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Sauron Jean mark two plays skeet with the snow to hobbit generator.
The Realms Lord meeting ends. Melk disappears again. Ferethyn wanders off to his lab. Savior of Chaos and Suhuy are still sitting at the table in Ferethyn's meeting room looking around for a way out.
Shiryu and Marial return to the replacements meeting with the list of tasks.
Marial looks for Benedict, and fails to find him. Jean hits replay on the recordings from the bugs. Marial pulls Corwin aside and sends him off. She then pulls Caine aside, and sends him off as well.
Shiryu is currently talking to Jenoir, Andron, and Qrelon.
Shiryu talks to Jean. He asks Jean to have all of him that are near rifts to change color and then tell him that color. Jean can't do that, and they decide that Jeans near either side of a rift should raise a shield of a distinctive color.
Jeans converge on rifts. He does the Dancers' Guild, the corridor just outside the Pattern in Castle Amber, the tank nearest the rift in that place, the hamster ball, and the second Sauron-tree.
The walls of the rooms in the meeting room turn wrath-of-god red, replacing the map of shadow. A few minutes later, Ferethyn wanders in, looks up, looks pleased, and wanders off again.
There is now an image of every rift that Jean knows about on the walls of the meeting room. The actual rifts are shadowy regions.
Other rift locations given to Jean include the one over Arden, the one outside Jesby, and the one in Random's place.
Jenoir is searching for all of the rifts in Chaos. She's doing something complex in a corner of her lab and is covered by a mostly-opaque shield made up of shimmering waves of raw-ish magic.
Andron has gone off looking for a locational relationship between the rifts using Jean's senses as a guide.
Qrelon was asked if something existed or had been created and responded that he did not believe that such a thing existed in this slice of fruit.
Corwin is readying the troops.
Caine is preparing the Warriors' Guild for action.
Marial is contacting her apprentice and placing her affairs in order to either repel or become a potential invasion.
Cailin grabs his bottle. The bottle is labeled "For external use only". The label is backwards and on the bottom of the bottle containing opaque liquid; it appears to be designed to be seen just after the potion has been drunk.
People watch and wait.
One of the saucer Jeans in the basement of Amber accidentally goes through the bug and ends up in the room with Ilk and Suhuy. He reverses his direction and goes back.
Jean fishes a note to the hamster ball reading, "Warning: The Logrus is sad here." and then sends a saucer through, checks that the note is visible from the room with Ilk and Suhuy, and then leaves again.
Time passes.
Corwin is standing outside the outer shields waiting patiently to be let back in. Jean considers whaling him in, but after asking Andron, decides to just wait. Corwin suggests playing cards.
"What's it good for?"
"Killing time."
There is a brief pause while Jean makes sure that none of his hours or minutes have died, and Corwin waits for Melk to object. Jean finds and fishes in cards, and Corwin and Jean play a variant on war.
Jean has his minions make little Amberite outfits for the hamsters, and gets a tiny Jewel of Judgment from Dworkin for them to fight over.
More time passes.
Jean tells Corwin that Llewella wants to meet with the King of Amber and asks for advice.
"Why do you want to meet with the king?"
"To warn her of Clarissa's evil machinations, throw myself on the mercy of the crown, and have my sentence of exile removed."
"We know about Clarissa, she went boom, her group went boom, Darkover went boom, Celeste and Brand went boom, ..."
It turns out the King of Amber is unfamiliar with the family members, recent history, or conspiracies, so Jean takes it upon himself to act as Minister of Information for Faythe and Felice.
Jean tells Faythe about the various conspiracies. He draws a lot on a big white-board.
Llewella expresses interest in the white board. Jean doesn't want to draw the conspiracies again, and the markers are water-soluble so moving them through the whale won't work. He figures he can just bring Llewella to Faythe if he has Corwin keeping an eye on things.
