"Does it have a name?" Tasìa asked.

"Mendacium," Demona answered.

Tasìa reached back to her student days when she first learned Latin. The root of the word was only slightly different from its Spanish ascendant. Simply the word 'lie.'

"I should have known," Tasìa said with a guffawed nod.

She peered at the palace with a mathematician's eye. Renaissance-era critics of the style disdained the Gothic aesthetic. They claimed it lacked the elegant geometry of their own era.

That sentiment simply wasn't true to the extent they denied that the style was even based upon geometry. Gothic architecture was first divided into ratios before geometric symmetry was added to functionally divided sets. That tended to produced a sprawl, but still, a highly patterned one.

As Tasìa noticed the frieze that lined the entire façade just above the central jamb columns, she realized something about the structure that stood before her.

After she double checked to make sure her count was accurate, she cleared her throat.

She wasn't sure how she was going to ask Demona about it.

It would imply that the palace of her dream was an artificial contrivance planted into the spook's mind, somehow.

"Demona, you are quiet?"

"I'm viewing the palace with your vehicle's forward camera. Thankfully, the device swivels. I'm at a loss, Tasìa. How did they extract that structure from my brain?"

Tasìa chuckled. She sat her bum on the hood of the Jeep. With the passenger side door open she could hear Demona's voice through the speakers.

"My first assumption, and it may be a bad one, is they didn't. If you take Chartres Cathedral. On the North front, the side with the lancetéd tower, you elongate that side to accommodate an athenaeum in the interior, and divide the repetition of its motifs by a symmetry of 333 you pretty much come up with what we see here.

"The South side of it appears quite a bit more complicated to measure given the addition of lateral curvature so I am only guessing that it too is based on a symmetrical divider of 333. But, I am curious, Demona. If I approach the entrance, and view that frieze will it depict the life stages of Christ as does the frieze on the Cathedral of Chartres?"

"Good guess. But do you know why it does that?"

Tasìa smiled.

The weaponized mockery of The Faith by their adversaries was a subject she studied at the seminary at great length in her classes on rhetoric, modern dialectics, and more traditional theological apologetics. Thematically, the mockery tended to be quite predictable.

"When subjected to the repetition we see here as the ratio of division is stretched to match the number 666, the stages in the life of Christ within the frieze becomes a Sisyphean endeavor."

Demona chortled.

"Sisyphus, Prometheus, and the Rebel Son, there lies the wisdom of the ages!"

Tasìa shook her head. Demona was missing the point.

"We can debate theology some other time. What I'm getting at, they did not extract that dream from you, they planted it there in the first place."

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There was a pause.

"Ms. Del Alma-Gris, are you saying that I am a fool?"

Demona sounded more genuinely inquisitive than angry. Still, Tasìa chose to be tactful. They needed each other's help and that tended to make for good allies.

"Ha! Be easy on yourself. Its not like they sold you the Golden Gate Bridge. Because your sensibilities are refined and there is nothing crass about you, instead, you bought into this.

And what is the Palace of Lies, exactly?"

Demona smacked her lips.

"Hmm. Ms. del Alma-Gris, I thought you had little time to debate theology? Thought you would be more curious as to where your friend disappeared."

Tasìa nodded her head forward.

"In there, I suppose. That is why I asked about its function."

When Demona sighed in an incongruent repose to the rest of her face just then she could empathize with the diabolist. Tasìa herself had just briefly lived in a state of vastly diminished being in the physiological sense.

Demona spoke.

"To be honest, I am not even sure if she is in there. If you want to go in, I detected AR specced driving goggles in Annebél's glove compartment, and I'll accompany you."

Tasìa was reminded of the neoPalm's strange behavior when she first met Demona via a hologram. She did as was requested of her.

The image of Demona appeared standing in front of her. She wore black jeans, a matching corduroy jacket, and a pair of high, silver colored pumps.

Tasìa whistled at her stunning virtual companion as they began to walk up to the Palace of Lies.

"If we were a pair of girlfriends going to the discotheque searching for guys, I would highly approve of your fashion sense, Demona."

Demona smiled, curtly.

"I'm a married woman, Tasìa."

Gut shot. Til death do us part. There was definitely a point of contention between them in the case of Leòn. Demona likely heard every flirty exchange Tasìa had with her husband from the first moment they stomped bugs together.

It miffed Tasìa a bit.

Whoever heard of a diabolist who believed in the sanctity of marriage? The fuck the world is coming to?

Still, she could only blame herself. When she invited Leòn for a triste in the Daga Chicas' rest room she had not even the slightest curiosity about his commitments to anyone else.

Nor, for Beauregard's, for that matter.

She was a grown woman. The responsibility for that was her own.

Demona shook her head, sympathetically.

"I seem to have shamed you into silence. Ms. del Alma-Gris, I know you only meant well."

Tasìa bowed her head.

"It never occurred to me that a roguish mercenary spook like Leòn would be committed to anyone."

Demona stopped to let Tasìa catch up to her. They faced one another.

"It does seem a bit incongruent, does it not? Tasìa, I forgive you, and I'll never bring it up again. I only ask one thing, if I am able to successfully help you achieve your myriad set of goals in Asunción help me get back in to physical, carnal existence.

"You have no idea how I yearn to touch my husband, again."

Tasìa thought about it. Her shoulders squinted up, and her eyelids pinched together.

"You have objections? Please let me know."

"Leòn shot you."

Demona's face grew animated and she spoke with her hands.

"Only because I told him to. Egliona had discovered my brain was a linked-in separate entity, and she took over my body with the intention of linking back to where my brain still remains secured. It would be devastating if they ever found this place.

"My body and my security detail were beyond corrupted by her to the point of no return. Leòn was reluctant, but he loved me, and he understood the consequences. That is why he did it."

Tasìa nodded.

"I'll do what I can."

They stood before the entrance. The construction was not of stone but of the strata of fungi she had experienced before. However, there were a few differences. The coloration was stratified in dozens of white tones.

Tasìa pointed to the masonry and questioned Demona.

"It's surface is glassy?"

Demona took a moment to consider it.

"Though the human eye can't see it unless the energy that storms from it is so vast that it reveals itself, there exist a constant battle between nanospore and the resonance field at the edges of Asunción city.

"The palace is being baked at the molecular level to its better aesthetic affect. The way the crystalized fungi disperses light is utterly dazzling."

They stood at the stairway entrance, a magnificent jamb with ribbed columns and tortured statuary stood before them.

Mel flew overhead. Tasìa plucked the PA from her fanny pocket.

"I'm going to send the nightwing to scope out the rooftops."

Demona's brows gave a curious frown. Her hand pointed toward the entrance way.

"You are not going inside?"

Tasìa chuckled.

"By the way of the front entrance? Pshaw, sister! Hi! My name is Tasìa, I don't believe we have met."