Consciousness comes back to you slowly, your head swimming in a mix of pain and confusion. Attempting to open your eyes meets with some limited success, as first one eyelid and then the other manage to get partially open, but unfortunately your vision is too glassy to see anything more than an indistinct blur of shapes. Attempting to move your arms, you are alarmed to find that they are somehow strapped down to whatever it is you are laying on. The same discovery follows for your legs, and the realization that you're completely helpless causes a knot of fear to develop in your gut. Blinking your eyes repeatedly, you try to get them back in working order, and in doing so you are granted occasional snippets of proper vision, though what you find does not offer any comfort. You are tied to a table with leather cuffs, which look just as sturdy as they feel. The room you occupy is small and lined with a couple of tables, a large chest, and a good number of shelves containing books interspersed with clay jars, medical instruments, and a great number of unidentifiable objects. The only exit appears to be a large wooden door set into the wall, crosshatched with iron slats and looking quite sturdy.
Struggling against your bonds, you hear a metallic rattle and glance toward the door, watching as it swings open and the old woman from before comes shuffling in. Looking at you with a rather sinister smile, the old woman walks around the table you are strapped to and comes to stand by your shoulder.
"Well now, are we comfortable yet? You picked the wrong woman to try and fool, little missy. Feeding me a story about needing directions, what rubbish. I know why you came here, you heard the rumors and hoped to steal the secret of my work," she said, her piercing glare holding more than a little madness in it. Attempting to deny her accusations, the old woman cuts you off in mid sentence by clamping her hand over your mouth. "No, no denials, sweetie. I know that you want the same thing that all of the others I've captured have wanted. You want to take possession of my life's work. You want my secret. You want to find the secret of eternal youth."
With an evil leer, the woman releases her grip on you, and for a moment you remain silent, trying to process what she has just said. After digesting her mad rambling, you again try to give voice to the truth, but the old woman merely turns away and begins attending to something within the large chest which you had briefly caught notice of earlier. After several minutes spent futilely trying to get her to listen to reason, you come to the conclusion that it will do no good and suffice to lay there and wait to see what the old woman's next move will be. Interminable minutes pass as the woman attends to some task at the side of the chest, until she rises and looks back at you with the same malicious expression.
"As I'm sure you can see, my sweet, I have not yet managed to find the secret you came here to steal. If I had, I would have abandoned this withered body long ago. I am close, though. So close to tasting the beauty of my youth," she says, her gaze becoming more vague, as if reliving days gone by. "I've sacrificed so much, tested my techniques on so many who have come here, only to meet with failure, but now... now I think I have found the answer. The only thing I need to finish my work once and for all is one last test subject."
The realization that she is talking about you hits like a ton of bricks, and you begin to struggle furiously at your bonds. Chuckling at your pointless attempts at freeing yourself, the old woman reaches out and taps you on your forehead, causing the tingling feeling which had preceded your earlier blackout to rush over you again. Darkness starts to pull at the edge of your vision as you valiantly fight to stay conscious, but you sense that it is a losing battle. Turning and heading back over to the chest, the woman carefully removes something and places it on one of the tables. Somnolence overcoming you, the last thing you see before you black out is the object she has brought into view, which for all the world appears to be...