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Cassandra is standing in a burnt-out woods with Janus. There are dead bodies everywhere, some still oozing various fluids. Crows and buzzards are stooping on the corpses. Trialla has walked away, back into shadow.
Cassandra and Janus walk through the woods. It is getting dark. They look for shelter, with no success. They start hauling some trees around to make a crude shelter, but notice that the sap is acidic and stop. Cassandra loots some nearby corpses, and finds the makings of a tent. They pitch it. Janus volunteers first watch, and Cassandra goes to sleep. Cassandra is woken in the middle of the night. It's Janus. He has his hand over her sword arm, and a hand gently pressing over her mouth. She hears large wings, and takes a look. She can see the outline of a bird rimmed in flame through the fabric of the tent. She mutters something to Janus, and the phoenix reorients towards them slightly. They flee silently away from their shelter into the night. The bird hears something, turns towards it, and stoops. They can no longer see the flame.
They wait in silence, get bored, and then continue heading away. They travel in an unpleasant fashion for quite some time. Janus emits a scream and falls out of sight. Cassandra looks around. There is no hole apparent. She tests the ground. It feels normal. She takes the step, and the forest shifts around her and the phoenix is right in front of her.
Janus is lying very carefully spread out on the ground. She freezes, and notices that he's slowly inching forwards. She follows him. She taps out a query in code. "Plan?" "Look." She looks around. The phoenix appears to be attacking something. The body and the sword look vaguely familiar. They creep forward.
REN and Bella are flying peacefully together over the sea of demons covering the Courts of Chaos. Celeste is suspended beneath them, skimming over the hordes of fanged, clawed, and armored multicolored demons, supported by a crude harness constructed from a physical tentacle that is tightly wrapped around her body. The tentacle originates from REN's lower torso. Celeste is not okay with shapeshifters anymore, apparently.
Celeste is looking down at a path opening around a five-year old boy who is carefully skipping along the ground. She yells up, "Hey, look!" and Bella swoops down to look more closely. The boy shouts back up, "Where's Paprika?" Celeste replies, "In the spice cabinet" "Where's that?" "In my house" "Where's that?" "Far away. Who are you?" "Me. Buh-bye." Bella is now beneath Celeste.
The demons look like they're disappearing from around and in front of the boy. Celeste wants to get a closer look, so she tugs on the tentacle. It grows longer and thicker; Celeste descends. The boy calls out, "Can you see from up there?" He seems to fly upward, grabs Celeste about her waist, scrambles up her, and climbs up the tentacle connecting her to her air support. Celeste hollers, "Incoming!" The kid reaches the top and starts playing with REN's wings. The tentacle becomes thinner and pulls Celeste upwards.
Cassandra is crawling through the muck and waste in Janus's path towards the phoenix. Janus stops and sidles over a bit. Cassandra moves up even with Janus.
Cassandra can now make out the colors worn by the corpse. They're Julian's colors, and the corpse is Julian shaped as well. She can't quite make out the sword. The sword seems to be moving slightly to avoid the phoenix, and stay in the body. The phoenix is attacking the sword, not the moving corpse that the sword is embedded in.
She reaches out to the mind behind the sword. The only thing she gets is determination and sorrow.
"The sword is Darhyse" "I moved. Corpse still moving." "Julian." "?"
Cassandra reaches out for the Force. The Force is strong here. She tries to make a noise off to the side as an distraction, and feels a mind come looking for hers before she completes the sound. She tries to resist, hiding from the contact.
The current composition of the mob: Three birds, one smug horse, Malachai, Random, Tazik, Serena, the corpse of Corwin, the corpse of Damia, Norton, and Norton, both with their fill complements of Ilk, Mandor, Screaming Meemie, and, of course, Corwin.
Malachai and Norton see off in the distance, some shapes coming into existence. They are vaguely humanoid. Norton has the Ilk simulacrum look - it's Cathryne, Logrus-pulling in. Dead Ilk warns Norton that it's the person that wanted his Greyswandir.
The Nortons hide the Greyswandirs inside them. The dead Ilks notice that there is a screaming person with Cathryne.