Jean whales Corwin to Faythe, then whales Llewella to Faythe. He drops off Llewella's entourage in Norton's courtyard and drops off the mangled copy of Corwin near Dworkin.
Jean remembers that Llewella was implicated in the trapping of Flora on the table, and tells Rainbow. He then fishes Rainbow to Llewella. Rainbow hangs out on the lips of the fish unobtrusively.
Jean uses the hamsters to try to explain Amber to Faythe. After they are fished to Chaos, they start taking on the mannerisms of their namesakes. Possibly due to Rainbow's sense of humor and tampering, the Flora hamster is now even cute to Amberoids.
Jean asks Qrelon for a diorama of Amber. Qrelon ignores him. Jean uses a bug generated by a saucer instead.
Jean gives Faythe, Felice, Llewella, and Corwin a guided tour of the current state of Amber. No one is happy with how it looks. Faythe mutters something about fixing up her new kingdom, Felice is just fascinated, Corwin is depressed, but remembering his promise not to be involved anymore, and Llewella is the most actively interested ...
Llewella asks him why they don't take the missionaries out of their containment. Jean whales some blucited items back.
Corwin is rather disturbed that the inhabitants of the golden circle all went rather crazy or blue.
Llewella lays her hand on the blue and it sublimates. She didn't make all the covering go away, just enough to show that she could do it, presumably because it was mentioned that they were, perhaps, out of their heads, and she didn't want to add complications to her petition.
Jean asks Ilk for advice. Yuri is fished into Hendrake. Ilk is very aware that the big cat on top of the House is Snarsht, and that Snarsht is trying to keep his identity ambiguous.
Jean uses the hamsters and the tiny Jewel of Judgment to illustrate Amberite history, inheritance, and politics. Llewella is not amused, but Corwin is. The Dworkin hamster is growing a hunched back, and the Llewella hamster has become green.
Faythe asks about the tiny Jewel; Jean fishes in a full-size Jewel from his mantel at Swayville in order to give her a better look. Llewella boggles and starts to do something mystical, but stops when Corwin taps the hilt of Greyswandir. Jean returns the Jewel to Swayville. Ilk was nonchalant while the Jewel was present.
Rainbow swims through Jean to Swayville to check out the Jewel. He returns looking disturbed.
Jean has them die like little Shakespearean hamsters, because he likes them and doesn't want them to actually die. Whomever Jean says was among the dead acquires that undead pallor so common in Norton's household. If he corrected himself, or he mentioned that they came back alive, their color returned.
Corwin looks startled at the mention of the Clown Prince of Amber. Corwin asks Jean not to tell Cassandra that the other Corwin is back.
Jean doesn't have two Cailin hamsters - just one Cailin and a marble.
The Raven hamster has wandered off and is climbing the bookshelf. On the way up it knocks a book off, which falls down and knocks off the Laetatio hamster's tail. Faythe picks up the hamster, pets it, and re-attaches his tail.
Llewella is given rooms in Hendrake while Faythe contemplates, and her entourage is housed separately.
Jean asks Snarsht to help keep an eye on Llewella and Faythe, to make sure that Llewella doesn't pull anything sneaky.
Jean whales Corwin to Corwin. Both Corwins are unhappy; Dworkin ignores them both.
Rainbow walks over, picks up the Jewel out of Jean's rooms in Swayville, and admires the mantle-pieces. He recommends that Jean move the Jewel to his rooms in the Dancers' Guild, so that it might not attract the Serpent's interest.
Jean asks Ilk for a hamster-sized Wixer. The Ilks in Ferethyn's meeting place work on building one to pass the time. Ilk recommends the insertion of a Jean into the hamster-sized Wixer, to keep an eye on things.
Jean brings the Clown Prince of Amber to Dworkin's attention. Dworkin is of the opinion that the Clown Prince isn't Corwin because:
... and then apparently dismisses the matter from his mind entirely, although he thinks that the clown shtick is pretty good.
