The crowd rose to get a better look at the Wau on the ground. After all those displays of power, it was surprising to see him so motionless. The Aleph was not fooled.
A tremor. The desert quakes. The VIP drop detaches and falls, smashing into a large violet stain that floods the turf like a raging disease. Around the stadium, the walls shatter and immense Lennox cubes rise up, darkening the horizon. Towering over everything, as tall as a Transient child, big-eyed and small-voiced, one of them exclaims:
" We don't leave without having killed someone."
The stadium plunges into a vast abyss, a mad elevator descending through all the levels of the True Abyss. The first bouts of madness and the first cardiac arrests break out among the crowd, and are stabilized by the Transient. On every level, tourists commit ever more horrific atrocities on Xenos, human children, and a giant Samuel Aloysius: eye-gouging, mutilations, murders. Brandishing cleavers, the tourists climb back up the stands to attack spectators, who die of terror only to come back to life.
The stadium stops just as Proteus—immense like the Transient child—announces, as though calling a train:
" Behold the True Abyss, where you will lose all hope in humankind."
On the field, the violet grasses burst into hellish flames as devils pierce and roast duplicates of the spectators before their eyes.
Somewhat dazed, the Aleph steps forward and sweeps the illusion away with a single gesture, and the stadium reappears, intact. The spectators, who have sometimes suffered two or three successive heart attacks, struggle to their feet, groggy.
A gigantic gryphon soars across the sky, blotting out the sun. Ariane grips a golden spear and plunges it into the turf, which bursts into flames again, screaming:
" YOU WILL NEVER SLEEP AGAIN!"
Around the spear, naked dancers, elephants, and a giant tortoise bearing Lord Lucky—who puffs on a hookah whose smoke coils constrict everyone's neck, even around the Transient's waist. He whispers to them, as they choke:
" Multitude, follow me into battle!"
Garen is bewildered; he thinks it's a Transient trick and materializes at his side, but everyone is lifted into the air, individuals orbiting one another like stars and planets, and Julia Prahi's voice thunders:
" DARK GALAXIES ARE PRISONS, AND YOU WILL NEVER ESCAPE THEM!"
Black spheres imprison them all as they continue their frenzied orbit, only to be hurled back to the ground once more.
When they regain consciousness—most again having been returned from death—harsh trumpets, both low and high, blare in cacophony. A colossal, inverted Tower of Babel, the size of the Earth, descends from the heavens to crush the stadium and its spectators. All scream in absolute despair, for not only is the vision utterly realistic, it radiates a certainty of its own existence.
Even Garen Antor is gripped by fear: on the second day of his return, could he have miscalculated? What madness is this? He focuses again and dispels the illusion—which indeed it was. The stadium returns exactly as before. Most of the spectators have soiled themselves, their clothes torn and their muscles aching.
Garen scans the surroundings with a look of hatred and helplessness. The Transient and the Wau have vanished.