Tasìa leaned forward.

"Out of my way, beguiler!"

Bajamutté's eyes grew darkly.

"Do not do anything rash," the Silent Dragon commanded.

The sheath of her stiletto was clipped in her right boot just above her ankle. She flicked it out and swept it forward until it made contact with the flesh that connected his penis to his nutsack.

"Is this rash? You sent the lémures against me, you bastard. Whatever sway you had over me is over. Now, out -"

Bajamutté attempted to backhand her, but he severely miscalculated her natural speed.

She swooped low on one knee, slit open his ballsack with a hard upward snap, twisted around to his backside, rose up and thrust the stiletto hilt-deep into the cauda equina nerve cluster near the bottom of his vertebrae. One sweeping set of motions before he even completed his backhand swing.

Bajamutté's entire body seized up; he lashed his head upward, and screamed with a discordantly cracked voice. Blood pulsed out of the wound as his body slid off of the stiletto and fell sixty feet onto the entrance steps with a hard crunch.

The Ecstasy Chorus became silent.

Demona's eyes widened and her mouth gaped open.

"Did I just kill him, Demona?" Tasìa asked.

Her companion peered down before she answered.

"I don't think a nanospore entity's death can be accomplished that easily. Likely, the nature of your attack incapacitated its ability to transform and heal its damage. At least, temporarily."

Tasìa nodded at the sense the spook's answer made.

The damaged material left on the stiletto left an impression. She wiped the blade down of the accumulate - sponge-like tattered meat, thick dark blood, and chunked cartilage with a baby wipe and slid the stiletto back into its sheath.

All the while, she kept an eye on Bajamutté with apprehension and she was surprised that he did not move.

"We better get going, Demona. I doubt if he'll underestimate me the next time we meet."

The companions crouched beside the vaulted chamber that rose up from the midrib supports. Mel stood watch atop it.

He squawked affirmatively with a nod.

Nice kill, was his message.

She nodded back.

"Thanks, Mel. But I know I'm going to be paying out the butt for that one."

She caught a slight smirk on Demona's face.

"What'cha thinking?" Tasìa asked her.

Demona shrugged to suggest that the observations that soon followed had no ulterior motive or deeper meaning than whimsical conversation.

"I notice you tend to anthropomorphize all things around you. The Bajamutté entity is a 'he', the crow you converse with as if it were a person."

Tasìa grimaced. She continued to speak as she positioned herself to lie flat on her belly and thighs.

"Quite correct you are in one respect. True that doing just that with the nanospore entities should be avoided. They use that tendency of ours to anthropomorphize them as distinct beings against us to weaken our resolve.

"However, you should take the personhood of nightwing's and even feral, untrained crows seriously. The ghosts are in their machines just as they are in ours."

Demona looked up to the horizon.

"That is why this continent fascinates me. Even when I was a little girl visiting pre-invasion Buenos Aires with my parents, I could feel that, that there is magic here."

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Tasìa smiled as she realized Demona only meant well, even if she was being a bit of a drag on the mission. Of course, it made a certain sense that there was little urgency in the spook's voice or in her virtual actions. She was in no eminent danger that a dragon was about to swoop from around the rooftop bend to give her a vengeful ass kicking.

She had a companion to keep her company while she waxes philosophical.

Tasìa needed to keep her busy.

"While I tend to this and figure out how to get inside, Demona, could you do me a little favor?"

Demona's head and her head of bushy brown hair bounced.

"Sure. Name it."

"Command Mel to keep a watch on Bajamutté's body. I'm guessing his ocular device is powerful enough to sustain your viewpoint referential even if I should go out of range."

"Good point. Would you like me to have the nightwing pluck the entity's eyeballs out while it is keeping guard over it?"

"That would be outstanding, but have my Mel exercise some caution around the entity."

"Right on it."

Tasìa pushed forward inside the opening and leaned inside.

Beneath her was the scramble of movement. She could not make out any distinct form or shape, just hasty movement like that of wheat if the stalks were made of glass.

Though a lit chandelier hung directly beneath her, and, in the spread of the great athenaeum hall, six other chandeliers hung, no shadow was formed on the floor even with the surrounding movement that suggested there should be a sway of shadows dancing on the floor.

