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Ilk notices a concerted attempt to get his attention, mostly by mid-level and lower-level houses, looking for the Savior of Chaos.
Ilk creates voders near all of the people searching for him, "You rang?"
Jean, in the Dancers' Guild, asks the folks running his backup memory if he rang.
They aren't loo ...
All but two of the heads of houses are in fairly secure places; the others are in extremely secure places -- it takes Ilk eight or nine minutes to work his way in.
The first main complaint: The Logrus has stopped maintaining things. Second main complaint: Magic has stopped maintaining things.
Granted, the higher houses don't notice this sort of thing, but all of the lower houses are in really bad shape.
There is one complaint from House Cara about some things not fermenting properly without the Logrus. Ilk creates a Logrus battery for them and hooks it up to the still.
Kintani has flown across the sea, but has had to stop for directions several times. He reaches the Council Chamber. Standing in the center of the Council Chamber is a human being. He has done something to the dragons in the chamber such that they aren't behaving properly. He looks like one of those soft humanoids, but doesn't smell like anyone that he recognizes. He's currently standing on the tail of one of the dragons and whacking at the base of its leg with a mailed fist. Scales are flying and blood is spurting.
Kintani spits out a Jean and asks him about the situation. Jean asks Princess Chandra in the Realms Lord meeting about the situation. Someone is possibly killing one of the dragons on the dragon council. Princess Chandra steps sideways into Jean's fish then persuades the fish to swim out of the correct Jean. Kintani bows to Princess Chandra; she informally acknowledges him.
Serpent's Apprentice arrives, hears a seductive song, and does nothing.
Suhuy arrives, and tosses Serpent's Apprentice into the Sea.
Kintani strikes Oberon's armor, and Jean buds through the hole into Oberon's underwear. Jean tries to give Oberon a wedgie. Oberon's muscles ripple and he resists it.
Jean asks Ilk in the tree to rack a spell in him. Ilk racks his summon wolf spell, and Jean casts it from the underwear. A very hungry Fenris Wolf appears inside Oberon's armor and starts gnawing on him. Jean finds it highly humorous.
Suhuy reaches through the Ilk in Jean to an Ilk in Chaos for Logrus power, and causes an enormous Sign of the Logrus to fill the chamber.
Oberon catches on fire. The Jean underwear starts trying to escape around Oberon's ankles. Kintani tries to pop Oberon's head off, but finds the fire and the wolf getting in his way. He breaths directly in Oberon's face. The fire doesn't seem to do much.
Suhuy starts looking for souls. He can't detect any of them, and he vibrates Kintani's helmet asking for ...
Princess Chandra reaches over and taps Kintani on his shoulder-blade.
She walks up to Oberon, shows him a piece of paper, explains that it was a warrant for his death. Oberon mutters something under his breath. He grows a nice, sharp blade out of his left eye-socket, then she decides that it is asymmetrical and he grows a nice sharp blade out of his right eye-socket. She then starts using them as salad tongs.
Jean can tell that whatever was in the armor is now no longer alive.
The Fenris Wolf-head has gone away with whatever was left of the lower half of Oberon's body. The Jewel of Judgment has melted into a puddle of goo. Ilk is pretty sure that the Eye of the Serpent wouldn't have done that.
The Oberon underwear stays put; the Jean saucer returns to Kintani's mouth. Kintani acquires more golden loot.
Suhuy, Kintani, Jean, and Jean head off into the Sea. They arrive on a place that looks like a Kolvir. No shadow around it, no toys. Just the primal Kolvir.
Ilk can detect vibrations in the air. He causes there to be no air around him, and surrounds Jean and Kintani with Logrus. It causes the song to lose its allure, but not the noise.
The group enters the promontory.
A woman is singing, about 3/4 of the way up Kolvir. She doesn't seem to stop to take a breath. She looks like a female version of Cailin. The ground is covered with white chalky-stuff. Jean tells Kintani not to land; he circles overhead.
The song was interesting for the first couple of minutes, but it has now gotten boring to Kintani.
Jean doesn't think that there is anything here that is alive except for the singing woman.
