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Celeste and Ferro are in Suhuy's lab with Dworkin, trying to find a way out. Celeste tries to convince Dworkin to help her leave. Dworkin tells her that he just walks through the wall, and says that the only door is three miles straight up.
Celeste tries to trump Malachai. Three devices turn on and start humming and her hand busts into fire. She drops the trump, which is now ice cold. The contact continues faintly, and the trump continues to get colder. Frost starts forming on the card.
One of the things that activated is a mixer, which is now mixing two universes together. Another is a spinning beanie. Ferro makes coffee. Celeste covers the card with the flat end of a stool, and the stool starts sticking to the card. She picks the stool back up, and the card sticks to it.
Celeste tries to peel the card off the stool. When her finger touches it, it bursts into flames and the trump contact re-establishes. She shuts the contact down mentally and extinguishes her hand again.
Ferro puts a beanie over the trump. It spins even faster, and lifts off. There is no trump on the stool. Ferro grabs the beanie and tries to squeeze the trump out into Celeste's pouch.
Dworkin says, "Ah-ah!" and walks through a wall. Celeste and Ferro try to follow him and fail.
Ferro puts the beanie on his head. He feels some kind of shapeshifting, but it's not his shapeshifting. He tries to take the beanie off, but it's stuck. He shifts into a small dragon, and the beanie shifts to match his dragon head.
Ferro flies to the ceiling, with some help from the spinning beanie. He notices footprints on the ceiling. All of them are left feet. Ferro leaves his left footprint on the ceiling with the others.
Ferro mosquitoes out to check out all of the wall surfaces. Each of the mosquitoes has a little beanie on its head. Celeste drinks coffee.
The mixing universes are being poured into a tall, frothy glass. Ferro tries to drink it, but is unable to lift the glass - it's too heavy. They discuss drinking the universes. Celeste is opposed to the idea.
Dworkin walks up to Ilk and Osric. He's holding a stone statue. He claims that the statue is important, and it was calling out to him. Dworkin shows off his frog, and twists Osric's brain. Osric now understands frog.
Ilk tries to persuade Dworkin to look into the surplus population at House Helgram. He fails miserably. Dworkin hands Ilk two olives. A few moments later, there are three. Then there are seven. Ilk offers them back to Dworkin. Dworkin takes one, and Ilk then has none.
Dworkin asks after his son, and Ilk tells him that he's probably still in Suhuy's lab. Dworkin heads back to Suhuy's lab, walking in a straight line through the walls. Ilk heads there directly.
Merlin and Corwin left Malachai some privacy with Serena. Corwin went off for a bath and was distracted by the nubile young female leading him there, and Merlin headed off with Norton and Damia.
Serena tells Malachai that Tazik has her eyes back now, courtesy of Damia. They head in the direction of the party to gather up Tazik, Corwin, and Bucephalus.
They reach the party. Vialle is sitting with Dana. Random is dancing with a fascinatingly beautiful young lady who seems to be embarrassing him, by the color in his cheeks. The young lady who came in looking for lubricant is sitting to the side looking indecently content. Tazik seems to be having a technical discussion with Finndo.
They approach Tazik. She's arguing over the proper material in which to sheath ship keels. Serena grabs Tazik, and they head off in search of Bucephalus. They find Bucephalus looking smug in a nearby corridor.
They consider looking for Corwin, and Malachai trumps him. The contact is faint. "Leave while you still can!" There is a flash of power, and the contact drops. Corwin sounded like he was watching his entire world fall apart around him.
Malachai returns to the party and warns Random about Corwin's message. Random warns Vialle. Vialle decides to stay behind; Random decides to leave. The group acquires five gigantic birds and starts Pattern-flying towards Amber.
Ilk beats Dworkin to the lab, and notices that the constraints holding the universes pent within the glass are dissolving. Ilk cautions Ferro to keep away from the glass and takes Celeste out of the room. Once they leave, Ferro sips at the glass. The glass drinks him.
Ilk returns. He notices a Pattern residue in the glass. The glass is about to explode when Dworkin enters the lab. Ilk tells Dworkin that his son seems to be in that glass. Dworkin tries to drink from the glass, and is drunk himself. The glass is no longer threatening to explode.
