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One piece at a time, he assured himself, is how the presence would be removed.

Solomon Garcia felt strong about his approach. He felt motivated. He was ready to dive into the dreamspace and arrive face to face with the king, this presence invading this house. He strode to the living room where his sleeping bag lay in wait and stopped just short of laying down upon it.

Trepidation and terror gripped his heart. A single refrain began repeating itself over and over in his mind:

Well played, Solomon. Well played indeed. But even these tricks will not save you for long.

Solomon had a plan. He set three alarms, spaced out disproportionately to address the possibility a pattern might be discovered among his antics. He needed a way to return to realspace, and his logic was such: if his initial alarm failed to release him from whatever drama he found himself trapped in, and a second alarm failed as well, the timing difference between the second and third may throw off his would-be warden and allow him to escape. It was a similar kind of trick, but not the same trick, and he thought he might get away with it, but he second-guessed himself.

What if it all goes wrong? he thought. His terror was somewhat waylaid by his setting of the alarms, but the trepidation remained.

Well played, Solomon. Well played indeed. But even these tricks will not save you for long.

What if, indeed. The stranger claimed to want to help him, but all she did was leave him in terrible situations and insult him. Or, at least this is what she had done so far; though truth be told, he wasn't sure she was insulting him with intention. She had left him trapped in the corridor. And if not for his alarm, he was sure she was going to leave him trapped in the garden. But this irked him somewhat, as he wondered if leaving him in the garden was indeed trapping him there. From the gazebo, he saw the maze, the forests and swamps beyond, and the mountain pass that would take him to the tower. If the stranger was being honest with him, then her dropping him off in the corridor gave him the most direct way to castle. Her doing so was illustrative of her warnings--this, he could admit, hindsight being the best sight and all--yet the possibility remained he could have made it to the tower had he stayed steadfast and focused. And if she left him in the garden with a clear understanding of what lay before him, then her disappearance meant nothing but the withdrawal of a tether or distraction in his journey to unseat the king. But he didn't know for sure. He didn't know if he could trust the stranger. He didn't know if she was, indeed, being honest.

The grim reality was that he didn't know anything. He only saw what she showed him, and understood what those visions meant within the framework of her words. If any part of what she said was dishonest, even to the most insignificant detail, he might find himself lost once again in the dreamspace, a victim to the stranger's machinations.

Solomon took a deep breath and exhaled slowly, working to calm his racing heart.

Well played, Solomon. Well played indeed. But even these tricks will not save you for long.

His interactions with the stranger were too short and too few, leaving him in a state of indecision. If he trusted her without question, and she turned out to be an agent of the presence, then he was lost. If he dismissed her warnings and it turned out she was honest in all of their interactions, he would likely be lost as well. What was it she had said?

I intend to help you, but I fear I can only take you so far. You are not ready to be here, and yet you insist on coming so completely.

Continued after the break

... I fear I can only take you so far.

It was clear she held some power in the dreamspace. She had raised a specter of the corridor in the gazebo during their recent interaction. She had cleared away the darkness and revealed the way forward. These could have been illusions, but was not everything an illusion in a dream?

No, he knew better than that. He'd read enough Jung. He'd read enough Castañeda. He'd had enough of his own experiences to know dreams were not some mild fancy but were often harbingers of some darker truths swimming below the conscious. The problem was he didn't know where he ended and the dreamspace began. Or, rather, how much of himself was imbued in the dreamspace. How much of who he was made up the stranger? The maze? The tower? How much of this presence influenced his understanding of what happened in the dreamspace? Once again, the stranger's words broke through:

We are all lost here because we lacked the foundation to stand firm against his influence. As do you.

He thought about his degeneration in the corridor, his loss of focus and determination, and near-complete submission to his fear. How much of his broken resolve was a result of the influence from the presence? How much of his broken resolve was a result of some darker and more nefarious aspect of himself?

Fuck.

He couldn't just stand there wondering about the psychological and philosophical ramifications of the words and deeds of some imaginary creature in an imaginary space. The presence was real enough, but whatever its machinations, dreams still held their own particular set of rules, and Solomon was a Dreamwalker, a master of the dream realm. Whatever doubts the stranger sought to imbue him with, he would overcome with action, not with consideration. Still, the trepidation remained, and he decided on one final failsafe, should his alarms fail to bring him back to the realspace.

He pulled out his phone and opened his wife's messages. His pride rolled around on his tongue for a moment, refusing to be dismissed, but with the stranger and the presence in mind, Solomon pressed his tongue to the roof of his mouth and swallowed. He could accept he didn't know everything. He quickly drafted a message and sent if before he second-guessed himself. With a heavy sigh, he put his phone away, and sat down on his sleeping bag.

He needed more information, and the only way to acquire that information was to step into the dreamspace. Without further contemplation, he laid down and began the breathing ritual which would provide him a lucid state as he entered the dreamspace.

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