Quoted By:
> I AM THE BRIGHTNESS AND THE BLOOD AND THE HEAT; THE SUN IS INSIDE OF ME!
This is not a possibility you accounted for, when you calculated out the cloak thing. That Wayne would go ahead and <span class="mu-i">justify</span> himself being stabbed repeatedly. That was nice of him. Your ears have decided that the passageway's full of bugs, or something, from the buzzing.
Yes, that was nice of him. Really nice of him. Because now there's no ethical qualms to cling to. Wayne is a murderer— he is, right now, before your eyes, murdering somebody. With no warning and apparently no compunctions about it. Wayne, you think, is probably evil. That's the definition of an evil person. Isn't it? The world would be a better place with you in Wayne's cloak, and Wayne dead on the ground oozing eyeball from his nose.
<span class="mu-r">P</span>lus Wayne throttled by his own spine; Wayne's cavities packed with worms; Wayne flung and broken into rectangles; Wayne's limbs pulled off one by one, like a bug's, starting with the withered hideous third one; and would it be wrong of you? Would it keep you up at night? No! Your sleep would be dreamless, and your body warm and heavy, just as it is now. So extremely warm, and so extremely heavy, as if your own heart had swollen out through your skin. The buzzing has deepened to a sort-of roar. You seem to be glowing from your chest, but Wayne hasn't noticed. His gun is as matte-black as it was in previous? A powder-coating? [Or the glow is a Richard. Not real. In your head only.]
Or the glow isn't real— a limited statement from a limited human mind in an extravagantly limited human body. A sad, limp truism. The human mind sees not-real as a bounding-area, a container to stuff the thing into and seal with container-tape and store away in a high storage place forever. A dismissal. This is one of many defects of the limited human mind. The unbounded— the expansive— the world-shaping— to them, the not-real is but a possibility-state. The nothing before a something is. And you, <span class="mu-i"><span class="mu-s">HERALD,</span></span> can draw the strings toward you, can loop them in your fingers, can sign the contract in blazing cursive...
[Okay. That isn't your heart swollen through your skin.]
What happens to something sufficiently dense?
[Your last semi-conscious thought is something like: Well Wayne <span class="mu-i">wanted</span> to see the magyck.]
You ignite.
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>What kind of voice do you hear?
>[1] Pitchy, halting, pinched. Strangely hollow, as if bouncing down a tiled storm-sewer.
>[2] Deep, rich, malted. A cultured accent. But with a strain to it.
>[3] Sharp, strident, fluting. Almost excessively cultured.
>[4] Low, mild, moderated. Wavers a bit in the high pitches.
