Tasìa caught a nap in Sachmilli's RV after hefting down four beers.

The day had worn her down both physically and mentally, so to her good fortune, she slumbered in a soul drifting dreamless sleep.

On waking, she felt her vitality restored.

Tasìa peeked out of an RV window. It was not yet dusk, but the tree shadowed street of her planned approach would give her plenty of cover.

She stretched, then put her tennis shoes and socks back on; she strapped the fanny pack to her waist.

The last two items she slipped on were her newly acquired feathered jacket and the Goddess Columbia necklace she had fastened together with a gold Liberty coin and twine of snake leather.

Totems and sigils. It was the way of her people.

As she left the little guest quarters, she saw and heard Sachmilli Cuervo snoring away on a hammock spread out in the living room space.

Tasìa kissed him on the cheek before she left the RV.

His cooler now only half-filled with bottles of Quilmes beer was still by the little table. Several blue labeled bottles floated in the water and ice.

She grabbed one, opened it, and downed half the contents. It felt good swishing down her throat as the first thing to flood her senses after the dulce pequeña muerte - sweet little death - of a long slumber.

Mel offered his advice in low, drawn-out cahs from a perch nearby her head. Persistent he was that she should heed his sound judgment.

"You sound like you know what I have planned, my little night wing."

Another swishing swallow down her throat as Tasìa walked the parameter of the rooftop to study the city below her.

She started her journey towards the north side of the building.

The beer gave Tasìa a notion of what she wanted to do after the raid.

I need to get shit-faced.

The place she had in mind to carry out this second assignment came in view two blocks away as she approached the eaves at the northern end.

In neon shades of pink, yellow and blue, the logo - La Daga Chicas - lit up from below.

It was a chophouse and dive bar that became like a second home to Tasìa during the year she lived incognito in the house outside of Villa Marròn.

She had grown close, like a little sister, to the proprietress, Isabella Cuervo. The eldest of the three sisters Sachmilli mentioned earlier.

Tasìa chuckled. How much she wished she had time to squeeze in and indulge a little bontemps before she met with León.

She swallowed another good quenching gulp.

How much she wished she could overcome her condition and have some dick thrown her way and get well and truly fucked.

She laughed at herself.

The risque notion gave her some pause as she considered from whence inside her conflicted being it derived.

The Hell did that come from?

Tasìa was usually quite reserved in language even in her thought processes about sexual matters. She cursed about almost everything else, but not that. She barely acknowledged that she had a libido.

Tasìa swallowed the rest of the malted beverage down with a hard smile. That coarseness in the sway of her thoughts meant the beer was working its magic.

It was a good thing.

She was feeling limber and loose. As a stealth artist needed to be.

It also helped to be buzzed while committing to carry out some skulkwork.

Tasìa looked back at the cooler on the other side of the rooftop as if it was drawing her back to it.

She would have another bottle of Quilmes before she took on her task.

Back at the table as she peered out from beneath the parasol, Tasìa noticed the statue of the Infernal Madré was lit from beneath by a spiral of tapers. The sculpture, in spite of the simulacra it made of a buxom womanly shaped figure, was a stark study of light and shadow in high contrast.

The Infernal Madré posed with one leg forward. The opposite hip swiveled in counter to her shoulders and arms. Much like a Natya dancer.

What was that odd matter that the entity talked about in that fucked-up video Felicité had sent her?

This I learned from Om Anaghaya Namaha as he explained why he chose to remain un-Manifested.

Tasìa usually tuned out the nanospore entities when they spoke of such things that were too weird to take seriously.

She considered this trait to be merely endemic to the nature of artificial intelligence where its communications would be abstracted from true worldly matters.

Tasìa typed the strange words of the Infernal Madré. Her search revealed it to be one of the names of Krishna. As the nanospore entity had described, indeed it meant his unmanifested self.

The Infernal Madré also made reference to the legend of his binding of demons as if she had been there and she was one herself.

It was at odds with the legend of The Infernal Madré in her father's religion. The demon goddess had been formed from the soul of a woman who was very much a real presence in Spanish history.

Egilona was the Infernal Madré's mortal name.

A woman who was condemned to Hell for the betrayal of her second husband, Abd al-Aziz, in a display of fierce anger by his supporters. At the very same time, in a counter-ceremony, she was blesséd to Heaven for that very same act of betrayal by al-Aziz's detractors, loyalists to her first husband, Rodrigo, the last Visigoth king.

This dual state of intended being caused her to rise above both fates to achieve an afterlife uniquely her own. A woman of the most Supreme Independence.

Tasìa wondered what Felicité would make of the AI behind the Infernal Madré given the Argentinian's knowledge in the field of information theory.

Obviously, the parameters set by the software programmers did not control for an outright perversion of historical inputs in establishing its identity.

Did this contribute to the AI being so out of control?

As Tasìa sipped, the other statue, the one of an angel in the Plaza del Centro Muerto caught her eye. It was similarly lit. Tasìa squinted as she compared the two statues.

There were more similarities than even this.

In spite of the different purposes displayed in the actions of the two figures, they were essentially affecting the same pose.

The Infernal Madré statue was a deliberate parody, a grotesque mockery, of the angelic figure in the center square.

Done for what reason? When Tasìa had lived in the greater Villa Morrón only a few years previously, the Hijos Lux was not known for either religious devotion nor sacrilege.

They were essentially spiritual thrill-seekers living on an edge that tested the boundaries of humanity and Manifestation.

Morphine was used to weaken the member's resistance to the proddings of the Black-Eyed Children, the Wise One, and the Incubus.

The cult members chanted for days on end as they squatted together inside of consecrated air chambers while gas, contaminated with dense concentrations of nanospores, was piped in.

When the signs of Manifestation started to stir on their faces, they were brought back to their humanity with the consumption of LSD.

Tasìa frowned as she considered this. The cult she had known was essentially harmless, if also protective of their territory, and secretive.

However, they threatened no one, and neither had they the ambition to expand their operation beyond sustaining their meager needs.

What had changed?

After Tasìa finished the beer, she placed the bottle on the eave support and headed down the side of the building.

Mel flapped loudly above her as she descended the wall.