"Polymus..."

She dreamt that she had her family back again, all right, or at least, she had them assembled around her. Only they weren't awake. Her father wasn't walking around ordering her about; Leroy wasn't grabbing things from her hands and then holding them over her head. They were lying rigid, on the ground, hands to their side, resembling the positions they had assumed as dolls. In fact, they were dolls, still, only flesh and blood dolls, for their spirit, their essence, was somewhere else. Their eyes stared up blankly at--what?

"Dextrous bromine..."

Where was she, anyhow? She certainly wasn't in her house, or in that cozy spot she had lain down in when she went to sleep...where was that again? Well, she wasn't in that place any more, in any event.

She couldn't see very far in front of her. There was too much fog...or was it smoke? Yes, it had to be smoke, because there was an acrid smell to it, and a taste that burned her throat and caused her to keep her mouth closed and stagger her breaths. When she looked up, she could tell that the ceiling appeared to be high above, cast in shadows, and when she looked to her sides, she couldn't see any walls, really, and the ground she walked upon seemed to be made of cold, solid, stone. A cave. If she had to guess, she would say she was in a cave.

"Dominous quantrum. Felipe uder..."

"Y plesum du terminus..."

In the center of the circle, past the stiff unmoving bodies of her father and mother and brother and sister and Woofdog, she could see a dark figure, a shadow without definition, bent over something. She couldn't exactly see what. The figure seemed to be caressing this something, softly speaking to it, urging it on, and this something appeared to be the source of the smoke.

"Triok di tempo in salfal triastat..."

Unbelievably (because she doubted she'd actually do this in real life), she felt herself moving forward, in order to catch a better glimpse of the figure surrounded in shadows. She kicked at something and glanced down at the ground. Oh. Her mother's leg.

She turned her attention back to the figure. She took a giant step forward, over her mother's body. She knew that she had been hypnotized, taken in by the siren song of the softly spoken words being chanted by the--was it a woman?--standing in front of her.

"Acti difliaflum y santos pium..."

The words were getting louder now, as if each step taken raised the sound level one decibel, like a knob upon a stereo. The figure was coming closer into focus now. She could discern a dark black robe now, with delicate figures etched in a darker shade of ebony. The figure was wearing a hood, so she couldn't see much of her (it was a her, it had to be a her) features. She continued to move forward, over Woof, over her Father's head. She just had to catch a better glimpse.

She still couldn't get a good look at the object the creature was coaxing on, because the figure kept swaying back and forth, hovering around it, first crouched over, then swaying from one side to the next. What could it be?

She was only a few feet away now. But strangely, although the figure before her--or at least, the back of the figure before her--was coming into sharper focus, the rest of the room was growing hazier, the smoke growing thicker, more intense.

"Modem mochi karise..."

One more step closer and she'd be right behind--

"Momanu!"

And at that moment the figure raised her hands and cried out, and whirled around to face Amelia, and Amelia could see her, the way she really looked, and suddenly she wanted to close her eyes and scream, but instead she stood there frozen, as the figure reached out her bony arms to grab a hold of Amelia's shoulders, and Amelia could feel her tight grip, and she also knew she couldn't possibly break free, that she was helpless, powerless, and she felt herself being pushed back, pushed back, pushed back, until she knocked over a tiki torch and suddenly the stone beneath her feet gave way to nothingness and she suddenly realized that she was falling...

"Ki-cha!"

She was falling into nothingness...

"Keringa!"

Falling into blackness...

"A-spet!"

Falling----

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