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Cassandra and Janus are in Trialla's mouth. Trialla is following in the wake caused by Snarsht, heading towards the Abyss. Janus has a small smoky torch lit, giving Cassandra enough light to read the notes Ilkandacian is passing her. Ilk has been tossing demon melts on the area around Trialla's head, to try to help out a bit with her demon problem.
"Can you do anything to help Trialla?" "I can keep the demons off her head for a short while, but not for much longer." "What can I do about the wounds?" "Leave Chaos, then treat them. I'm not a healer. Sorry."
[I'm a Logrus-mage, not a doctor, Cassandra!]
Ilk asks Cassandra if she has seen Merlin or Norton recently. She replies that she got a brief trump contact from Merlin that was suddenly cut off. She tries to trump Merlin and fails. She attaches one of her trumps of Merlin to one of Ilk's notes. Ilk pulls the trump back to him, tries it, and fails.
Ilk reaches into shadow and grabs a big hunk of strong cloth to use as a sling for Trialla. He warns Cassandra that he's going to try to hoist Trialla above the demons. Cassandra knocks on Trialla's teeth, and Trialla ignores her. Ilk notices that they're only a few strides away from the Abyss and tells Cassandra not to bother.
Ilk notices that the more time he spends concentrating on any place, the closer the part of Suhuy's realm under him seems to be to that place.
Trialla skates across the Abyss, with four or five filmies under each foot. Ilk is amused, and generates a holographic image of the event in front of Cassandra. Trialla reaches the other side of the Abyss, looks back at something on the Chaosian shore, winks her one remaining good eye at something there, and then takes off into shadow.
Ilk looks around.
House Ganda is a mess. Swayville is holding their own, using a tame volcano to hold off the demons and rebuild eaten parts of their House with the rapidly cooling stone. Chanicut is being defended primarily by the Ventrue and Toreador that Norton left behind, and most of the members had been previously evacuated to House Cara.
Barimen has set up trump traps in circles around their House such that approaching or appearing demons will fall into them before they reach the house. The traps are working at their full capacity. House Barimen is mostly empty. The few people still present are moving about, apparently unconcerned with the demons trying to reach them.
The rubble from Sawall's ways are still smoking and covered with demons. There is a crater where Mandor's ways once stood, and there are no demons in or above the crater. The place where House Jesby once stood is flat, and covered with demons.
Thelbane is unfocused from this vantage point - Ilk cannot even slip a tendril into the antechamber.
The Warriors Guild is successfully pushing the demons back. There is a young lady leading them quite ably. Ilk recognizes her as Cyndia.
Ilk looks around at the remaining Houses. Most of the minor Houses are either flattened or fighting desperately. Eight or nine of the minor Houses had been evacuated successfully to House Cara.
Ilk grabs some undead flesh from the corpses of Norton's once and future army, and heads back inside Suhuy's realm with Osric.
Cathryne is in Valhalla, quizzing Fi on how to get back to her reality, and how to restore her house to the way it should be. She is told that her house has been erased, taken completely out of time, and cannot be restored.
The GM is a liar.
Cathryne asks Fi how to acquire the local Snarsht's assistance, but doesn't receive any answers that she is willing to accept.
Fi tells Cathryne that Melchizedik is common to many realities, including hers. There are a very small number of others beings that are also common between realities, but most of the aren't common to more than two. John Carter - a shadow individual - is the only being other than the Time Lord who is common between Cathryne's reality and this one.
Cathryne's companion starts hopping them between islands in the Sea of Chance, looking for John Carter. The islands very strange and very static, as if someone had taken a slice of Chaos and frozen it.
They are standing on a red plain, and there are some green beasts charging towards them with a smaller beast in the lead. There is a glistening dome off in a different direction. Cathryne ignores the charging folk and heads towards the dome, adjusting for the lessened gravity as they go. Her unnamed companion has changed into a rubbery bouncing ball.
Cathryne notices that the locals are green and have four arms, so she grows another two arms and turns green. The charging red thing has weapons in each of his four arms. Cathryne and her companion go gaseous, and the red guy charges through them and attacks some more things shaped like him behind a nearby hill. They head to the dome, and enter as some other beings leave. It looks like a farm, and there's a big statue of a four-armed guy in the center. The sounds of machinery rumble from beneath the statue.
Some locals greet her in Thari. She asks them if they know where John Carter is, and they tell her that she just missed the hunting party that went out after him a few minutes ago. She exits the dome and heads towards the fight.
There is one guy that looks different from the others. He has pink skin, two arms, a sword, a shield, no clothing, and is killing everything near him. Cathryne takes on her normal human form and starts fighting her way towards him. The four-armed people look at her, cry out, "Another John Carter!" and start attacking her, too. She kills them. John Carter calls out, "Ah - a fair damsel from Earth! I'll protect you!" and starts fighting towards her. He's really good. He's not in Cathryne's class, and he's not as good as a number of the Amberites that she's seen recently, but he could make his way in the Warriors Guild. Her companion changes into a large foot, and joins in the stomping.
When their foes are dead, Cathryne asks John Carter how he travels between worlds. He replies that he wakes up in a cave on Earth, and has no control over the traveling. She urges him to try to leave, but says that he needs to save the princess of Mars first, and describes her in loving detail. Cathryne volunteers to help. Her companion pours into the form of the princess when John's back is turned.
Wedding plans ensue. Cathryne's companion panics. They whack John Carter over the head, and then decide to tell him when he wakes up that the princess was just an illusion cast on him during battle.
