![[previous]](gu-prev.gif){kind=small}
![[next]](gu-next.gif){kind=small}
Back to the index.
Gauss shuffled Darkstar into old Cataan, and Darkstar trumped back and pulled Hubert, Beldin, Duncan, Fredrick, Fredrick's sidekick, Ged, the archivist, Cailin's new bodyguard [Marial], Flora, and the bear mage into old Cataan.
Cailin and Cailin are with Snarsht and Rainbow in old Cataan.
The Serpent's Apprentice heads into the Sea of Chance to search for Ingold.
Cailin asks Rainbow if Pattern would be harmful to him, and then trumps Beldin. They discuss saturating the area with Pattern. The contact drops and Beldin thinks, and Cailin starts trying to raise the Pattern. It's difficult to try. Cailin trumps Darkstar, who is slapping Fredrick's sidekick around, and asks for his power back. The bear mage refuses.
Cailin gets a trump call. It's Beldin. He says, "Okay, think at me. In this trump, with everything you have!" Cailin bends the power of his mind towards Beldin, and Beldin uses it to raise the Pattern and fling it at Cailin. Beldin falls over, and there is an actual Pattern flying at Cailin. The trump contact is still active.
Cailin warns Rainbow and Snarsht, "Incoming Pattern."
Rainbow - "You're kidding, right?"
Cailin - "I wish I were."
Jean, floating around in Tir, notices that the Pattern room is now empty.
Cailin tries to interrogate the unconscious Beldin. Beldin's mind is screaming, as he has realized what he just did.
Cailin asks the Old Lords if they can see the anti-dragons. Snarsht can see the anti-dragons; Rainbow cannot. Rainbow gives Snarsht a hurt look. Cailin asks them if they can see the incoming Pattern. Rainbow can see the incoming Pattern; Snarsht cannot. Snarsht gives Rainbow a hurt look. They correlate data, and determine that the anti-dragons are moving out of the way of the Pattern.
Fredrick's sidekick has gone unconscious. Fredrick has pulled out a set of rosary beads and begun to pray. Hubert has drawn his sword, set his feet firmly in the nothingness, and assumed a look of "we who are about to die salute you".
There is now a Unicorn charging past Cailin towards the other group. [Someone has just prayed to it.] Cailin says, "Incoming Unicorn -- move!" and shifts into a roc. Snarsht turns around and grins. Rainbow looks sheepish. Cailin dodges the Unicorn. Snarsht takes off after the Unicorn. Rainbow takes off after Snarsht. Cailin follows the Unicorn. The Pattern is heading right for them.
The Unicorn impacts with the Pattern. There is a pull on Cailin's mind, as if every bit of him that was Pattern-attuned was struck with a little hammer.
Snarsht and Rainbow simultaneously determine that this is not a safe place to be and head in opposite directions. Cailin heads off after Snarsht, but the Pattern homes in on him and impacts.
Hubert runs over and pulls Cailin out of the Pattern's path.
There is a small turtle gnawing on Cailin's leg. The turtle drags Cailin and Hubert in an odd direction, there is a twist, and he is somewhere else, out of the sight of everyone else.
There is another impact, as the unicorn's horn impales the Pattern. The Pattern is now being used as a giant flyswatter.
Cailin turns back into a human. He realizes this his vision is skipping a certain area and checks with Hubert, who can't see that area either. Cailin trumps Duncan. Duncan opens up a case and hands Cailin a half-dozen Pattern-daggers. Duncan comes through the trump.
Hubert scouts the blind spot and reports that it is a fortress of mages. Hubert and Cailin troop off towards the fortress. Duncan stays behind, but gives them the case of Pattern-blades. Cailin and Hubert discuss assaults, reinforcements, and minions.
Cailin trumps Darkstar and asks for reinforcements. Fredrick is the only one willing to come through. He looks at Cailin, Hubert, and the fortress, and charges.
Cailin suggests using bibliomantic tokens as grenades; Hubert wings one into the fortress. It hits a fairly central part of their magical defenses, which blows up, leaving a sizable hole in the tower. Cailin hands Hubert the box of transport tokens to Vanir's Wrath, and Hubert proceeds to volley tokens at the fortress.
