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Cailin is wandering through the Assassins' Guild. He calls out, asking if a servant is nearby. One of the light sconces chuckles and pours itself into a vaguely humanoid form. Introductions happen, and the sconce decides that one of Cailin's rank should not be wandering the guild unescorted.
The assassin walks off straight off the stairs and across the air. Cailin follows, going down the stairs. After some confusion, Cailin levitates himself, and joins the assassin. They proceed through an apparently illusionary wall, across a vortex, through a set of double doors, and into a reception hall. He walks over to a desk marked "Special", with Cailin following.
"Aelliana - I would like to introduce you to someone. This is Princess Chandra's grandson, Cailin." He explains that Aelliana handles special situations, including those people who have the privileges of a guild member but are not full guild members. The former wall-sconce then sprouts wings, flies upwards, encounters the ceiling fan, and is propelled off to the side at high velocity.
Cailin questions Aelliana briefly. He is told that he should seek training within the Assassins' Guild instead of going to the Warriors' Guild. She raises wards, and they discuss Cailin's interests. She suggests placing part of his training under Princess Chandra's new apprentice. When Cailin realizes who she is talking about, he asks about other possibilities.
Another possibility raised is someone that has spent more time righting wrongs than fulfilling contracts that is currently going by the name of Zorro. They try to contact him, but he is in the middle of a fight with a large number of opponents. She researches some more, and mentions that additionally, someone called Sir Erik offered three favors to the Guild, and is rated highly with the sword.
A fellow named Laetatio is mentioned as being good at knife-throwing. Cailin agrees to consider him, so Aelliana pulls out a trump of Tate, reads the instructions paper-clipped to it, and tries them. "Sir? I'm with the Assassins' Guild. It's all right, sir - we're not going to kill you." She chats with Tate via the trump briefly, and then tells Cailin that Laetatio would like to consider the decision first. Cailin is not surprised, and asks if there is a place where he can practice.
Aelliana creates a ways to the practice grounds. Cailin passes through the ways, and enters a well-appointed gymnasium. He stretches out, then practices a bit with a pole arm. Someone enters the gym. Cailin and the stranger chat. The stranger pulls what looks like an orange out of his pouch and tosses it to Cailin. Cailin steps to the side. The orange goes splat. The stranger throws another orange, and Cailin catches it. The stranger pulls out a third orange and eats it. They decide to go for a walk and look for the Yeti.
They arrive at the stranger's cabin in the mountains. It's a well-appointed shack. They go outside to look for a Yeti. Cailin conjures a larger coat.
Cailin's companion has acquired a batch of the brew that supposedly enabled him to turn into a yeti. Cailin takes some magical precautions, then drinks the mixture. The stranger tries to scare him, but fails. Cailin thinks of his grandmother coming to kill him, and becomes frightened briefly, but recovers without changing shape. He asks the stranger to threaten him, but the stranger is insufficiently threatening. An avalanche begins. Cailin is unsurprised, and cooks up a quick spell to put the snow back where it belongs, and discovers that the stranger turned into a Yeti and fled the avalanche.
Cailin returns to the cabin, then backtracks through the ways back to the gym and resumes weapons practice.
Neville and his two mages are waking up. Neville orders breakfast from a servant and inquires after a library. The three of them follow the servant down to the kitchens to talk with the cooks directly. Neville is shocked at the lack of variability in the hallways, the crude cooking facilities, and the concept of having to walk everywhere.
The only thing they find unusual in the dining hall is a number of voluptuous women, some of whom are undead, seated around a table and being served by a nasty gnarled individual. A high table exists, but is empty.
Jean is trying to transfer energy through the Jean band with no success. He is thinning the shield around one of the Jeans in Amber successfully, and discovers that transferring energy between Jeans through shields in Chaos results in more chaos outbreaks. There are more Jeans popping out of their shields, and the breakouts seem to be unrelated to the blind spots and reopening ways. About one in fifty of the Jeans being launched out of their shields are being splattered against the shields above them.
Jean asks Ilk if there are any reasons for him to be remaining inside his shields. Ilk suggests that he ask Celeste, but Celeste and Cassandra have left the roof of House Cara to check out the Faerie gate. Celeste looks, finds the presence, and tells Ilk and Jean.
Jean contemplates moving into shadow, and moves around looking for something interesting. He varies the colors of his shields in a place where people are playing marbles with him.
Discussion occurs. Tate claims to have a way to send all of the Jeans into shadow in a matter of seconds.
Tate jumps off the side of the building, and all of the Jeans in contact with his shields are trumped into random places in shadow. Pressure, gravity, and Chaos itself (or was that Shiryu?) quickly pushes most of the marbles through the drain, leaving a layer about one Jean deep across the Courts of Chaos.
Tate is now standing directly on Chaosian soil. Jean is now ubiquitous across shadow.
Celeste notices a power drain, and does system checks. She spots an open channel to Jean, and gently closes it down. All of Jean's shields, everywhere, go down. Many of the demon bodies on the order side of reality melt.
Many Jeans turn into flying saucers and start zooming around. He chats with REN, who is still in his quarters in the Dancers' Guild.
Ilk tells Jean that it is more polite to shift ones' own shape instead of eating people's brains and taking over all of shadow. Jean is sceptical, and asks his mother for confirmation. She says that it is usually more polite to shift ones' own shape, but occasionally it is more useful to eat brains.
The mattresses try to shift into local forms and mingle. Luckily, most of the places where he splashed down are mostly unoccupied, so his more spectacular failures to blend in are, for the most part, unnoticed. Various Jeans are either interrogated, worshipped, or both.