Ilk leaves the lab and takes Celeste to join the group in the hallway outside the stables. Ilk tries to gather a group to go outside and look at the demons and the overpopulation problem. Celeste is surprised that Ilk has a trump of Merlin.
Cassandra is in Trialla's mouth. The mouth opens, and Cassandra is practically spit out, pushed by a gigantic tongue.
There is a dead demon half-way embedded in one of Trialla's eye sockets, one of her ears is mostly gnawed off, and there are dead fuzzies smeared all over Trialla. One demon appears to have been suffocated by dead fuzzies, and another was suffocated by a ring of barely-alive fuzzies. Trialla's tail is half gnawed off, and her feet are sheathed in some kind of goo.
Cassandra and Janus leave the mouth and kill demons.
Cathryne attends King Random's party. After the party ends, she goes upstairs. Her companion, stoned, oozes into a couch. Cathryne sleeps. In the morning, she wakes up, orders food, and acquires one of Random's hangover remedies for her companion.
Her companion tries to marry her, and claims that they are going to acquire a homestead and raise seven or eight kids and lots of squid.
Cathryne tries to convince her companion to teach her to do that chemical movement through shadow thing. "Like this?" He disappears. He reappears. "I'll show you how to do that if you marry me."
"Okay, how about if I sleep with you once, will you show me how to do this?"
They argue about educational techniques and tuition as they wait for Tir to rise.
Food shows up. There is a gentleman carrying something that looks like a spice rack with things bubbling and seething in it. Worked into the woodwork is "Caine's Complements (tm)"
Her companion experiments with the food and the spices. Cathryne warily follows suit. A messenger arrives, carrying a scroll from King Random granting Cathryne free passage in Amber.
They go to the steps of Tir. There is a picnic set up there. It's Flora's. Flora claims to be dead, and offers Cathryne a pomegranate. They make small talk. Flora knew that she was going to be here - she saw Cathryne in Tir last night. "Was I successful?" "Well, you screamed a lot."
Cathryne tries to borrow a sword from Flora, but it is intangible to her. "I guess I'm going to have to go about it the old-fashioned way." "You're going to quilt a sword?"
"What was I doing besides screaming?" "Bleeding a lot."
Finally, the first step is solid. Cathryne and her companion climb the stairs.
Osric, Celeste, and Ilk discuss realities, overpopulation, and demon problems.
Jesby, Mandor, Osric, Celeste, and Ilk leave Suhuy's realm. Ilk notices that it is easier for him to enter and exit at this spot than other places.
[It's an Ilk door!]
Mandor disappears. All that remains are three luminescent balls circling in mid-air.
Osric pulls out his trump of Merlin. Celeste is surprised that Osric has a trump of Merlin. Osric fails to connect. Celeste asks for the trump, and receives it. She touches the trump with her burnt hand. It hurts a lot. She switches hands. She hits a trump block, and pushes. The block stretches in an odd way, but holds her, and becomes thicker where she pushes at it. She tries to pull the block through the trump, and fails. She continues to concentrate on the trump.
Ilk tests a demon's claw against another demon's armor. The claw and armor are made out of the same material. Ilk husks some demons, and tosses both halves back in. The shell is unsuccessfully attacked, but the fleshy bits are eaten. Ilk starts assembling a boat from demon-shells while reaching into shadow for tougher stuff.
The three luminescent balls descend to the ground, then rise back up to their previous elevation, uncovering a bottle of wine. Ilk checks it out - it looks like one of Mandor's, and is fizzing. He puts it back down.
Osric finishes hanging a gate spell that terminates at this place.
Celeste makes a side contact with something inanimate while her main effort is being blocked. Celeste asks Ilk to write a note for Merlin, receives one, and pushes it through. She has the impression of an explosion, as Merlin is distracted and has problems controlling his Spiral magic.
Osric gates through to his Fringe gate in the Abyss, and has to fight the last few feet to it through demons worshiping the gate as the only eternally stable thing in their experience.
Celeste [err... anyone remember what happened here?]
