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Neville was outside the door to the room with the god, along with Verra, Caine, Cailin, Natasha, Kieron, and some Jean-saucers. Neville works on a plan.
He suggests that the group set up all available magic defenses before they open the door, and asks Verra to instruct him on how to sacrifice this god to her.
Verra hands Neville a recipe. The first item is, "First, get yourself a good god..."
"Got one right over there. Does it have to be "good"? I suspect this one might be evil."
"What do we do next, fearless leader?"
"As I said, raise shields... When we open the door, I need Cailin to point out the most dangerous mage."
Cailin asks Verra just how many gods there are in this reality; Verra says, "an uncountable number".
Neville exclaims, "In that room?????"
Cailin: "That would be nice, that would be a start..."
Verra says that she doesn't know how many gods are in that room - she hasn't looked.
Jean tells Cailin not to point to himself.
Neville: "Be more specific about the"uncountable number"?"
Jean says that it might have been good if they came up with the plan-thingy before they got right outside the door.
Neville: "Can anyone look without opening the door?"
Cailin says that the mages were targeting him earlier because he was protecting Neville.
Neville and Verra have a theological discussion about numbers.
Neville's plan: open the door and kill everything inside, starting with the mages.
Neville considers busting out, grabbing a few of them, and busting back out. Jean suggests just bringing more people.
Cailin - "We've got Jean. We outnumber them ten billion to one."
Jean - "I'm in a room with a bunch of Old Lords. I have a fish."
Neville asks if anyone can see through the door without opening it. Cailin says not without being noticed. Jean says no. Verra says yes, but doesn't give any useful specifics.
Cailin realizes that several people inside the room and a few others elsewhere are looking at them.
Neville announces the attack; the door is opened. A massive blast of magical fire shoots out at them, splashes off Cailin's shields, and melts some nearby rock.
Suhuy's attention is yanked to a large surge of Logrus-magic... someone is tainting the Logrus with lots of magic! It's in House Helgram. Suhuy grabs the Savior of Chaos and heads that way.
Cailin expands his shields into the room; when they reach the god, the shields shred. Jean opens fire with the wave motion gun and various lesser armaments.
Neville draws his magic-eating, soul-eating sword so it can provide magical defenses.
Natasha sighs, pulls the singing sword from Cailin's side, and charges into the room. Kieron calls, "Wait for me! Wait for me!" and charges after his mother.
Neville asks and is told that containing the god for the sacrifice is his problem.
Verra hands Neville a piece of paper that says, "Sacrifice of a God, the Short Form: I consign thee to you my god Verra in her glory and greatness."
Cailin is shunting power around instead of countering spells individually.
Suhuy and Savior of Chaos arrive.
Neville readies his sword and tries to coat the sword with some Pattern-stuff. He's now on fire from the conflict with the Logrus in the room. Neville pushes harder.
Suhuy and Savior of Chaos turn off all of the Logrus but theirs in the room. Neville stops burning, and Cailin notices the level of magical attack in the room drop by several notches. Jean mind-wipes one of the enemies.
As far as anyone in the room can tell, the god is just sitting there. Cailin's shields are being shredded by the essence of the god itself.
Jean successfully buds into the person he mind-wiped, finds no self-destruct mechanism, and uses up all but one of his mind-wipe spells.
Cailin yetis out to trample mages. As he runs past Kieron, Kieron grabs a hold and yells, "Yeti ride!"
Jean acquires info from brains. The god came into being inside the hole in the living room -- the rest is just propaganda.
Neville is sure that he is walking closer and closer to the god, but he doesn't seem to be closing any distance. The other people in the room just see him start to slow down, but Neville doesn't notice anything else speeding up. Neville examines the phenomenon. He notices trees and a country road.
Suhuy and Savior of Chaos don't see Caine - he's apparently not in the room any more. Neville cannot see Caine's Pattern-sword any more.
Cailin leaves two mages alive. Kieron kills one; Cailin leaves Yeti-form, tells Kieron to stop, and shields the last one.
Currently, the state of the battle:
Six new Jean-converts. One mage-in-a-bubble. Many squished body parts scattered about the room. Natasha has one slightly bleeding scrape going from the top of her shoulder to the center of her back.
