"Fool!" cried the god. "Do you still doubt me?"
"The servant is real but the master a dream." He paid no further attention as the visage dissolved into excrement. But the fire remained.
The way before him was too dark to see, so he went back to the entrance and pulled a torch from its mount just inside the arch. He returned to the door, and looked inside.
He entered a shallow stone hallway which ended in a tight spiral of stairs, leading downward. His torch was the only light. He descended slowly, the way cramped and his legs tight and bleeding, and after perhaps three hundred steps came upon a long catacomb, which he entered from a recessed hole in its side. The way was thick with webs which he brushed aside with is free hand, as he stepped out silently into the endless row of tombs.
She had to be there, somewhere: the way the shadows played upon the walls, the branching crypts and long row of stone caskets. The way his shadow-self stalked behind him, so tall.
He walked a long way, silent but for the sounds of his moving, then heard something like a faint groan of pain, unmistakably feminine, to his left and a short way ahead. He moved towards it, thrust the torch ahead of him and into a high, wide antechamber like a small cathedral, several caskets deep. He heard the sound again, this time a cry of terror and alarm, and strained his eyes to see. He moved closer, wedged the torch between two caskets and looked to the front of the chamber.
And there she was, the love of his life: above an altar, mounted halfway up the wall behind it, spread like a crucifix, arms and legs bound by iron shackles, garment torn, a hideous mask covering her face and spreading out in huge lizard's fins an arm's length wide. Only her eyes were visible, wide with terror, pleading against the act sure to come.
"Please, no. No. . .God. Please, I beg you. Please." And she lost all control and wept bitterly. He lowered his head, his heart torn apart.
"Don't cry, I won't hurt you." He stumbled for words, inadequate. "I haven't come to hurt you, I swear it….. By everything that is and isn't sacred I make this vow: that I will be to you whatever you need me to be, that I will never leave you, and that the day I knowingly cause you pain I will be the instrument of my own destruction. Please, don't cry."
He felt the tears pushing at his eyes, but would not leave her there a moment longer. He shook off emotion, climbed onto the altar and lifted the heavy mask from its hook above her head, set it quietly beside him.