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Celeste and Brand were asleep in a basement bedroom in the ruins of an ancient city in Faerie. Celeste wakes up, but Brand is still asleep. Celeste conjures coffee and pastries out of thin air. The coffee is rich and thick. The pastries look like a chef has slaved over them for hours. The bagels are nice, crisp, and thick. The orange juice looks like it was squeezed just moments before the glass it was in was taken out of the freezer. The food was conjured onto the bed. Brand is still not showing any signs of waking up.
Celeste moves the food. The night stand creaks a bit when she puts the coffee on it.
Celeste taps Brand gently. He continues to snore. She taps him again. She waves the coffee under his nose. She tries calling his name softly and kissing his neck. She tries touching him and making mental contact. She gets a vague impression of stags running over hills and naked women that mostly resemble her.
She tries to check out Brand magically, physically, and with her matrix crystal. She can't see anything out of the ordinary.
Celeste gives up and eats breakfast.
She tries to wake Brand again. After a while, she's satisfied, but he's still asleep.
She takes a look outside, then re-enters the room, throws Brand over her shoulder, and leaves the city in search of someplace less gloomy. After a while, she is standing in the middle of an emerald city. She chats with a small green native, leaves the city, and arrives at a lake. There is a moose-headed sea monster sticking out of the water.
Cassandra suggests leading the shadow to Julian's rooms. Ilk suggests leading it back to the Suhuy ghost. The group heads back towards Flora's chambers.
Cassandra tries to trump Ingold, and gets a headache. The card gets very cold.
Malachai reaches the pass at Garnath. Martin has a Random slung over his shoulder and a fairly gory Werewindle sheathed at his side. Malachai asks, "Why is he wounded?" Prospero looks at Malachai and responds, "Why do you Amberites think that you're invulnerable?" Random is covered with fairly gory wounds.
Malachai trumps Cassandra. He tells her that he has a fairly wounded Random here, and she tells him that they're being chased by a nasty shadow-like thing that is possibly related to a Chaos-lord they thought they killed. They chat.
A word-less call to battle rings out in the air over Garnath. Prospero swears and starts running towards the pass.
Cassandra hands Chen, Corwin's shambling corpse, and Norton through the trump contact, and then goes through herself.
Jean Prime starts working on a way out of Brand's garden.
Chen asks her "daddy" for some breakfast. Malachai asks Norton who asks Ilk who acquires breakfast from shadow. Chen eats messily.
At Malachai's request, Norton starts patching the holes in Random.
Malachai and Cassandra head off towards the battle - Malachai on Bucephalus, and Cassandra on foot. They reach the crest and can look down into the pass. They see a small group of castle guards clustered around Prospero near the top of the pass, and a larger group farther down the pass. The two groups are both surrounded by enemy troops, and are fighting towards each other. There are between three hundred and fifty and four hundred guardsmen present.
Something that appears to be a giant humanoid corpse is lying near the larger group of troops.
Malachai and Cassandra head down towards the battle, which is contained within the mouth of the pass. They proceed to carve a path towards the smaller group of castle guards, leaving a wake of bodies in their path.
Malachai and Cassandra don't notice their enemy being any tougher than Golden circle folks. They join the smaller force, take the point of the formation, and start opening a path towards the larger force.
Norton and friends finish patching up Random. They determine that he'll probably recover. They follow Malachai's path, and spot the battle. Norton taps Ilk for power and raises corpses.
Malachai and Cassandra notice corpses standing up around them and fighting against their enemies. Malachai tells the castle guard not to kill them.
Jean tries to bud through into one of the zombies.
"If there are live things in front of me, make them corpses behind me."
There is the sound of a very put-out cat from behind Cassandra and Malachai. It's Gillian, with Tazik on her back. Norton levitates out of Gillian's path.
Norton asks Ilk to check out the dead giant. It's dead. Norton animates it, Jean tries to bud into it, and Gillian pounces on it. Ilk Logrus-pulls the giant out of Gillian's reach. Gillian bounds around, swatting at the giant.
