Everyone peered closely at the ancient engraving...not noticing that Russell was slowly backing his way deep into the cave, looking for the hidden lever that would....

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...forever seal the entrance of the cave and release the beams of blue light that would turn all the males in the room into Egyptian smarfflizards. He would be the ONLY character! Himself was gone. The characters would soon be gone. Crowedom would be HIS! And, thus, so it was written...and so it was done.

The giant slab of rock slid crunchingly into place, the blue light beams wove their evil patterns back and forth across the large entrance room of the cave, and *poof* *poof* *poof* all the characters found themselves belly-deep in skull dust. The eyes of every woman widened in shock and awe at the sight of nearly two dozen smarfflizards.

Amanda's knees went all weak and she sat down heavily, nearly missing crushing Steve to death. It was too horrible for words....but one must try to find them anyway. Else one would have to type "the end" and Sid would, then, have gotten his way.

Joimus squared her chin, a determined gleam in her eye as she scooped her palm under Maximus. Shining Zack's flashlight into the noblest of all the smarfflizard's faces, she saw large, sadly puzzled seagreen eyes looking back at her. Delicately running her fingertip down Maximus' scaly snout, she promised him, "I shall not rest, my dearest, until you are restored once more to General of the Armies of the Northiness." Turning to Juditha, she said passionately, "I sense Sid's hand in this foul plot!"

Juditha, long a victim of Sid's perverted circuitry, instantly agreed. "But where IS Sid?" Juditha asked, not having seen him so far on their Egyptian adventure.

"Didn't he get left back in Dickens' London at Christmas?" asked Carole.

"I thought so," added Lucilla, "but this is way, way too Siddish for comfort."

"Which smarfflizard is Russell?" inquired Bunny.

"Hmmmm?" said BertiVet, scanning the floor. "Is it that one?"

"Come now!" remarked Ann. "Surely you can see THAT smarfflizard has the best lizardian equipment and is obviously Terry!" It was true. If you looked closely at the smarfflizards, each had some individual characteristic that revealed which character he was...er...had been. One of them had no scales but was covered with strange, black markings. Another had an "X" branded low on his back (This is a reference to Arthur, branded in the past on a Welsh beach by Ando...like a hot-crossed bun). Both of these kept hanging around Ando's hemline. The one nearest to where the flashlight had fallen was covered snout to tailtip in brown fur. Ando laughed and pointed at it, "WookieLizard!" she taunted as Susan Guildford quickly popped it out of sight in her pocket. There was the plump lizard reeking of soy sauce, the black lizard covered in dust, the yellow lizard with the 3 mournful seagulls following it about...but there was no lizard with plaid markings anywhere in the cave.

"That is really, really STRANGE!" said Juditha. "I can't find a Russellsmarff at ALL!"

"Of COURSE you can't!" snarked a satisfied voice from the darkness of the passageway that led off the main cavern. Joimus shone the flashlight's beam in that direction, revealing Himself standing there, his chest so swollen with self-importance that his buttons almost popped off his blue flannelled torso.

"RUSSELL!" cried Juditha, shocked. "What have you done to all your characters?!?"

"Russell", his quotation marks having returned in the dry desert air, merely stared with overweening satisfaction at his lizardian handiwork. It was even better than he had hoped! He strutted into the room, deliberately treading on Bud's tail, and repeated, "What have I done? I have made myself the ONLY character in all of Crowedom....that's what I have done!"

"Character?" queried Joimus. "You are not a character...you are Himself. You are all the characters...and more...in one."

"Russell" smiled wickedly, paused, then ripped open quite ruthlessly the front of Big Blue in a most unRustyish manner, revealing beneath it a purple suitcoat. Crowedom gasped!

"SID!" breathed Juditha, her hand flying to her mouth in horror.

"Yes...Sid," mocked the chipman. "Now it is ME or...or...Ben Affleck!"

Crowedom gulped. Being a CrowePerson was about to take on a whole new meaning. It was the ultimate test of croweablity. Would one stay in CroweLand with only Sid in residence...or would one hop ship and become an Affleckky? Moans and groans and great gnashings of teeth resounded throughout the cave.

Joimus' eyes narrowed in the dim light as she continued running her fingertip fondly down MaxiSmarff's snout. She whispered something in Juditha's ear, who whispered it into BertiVet's ear, who whispered it into...well...it went like that until everyone had been ear-whispered then Joimus shouted , "NOW!" and all the smarfflizards left on the cave floor were quickly gathered in loving hands as 3200 feet dashed for the back passageway.

This being an epi and all, it was accomplished with the utmost swiftness, flair, grace and style and they were all gone into the darkness before Sid could blink a seagreen eyeball. *WHOOOSH* Well, all that is except for Cyd, who had been taking digital photographs of a rare mummified tomblily in a far crevice and now turned, facing Sid. She smiled. His anticipated denouement had come at last. They were alone. He was now hers. She advanced upon him, dropping her camera heedlessly into the skull dust and smarfflizard guano, fascinating him with the brazenness of her approach and the sparkling blueness of her lipstick.

Meanwhile, far down the passageway, the women and characterlizards had made their way to the top of a looooong flight of steps carved out of the rock. "What do you suppose is down THERE?" asked Juditha, frowning at the velvet blackness into which the steps descended.

Lucilla had noticed a small emerald resting on the fifth step down. Next to it lay a curl of mummy wrapping. She recalled the London bobby's whistle and his "Stop that mummy!" shout. The emerald gleamed in the beam of Joimus' flashlight like Aubrey's eyes as he stood on the poop deck, watching the sunrise. "Well, then," she tossed back over her shoulder as she headed down, scooping up the emerald as she passed, "there's not a moment to lose!"

"I KNEW it!" grumped Diz! "I KNEW she didn't have the willpower not to say it!"

"Lucilla, WAIT!" Joimus called after her. But it was too late. The hostess had disappeared into the blackness.

"Oh, well," remarked Ando, following after. "Sid is back up there. What could be down there that's worse than HIS plottings?" Alas, she was to find out. In her efforts to avoid all contact with...shudder... 'fields'...the former Welshwoman had spent most of her childhood creeping about abandoned coal mines and, so, it was with perhaps a bit too great a portion of overconfidence that she strode so boldly downward into the blackness of the far reaches of what she seemed to have forgotten was actually...you know...a TOMB! It was, one presumes, the way the distant wail rose and fell, its cadence and tones wrapping about the hearer like a poisonous fog that made her pause at last on the 92nd step down.

The sound of Lucilla's footsteps had ceased. There was only the otherworldly wail and the heavy breathing of the women clustered still at the top of the steps. Well, that and the muffled scraping of some ancient stone lid being opened. The coalmines of Wales had NOT been like THIS! THEY had been filled with happy canaries and the occasional homeless, wandering llama. She held the lizard with the black markings up close to her face, wrinkling her nose as its long tongue whipped out and licked her left nostril just as he so often did when in human form. How she missed the good ole days in the sewers of Malta when he had been a man with a switchblade!

"It's just you and me, kid," she said with false bravado as she placed him carefully on her right shoulder and took another step downwards. Something went *squish* in the darkness beneath her foot. "Oh, NO!" she thought in contrition, "Have I flattened poor Arthur?" But...no...it was not Arthur. It was something that had NEVER been Welsh! It was...