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Cailin, Beldin, Neville, and Jean are in Primal Amber, looking at the Primal Pattern.
Someone decides that Cailin should walk the Pattern.
Beldin says that Neville looks like one of his aunts, after he takes off his armor.
Cailin strips off a number of items in preparation to walking the Pattern.
Neville starts. He's walking slowly, but doesn't seem to be working too hard.
Cailin starts. It's electric, and gets more difficult as he walks. By the fifth step, he's putting all of his effort into it.
Neville has passed the second veil; Cailin hasn't reached the first veil yet.
Titania, in Cailin's head, has burst into flames and started screaming. Faythe and Felice are trying to help her. Felice touches her. Titania stops burning and falls over. Felice bursts into flames and falls over.
Jean complains to Ilk that Felice is on fire. Suhuy-Ilk fishes to Ferethyn's ways, spots the Pattern burning, and starts draining the Pattern off of Felice with variable Pattern.
Cailin feels something cool touching him. His walking speeds up. Neville looks back and notices that a foreign Pattern is touching Cailin occasionally. Cailin decides that this is easy, and then he hits the first Veil.
Cailin remembers his mother. Circe. She cared for him, she loved him, she fed him fresh blood from the peasants. He remember the night when he was stolen away from her. He's not sure who did it, but it was a dark and stormy night. He woke up on a hillside, naked, tired, and with a goat gnawing on his ankle.
Other old memories flood back to Cailin.
On the second Veil, Cailin relives all of his frustrating moments with his father. He notices the touch of his grandmother in the background easing things in many of them.
After the second Veil, Cailin is drenched with sweat and yearning for a bed.
The third Veil feels like someone has sunk a meat-hook into his back.
When Cailin takes the last step off the Pattern, he falls over. Neville catches him. Cailin is ...
It took Cailin about two and a half hours to walk the Primal Pattern.
Cailin tries to go to sleep, but can't -- there's a crackle of energy flowing through him, trying to find it's level.
Neville draws his Trump of the Primal Pattern. The card is cool. Cailin is prepared to slap the trump out of his hand and Pattern-teleport them out.
Ice starts pouring off the card and down Neville's hand and arm. Finally, he gets this megolithic stability, not really an awareness, but a concept of a long period of time passing.
Neville drops the contact; Cailin lowers his shoe. Neville announces that the Pattern is clean. Cailin tries to convince Neville to go to Cataan and fool around there some more.
Neville passes Cailin an image of a bed in Amber. Cailin Pattern-teleports. He seems to be in a nice, comfortable bed. No Morganti blades in it. Cailin falls asleep.
Neville teleports back to the beginning of the Pattern and starts putting on the armor. Neville and Beldin trump to Amber. Beldin is warned about the courtyard and the time-frozen Connor statue.
Jean tells the King of Amber that his big sword is now an Old Lord, Guido, and has part of Toram in his head.
Cailin spends an incredibly long time trying to convince one of the Old Lords in New Cataan to take Guido's place in Cataan.
A copy of Gauss is brought into Cataan. A number of Jeans converge at high speed on a single point, and self-annihalate. A new star forms.
Cailin, Princess Chandra, and Beldin leave new Cataan and arrive in Chaos.
Dworkin, Dworkin, and ecto-Suhuy have created the variable Pattern flyswatter.
Hubert, or at least his image, shows up. It's flickering somewhat. It seems to be powered by the same sort of Logrus tendrils and magic that Ilk normally uses for a display screen. It's mostly magic. The Logrus and magic signatures involved are both Toram's.
Hubert starts talking. It's not quite as bad as a re-dubbed movie, but the body language and the facial movements don't match the voice well.
"What are you doing?"
Ilk ignores him, and signals to the others in variable Pattern, filling them in. The Dworkins start bullshitting, claiming that they're preparing to walk the Spiral. Ecto-Suhuy isn't quite following it. "Hubert" claims that they should have permission of the current keeper of the Spiral. Dworkin claims to have it right here... and fishes in his pockets, pulling out a fish. "Want a fish?" The Dworkins play mirror image games, and then reach out and grab the image. The variable Pattern unravels the Logrus, and the spell fails.
The next image to arrive is Coral. Jean goes into denial - she looks nothing like her! Jean asks her if she needs psychiatric help. Ecto-Suhuy creates a variable Pattern couch for her. "Coral" sits down on the couch, and blows up.
The next thing to show up is a Logrus bomb. Ilk yoinks it and reverts it back to a reality seed. Another Logrus bomb arrives, and Ilk yoinks that one, too.
There is the sound of hooves pounding down the stairs. Ilk looks through the door -- it's a charger, being ridden by a figure in armor. The figure dismounts and pounds on the door. She claims to be Erica. Jean checks in the dragon-egg place, and Erica is still guarding the Spiral.
Ilk throws up a bubble of variable Pattern around Erica and Jean. It unravels when it goes near Erica. Ilk keeps renewing it, and tells Jean that it's safe to talk.
They experiment, and Jean and Erica leave the room. Erica strips, and Ilk and Jean determine that it isn't any items -- the variable Pattern just twists away oddly... Fractalish? Dworkins are told; local Dworkin comes out to deal with the situation.
Erica knows that she's compromised; she's beaten it into submission. It's thrown her off a cliff a few times, but she's survived.
"Dworkin?"
"You've heard of me?"
"Well, you look kinda like Benedict, but more powerful..."
They talk for some time. Her armor and horse are locked in separate cells, as is she. Dworkin sets up a variable Pattern sphere just outside her range of effect around her, the armor, and the horse.
People return to the Spiral room. Those who remained behind have gotten much farther. The non-Local Dworkin now has a map, made out of variable Pattern, of all of the connection points.
The net hits the Spiral. Cailin falls over. He is at 106 or 107 percent. He dumps the excess into Titania.
The Serpent's Apprentice grabs a big chunk of something. It's hard to hold onto. Instead of stuffing it into a reality seed, he has ecto-Ilk contact Ilk in the tree, who asks Princess Chandra for a scale -- fast.
Princess Chandra turns towards Jean and asks for assistance.
"I'm not going to end up with scar tissue and a dildo, am I?"
Princess Chandra and Jean go near the Serpent. She recommends the whale, so there will be more space around what she will be carrying. Jean whales her to Cataan, then has the heeby-jeebies.
Princess Chandra enters the room. Only the Serpent's Apprentice sees her. She sets down a something mid-way between the two of them, and walks out.
They wonder if it is clear; Ilk says that it is. They lift the net. The Spiral lights back up. Ilk notices a large blast of magical power inbound. The group drops the net back on the Spiral. The magic splashes, sizzles, and burns.
Dworkin experiments, and determines that the lines of control don't seem to be up. Dworkin releases Erica. She's busy. People get her attention. She's still contaminated.
Ilk works on feeding Logrus tendrils through the Fractalization. It will take a bit of study. Serpent's Apprentice goes upstairs with Erica to study the Fractilization.
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