They head off in search of the real missing princess, slaughter many, many four-armed guys, and finally rescue the princess. They bring her to the wedding site, and a wedding happens.
In the midst of the wedding vows, the princess swoons and falls into a deep sleep. A hue and cry of poison is raised, and John Carter must go off and find the antidote before she dies.
Cathryne investigates the area, and discovers that she cannot approach the left side of the altar. When she approaches, she's instantly translocated to the other side of the altar. It's a direct spatial discontinuity, and seems to be more solidly real than the stuff around it.
Cathryne tries Pattern-shifting while moving through the discontinuity. She's on a promentary that looks like it is in the shadow Flora had her working in. She calls up the Sign of the Logrus, and it comes looking for her. She frantically drops the Sign, the Logrus stops short of finding her. Vapors are billowing out from a cave behind her. She steps into the cave, and is back on Mars.
She returns to Earth, taking her companion with her. Her companion does not appreciate the use of Pattern. She tries to call Clarissa, and the area around her starts turning grey, as if the color was fading out of the world. Nine grey shapes appear around her in a circle, and look at her as if she was a lower life form. She apologizes, telling them that she was only looking for Clarissa. They talk to each other in a language she cannot even guess at, then disappear, and the color bleeds back into the world.
There is the sound of approaching hoof beats.
She tries to trump Random, and reaches King Random. "Back to haunt me?" He describes his last encounter with her, and claims that she fed him a line about being her daughter. "Oh, this is one of the ones I've been to before!" "You're going to tell me that one again?" Cathryne tells him that she should warn him about some problems with all of Reality.
She shifts into appropriate Amber court garb as Random pulls her through the contact. Her companion shifts into a lady in waiting. Random introduces "not quite my daughter, Cathryne" to the court at large. Vialle is surprised, and is also not blind. Cathryne is surprised.
She gives him the standard story. Cracks in reality, involuntary travel, and so on.
Bleys takes her hand, pulls the image of the cave from her mind, displays it for everyone to see, and then transports everyone to the cave. Cathryne realizes that he tried to pull more than just that image from her mind, but quietly failed.
She enters the cave, and appears next to the altar, which has been desecrated since her departure. The rest gradually trickle through the cave into Mars. Cathryne tells the assembled crowd that they are now in a different reality, and that their Pattern and Logrus will not work here.
Random lifts his arms, and proclaims, "I command the sky to be purple!" Nothing happens. He wanders around, and says, "Damn - I can't even do flowers. Bleys?" Bleys does something grandiose... and nothing happens.
Cathryne trumps Corwin, with Random eavesdropping on the conversation. "You know what, Eric? Guess what! That babe's in my mind again! I wonder if I can bring her to me again?" Cathryne slams the connection shut. Random is stunned. "Wow - that was Corwin?"
Bleys trumps Corwin at Random's request and goes through the contact. Random tries a different trump, and fails. Random and company discover the way back to Earth. Random instructs his court to keep an eye on Cathryne, goes through, and returns a bit later with King Merlin in tow.
Merlin plays with the Logrus, and changes things about. Cathryne is disappointed at his success, and claims that he must be drawing power from his Logrus through the crack.
Merlin Logrus-pulls to his palace in Chaos, and then returns, freaking out. "What have you done to my Chaos!" He complains that everyone thinks that Cathryne is in charge, Snarsht is a chemical engineer, and Cathryne is in charge of all of the rest of the guilds. Cathryne responds that they were backwards and didn't know how Chaos should be run, so she showed them.
Merlin pulls off to check out this Amber. Random starts asking him to pick up Bleys... but he's gone.
They wait.
There is a rumbling sound. Cathryne sends her lady in waiting off to investigate. After she crosses the nearby hill-crest, there is a wet sound and then some stomping. A few minutes later, she returns and says that nothing will be bothering them from that direction.
Merlin returns with Bleys. Bleys is holding a gopher, and looks shocked. "Anyone want a gopher? ... It's hopeless." Merlin describes some of the ways in which he taunted the locals, including creating an illusion of an unicorn and watching Corwin and Eric go scurrying off after it like... well...
Cathryne visibly struggles not to visualize that scene.
They return to Earth. Cathryne is granted guest status in both Amber and Chaos, and decides to return to Amber. Random looks at Bleys. "The castle trump?" He grumbles. "...one of the most powerful sorcerers left and he has me opening trump gates..."
In Amber, the sun is setting. Random announces a party, and Cathryne is given a nice suite of rooms - they look like they might have been Fiona's when she was alive. Cathryne prepares for the party, making her clothing shimmer. She fills in her companion as to appropriate party behavior.
It's a swinging, happening, Random party. It's a bit tamer and more formal that the ones Cathryne is used to, as some of the tricks he pulls in Chaos couldn't really happen here.
Ilk rescues the last few still-living fish from the stables, calms them with the undead flesh, and stashes them in an empty corridor.
Ilk goes Logrus, and finds that doing so relieves him of some of his exhaustion. Ilk opens a hole to the outside from the stables, lights it on fire, and starts shoveling burning fish out into the Courts.
Ilk returns to the hallway and reassumes human form. Jenoir, Andron, and the doll seem to have left. The rest are still present. Shiryu is resting, and the head of the healers guild is talking to Princess Chandra.
Ilk gives a briefing on the situation outside to Jesby, Mandor, and the other interested parties present.
Ilk considers exiting and seeing if any of the people from the Beastmasters Guild at House Cara could modify Norton's fish to eat demons.
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