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Norton reaches the location of the Slavers' Guild. He finds it to be filled with dragons, each with an attached Jean. Norton can see the Slavers' Guild house. He walks over and knocks. The door knocks back. He makes up a secret knock. There is a pause, and then the door knocks back. The door fails to open, so Norton lights the door on fire.
Jean tells Faythe that Norton is having sanity issues, but that he knows exactly where Norton is. Jean, Faythe, and Titania play with the entrance to Faerie and fish, and then Titania and Faythe are near Norton. Norton explains the situation to his fiance.
"They would not answer to the secret knock, so they must all be punished."
Natasha is suggested as possibly useful, but not currently fixed. Norton tries to shift the door into an explosive substance. He fails -- the door was never alive. Jean looks at the door. "Door! If you open, I'll make him stop burning you!" The door cracks open. "Good door!" Norton damps down the fire somewhat.
The door opens a bit more. Norton grabs the person from the far side of the door with a tendril and shifts it into Natasha. The resistance stops, and the door flies open. Norton stops burning the door, at Jean's prompting.
Norton tries to convince "Natasha" to make exploding corn dogs. "Natasha" refuses, so Norton sets her on fire, too.
Norton - "Oh, those mountains, I keep forgetting about those mountains... remind me."
Jean - "That reminds me -- Gerard!"
Jean explains about Gerard's current situation -- screaming and bodiless. Jean also explains about Dara. Faythe wants to heal things, and is stopped from doing so.
They enter the building. The door rubs up against Jean as they walk through the entrance. There's nobody visible, and nobody responds to Norton's calls of "Amway!"
Norton starts making blood mice and sending them out. Norton makes a blood-herring, and Jean starts duplicating them. Norton makes some magic-eating fish. Jean duplicates them, too. Norton is delighted. Titania is amused.
Norton complains about not being able to find any Slavers. Jean asks Ilk in the tree for tracking assistance. Ilk ponders briefly, then pokes the tendri'd out, recently revivified Suhuy.
They enter the room. The door suggests that the table might know more. The table is large, wooden, and solid. There is a note stuck to the table with a dagger - "Run! Norton coming!"
Jean tries to talk to the dagger, but it doesn't respond. Norton tries to interrogate the table, then Faythe connects to the matrix crystal and makes the table grow. A giant oak tree blasts up through the center of the building. It's definitely alive now. Norton beastmasters it to create a mouth. "Do you know where everybody who used to live here went?"
"I can talk! Can I walk?"
"Sure!" Norton creates legs.
"I'll walk you there!"
[Follow that tree!]
Jean, Faythe, Titania, and Norton follow the tree.
The door complains to Jean that it wants to come, too. Jean asks the tree to carry the door. The tree complains about not having hands, so Norton fixes that, then Titania creates a monster-hiding-behind-the-door to carry the door.
Ilk shows up and sees the procession. He talks with the group briefly, steals and stashes the magic-eating fish, and decides that the tree doesn't know where it is going -- it's not shadow-mobile, and there aren't any Poisoners left in this shadow.
They discuss the matter for a while. Ilk asks Jean if Norton would be more useful sane. Jean thinks that 90% sane would be useful. Finally, Ilk swats Norton with a ball of variable Pattern.
[So _that's_ what the bucket of light feels like!]
Ilk grabs three slavers, but doesn't know any others, so can't find them.
Jean notices that economies everywhere are collapsing as slaver-related businesses pull out, fold up, and flee.
Norton tries to interrogate the slavers by chopping off arms, growing them into complete bodies, and then torturing the bodies. Eventually, Titania takes over the interrogation. People stand and chat around the sleeping, tortured slavers.
Mikail apparently put in a bid to become the head of the Slavers' Guild on the platform of "Kill Norton".
Norton recalls his blood mice, and Ilk sends them to House Hendrake.
More door-related amusement occurs. Ilk in the tree teaches Jean the rules of Faerie.
[Neville went through the trump gate to Cataan with the Old Lord mob, carrying Goliath.]
One of the dragons turns to the King of Chaos and tells him that his forces are almost all gathered, and that they should coordinate the attack. The dragon is not particularly informative.
Osric - "What would you expect?"
Dragon - "Disaster. Failure. You are not dragons."
The dragon blames the plan on Cailin. Osric places a hand on Flora's shoulder, chats with Cailin, then comes through the contact to be shown what they will be attacking. For a brief moment while he is in contact with Cailin's mind, something very ancient and powerful opens its eyes, looks at him, and then closes its eyes again.
The dragons have all gathered. At one coordinated moment, the dragons all simultaneously howl. Toram's lands begin to turn on themselves, and shrink, and turn on themselves, and shrink, and turn on themselves, and shrink... ex-Suhuy Ilk suspects that they are curdling the entire shadow into a scale.
Features start to disappear around them. Unfortunately, some of the features that are sucked up include the door and the ent. Some few things come winging across Chaos to this place, but they're already scalish by the time they arrive.
Ilk looks for any booby-traps designed by the designer of this place against a betrayal by his guards, Logrus-magic in particular. He spots a working uncoiling and examines it. It is fueled by several reality seeds. Ilk ponders briefly, then disconnects the working from the reality seeds. Instead of being a major working, it is now a minor working.
Ilk grabs the tendrils of the working and freezes it in place. Even without the external power, it takes about 90% of his capacity.
Ilk uses the remaining 10% to look for reality seeds. He finds several scattered around, and a single fairly large cache. He scoops them all up and puts them in a bucket.
Every single Jean that is on a dragon is absorbed into their dragon as the final note of the howl fades. Those Jeans are now gone -- they've been dragon-ed. There is now a giant scale. Jean can see out of it. The shadow was never alive, so it is unalive. Jean tries to look around and move the scale. He begins to experiment.
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