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Previously, before these run logs started, Auricle left the Locked Door party through Zack's Faerie gate and followed the others into Faerie. She spent a long time in Faerie, but it's been getting darker there. Instead of things coming apart in interesting ways, they've been coming apart in less fun ways.
She spots Zack entering and then leaving Faerie, realizes that he is an Amberite, and follows him out.
Zack sees a creature that looks like a cross between a troll and a diagnostic lab trundle out of his Faerie gate after him. He greets her while sorting through his trumps. She introduces herself as Auricle, and he introduces himself as Wry. Auricle shifts to a humanish form, which is vaguely femaleish. Zack says that, in Amber, he is known as Zack.
Auricle says that she was last following Rivka, and asks Zack if he has seen her recently. "Define recently?" "Since the party without Oberon." "In a locked room?" "Yes." Zack offers his assistance in her endeavors, and she accepts. Zack tries to trump Stormy, keeping an eye on Auricle at all times.
Stormy heads into the formerly Locked Room to rejoin the math conversation, and is intercepted by Suhuy. Suhuy states that he has made improvements to "Stormy's thing", and starts explaining them, saying that otherwise if Stormy moves it he will unravel. The explanation takes about ten minutes, and then Stormy reassimilates the recording device and its information. Just as he is about to start sorting the data, he receives a trump call from Zack.
Stormy comments, "What an ugly place that is..."
Zack asks Stormy to help him find his father. Stormy replies that he saw something looking sort of like Julian, and will go get him.
Stormy trumps through to Zack, and they chat. Turvalen, shaped as a large grey man, walks in carrying Julian's body. Stormy tries to point out something leading away from the body, but Zack can't see it. Zack checks over his father, and discovers that the body is in really bad shape - the brain was jammed down the spine, and there are no signs of life. Stormy runs his hand along the cord, and it feels like he was just hit with a "Stop that!" gun. Zack still can't see the chain.
Stormy trumps Zack and shows the chain to him that way; Zack sees a silver chain heading away from the center of the body. Zack offers to come along and help track down the chain, and Auricle joins them as well. Stormy asks Auricle, "What connection do you have to Amber?" "There is conjecture that I might be family". They talk about the math discussion. Auricle learns a great deal from Stormy's math dump into her gargoyle, including how to rewrite Stormy into this reality.
Ilkandacian is still lying on the floor in the wrong Chaos. He asks how he arrived at his present location, and is told that he appeared about six hours ago in mid-air and fell about two feet to the ground. Ilk looks for the back end of the crack that he fell through, and spots it above him. He tries to re-open it with the Logrus, but the Logrus appears and starts trying to figure out who he is, and starts the preliminaries of transporting Ilk to re-walk the Logrus. Realizing that in his current condition he would probably not survive walking the Logrus, he withdraws completely from the Logrus, dropping even his Logrus-sight for the first time in centuries.
[logger's note: I might have Lana and Lois backwards here.]
Cathryn is walking to Tir with Lana when she experiences a flicker, similar to pulling through a shadow storm. Lana is confused, and Cathryn takes advantage of the situation.
Ilkandacian chats with King Merlin, and tells him that the Logrus here talks back, and it just invited him to walk it. Merlin tells Ilk to stay put, and goes off to find someone. Ilk just lies on the floor and rests. Suhuy arrives, and Ilk tries to explain what he thinks has happened. Suhuy is unconvinced (or lying), claims that Ilk is insane, and tries to convince him to visit the Mathematicians' Guild, where there are people that will understand him. Finally, in an attempt to avoid be comitted to the Mathematicians' Guild, Ilk asks for directions to a fast place where he can rest up for a week or so, when he will try to reproduce that odd Logrus effect. Flora volunteers knowledge of such a place and leads Ilk off.
Aramek survived the mating, and is feeling better than he has in years. The other arachnid's mention of something being enscribed on the mountain strikes a chord in his head. He heads through Arden to that castle that looks familiar, still in spider form.
