And maybe this was only his vigour returning, or maybe all of this was just the first, true glimpse of reality that awaited him, in terms of: this was the way he saw the world now, after, after that was, he had passed through, in more than one sense - and in more than that one other sense, the supernatural organ of Clua-Sryh.

Something had been hacked out of the final blood red wall of reality, using his flesh. And he could see things now. He was an entirely different person; he had no choice but to recognise.

Frivolous, he was still frivolous, prone to bouts of perhaps fruitless fantasy, yes, obviously.

- Maybe more than ever; He felt – none of them could see what was really going on.

This vast terminal thing on the horizon. This emptiness; this wave of finality. The wave of the final collapse of even what was merely the wake of all that had come before. It was zero, on the horizon. The storm coming was nothing. The storm coming was complete non-existence. They already, all of them, lived in a complete lack - generated out of the reflected dreams and fantasies, of beings, reinforced, and indeed directed out of fantasies, weird shapes and movements, in the correct order and words, that forced a reality directly out the eyes through the force of will and fantasy.

Dreams, and fantasy.

This was the place they already were. This was the thing they were used to. And the weird nothing coming, the strange absence. The inward squall of that complete bizarre lack – of a nothing that was madness. This: it was coming.

He felt insane because he could see this. And knew it was real. And it was. And the same games circled, and the same feints, strategies; the same lines, the same rituals, the... same -

- it could be a song, it could be a dream, it could be anything.

The twisted shapes he saw out the black behind them; through the opinions of Cyclops, through: they intended what was there.

Pheel could see through it now. He could see far beyond what was agreed, a direct consequence of a ceremony itself. A biological entwining, sex with supernatural organs; he saw past all the Old Works; all the Old... lies, and what he sensed there.

Propped up a world of lies, he did, and he hated himself for it; never able to become the man okay with any of it. He had tried and failed to accommodate, what should have been easy to agree was real, even good; but he couldn't – and/but now even worse.

It was all collapsing, it would collapse, it was the end - but when those towers of dissimulation tumbled. The complete weird absence he saw beyond it all, that was worse.

“No, I'm in charge.” he was saying again. Massimo rose again twenty feet in the air, maybe eight.

“I don't think you understand. You've set up a process that's going to destroy all of us. As inevitable as -

“No, I think I do -” Apparently he – whatever it was that had happened to him it was communicated - he - picked up the change in Pheel Cazzo, apparently they all did.

“You understand that,” big as I am; this was the subtext, “- I'm in charge of nothing.

“Formulas would have been... better than what we,” trailing, “currently have.

“But they don't work.” He was somehow bigger than he'd ever been and simultaneously – sheer kingly mass. And simultaneously defeated. “We're dead. You know the next thing is far worse. You know the next thing - you know they want this? You know they want what you've done? I've been, you know this, fighting, for, you. For Pry here, for – all of them. you think you've seen a massacre. - You feel bad for the dreamunits; you feel bad for beings whose fantasies mean anything, are of any use? You feel bad for them.” His eyes were... panels. “You feel bad for a people whose dreams are important - the most important thing we have? Wait till they are nothing. Wait till they could care. Wait till there is no reason at all - nothing they can get from them; wait till dreams, their dreams and, the dreams of - dreamunits are of no conceivable use to anybody.

“You think you've seen a massacre, you think you've seen a holocaust, you think you've seen death? You think you understand the quantities of blood this thing works on? You think, Pheel, you think? You feel bad for the children; the blood of the children? You feel bad for how much wet and then sticky blood of children is poured into this, to oil the gears, of Old Works? This pricks your conscience. - I answer to demons. It is demons I answer to. Human beings. Demons. I answer to demons. - Demons. Demons. Seas of blood? You have no idea how much New Works needs to drink, and it ain't three planets.” He collapsed. In on himself. “You're a fucking slave. - They made you do this.”