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Jean fills in the folks eating in Castle Amber about the disposal of Dara's army, and mentions the death cloud.
All those at breakfast. When breakfast is ending, one of the few remaining animals who are still doing the cleanup runs in, runs up to Neville, grabs his pants leg, tugs on it, and runs off. Neville follows. Neville is brought to a window. There is a nightmare coming up the hill towards the back of the castle. Neville grabs the squirrel and takes it back to breakfast. "We have a problem -- evil Benedict is back."
Jean, all across Amber, spreads out. Jean looks for Marial, but can't find her.
Andron says that he hears his wife calling.
Jean asks Hamster Finndo and Hamster Osric if they want to beat up on an evil alternate version of their little brother. "Why would we want to beat up on our little brother?"
"I love you guys." Jean decides (yet again) not to do anything that could corrupt the Hamster Amberites.
Random says that he needs to go use the necessity.
Jean tells Corwin. Corwin suggests Titania would be an appropriate person to deal with the nightmare. Jean can't figure out how to contact Titania.
Jean asks Bun-bun if he wants to go take out a really huge bunny out of nightmare.
Jean goes down to check in on a report that Titania lives "behind that bush", and falls through the Faerie gate. The saucer falls to the ground, spits a bug out, and all of the dials and knobs pin at zero. Jean shifts into a homoculi-Jean.
"Notice what, dear?" Titania is standing nearby. They are in a room at the top of a glass tower.
Bug - "Big. Ugly. Bad. Kill it."
Titania - "That's Jean, dear. It's not big, ugly, and bad."
Titania is not pleased with the idea of a non-local nightmare near Amber, steps out of the crystal tower, and starts walking down the side of the tower. Jean steps out, falls, and hits the ground. The bug floats to the ground. The three of them return to Arden.
A ranger jumps out at them and demands, "What is the password?" Jean asks around, and determines that there is no password. The lack of a password is determined to be the correct password.
Jean - "Be warned that evil Benedict may be on this nightmare."
Titania - "That's fine. I want to have words with his mount."
Titania gives the bug another gnome. The former one, used as a messenger, apparently never arrived. The bug stays with the gnome.
Jean leads Titania towards the nightmare.
In Amber, Jenoir sits up, stretches, and says, "Oh my god, we have to get to the castle. Evil Benedict is attacking!" She talks with Cailin briefly, and then gates them both to Castle Amber.
Jean asks Verra if she takes people-level sacrifices. She is willing, but curious as to whether or not Jean can successfully sacrifice evil Benedict. Jean approaches the librarian and the cat. "Lord Snarsht. Verra suggested that I point out to you that [evil Benedict, nightmare] are approaching Castle Amber."
Snarsht crosses the librarian's circle of death and fishes out. He leaves behind some fish food as he departs.
Titania, Bun-bun, and Snarsht all show up at about the same time. Snarsht looks around and doesn't seem to see anything. Titania looks at the nightmare beast, and it turns into Titania. Jean tries to hover over our Titania. People are horrified at the idea that the nightmare is an subverted Titania.
Snarsht has wandered off. Bun-bun has his knife out and is asking, "Which one is the bunny?"
Bun-bun tries to fling himself on the evil Titania and freezes in mid-air with a horrified look on his face. Jean is not displeased.
Neville searches for evil Benedict with a Pattern-lens. His lens cannot look into the gardens, and evil Benedict is not anywhere else. None of Neville's animals have reported back yet, even though they all should have.
Jean tells breakfast that the nightmare is an alternate Titania, presumably evil. Random says, "I don't have to go to the bathroom; I'm outta here." and pulls out a trump. Cailin argues with him. The hamsters are arguing among themselves.
Cailin asks Jenoir if she's found anything yet.
Neville reaches a hand through the trump he left on the table, knocks on the table, and eventually acquires contact with Cailin. He passes a request through for Ilk.
Ecto-Ilk and ecto-Suhuy head towards the window overlooking the gardens. Ilk and Neville chat. Ilk throws a few tendrils towards the roof, and bounces off the inside of the roof door.
Different people chat in different ways.
Ilk fills the corridors of the castle with Logrus tendrils, and announces that to Neville and to breakfast.
A small grey cat chasing a butterfly bounds up to a leaf-bug. The butterfly lands next to the bug on the gnome's head. The bug tries to shoo the butterfly away, then finds a different place to hide. The cat leaps, the gnome blinks, and the cat, obviously having misjudged his leap, knocks the head off the gnome. The butterfly lands on the gnome's other shoulder. "See?"
bug - "Jean!"
Jean arrives, and the bug lands on one shoulder.
butterfly - "Hi, Jean."
Jean - "Hi, Dad. Have you seen what's up at the castle yet?"
The butterfly lands on Jean's shoulder. Jean and Rainbow chat.
The cat leaps and lands on Jean's head.
Rainbow suggests making a Temple of Cassandra in the garden.
Rainbow - "Why are you afraid?"
Bug - "I'm just a bug!"
Rainbow - "Hey Snarsht, this thing thinks that it's just a bug."
Snarsht looks at the leaf bug and says, "Boo!" The bug falls off Jean's shoulder, turns into a foot-tall Yeti, and runs off. Behind the bug are small Yeti-shaped holes in trees and detonating land-mines. The bug acquires a sense of direction, turns around, and heads away from the castle.
Cailin is aware that somewhere outside the castle is someone is yelling in yeti. Cailin turns into a yeti and bellows back and forth with the bug.
