Supposedly, they'd been prepared for this one.
All the research was solid, the mazes brilliant, the setup flawless. They'd even known that the Mark had been Trained, so they'd expected the projections to be armed.
They'd also expected the projections to be human. And they most definitely weren't.
Two headed bats screamed mindlessly at them from windowless buildings, while golden tentacles oozed down the walls and sprouted spontaneous fangs that smiled and laughed, and things with far too many mouths grew random appendages when you weren't looking. A faceless dark-skinned man playing a flute whispered nonsense that made your skin crawl, and all Ariadne's careful mazes did no good when the three-lobed burning eyes could pass through walls like they didn't exist.
The entire dream would've been completely ridiculous..if it wasn't so insanely terrifying.
Eames, Cobb, and the Mark were one level down, looking for some ancient book that had the answers they'd been paid to find. Which was going to be tricky, since the Mark said reading a single word of it would drive the reader mad...or possibly destroy the world, it depends...
Arthur had actually been intrigued by all of it, up until one of the maddeningly horrific shapes had torn a strip off of Ariadne's leg and started to drag her into the shadows. At THAT point Arthur got very angry.
One of them should've used a gun to send her out of the dream, except she refused to leave Arthur behind, and he found himself completely incapable of shooting her, even in a dream.
They were much too busy to talk, so they never knew that they both thought at the exact same moment "This is the LAST FUCKING TIME we take on a Mark who reads Lovecraft..."
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Written to go with a drawing I did over on deviantart. Because I love Inception to bits and I AM that obsessed..
http:/llyzabeth dot deviantart dot com/#/d32sxvm