The star-core arrives. Ilk waves it around, and the demons it touches are sucked into it. He uses it as an outboard motor, hanging it below and in front of the boat. Ilk contemplates upgrading to a black hole, but demurres, as it could take a very long time to summon one.
The GM is a liar.
The Ilk on Suhuy's realm sends a note to the Ilk at House Cara, suggesting that he build a hexagonal wall out of demon-shell around the House.
Cathryne arrives at the top of the stairs to Tir. There is a Caine there, choking a Corwin who is looking away from him. Corwin is looking rag-dollish, as if he has been choked for some time. Cathryne notices that there is a large axe sticking out of Caine's back, and that Caine's feet aren't moving.
She goes through the door, and Benedict is shooting arrows at her. She avoids them. Those that she cannot avoid go right through her. She approaches Benedict, and he draws a sword and attacks her. The attacks continue to pass through her. She realizes that Benedict is fighting like he does when he's attacking invisible things that aren't there.
Oberon is arguing with Flora, Caine, Corwin, and a number of others over whether or not he's dead. Oberon goes stamping over to Cathryne and raves at her. When Cathryne tells Oberon that the Unicorn chose Random as his successor, Oberon rants about the Unicorn's poor judgment - just look at who it slept with.
Cathryne continues on her way, and the ghost of Flora goes with her.
There are some rose bushes up ahead that aren't made of Tir stuff. The thorns are very sharp, and the flowers have an almost intoxicating smell. Cathryne tries to pull the thorns off of one so she can pick it. The flowers want her to join them, to grow here with them. She pulls her hand back, and they're only intoxicatingly beautiful flowers again. Flora reaches in with a blissful expression on her face, pulls back, throws her dress off, reaches forward again, and then there is a new stalk of translucent roses.
They arrive at a dead horse being eaten by a large beast. The beast is having difficulty holding its form. They continue. As they go past it, it becomes clear that the corpse was a unicorn, and that the monster eating it has only one eye. Once Cathryne is past the scene, she can see that her face is reflected in both creatures.
She goes through the next doorway, and notices that her companion is no longer with her. She goes back through the doorway, and is in a different place, and her companion is not there. She calls out, "Hey you!" and hears a cry of "Help me!" She heads towards the yells.
She is approaching a hedge maze. It sounds like the screaming is coming from the center of the maze. She can see her companion's tall ambling form approaching the maze from the other side. "Stop!" She goes into a flying form, and heads over the and her companion stretches out his neck.
There is a large purple-veined sorta-demon thing that looks vaguely like her on one side and vaguely like her companion on the other. Cathryne argues with the trap. It's not much of a conversationalist. Her companion stretches up, places a tiny head between her wings, and then shifts his entire body along his neck and ends up riding her.
"Think of me like a tick of life."
She flies down to the Pattern-room. There are nine old grey men sitting around the Pattern staring at it and smoking. They're the same ones that she saw earlier. "Hi, how are ya' doing?" They respond. "We await you." "In a good way or a bad way?" "It is foretold." "Foretold what?" "That this is the end." "The end of what?" "The end of everything." They tell her that she is just a sign.
"The force of order tried to stop you. The force of disorder tried to stop you. They both failed, as was foretold."
They maintain that this is the end and that there is nothing else. She asks for directions home. They maintain that this is the only continuum.
This is not her Pattern.
Cathryne goes flying through the walls of Tir looking for the Oberon ghost, yelling, "Hey Oberon!" No response. There are six or seven translucent flowers in the rose patch where once there was only Flora's. Cathryne plays with the flowers, then returns to the Pattern room.
Cathryne holds her foot over that Pattern. It feels tingly, like a normal Pattern. She flies over the Pattern and lands in the center. She tries to go back to her Courts, and fails. She flies back to the beginning.
She warns her companion that if he stays on her he will probably die. He insists that he won't die. She asks him to tell her about this chemical thing before he dies. He asks her to give him control of her body so he can train it. She refuses.
Cathryne tentatively puts one toe on the Pattern. It feels Patternish. There is a large cracking sound, as if the earth itself beneath Tir has started to crack. There is a humming noise coming from the nine who watch. She continues walking. The Pattern energy envelops her. It is a horrendous walk, much more difficult than her last one. It forces her from shape to shape and hounds her from thought to thought, as if the entire length was one large veil. She succeeds. She's lying in the center of the Pattern, and is completely exhausted.