Norton and Malachai discuss Cathryne briefly.
Cathryne notices that there is a mob in front of her. Corwin, corpse, shambling. Damia, corpse, shambling. Three large birds, one large horse. Norton, Norton, Random, Serena, and Tazik.
Cathryne greets her father. Martin stops screaming as soon as they leave Logrus.
Malachai: "He's got himself dead again... it's quite annoying."
Malachai says that they stopped because of a Pattern-block. Norton and Ilk discuss Logrus-pulling through the block, debating the issue verbally, but not sticking to any specific one of Norton's bodies.
A very convoluted discussion occurs. Corwin doesn't want to give up the Jewels of Judgment. Ilk and Norton decide that Cathryne should Logrus-pull the group past the block, since her Pattern should counteract any annoyances caused by the excessive amount of Pattern in the area.
[Keeping the family jewels where I can keep an eye on them.]
Cathryne pulls the group, and the dead Ilks amplify her. Martin immediately starts screaming again. The Nortons start screaming along, and open two more mouths and start harmonizing. Random offers musical commentary.
The pull is suddenly interrupted, like by one of those rift-things, but not quite. Cathryne is standing all alone on a big silvery platform.
Osric sees someone come through the Fringe gate right in front of him. It's an impressively dressed Chaosian female. The last time that Osric checked, there were no humanoids in that shadow. It's Cathryne.
Cathryne sees a large vehicle bearing down on her. She turns around. There is a featureless silvery ring with a black center and a ramp leading up to it. She goes back through the gate.
Osric secures his captive mutated Mellor and follows her.
Norton and Dead Ilk check out the silvery ring in front of them. Cathryne comes through it, then Osric. Cathryne rants. Osric offers a short cut through the Fringe.
After much discussion, Malachai starts Pattern-walking towards Amber. Dead Ilks acquire purple splotched six-legged horselike beings for the unmounted people to ride. Osric doesn't join them.
Malachai detours around Tremere. On the way, they encounter the ephemeral white horses twice.
They arrive at Arden. From a distance, they can see Zack's carpet heading towards the castle with great haste. Ilk sees a femaleish figure with Pattern riding the carpet. He leaves a note, which is ignored.
Malachai is worried about the lack of guards present, so the mob heads into Arden. Cathryne Logrus-searches and finds rangers near something wet over there. Malachai finds a written status report at a command post.
Malachai suggests that a scout might be useful. Norton shapes insects from his own blood, and sends them forward. Ilk casts a bug on the end of a Logrus tendril and creates a holograph of the scenery on the far side.
There are blue things fighting the guards. When the blue things envelop a person, that person is no longer there, with no magical, Logrus, or Pattern energies evident.
Cathryne sticks a tendril into one of the blue things. It follows her up the tendril. She drops the tendril, but it reaches her and things start turning blue and crystalline around her. The group sees one of the blue things disappear from Ilk's viewscreen and appear around Cathryne.
Ilk lights Cathryne and the blue thing on fire. The blue thing shrinks a bit, then absorbs the heat from the fire. Cathryne shifts into a fire form. Around her appears many little pin pricks of fire. They say, "We'll save you!" and pull her away.
One of the Nortons teleports to just outside Home to check out things in the Courts. He encounters Ilk, who is defending Home. The Ilks core dump to each other.
Osric is dissecting his mutated Mellor, when an alert goes off - break-in.
Osric gets there in a combat form. There are six elder Mellor here, the uninfected ones. They don't have wings, and they're cowering in a corner. They say that there is a big white winged thing with glasses out there trying to get into the Fringe. Osric checks that gate out on his computer. There's a major temple on the other side, worshiping a large white winged statue wearing shades. The Mellor did not come from the place with the temple, but from a place near there.
Osric closes and locks the gate. At the time when he shut it, there was living presence flowing through it. He just cut whatever it was in half. There doesn't appear to be anything corporeal on this side.
Osric shuts off all of the major gates to that platform, and they close on something as well. He starts working his way outwards. He iterates through eighteen levels before closing a gate doesn't close on something, shutting down a total of 34^2 platforms. The gate to the Abyss isn't in that group, but the gates closest to Amber were. If the group had taken his short-cut to Amber, they would have walked into it.
Osric chats with the elder Mellor. They say that they hid from the bad Mellor for years. The gate they came through looks like it was forced through.
Osric and the Mellor try to fix the gate.
"Dancers Guild empty. Find Paprika!"
Celeste conjures a bottle of paprika and hands it to the newcomer. It looks to him like Paprika's hair, ground into little pieces. "Aaargh! What is that!" "That's paprika!" "Aargh!"
Confusion continues. The kid claims that his sitter is named Paprika.
"Not babysitter. Not baby. Sitter."
REN's flying has gotten somewhat erratic. The tentacle around Celeste starts vibrating in such a way as to vibrate her bones to make sound. "Paprika babysitted Rainbow and his son by Flora."
After accidentally acquiring Rainbow's son, Jean, REN and Bella turned around and headed back towards Suhuy's realms. Celeste is not okay with that. Celeste pulls out Flora's trump. She pushes through the trump block, and reaches Flora. Flora asks, "Pull me through." "I'm not in a position to do that" "I'm chained to a table. Pull me through." "I'm flying." "That's nice. Pull me through." Celeste tries to pull Flora through, and fails.
Flora says that she's been chained to this table for the last day or day in a half. Flora thinks that Llewella is in league with Oberon against Benedict.
"Get mom!" Celeste feels two invisible tendrils touch her.
Flora is annoyed that Rainbow went off having adventures instead of showing up in shining armor to rescue her.
They chat. REN keeps the contact with Flora open, and Celeste tries several other contacts and hits two trump blocks - Malachai, Zack, Damia, and Darkstar.
Celeste gets through to Cassandra. Cassandra asks for help with the oncoming trump contact. Celeste notices that the contact Cassandra is resisting is really strong. Cassandra notices that she's in trump contact with four people -- Flora, REN, Jean, and Celeste.
Ilk and Ilk chat, and put together Celeste's involvement in Merlin's explosion.
Norton, as Corwin, trumps Celeste and describes the carnage. Celeste is horrified when Norton starts listing the dead.
A many-way conversation ensues. It is highly amusing, but not loggable on a two-dimensional screen. The participants are, in Norton's head -- Ilk, Mandor, Corwin, Norton, and the Screaming Meemie. On the other end is Celeste, Jean, and REN, who is also in trump contact with Flora. Jean buds himself a simulacrum in Norton's mind, and has fun talking to himself. He decides that his embodied one is going to try and help "Mom" and his un-embodied one is going to continue his quest for Paprika.
Norton grows a second head so Corwin can try to trump Cathryne. "I can't get through." Celeste helps.
Cathryne takes the contact. She eventually comes through to Flora's location, that being underwater, chained to a table, and breathing normally. Contact is reestablished between Corwin and Cathryne. Cathryne shifts into her normal form. Celeste asks to be pulled through, and tells REN to let go. Celeste then gets pulled through to Cathryne via Corwin during her fall.
Celeste, Cathryne, and two members of the Dancers Guild are trying to free Flora. Jean goes through the Flora trump to "Mommy". REN tucks away Flora's trump for future use.
Ilk on House Cara was told by Ilk at Home that there were invaders in Home, so Ilk prime went to Home to defend. He was immediately attacked by many master-level mages and Logrus users. The Logrus users are at a higher level than Ilk, but are using the Logrus clumsily. Ilk suspects imports.
[Hey buddy - you got a green card?]
Ilk was busy defending himself, so didn't have the time to go inside. There are also attackers inside Home, who have created a Morganti-esque death zone. The death zone was designed to expand and destroy an entire shadow in a matter of seconds, but this shadow is fighting back.
Now that Ilk has backup, he heads into Home to deal with the attacks from the inside, giving Norton some of his stored fish. Norton releases the fish and generates Brut. Mages start dying in swarms, but the attacking Logrus users just fling the fish away.
Norton generates Pattern-bombs and starts launching them at the Logrus users. Norton is disappointed at the lack of corpses to play with.
Celeste trumps Darkstar, and connects. They chat. He pulls her through the contact.
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