or
Recorded for Posterity by Iain Walker.
Tristan is out in shadow conducting research near the Tree of Ygg, in shadows that are largely proof against the Trumps.
As part of this he examines Ygg itself through the life-force lens and finds that it has lots of life-force, perhaps twice that of a young Amberite. It also seems to be looking back at him...
Hmm...
He heads off through shadow, doing more experiments as he goes.
One area of research he is investigating is to see whether it is possible to remove the black memory sparks from the children suffering from the 'cold baby' syndrome, and turn them back into normal humans. Unfortunately, this does not work. The alien memories seem to be too deeply embedded and interwoven with those of the sufferer themselves to allow them to be removed.
Wishing to discuss this with someone else, Tristan decides to go and see Brand. He tries Trumping him, but finds that he cannot get through.
That being so, he Trumps to Amber instead, and ends up talking to King Random, who tells him about the demonic kidnapping of Brand and Chalice. Tristan wants to go and assist, so Random lends him a super-Trump of the Abyss to speed his progress there.
Not using the super-Trump immediately, Tristan instead goes into shadow, quickly finds Castle Corvallin and tools up there, equipping himself with sword, armour, spell-rack, lightning cannon and so on. Then he uses the super-Trump to travel to the Iron Castle by the Abyss.
From the Iron Castle he attempts to Trump each of the rest of us, in sequence. However, as we are all in the demon realms, he does not get through. He tries Brand instead who, not being in the Abyss, is callable, and answers the Trump.
He brings Tristan through to his laboratory tent, which is rather less cluttered than it was before. A large Abyss gun is taking shape on the main workbench, while a glass mannequin, the Ittibya named Oka, lurks nearby.
"This is the combined Abyss/Pure Order Gun," says Brand rather proudly. "Not the original Abyss Gun."
"Is firing that thing safe?" asks Tristan, appalled.
"In almost no sense whatsoever," replies Brand.
Brand tells Tristan what has been happening, about his research, where the rest of us are, and how we got there. To help Tristan he draws a quick Trump sketch of the upper ring portal.
Tristan thanks him then uses the sketch to Trump to the upper ring. And from there he shifts shadow down to the lower ring...
Meanwhile, inside the demon realms, Phoenix is analysing the data she has gathered on and from the Rurrae, working particularly on creating a smart virus/toxin that will dissolve it. Ibrahim is assisting her in this.
Damien is touring the defences against the Rurrae. However, as he knows, there are only so many ways one can build a wall across a passageway...
As she examines the samples that she has, Phoenix cannot help but notice that all of the demons whose parts she has picked out of the Rurrae have been subjected to a savage, continuous and very long programme of breeding, eugenics and genetic modification that would, she think, have greatly reduced or entirely eliminated their initiative, imagination, curiosity and originality. In many cases most of their intelligence has gone, too, to the point of their being barely sentient. In all cases the ability to lie has also been largely removed, as well as, for all but warriors and police, the ability to fight. The Rurrae shows the same Pattern of having been drastically modified, implying that it too is a created servitor of some kind.
Tamarind studies the Trumps, as is his wont.
Damien goes off and checks each of the other three tunnels down which the Rurrae lurks.
It does not seem to be doing very much at the moment, but does begin to shamble towards him if he approaches.
He wanders back, pausing only to block one of the passages with another Hellfire spell before continuing back to rejoin the rest of us.
Outside, in the Abyss, Tristan arrives at the lower ring-gate, minus some skin and all of his enchanted equipment.
He concentrates upon the portal as quickly and as hard as possible as the Abyss eats away at him, and before long it opens. He enters, and passes into the Fractal Vortex that lies within.
He quickly finds himself in the kidney-shaped entrance chamber, which he immediately senses has a very slow time-flow rate of some fifty times slower than that in Amber.
"Halt, who goes there?" demands an Ittibya who seems to be in charge of the large demonic welcoming committee.
Tristan announces himself, and after some deliberations is allowed in.
He heads down the corridors through the many shadow veils into faster and faster shadows, finally arriving in the huge stomach-shaped chamber.
Another Ittibya greets him. It begins to cast a spell on him.
Tristan protests this, and demands to know what the spell is.
"A Flight spell," the Ittibya tells him.
Once Tristan has determined that it is only a Flight spell, he lets the Ittibya cast it, and off they fly to rejoin the rest of us.