The enemy starts retreating uphill, into the pass, touching the rock, and disappearing. Ilk looks - they're transmuting into the rock and fleeing through it. Ilk pulls some of them out of the rock. They don't live very long - Malachai kills them.
Cassandra cleans her blade on one of the corpses. The three hundred and twenty-five or so remaining soldiers are clustered around Malachai and Cassandra.
Prospero tells Malachai that Random was perforated while fighting the giant, but he damaged it enough that the small force could finish it off. The giant was ripping a new pass through the mountains.
Malachai heads up the hill to ask Ilk about the disappearing troops.
Celeste chats with a green creature again.
"It's a ferry-monster. You pay it two copper pennies and he takes you across the lake."
Celeste wanders around, wishing that she was somewhere other than grey and gloomy or blue and cheery. She's in a bright yellow desert. She tries again, aiming for Titania's party. After a while, she arrives at the deserted, trampled grove where the party took place.
Celeste pokes Brand in the ribs. He's still asleep. Celeste powers up the god channels, and hears snoring.
Celeste tries to go to Court. She encounters a wall, follows it for a while, and encounters a back-side with a wig. It's a judge. Judge Worm. He's busily sentencing people to Omega.
Osric has no idea if the shadowy thing is getting closer to him or not. He keeps chipping away at the Flora's bonds, keeping an eye out for the shadow. He eventually frees an arm. Flora starts scratching, all over. Osric never before thought that scratching could be seductive...
He continues chipping. At one point he uses a probe large enough that Flora says, "ouch". He backs down slightly and continues. One of the castle staff wanders by, looks at him, looks at her, giggles, and wanders off. "I've always disliked her." "Want me to do something about it?" "No, dear, I'll make her life miserable later."
Malachai reaches the top of the hill. Chen is there, with jelly doughnut filling dripping out of the corner of her mouth.
Ilk mentions that he acquired a prisoner, and brings the floating enemy down to the group. Malachai wakes the prisoner. The prisoner looks around, realizes his predicament, and falls unconscious. Malachai wakes him again. "Why don't you tell us about it?" "You are evil! You are an Amberite! You must die!"
"Where do you come from?" "The rocks."
The guy claims that they attacked because they were told that Amber was weak. "Who told you that we were weak?" The guy describes Benedict fairly well, and says that they captured that guy, tortured him, and then killed him. The group fails to be concerned for Benedict's safety.
Ilk and Malachai chat about dealing with the source of the problems instead of just killing the symptoms, and agree that something should be done about it.
The interrogation continues. They discover that there are bits of jade in each of the rock people, and that pulling it out causes them to revert back to stone. Ilk and Cassandra play with the jade. When Ilk carves a piece of jade into a die, it explodes, taking the tendril with it.
[That's one of the good things about Jean's group mind - one of them can be in group therapy constantly.]
Cassandra reaches for the brain of the prisoner, and it's not shaped quite like she expects a brain to be shaped. It's a computer. The prisoner gives out a thin cry, shudders, and dies.
Ilk sets up a standing spell on the giant providing flight and heating, and gives control over it to the mind present. Jean has fun with it.
Norton poses the undead army, and Ilk yanks out the jade, blocking the pass.
Ilk opens a teleport gate to the base of Tir.
Malachai prepares to keep a trump link open with Cassandra during her expedition to Tir, and heads back to the castle.
Osric plans on completely freeing Flora's second arm and then taking a break. By now it is clear that the shadow is not following either Osric or Flora.
Celeste doesn't see a spectator area. She's in the line of defendants.
Celeste thinks, "I want to go to Titania's court!" and fades out as she walks. One of the defendants screams, "Take me with you!" and flings himself at Celeste. She brings him along. They're back in the glade. The guy is calling out, "Free! Free! Free!" Two guys show up from behind a tree and announce, "Decency police!" They grab him. "You ain't got nothing on me!" Celeste asks, "Decency police?" They both turn, look at her, and say, "We will remember you." "What is the charge?" "He comes from an indecently powerful family." "I see."
Celeste moves along. She wanders, looking for a sign of life. Occasionally, birds land nearby, start singing something appropriately complex, notice Celeste, get embarrassed, and fly off. She stops one of them and tries to question it, but it's not much of a conversationalist.
