Osric is shielded in a corner with a gate ready to go; two demon Jeans are wandering around, and Cassandra, Ingold, and Corwin are preparing to hold off Benedict long enough for the noncombatants to escape. Everyone else has either gone to Chaos or left the room for dinner with Flora.
Celeste, Cailin, Tate, many Jeans, Ilk, Random, Martin, Raven, Norton, and a number of Chaosians are on the roof of House Cara. Tessa was brought directly into the heart of the House, and given into the care of those who deal with kids, after they were informed of her Logrus.
Cailin goes to Tate and asks him if he has a way back to the Assassins' Guild. Tate says that he might, but they are going to visit the Torturers' Guild first.
Ilk pulls a set of ambassadorial robes for Random from his embassy.
Ilk Logrus-pulls the group to a safe distance from the Torturers' Guild, then proceeds to pull the air surrounding the group the rest of the way. They are facing what looks like a very pleasant and restful tropical island. There is a small building in the center of the island. The sky is a dark and ragged black, except for the light source, which fails to illuminate the rest of the sky. The building looks to Norton, somewhere in the back of his mind, like a sanitarium. "Zack" has no idea. "Zack" mentions that he wishes that he had his flying carpet here. Ilk conjures a carpet beneath them. It takes some effort - this place resists change.
Ilk sends forward a tendril to the obvious entranceway,
A large projection of a face appears just off the leading edge of the magic carpet. The lady is wearing a white hat with a very sharp medical probe stuck through it in a disturbing fashion. The face is looking at the group of people.
Celeste speaks up. "Good afternoon." The head reorients and looks at Celeste. She continues. "We were wondering if we could receive permission to visit with someone that may be at your guild."
Norton and Cailin nod. Jean waves. Ilk nods appropriately. Random sweeps a very deep bow. Tate does a stiff half-bow. Raven does a saber salute with his Logrus-blade.
The group is all plucked from the air and left standing in the entrance room. They are standing in front of her desk. There is a fairly large, feral-looking mouth on her left shoulder.
The receptionist looks around and says, "Name the patient."
Celeste leans forward and quietly says, "Brand."
When the receptionist leans forward, the lips on the mouth peel back and reveal some nasty-looking teeth.
Cailin expresses a lack of knowledge, and is shown Brand's trump by Tate.
She turns to reach the files, and they can see that the edges of her uniform are attached to her flesh, leaving her back naked. The edges go as far as her waist, then the skirt wraps around her waist. There are some splatters of a dried fluid on her back. Norton looks around for cameras, and doesn't see any, but sees something in the places where he would have placed cameras.
As she looks through the files, a single lock of hair shaped like a snake comes out from under her cap. She absent-mindedly tucks it back. She pulls out a file, takes it back to the desk, and sits down in front of them, and starts flipping through it.
"We have between 1500 and 1700 people by that name here. If you see his picture, let me know."
Tate hands Celeste his trump of Brand. She's never seen it before. She looks at it carefully. It's not done in any hand she recognizes, nor is the background any setting that she recognizes.
Celeste talks politely with the lady.
The receptionist says that she will see if the current practitioner can see them. She reaches into the desk and pulls out a speaking-phone like device. She holds it up to the mouth on her shoulder. The mouth opens and speaks into the tube. They can see her heart beating behind the tube.
She asks them to sit for a few minutes until the current specialist is ready to talk with them. "Zack" asks for the architect. She says that she will have it delivered to Zacharias, at House Cara.
"Is your sister, Cassandra, available? A Lord Talos was asking after her." "Zack" agrees to relay the message to Cassandra.
After a few minutes, an elderly gentleman comes out and looks around. "You are the lady making the inquiry?" He says that the facility is set up such that only one person at a time may visit with him, but everyone can watch.
Specialist - "He needs to become himself again."
Celeste - "He is not currently himself?"
Specialist - "There are pieces of him in there, but not enough. The
pieces of him that are present are not entirely in control."
"Zack" - "So what is in control?"
Specialist - "Currently, I am."
Norton and "Zack" are both interested, and question the man closely. The man says that they have currently disassociated the mind from the body by overriding the signals from the body. Celeste discusses the necessity of the treatment with the gentleman.
As Celeste enters the room, she sees a series of layers of flesh peeled back and tacked around the room, with Brand's face at face-level. There are tubes running into the back of his head.
Norton advises Celeste to be careful of where she steps. Celeste follows the gentleman without looking at him. She walks through a normal-looking door into the room with Brand.
Norton, Ilk, and Cailin kibitz while watching Celeste and Brand talk.
He looks at her and smiles. "Celeste, hi!"
"Brand? What are you doing?"
"Getting fixed."
"You don't look fixed. You look really broken."
"I cannot see myself."
Celeste asks why he didn't just go home.
"We couldn't." "We couldn't?"
...
"Now you believe me."
"Now I do."
"Now you finally believe me."
"So you finally believe everything that I told you about..."
"Not everything."
"So now you know why everyone is mad?"
...
Brand - "Remember when I mentioned an offer to you?"
Celeste - "Yes."