Damien has just rejoined Phoenix, Ibrahim and Tamarind when Tristan arrives with the Ittibya.
"Random asked me to come and check up on you," Tristan explains.
"Bad case of internal blockage," says Damien. "But we've cleared part of it," he continues, indicating Merlin.
"Oi!" protests Merlin.
"Uh huh," says Tristan dubiously, and turns to the others for an explanation.
We do our best to explain.
"The Rurrae seems to have been bred just like the servitor demons," Ibrahim tells Tristan.
Phoenix gives Tristan a healing skin patch. It immediately begins working overtime to undo the effects of his exposure to the Abyss.
In general, we explain what we have found about the Rurrae and how to fight it.
Tristan checks his equipment, and finds most of it damaged or destroyed, magically speaking. An enchanted sentient crystal that he was carrying is not only un-empowered now, but dead. His Very Real Sword is totally undamaged, however.
He peers at the demons with his life-force lens. Most of them have about as much life-force as a non-Royal Amberite, that is, roughly ten percent of the life-force of a young Amberite. He also checks Merlin, who seems to be unaffected by his ordeal, at least physically and in terms of life-force level.
"What are you planning?" Tristan asks the rest of us.
"Biological warfare or Brand's gun," we reply.
Tristan does not argue with any of this, so we start to make ready.
Damien begins hanging some more Hellfire spells to keep the Rurrae bottled up, in the hope that if we can do so then the demons will not be tempted to use the booby-trapped Abyss Gun.
As we prepare, eight demonic cherub-like creatures fly into the chamber and over to the Ittibya. Each Ittibya holds out a hand and a 'cherub' alights on it. They are then sucked into the Ittibya, screaming and dying as they do so, in a cloud of blood that slowly begins to dissipate into the glassy flesh of the Ittibya.
Tristan looks a bit ill at this.
"Do you wish Food?" Uljas asks us.
We politely decline.
The remaining six 'cherubs' are dismissed, and fly off again.
Tristan wants to look at the Rurrae through the life-force lens, to see if it is either Anurerishkigal - which the rest of us doubt - or has a large amount of life-force, in which case Anurerishkigal might be homing in on it.
Ibrahim offers to escort him up the tunnel.
Damien also volunteers to come, to turn down the Hellfire spell that is currently blocking the view of the Rurrae.
"Can you think about a delivery mechanism for the toxin I'm working on?" Phoenix asks Damien as they go off.
He nods.
In the end only Tamarind and Merlin stay behind; everyone else goes with Tristan. This includes Uljas.
As we go Ibrahim activates his Dancing Knives.
Looking through the life-force lens, Tristan notes the Ibrahim's knives are sentient - more so than his own late lamented construct - and so have life-force of their own. He disapproves.
As we arrive at the barrier, Damien turns down the flames of his Hellfire spell.
Tristan looks at the Rurrae further down the passage, first with his eyes, then through the life-force lens.
He sees a peculiar double image - the Rurrae itself, with its own life-force, and the hodge-podge of mangled demonic components, each of which has its own life-force too. Examining the life-force of the Rurrae in particular, he determines that it has a few thousand years worth of life-force in it.
It could thus be drained quite quickly using one of the life-force draining spikes, if the spike could be inserted into the Rurrae membrane itself.
"What's going to happen if we get rid of the Rurrae?" Phoenix asks Uljas.
"We go back to the way things were," it replies. "Stable. Unchanging."
Fair enough.
Down the passage, the tentacles of the Rurrae are approaching.
Damien turns the flames of his Hellfire spell back up to burn them off.
Ibrahim wants to chop off a tentacle with Chrysanthir, so Damien lowers the flames again.
However, this time the Rurrae seems not to take the bait. At least, no tentacles emerge to be cleaved by Chrysanthir.
"We might not pause to chat next time!" we shout down the passage to the Rurrae, attempting to warn it of the dire consequences of opposing us.
"I want to live," it says in a multi-voiced reply, after a considerable delay.
"Why do you want to expand?" Ibrahim asks it.
"I must."
"What is your purpose?" Tristan asks it.
"To serve the Masters."
Further conversation establishes that neither we nor Merlin are its Masters.
"Who are the Masters, then?" asks Tristan.
"The Adretti," it replies.
"The Adretti are demons like we Ittibya in appearance, but transparent red in colour," Uljas tells us. "Though we do not mix with them socially."
