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Ferro is in the wrong Courts of Chaos, inscribing a Pattern on the inside of a bottle that is being held in mid-air by the wrong Toram. Ferro completes and walks the Pattern, then goes to the hillbilly Amber, taking the bottle with him.
The bottle shatters, leaving a bottle-shaped Pattern floating in mid-air. The lines all became wide enough to be walkable simultaneously and overlapped. He now has a container that basically is Pattern, but is now unmanipulatable. It is lying in the precise center of the Pattern that he drew outside Suhuy's cave.
Ferro can see the grey wall around the center of his Pattern. It's misty, somewhat translucent. He Pattern-teleports to where Celeste is.
[Make a saving throw. I make it.]
Instead of going to Celeste, he tries to bring Celeste to him. He fails.
He tries to go to the nearest open space ten feet to the left of Celeste, and fails. There is no open space there.
He tries to go to the open space closest to Celeste that is at least as large as a top, and is now falling. He grows helicopter blades. They don't help much. He expands outward into the form of a small dragon, and notices that he seems to be inside a column. It's as if someone took a core sample of something Real. It's a column about ten or fifteen feet in diameter. He arrived in vacuum, and has now fallen into atmosphere. Surrounding the cylinder is something that he really doesn't want to be near. He's falling really fast. He starts parachuting, growing trailing lots of silky veils and trailing them behind him.
Cassandra wanders off to a spot away from people to test her darksaber. She draws and activates it. The first four inches of the blade are normal. The next bit is a delicately carved spiral staircase. The last bit is a green, smiling face. She moves the weapon slightly, and the effect changes completely. She plays with her darksaber.
Norton tries to shift out of Branier's form, and Osric tries to shift out of Chanicut's form. They each fail, and are distressed. Osric goes over to talk to Andron about it, and Andron brushes him off.
Ilk tells Cassandra that Dutch and several members of his company are in House Cara, and that Benjamin is wandering around the Courts in search of her, destroying everything in his path.
Conversation happens.
Osric mingles while looking in his crystal for Mellor. Andron, Imagio, Jenoir, Jenoir's doll, Merlin, Mandor, and Princess Harp are fringe-worthy. Clarissa is emphatically not fringe-worthy. No Mellor are spotted.
Malachai gets a trump call, and accepts it. He has a very thin, tenuous connection, as if it were passing through many veils. It's Celeste. They chat. Celeste and Ferro grab for Malachai. Malachai disappears, and Cassandra grabs for him.
Malachai stumbles into Celeste's arms. Cassandra now is holding a pseudopod from what looks like a shapeshifted cephalopod. She freaks out. Cassandra tries to trumps Malachai, connects to the piece of squid, and freaks out even more.
Cassandra gets a trump call. Ilk and Merlin anchor her. It's Corwin. He asks what happened. She gives him an image of Malachai receiving a trump call and turning into a squid, then tries to drop the contact. She fails. Merlin pokes into her head, and Merlin and Corwin argue in her head over the appropriate use of it. Merlin wins, and Corwin drops the contact.
Celeste gets into trump contact with Merlin. Merlin pulls Malachai out of his ass. Merlin brings Celeste through. Ilk and Norton chorus, "No! Don't bring Ferro through!" Ferro has a sensation like he is being pulled through cheesecloth. He lets go. Celeste has some sugary stuff on her hand.
The moment when Celeste comes through is the exact moment that Dworkin chooses to throw his water balloon at Ferethyn.
Celeste approaches Clarissa. She's chatting with someone impressive-looking. Celeste notices that Clarissa is inappropriately dressed for the occasion, and magics her own clothing into Darkover formal garb.
Malachai is extremely distressed at the sight of the squid. Cassandra is relieved at the reappearance of Malachai. Malachai says that he never wants to see the squid again. Norton works on trying to shift the squid. He has difficulty, and saves it for later.
Ferethyn is extremely not pleased at the water balloon and looks at "Branier" expectantly, as if to get this thing over with so that he can leave.
The ceremony begins.