One of the Cailins charges the fortress, in bird form. He is attacked, turns into a yeti, and starts running across the wall. There are fifteen or twenty simultaneous attacks -- lightning bolts, fireballs, and so on. Cailin goes human, drains power from the attacks, and redirects it back onto the attackers. He's channeling an enormous amount of power. He tries to swallow it, but soon fills up.
Cailin throws a bibliomantic token into a clump of the enemy and redirects some power into that area. It explodes successfully. He repeats the process on a more central region of the fortress.
Cailin heads towards the center of the fortress. He sees lots of people conjuring at him. He continues spraying bibliomantic tokens around the area, and succeeds in taking out the center of their power. Cailin hears a scream, then Fredrick bursts through a wall dragging a well-dressed woman. Fredrick throws it at Cailin, saying, "This is the head mage." Cailin turns into a yeti and catches the unconscious mage.
Cailin starts pulling out, carrying the mage with him.
The Serpent's Apprentice swims out into the Sea of Chance in search of Ingold. A kraken tries to devour him, and he pats it on the head. He keeps an eye open for squid -- they taste better than kraken. The ghost ship that he's seen before, he can see in the distance again. He heads after it.
The Serpent's Apprentice continues wandering, gets bored, and starts aiming home. No luck. He tries to go to the Serpent's Antechamber, but can't -- he's out of range. No sign of Pattern, Logrus, Chaos, Shiryu, or Ingold. He hasn't found a promontory in some time. He meets a squid, tries to talk to it, then eats it. It tastes good.
The Serpent's Apprentice hears the echo of a real place, but can't pinpoint it. He scrapes off his back with the squid's spine, and finds the promontory that he was detecting. He sticks his head back up on the deteriorating promontory and calls out to Shiryu through the growing stuff. Shiryu appears, stabilizes the promontory, and says, "You have found a new garden." "Not on purpose... I've become misplaced." They chat.
Shiryu gives the Serpent's Apprentice a lift to the promontory with the marbles. He dives back into the sea and heads to the Serpent's Antechamber.
Jean gets through three shadows where nothing is left alive, and it has that glowy look as the area where Soyzilla was eating. He tells the Dancers Guild. They have him set off the type of explosion that they thought happened, and it just makes Jean warmer, so it can't be that.
Some of the people that are playing tag with Jean have gotten very good. Suddenly, their skill level jumped dramatically. He checks with the Dancers to see if he has forgotten anything recently. There are a lot of new ghost Jeans, most of them in his home Amber/Chaos stretch. Titania has assigned a minion to help Jean move the scale around to collect his ghosts. The minion opens faerie gates to help move the scale cross-shadow, and as more Jeans collect in the scale, it becomes easier to move the scale, both under its own power and separately.
Jean realizes that more and more of him are missing. He recovers some of the ghosts, and remembers the saucers smashing into other saucers, creating the glassy plains.
Many Jeans turn into homunculi, then one per shadow turns back into a saucer. Someone shows up with a remote control into one of the shadows with a saucer, does something, and it smashes into a cliff, releasing a great deal of power. He then walks off cross-shadow, muttering something about being free of that spy. The homunculi are immune to the remote control, but the gunships seem to be vulnerable. He tells Ilk, and they work with the shifter who is helping Jean come to terms with unlife to change the control mechanism. Jean starts Faerie-gating gunships around, chasing the guy.
Jean fishes ecto-Ilk to the area. Ilk grabs the guy, and they screw around a bit. Ilk is amazed at the amount of Pattern that the guy has. Ilk can feel the backlash when he hits the attacker with Logrus, and his attempts to crush the hand holding the remote control with variable Pattern fail. He doesn't appear to be a redhead.
The Ilk-Suhuy joins in the fun. It looks like Jean's attacker is currently simultaneously there and standing in the center of the Pattern. That could explain the Logrus backlash... Ilk tells Jean, who checks the local Patterns.
The Rebman Pattern is empty and still covered in blucite, but dims briefly whenever the guy catches on fire. The Primal Pattern is empty. Tir's Pattern is missing. [In Old Cataan] Jean goes down to check Amber's Pattern room, but the door is missing and the wall is sealed over. Jean tells King Neville, who heads downstairs to check on Amber's Pattern.
Back to the index.