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While Cathryn is preparing for Random's party, she sends a note to Suhuy saying that Ilk and the head of House Cara are missing.
Malachai and Cassandra continue talking about Darhyse.
Zack trumps Malachai, and talks with Cassandra as well. Zack pulls Cassandra through onto Trialla's back, where the fuzzies that were climbing over Zack swarm her, then lead her towards Trialla's tail.
One moment Cathryn is walking through Jesby, and in the next she is in an entry hall. She brings up her Logrus sight, and observes that the hall appears empty and notices a residue of Logrus energy on her. She starts walking down the hall, and discovers that the hall is an illusion -- the hall becomes smaller as she travels, and she shrinks to match. When she reaches the end, there is a tiny door which she opens, to discover that it is set against a wall. She tries to Logrus out and fails, then heads towards the other end. The hall gets bigger until the midpoint, then it starts getting smaller again.
When Cathryn is almost at the other end of the hall, a clock strikes, and Rainbow arrives on the waves of the clock.
Cathryn: "Shall I assume you brought me
here?"
Rainbow: "No, I'm the cavalry."
Cathryn: "Who told you I needed help?"
Rainbow: "Flora"
Cathryn asks Rainbow if he is planning on attending her party, but he seems unaware of the party's existence. He also thinks Random is a little kid. After some arguing about reality, Rainbow says, "Let's restart this. Hi, I'm the cavalry. I'm here to rescue you."
Cathryn remembers Flora as currently seeing Rainbow; Rainbow remembers having been rebuffed by Flora.
"Let's try this again. Hi, I'm the cavalry. I'm here to rescue you."
Rainbow finds an ordinary-looking point along the wall, shifts into the sound of a clock, and pulls Cathryn with him, passing through the wall.
Malachai sends Cassandra through the trump contact to Zack, then continues managing the aftermath of the battle. He notices little bits, of varying color and substance, scooting around the battlefield. There seem to be three or four little pieces moving at a time within his field of view. He has no idea how many of the litle pieces there are. Malachai, not knowing what to do about this, ignores it.
Malachai observes that Johann's donkey is eating corpses again, and decides that he really needs to talk with Johann about his donkey.
Cassandra is heading towards Trialla's tail; Zack is heading towards Trialla's head.
Zack trumps Oberon, who answers with, "This had better be good." "Would you be interested in taking Julian prisoner? Sir?" Oberon hands Zack a signed and sealed scroll, and as the contact fades, Oberon turns to his side and says "If you don't leave at once, all peaceful relations will cease."
The fuzzies point out Darhyse to Cassandra. She calls to Stormy, who doesn't hear her, but he trumps her to directly behind him and asks her, "Hi. Is that your cat?" "Yes. Stormy? What's going on?" "That yours?" "Yes. How is she?"
Stormy reassures her that Darhyse is recovering, and the two of them chat.
Zack reaches Trialla's head, and walks into one of her ears. He asks Trialla to release Julian so he can bring him to Oberon for justice, and the fuzzies in her ear shush him - they're playing games. Zack conjures some popcorn, peanuts, and cold drinks, hands them to the fuzzies, and announces that it is now halftime. The fuzzies eat the food, but continue blocking Trialla's ear.
Zack tries to communicate with Trialla mentally. He gets contact with a mind, but it is focused on the travelling concept. It doesn't even seem aware of carrying Julian, but it has a sense of imminent danger. Zack tries to convince Trialla to open her mouth - it's much easier to breath that way. She does so.
Cassandra and Stormy notice the Barrier approaching quickly.
Zack climbs towards Trialla's mouth.... and experiences a tearing apart and putting back together feeling, and feels like he is being wrapped in cotton. He now has a pounding headache.
Stormy turns back into his base Stormy form in preparation for the Barrier.
Zack notices that Trialla apparently dropped Julian on the other side of the Barrier. He jumps off, cushioning his fall magically.
The Sha'um start slowing down.
Stormy bounces off the Barrier and remains outside Pearl's reality.
Cassandra notices Stormy's disappearance, and hears a sigh of relief from Corwin. She asks Gwen if they can stop now, and she says no. Cassandra trumps Zack.
