Now bodiless, little more than a ghost herself, Dema retreats deep into her shaman dream, and from there reaches out to Cern. He has been thrown against a tall stalagmite and is unconscious. Her touch rouses him, but there is little he can do until he gathers himself.

She reaches out still farther, into the timeless realm in which the cavern is the same as when she first came into her shaman power, and in that realm she finds a resonance with an awareness that has been growing in her. 

She finds a link to Gaia, the Earth Mother, the over-arching awareness that encompasses the awareness of all life forms of Earth, and of the non-living as well. Drawing upon the strength of this connection, this limitless will of life to survive and flourish, she re-exerts her own will, takes back from Vlad the substance he has absorbed from her, and accretes more as well from the living microbial substance that layers the surrounding walls.  She becomes again the ancient Lamia, towering over Vlad in half-snake form.

"False one," she hissed, "Did I not warn you long ago that the Earth Mother does not lightly allow such as you to defile the lives of the innocent?" 

"You!" He exclaimed. "I should have known! But I have defeated you in the past, and will do so again." 

"Your memory is as false as your façade of a human form."

His physical command over Dema gone, Vlad's previously swollen form shrank to its most stable core of accretions. With her newly expanded link to the all-seeing Gaia, his true appearance, the bland façade she had glimpsed in the reflecting pools, was now evident to Dema. 

"Witch. So you still have the Mother on your side. No matter. Your Gaia is not all-powerful. She cannot control me without my consent. She cannot touch me."

"Maybe not. But I can." And with that, Cern, who had climbed silently onto the platform while Vlad was focused on Dema, plunged a length of broken stalagmite spire into his back. 

At the thrust, Vlad's control over his bodily matter was disrupted, and it dissipated into a swirling mist. A dwindling cry of "Nooo..." escaped from his throat as his body dissolved, and echoed through the cavern until it vanished along with his misty remains. The Impaler could not survive his own impalement.

But Vlad himself was still there. He was visible to Dema's dream-awareness, and when Cern joined her in the dream he saw him too. His ghostly presence was not nearly as compelling as his physical form had been, and probably looked like Vlad Dracul had appeared in life.

Even in this form he remained defiant, but was now powerless against them. Dema drew him deeper into the shaman dream world and led him into a detailed dream recall of the actual circumstances of his acts against the original Lamia, until he could not fail to recognize his own culpability, his own choices. 

It also became evident that his choice of the name Dracul—the Dragon—had been an echo of his abiding fear of the Lamia and her ancient curse, another attempt to usurp her power. Having thus seen the truth of his past unraveled, and witnessed the judgment against him, this master vampire could at last allow himself to be swayed, to accept the fact of his death centuries before, and perhaps move on to a less cursed existence. 

But he was not as immune to the power of Gaia as he had believed. Her presence in this cavern was not unlike the waters of the Mures or the Olt. So, perhaps with a little assist from Dema, his disembodied spirit found itself imbued into the bodies of the many bats that inhabited the cavern, soon to learn the pleasure of flying through the night sky, feeding on insects.