["I've got one of your hairs in my mouth." "I just lost a contact lens"]
There is a discussion between the bird that she found earlier and a series of things that keep dying, but she's not sure what it is.
Celeste tries a few awaken spells on Brand. They fail. She tries to trump him, but his trump looks like Zack. She tries to draw him, and it looks like Zack. She flips through her trump deck. Her male trumps are of Zack, half of her female trumps are of Ivy, and half of her female trumps are of herself.
Celeste goes back into Brand's dreams. He's dreaming that he is in a restaurant, eating a really good steak. She reaches out to take his hand, and he starts eating her hand. She tries telling him to wake up. He decides that she should be naked and on the table, and she is naked and on the table in his dream. He starts pulling out whipped cream....
Celeste thinks for a while. She remembers that the cardinal rules of Faerie include not sleeping, but that royalty are exempt from the rules. She releases Brand from being trapped in the dream, and he wakes up.
She takes Brand by the hand and tries to walk to Faythe. They arrive at a very nice chapel with a bier in front of it. There is a withered corpse on top of the bier. She looks at the corpse. It's fairly dessicated. There's a pretty blue stone hung around the corpse's neck. The stone is not a matrix crystal, although it is carved to look like one. The robes are greenish, and made out of something durable.
"Any reason why we're stopping here? Corpse fascination?" "I think that I made a wrong turn."
As they're walking out of the chapel, the corpse sits up, says "You will fail" and turns into a pile of dust. Celeste looks back as the walk out of the chapel. There is writing over the lintel. It says, "Saint Cassandra." Celeste stops and points out the writing to Brand. He can't see the inscription.
Brand suggests that they return to the chapel to talk to the priestess. Brand can see a priestess kneeling next to an altar, and didn't see the corpse. He talks with thin air, and then says that the priestess says that Cassandra is dead.
Celeste sits down in the chapel to think, and she hears distant music, like a Gregorian chant. She gets up to leave, the doors open, and a line of white robed people walk in carrying candles and set them down around the bier. Brand doesn't appear to notice them. They leave.
Ilk and Norton arrive in Chaos, on the fuchsia tongue. Ilk tries to take Norton with him into Suhuy's realm, and encounters resistance to Norton. Ilk is puzzled, and decides to take Norton to the Beastmasters Guild to see if Norton is still possessed. They take the demon-skin boat, and make good time. There are no demons in the immediate vicinity of the Beastmasters Guild, so they coast to a stop at ground level, pop the canopy, and head towards the doors.
The massive doors are closed. Ilk introduces himself and Norton to the door. The postern door opens slightly and vibrates, "hello". They try to acquire entrance.
"Un-riddle me."
Waffling occurs.
"What would make Rainbow say 'Run!'?" The doors open, and Snarsht's head pokes out. Ilk in Norton demands information from Jean, and receives it.
They start filling Snarsht in on the story, starting from the time when Merlin trumped Norton out of Snarsht's mouth. When they start talking, Snarsht turns around and heads inside. Norton and Ilk follow, and the doors close behind them with a massive clang. Ilk pops an eye on the back of his head, and it does not look like the doors were ever there. They continue the story while inside.
Snarsht looks at Norton, and says, "Do not fret. Norton is Norton." When they reach the end of the story, Snarsht demands to be taken there.
Ilk takes the group to the base of the stairway of Tir, burning through the Logrus blocks around Chaos to get outside the teleport barrier around Chaos, teleporting to just outside the teleport block around Amber, then Logrus-pulling to Kolvir, avoiding the rift in the skies above Arden.
Cassandra notices Norton, Ilkandacian, and Snarsht come into view as she is about to take the first step into Tir.
Jean tries to get out of Brand's garden, with limited success. He has a temper tantrum, then contacts the Jeans in Nortons and tells them of his problem.
Damia decides to present both children to Cobalt's court. She's not sure about Amber, because she's not planning on returning to Amber. There are two children. The female child is Random and Vialle's. She decides to send information about the babies to Amber's court.
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