Brand - "Instead, I chose someone else as
my tutor. It was apparently a very bad choice."
...
Brand - "I couldn't risk her ever getting
anywhere else."
Celeste - "Her?"
Brand - "Yes."
Celeste - "Her? Her who?"
Brand - "I don't know. The name was
removed from my mind."
...
Brand - "You're her rival. I'd rather be with you."
Brand says that he's getting her out of his head, bit by bit.
Celeste asks Brand if, when she was in her head, if he
heard a fading echo of laughter.
Brand - "Only when I did poorly."
Celeste - "What did the voice sound like?"
Brand - "She was a very good teacher, but
she wasn't very nice."
Celeste - "I think that your tutor knows
who I am... I think that when she lost track of you, she found something
else."
Brand - "Run. Hide."
Celeste and Brand complain that Celeste's tutor doesn't seem very interested in anyone. Celeste mentions that she has another offer; Brand asks if that offer is the right one.
Brand advises Celeste to gaze into his eyes so she doesn't have to look at the tubes any longer.
Cailin asks if he could acquire some food from anywhere. Norton asks for a pizza with anchovies. Ilk declines an offer of food. Tate orders a complex and highly elaborate dish, with his nose still in a book. Four people show up carrying the dish, and present it to him. Tate responds to the presentation flawlessly, without raising his nose from his book.
She pulls out a box of animal crackers - actual animals made out of cracker in cages. She advises Jean to be careful - the bars can be sharp.
Celeste and Brand have degenerated into lovey-dovey stuff. The conversation quickly acquires an 'X' rating.
Norton asks if he could acquire a videotape of the proceedings. "Well, of course. We record everything that goes on in our facilities."
Cassandra is standing in the center of the courtroom in Amber next to sandy Corwin and an Ingold who appears to be both here and not here at the same time. She extends her senses, and notices that a number of her assassins are still present. She gestures to the closest. He flips off the balcony, lands in front of her, and salutes.
Cassandra tells him that they are expecting an attack imminently from Benedict. The bodyguard pulls out a small thing from his shirt and drops it. When it hits the ground, Cassandra and her bodyguard disappear from Amber. They are standing on something pyramid-shaped that bells out towards the bottom, and is made entirely of glass.
Cassandra - "Why did you do that?"
Bodyguard - "Not on my watch."
Cassandra - "You have caused me to
leave my father and cousin less defended."
Bodyguard - "Not on my watch. Do you want me to get them out?"
Cassandra argues with him. Cassandra tries to trump Corwin, and hits the trump block. She asks the bodyguard to relay. He takes a knife, stabs his arm, and four drops of blood fall off his arm and hit the glass below him. Each drop turns into a bodyguard. They look around, re-orient, then say, "Explain." "A message needed to be passed, and this was the only way to gain attention." "Accepted. What is the message?" Cassandra gives them a message. One of them parrots the message back to her, accurately reflecting her intonation, then steps off, hits terminal velocity about half-way down the pyramid, and seems to bleed out of existence.
The bodyguard gates Cassandra to the room where she first met Princess Chandra. The bodyguard goes off and taps a cornice, which unfolds into an assassin. That assassin tells them that Princess Chandra is off disciplining some bodyguards for repeatedly losing their charge, her newest apprentice.
The bodyguard says that he knows where Princess Chandra is probably disciplining the assassins. He opens up another shadow-gate. On the other side of the shadow gate, Cassandra sees, sitting in what appears to be a waiting room, Zacharias, Ilk, Cailin, Tate, and some others.
The group sees a shadow gate start to open in front of them. Cassandra and two bodyguards step through. "Zack" tells Cassandra that Lord Talos has a package for her. The nurse joins in. Cassandra memorizes the view. Through the gate comes another assassin who passes something to those present, and steps back through.
Osric and Jean saw Cassandra gesture to someone that appeared in front of her, then disappear.
Corwin lets out a series of expletives that were apparently more than just expletives, because the balcony collapses and crumples into dust.
In unison, the two Jeans say, "Cool!"
He turns to Ingold, says, "That's it. We're overmatched. Let's go." He turns to Osric and says, "We're leaving. You coming?" Corwin says that he is going to leave Benedict a trail. Osric is very curious about the situation. Corwin is not.
"If I had a gate ready, would he be able to stop me from going through it?" "Do you have to be alive to go through it?" "Yes." Osric decides to leave. Corwin turns to the Jeans and says, "Go talk to your mother. Now." "Okay Corwin." The two Jeans head out. Osric starts heading towards the dining rooms. Corwin turns towards Ingold and starts saying something to him. Osric doesn't hear anything until he feels a dislocation, and then he can hear the dinner clearly.
Neville asks Flora if he could borrow a mage from her to finish his quest.
Neville goes off into a corner and writes a note asking for two well mannered, polite mages that are powerful enough to deal with the current situation to arrive by gate. The note goes through, and comes out the other end. He is sent back two master-level mages. Neville didn't know that he had enough clout to rate two master-level mages. They're very well dressed, well-behaved, and seem very impressed with Neville for some reason. They look around the room and set up a few subtle wards around them and Neville. The first mage is Karell, who is collaterally related to Andron, and the second is Sinetar, who is the great-grandchild of Toram. They are here primarily as mages, with a House tag on them.
