Author’s Note:
I stopped writing Doctor E for a semester of school as updating was incompatible with my schedule, but I did scrawl a little for the beginning of book 2, “Opener,” where book 1 was “Closer.”  This is alternate beginning part 3 of 3.

 

The Hall of the Seven King is not a dwarven hall of stone, with some Peter Jackson marvel of pillars that reach to the sky despite being set within darkness.  (And who needed the room, anyway? I mean, sure, Tolkien had Tall Elves, but that’s just inviting in something like a dragon, when you can fly kites in your own living room.  Well, I suppose the main hall of Khazad-dum was probably not the equivalent of the living room, and instead was their own cubicle farm.  The Balrog probably just felt right at home, that’s all I’m saying.)  It was still absolutely as imagined, full of warmth and colour and texture, really a lot of texture.  I might have known what to expect, which is to say, either our Reality or that Beyond bleeds into the other.  I guess specialists like myself are just giant napkins and seltzer water, dabbing up the stains.  Honestly, I probably prefer the plumber metaphor to the dry cleaner one.

 

 

From here, the description went on to meeting the Seven King, but I lost everything in a server move.  (I thought I was updating the new database, turned out I was updating the old database.)  Alas, alack, all that.  We’ll get back here someday.