He'd have to ram as much truth into this thing as possible without breaking it. Nothing else would hold it together. She was right. Nothing else would even hold it.

And that meant. That meant now. That meant right away. That meant this thing had to be going even before Demonlord, his real name was Demonlord, had a chance to glance at it; sans p52 or otherwise. If everything collapsed he was de-balled and executed anyway. They did that on Hortag. In prisons on those wasted planes. Tubes, there were tubes in which – he didn't want to think about it. In fact the details he didn't really know. They'd manage, they could manage things, it was all they did, to get him to Hortag, before everything fell in on itself. And if Demonlord didn't do it personally, on his own desk; they would complete that task in one of the quadratic ice prisons for artists and fools, they had over there, maybe that was - another planet, another dream, Shensh, you weren't even permitted to judge Hortag, or certain dreams.

They had their own methodologies based on a bunch of other stuff that everybody agreed was fine, he just didn't want, de-balled obviously.

Which meant.

“Send Pry.”

But all this. This, impossible even, in these terms, bureaucratic task. Getting a maxed truth stat, in terms of the obviously brand new story required, past anyone here in an institution pathologically, even, designed to trust nothing less than raw verity - get it past anyone, anyone, at all, let alone... his name was Demonlord.

And all that without, of course, yet another dead Cyclops, a true talent, the annunciator of quests, of new worlds really, he gave birth to heroes even more than he did, Pheel; he had to admit. He was the mode in which – he was the mode – through which the consciousness, that of the hero himself, was transmitted back to the whole. Back to Old Works, harnessed, and exploited through every dreamunit through which their life/quest/consciousness – the same thing - played - across three planets. He was his friend, fine, Tarr-Saik, but he was also the annunciator; his annunciator, his. He made reality out of the words he put on paper, and could you love a person anymore than one, for you, who did this.

And someone had – he'd been slain. Send Pry, she'd said.

“Who's killing Cyclops?”

He'd have to.

“Send Pry.”

Send Pry.

“Everyone else is doing something rather more important. Trust the mode. Trust it's totality. Trust that reality of story consciousness, of the combined consciousnesses running... through it -”

“It's not as simple. - Tarr-Saik was an artist.”

“Another reason you need truth; need to ram as much in there as possible.”

“Which is what? - What is the truth?”

“That the whole thing is run on illusion, is run on perception, is run on dreams. Is fake and is run on perception and illusion, and dreams, literally dreams, literally the dreams of dreamunits, which is what we call ordinary human beings, in measurable unitized energy, the name of which is fantasy weight, which is what holds the exchange of everything required to keep three mutually interdependent, interconnected civilisations afloat anyway in the first place – it's on that screen there -” she pointed at the screen there, “You cannot say that. Explicitly. But you have to ram that thing in there, and it has to reflect something real - you've got to tell these people the truth: the basic truth of how their lives work and what they're for - really actually just tell them that this is what it is; this is true; this is the truth; you've got to just say just that. - Tell them about Old Works.” She paused. She stopped. She paused. She paused and stopped again. And then she sighed, “You know, obviously in terms of it being, in terms of it being a story. And send Pry and trust this thing, and trust them, trust that totality, trust Old Works, and trust the story running through it – and.

“Watch it reinforce itself on truth -”

“- He'll kill me. Too much truth could - break it/it necessarily will, and he'll kill me. For that. The tight-rope you'd have to walk on this and he'll kill me.”

“He'll kill you worse the other way.”

His head was pounding. But he had no blood. His head was pounding arteries without blood.

“Yes. You have no blood now, anymore, in your body - you gave it all to my child, but -”

A tall young skinny woman with fierce golden eyes entered the room unannounced, and Pheel recognised her immediately. It wasn't hard to, he'd seen her before and the only person who could enter his office like that announced was, him, that man, the man himself, or a direct representative. This was obviously a direct representative who'd entered the moment Clua's discourse was reaching its apex, not just of perspicacity, but of clarity; of it being in fact, even maliciously, pointed directly at his soul -

“He wants you. Now.”