The choices were between Idris punishing himself, or the Architect meeting the wrath of… who? What possible power could compel them? But there was something there—that was what he had learned. There was an intent behind the Architects. A purpose that was not native to them. A hand that brandished the whip. Please… And it left, the whole immensity of it falling away into unspace from the real. It abandoned the Berlenhof system, leaving a scattering of ships and filigreed debris spinning in its wake.