"They are workers," Uljas tells us when we ask why this is, as if that explains everything. "I do not know where they are, but they have not been seen recently."
"I must grow. I must eat," chips in the Rurrae.
"Did you assimilate the Adretti?" Tristan asks it.
"Yes."
"But you still serve them?"
"Yes."
"How?" asks Ibrahim.
The Rurrae does not reply.
"Did they ask to be assimilated?" Damien asks.
"No."
"Do they still give you instructions?"
"No."
"So please elucidate the sense in which you serve them," says Damien.
"I serve the Masters."
"Who are assimilated."
"Yes."
"Ah." Damien gives up at this point. Then changes his mind. "How did you serve them before you assimilated them?" he asks. "What was your specific function? Did you make the tea, or what?"
"Building. Moving," replies the Rurrae.
"Building and moving what?"
"Whatever was required."
Tristan passes the life-force lens to Ibrahim, who also has a look at the Rurrae. He sees much the same as Tristan.
"What are you building or moving at the moment?" Damien asks.
"Nothing."
"Shouldn't you be getting on with it then?"
"I must eat and grow," it says.
"Why?" asks Ibrahim.
"I must."
"Can we just shoot it, please?" pleads Phoenix, who is not really enjoying the conversation.
"How old are you?" Tristan asks it.
It names a period of time that translates to roughly a thousand years.
"Do you know of the Courts of Chaos?" Tristan asks it.
"The Masters' Masters," it replies.
"Did they know of you?"
"The Masters' Masters know All," it replies.
"Hmm..."
Tristan studies the shadow path along which the Rurrae has extruded itself. He reckons he could close it off in about half an hour. If not disturbed.
"Have you always needed to eat this much?" Damien asks it. "Before you absorbed your Masters? When you built and moved for them?"
"No," it says. "I just became more hungry. I don't know why."
"When was this?" Ibrahim asks.
It names a time period that translates to some two hundred years, local time. We are not sure when that would have been in Amber timeframe.
"I don't think any of the genetic engineering performed on it was that recent," comments Phoenix. "Whenever it was."
"Were there others like you?" Ibrahim asks the Rurrae.
"Yes."
"What happened to them?"
"I ate them."
We are about to give up on the Rurrae when Tristan, Ibrahim and Damien begin to realise that there is a hint of Pattern in it.
"Did anything containing Pattern go into the Abyss about then?" Phoenix asks.
"Bleys and his Pattern sword went in at what might be the right time," replies Tristan musingly.
"Did you absorb anything unusual then?" we ask the Rurrae.
From its reply we eventually gather that it built things and servants from the things the Masters brought for it to absorb. But it does not recall or recognise anything it absorbed as being 'unusual'. It says that it cannot survive in the Abyss, so did not go feeding there.
From what Tristan, Ibrahim and Damien can sense on the Rurrae, the Pattern quality seems to pervade it rather than having a centre. However, it is too faint for them to be able to associate it with a specific Pattern.
"Wasn't Oberon thrown into the Abyss?" asks Phoenix.
"Oh. My. Lord," comments Tristan worriedly.
"Are we going to shoot this fucker or not?" demands Phoenix.
"I will not be destroyed," it insists.
Hmm...
We bid the Rurrae farewell, and Damien seals it off with Hellfire once again.
We head back to the Tamarind and Merlin.
"Can we just use the Gun on it?" asks Phoenix.
"Well, at least we know it's not part of the Universe's essential furniture," comments Damien.
Phoenix, however, worries that there might just be someone else in the Rurrae in need of rescue. That is, a non-demon. Demons evidently do not count to her. Otherwise she sees no reason not to kill it.
"I think its rampage began about the same time that Bleys and Fiona were dumped into the Abyss," ponders Tristan.
But Bleys was dust and his Pattern sword was probably not digestible, so Damien's conscience is clear.
"Perhaps the ingestion of something Pattern-ish disrupted the magic controlling it?" suggests Ibrahim.
By now we have returned to where Tamarind and Merlin are waiting.
"Can you tell what Pattern imprint the Rurrae has?" we ask Tamarind.
"Not as such," he says. "But I could do a Trump reading."
This sounds like a plan. After some discussion we specify the question to be asked: 'What Pattern-related person or thing has a connection with the Rurrae two hundred local years ago?'