Malachai is drinking with Ingold when one of Johann's trusted men comes running up and says that a giant spider is charging the castle. Ingold delegates the authority to deal with the situation to Malachai, who staggers out of the room. The messenger says that the spider has a legspan the size of the town.
Malachai goes to a parapet and sees one of the two spiders that was stomping on Julian's troops during the battle. The bottom joint of its leg was the height of the enemy, but from this perspective it looks much larger. He flips through his trump deck looking for likely assistants, and trumps Stormy.
Malachai: "I hate to bother you again, but... how are you with Mount Kolvir?"
Malachai: "It's really big, and it looks like it's going to eat the castle or something."
Stormy: "Hey Zack - any good at fighting giant spiders?"
Auricle offers to change into a giant jar filled with formaldehyde. Stormy decides to keep following the chain off Julian's body, and passes Auricle and Zack through to help Malachai. While Auricle is going through, Stormy notices a powerful Pattern-based processor with her.
Auricle starts changing into a giant jar, while Malachai and Zack provide running commentary.
Aramek dances at the jar. Auricle's gargoyle recognizes the movement as a language, so Auricle starts changing into a spider as well to reply in kind. Her spider isn't quite right - it's still made out of glass. Aramek points out the lack of organic matter in her form, and Auricle shifts to a fishy substance and dances over towards the spider.
Malachai and Zack chat. Zack says that Julian is possibly dead, and they're tracking down a spell that seems to be on his body. Malachai mentions the multiple Oberon incident.
The two arachnids dance off, and Malachai and Zack talk about following. As they leave, Auricle teaches Aramek what Rivka taught her about shapeshifting -- a Mikail form. Aramek starts shrinking. Auricle tries to show him how to stop, but he starts blacking out, while frantically trying to take control of the shift and change into Mikail.
Cathryn is heading towards Amber in the other Reality, and notices that this terrain is different from the one that she is familiar with. The area is far more militarized. They're traveling at night, which she takes to be a bad sign. Cathryn works on her scheme to use shapeshifting to kill or defend against Lana.
Lana sits down, pulls out bread, the two of them eat. Lana asks Cathryn to get a drink, Cathryn declines, and Lana goes to sleep.
Cathryn shifts to a pantheresque form and wanders around - she's not really tired yet, since Lana was doing all of the work of the shifting. There is nothing living in this shadow: no algae, no insects, no birds, no nothing.
Cathryn goes into Lana's bag. She pulls out Random's trump and contacts him. He's on a drug trip, but it's obviously not her Random. Cathryn finishes looking Lana's bag. After about two hours of rest, Lana wakes up, grabs some bread, eats it, and then they continue. They approach Amber, and see Tir hanging in the sky.
Flora trumps Ilkandacian and herself to Remba, in the underwater city, and they head uphill. Cathryn's guide curses, seeing the two specks on the shore below, saying that if Flora was going all this way she could have saved her the trip. Cathryn replies, "Flora came to kill me here." "I won't let her." Cathryn starts paranoiac ranting, and heads up the stairs while Lana warns her about the hazards of Tir.
Ilk spots Tir and notices someone climbing up the stairs. He shifts his eyes to zoom in, and recognizes Cathryn. Ilk asks Flora if he is going where she is going, and Flora points to the wrong she. Flora leads Ilk up to the steps of Tir, and asks Lana to ignore anything that is said here - there will be heated words.
Cathryn spots a party on the stairs, including some of her family members. Part-way up, a Fiona-ghost spots her, blinks twice, then returns to the party, occasionally glancing around to see if she spots her. Cathryn tries to shift more visible, realizes that it would involve giving up lifeforce, and punts.
The sixth time that Fiona spots her, she closes her eyes, beckons, and heads towards the center of the castle. Cathryn follows. The castle is strange, and Fiona isn't following the layout of the Tir castle, but Cathryn has to. However, since the walls are transparent, Cathryn successfully follows Fiona to her lab.