It is a very nice, formal ceremony. People find that they know to say the right things at the right times, but are not forced to say them. Celeste knows what the source of the information is. It's Andron. He poked right through her defenses, and decided that writing the words on her forebrain would be an effort, so he opened a dialog with her instead, to pass her the words that way. She thinks that she might be able to do something like that at some point in time, given training. He has a side conversation with her, and tries to explain some of the techniques, but she doesn't even have the language needed. Andron tells her to look him up after this is over.
The ceremony is very right, very formal, and very pretty. It is esthetically pleasing. Norton finds himself doing magics he didn't think he was capable of, courtesy of the Jenoir in his head. The last word is spoken, and the ceremony is over.
Andron ends his conversation with Celeste, saying that he should repair to his own defenses. Celeste gets a quick flash over the god channel of, "Looks good, kid. Smile."
Ferro is across the Abyss from the Courts, looking at the sea of demons. He watches as they change color. They were blue, but become multicolored and grow fangs, claws, and armor. Ferro shifts into a dragon form and takes off, flying towards Chaos. He hits the area above the Abyss like a wall and bounces.
Ferro flies in the shape of a Pattern, leaving dust motes behind him. He gets about two or three feet into it when, boiling out of the Abyss, come many different demons of many different descriptions that start attacking him.
Ferro starts mosquitoing out. The demons chase the mosquitoes. He tries to physically move to cause the demons to interfere with each other. It doesn't slow them down. Ferro is having a lot of trouble - he's running for his life. He needs help.
Celeste goes over to talk to her grandmother. Norton sends a thought towards Andron, is not acknowledged, and walks over to him. Ilk spots lots of people raising defenses, and goes active.
Celeste reaches her grandmother. They start talking over the god channels. "It's so lovely to see you, dear, especially on the eve of such a lovely battle." Celeste confesses to having lost Faythe. Clarissa commiserates about children acquiring will, and asks Celeste if she has seen her latest project, Mikail. Celeste says that she has something else to ask her about, but will ask elsewhere, afterwards.
"Not only that, but I don't expect you to survive this little shindig."
Clarissa: "Anything else I should take care of for you after I survive
this?"
Celeste: "Whatever happened to my father?"
Clarissa: "I heard that he had had some problems..."
Celeste complains about proto-Darkover, proto-Chaos, and hillbilly Amber. Clarissa questions her. Celeste mentions her difficulties building a tower, and Clarissa asks her why she did it the hard way.
"Can't you come up with something unique of your own?"
Ilk fuzzes out, going tendri.
They notice Ilk disappear. Andron seems to have disappeared. Snarsht seems to have disappeared.
Norton goes to Andron and considers poking him in the forehead. Osric follows Norton. Malachai is regaining his composure. Celeste goes someplace out of Clarissa's line of sight, and tries to accept her invitation from Titania. Cassandra tries to comfort Malachai. She has no weapons drawn, but is in a position such that she could draw Galantine if necessary.
Celeste reaches into her pouch to pull out the invitation. As her fingers touch her pouch, she has a greasy feeling, as if there is an interaction going on between the things in there. She opens it and looks in. There is a non-moving mandrake in there, looking charred. She pulls it out; it's dead. She sees char marks on the cloth. The three items seem to be in circuit with each other through the char marks. She reaches in, and in, and in... her hand goes numb, but she's still reaching in. She pulls her arm out, and her hand is charred from the second knuckle down. She doesn't regain feeling in the charred areas.
Norton fails to get Andron's attention. Osric looks around. Jenoir is still there. She's raising lots of magical stuff. Norton considers poking Andron, but Osric and the Ilk in his head yell at him.
Osric's shield comes up, seemingly all on its own. According to Celeste's life sense, the person who was Chanicut next to her when she came in just died.
Celeste dumps her pouch out. Faerie dust falls to the ground. She dumps it over her head, and starts floating. Nothing else comes out of the pouch.
Celeste grabs the bottle from another pouch and sniffs it. She passes out.
All of the little mosquitoes try to fly separately in the shape of a Pattern, then merge into one entity. This takes some effort to accomplish without being eaten.
Norton has walked over to Andron. There winks into existence, fairly close to him, something that is trying to attack him. Norton tries to figure out what this form can do.
Ilk notices that the walls are breached in seventy-five or eighty places. He tries to smooth Logrus over them.