What is it with the denial of the most fundamental physics underlying our natural order with you fucking nanospore assholes?

That quality effected sound, as well. There should have been reverberation occurring due to that shifting movement, but there was none.

With the fall of Bajamutté by her hand, the voices and the flute instrument went silent. There was a strange muted quality about it.

The entire chamber was like the chamber of a gun with a sound suppressor attached to the end of its barrel. Sound was kept from expanding out.

To test that theory that the reverberation below was muted, Tasìa found a spent .50 shell case in her fanny pack that she kept as a souvenir. With a toss, it plunged down on to the floor.

The shell case clattered on the floor with a low frequency pattern. Its natural high pitched glassy clang was muted.

Tasìa threw a flash bang at the chandelier below her. No sound at first, or much of a flash, but then the light swelled up and folded into itself before it burst outward with a fury of sound following soon after.

Nearer to the ground, another sound, like ice breaking slowly before it rose outward and crinkled upward. It shattered with a loud burst, as well.

Whatever artifice that was deployed to mute sensory perception had cracked away, entirely.

Now she could hear their voices entwined and their ire aimed collectively against her.

"Defiler," they whispered. "Go away, defiler. You are unwanted. Unneeded. Needless thing that you are."

The voices stirred into her gut, and her legs trembled. The words were persuasive, they pushed against her, and they made her want to turn and leave.

Tasìa was forced to address the claims against her to prevent their persuasive effect from overtaking her resolve.

Defiler.

"Not I. That is you, you unnatural Manifested!"

She gazed down into the chamber. There was no longer any beauty to be seen. They were now the shambling, tentacle bearing beasts of the Manifest.

Their faces draped in down-sloped skin and made indistinguishable from one another.

Go away, defiler.

Tasìa huffed.

"I'm not leaving without Annebél!"

She yelled more loudly.

"Annebél! Are you here?"

For several seconds, silence pervaded the chamber, once more.

Movement stirred in a waving pattern in the far distance.

"I'm over here!"

Annebél shouted back from beyond the stadium.

Tasìa first considered sliding down the support pole that held the chandelier in place, but there was nowhere that she could go from there.

Instead, she jumped onto a vaulted rib nearby that supported the vaulted tower, and shimmied down it to the grounded column that it was attached.

For the remainder of her descent, crystalized fungi made an easy medium for her to scale down to the floor.

As the Manifested nearest her approached, Tasìa grabbed the Vaquero, and warned them to stay back.

At first they stopped in place and hesitated to move back. When Tasìa pulled out her last flashbang - they whispered in protest, the first flashbang had made an indelible impression.

The Manifested moved away from her and slowly lined up to the side of the center walk way. This allowed her a path to the stadium. On its far end, Annebél was now behind a near translucent divider. She was getting dressed.

The Disappeared spread out on the stage. They all now bore a hard appearance like Mayan statuary. Only their chest moved. From those inhuman appearing dugs covered in the movement of active pustules sighing noises heaved out from the lungs beneath.

Tasia wondered which of the thirty six was Lydia. It was impossible to tell. When Tasìa searched the IMCQ casualty report, she had been distracted by the anger she had felt when Felicité's lie had been exposed to follow up on Lydia's status.

She shook her head at the malformed Disappeared.

Some fates are worse than the instant obliteration from a nuclear detonation.

As Tasìa climbed the steps, Annebél emerged from behind the divider. Two Disappeared followed from behind her. One held in her hands a glaive-like long poll weapon, the other carried a large vase.

It was made of a green glass held in place with a lattice of ebony. Something glowed from inside it.

As Tasìa turned back to the armed Manifested to size her up, Annebél gave her a warning.

"Tasìa," Annebél spoke. "So long as you don't try to take or harm the ovum vessel, they won't attack you."

Tasìa cocked her head to the side.

"The ovum vessel?"

Annebél nodded, her admission came reluctantly from her tightly held lips.

"The sexual maturation Bajamutté granted me came with a sacrifice. For me, a monthly one."

Tasìa frowned.

Annebél nodded, and responded to her friend's unspoken sorrow, "for me, its better than the alternative -," she waved Tasìa forward, "- of remaining a shitwhore. Come on, there is an exit just off of the stage to your right. There is nothing left for us here. Let's get away from this place."