Garrett's men came out of hiding, each sending Sam into paroxysms of fretting. He didn't seem to have a handle on counting. Two seemed to be two, but three came across as a whole lot more, and more than that apparently meant an infinite amount of tall, hairy, ill-dressed invaders. But he calmed with each revelation of numbers, confident that the "infinite" number of spiders in his company could match any power of the other-universal strangers.

"Are we being stupid?" Garrett asked Top as they walked along the graded path in the razor rocks, pixies ahead and spiders swarming to the rear and either flank. "This is a nightmareverse, after all. Maybe we shouldn't trust anybody in the AO."

"It's a nightmareverse because we made it that way," Reiser cut in be...

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