high, lacy ball through the darkness: a spherical cage woven of fine gold wire. A strange mechanism is barely visible inside.
  
  The clockwork scarab is pushing its lacy metal ball west across the top arc of the chamber.
  
  > look at the ball
  The scarab is pushing a man-high, lacy ball through the darkness: a spherical cage woven of fine gold wire. A strange mechanism is barely visible inside.
  
  The clockwork scarab is pushing its lacy metal ball down the west arc of the chamber. (In a moment it will come within your reach again as it crosses the bottom of the chamber.)
  
  > look at the scarab
  The giant scarab beetle, finely crafted of copper and bronze, works its six leg-cams tirelessly along two thin grooves that circle this chamber. Between the polished plates of its carapace you can see gears turning inside.
  
  The clockwork scarab is pushing its lacy metal ball east along the bottom arc of the chamber.
  
  > Inventory
  You are carrying:
  your Coronation Crook
  your replacement Coronation Flail
  a Book of Songs of Getting Through the Day
  
  The clockwork scarab is pushing its lacy metal ball up the east arc of the chamber.
  
  > touch ball
  The cage-ball is out of reach: the mechanical scarab is pushing it up the east arc of the chamber....
  
  The clockwork scarab is pushing its lacy metal ball west across the top arc of the chamber.
  
  > put Crook in scarab
  That can't contain things.
  
  The clockwork scarab is pushing its lacy metal ball down the west arc of the chamber. (In a moment it will come within your reach again as it crosses the bottom of the chamber.)
  
  > take the ball
  The cage-ball is out of reach: the mechanical scarab is pushing it down the west arc of the chamber....
  
  The clockwork scarab is pushing its lacy metal ball east along the bottom arc of the chamber.
  
  > jump
  You jump, but the jewelled globe remains out of your reach.
  
  The clockwork scarab is pushing its lacy metal ball up the east arc of the chamber.
  
  > take the ball
  That's too heavy to move.
  
  The clockwork scarab is pushing its lacy metal ball up the east arc of the chamber.