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Cathryn is chatting about alternate Ambers with the Oberon that is chained to the wall of a cell in an alternate House Cara's dungeons. Zack is fixing Flora, and wrapping Flora bits in the magical equivalent of Saran Wrap. Theraat is watching Benedict play with the attacking troops. Time passes.
Zack finishes wrapping Flora, and sets up a magical bowling ball case in which to carry her. Benedict sticks his head into the hall and calls, "Form up!" Zack and Benedict chat about potential destinations.
"For a fake Oberon he's got a very good story" - Cathryn
They discuss the Oberon in the next cell, waffle, then decide to leave him there.
They start shifting out, and arrive on the Chaos side of the Abyss. Benedict stops, and looks for a filmy.
Cathryn bamfs herself to the other side of the Abyss using her Stormy Supercharge (tm), then pulls the others across after her, nearly causing Zack to drop his Flora maintenance spell.
They head out, hellmoseying north.
They chat. Zack tries to get Theraat to open up; he fails. Cathryn snipes at him. A bird swoops outo of the sky, and lands on Benedict's arm. He chats with it, and then tosses it into the air. It flies off.
Zack asks Theraat to tell him about her home -- "Much more stable than wherever we are now"
Ilkandacian grabs the known badger council member and yanks the artifact off. The badger turns into a grease spot on the floor of a tunnel. Oops.
He pokes around trying to come up with a backup plan, and then tries tracking down the tracks of the rings with the Logrus.
Auricle climbs up the ladder and goes into the planet-sized globe dangling over her head, and climbs out into Omega, near a dorm.
She asks her gargoyle for a map, but the map isn't useful - this area hasn't been mapped yet. She heads downhill, and there's a strange crashing noise in the woods that sounds like it might be interesecting her path. A normal-looking person runs in front of her and yells, "Run, hide! They're coming!" Auricle takes a look. The pursuers look weird, and she's tired of weird, so she heads away.
A guy in a uniform pops out from behind a tree, and calls out, "Wait!" Auricle claims to have a pass, and ends up being led towards the infirmary by the Vice Cop.
Cathryn: "Why have we stopped?"
Benedict: "There's about to be a large incursion coming over that hill."
Cathryn: "Well, can't you just go around them?"
Benedict tells Cathryn that they'll just stay there and wait for the army to break against them.
A trumpet sounds. Cathryn and Zack grow/float up to get a look. The attacking force is composed of three foot tall people mounted on pigs. The troops go to one knee and brace for a charge; Benedict casually waves his sword around, killing both mount and rider with single swings. Soon it is over, and they continue.
Time passes.
They arrive at a manor house on a rolling, grassy plain. There's an army on the plain; Benedict talks to the leader of the army and then heads into the house. He dismisses his troops, and gestures the others inside. Theraat goes first. They see a large room, with a big picture of Bleys on the far wall, styled as if he were a god. They follow a servant through a wall into a room - it's a well-stocked magical lab. It's very good - it's significantly better than Zack's, and Zack notices Bleys' fingerprints all over it. Theraat is confused, and thinks that it looks like some sort of strange scientific lab. There is a comfortable-looking bed in the corner, and Benedict suggests that Theraat take a nap. She does so.
Cathryn claims that magic is not her forte, leaving everyone to wonder as to what it might be.
Zack starts working on fixing Flora.
[Bob's a good pen pal, as long as you don't live where he sends the letters.]
Cathryn tries to covertly observe Zack; Zack tries to covertly observe Cathryn covertly observing him. Theraat sleeps. Benedict has left the laboratory.
Arielle walking through the woods in Omega. She hears someone calling, "Run for your life!" She gets out of the way of the crowd - they're mostly Medionites.
As she continues her walk. she notices an Omega Vice Cop explaining to someone that she will get her memory back if she goes to the infirmary, and to not trust Thorn Industries - they'll destroy her trying to restore her memories.
Auricle asks her gargoyle if memory restoration can be destructive.