Kintani asks Ilk to lessen the protections. He gingerly does so. Kintani can tell that the song is just a simple summoning, calling him to a spot behind her. He tries to triangulate. It's only coming out of the rock behind her.
Jean creates an ambassadorial rock, buds into it, and casts the flight and voder spells. He approaches her and begins a greeting speech. She has absolutely no reaction. Jean's help from the Ambassador's Guild tries to modulate the speech to try to get a reaction.
She moves slightly only once, to look at Jean. Her eyes have a haunted look, as if she was not entirely of her own accord.
Ilk casts a scrubbed TK spell into Jean. Jean becomes paranoid and tries to tractor her to the rock. She doesn't move; Jean is pulled instead.
Jean fools around for a while, and asks his mother for advice. Jean has Ilk remove the air from the promontory.
Her lips turn blue after a bit, then stop moving.
Kintani drops a tail to her. The woman hangs on to the tail, then gives up after six or seven minutes.
Princess Chandra has openly approached the woman and placed a blade near her. Ilk recognizes it as a blade used to honorably end one's life. It normally hangs in Thelbane vaguely near ...
Ilk generates a Logrus poleaxe and tries to cut the stone. It's not working.
Jean fishes in a notebook and a pen and hand them to her. She draws something. It's the ghostly outline of a face with eyes, that are crying.
Jean can see Shiryu in the dragons' council chambers. He's tending to the dragons' wounds.
["Can the boxer shorts speak?"]
Jean flaps around and tries to get Shiryu's attention. Eventually Shiryu notices, walks over, and touches the underwear. Jean can hear Shiryu in his mind.
Jean tries to explain the situation. Shiryu has Jean wake one of Shiryu's apprentices and fish him to that place to tend to the dragons, so Shiryu can investigate the mountainside.
Shiryu appears and walks up the mountainside, avoiding the dust.
Shiryu walks up to the woman and offers her his hand. They stand there in apparent conversation for a while. He then releases her hand and walks off towards the Sea of Chance.
Ilk is confused, and sends him a test message over the Realms Lord channel.
Ilk sends out a high priority, "Oh, Shit!" broadcast on the Realms Lord channel. Shiryu fails to respond.
Jean tells Melk what happened. A few moments later, Melk appears in the area. Marial follows, and complains afterwards.
Marial goes over to Shiryu, does something, and he falls to the ground, unconscious.
Ilk tells the Realms Lords assembled that the attack seemed to be proportional to the power of the target -- Kintani was fine, but Serpent's Apprentice was taken almost instantly.
Marial asks Jean to beat on the woman with a stick. The Jean-rock tractors a stick, heads over to the woman, and beats her about the head and shoulders. Marial tells him to stop - he's apparently too good. Jean withdraws from the rock and talks to it. He spends a while talking to the un-alive rock, and convinces it to attack the "squishy rock".
Marial says that the rock seems to be doing better than Jean was -- it does appear to be proportional to the power. The woman is starting to bruise, and there are tears pouring out of her eyes.
Kintani explains that when he breathed on the white rock, something tried to find him. Melk places his hand on Kintani and there is a gap.
Princess Chandra points out that the tears are pooling, and the pools are black and inky. Ilk can see that there seems to be something in those tears, something very hateful and desirous of flames, fire, and the opposite of entropy.
Ilk makes a Logrus licorice-stick and some Logrus gummi-bear bombs. He gives them to Jean who gives them to the rock.
Jean informs the rock that it is doing great and that its new name is Wixer. The rock is delighted to discover that it is now "Wixer Rock".
The bits of Logrus are definitely having a detrimental effect on the puddle.
[Wixer Rock and the Bears]
The woman has deliberately opened herself up to the attacks of the stick. The stick is now hitting one time in six, not one time in ten.
Kintani gets bored, acquires a number of rocks, and lines them up in a row for a cheering section. The Jean ghost buds into and pulls out of each of the rocks, then buds into and stays in a rock behind them. Jean starts instructing the rocks.
The cheering section distracts the rock and makes it worse, which makes the attack more effective.
The bears are working well; the licorice not so well. Ilk keeps the rock provided with bears.
