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Jean is working on shielding, going through mages' memories, and multitasking.
There is a raw chaos bubble near the group on House Cara.
Ilk notices raw chaos burbling up everywhere. He contemplates checking with Shiryu, and contemplates how to actually do this.
Osric asks if the thing is still looking for them. Celeste sets up a periscope through her shields and checks - the presence is still there.
Ilk sends a cluster of tendrils out looking for Ferethyn's dwelling. He finds out what Castle Black is a shadow of, but this one seems to be curdled out of pure magic. He knocks. A small brown furry thing opens the door, looks around, doesn't see anything, and closes the door. Ilk creates an illusion and starts solidifying inside his illusion. Knocks again, door opens again, furry thing comes out, wanders around, waves his hand around, including through Ilk, fails to hear Ilk's attempts at conversation, and walks back inside.
Ilk knocks again. He hears from the other side of the door, "You get it this time! There's nothing there!" The door opens and a squashed barber-pole of a being whose eyes keep rotating like the stripes on a pole emerges. The being fails to perceive Ilk. The furry thing joins it, and the two argue.
Ilk decides this is an attempt to get rid of tourists and walks inside. He tries to get someones attention. Nothing happens. He's in a large cathedral-like room. The floor is one large rock, and the walls are constructed of many small rocks. He pushes the door in the far end of the hall open. The next room contains a couple of chairs, two whose backs are toward him, a burning fireplace, and what might be cages hanging from the ceiling.
Ilk clears his throat and tries to attract attention again. Slowly, the fire begins to brighten. Ilk looks around and prepares to bow to something. He begins to see that the hanging things are people. They seem to be pent inside tall glass bells that hover above the floor. The environment inside the jars is very comforting to Ilk - it reminds him of Home, but faster.
Sitting in one of the chairs is a vaguely Amberoid-shaped corpse. As the light continues to raise, Ilk can see a porthole in the ceiling. He can only see shadows through the porthole.
Tate is struck with a sneezing fit. There is a small fur ball inside his shields looking up at him curiously. Celeste looks at the fur ball and starts laughing. Cailin pipes up. "Well, it could have been a supertanker. At least this is more amusing." Tate finally manages to kick the critter back through his shields.
Cassandra pipes up. "You going to live?" Tate splutters, then responds in the affirmative. He finally manages to blow his nose, and squats on the ground with his head between his knees.
Osric contemplates returning to the Fringe and checking things out there. Theoretically, if the scrying stops when he leaves, then useful information will have been acquired. A group discussion ensues.
The Ilk in the Norton who that thinks he is Zack isn't making very much progress on his barcalounger.
Osric invites Cailin to come along. Cailin agrees, and Osric expands his shields around Cailin. Osric asks for a trump of Tate. Tate opens a slot in his shields and tosses a trump of himself to Osric. It bounces off one of Osric's shields. Osric shrinks his shields, Cailin grabs the card, and Osric expands his shields again. The card doesn't feel like paper or plastic, but it's thin, light, and flexible like card stock. Osric gates them directly to the Fringe gate in the Abyss. There is a large totem of Osric present that is in combat with the large totem that was there before. They ignore the combat and go through the gate.
Osric goes through the Fringe gate and notices that the demons that were on the other side of the gate are now on this side.
Osric - "What are you doing here?"
Demons - "Keeping you out!"
The demons charge. Osric proceeds to beat the seventy-five demons up, about three at a time. Cailin observes that Osric isn't even breaking into a sweat, so he ignores the fight and examines the trump he was just given. The demons don't try to attack Cailin - they just look at him as if he was awful.
Cailin turns towards Osric. "You hail from here?"
"No, I'm actually from Chaos, but I found this place."
As they talk, a fully-enclosed vehicle comes through one of the large rings towards them. They enter it, and head towards one of the sub-stations, taking a circuitous route. Osric checks, and notices that Cailin is Fringe-worthy. Cailin examines his surroundings with interest.
As they arrive, Osric notices something that looks like rabbit droppings spread across the platform they arrived upon. He picks one up with a set of tongs and examines it. It's human waste. Osric checks on his computer - no new outbreaks. Osric drops his shield, and doesn't feel anything different. Cailin looks around, including through sorcerous vision. This place looks like a lab. Osric is surprised - he didn't know that magic was possible here.
"By the way, this realm... I call it the Fringe."
"You built it?"
"I didn't build it - I discovered it. Others were in control of it before, but I am in control over it now. As far as I can tell, it is endless. each of the smaller gates leads to another shadow."
"Was anyone in power over it when you found it?"
Something that looks like a giant otter comes dashing through the door. Osric picks it up, goes to the lab, and locks the door. It raves about big things bouncing around. It claims that Osric must be sick - he doesn't have any fur. Osric shifts into an otter, and the creature claims, "That's better."
