He looked back. A sense of profound horror sickened him. He recognized them now. For the first time they were near enough for him to identify them.
He sank down on his knees. He began to crawl through the stinking ooze. Then he felt their nearness. They were surrounding him. He couldn't escape. He saw a ring of cold green faces. Hands, innumerable hands, reached out, tickling him with a branch of small blue nettles.
They had caught up with him at last!
He screamed. The poison fangs of the bombi-vine. The final agonies of the damned. The bombi-vine! Death would be infinitely preferable to the sting of the bombi-vine. It was unendurable pain, indefinitely prolonged. It directly effected a mysterious distortion in the nervous structure. Science had no cure, had never found the cause. Men who stumbled onto the nettles of the bombi-vine sought a quick and merciful death as the only escape.
Without death, the victim lived out a full lifetime of raw, shrieking pain....
His screams as he awoke silenced the giant tree-toads who hung heavily from the five-hundred foot crinoids. But before he left for Vencity through the darkness, he had suppressed the stark horror of the dream.
Once more he had drowned his hell in Stith.