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Celeste is floating in mid-air inside an ice cube nestled inside a blast furnace, frying mages.
Osric was blocking for Andron and Norton. They disappeared, so he made a weapon and started fighting, raising shields occasionally to fry unfriendlies that got too close.
Cassandra disappeared unexpectedly from Malachai's back. Janus almost immediately took one step to the side and filled in the hole.
[Princess Chandra's conversation with Cassandra was on a mental level, from Sith Master to Sith Master]
Back into the room pops Norton, who falls over, Cassandra, Andron, who catches Norton, Jenoir, who takes up the slack from Ferethyn and Celeste on frying high-powered mages, Corwin, and Princess Chandra.
Hanging from Corwin's belt is Toram's head.
Ilk notices that the demons' attack has become, if anything, more desperate than before.
The elapsed time for Malachai since Cassandra left was about ten minutes. The elapsed time for Cassandra was closer to an hour.
Dworkin announces, "Hey - give me that!", reaches out, grabs something, and pulls it to him. It looks like a marsipan Pattern. It looks like it masses about as much as a human, and is about thirty feet across. Dworkin is now flailing about him, smacking demons with the porta-Pattern.
Norton drops Blackwand, and Cassandra catches it by the hilt before it touches the ground. As soon as it touches her hand, she can feel its hunger. She cloaks it in darkness; that makes it louder. Celeste notices that a sword is in Cassandra's hand, yammering for the destruction of all life. Celeste makes contact with Cassandra mentally to warn her. She also gains contact with the sword and notices that it wants to eat all of the life in the room, starting with her, and that the blue crystal would be especially tasty. Celeste drops the contact, fast.
Ilk asks Jenoir if she thinks that the party should be moved farther inside Suhuy's realm, outside the realm, or just stay put. Osric and Cassandra overhear. Osric replies that it might be nice to go somewhere they can catch their breath and come up with a plan. Jenoir doesn't respond.
Ilk cranks up the volume on the voder and asks if anyone would object to moving this party from its current location to someplace with fewer uninvited guests.
No objections are received.
Ilk warns the individuals present not to stray from the new location of the party, for their own convenience.
Ilk starts with Malachai, Cassandra, Corwin, Norton, and Janus. Malachai sees all of his opponents disappear. There are several bodies nearby - Cassandra and Corwin. He takes a moment to get himself under control. There are no corpses present.
Ilk tries to move Osric out, but loses his grip when Osric feels the tug and raises his shields. Ilk warns Osric of his efforts, then tries again, successfully. Ilk continues moving folks out.
Ilk has now moved all of the easy folks through. The ones left include Imagio, who is not visible, Clarissa and Celeste, Jenoir and Andron, Shiryu and Ferethyn, Snarsht and Trialla, and Dworkin with his marsipan Pattern.
Ilk asks Andron for advice on how to move the rest out, and is told to get Dworkin out of the way - he's being distracting. Ilk asks Dworkin to leave this place and join the rest of the party, and Dworkin ignores him. Ilk rearranges some demons into letters, and Dworkin ignores them, too. Celeste perceives the demons as an obvious ploy by the enemy.
Ilk informs Snarsht that most of the party has moved, and asks him if he would like to join them. Snarsht ignores it - he appears to be in a battle rage. Ilk puts up a voder near Trialla, and asks her to relay to Snarsht. She ignores it. She isn't in a battle rage - she's just sitting in the corner lighting demons on fire by touching them. Ilk creates a new voder near Cassandra in the hallway, and asks her to relay a message to Trialla for him. Corwin pipes in, "Excuse me. That one's mine."
Cassandra reaches out mentally to Trialla. She gets the impression that Trialla is talking with her and with someone else at the same time. All Trialla tells Cassandra is, "Remember, kitty, Important." Cassandra agrees to go see the grave site. Malachai and Janus volunteer to come along.
Corwin waves goodbye to Cassandra, salutes Malachai, and nods to Janus. Janus mutters something under his breath and hoists Norton onto his shoulder. Osric whines about being left behind.
Cassandra chats with Trialla, who says that Cassandra will be dropped off in Pearl after seeing the grave, so she can finish growing.
Osric volunteers to take care of Norton. Janus looks him up and down, and is doubtful.
Celeste floats lower as the demons start vastly outnumbering the remaining friendlies, to better freeze and fry them with her defenses.
Ilk pipes in in favor of Norton staying. Janus sighs, and tosses Norton to Osric.
Ilk contacts Shirest, the head of the Healers Guild, and asks him if he could minister to someone who is unconscious and whose skills could be useful in contacting Snarsht. Shirest wanders over, looks at Norton, then complains to Osric.
Shirest: "I'm sorry. He's dead."
Osric: "That's okay. We knew that."
Shirest: "No. He's dead."
Osric: "He's often dead. Could you bring him back to consciousness?"
Ilk relocates Janus and Cassandra to directly in front of Trialla.
