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Osric is about to return to Amber to warn people about the death cloud in the radiation zone when he notices a pulsation in the spherical Fringe crystal that he is carrying. It is getting brighter and darker. He tries to call up Johnnie, and fails - there are no Fringe gates nearby. The crystal isn't glowing, either.
Osric gates to another known gate. There is no Fringe gate there. "It reset again?!" Osric is annoyed.
Osric goes into the Void, looks for a dark spot corresponding to a Fringe gate, and exits the Void from a point near the spot. There's a ring station there, in a cave, deep beneath old, musty ruins. It looks like it's been there for a long, long, time -- but Osric knows that it wasn't there before.
Osric steps onto the Fringe and tries to contact Johnnie. No answer - he's not on the Fringe.
Osric calls up a car and goes to the command center. There are currently 42 gates... 43....
Someone reset the date field - the string is now mostly zeroes.
Osric leaves the Fringe and gates to Johnnie. Johnnie's equipment doesn't work.
Osric tries to hand Johnnie the crystal sphere. He yanks back. "It bit me!" Johnnie has a burn on his hand. Osric doesn't notice whatever it was that shocked Johnnie.
There is a knock at the door. Osric pops a camera. It looks like a very tall squirrel thing. Osric opens the door and questions the creature. "Excuse me - what's going on?"
It replies in Tremellorian, "What are you doing here, and where is the rest of my tribe?"
According to the squirrel, the last thing that he remembers was studying a virus that was infecting the Mellor - it was making them crazy. Then everything stopped, and it just started again. He's a biologist - he doesn't know anything about computers. Osric speculates that time travel is occurring. They talk.
Johnnie pipes up that he seems to have a key to what is going on - everything has been randomized. It hasn't been overwritten with zeroes - there are bits of things scattered everywhere.
Suddenly, the power goes down again. Everything goes dark, except for the sphere that Osric has been carrying. That sphere gets a bit larger. Johnnie freezes; the Tremelloran is worried. Ten or twelve seconds pass before the Fringe comes back up. The power meter is near red, but acceptable. The date number reads zero again. The number of Fringe gates reads zero... then one... then two...
There is another knock at the door. Osric checks - it's a horde of infected Mellor. Osric decides not to open the door, and turns the Fringe defenses back on. The Mellor fry. There is a sickly-sweet smell in the air.
Osric wanders over to the console and resets the preferences to Osric's user settings.
As far as Johnnie can tell, turning on the Fringe defenses made the tap go away. He also speculates that the Fringe might have rebooted itself the first time to defend against an attack.
Osric prepares to head out to see if he can get Andron to investigate the crystal sphere.
The Tremelloran says that he is the Chief Biologist - he used to grow the Fringe crystals. Osric wonders why he grew them when you can just create them - and does. The Tremelloran is amazed. The Fringe is beeping due to a lack of power. "Well, it's costly."
They go through a Fringe gate and find themselves in a cave. The Fringe gate is blocking the entrance to the cave. There's an old guy there who says that he's been stuck for a thousand years - whenever he tries to leave the cave, he finds himself on the silvery land.
Osric has Johnnie close the Fringe gate so the guy can leave, and opens a teleport gate to Arden. Nobody is near Arden, so Osric heads to the castle. The garden looks different than the last time that he saw it -- the battle is over.
Osric shifts into something that the Tremelloran can ride.
Calla awakes and looks around. There's her father, Gil, and a saucer floating overhead. Gil wakes, and desires food.
Janus, Gil, Calla, and Jean go to Chaos; Jean brings them to House Swayville and through a ways to a grey zone kingdom with a good restaurant.
Janus starts to stir with the smell of the food. Gil moves a thin soup in front of Janus, and moves everything else out of arms reach. Gil starts chowing down. Janus awakes, looks disconsolately at the soup, and starts sipping. Gil and Calla gorge. The table is refilled with food, and all three gorge themselves.
Janus stretches and immediately launches into an all-out fight against Gil. Gil's just trying to survive. Jean evacuates the non-combatants and asks if this is normal, or if someone is possessed. Janus says that this is due to Gil's little problem. Calla questions Janus; Janus claims that Calla was supposed to be tucked away until after he (Janus) died. Janus says that Calla's adoptive parents were supposed to survive longer than they did - they apparently died when she was only twenty.
Calla is not pleased.
Calla - "Dad?" Janus - "Yeah?" Calla - "En-guard!" Janus - "Yeah right"
Janus fails to look her way. She closes; Jean catches her as she bounces off the wall. Calla manages to pull her blade out of the wall.
Jean calls out, "Ilk?" Ilk, who has been in Chaos monitoring House Moonlight, responds. Jean tells Ilk that Janus wants to go to Corwin. Ilk Logrus-pulls to Janus.
Calla - "Dad? I came here to help you. I wanted to see you before you died."
Calla and Janus continue to talk. Ilk takes both of them to Corwin's location. Janus pulls a sword from a corpse and tosses it to Calla.
Ilk is surprised that some of the opponents, soldiers in Evil Benedict's army, are actually evading his Logrus tendrils. He squishes those. Ilk notices his magical signature on a couple of burnt spots around, and decides to not bother talking to Jean about it.