Zack prepares for battle and accepts the contact. It's Cassandra. Zack tells her that he dropped Julian on the other side of the Barrier, and then convinces her to give him a day to find a way out and then trump him. Zack says that he wants to take Julian to Oberon for justice, and Cassandra says that he has crimes to answer for here, too. Cassandra warns Zack of the time differential between Amber and Pearl.
Stormy spots a pavilion with Oberon's sigil flying above it. He chats with Trivallen, who says that Oberon is arguing with Oberon back in Amber. Stormy convinces Trivallen that they should switch places, and Trivallen ends up taking Julian's body, and Stormy takes Gerard's baby.
Zack tries to find Julian by backtracking the cats. However, about four feet back, the steps cross shadow and Zack is unable to follow. He ponders his options, as various creatures creep around in the rocks and try to decide whether or not he would make a good meal.
Cassandra notices that Trialla and the other Sha'um are slowing down. They appear to be approaching her tutor's place.
Zack fails to trump Stormy. The trump expends lots of magical energy in the attempt, and draws power from Zack as well before he closes off the contact attempt. Zack then makes a Faerie gate into Unseelie Faerie.
Malachai notices that the little bits are coalescing into about eleven different points. If Dworkin ever threw up, it would probably look like this. Malachai goes to look at a gathering point, and contemplates trying to destroy it. Despite the lack of witnesses, he orders rangers to put the globs into different buckets, and keep them apart. At one point, a ranger screams and is schlurped into the bucket. Malachai wanders off to throw up, then goes to check out Bucephalus.
Bucephalus looks perfectly healed, and is standing over Arielle, who is lying fainted on the ground, nudging at her trying to wake her up. Logan is standing next to Bucephalus, howling hysterically. After twenty or twenty-five minutes, Malachai finally manages to extract the story from Logan, who tells him that Bucephalus snuck up behind Arielle and touched her with his cold nose. She jumped up, spun around in mid-air, noticed that he was wounded, healed him with the last of her energy, and fell over.
Most of the people in the area are watching Gerard and the cat fight. The cat currently has the advantage, since the ground around them has been chopped up significantly by their fighting.
Malachai asks Johann if he has a trump of Ingold. Nope. Malachai gives a few last orders, transfers command to Johann, then rides Bucephalus up to the castle to report.
Cathryn has been rescued. Flora is talking with King Merlin. The King of Chaos, that is. Merlin is asking Flora if she is sure that this is a good idea, when Cathryn butts in with "Merlin, I missed your coronation". "I'll send you a recap". Merlin was apparently crowned about ten years ago.
Flora pulls Cathryn off to the side, and Merlin and Rainbow wander off to the other side of the chamber. Cathryn: "Something very wrong is happening." Flora explains that she comes from a different Chaos, and tells her that people transferring between alternate realities is a deeply guarded secret. In response to Cathryn's questioning as to how they knew to come rescue her, Flora says, "We lost someone in there - you weren't the person we thought we were rescuing." They converse at great length, and Flora explains that the way back seems to lie through Tir, Tir being the only weak spot between the realities. Flora wants Cathryn to allow herself to be escorted to Tir by Lois, the twin sister of Lana, the person that they believe was switched with her. Cathryn refuses to agree to this plan, suspecting a trap. Trumping to Amber won't work -- the target site of the Castle Trump is heavily guarded, and anything trumping through is killed.
When Cathryn says that she is Jesby and displays the ring, Flora freaks. Jesby just took out House Sawall, is pumped, and won't take well to an imposter. When Flora recites Jesby's lineage, Cathryn recognizes her as her grandmother -- but Flora said that Jesby has no children. Flora states that Mask, a sorcerer living at a place called "The Keep of Four Worlds" is causing trouble, and is probably behind the switches. In an attempt to convince Cathryn of the current situation, Flora shows her an Amber coin - it has Pattern in it, stacks like a poker chip, and has a Random's face on one side and Oberon's face on the other. King Random has only one child, Martin. Cathryn pulls out her trump of Random, and it is warm. Flora hands Cathryn her trump of Random, which is properly cool, but blocked.
Cathryn tries to Logrus-reach for Ilk, and the Logrus gets curious and turns her tendrils back on her. She starts feeling the fringes of Logrus-induced madness, but manages to break the contact. She then heads out to find Suhuy.