Cassandra wants to have weapons out right now. She puts Galantine in Malachai's hand and draws her weapons. Malachai becomes aware that Galantine is in his hand and Cassandra is at his back.
Janus is standing over Merlin, whom he has pulled to the ground under him.
That which is Pharaban has moved in a way that man was not meant to know over to one corner and is attacking something.
Norton is trying to entrap the thing next to him in Pattern, as a prelude to shifting it into something harmless.
Ilk manages to cover most of the holes, but not all of them. It's like someone is shooting a a machine gun at a balloon, and he's frantically patching holes from the inside. He's missing statistically few of them.
Something whangs off Osric's shield. It was fired from outside the room and hit the shield. Once his shield went up, Osric found himself in his normal shape. Osric puts a shield around Norton for a split second. For a split second, Norton flashes out of Branier's form into Chanicut's, then back again as the shield drops. Osric goes into a combat form.
GM: "Things are attacking you."
Cassandra: "Kill them."
GM: "Things are attacking you."
Malachai: "What she said."
Cassandra and Malachai notice that the things attacking them are the same general shape as the demons outside, but they're multicolored, armored, fanged, and deadly.
Celeste is dreaming. Titania comes up to her, and says that she should get back to her body - it's under attack. Celeste says that she was trying to come to her, and Titania states that she could take Celeste's mind, but then her body would be stuck in that place forever.
"Once I leave that place, I will accept your invitation."
"If you survive it... there's something gnawing on you."
Titania puts Celeste back. There is indeed something trying to chew on her, and it's being shocked by the interactions in her pouch. Celeste drops its temperature, then shatters it. It takes her all of half of a second or a second.
The demons are attacking Malachai and Cassandra in preponderance - since they are dying disproportionately there, those two must be a greater threat. Malachai and Cassandra continue killing things.
Osric pulls out a Niven-esque flashlight-laser and turns it on. The beam goes a few millimeters and then turns into a bouquet of flowers. There is the sound of fish from the power source.
Norton doesn't see anything in front of him anymore - he finished bashing it with Pattern. He sees people fighting things that he can's see, shifts his vision, and then sees demons fighting things. Norton calls to his army.
Ilk notices a perforation going out. He gives it a few seconds, and notices that it has his signature on it. "That must be Norton." He leaves it intact.
Norton is in contact with his undead army. They report that all of the standing around, non-hostile demons have gone hostile and are shredding everything in sight. Norton tells them to fight back.
Celeste pulls herself into a bubble of cold, and throws daggers of ice at things that make it through the cold to attack her. An ice cube forms around her, and the outside is looking castle-ish. The others see a ball of ice bobbing in mid-air.
Osric moves his shield around to speed-bump for Andron.
Celeste puts a layer of hot around the layer of cold, to try to reduce the number of demons making it close enough to attack her.
Norton pokes into the mind of a demon. It's very small. He pushes a bit towards the mind controlling it, and is gone. He's inside a very small glowing box. He looks through the walls of the box. He's in what looks like a laboratory, on a shelf.
Ilk notices that the outgoing hole was just ripped asunder, as if a mind-blast was echoing along it. He tries to clean up the rip, and when he touches it, the hole is completely gone.
Dworkin is bouncing around and touching the demons. His touch causes them to scream and shrivel up. Dworkin is somewhat panting for breath.
Snarsht comes back in the room looking somewhat singed, but pleased with himself. Trialla comes over and starts ministering to him.
When Dworkin touches the demons near Malachai and Cassandra, they burst into flames and they disappear into a cloud of greasy smoke.
Norton knows that he reached something, and that that something grabbed him and presumably stuffed him here.
Mages start gating in. Ilk has the impression that they are frustrated of bouncing off closed holes. They're now tossing demons at holes to find ones that are still open, then trying to gate through before they close.
Three or four have gated in, and Jenoir is attacking them. She seems to have casually spacked them.
Celeste boils the brains of the next one to enter. She has to burn through six layers of defenses first.
Ilk starts letting in small groups in waves, by letting more holes open and then slamming them closed behind them, cutting off their reinforcements and escape route.
A small group of mages, physically surrounded by demons, shows up. Cassandra and Malachai head in that direction. Celeste is under attack. She tries to feed the mages their own power.
