Music too loud, eyes too numerous, negative emotions too direct and focused, all before Eti could — could what? He blinked, discovering his claws pierced through the soft mottled gray shingles that cascaded in a golden spiral down around the spire’s needle-point nib. It wasn’t like he cared, not in this consequence free and illusory world formed of the chaotic collisions of force-folded spacetime. Still, something primal intertwined with him reacted, [i]<< Too much attention, too much! >> Weird. Latent paranoia from my assassin programming? Why the paracusis?[/i] Through his comm-link with the Ruzgar ascended worry palpable in the rate of his synthetic cognito-emotive wave velocity. Perturbed, he lowered the music volume that emanated from his brass buttons. Low enough to be dissipated by a gentle breeze, the next line wisped away before it reached the streets. Loud enough that it reverberated along his synthetic eardrums in tandem with his synthesized heartbeat. Far above, a vantage point gyred and glared. Wings thrumped against the dense air. From it, Eti observed the cobbles and procession, the brick and stone ancient lane tinged with soot and scorch marks from when its border buildings blazed, were rebuilt, and burned again in a riotous cycle of neglect and want. He saw, like insects, flecks of vermilion and black — figures upright and proud with their argent bayonet-plugged instruments of noise and destruction. [i]I’ve been made[/i], he ascertained as eyes below glinted curiously up at him, [i]time to move. [/i] Claws out and shingles split, he burrowed. Fallen through the rend in the roof, Eti’s paw pads buffed the floor of an octagonal chamber. Iron torches held aloft a blazing parody of fire constrained by glass caskets. A large globe was split, halfwise hung, and in its core decanter and cups. The floor resembled spalted wide-plank wood, but its texture belied tightly-woven yarn. Of course there were burgundy and gold runners as well, opulent additions that made the room feel full in the sense of a den, or a library, or a powder room in Versailles. All heavily-trafficked, preferred to the relatively pristine wood planks. Before he fully appreciated the deception, a party hat atop an agape rococo secretary beneath an ornate stain glass window that depicted a beheaded Saint Denis leaned back and welcomed him with the emphatic brreeeeeaaauuh characteristic of an uncoiled party horn. His attention secured, a book nextwise to the party hat flapped and opened. Forthwith, an unfamiliar disembodied voice all too jovially narrated the words scrawled therein with a rainbow of crayons. [i]Behold and welcome, for it is I, Mister A! Soon, as I, shall your bourn be in and with the Cackling Thoughtform, the Dream Spark, the Burning Hyena-Dragon in and out of time! Keep that to yourself! Take this button. Give it a push. No regrets! Don’t worry, Alice, too was one given! Too~da~loo![/i] A page flip accompanied each excited sentence. Cautious yet curious, Eti approached. All the pages struck him as ancient, oxidized, and sketched colorfully and crudely, yet the crayon smears were exceptionally vibrant and peculiarly prideful of that fact, an odd quality for inexpert scribbles. It began with a variegated ‘A’ that sprouted wings angelic and demonic, or maybe alien, crazy and composed of spirals and unnatural eyes; next slavered a hyena with red horns, fiery breath, and little red and black fleshen wings; lastly, a big red button held by a female mannequin of sorts belowwhich loomed large an arrow that pointed off page and indicated an actual big red button on the table beside. He lept to the window, flung open the leadened and limmed portrait of Saint Dennis, and glanced down. Even before he saw her, he saw her; near, through big dopey chocolate eyes, and far, through flecks of unblinking jet. Eyes not native to this world darted up at him, met his own that gleamed inquisitive through the diffused glow of this marvelous overcast city so full of pomp and circumstance, so light and airy, so incongruous with the experiences of his former life. She stood out as distinct among the creatures in the alley, perhaps due to her grandmotherly charm or, more likely, her viscous wake. [i]“Alice, is it? I’m gon’a push Mister A’s button!”[/i] he bellowed down below, his voice propelled through the stiff breeze that flung back his duster and exposed his belts and bandolier. Imagined or shouted back, [i]“What button? No, it’s a trap!”[/i] — likely another phantom voice yeeted into his mind. No matter, he lifted the artifact, which he had glommed from the table, red, bold, and fringed with filigree, and with authority bapped it in view for all to see. The party horn blared, the horse reared, and the swan dove with a skin-curdling honk. Eti’s vision blurred, his grand perspicuousness reduced to the intake of his two machine lenses. It felt like no time passed, but the scene below was abruptly changed — a storm of confetti, glitter, and glue erupted in place of the two anticipated, yet absent, animals. Eti felt their loss deeply, strangely. It juxtaposed the gaiety of the rainbow sticky tape clung to, among other things, the pavers that fringed the lot of Dean’s Yard and proclaimed, [i]“Welcome Alice and Eti to the Yarni-Earth!”[/i] Bystanders were slack-jawed in amazement, as this was meant to be a celebratory occasion. They gaped at the confetti, the glue, the glitz, they gaped at Alice, and they gaped at Eti. He locked eyes with a pair, a coachman and valet, and that same peculiar sensation as when, with the horse and bird, subsumed him. A larger view, a sense of phantom limbs, voices in his mind that did not belong, and animus toward these two strange interlopers who obscenely interfered with a royal event.