...as he spiraled down into blackness, Dabbler realized he and Landis were not alone. Although it was too dark to even really see, he sensed somehow that someone else was falling with them, surely not -- Lizzie? But so it seemed to be. Though there was something wrong about her, he sensed some other presence associated with her -- within her?
Dabbler wondered what it was, even as he received and emphatic confirmation of what it wasn't -- for from somewhere far above them there was a great reverberating howl of rage that sounded like it came from a Zorlond the size of a whale.
Or perhaps a pod of whales....
Through the keyhole, Lesley saw it all. Two of his companions, along with the strangely denatured-looking version of the Author they had come to save, falling endlessly from the higher levels of Dream, just beneath the threshhold of consciousness, into the unknown depths. But was it just a vision or could he somehow contact them, save them--?
Or ... did they even need saving? Perhaps this was just what needed to happen right now. He hesitated, wondering if he should try anything, and what he should try if he did. He also wondered where D.J. might be.
Then an occurance in his own setting broke his concentration, and made him realize that here too, there was still work to be done....
D.J. couldn't do it. Somehow she was certain that if she started firing at the zombies she would be committing a mistake, or perhaps compounding one. Her skin crawled as the horde of undead approached, but she couldn't help thinking what if they're right? This dream, which she had so carefully tailored to fill the gap in her own and Lizzie's lives and then perforce made the arena of their struggle to save Zorlond, had been completely recast by the warped and shattered psyche of the Red Magician. Its denizens, from which she had so carefully winnowed the fantastic from the real, might well have lost whatever passed for life here in Dream. This hollow, burnt-out shell of what this dream had been before Zorlond could be all that remained of its previous state -- to do it even more damage could be reckless, criminal, even fatal to any possibility of later restoration. Or this could simply be another deadly delusion cast up by the Red Magician's shattered mind, to ensnare her. What should she do?
It was the fact that the setting derived from her mind rather than Zorlond's that finally decided her. It couldn't be a snare. Or, if it was, it was self-set, not from Zorlond. In any case, it would have to be dealt with, not destroyed. D.J. Woohoo lowered her pistol again.
"Fool!" cried Harry and Zorlond together. The Zorlond-voice in the back of her head wasn't too happy about things, either.
The lead zombies leered in malevolent triumph, reaching out towards her--
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Tue Jan 11 00:21:26 2005
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