The hamster Mirelle tries to walk the Pattern and explodes. Jean tells Dworkin, and is advised that he might need to teach the hamsters how to walk tightropes.
The Corwin has thrown Greyswandir to Corwin and drawn the stone sword. They are discussing the possible terms of a potential duel, insulting each other, and escalating terms.
Jean suggests turning one of the Corwins into Benedict. Dworkin, while not pleased that Benedict is broken, is not interested in the idea. Clown Corwin is less interested. Good Corwin is intrigued for a moment.
Marial shows up in the place with the Corwins and Dworkin, looks at the Corwin with the stone sword, and says, "You're supposed to be doing something for me."
Corwin is about to be flippant to her, visibly decides not to, and says, "I finished that already, ma'am."
"Good, you can keep your temper. You can be of use to me."
Marial tells Corwin that he should return to Jenoir's, and that she will be returning shortly. Jean whales Corwin to Jenoir's stoop, and tells Andron that Marial told Corwin to return to Jenoir's. Andron says that he will likely be returning shortly. For some reason, Greyswandir goes along with Corwin. It is briefly speculated that it was too embarrassed to stay.
Marial walks over to the Clown Prince of Amber, looks him up and down, and says, "Nice get-up". He throws a punch at her; it fails to land. Marial pulls a sword, throws it nonchalantly at him, draws a wooden blade for herself, and says, "Well, let's see if you are any good."
"My daughter put you up to this, didn't she?"
"Nope - she recommended glass, but my ego isn't that big."
She disarms him twice, then leaves a bruise while disarming him the third time. She then stops bothering to disarm him, and he becomes more and more pissed. She starts walking back towards Dworkin, and when she reaches him, twirls her blade and breaks Corwin's steel.
She says, "Clumsy. Have that reforged for me, would you?" and turns her back on Corwin. Corwin picks up the broken end of the blade and tries to drive it into her back. She parries it without using her weapon, leaving Corwin with a bleeding hand.
She says, "No, you aren't any use to me" and returns her attention to Dworkin. Dworkin asks about Ferro, and is told to ask his brother.
Dworkin takes off across shadow. His apprentice follows.
Marial looks around, looks at Corwin, looks at Yuri, says, "Aren't you... never mind." and leaves.
Jean distracts Dworkin, and has him climb into the fish, then fishes Dworkin near the rift in Kolvir. Dworkin pokes a finger through the bug and into the room. Ilk and Suhuy send a note to Ferethyn, who recommends that Suhuy go out and see what his brother wants.
Suhuy sighs and steps through the rift. Dworkin greets his brother, and asks if they're invading again. Suhuy says that they just invaded, and should give both sides some time to rebuild. Dworkin asks for Ferro, and Suhuy agrees to try to dig Ferro up and deliver him to Ygg.
Dworkin reaches an arm out, snags his apprentice, takes a single step, and is next to Ygg. He chats with Ygg, but Jean can only hear Dworkin's side of the conversation, and Ygg is apparently doing almost all of the talking.
Jean asks Ilk to bring him an ocean for the hamsters, and after a bit of testing to ensure that he won't blow up, Yuri goes through to the robot place. Ilk fails to find any large bodies of water in that piece of fruit -- there isn't even much water in the atmosphere. He's not sure how the hamsters are surviving.
Ilk notices that there is an approaching invasion force of starships, and that they contain a wide variety of powers on board. Jean suggests that they go invade the invasion. Ilk realizes that he has been running on internal Logrus, and asks for a lift back to their reality so he can recharge.
Yuri fishes back, recharges, and is given a Logrus blade created by Suhuy. Yuri returns and heads towards the invasion fleet with two Jeans in tow.
At some point, Ilk notices that a piece of the Logrus blade has broken off. He can't find it anywhere.
Jean acquires a replacement Mirelle for the hamsters and has Rainbow fix it to make it more like Mirelle.