Apart from a single moon beam coming from the depths of the Sea of Chance, this room, and the nine, there is nothing but the Sea of Chance.
"I'd like to go to my Courts, please." She's thinking about the blue demons, and her mom. There is a sound like a sigh as the humming of the nine stops, and Cathryne can see the moon beam growing shorter, gradually reaching towards this room. As she fades out, she can see Tir disappear, leaving only the nine, and the Sea.
She fades back into consciousness being handed a drink by obviously some servant or another wearing Jesby colors who looks somewhat battered, as if there might be a battle going on somewhere. He looks at her and says, "Welcome home, Lady Sheena. You pick an odd time to return." He fills her in at her prompting. Wrong Chaos. The Warriors Guild is destroyed, and they think that she is the legendary founder of House Jesby. She sends for someone that was around before she left.
She trumps Random. He's tripped out, and is looking at what looks like a Chaosian trip toy. He isn't the right Random. Random says that he's the new ambassador here. A fairly old demon approaches her and says, "Great lady! You have returned!" The demon tells her that they have kept the house well, and that they are now second in the order. When she left, they were but a minor house. Cathryne has a mathematician sent for.
Cathryne summons the current Head of House. Her mother is brought to her. Jesby lists the House's accomplishments. They don't quite match Cathryne's memories, but they're close. They are second to Pharaban. Jesby says that Chaos is currently under siege by a sea of blue demons, so they haven't been caring for her cenotaph as well as they should have. Cathryne asks after rifts, and Jesby mentions that the ambassador from Amber was complaining that he could pull lemon custard pies through them, and he doesn't like lemon.
Jesby says that she's not sure that Random has been sober since Amber lost their recent war with Chaos.
They ride towards Random's place in a very interesting boat that is poled over the heads of the demons.
The ambassador's place is suspiciously clear of demons. A very formal gentleman that looks like Martin greets Cathryne, and tries to convince her that now is a bad time to see the ambassador.
She Logrus-reaches around the room looking for a sober-up-quick pill. She fails. The Logrus seems to be not quite hers, but it is willing to be bent to her will. It doesn't seem as powerful as hers. She reaches into shadow for a sobering agent, and runs out of reach.
Random pulls a pie out of thin air, says, "Damn. Lemon again." and throws it on a stack in the corner. Cathryne notices a discontinuity next to him. Random reaches into it again, and pulls out a little pie. "See? I can even get their children."
Cathryne passes a tendril past the pie-plates, and gets stems and other stuff. It appears to be a place that grows pies.
The mathematician arrives, and looks a lot like Dworkin. He introduces himself as Berol, Dworkin's cousin. The mathematician plays with the rift. A candy-bar tree is generated. The mathematicain claims that olives are strictly a local phenomenon, and demonstrates some tricks.
The mathematician acquires permission to take a piece of the rift with him to experiment with, and starts pulling out equipment while muttering under his breath.
Random is tripping about the olives. Cathryne trumps him to try to sober him up. No success. Random asks her to trump Eric. She tries, and fails.
Random trumps Eric, and gets a young man who looks like Eric, possibly one of his children, sitting in a boardroom. Random and Cathryne torment the poor guy, who keeps complaining about hearing voices in his head. Cathryne goes through to the guy. She chats with him, and gives him the clam watch that was given to her by Sethra in Pearl. "I'm not a demon of your imagination - I'm a Lord of Chaos." She trumps back to Random.
Random is sitting sort of curled up in Cathryne's mother's arms. They're very close to each other. Cathryne is not okay with that. A very scrawny, ill-kept kid is staring at Cathryne. She asks him of rifts. He doesn't tell her very much. There is only one Sea of Thought that can exist, yet it can talk to another Sea of Thought that is also the only one that can exist, so the Sea must be over a rift. That is the only rift that they know about.
Cathryne: "Since you can't help me, I'll just go through this rift now."
Philosopher: "Are you sure that would be wise?"
Cathryne reluctantly agrees to go be introduced to the Sea of Thought.
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