Jean determines that these are a separate faction of Helgramites from before the Hellmaids who were not involved in the Hellmaids. They were waiting for the faction behind the Hellmaids to fail so they could take over, and were surprised when someone else stepped into the power vacuum.
They are or were Guild mages at one point of another. They disappeared from the rolls of the Mages Guild when Toram came to power because he was a power-hungry psychopath who wouldn't have let them do as they pleased.
There are other co-conspirators hidden away that don't know about that god. There is something wrong about every thought about this god --- he frobbed their thoughts to make them worship them. Verra determines that it is cheating, but not much more than killing everyone who doesn't worship you. Jean finds that those bodies are still worshiping the god. He's not sure how to stop. He is physically incapable of incanting the dedication to Verra. There's a strange name there in place of it. Cailin determines that it doesn't have the weight of a true name.
Jean acquires a list of un-answered questions about Helgram from the Dancers Guild. Very few of them can be answered with the information in their heads.
During the trailing part of the battle, Ilk gives Verra a Cheshire cat-grin as a greeting, and receives in return a sense of waiting.
A gun ship zips past Neville and down the country road. Everyone else sees it pass Neville and disappear. Cailin yetis and runs off with Kieron and Natasha in tow. They also pass Neville, who isn't making much headway.
Neville tries to use his shadow-shifting abilities to stay in the room where he thinks the god is, but he keeps moving closer to the road. He asks Verra, who says that the god never left the room, as far as she can tell.
Ilk can see a green thing, and couldn't determine how the others disappeared.
Neville manages to fight his way back, and finds himself four feet farther from the god than when he started to see the road.
Neville can feel something in him reaching out towards the god. Neville tries to throw something at the god. It bursts into flame when it reaches the place where he first saw the country road.
Neville complains to Verra about the god trying to make him worship it. She says that she can fix the problem, and translocates Neville into the middle of a temple to Verra. Jean-torcs around priests' necks cause them to pray for the return of Neville to Verra's fold. After about fifteen minutes of that, the feeling of sympathy for that god seems to have gone away. He tells the guys there, Jean tells Verra, and Verra translocates him back to her side.
Jean, in some plain, boring shadow, sees the Cailin mob approach him. Jean whales Cailin and company into the temple, and Verra translocates them back into the Helgramite council chambers. The dentist and doctors are brought with the whale.
The leaf bug spots Laetatio in the dungeons beneath the glass castle in Faerie. They chat.
In the Helgramite council chamber, Savior of Chaos responds, "Yes?"
Ilk and Jean discuss moving them to the god or it to them.
Neville suggests drawing a trump of the god, but it is pointed out to him that making mental contact with a god might not be the best of ideas.
Neville, Cailin, Kieron, Natasha, three gun ships and one Jean-mage all volunteer to go.
Ilk Logrus-pulls the group to around the green thing. Neville, wearing his Pattern-armor and with his Pattern-defenses up, does into denial.
Neville recites his incant to Verra and pokes the god with his Morganti. The god's attention finally swings to the assembled company. It's too late to avoid the Morganti, but it attacks those assembled. The fire around Neville has been blown onto the yeti, who is now on fire. Jean shields; there are now lots of round black balls bouncing around.
Natasha has collapsed into a small, un-moving heap, Kieron is standing over her saying, "Get up, mommy, get up."
There is a Neville-shaped dent in the wall. He's not really hurt, just shook up.
Jean goes to the Healers' Guild and says that a dear friend of his may need first aid. He introduces himself, and is told that neither the Dancers' Guild nor House Swayville have an account. He says that his father is Rainbow, and his aunt is the King -- one of them should be good for it. They reply that Rainbow is in arrears to their Guild to a significant amount. Jean waffles a bit more, and then says that the subject is married to the grandson of the head of the Assassins' Guild. The healers say that they'll be right over.
Neville works on recovering. He's in shock.
Jean fishes in a member of the Healers' Guild. The healer looks at Natasha, then looks at Cailin and says, "Excuse me, sir - do you know that you're on fire?"
Cailin tries to put out the flames, turns into a yeti and tries again, with no success.
Verra disappeared when the god was sacrificed to her.