Auricle, to the Vice Cop, "Do you have any particular qualms against being dissected? Some people are opposed to that kind of thing - I just like making sure"
Arielle tells Auricle that might be a bad idea. Auricle greets Arielle and reminds her of their meeting in Arden.
Auricle: "Arielle? What am I studying?" Arielle: "How not to get into even more trouble."
Arielle: "We don't casually dissect living things." Auricle: "That wasn't casual... he wasn't responding properly to stimuli."
Arielle tries to fill Auricle in. They chat. Auricle was somewhere called "The Interdict Zone".
After much confusion, Auricle is invited back to Arielle's dorm room.
They go. Arielle introduces her kids to Auricle. (Peter, Sara, T??? and "the babies") Arielle has apparently mislaid Aramek. Someone says "Faerie" and *bamf* an icky thing appears in the room, claiming that Auricle is its. Arielle asks him to get Zack for her. It is uncooperative.
Arielle chases it out. It takes Arielle's table with it.
Logan wanders in. Auricle shifts into Mikail then shifts back again. Confusion happens. Logan tries incite a hunt against the thing. Arielle tries to describe it; Auricle shifts into the shape. "That's much more convenient."
Auricle grabs an end table and tries to bamf out - and succeeds. The lamp, formerly on the end table, falls to the floor and shatters. She's under the blue globe once again. The demon-thing isn't in sight. Auricle retraces her steps and returns to Arielle's room.
Arielle calls Nicky, and she agrees to stop by with a hunk she found in a gift shop.
Logan insists that they need two more; things work when they have seven. They try to find another two.
[Table-based teleportation! (so, would that be a jump table?)]
They acquire Penny and Caine.
Nicky shows up with someone that looks like an ad for a Schwartzenegger movie. Nicky claims to have bought him - he was a display model.
Now that they have seven, they head out.
Auricle grabs a table, and they bamf out.
Ilkandacian does a Logrus-search for the artifacts. He finds them.
He grabs another badger with an artifact, and it's a group leader. He fixes him, then finds the twenty-four underlings that he knows about, gives them some spine, and erases their having been swayed by their leaders. The followers of the second leader lynch him; the first leader's followers are still in conference.
Ilk grabs another council member, and tests the ring by shielding the badger, watching the artifact blast through it with just enough power, and repeating with more power. After a bit, he notices that everything within fifteen miles of that badger is dead, and the badger is hanging in the middle of a giant crater. The artifact is tapping his shields to acquire the power with which to break them. Ilk shrugs, and yanks then artifact off, carefully watching the badger explode. It self-destructed the moment that the artifact left body contact. The self-destruct was with the badger's own power, and was likely part of the hook.
He grabs another - it's a council member.
"Throw him back, grab another one"
He grabs another.
Cathryn is still watching Zack; when she gets a glimpse of magical sight, it's very complex. Cathryn tries to feed him some extra power...
Zack is husbanding his power normally, when he gets a huge surge of power. It seems to be mostly magical energy, with a strong tinge of trump. Zack turns on the spigot and starts using it. He recognizes the power as Stormy's, having worked magically with him before. He looks over at Cathryn and asks her how she learned how to do this. "Oh, I just picked it up." "It seems identical to some things that my friend Stormy can do." "Shouldn't you be attending to Flora?"
As Zack uses the power, the working become more in focus for Cathryn.
After a while, Zack is done, and is exhausted from the working. Cathryn is exhausted from watching. Theraat is wide awake.
Theraat finds a good point from which to guard. Zack is finishing up the leavings of the spell and Cathryn is watching him. Zack finishes, puts Flora on the bed, and conjures her some clothing. He sticks his head out the door and orders food from the grey-haired servant just outside.
Zack pulls out his trumps and tries to trump Stormy. It doesn't work. He tries to trump Arielle, and hits a barrier of some kind. He tries Benedict, and gets him. Benedict doesn't seem to be moving at the moment - he's face to face with a puppy. He responds mentally. Zack reports, and Benedict says that he'll be along as soon as he's done with this worthy opponent.