The stick actually cuts her. The black, smokey liquid pours out of her. The gummi-bears start heading upstream into her, with intentions to spawn.
The sword is grabbed by Princess Chandra before the blood gets on it. When the blood touches the ground, it smokes and burns.
Marial speculates on how to make the attacks even less effective.
Kintani goes to check out the Pattern, and notices a stone out of place near the start of the Pattern. It has scratches on it. Kintani tries to bellow back to the group, but there's no air. He thinks hard at them.
A couple of the Gummi-bears were Logrus-colored when they come in and are Pool-colored when they come out. Ilk warns the others present. Marial asks for the natural enemy of Gummi-bears.
Ilk starts pulling in the undead babies that they sent after Oberon through Jean. The babies and gummi bears start warring.
Kintani returns and sees the babies and gummi bears waging war. He tells the mob about the rock. Ilk goes off to check it out.
The rock reads, "Here lies the best man who ever lived.". There's a corpse there - bones. They might be Dworkin's... they're about the right size. There are two fake Jewels of Judgment and one real Jewel of Judgment buried under the corpse. Apparently Oberon grabbed the wrong one.
Marial warns Ilk to stop probing beneath the leading edge of the Pattern.
Finally, the woman rips herself free from what she is bound to, leaving the back half of her body behind, including a fair number of bones. The little Gummi-bears are helping her push and cheering her on.
The first person to her in Princess Chandra, who catches her before she hits her head. The second person there is Marial. Jean's attempt to go catch her hasn't processed yet before both of them are there. Princess Chandra is holding the woman; Marial is facing what was left behind her.
Bits of bone and other body parts left behind are moving to help the corrupted gummi bears attack the undead Ambrite babies.
From the visible bone structure, she was at one time a centaur, and the whole horse part was melded into the mountain.
Princess Chandra turns to her left and says, "There you are!" and insane Norton steps out from wherever he was. She tells Norton that the black thing is attacking his babies. Norton starts ranting, and throws god-flame at the stuff. It starts burning merrily. The good gummi-bears are roasting the bad gummi-bears over the fire.
Jean tries to get insane Norton to fix the wounded woman. They are all horribly broken. Norton starts healing.
Ilk checks under the Pattern. There is the beginning of a book there.
Dworkin was sitting on his Kraken, bored. He fell asleep, and woke up on a mountain. He was still bored, so he made companionship. The companionship talked him into making a Pattern, and the effort killed him. One of the last comments in the book says, "I realize that I have given my companion infinite power and no responsibility, and I gain nothing."
The woman starts to try to speak, but it doesn't work, because there's no air. She goes for the pad, and writes on the pad, "Thank you." She writes again, and asks if she could go with us to leave this place, at least to tell her story.
Kintani tries to get the woman to give information about the stuff. Ilk makes lots of nanite-sized Logrus gummi-bears and sends them into her bloodstream.
Norton complains about the eyes staring at him. He demands to know why the eyes are looking at the dragon but can't see him either.
Kintani reaches out a talon and touches one of the black eyes. It gradually melts.
Jean can see one or two other promontories filled with shambling people with black eyes and warns the mob.
The god-fire has finally gone out. Beneath the white that is no longer there is the top of a pedestal. The thing that was looking at Kintani is no more.
Melk turns to Kintani and says, "Thank you. That was fun." Melk encourages Kintani to go chase the dragon souls. Princess Chandra silently waves Kintani off.
Savior of Chaos goes to the Logrus to tow it back to Chaos. He finds Pharaban there, and briefs Pharaban on the situation.
Cailin and company try to figure out how to leave the box. However, the anti-dragons are still attacking the Pattern.
Cailin rants at Rainbow and Snarsht, then conjures a hobbit that is eaten by the anti-dragons.
Beldin says that the Tir Pattern isn't around any more, and the Rebman Pattern isn't much better -- only the second and third veils are left, and the third veil is looking pretty tattered.
Cailin touches Beldin and gives him an image of the Hat. Beldin says that he can't get the hat -- it's encased in blucite.
They decide to wait it out. Rainbow and Snarsht pull a table and two decks of cards out of nowhere. Fredrick's sidekick sits down at the table with him.
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