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The Undertaker hovered over Ednath for a moment as the Trilock Memorium hummed away at low resonance around his straining neck.

Ednath wasn't fighting. But the Blood Beast was!

The nanotech machines had tapped into his consciousness enough to have awreness of an acute threat to their survival. A body with a burned-out mind would be useless to them, and the transfer process rarely spared the donor.

Ednath screamed in pain as the capillaries in his skin began to burst and the billions of nanotech machines hiding in his blood started flowing out of him slowly.

The Undertaker cursed and quickly set the Intellect Decoder on Ednath's ears while the pieces of the chair slid up and around Ednath's head. It was like petals of a copper and silver flower blooming in reverse over the former human's torso. On the center of the outside of each petal was a plug of a sort, a mix of wires and tubes making each one different from the last.

The crowd had fallen silent. Frothy blood was angrily flowing from between the seams of the strange flower's petals.

The Undertaker's wings moved in around the central body and collected together in a compact mess of metal. For a moment, the lights in the hall flickered and then the Undertaker's wings unfolded suddenly to reveal that they had become a dozen long spindly legs coursing with electric energy down the wires and tubes. The crowd sang out in a beautiful song, a thousand bell chorus chiming out an anthem of hope and everlasting life. The great arachnoid form of the Undertaker slouched forward and legs began connecting to their corresponding plugs in unison.

Sirrini was dashing toward the hall as fast as her new form could carry her. The balance was different from her last body, and she kept finding herself misjudging her steps just a bit and toppling over into the wall on turns.

She had taken the royal tram down into the area around the hall and was skidding into the last corner when the sound hit her.

The singing! She knew the ceremony was well underway, and it might even be too late... but she had no time to consider options now.

The guards at the end of the royal entryway turned to see what the clatter was moving at them at such an undignified speed. The larger of the two called out, "By order of Landfarer manifest, declare yourself!"

"I am the first daughter of the Skyfarer and I demand immediate audience with the Undertaker!" Sirrini cried out in the human tongue.

The guards looked at each other puzzled and started laughing. Sirrini skidded to a stop before them and pushed one of them in the stomach. "Open the gateway! I need to get in!"

The smaller guard checked her pattern codes against the database and discovered to his surprise she actually was Sirrini. He opened his eyes and looked at her askance, "Sorry your highness, we've never heard a royal meatspeak before."

Sirrini looked up at him in confusion and tilted her head slightly. She hadn't even noticed she was speaking in the old tongue. She pondered for a moment but shook it off and addressed the guards once more in a forceful tone, this time in Niminian, "By royal order of the house of the Skyfarer in service to The Epicyclic Empress, I relieve you of duty! Leave the gate at once!"

"What?" the guards rang out nearly in unison.

"DO IT! GO!" she screamed.

The guards looked at each other again uneasily and started walking away down the passage toward the tramway, the whole time discussing how Grishel was going to react when he found out about this odd occurrence.

Meanwhile, Sirrini had managed to enter the code in the keypad and unlock the gateway into the grand hall. There was a rush of noise and clamor from the space beyond as the stone doors slid aside into the wall and she pressed the lock so that they would remain open after she had passed.

Directly on the other side of the gateway was a large hanging tapestry woven of thin metal wires that sparkled like the neural-ivy down in the deepest chambers of the city. She knew this must be the back way in to the hall, and the tapestry must be the processor that actually translated the biological mind into a series of code that could be downloaded into a waiting EletriCore. But where /was/ the ElectriCore that should soon hold Ednath's mind? She cursed herself for not learning more about the process when she had the chance.

She moved carefully around the tapestry and into the room beyond it. There were layer after layer of woven wire tapestries hanging in succession inches away from the others in a row. She had never known it took so much processing power to achieve the melding of mind and metal!

She reached the other side of the room and found only another door. This one was locked from the inside and she quickly passed through it, making sure to leave it unlocked behind her.

She blinked as the light and noise from the crowd hit her from all sides at once. She looked up and saw the back of The Undertaker filling the space of the grand hall. She noticed that a wave of attention was moving through the crowd above in her direction. It was highly unusual for such an austere event to be interrupted, even by royalty, and even more so for a child to step out of a passageway that few knew existed before this moment. As Sirrini drew near to the center of the hall, she stumbled and nearly toppled, but caught herself and continued running.

The Undertaker took notice of the change in tone of the assembly and looked around for the cause. "It appears we have a special guest this evening!" The Undertaker announced, "I do believe this is Princess Sirinni herself!"

All eyes followed Sirrini as she ran up to the copper and silver flower that was now glistening bright red like a rose and stopped dead in her tracks in front of it. As she stood there, it began to open, the petals sliding away to reveal an unholy mess of biological waste that used to be a man named Ednath. A seemingly impossible amount of tainted blood gushed forward from the seat as the Intellect Decoder simply fell off of what seemed to be a skull with no flesh left anywhere on it. Immediately, dozens of small medical contraptions rushed in and started the process of sterilizing the whole area.

She fell onto her knees at the horrible sight and sobbed uncontrollably. The Undertaker reverted back to the angelic form and the shape that most resembled a human in the center of it all lowered to the ground and walked over to Sirrini's folded body. It stretched a hand out to her and said calmly, "It's okay... he's right here! We got to him in time."

She looked up and saw The Undertaker's fingers unwrap from around the ElectriCore. Ednath had survived the process!

"May I please address the assembly?" She whispered to the mechanical angelic shape.

The Undertaker nodded peacefully.

She tried in vain to hold back a devilish grin as she snatched the ElectriCore away and stood up to face the crowd above. She stepped slowly and carefully out into the center of the hall. She continued walking slowly until she was near the formerly secret door she originally entered from.

Silence took the room as she paused and prepared to speak.

"I'll be right back!" Sirrini yelled and she disappeared behind the door.