Ilk asks Corwin if he would like evacuation to a medical facility; Corwin seems to be okay with that idea. Ilk discovers that he cannot move Corwin, probably due to that blade sticking into him. It's evil Benedict's blade. Corwin tells Ilk to pull it out. Ilk conjures a glove and pulls, but the blade doesn't move. Ilk notices a slight resonance through the glove. The blade could be Logrus-ish.
Ilk throws a magic insulator inside the glove and pulls again. The blade comes out. Corwin collapses. Ilk blocks up the places that are spurting blood, brings in ecto-Ilk to babysit the blade, and takes Corwin to the Healers' Guild. They are unable to approach Corwin -- apparently he has too much Pattern in him. Jean suggests that they try someone with internal organs, and indicates Brandt and Brendhyn. Ilk says that he likes Corwin too much to hand him off to a redhead, and contacts Suhuy to ask after Snarsht. Snarsht is interruptable, and very interested in helping Corwin.
Snarsht takes Corwin off to the Beastmasters' Guild to heal him.
Marial successfully knocks evil Benedict out.
Marial tells Jean that he should tell Ilk that the blade should find itself in her demesnes, once he is done looking at it - fairly soon.
Marial tosses evil Benedict over her shoulder and Logrus-walks off towards Chaos.
Janus scolds Calla and criticizes her swordwork. Janus and Calla hellride towards Gil, as a form of "instruction" for Calla.
Cailin trumps his father, who offers him the trump-shovel. Cailin refuses the shovel. They rant at each other, and plan for their attempt to deal with the snow. Tate draws trumps and passes them around. The contact drops, and Cailin finds himself holding the shovel.
Cailin looks around. Snow clouds flee him. He can't find any signatures, but he finds one of his birds, even though he destroyed both of them earlier. He destroys it, then finds another a few minutes later. He destroys it later, and puts up a spell to look for them. There are apparently thirty or forty of them floating about, and they're breeding. Cailin true-name destroys them all, exterminating an entire species that he created.
There are two clouds fleeing him; he drains them and wipes their signatures. Another cloud pops into existence over there - it looks like one of the signatures from the scrying pool. Cailin holds up flash cards, then communicates with the arch-mages via a magical gate.
Cailin contemplates ways of eliminating the snow, and speculates out loud. "Where's a god when you need one?"
Cailin gets the impression that Verra is looking at him. He tries to make contact. "Hi!"
Verra responds. "You rang?"
Cailin explains the snow and this place.
Verra states that in order to shut down the shadow, she would need a suitably powerful sacrifice -- the first-born of all of the Houses of Chaos would be along the right lines. Cailin contemplates an appropriate sacrifice. Verra's presence fades.
Cailin experiments, and tries to figure out what to do with the massive amount of power that he has accumulated and stored recently.
Cailin travels to the Spiral, with the intention of feeding the power to it.
Ecto-Ilk examines the funky blade. It's really hard to examine with the Logrus. Ecto-Ilk talks to the Serpent's apprentice, who manifests in the Serpent's antechamber, acquiring the Serpent's attention.
The Serpent's apprentice updates Princess Chandra and the Serpent on the capture of Evil Benedict, and expresses his concern that the blade could be the Logrus from Evil Benedict's native reality, beaten into the shape of a sword. The Serpent turns towards Princess Chandra.
"Walk it for me, sister"
She responds, "Why me, brother?"
"Because it might be dangerous."
"That's Suhuy's job"
"This Suhuy is not yet ready."
"So it can wait?"
"Yes..." The Serpent turns towards his apprentice. "Tell your Suhuy that, once he is ready, he should walk it. Until then, keep it someplace safe and remote. Here will do."
Ilk replies, "Err... I cannot manipulate it with Logrus, and know of no other way of traveling to here."
Princess Chandra agrees to transport the blade, and follows Ilk to its location. She looks at the blade, picks it up, hefts it a few times, grins, and disappears with a faint scent of Serpent power. The Serpent's Apprentice follows her. When he arrives in the Serpent's antechamber, the blade is just in front of him. "Sorry - let me move that." She does so.
Princess Chandra indicates that the blade does seem to have that of the Logrus about it, and recommends that his counterpart wait until after he has walked his own Logrus for a second time before trying to walk a hostile one. He asks about Marial's request, and it told that she should be patient.
There is a polite tap at one of Suhuy's doors. It's Marial. Suhuy causes the door to open and a presence to be there. "I believe that you have something of mine?" Suhuy is confused; Marial indicates her apprentice. Suhuy causes a path to be made apparent. The apprentice is still frozen in time. Marial asks Suhuy if he can restore her.
Suhuy reaches out for Melk. Melk coalesces. Marial and Melk exchange bows. Melk gestures off-handedly, and Marial's apprentice moves and smiles.
Marial states that she has taken evil Benedict captive and that they should interrogate him once he is capable of responding to such.
Marial heads out with her apprentice; Suhuy leaves a tendril on her so that he can easily find her again when the time is right.
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