Zack opens a Faerie gate and sees two large trolls on either side of the other end. The trolls say, "Bones, bones for bread!" Zack pulls out two thigh bones and hands them to the trolls, after asking them if they want their bones with or without marrow. They let him pass. Zack closes his gate, and the Faerie end of the gate that he passed through shifts. A person wearing a loud, brightly-colored shirt walks through the gate, fails to produce bones upon being prompted, and is shredded. "Tourists" Zack offers to pay in advance for the next dozen or so travelers, but the trolls insist that each traveler must pay his own toll.
Zack shifts to something more gothic, to better fit in with the current Unseelie nature of Faerie.
Zack opens a gate, aiming for Ygg, and instead reaches someplace else.
Ilk has consolidated into eleven big bits, and his consciousness is currently spread across all of them. He starts causing the eleven big bits to merge into fewer, larger pieces, while experimenting with the multiple body consciousness phenomenon.
As one of the pieces leaves the bucket in which it was residing, a ranger tries to force it back with a stick. The piece eats the stick, and accidentally, the ranger as well. Malachai, observing, is not pleased.
Malachai heads to the Castle. The guards greet him nervously, and direct him to the Throne Room, where they say Ingold is trying to keep Oberon from killing Oberon.
Stormy is holding a baby. It's gnawing on his finger. It hurts. He concludes that any baby that strong must be Gerard's. Stormy makes his finger taste bad, and the baby starts crying. Stormy makes a pacifier, and the baby chews through it. He makes another pacifier with an adamantium-mithril nipple, and the baby gnaws on it.
Stormy makes a golem with baby-tending skills, constructs a trump of him on its back as a calling-card in case someone finds it, and tells it to give the baby to either Gerard or Velaria should they show up.
Stormy casts trump in search of Oberon, and spots a room with two Oberons, one Ingold, and two corpses. He fetches the corpses and fixes them, then trumps into the room about twenty feet away from the Oberons. Simultaneously, a door behind him opens, and Malachai walks in.
Ingold is holding the two Oberons apart, and looks heavily bruised. Malachai offers to replace Ingold, but Ingold refuses, telling Malachai that he couldn't take this.
Both of the Oberons turn to look at the newcomers, and one of them says to Stormy, "It's all your fault!" Stormy replies, "I haven't checked the math yet," and says to the other Oberon, "You're in the other Amber".
The other Oberon starts yelling highly effective insults at Stormy, and the first Oberon joins in with him.
Ingold releases the two Oberons, and when they don't attack each other, he drops to the floor and rolls over to Malachai.
Ingold: "Who can talk sense into them?"
Malachai: "Benedict's not answering trump... Dworkin?"
Ingold: "Is he still alive?"
Malachai: "Yah - in the locked room."
Malachai heads to the room formerly known as Locked, finds Dworkin, and says, "Dworkin, your children are having an argument, can you come help break it up?" Dworkin replies, "Really? She came back? See ya later, bro", pats Suhuy on the back, and follows Malachai. Dworkin starts losing control of his form on the way over to the argument.
Stormy sends a lightning bolt at Oberon's feet. The door opens behind him, and a big hairy hand reaches out, grabs him, and pulls him to the side. The Jewel of Judgement is a ring on one of the hand's fingers. Dworkin says, "Children, be quiet or you'll stand in a corner for a millennium!" "Yes, Dad", they reply in unison.
Stormy notices that the Oberon that he was having the math conversation isn't the right one for this Amber, either. Dworkin says that neither of those are the right Oberon, and that the real Oberon is asleep in a corner of the locked room.
The Oberons start arguing again. "Stop it!" "Yes, Dad."
Stormy asks Dworkin to wake up the real Oberon. Dworkin pulls out one of the mathematically-created shapes that he was polishing in the formerly Locked room, reaches through it, pulls out Oberon, and hands him to Stormy. This Oberon is in a bad mood, having been recently KO'd by Llewella. "Get out of my shape and..." Dworkin covers his mouth, saying "Not now, son." Stormy turns to the newly arrived Oberon and says, "You're about half an hour late".
The three Oberons start arguing again. Stormy asks Dworkin to stop them again, and he replies that he's not sure how often it will work.
Stormy notices that the other Oberon is one that he saw in a previous Amber, and hands that one a trump to his Amber. That Oberon concentrates on the trump and fades out.