There are two or three Jeans in most places; in a few there is only one. Jean moves away from all of the white statues within his view.
The Jeans near Tate are turning into other shapes. One is now an onion growing into the ground with its feet in the air, and several are jackasses. All of the Jeans back away from Tate. Various Jeans carry the non-mobile onion away. Tate continues cursing. Jean doesn't understand what Tate is saying, but remembers the words against the possibility that they would come in handy.
Ilk observers this and floats down to the ground near Tate. Tate looks at him and glares. "It's all your fault!" "What?" "You pushed me!" They discuss Tate's uncontrolled descent briefly. Ilk asks Tate to move a bit farther from the House - his cursing is lowering property values. Tate complains about the energy drain and a few minor injuries. Ilk offers Tate some duct tape and wood glue to patch up a gash on his leg. Tate is not amused.
"Hey Mom - where did that Faythe chick go?"
"I don't know - I thought that she was with you."
Flora sends out servants looking for Faythe, Jean's saucers goes looking for Faythe, and Caine volunteers to help look, and promises to return Faythe in the same condition that she was in before he found her.
Some of the people Jean was strafing in the saucers near Amber are shooting at him. He sees lots of corpses. Jean dodges what bullets he notices, and the rest ricochet off his hull.
"Hey Mom?"
"Yes, dear."
"Who are those dead guys at the top of the hill?"
Flora is pissed when Jean tells her that some of the corpses are wearing her colors.
"Well, mostly they're in the courtyard."
"The courtyard. The trap for Oberon?"
Flora pulls out a card and trumps Corwin just as he is leaving Faerie near Oberon's tent near Ygg. Corwin comes through the contact.
Corwin comments on Jean's lack of shielding. Corwin adds that if Jean eats the brains of people that he doesn't know currently, he might be destroying potential playmates.
["Play with me!" "No." *Munch munch munch*]
Corwin thanks Flora for the update and heads off.
Two mattress Jeans are in a pastoral forest where a deer is trying to stand upright on an ice covered pond and is being mocked by a bunny and a skunk. Jean shifts himselves into a tiny ballista and bolt and launches himself at the bunny. The bolt kinda sticks into the bunny's fur. The bolt tries to turn into a flying saucer, becomes a tiny saucer, and falls off the bunny. He turns into a long thin sharp thing, pulls himself upright, and topples over, cutting the bunny in half from tail to head, cutting straight through the ice, and tumbling into the pond.
The skunk says, "See - you were mean to the deer, and the deer is the king of the woods..." Someone over to the side is calling "Cut, cut!"
The sharp Jean slinkies out of the pond and rejoins the other Jean.
The deer is calling out to the bunny. "Talk to me, talk to me! Does this mean that it's no for tonight?"
The stunt bunny is called for, but was given the night off.
The two Jeans take advantage of the confusion to sneak over and nest in the video equipment.
Some number of the Jeans in boring places start working on gaining mass and coalescing into one large uber-Jean.
Some of the Jeans attempt to go the way of sandy Jean and build up golem bodies of mud. It doesn't work in any of the shadows Jean tries it in, because the only shadows it would work in are those where the demon puppets didn't melt.
The Ilk near House Cara is getting a trump call. He steps through his bug to the Faerie gate near House Cara and asks Celeste if she can find out who it is. Celeste tries to trace the call, but cannot determine who is on the far end of the connection.
Ilk accepts the call. Someone he doesn't recognize is tapping a knuckle on the trump device. "Hello? Is this thing working?" Ilk places a hand on Celeste's shoulder. Celeste suppresses a snicker. Ilk removes his hand, pushes the part of his brain holding the contact away from the rest of his brain, and asks Celeste, "Who is it?"
Ilk asks the contact, "Hello?" "Is this Ilkandacian, Savior of Chaos, Head of House Cara, ..." "Who is this?" "House Helgram and House Barimen have agreed to broker a surrender..." A mental subchannel opens, and the guy says, "Get me out of here! Help me! I'm lying!"
Ilk warns those nearby that someone possibly hostile might be coming through the contact along with possibly others that will definitely be hostile. Cassandra draws her darksaber, ignites it, glares at the tiny flickering flame protruding from the end, returns it, and draws Darhyse. Ilk Logrus-pulls everyone but Zack from the roof to help out, and pulls the guy through the contact.
He comes through. One other guy managed to get a hand on him, and came through as well. The first bursts into flames and drops something from his hand. Ilk extinguishes the flames, Logrus-grabs the trump token, and Logrus-grabs the Helgramite. The Helgramite tries to open a magical gate. Celeste reaches through the gate and squishes their minds, and Jean tosses through a nasty spell. Jean notices a nega-sphere appear on the far side of the wall of House Cara from the Faerie Gate. He tells Ilk and stops pushing the spell. Ilk recons, but there's only a smear remaining.
Jean does recon across all of reality. He doesn't spot anything useful.
Ilk heads to Grand Tour to borrow Norton's happy helmet. When he returns with said helmet, the Helgramite explodes, drenching the area in a mixture of shapeshifter virus and Logrus virus. The tendrils with which Ilk is holding the Helgramite vanish, and the mobile parapet and the guy from Barimen are drenched. The rest of Ilk's tendrils dodge, and Celeste's shields protect everyone else.
Celeste scoops up the virus magically into a bucket and seals it. Ilk zips off, and exchanges the happy helmet for shifter virus antidote and starts disinfecting the area. The guy from Barimen appears to be unaffected by the viruses, but is still zorched. Jean checks but has no healing spells racked.
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