It is not elegant, but Tamarind thinks it will do.
"I could seal off the shadow behind us, to isolate that lump of the Rurrae," Tristan suggests.
No-one else thinks there is much profit to be gained by this at the moment, so we just wait for Tamarind to do the Trump reading.
And Tamarind slowly lays out the cards.
The Ace of Swords appears in the centre of the spread. Right next to it is Damien's Trump. Tamarind points this out to the rest of us. The remainder of the spread is a little harder to interpret, but eventually Tamarind concludes that it indicates disease, or what is basically cancer.
"I think there was a Pattern energy pulse as the sword was destroyed," puts in Tristan. "Probably."
He borrows Chrysanthir from Ibrahim and attempt Osric's Pattern resonance trick to see it he can sense another Pattern sword nearby.
Ibrahim and Damien feel him pumping Pattern energy into the sword.
The demons around us all step back warily.
Despite the energy he pumps into Chrysanthir, Tristan feels no response. There seems to be no sword close by, just its residual energy.
"Could the Pattern pulse really have penetrated this far?" Damien wonders.
"I think so," nods Tristan.
Damien is not unaware that the person who threw Fiona's head into the Abyss is the one who dealt the cards, but he makes no further comment. However, we did all watch Tamarind lay out the cards, so it is fairly likely we would have noticed if he had tried any funny business.
"You don't want to keep it and train it?" Phoenix asks Damien dubiously.
"No, I don't," he replies.
"Phoenix is right," says Tristan. "That thing in there is a diseased thing, and the only thing we can do is put it out of our misery ... Err ..."
We withhold comment on his little slip.
"I'd like to restore it to its controlled state and release those trapped in it," Ibrahim says.
Damien suggests attacking it directly, in the hope that the individuals it has absorbed will be released as it dies.
Ibrahim wonders whether we could find where the Adretti lived and see if we could find any of the spells or other things used to control the Rurrae.
"I'm not sure I could shift shadow for a member of the Adretti," says Tristan. "But I could give it a go."
"I'd prefer to isolate one of the Adretti and talk to it, if possible," says Ibrahim.
In the end, we look to Phoenix for her intelligent, shapeshifting stealth virus (ISSSV) that can attack the Rurrae's brain membrane. "I reckon it'll take a few hours to assemble," she says.
She enlists Ibrahim to help her, and they get to work.
Damien goes off and casts Hellfire spells on the Rurrae's other three access routes, blocking them.
Then he returns and racks a few more such spells.
Tristan re-Empowers his armour and his other, less Real, sword.
Once he has done that, Tristan shifts shadow to find some nutrient soup to help the growth of Phoenix's ISSSV, as well as some food for the rest of us.
It takes him a little while to do this, but he eventually finds something suitable, if bland and probably of dubious origin, and returns with it.
We rest while the ISSSV replicates in its soup.
Ibrahim's plan is to attack the Rurrae with the same tools as we used before - flying daggers, flying darts and so on - so as not to arouse its suspicions. Only this time they will all be coated with the ISSSV. We want to attack and thus infect it from as many points as possible.
"Can we help?" asks Uljas.
"Yes," we tell it.
"We can send demons in to be assimilated, infected with your organism," it tells us.
"Err... OK," we reply dubiously.
"Make sure it looks like a real attack," warns Damien.
"And make sure they don't know that they are infected," both Phoenix and Tristan insist.
Uljas, prepared to order underlings to their deaths or assimilation, seems to have no qualms about lying to them too, and agrees to this.
Phoenix hands him a jar of ISSSV swimming in its nutrient broth.
He leaves to go and infect his sacrificial troops.
We coat every sharp and/or spiky thing we have with the ISSSV solution.
Tamarind takes Merlin back to Amber, leaving us with a few useful Trumps in case of need.
And Tristan shifts us off through shadow, looking for some of the Adretti.
After a short while, we arrive in a passageway with a large hole in its floor just ahead of us. Peering into the hole we see that it is an opening into the roof of a vast chamber filled with the patchwork flesh of the Rurrae. We can also see that parts of it have the red and glassy flesh that we have been told is that of the Adretti.
Damien makes ready to go down. He ties a rope around his ankle, then makes a loop in it above him to hold the Adretti we hope to extract. He gives the other end of the rope to Tristan and Phoenix.
Ibrahim casts a Flight spell on Damien and himself, then activates his knives, which fly out to form a defensive perimeter around him.
