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Cailin and the winged Serpent are in Cataan. The Serpent indicates Cailin's planets. "Those are your fault. Is the rest yours?" The Serpent touches Cailin and shows him hundreds of thousands of screaming, tortured souls that block out his sight of even more.
Cailin is confused, and denies responsibility. Kinda, sorta, maybe.
Cailin asks to go where Ilk is. The winged Serpent takes Cailin to the Serpent's Antechamber. Ilk's not there, although Cailin can't tell, and the winged Serpent is noncommittal. Kieron is there, though.
Cailin perceives a multi-eyed snaky thing. His neurons flee, and he would yeti out, but is frozen in fear.
Cailin - "Son? I want to leave." Kieron - "Why? This is one of my babysitters."
Cailin tries to grovel, but the Serpent doesn't notice.
Yuri and Princess Chandra are yanked to the Serpent's Antechamber. Yuri comes through manifest as the Serpent's Apprentice. Cailin recognizes this dragon as the one that Kieron was riding in the attack on Vanir's Wrath. Princess Chandra bows to the Serpent. "Brother... summoned, I obey." Cailin is horrified. Ilk follows suit. "Master... summoned, I obey."
The winged Serpent tells the company that the Serpent's children owe allegiance to the one who holds souls hostage.
The Serpent send Princess Chandra off to fix his children, and sends his apprentice off to verify the claim.
The winged Serpent takes Ilk and Cailin to Cataan. Ilk is amazed at the Serpent-shaped hole -- it really shouldn't be there.
Cailin babbles about Jenoir and Andron. The winged Serpent asks Ilk why they should care about those in particular, "Those two are a Realms Lord -- the Realms Mage, who was investigating this place when he went missing." The winged Serpent seems to be placated by that and permits the recovery efforts to begin.
Cailin generates Jenoir's signature and Andron's signature in turn, and Ilk grabs the souls. Suhuy's soul comes along with Andron's, hanging on for dear... existence.
The Serpent's Apprentice moves the mob to Shiryu's place to continue their work. The winged Serpent ends up bracelet-sized when in Shiryu's ways. The Serpent's Apprentice perches on the bonsai tree.
Cailin plans to use Galadriel's body as a template for Jenoir. He creates the body with true name magic, then the winged dragon brushes up against it and the body is empty. Cailin uses Jenoir's true name, provided by Ilk, to rename the body, and Jenoir's soul pours from Ilk's claw into the body. She stretches, and turns towards Cailin. "Good work. Yours?"
Cailin generates a copy of Radagast the Brown, and repeats the process with Andron, and then he doesn't remember why he is here or what just happened. Cailin looks around, puzzled, and asks the room at large if he is about to be yelled at. Jenoir and Andron, who haven't shapeshifted into their true forms yet, are noncommittal in his direction.
[Jean doesn't remember, either]
Ilk moves Cailin to the shadow just outside the hole to Cataan. Cailin goes through. Jenoir revives Suhuy, using the same techniques that Cailin used for Andron and herself. Suhuy and Ferethyn chat, carefully failing to notice the dragons perched nearby. Ferethyn says to Suhuy that perhaps Andron and Jenoir should stay dead, to help motivate the powers that be to feel threatened and attack the thing trying to destroy them. But they can't discuss it here, or anywhere else, for that matter. Ferethyn will just show up and say, "Get 'em!". Ferethyn looks around and sighs. "Can I have a way out?"
The Serpent's Apprentice brings Ferethyn and Suhuy to the gathering of Old Lords. Suhuy remains tendri'd out.
Ferethyn appears before King Osric and bows, as Realms Lord to King. It's not a very deep bow.
"There is that which preys on members of your Court... were it not for the valiant sacrifice of both Andron and Jenoir, I would not be here today to bring you this news. There is that which is preying on powers."
Osric tries to understand what is going on.
"This has touches of the power of she who used to run the Poisoners' Guild, and of he who used to run the Mages' Guild. It is currently being run by a third party."
The assault will take place from two avenues; one through an access point, and another from another side that will be dealt with by other entities. Ferethyn wants as many of the Guild Heads, Guild Seconds, and Old Lords as are willing to go. Osric grabs a member of the Etiquette Guild and summons the Guild heads and seconds.
Cailin checks on the planets in Cataan. The planetary orbits and planets and people are larger now. Cailin investigates the matter, and determines that he may just be getting smaller.
The settlers complain about clouds drifting by and wiping out everything in their paths. They're slow, though, so they can be dodged. Cailin drains as many of the nearby clouds as he can easily reach.
Cailin plays with the hole on the edge of Cataan for a while. Magic shies away from the edges of the hole. Cailin passes through the center of the hole and then summons Get and Saruman. Get has been learning bibliomancy from the archivist-Cailin.
Cailin receives a trump call. It's Flora. She starts passing hordes of assembled Old Lords and Guild heads and seconds through to Cailin.
Princess Chandra uses the Jean-band to gain a connection to all of the dragons. He's been approaching all of the dragons that he can find (with her help) and repeating something to them that Princess Chandra told him.
Jean has remora'd onto all of the dragons that he can find. Princess Chandra asks him to relay something to all of them for her. Jean hands her a microphone. She gives a speech that seems to occasionally drops near Thari, but is mostly gutturals and hisses. All of the dragons stop what they are doing and listen. At the end of it, she says, "and you all have to thank Jean for helping me bring this message to you. You all owe him a big favor for helping bring you out of this folly's path."
The dragons have all stirred, and are now heading towards Toram's lands.
The Serpent's Apprentice takes himself and the winged Serpent back to the Serpent's antechamber. The winged Serpent contemplates destroying Cataan, while Ilk gives Kieron a fly around the antechamber. At some point during the flight, Kieron says that the dragons are all talking, and Ilk can hear Princess Chandra's message.
The Serpent and his brother turn towards the Serpent's Apprentice and explain that there is now a hole, and that while it is beneath their dignity to ferry scales about, it is not beneath his.
After tendril-swapping with the tree, the other Ilks now know what happened when Suhuy died in Cataan.
Jenoir and Andron had coalesced as Ferethyn, and the more power that they poured into the working to determine how Cataan was tied into shadow, the more the place tore at them. At the last, they called out to Suhuy, and he gave them power. The thing crawled up the link to him, and then he dumped the link, but it had his signature and proceeded to hunt him. Ferethyn exploded when Suhuy stopped feeding him power. The entity or force seemed to be motivated, but not necessarily sentient. Every time that Suhuy approached the edge of Cataan, the entity was between him and the edge, and eventually it caught him.
Ilk passes an image of the thing to Jean, who agrees to look for it.
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