Shiryu finishes towing the Serpent's Apprentice to Dragonhome. All of the passengers are unloaded and moves a kraken beneath the new promontory. Ilk climbs onto Dragonhome, and smacks the least senior dragon back into its body. It works, but is very painful. This is not considered to be a problem, so Ilk works his way up the line of seniority, experimenting as he goes.
The Serpent's Apprentice goes off to acquire the bodies that were left behind. The centaur woman's body is placed on the (airless) new promontory, rather than being moved to Dragonhome proper. The Chaosians have less of a problem with being stuffed back into their bodies than the dragons did.
Princess Chandra is acquired to supervise the centaur-woman.
Princess Chandra looks the body and soul up and down, and asks, "Do you want to explain how this happened?" Both shake their heads negatively.
She looks directly at the Dancer that Jean acquired to spy on the woman, and dismisses him.
Princess Chandra and Ilk chat. She says that they might have a problem -- the body and soul don't match. The body may have changed during the time that it was embedded in the mountain. They may need to create a new body and kill the old one... but how do you kill a body that doesn't have a soul? Throwing it into the Sea might just create a new Old Lord.
Ilk consults Jean, who waffles, and Norton, who claims that she is dead. Jean asks Titania, who asks if the body dreams. Jean has the dancer check. The soul doesn't dream, but the body does.
An unconscious Faythe is given wrap-around blacked out sunglasses with "It's an Unlife thing, not a Life thing -- don't heal it" written on the inside. Norton and an Faythe are brought to Dragonhome, Norton can't tell much about the body, which is unusual, but the soul is nice.
Norton writes up a psychiatric test and administers it to the centaur. Norton determines that more tests are required, and settles down to work.
Ilk gives Norton a vest made of combined Logrus and variable Pattern to guard him from the potential song as well as the Logrus-inspired insanity.
Cailin notices that someone is stacking the deck to give him pat hands. He's pretty sure that Rainbow or Snarsht could do it, but doesn't think that he is.
Cailin notices that he has an extra blade on his person. He fools around with his cards some more, and then realizes that the blade is a vengeance blade or a Morganti.
Cailin starts speechifying and has Snarsht determine if the blade is a vengeance blade or a Morganti. A Snarsht kitten jumps up on the table, sniffs at the blade, glances at the maker of the vengeance blades, and returns to his usual... place. Snarsht tells Rainbow that not only is it a vengeance blade, but it has his name written all over it.
Hubert takes the blame as being the only person present who can create vengeance blades. The only other person that knows how to make them is the master who taught him. Hubert claims to have made the blade, but not recently. He made it on the behest of someone who claimed that Ilkandacian was evil and needed to be destroyed. He made a dozen, but doesn't know where they are currently.
According to Snarsht, this blade smells like it has been on Cailin for quite some time.
Cailin grumps about having kept that person alive, despite his attempts to kill "the great and all powerful Ilkandacian". Snarsht is looking at Rainbow while rolling around laughing.
They've only seen two of the vengeance blades so far. One was being used to "chase" the butterflies; the other is currently on Cailin.
They discuss the situation for a while, and Cailin complains some more about the cards being stacked.
Cailin notices a small amount of magic pooling in front of him, at the location where his attention is focused.
People experiment with the cards being stacked, and determine that Cailin is doing the stacking. The cards actually change as they're slid through the pool in front of Cailin. However, nobody else can see Cailin's signature.
Cailin tries to dismiss all of the non-essential personnel, but Rainbow refuses to let anyone leave -- he'd get bored.
Cailin keeps yelling at Rainbow, yet claims that he isn't a minion.
Chess is attempted, and eventually chess pieces start being switched.