Damien dives through the hole in the floor of the passageway. Ibrahim flies through.
As they emerge through the hole, Damien and Ibrahim see that the chamber below stretches off for hundreds of yards in all directions. The Rurrae fills nearly all of it.
Damien flies down towards where an Adretti (or at least something red and glassy) is embedded in the Rurrae and begins cutting it out. He intends to cut out a cone-shaped section of the Rurrae containing the Adretti, then we can take it away and extract the Adretti from the cone in a safer location.
Phoenix throws a cloud of needles down into the Rurrae. They are mostly carrying the ISSSV, though some are more information gatherers that will fly back to her when they are done.
Ibrahim swoops over the Rurrae and gouges a trench in its surface with Chrysanthir. The Rurrae begins to burn where the Pattern blade came into contact with it. His flying knives also stab at it.
Damien finds some of the armoured demons making up the Rurrae to be hard going. He saws at them with Dashwood.
Tentacles erupt from the surface of the Rurrae and writhe towards Damien. He slices at a few with Dashwood, begins casting a Hellfire spell to his left, and keeps sawing.
Ibrahim begins to cast a Sandstorm spell.
In the absence of Tamarind, we can all sense the Rurrae beginning to do something magical.
Phoenix and Tristan both begin to summon Pattern Defence.
Damien's Hellfire spell goes off to his left. Phoom.
Then the spell of the Rurrae. A wave of force ripples out from its surface in all directions.
Damien is carried up and away, but is able to slide sideways so that he is under the hole through which we entered rather than being splattered against the ceiling.
Ibrahim extends Chrysanthir and the magical force field goes 'pop' against his Pattern blade.
Free again, Damien dives back down again, using his momentum to sever a particularly recalcitrant node of demonic gristle.
Ibrahim sends some of his knives off to help Damien cut out the Adretti, then slots in the last lynchpin of his Sandstorm spell.
The Sandstorm gathers over the Rurrae and begins to abrade a trench across its surface.
More tentacles emerge from the Rurrae and extend up to the entrance hole. However, they recoil from the Pattern Defence that Tristan is radiating about himself.
Instead, they move to try and block the hole to trap Damien and Ibrahim inside.
Phoenix works to keep the hole clear.
Below, Damien is spending as much time fighting off tentacles as sawing out the Adretti.
A couple of Ibrahim's knives are seized and absorbed by the Rurrae. The rest continue to hack away to free the Adretti.
Ibrahim flies up to assist Phoenix in keeping the exit hole open.
Tristan stands there radiating Pattern Defence about himself and thus repelling the Rurrae from the passageway above. To the untrained eye this looks much like standing around doing nothing.
The Rurrae begins casting another spell.
"Damien, hurry up, and bring your hands!" Phoenix shouts down to him.
Damien begins casting an undirected Chain Shot spell and trusts to luck. Not an unreasonable thing in his case.
By now we can sense that the Rurrae is casting an Anti-Magic spell.
The Chain Shot spell goes off just in time, and the magical cannonballs and chain plough through the Rurrae, causing it to roar in pain.
Then its Anti-Magic spell goes off, and the Flight spells on Damien and Ibrahim fail. Damien is on the Rurrae, and so is not too badly affected. Ibrahim is flying near the roof of the chamber, and falls, but manages to grab the rope linking Damien to Phoenix and Tristan, arresting his fall. All of Ibrahim's Empowered knives drop out of the air.
With a last slash by Dashwood, Damien finally frees the cone of demon flesh containing the Adretti (as well as lots of bits of other demons) from the body of the Rurrae, and pulls it out. ['The Cone Hotline', perhaps?]
He sticks the narrow part of the cone through the loop he tied in the rope earlier and tugs it tight.
Seeing this, Tristan and Phoenix begin to haul him, the cone and Ibrahim up out of the chamber.
Ibrahim casts a Lightning Bolt spell into the conical hole Damien has left behind.
Phoenix summons her probe needles back from inside the Rurrae, and they fly quickly up and into her.
Before long everyone has been hauled up, and we leave in a hurry, the tentacles of the Rurrae waving us on our way. Or not, as the case may be.
We stop a few shadow veils away.
"I think we should go back to where we started from," suggests Ibrahim.
A mass of Rurrae tentacles emerge from around a corner in another direction to the one from which we have just come, adding urgency to this suggestion.