Fiona does some things, points in Cathryn's direction, then points to a big blue crystal in the corner of the room. Cathryn walks over into and out of it. Fiona looks at it - when Cathryn pokes her head into the crystal, everything becomes clear, and they can see and hear each other. Fiona says that she stole the crystal from her mother, and asks Cathryn why she is haunting her. Cathryn says that she's not from here, and is trying to get back to where she should be. Fiona asks Cathryn about her personal past, future, and other deep and meaningful stuff. Fiona seems to think that Cathryn is a messegenger of some sort. Come back in a few minutes - you'll be where you want to be. Cathryn says she was switched with Lana. Benedict's daughter? Yah. Cathryn comes back a few minutes later, and Fiona is adjusting the crystal, and a grey sphere appears to be Fiona.
Flora and the other are arguing in a language that sounds like screaming cats. A few members of the grey council are beckoning, so Ilk steps onto the stair. Flora says, "No, wait!" and there is a shift and King Random appears. Ilk continues up the stairs, and sees a group of Lords of Chaos, some of whom are, in his experience, dead. They recognize him as a Chaosian and ask for his help invading Amber. He demurrs, offering to perhaps aid them at a later point in time. They make it clear to him that declining their request is not an valid option, and head up the stairs. A ghostly Benedict charges them and they laugh, until his silver arm hits one. Ilkandacian takes advantage of the confusion to duck into Tir, where he spots something Real and heads towards it.
Cathryn asks Fiona why there is a Fiona in that grey sphere, and Fiona pulls out a trump of Stormy.
Stormy receives a trump call. It's from a Fiona that he isn't familiar with. She says that someone gave her his trump and a grey sphere and told her to call the trump if any problems with the sphere arose. Stormy gets a trump of that Fiona, and trumps his wife. She says that she stole the sphere from a Clarissa and gave it to that Fiona. They chat about crystals and bottling Amberites. Stormy hands Fiona's trump to his wife and tells them to work it out.
A person appears in the room and says, "Stormy says I'll take care of it" to Cathryn. However, Cathryn hasn't met Stormy, and replies,"I'm not from this Reality". The other Fiona asks which Amber she is from, and she replies, "find a place where my father isn't king!"
Cathryn spots an Ilk-shaped thing in Tir. They chat, exchange stories, and head to Fiona's room.
In the room there is a Stormy and a tall Fiona. The tall Fiona leaves, and a short (normal) Fiona and a Benedict with a silver arm arrive.
They introduce the Benedict to Stormy.
Cathryn sticks her head into the crystal and talks with Benedict. He thinks that she is the ghost of his dead wife. Stormy does something with the crystal. Cathryn says that she was switched with Benedict's daughter.
Cathryn steps entirely into the crystal, and is spit back out of Tir into that reality. She chats with Stormy. "Is Oberon the king where you come from?" Stormy: "You're Random's daughter? Just recognized? I can get you home."
Cathryn gestures to Ilkandacian to come through. She writes a note reading, "This guy can get us to our Amber" and holds it facing towards his last known location.
Ilk, recognizing the crystal as a Clarissa-thing, is reluctant to come through, but shifts a staff from his excess mass left over from eating two rangers, makes it not part of him, and pokes it into the crystal. After testing that briefly, he breaks off a piece of the stick, throws it through, and watches it land in Fiona's lab. Cathryn tires of this quickly and writes on the back of her sign, "Damnit, I met him at the Amber ceremony!" Ilk checks to make sure that nobody is touching the crystal and then goes through quickly.
Stormy draws a containment circle around the sphere and starts trying to invert it to free that Fiona, as Ilkandacian watches closely. Suddenly, Fiona screams and turns into a grey sphere. Both power sources are now in the new sphere - the old one appears to be empty. Benedict looks unhappy. Cathryn asks, "Are you sure you can get us back?", Ilk asks, "Are you sure Benedict won't kill you first?", and Benedict asks, "You're sure you can put that back?"
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