Although Autun expertly ignored people’s petulant and prudish demands, something definitely irritated him. At last, even as Apollo urged him to intervene, he extraneously exclaimed, [I]“The little bugger is really starting to itch!”[/i] and plucked off his cockring. Aloft between his thumb and index finger, he observed it sizzle and crack with psionic energy and its minuscule individual segments writhe to a veritably prurient tempo. Rather than engage him in his analysis of the object, Apollo demurred with disgust and again urged Autun to address the jellyfish on the horizon.

Autun tilted his feathery head to the side, closed his eyes briefly, and tapped his foot.

[i]“Unnecessary. You see—ouch! Little bugger bit my finger. Settle down, SMD’P!”[/i]—the name, while spoken glibly, sent many round-about into paroxysms. Were it uttered by Brobdingnag, they’d be dead. [i]“Anyhoo … if you attack, they will too,” [/i] Autun concluded, [I] “so it is best to order a stand down.”[/i]

Apollo gazed at him as if he were insane.

[I]“Your scientists can confirm the astrometrics. The Val’Gara aren’t aligned with Earth. They’re chasing after your operative, Max, who went into that big glowing slit out past Neptune,”[/i] to which Autun again pointed to one of the screens in the monitor that showed the perspective of a radio telescope.

[I] “You guys have an antimatter nuke test vault; right? I need to borrow it. This little menace is getting out of hand and could use a time out.” [/i]

[center] . . . [/center]

[quote=@Circ]Suddenly, [Czes] was elsewhere; a place he dubbed Spiritus Infra Terrarum. It was not the spirit world, but a plane below where the shades of souls wandered with features dimmed and animus bared [… There] he sojourned and at last came to Allure City […where...] in sharp contrast to the variegated images Spencer supplied, he saw an absence of diversity that intermingled merely drudgery and control. It was the former he sought to incite and the latter to dismay. Particularly the latter that were too similar, too singular, too much copies of the same. The mouthpiece that promised peace on Earth’s airwaves before being auspiciously silenced. Into that corrupt unity, he spoke a prahelikā of division that manifested as a vermin swarm on which danced the carriers of an astral plague that would flow from soul to mind and lay waste to the whole that was many.[/quote]

A third of Allure City perished as the Platinum army along with Idereen and her extensions of self were rent from their mortal coils by Czes' sorcery. At least, from the perspective of a slaver. Instead of death, free will, independent consciousness, and total self-determination were foist upon whose able to accept such. The rest would die. Of course, that meant relative blindness for Idereen as she relaxed on her divan and closed her eyes. Perhaps she would enjoy the tranquility of solitude and, for the first time in her life, partake in an actually pleasant and uninterrupted nap. As for the Platinum army, their auspicious disarray and dismemberment made them easy work for Earth’s military forces.