Celeste is working at close to her potential, at about fifteen of them to one of her. Of course, the swords being passed through the enemies' gizzards help disrupt them as well.
Another group comes through when the first is almost gone, and tries a mass attack at Celeste. Jenoir notices that they didn't notice her, and squishes them.
Things continue for quite some time in this fashion.
Norton takes stock of his surroundings. He tries to stretch out a Logrus tendril towards the wall, and it's solid. He sends out a Pattern-laced Logrus tendril. It's a bit mushier, but it's still solid. He sends out a physical tendril, and gets shocked, and the box shrinks slightly.
The Ilk and Corwin in his head pipe up with ideas. Trumping to Zack or Corwin is compared against trying to break out here and do some damage. A vote is taken, and Norton decides to try to break out first, then trump out only if that fails.
Norton dies. Voluntarily. He feels better now.
Norton whacks at the box with the Pattern-squid, hard. It goes flying right out of his hands and through the walls of the box, hitting the far wall.
Norton lets Corwin take over his body. A dead Corwin walks out of the box. He is now in a lab that looks very familiar. It's Suhuy's.
They look around. The box they came out of was not there before, and Toram is in the corner, looking at a piece of dead squid. Norton releases Brut, and the fish frenzy.
Norton turns into Ilk to leave, and Toram rotates his head in time to see the rapidly departing Ilk and rapidly arriving fish.
Ilk, dead, talks to Ilk, living. Discusses Toram's whereabouts.
[This conversation should be expanded when the logger has time to write a conversation between his character and his character.]
Ilk, dead, creates a voder in the room where the ceremony took place and tells Jenoir that Ilk, live is preventing most of the intrusions into the area, that Toram has been spotted in Suhuy's lab, and asks her if there is anything that she would like to be done about that.
Jenoir: "Take me there?"
Dead Ilk: "Anyone else?"
Jenoir puts one hand on Andron's shoulder, and another on Corwin's shoulder.
Dead Ilk pushes the three of them into Suhuy's lab, then follows and returns control to Norton after checking for Logrus attacks. Norton remains in Ilk's shape, for ease of escape.
Corwin has Blackwand in one hand and one of the Greyswandirs in the other. There is a second Greyswandir sticking out of Toram's leg.
The Greyswandir in Toram's leg is burning with a cold blue flame, and his leg is also covered slightly with a blue flame.
Corwin seems to be somewhat wounded; there is blood oozing out of his lips.
Andron is not in sight.
Jenoir is in the midst of a cast. So is Toram.
Magical energies are being bent in a visible fashion. The two have gone far beyond shifting concepts, to shifting universes.
Norton tries to throw a Pattern-laced tendril through Toram's head, and it bounces long before it hits him.
Corwin is absorbing body blows occasionally. All of the Jewels hanging around his body are glowing.
There is major damage being scattered around. The lab is being trashed. Dead Ilk whimpers.
Pure Logrus also bounces against Toram's shields. Norton tries throwing stuff. They bounce as well.
Dead Ilk tries to Logrus-grab the stuff that is attacking Corwin, and Corwin adjusts his attack pattern somewhat to capitalize on that help.
Norton looks at the boxes. There are many of them, and all but one of them are occupied. Norton sends out a physical tendril, grabs the squid, and tries passing it through the empty box. It looks like Andron is in one of the boxes. Norton pokes the squid through the box to Andron, and receives a thought, "That's not really me." Norton stops playing with the boxes.
The Ilk in Norton's head unracks a flechette gun spell, firing lots of slivers of stuff at Toram. They stick into his physical shields. Norton puts some Pattern into the bits. They stick into the shields and flame a bit.
There are no fish lying around, but there is a bite out of Toram's forehead.
Ilk activates the voder and gives Princess Chandra the same invitation he gave Jenoir, with an update on the recent actions.
Princess Chandra turns to Cassandra and invites her to join in the other portion of the battle.
When Ilk lets the next wave through, he sends Princess Chandra and Cassandra through to the lab.
Cassandra views the battle. She also notices that the wound in Toram's back is not moving around with his body, as if he was not the one with that wound.
Princess Chandra shrugged her shoulders the instant that they showed up, before Cassandra had even oriented herself, and many, many bits of sharp pointy metal were surrounding Toram, sticking into his shields.
