In the bottom section these waterfalls reversed, against the laws of gravity; anyway, it looked like, to Pheel Cazzo - shooting out the floor upwards to other tiles, some of them reversing, or indeed flowing up - depending on the laws of reality in that section - separate stairways.

It was a hodgepodge of intentionally weird, overlapping, confusing elements - intentionally that way to discomfit, to render you purposefully and decidedly off-kilter; soliciting, internally, a general confusion and distrust of not just your environment but everything you knew. The office itself was designed to make you think that reality was malleable, that nothing was really real, except, that was, of course, for exactly that which Massimo Diap'leptico Rampposz said was real. By means of his trained/indoctrinated Cyclops.

It wasn't true that Massimo Diap'leptico Rampposz, the Demonlord was talentless; that he was merely a manager of men, that he was merely the apex of some convoluted organizational chart. No, he was a genius at this, whatever this was: making you think nothing was real, that you couldn't trust anything. And that you had things to fear - you had many, many specific things to fear. The source of which was likely him; among which death and torture, but that, given the malleable nature of reality - and the terrible, terrible things you must fear at the other end of it - the only response; it was the only possible/reasonable reaction to anything, any of this, was complete blind, unquestioning trust and obedience.

There was no room for anything else including – personal thought, your own identity, your own thoughts about what reality was, a separate conception of your own purpose in life, a belief in anything beyond death, anything, anything at all really, personal, in your head, in your own head, that you could even be allowed to retain.

All instead that was left for you, because everything else was intentionally destroyed under the weight of instrumentalised fear and irreality; was blindness, was unquestioning, was obedience, obedience. It wasn't even really just Massimo Diap'leptico Rampposz; he was rendered abstract in this schema. In his place was only authority. Was only power. Only the complete absence of freedom in response... to it.

Do what Massimo Diap'leptico Rampposz tells you.

But despite the myriad cheap tricks and Pheel's particular sensitivity to them, he felt within him, it was the – perhaps ephemeral, but beautiful nonetheless, flowering of a resentment that could burn the lips off a – didn't matter how many eyes; other organs; regular; supernatural – face.

“Sit.”

He looked like this: