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[The GM is a liar] [Time does not have mass, it has weight]
The altered Mellor still register as Mellor on Osric's Fringe crystal. Osric finds a place that has psionic technology that he might be able to use against the intruder. Unfortunately, the residents of that place have refused to trade with him in the past because they can't get into his mind. He orders his computer to register any matches with the demons on a nearby pillar and leaves the Fringe.
[Osric tries to use his Fringe crystal as a pager, but fails]
Osric skulks around for a while looking for high-tech psionic toys that might be of use in detecting or combating the intruder. He spots Chen, the little girl that was clinging to Malachai for a while, whining at passers-by. He greets her, and she runs up to him. She says that the evil woman left her. The girl describes the woman's legs, and says that the woman screamed and ran, holding her head. The girl says that she can steal things easily here, because nobody notices her. "Watch!" She runs over to a passer-by and rips his pants. He ignores her and continues walking, and his pants re-knit as he walks. Osric conjures some ice cream and strawberries for her. He conjures a timer, some jacks, and a technological tracking device shaped like a piece of jewelry. The girl stuffs the pin inside her shirt. "You'll lose it!" "I didn't lose the frog." She exhibits a frog. The frog croaks, "More flies." Osric conjures some flies. "Lily pad." "Can't help you there."
Osric leaves to acquire the device, and returns a half of an hour or so later. There is a corpse next to the little girl with a jack embedded in one eye. She insists that he fell, and that she was just playing jacks. Osric notices jack-shaped dents in the sidewalk. He picks up the girl, and returns to the Fringe with her.
The Osric leaves the fringe again, and tries to trump Corwin. He contacts Corwin, and Norton, Mandor, Ilk, and Jean, near Home. He is politely horrified.
Osric asks if they can tell Malachai they he has his daughter. Jean in Norton in Amber tells Malachai, "Malachai - Osric has your daughter"
The group chats with Osric. Osric confirms that Celeste trumped Merlin. Osric is in contact with the inside of Norton's head.
Norton pops another head for Corwin, shuffles through his trump deck, and pulls out Malachai's trump.
Malachai responds to Jean in Norton. "I don't have a daughter." Malachai gets a trump call. It's staticy. It feels like trump energy, but not quite. It seems to be Norton, but he's not sure.
Suddenly, the girl sees something that she is afraid of and jumps into Osric's arms. Everyone in the trump contact feels a cold and calculating mind for a moment, and then it's another five year old. She enthuses at Malachai and asks if she can come to him.
Osric looks for the thing that was scaring Chen.
Osric sees the white area on the wall become whiter. The girl pushes in a strange way, and Osric and the girl are now standing next to Malachai. The girl cries, "Daddy!" and heads towards Malachai.
While the little girl is out of the contact, Osric tells the others that his place has been invaded by the white statue person with wings and sunglasses.
Osric drops the contact with Corwin in Norton and tries to gate back to his Fringe gate. He hits a barrier, and bounces. He starts debugging, and chats with Malachai and Norton. Norton tells Malachai that he subverted a number of guards when he thought that this was all a drug-induced haze, and that he wants to apologize to Benedict. The Ilk in Norton's head is aware that Norton still thinks that this is a drug-induced haze, and buckles the seat-belt on his ejection seat.
Malachai knocks, and enters Flora's chambers. The others follow. The Flora that is chained to the table is asleep.
Ilk in Norton can see something that looks like Suhuy, but with no Logrus and imprinted with a very complex Pattern. Ilk perceives him as solid, not ghostly. Malachai and Osric cannot see the ghost. The Jean in Norton's head can now see Suhuy.
Osric says that Suhuy and Deirdre are from a different Reality.
The group examines Flora and the table. Ilk uses Logrus. He examines the wounds left by Cathryne's attempt to free Flora, and discovers that the bonds are attached to Flora's body. Ilk experiments with shattering the table or pulling the bonds from the table with Logrus, but he can't get a decent grip on the transparent watery-looking sheaths, the table is all one piece, and he doesn't want to generate entropy or primal chaos in Dworkin's castle.
Someone asks Ilk about just pulling her out of the table directly. "My guess is that either the table would go with her, or she would be ripped in half."
Malachai trumps Serena; Serena goes off to get Tazik. Tazik agrees to go through to help, and Serena agrees to tend to Gillian.
Osric fetches Chen from the hallway and asks her if she can help; she ineffectually tries to pull Flora off the table physically.
They decide that they need to acquire Flora's input. Norton pipes up. "Oh my god - her dress clashes with the table!" Flora wakes up with a start. "I was listening! It was something about gophers!"
Flora - "Such a nice young girl, Cathryne - she can dress so well; a pity she doesn't do it more often."
Ilk offers to conjure a new dress for Flora. Flora describes the dress in detail down to the warp and woof of the fabric, and Ilk conjures it around the parts of her not contained within the sheaths.
Once Rainbow is done squishing the Logrus masters, Jean in Norton tells him that Flora is stuck to a table in Amber, and Ilk in Norton mentions that she might be looking for a knight in shining armor. Rainbow asks if they can contact anyone up there. Norton trumps Malachai.
Rainbow has shrunk down, and looks human when he touches Norton. He still looks human when he comes through.
When Rainbow goes through the contact, Norton loses the power to keep burning through the Trump block around Amber, and is hit by the backlash. He lies down for a while.
Rainbow and Flora exchange a trivial greeting, and most of those in the room are aware that vast amounts of information were just transmitted. Osric picks up on some inflections of their conversation.
Norton complains about the buzzing and considers removing his brain. The Ilk in Norton continues working on his escape pod. "Eject! Eject!"
Osric pokes at one of the sheaths with an energy lance. There is a large spark, and the lance shatters. Ilk in Norton notices that it looks like a Pattern - Logrus collision. He suggests that idea to Osric, and offers to measure before and after to see if the sheath was lessened by the collision. Ilk in Norton takes an initial measurement, using scads of tendrils to feel out the extent of the bonds.
The Suhuy ghost comes over and says, "Such a clumsy usage." "The use or the power?" "Both." Norton boxes Ilk away before he can jump at Suhuy's throat. Norton and the Suhuy ghost chat, as the Ilk simulacrum demands to be let out so he can strangle the traitorous old lord.
Norton asks the Suhuy ghost how you attune to the Jewel. "You just do" Norton offers the Suhuy a body. When Osric points out that it would let him talk with his brother, Suhuy declines the offer.
Osric asks if they could free Flora by having someone carry the table while walking the Pattern. His idea is rejected. "I thought that the Pattern was the center of the universe." "Maybe, but that doesn't mean that it takes away tables."
Rainbow turns to Malachai and suggests that he leave the room, given his proclivities. Malachai thanks him, and goes into the hallway. He sees the little girl wrestling with something that looks thin and hair-like. It looks like a single long hair that is extended from Flora's room. Norton continues tickling the girl.
Malachai backtracks in search of the source of the buzzing, and sees a patch of something darker than the surrounding floor. It is slowly moving towards Flora's room. Malachai approaches it, and says, "Hello?" No response. It is moving towards him at slightly less than a walking pace.
After Malachai leaves the room, Rainbow leans over, kisses Flora, and, to all appearances, dissolves over her.
Ilk agrees not to try to kill the Suhuy ghost. Norton's head people decide to refer to the ghost as Freddy, and Norton lets Ilk out of the box.
Ilk and Osric repeat the experiment. Ilk notices that the sheath lost about half as much substance as there was in the spike. Osric increases the size of the spike by fifty percent, and tries again.
Rainbow puddles out from under the table, and says, "Nope. I couldn't affect it."
Malachai re-enters the room, and reports having spotted a shadow moving towards them. Norton goes into the hallway and tries to look, but can't really see it. Ilk looks with various powers, and sees a field that seems to be anti-magical.
Norton echolocates. There are thirty or forty invisible beings on shells moving near the ceiling. He points them out to Malachai. He swings Galantine at them, to no effect.
"Would you mind being a bat for a while?" "Yes!"
Norton has Osric make a mechanical binocular-echolocator. Malachai tries it, and sees nothing. Norton takes it, shifts it into something living, and hands it back. Malachai can now see something that might be a shelf with something humanoid on it.
Ilk asks Mandor to take a look at the shadow. Three semi-glowing balls, not made of substance, start whirling around over Norton's head, shoot off into the shadow, then disappear. "Hmm... interesting." Mandor confirms that the shadow is an anti-magic zone.
"Could that be what's left of Merlin?" "Very probably."
Malachai trumps Cassandra. She's at a good breaking point in her efforts in Julian's quarters, and agrees to join them near Flora's chambers.
Malachai gets a trump call. It's Prospero. Prospero says that he's at the battle near Garnath, and that things are getting hot. Malachai excuses himself from the group, and heads off to acquire Bucephalus.
Cassandra squeezes the bat. It screams, and she drops it. "No, look through the screen. It's sonar." She squeezes it again, and looks through the device. She can see something that might be shelves, with humanoid things on them.
Cassandra echolocates with the aid of the force, but doesn't see anything. Norton echolocates again, and sees them.
Cassandra looks at the shadow. It doesn't move quite like Merlin, and it doesn't look familiar to her.
Cassandra tries Merlin's trump and gets nauseous.
Norton calls to Suhuy's ghost. He looks smoky and translucent to Cassandra. Norton points the shadow out to him, and Suhuy cranks up his Pattern and does something. The ghost claims that he failed to make contact with it.
Norton thinks it might be a shifter that lost its shape, and calls to Rainbow. There is the sound of a broken kiss, and then Rainbow joins the group outside the room.
Rainbow walks down the hall and looks around. "Where's Malachai?" "He left" "Good" Random slinkies off the shadow, bounces back towards the others, and says, "Run!"
They all run. Osric grabs the table and follows them. "What is it?" "Don't even think it!" Rainbow says, "I'll go left, you go right!", and turns left. Norton goes to the right.
Osric grabs the girl, puts her on the table with a tentacle, and shifts to something scuttling beneath the table.
The Deirdre says, "Sounds like a prank" and stays inside the room. The Suhuy ghost remains with her, as does Theraat, who is still sleeping in a corner of the room.
Cassandra and Osric follow Norton to the right.
The girl screams, "Whee!" Flora corrects her. "Don't go for whee. Chases aren't 'whee'. Try 'aaaah'" The girl screams, "Aaaah!"
Flora is giving directions to them as they run. After a bit, they stop running and decide that Rainbow probably didn't know how quickly the thing could move.
Norton has a discussion with his head people about whether the shadow is following the Ilk simulacrum, Norton, or the group as a whole. No conclusion is reached.
Ilk in Home has finished with the mages inside Home. He managed to keep one of the mages alive, but he went mad rather than be interrogated. He now thinks that he is periwinkle. Ilk walls him up somewhere secure for later interrogation by someone like, say, Andron.
Damia is being scolded out by her family, when Damien appears. "What did we do?" "What?" "We sent the message a while ago." "What?" "Aren't you going to be around?" "For what?" "The birth of your child." Damien says that everyone got blown up about six months ago.
[Cobalt has apparently flipped from being much, much slower than Amber to being much, much, faster than Amber since the Spiral was destroyed]
Damien says that they joined the soul of Damia's baby with the soul of the baby that Bast was going to birth.
Damia leaves a note for her family members who are not currently in the room.
Damien pulls out a small statue of a woman and they concentrate on it. They go through the statuary trump, which was created by a person who is blind. They arrive just in time to miss the birthing. Bast is nursing. The child looks like a normal male human baby with red hair. Damia picks him up. He tries to nurse, fails miserably, and starts crying. The undead Damia hands him back to Bast.
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