Cassandra throws a dagger at the wound in Toram's back, and it sticks into his shields.
Cassandra tries to burrow a hole through Toram's shield with the Force, disappears, and ends up in a box. She chats with Norton briefly, then simply walks out.
Cassandra tries to push the dagger in deeper with the Force, and ends up being boxed after a few inches. She walks out and tries again, and is boxed immediately.
Norton makes a Pattern-grenade and throws it at the Pattern-blade in Toram's leg. It hits, feeds Pattern up the blade, and vanishes. Toram stumbles.
Cassandra throws another dagger, which pushes the first one another dagger-length into the shields.
Norton makes another Eric grenade, puts a magic-eating fish into it, and tosses it at Greyswandir. The grenade gets through and makes Toram stumble again, which frees the fish, which starts splitting and gnawing towards him. Toram turns his attention towards the fish to fry them, and Jenoir advances a bit in whatever she is doing.
Princess Chandra is still contemplating her next move.
Cassandra contemplates advancing, fighting sword and axe.
Princess Chandra turns towards Cassandra and mentions that someone seems to be trying to kill her father. She mentions that for the promise of a small payment, she might be able to remove that obstacle. Cassandra accedes to the proposal.
Princess Chandra walks over, waits until the appropriate time, and taps Corwin on the shoulder. He is startled and turns just enough for her to take his Pattern blade and sink it up to the hilt through Toram's breast bone. Toram coughs up blood.
Norton tosses more Pattern grenades at the second sword. They hit, and the sword is driven in even farther.
Cassandra throws Corwin her sword. He catches it, turns to her, and thanks her. She ignores the thanks, and contemplates advancing with the axe alone.
Ilk tosses a demon melt at Toram, and it hits his shields.
Jenoir manages something, and then relaxes. There is a scream from Toram. There is blood squirting from all over him. Pieces are moving away and squirting blood. Ilk hits them with a demon melt as they exit Toram's shields and they splatter.
Corwin gets in another blow to Toram's flesh using Cassandra's sword, resulting in a bloody line. Cassandra is looking for an opening, and almost thinks that she has found one, when Corwin drives Blackwand home, and Toram finally screams, and falls over.
"But I just scratched him..." At Ilk's urging, Norton mentions that that blade eats souls. Corwin looks at it, amazed. "We need to return it to the person that we borrowed it from." Corwin returns the blade to Norton. It whispers at his mind, "hungry". Ilk yells at Norton, and Norton doesn't talk back.
Cassandra starts wiggling the Pattern blades around in Toram's body.
Jenoir finishes something, and all of the weapons that were around Toram collapse inwards.
Cassandra beheads Toram.
Princess Chandra picks up the head, wipes it off, hands it to Corwin, and says, "This was paid for by your daughter." "Thank you."
Cassandra pulls out the other Greyswandir, wipes it off, and passes it to Norton.
Cassandra thanks Princess Chandra and asks what would be an appropriate recompense for her aid. She says that it was just a token payment, for the sake of form, so anything little would be fine. Cassandra offers some imperial coinage, and Princess Chandra picks out a pretty coin.
Ilk in Norton's head yells at Norton for acting insane in his shape, so Norton takes his own form.
What remains of Toram's body has been reduced to hamburger when all of the weapons in his shields suddenly collapsed inward. Norton stirs the Toram hamburger a bit, and sculpts spam cubes with it.
[Attention K-MART shoppers. There is now a blue-light special in aisle three on Toram-burger, extra lean.]
Norton asks what should be done with the body, and Jenoir says that she will take it back to the Mages Guild for proper interment.
Princess Chandra asks Jenoir to see that her weapons are returned to her at some point.
Andron has approached and is holding Jenoir up. Cassandra congratulates Jenoir on her new title.
Princess Chandra looks around and says, "I wonder where Ilk went, as he seems to be our ticket out of here." Norton goes Ilk. "Ah, great disguise, Ilk." "Ilk, Mandor, Norton, whatever."
The group returns to the demon battle. It takes two trips.
Corwin runs immediately back into battle and starts hacking at demons, with Toram's head hanging from his belt.
Norton and Dead Ilk give live Ilk an update on the recent events.
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