Zack re-enters the room and tells the others that food will be arriving shortly. They chat.
"He was staring down a puppy when I last saw him... but knowing Benedict, I suspect that it was more than it appeared." - Zack
Cathryn tries to get a tour of the place; the servant at the door stalls her. She goes around him. He raises his hand, and a crackling magical barrier appeears in front of her. She tries to walk through it, and bounces. she tries to take it down, and it's anchored. She tries to translocate herself to the other side, and the ward bulges to keep her on the same side. A lid comes down over the ward, and the magical jar floats back into the lab, carrying Cathryn.
"Neat trick - how did you do that?" - Theraat
"Don't make me hurt you." - Cathryn
Cathryn concentrates hard and tries to move herself to her personal rooms in her Jesby. She ends up in the middle of a cyclone, about to be torn limb from limb. She tries to shift to compensate, and cannot. She tries to return, and cannot concentrate.
Zack and Theraat play simple Minbari games. Zack debates on cheating. Theraat looks for tentacles, then realizes that there are no Centauri present.
Ilk greases another council member - he drains it, hoping that it will be unable to self-destruct if it is weak enough, but when it is almost dry, it flashes, right before it would have had not enough energy to do that.
He sets up a pocket underwater in the badger shadow, and tries to yank the council member there he threw back before in. The artifact yanks back, magically. That's cheating...
Ilk is somewhere else. There are Logrus bindings around him. The badger is there, with the artifact. He smokes the badger, and removes the Logrus bindings. The lights start going up. Ilk tries to teleport out, and fails. He tries to Logrus out, and discovers that the Logrus is very, very close here... he drops the Logrus, pronto, hoping that it won't walk him. A door opens, and something walks through the doorway, shifting as it moves forward.
Stormy trumps in to Ilk's current location.
Ilk: "Let's get the fuck out of here, fast!"
*bamf* - to Ilk's Courts of Chaos. They're on the far side of the Abyss, which is not named Joe. Ilkandacian brings up Logrus-sight, and the familiar Logrum is present, not Bob.
Ilk asks Stormy how all of this happened, how he moves between realities, and so on... Stormy conjures and hands over a pendant.
Ilk has a discussion with Stormy and the pendant.
Melchizedik and Illyana arrive, bows happen.
Stormy reaches back to the golem, it's still there, and still with Gerard's baby. Apparently nobody has bothered to go back and pick the baby up.
Illyana tells Stormy that smiths are disassembling Turvalen.
"Ilk, gotta go, bye"
"Bye, thanks,..."
Stormy pulls out a trump of Bronwyn, concentrates, and is pulled through.
Melk and Illyana wave goodbye to Ilkandacian. Ilk returns the wave, Illyana blows a kiss to the amulet, and the two leave.
The amulet asks Ilk if it should be in a different shape. It's better to not be embodied, to avoid confusion with the embodied Stormies. Staff? shift -and staff. Ilk mentions that he'll have to remember not to accidentally rack spells in him - why not? He's nearly an infinite rack.
They have a long chat.
Cathryn is being torn limb from limb in a cyclone. She can't trump out - her trumps are in an inside pocket, and she can't shift, so she can't use them. She throws herself out of the cyclone and hits the ground, her shapeshifting kicking back in just in time to cushion the fall. She goes unconscious.
Zack and Theraat chat. Benedict walks in, followed by the food.
They discuss heading out to rescue Cathryn from her tangle with the shadow's defenses.
Zack, Theraat, Benedict - looking for Cathryn
Cathryn - unconscious
Ilk - chatting with a staff
Stormy - headed home to go help the third stormy
Stormy - chatting with Ilk
Stormy - just got back from trying to rescue Turvalen - the Seroli were
trying to disenchant/modify him. Wouldn't have been a problem, if it
wasn't for Clarissa's intervention.
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