Jenoir opens a gate to Arden. Cailin, Natasha, the hamsters, Andron, Jenoir, and Jean go through. Random has already trumped out. They encounter the tiny yeti. Cailin gathers up the bug and returns to the others.
The familiar-looking people in the other continent are being slaughtered by assassins.
Ilk is searching cross-shadow for more of the familiar-looking guys. They are spread across shadow; this shadow appears to be the densest concentration.
There are several hundred of the temples or generators in the far continent, and there are thousands or tens of thousands of generators spread across shadow - at most, one hundred thousand. Ilk reports to Princess Chandra. She suggests that he look for Jeans. Ilk checks. There are eight Jean-marked gates; they are pulling victims through each of them. Princess Chandra suggests that they shut those down. Ilk provides transport.
Ilk suggests that possibly this whole thing is a scheme by a megalomanical deity to generate worshipers.
Jean points out that emanations on the god channel are being generated from this city and from the continent on the other side. It seems likely that there is a god in this city, and a lesser god or a prophet for the god on the other continent. Ilk speculates that the god is creating these worshipers in his own image, and is hiding among their number.
[So that's what the Guild is doing so carefully -- playing spot the god.]
In one of the places in shadow where Ilk has dropped an assassin, that assassin has completed his job. That generator is overburdened and not in a happy state. Ilk studies it more closely, updates Princess Chandra, and then enters the generator. He thinks that he can reverse the flow, and does so momentarily. Numerous souls pour out and seem to dissipate. He reports in to Princess Chandra, returns with two more assassins, and causes the machine to throw up. When the souls in the machine are gone, souls that seem to be comprising the machine itself start dissipating. At the end, all that is left is one small piece of metal that looks like the ring from the ambassadorial chambers in the city, but doesn't have the weight of reality of that ring.
Ilk takes several assassins to the edge of the locus of generators. They kill the worshipers, and then Ilk unwinds the machine. After a long time, they reach a shadow with two machines. When the first machine disgorges souls, they are sucked in by the second. Ilk moves one of the machines to another shadow and unravels it there without any problems.
As the souls pass through Ilk, he feels more energetic.
Ilk continues to work, checking in with Princess Chandra every now and then. The council that was somewhat slaughtered has re-opened negotiations with the mostly-healed flying saucer.
Once Ilk reaches places where there are four and five machines, the assassins are a lot slower. Ilk pulls in more assassins. One time when he goes back, Princess Chandra is not in evidence.
When Ilk reaches the center, there is an out-and-out war going on. Jean and the ambassador who came with him are holed up in the UN building, along with lots of people who are fending off the attacks. The attacks are performed by a mixed group, not just the similar-looking people. The war is much more widely spread than just the city. The general and others that Jean met are also being attacked.
[It's coincidental assassination!]
[So Logrus use would just be vulgar?]
Ilk looks around a bit more, then returns. The fighting has gotten much worse. Mostly non-similar people are fighting each other, and allies are turning on each other. Ilk coalesces letters in the dust to communicate with people in the assassins' HQ. While Ilk is present, there seems to be a word of some kind given in the other continent and the assassins just go and kill everyone.
Ilk starts working on the unraveling the machines from the far continent, and takes a whole group of assassins with him as an escort, on the grounds that someone might react poorly. After three or four, resistance starts sporadically building up against his moving of the machines to another shadow.
When Ilk has gotten down to fifty or so machines left on the far continent, he reaches the first machine that he can't move. He drains it in place. Instantly, when he starts to disassemble the machine, Ilk feels that he has the center of something's attention. Almost as instantly, Princess Chandra is besides him, tries to track it, and then disappears again. Ilk prepares to dodge. Just as he is getting down to where the ring is, the pressure and attention on him goes away. When he finishes, there is only a ring left. One of the nameless faceless stretches out his hand, says some things in Thari that Ilk doesn't catch, and the ring leaps onto his finger. He dies almost immediately, and a new machine forms in his place.
Ilk moves on to another one on that continent. It moves, easily. Ilk drains it somewhere else. He drains another, then does one in place. That ring is summoned by another guy. Ilk drains another in-place, and has an assassin look at the guy before the ring hits. No noticeable differences between that guy and the others.
Ilk continues draining the machines in other shadows, opening the neatly closed system.
Ilk gets down to all but the three new machines. Ilk sees, for the first time, a lizard wander by. A few flies fly in, a bunny hops over the border... [Ilk reflexively squishes the bunny] Life begins to encroach upon the continent.
Ilk takes two of the devices cross-shadow, and squishes one in place, squishes the new one, squishes the next one, and continues for a while until he gets bored and does it cross-shadow.
When Ilk checks the city again, the fighting has died down a bit. There are a few truces in place.
All of a sudden, from all of the throats of all of the similar-faced individuals comes a cry of anguish and then the assassin who had hidden himself near every one of them emerges and kills them. The people in the assassin HQ start packing up.
Ilk does an invasive search for machines. He finds one buried deep beneath the city that didn't have a ritual going on around it. There is a chair in front of the machine. It is constructed differently; it seems to be sucking and storing souls without an active ritual, and is not creating nameless-faceless. Ilk drains it in place. There is no ring left; just a lock of hair. Ilk bundles up the hair into a bag and passes it off to an assassin in the HQ building.
Ilk bundles up all of the rings in separate baggies and places the baggies in a sack and gives the sack to someone in HQ.
Ilk unravels the rest of the generators.
Jean is on a pedestal. Beneath the pedestal is Princess Chandra, who is feeding assassins into a fish.
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