[Cara's mages don't tend to run to Guild. They are trained outside the Courts, and therefore not highly regarded.]
Neville introduces his mages to Flora. Flora greets them, and lets enough slip to let them know that she is aware of their lineage. Neville wasn't certain of the lineage of his mages until then.
Osric sneaks out into the kitchen for some food. The kitchen is at a much higher tech level than the dining room; it's definitely not the kitchen in Castle Amber.
One of the servants approaches Osric and asks him to remain out of the kitchen in order to avoid confusing the cooks. He finds his seat. Osric is seated next to a man from a Golden Circle kingdom that is in the arms business. They talk shop.
An assassin that has been running across the heads of the demons stops next to Ilk on grand tour. He bows to Ilk from a high-ranking member of a Guild to the head of a major House, and Ilk returns the bow. The assassin tells him that Lord Corwin, Second of the Warriors' Guild, is finished with his current business and would be glad to rejoin them.
Norton trumps Corwin, and gets through. Corwin tells Norton that he has left a false trail for Benedict, and is ready to rejoin them. Norton pulls Corwin through.
Corwin asks Ilk why he didn't tell him that his other self discorporeated - it caused him to have to re-evaluate his plans at the last minute. Ilk apologizes for the inconvenience, and explains that nothing else could be done at that time, and that it didn't seem appropriate to mention that fact to everyone that might be listening in.
[Tally Ho - count the prostitutes?]
A third assassin just went through the gate, handed the other two a piece of paper, and returns. The bodyguard looks at the paper, grins, and shows it to Cassandra. It reads, "Castle Amber has been cleared. No casualties."
Cassandra stares at the pizza to avoid looking at Celeste being cutesy with a face.
Jean feels an urge to venerate Cassandra. It seems to be associated with a scroll that he keeps by his side. He tries to read it, but cannot. He inverts the scroll, but still cannot read it. Cassandra asks if she could take a look at it. It is written in the language of Pearl. It goes on at great length declaring the bearer to be a priest of Cassandra. Cassandra keeps the scroll. Jean continues to go through his possessions, and finds a death certificate, made out for the time that Jean took over that body. The cause of death is listed as disease. He has something in a box labeled "Holy Relic". It's a piece of a stick or pike or something with a little bit of blood on it.
As Norton touches the piece of wood, there is a feeling of holiness. Cailin takes it. It feels like the other holy relics that he's been around. Cassandra takes it. It makes her uncomfortable to hold it. She puts it in its box and hands the box to an assassin. He opens the box, reaches into the box, and gets a look of awe on his face. Ilk takes a look at the blood. The blood seems almost artificial, almost as if it was transmuted to or from something, and the wood is just wood. Ilk asks if he could deliver it to Norton for further investigation. Cassandra agrees, on the condition that Norton not use it to make another her. Ilk agrees to try, and tucks the boxed bit of wood away.
About an hour and a half after Celeste entered the room, the doctor mentions that the cycle is about to end, and asks if she should be retrieved or left there for yet another cycle. They ask him to retrieve her from the room.
Cassandra asks the nurse if Lord Talos is available to see her. The mouth on the nurse's shoulder talks into the microphone briefly, and then the nurse turns to Cassandra. "Lord Talos regrets that he cannot come out at the moment - he is dealing with a problem handed off by a very high ranking individual. Princess Chandra expects only the best." The nurse tells Cassandra that Princess Chandra is observing the matter personally.
In Amber, Flora gives Jean a very interesting version of the Easter bunny legend. Jean resolves to kill the Easter bunny.
The door opens behind Celeste. She hears the doctor's voice say, "You must remove yourself." Celeste apologizes to Brand and departs. The doctor passes her in the doorway, turns towards Brand, and says, "May we begin again, friend?"
Celeste enters the waiting room and looks at the rapidly fading screen. Laetatio has just finished his meal. He bows deeply to each of the four in turn, who return the bow. Tate returns to his book.
An inner door opens into the waiting room, and a very distinguished individual enters, bows to the group at large, and greets Cassandra. He thanks "Zack" for delivering the message. Discussion happens. Lord Talos greets Ilkandacian, and says that he will deliver her to House Cara.
Ilk tosses a tendril out and bounces off the walls of the Torturers' Guild. The group walks outside, and Ilk tendri's out and pulls them to the roof of House Cara, remaining tendri'd himself.
Lord Talos bows towards Cassandra and gestures towards a room. They head into the room. Cassandra mentions that perhaps his most recent clients would not be pleased to meet her. He understands once she mentions that she is newly apprenticed to Princess Chandra. They discuss and renew their acquaintanceship. Lord Talos asks Cassandra if she has considered his offer of a relationship.
[Celeste notices, when kissing Brand, that his tongue is not attached to the back of his mouth. Player is squicked and leaves the room screaming. Run dissolves.]