They look outside.
There is a big rabbit hopping around, wearing a waistcoat, with a chain visibly attached to a pocket watch. There is a bag attached to the waist of the rabbit, twitching. The otter says it came from the bag.
Osric kicks the rabbit out through a gate, the otter thinks it's from a "sunset fields".
Osric looks at the power meter -- it's way down, in the red zone. He investigates.
Cailin looks at the trump sorcerously. It's not magic based, and not quite the same picture on both sides.
Osric's trace indicates a fault from the substation he locked the six in -- a short. He gets in a vehicle, and goes there.
He sees fresh corpses, humaniform wearing uniforms. There are signs of the Fringe defenses having been activated on them. There is a partially melted rainbow crystal in a mostly melted pylon. Very bad, not good.
Osric deactivates the melted pylon, conjures a new pylon, and takes the damaged pylon and crystal into the lab with him.
Five of the six are cowering in a corner of the substation. The sixth is lying on his back, calling out, "I can dissect me!" and ... err... trying to dissect himself.
The five say that the bad people out there tried to break in so they turned the Fringe defenses up really high and stopped them. Osric recommends that they don't play with the controls again.
An army wearing the same uniforms arrives and starts setting up heavy weapon emplacements and field hospitals. Osric sees a half-charred guy in a nest of life support equipment. He powers up the Fringe defenses and targets it at the other half.
He leaves the room, shielded. The army fires, and the Fringe defenses fries the other half of the injured guy. Shrapnel causes knock-back. More gunners fire and die. Enter and shield truck and drive through a ring. They go to a gate on the Amber-side of reality.
When Osric and Cailin leave the roof...
Ilk tells Cassandra that her trump from Corwin's deck is missing, hopefully destroyed. She doesn't particularly like the idea of a trump of her being extant and unaccounted for.
There is a major inversion, and one of the Jean demons is popped out of his shielding out in Chaos somewhere. Jean looks around - he's accelerating upwards. Some of the mattresses inside the demon try to fly. The demon starts flapping its arms. One of the Jean-mages rummages through the box and unracks a flight spell to affect that demon. There is now a winged horse flapping frantically away trying to reach the demon.
Jean can see spews and sprays spitting out of the sea of demons. There is a pattern to them - they seem to have something to do with something he is doing. He stops doing it, and the sprays change.
Jean tries another flight spell, and the demon is wearing a flight-pack. It has controls like the flying saucer. He experiments, and bumps into the horse more than once. The demon-Jean spots House Cara and heads towards it.
Ilk notices something incoming, and sends up a dozen tendrils or so. The demon is still accelerating, and tries to stop, but the fabric of Chaos wants to continue accelerating. Tendril, vibrate, chat.
Ilk uses Jean to sky-write in an attempt to get Shiryu's attention.
"Want me to give it some help?"
"Sure"
Ilk hitches the horse to the back of the Jean. The horse is not okay with that. Ilk continues sky-writing. He puts a screen up.
Cassandra throws popcorn at the screen. The screen eats the popcorn.
Cassandra tries to reach Atalanta. Ilk notices that a cat that has just gathered up enough velocity to vault the Abyss, and is now scrambling futilely on the marbles on the other side.
Ilk pulls in his Trialla-sized sling. Atalanta climbs onto it and zooms around it as Ilk pulls her to House Cara.
Atalanta dives off the sling and tackles Cassandra. They wrestle, then chat.
Atalanta says that Lazy knows how to walk on air, and she can go ask.
Cassandra tries to describe the enemy, but cannot come up with a decent explanation.
Atalanta pounces on bits of the parapet, and starts swatting them around. Ilk advises the shifters comprising the parapet on how to be good cat toys.
Jean notices that his shields are starting to go away as he stops paying attention to them. He works on it.
Atalanta tells Cassandra that Peekaboo is stuck on the far side of the gap-thing and a demon is bopping her nose. Ilk sends over the sling. Peekaboo climbs in it, along with lots of demons. Peekaboo plays with the demons.
Ilk has the parapet perform a light show. Atalanta is leaving after-images behind her, and Peekaboo is occasionally poking her head through the parapet.
At one of the passes, Atalanta sprints across the roof, leaps, and lands on the back of the horse. Ilk asks Cassandra, then disconnects the horse from the demon.
One whole section of the sea that Jean can see turns bright fuchsia for a moment. Jean continues to work on colors. He can get ripples of changing color, but they're not really controllable yet. Ilk tries to help Jean play Chaosian tetris.
Atalanta is sitting on the horse's head, and the horse is having half of a conversation, but the cat isn't saying anything out loud.
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