Ilk tries to contact Norton mentally. "Norton! Ilk! Mandor! Corwin! Anyone?" There is a very powerful presence there, and none of the familiar ones are home. Ilk starts asking Osric to investigate farther, but decides not to say anything this close to the possibly possessed body, and aborts mid-sentence.
Ilk activates the voder inside the room, and tells Andron and company that something powerful that is not Norton is inside Norton's head. Cassandra hears, tries to contact Norton mentally, and fails due to the Logrus-wall between them.
Trialla stops for a moment. Snarsht looks up. Ilk notices a massive hole being ripped into the wall from the inside, and stays out of the way.
Celeste saw the sword re-enter the room, saw a hole open in the wall, and felt a sucking at her and the other non-interloping mages present. Celeste tries to mentally investigate the sucking, and winks out.
Clarissa is pelting towards Cassandra at a dead run.
Jenoir calls three words. The hole slaps closed, Jenoir falls over, and Andron falls over. Everyone in the room heard those words, but cannot remember them. When the three words were spoken, the Pattern in Dworkin's hands shattered.
The sword is vibrating madly in Cassandra's hands. She calls out, "We've got a problem, guys!"
Ilk pulls the now-unconscious Andron and Jenoir through into the hallway.
Fereth is physically staggering, and Shiryu is holding him upright. Ilk asks, "Would you like to join the others?" "Yes." Ilk pulls them through. Shirest goes over to look at Ferethyn.
Snarsht is no longer in rampage mode. He's sitting still lighting the demons on fire with the same autonomic mode with which he was flicking fuzzies.
The shattered marsipan Pattern has formed into mosquitoes, which buzz the eyes of demons, keeping the area around Dworkin somewhat clear.
Ilk cranks up the voder in the room and says, "Lord Imagio - I can't help you leave if I don't know where you are." A Logrus tendril reaches out, touches Ilk's voder and vibrates, "I'm in Snarsht. Don't fret."
Cassandra tosses the sword to Clarissa, after much prompting. As soon as she tosses it, it looks like Clarissa and the sword are departing at ninety degrees to everything. Clarissa's hand touches the sword, and they disappear completely. Ilk noticed a tiny blue sparkle as Clarissa left.
Celeste is awake and aware of the fact that she is in a glowing blue box. Through the box she can see a somewhat trashed laboratory. She has no idea where she is. She tries to trump out. When the trump energy reaches the edge of the box, the box shrinks. She pokes at the box physically, and it gets even smaller. She stops to think.
Dworkin starts complaining about the departure of everyone from the party. Dworkin and Ferro decide to go find the party. Dworkin opens his pocket, and Ferro dives in and starts reconstituting himself. Also in this pocket is a bologna sandwich, a thermos, and a carnivorous care bear. When all of Ferro is in, Dworkin closes the pocket, and walks off.
Ilk notices Dworkin walk out through the main wall towards Suhuy's lab.
Snarsht notices that almost everyone is gone and walks outside, into the Courts proper. Ilk feels Snarsht walk through him on his way out. Cassandra and Janus enter Trialla's mouth, and Trialla leaves in Snarsht's wake.
Ilk announces to the hallway at large that everyone has left the stables, and asks if he should just let them fill with demons.
[(A South Park digression ensues)
They killed Brand! You bastards!
You can't say unicorn-fucker in front of Dworkin!]
Malachai asks Merlin if he knows how to leave this place. "Beats me."
Ferro hears a whistling sound as Dworkin opens his pocket. He exits the pocket and takes human form. He's in a fairly well-wrecked laboratory. There's a teakettle floating in mid-air nearby. Dworkin pours water from the teakettle into a sugar-encrusted beaker, then pours tea from the beaker into a mug. He takes something jagged and broken made of glass and breathes on it, and it becomes an exact replica of his mug. He fills the second mug with tea as well, and hands it to Ferro.
As Ferro looks around, he sees Celeste floating in mid-air over there. He walks over and waves to her. "Help!" They chat. Ferro pokes her through the box. "Pull me out!" He tries to pull her out. When she touches the box, it starts shrinking. "Let go!"
[ I disbelieve in the box.
You fail. ]
Ferro complains to Dworkin. Dworkin points out the box to Ferro, then makes owl-glasses with his fingers over Ferro's head, and now Ferro can see the box looking through Dworkin's fingers.
Dworkin rummages around, pulls out a sandwich, puts it back, pulls out a piece of swiss cheese, and hands it to Ferro. He looks through it and can now see the boxes.
Dworkin starts touching boxes, and they evaporate. He touches Celeste's box, and it evaporates. She is sunburnt on the way out. Dworkin touches her to see if she will evaporate as well. His touch burns.
Shiryu is working with Shirest on Ferethyn, Jenoir, and Andron.
No objections were heard to Ilk's suggestion to let the room fill, so he stops blocking. Mages and demons are flooding in. Ilk Logrus-shreds some of the incoming mages with spare cycles.
Ilk leads Princess Chandra off somewhere else, and tells her that he tried to wake up one of more of the people in Norton, and couldn't find any of them, but found someone very powerful there instead. She concurs that this could be a serious problem.
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