Stormy says something sarcastic about linking his mind to the first Oberon's and pulling the image of his Amber out of his mind to construct a trump back while being overwhelmed by the mind that is Oberon.
Dworkin then links Stormy to the first Oberon, keeping his mind between the two as a buffer, gets an image of that Oberon's Amber, and passes it to Stormy. Dworkin then puts the minds back, placing Stormy's mind in his aura (a kitty cat), not his body. Stormy pulls his mind back into his body, makes a trump, and hands it to the Oberon, who concentrates on it and then fades out.
Malachai notices that Ingold is drinking from a flask in a corner of the room and asks for a swig. It's water.
Stormy asks Dworkin to not do that, and Dworkin says that Oberon is a stubborn little boy. The sole remaining Oberon (the real one), counters, "No I'm not... yes, Dad."
Oberon leaves. Dworkin returns to the Math conversation to polish shapes. Malachai, Stormy, and Ingold chat.
Ingold is worried about a funeral, specifically, his. He claims to be guilty of treason, for having usurped the Castle Guard. Malachai and Stormy convince him that he's not in trouble, since he was appointed by an Oberon, even if it was the wrong one. Malachai gives Ingold a medal from his uniform, the one he acquired in Tremere.
Stormy gives Ingold a trump of himself, and tells him to trump him if anyone gives him any problems and he'll explain the multiple Oberon thing. Stormy then heads to the room formerly known as the Locked Room to check up on the status of the Math conversation.
Malachai gives Ingold a summary of the battle. Afterwards, Ingold asks, "Who gets to tell Caine his sailors aren't that tough?" Ingold tells Malachai, "We owe a trip to Tazik and she is known as the official armorer of Amber, a one year all-expenses paid vacation anywhere, to compensate for the six years she spent making weapons." He mentions that he's telling Malachai this because Malachai was already Warden of Arden, so he'll be in a position of power to do something about it even if he isn't after Oberon finds out about the battle.
Was that our Julian? He was awfully competent.
Malachai goes off to give orders dealing with casualty reports, and to change into a spare uniform, since the one he is currently wearing is covered in white blood.
Cathryn walks to Suhuy's place, and the gates are closed by Logrus as usual. Remembering what happened the last time she tried to use the Logrus here, she gives up and heads back to look for Flora.
Flora is gone, but she finds a woman who looks vaguely like Benedict. The woman looks Cathryn up and down, and visibly comes up lacking. Cathryn looks the woman up and down, and decides that she couldn't win a fair fight against her.
Cathryn asks the woman to just kill her. Why? Cathryn starts a paranoid rant, complains about the current Logrus, and so on. The woman tries to lead her to Tir. They threaten each other repeatedly, the woman demures to attack because she needs Cathryn to retrieve her sister, and Cathryn demures because the Logrus here is after her.
The woman pulls a milky-white gem out of her cleavage, does something nonmagical, and a beam shoots out across the Abyss. She crosses, and Cathryn follows.
The woman has a fast stride and a high rate of shadow shifting. Cathryn isn't sure if she can keep up this rate all the way to Amber, but disguises that fact.
Ilkandacian coalesces into three Ilk-sized pieces, grabs the last stray bits, and decides to experiment with the multiple-body consciousness thing for a while. He really wants a week or so of sleep, but isn't about to sleep here, doesn't have any spells hung, and doesn't have enough energy to Logrus-pull very far. He looks for local power sources to draw from and there are a few, but by far the easiest way to get back Home would be to bum a ride off Suhuy, who is currently in the Castle.
Ilk looks around. He's in Arden, and the sun is shining, but there is a crack in the sky. He reaches up with a few tendrils to examine the crack, and it pulls all of him through. He blacks out.
Ilk wakes in one body, with about triple the normal density, up lying on the ground looking up at Flora, who is looking at something in her hand. He reaches up a tendril to look at the thing in her hand, and she slaps it. "Naughty boy, don't look up my skirts!" She gathers her skirts around her legs and tucks the thing in her hand away.
Flora announces, "Oh Rainbow, King Merlin!"
Ilk asks, "Could you repeat that last bit again?"
"Merlin?"
"The word before that."
"King Merlin?"
"I'm not used to hearing those words together..."
Merlin looks down at Ilk and asks, "Not used to hearing what?"
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