Jean asks the assembled Old Lords in Jenoir's lab how to put out god-fire.
The healer working on Natasha refuses to be interrupted. Neville offers blucite and Cailin refuses vehemently, pointing out the differences between blucite and stasis. Cailin tells Kieron to stay with his mother and goes off into shadow and performs a true name heal on himself. It's a long, slow process, but eventually it works.
The healer gets up from Natasha, shaking his head and says he can do nothing here -- it's beyond his skill. He placed her into stasis so that she wouldn't degenerate farther.
The healer approaches Neville, raises a hand which becomes transparently thin and splits into countless many tiny tendrils that thread through cracks in his armor and make him feel much better.
The healer heads towards the god and is quite insistent about healing him. When told that the god is not on their account, the healer continues towards the god to negotiate prices, and ends up walking down the garden path into shadow.
The mind and body of the mage that Cailin shielded were shredded by the death of the god. The six bodies that Jean budded into are dead except for their spell racks. He re-learns the lost memories from his off-site backup in the Dancers' Guild.
After four hours that felt like a month, Cailin finished healing himself and goes in search of a Jean.
Jean asks Neville for a note to let him into Helgram so he can bring Cailin back in. Cailin realizes that he can just gate back into the Helgramite council room door and does so.
There is a polite tap at the door. It's someone that Neville doesn't recognize. They claim to be from the Warriors Guild. They are told that Caine wandered off, and determine that they need to wait for his return. Neville promises to send in some more food.
The god just finished dying. He coughed, said, "Murial", expired, and his corporeal form vanished. Neville recovers his sword. The sword is very peppy. Jean asks the Dancers' Guild if they know a Murial who hangs out with gods, dead or otherwise.
Cailin considers reverse-engineering Natasha's true name to heal her.
Cailin pulls his family and Neville to House Moonlight. Jean and Neville go off and talk about what Jean found out from the mages.
There is another blackout in Faerie; this time the lights don't come back up. The leaf bug gets worried. It can't find any other people around here, either. No doors. There is a large breath, and the bug yetis and runs.
Savior of Chaos sees a bug-sized yeti run out of the Faerie gate. Ilk tries to communicate, but doesn't speak yeti. It is about to run into the Abyss, so Ilk hits it with a moebius strip spell. The yeti-bug continues running. Ilk puts the strip in the party outside House Cara near the beer, so the bug can reach out and scoop up the beer. The bug proceeds to get drunk.
There is Titania tape up around the Faerie gate near House Cara. The Savior of Chaos tape is still up around the rift near the Assassins' Guild. House Barimen is turning into a swamp.
There is a note waiting for Suhuy when he returns to his studies. One of the prospective students blew himself apart before even walking the Logrus. Condolences are due to the family, etc. Suhuy deals with the matter, then returns to his studies.
Cailin goes with Kieron to see Princess Chandra. He leaves a note, and Kieron throws a temper tantrum. There is also someone there presenting a bill to the Guild for the healing of Neville.
Jean chats with the Healers' Guild. They won't let him negotiate for Rainbow's debt. Jean says that he is with House Swayville. House Swayville is also in arrears. Since Jean replaced the old management wholesale, the debt falls to the new management.
Jean barca-Jeans the guy with the House ring to the Healers' Guild. The House Head tells them that Jean is authorized to negotiate for House Swayville.
Cailin discusses opening a tab with the Healers' Guild for House Moonlight with the messenger at the Assassins' Guild. They say that they feel some debt due to the Assassins' Guild due to the Poisoners' Guild situation, and that House Moonlight can receive credit on that account until they determine the legitimacy of the connection.
The healer tells Cailin that they need to find the missing healer in shadow before they can look at Natasha.
Cailin talks with Kieron. Kieron tells Cailin that the god didn't die normal-like - he didn't become a scale or go into the sword. Kieron offers to show Cailin how to become a scale. Cailin suggests that perhaps he isn't ready for that just now.
Jean talks with Dworkin in Ferethyn's place; Jean re-delivers the message that Dworkin wants to talk to Suhuy. Ilk re-delivers; Suhuy plans on asking Princess Chandra's advice (via the Serpent's Apprentice) first.
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