"Can you block our path as we retreat?" Damien asks Tristan, who nods.
And we shift back through to shadow to where we started, Tristan blocking the Rurrae from following as we do so.
Once there, and watched by Uljas, Damien begins chopping out the red glassy part of the rough cone of demon flesh.
As he does so, the Adretti proves to be shaped much like Merlin was initially - rather like a brain cell.
"We've got a brain cell - our very first!" comments Phoenix.
When it has been stripped of all the other demon flesh, including the Rurrae membrane, we try talking to the Adretti.
It responds, in the same way that the Ittibya can, as a voice in our heads.
We ask it about stopping the Rurrae from absorbing everything in its path.
Unfortunately, its idea of doing so is to tell it not to. But this does not seem to work any more. It cannot help us, since it does not know any more than that. Rurrae obey orders. This one does not. It is a puzzle.
Doh.
Phoenix shapeshifts the Adretti into its proper form, based on the shape of the Ittibya and the faint hints of its own form that she can just discern in it.
Uljas summons some 'cherubs' - or Food, as it calls them - for the Adretti to consume.
The Adretti bows slightly to Phoenix, then hungrily absorbs the Food, which scream and die, as before.
Phoenix then checks the samples she took from the Rurrae during the rescue of the Adretti.
"Did the demon attacks go well?" Damien asks Uljas.
"They did," it replies. "Heavy casualties."
"You can stop now," Damien suggests.
"We have."
"Ah, initiative," comments Damien.
"Procedure."
"Oh."
As she examines the samples taken from the Rurrae, Phoenix finds a bit of it that is full of Pattern. It was from one of the probes that had gone deepest into the Rurrae before she summoned it back.
She calls Tristan over and shows it to him.
Tristan studies it. "It feels like Bleys' Pattern Sword," he eventually concludes.
Damien is forced to conclude that Tamarind was not fiddling the Trump reading after all.
From what Phoenix can tell, the Pattern-infused sample comes from something similar to and larger than - the healing 'doctor fish' we encountered previously. She can also sense that the Rurrae is still linked to it.
Her words inspire an idea in Tristan - to use Chrysanthir to resonate with the residue of Bleys' sword.
Ibrahim hands him Chrysanthir again, and Tristan concentrates hard on it, trying to feed Pattern energy into it in such a way as to resonate at the right 'frequency' to get a return from the fragments of the Rurrae most charged with the residue of Bleys' sword.
This is not a very efficient process, since there is no solid sword to resonate with. Tristan pumps power into it regardless.
After a short while he seems to hit the correct 'frequency' to resonate with the residual Pattern energy. And suddenly the sample Phoenix has begins to grow wildly and out of control...
Phoenix burns it to nothing.
"OK, so no Pattern," comments Damien. "It just encourages it..."
Phoenix creates a few more probes and sends them off into the nearest part of the Rurrae where they will keep track of the progress of the ISSSV.
"The Doctor Fish sample was affected by this experiment, not the physical membrane of the Rurrae itself," notes Damien. "So why haven't we seen other creatures growing out of control due to exposure to the Pattern flash when Bleys' sword was destroyed?"
No-one has an answer to this, but we do speculate that, having some Reality to it, the Rurrae might have some resistance to Phoenix's ISSSV. Possibly.
So we might still have to Brand's gun on it.
All of that being so, the next project is to find a way to block the corrosive effect of the Abyss so that our coming and going is far less unpleasant.
Phoenix beings to study this for us.
However, she can multi-task, so she splits off some of herself, grows both parts up to full size, and the new part resumes her fencing lessons with Damien at the same time.
Tristan surreptitiously works to turn the (small) shadow that we are in into a Shadow of Destiny-type trap, with all of the magic concentrated on the route through which the Rurrae must come. He finds that this is harder than normal, due to the lack of Reality in the shadows here which forces him to be very careful, as otherwise he could simply tear the whole place apart by accident. He almost loses control as he works, but by dint of some urgent work manages not to entirely wreck the shadow.
As he does this, Tristan also works out that he cannot actually shift shadow out of here and back to the surface without going through the Abyss en route.
This is a relief. Sort of. Since it means that Phoenix is not wasting her time working out how to duplicate the Ittibya's ability to resist the effects of the Abyss.
In general, we rest and do magic while Phoenix works.
Phoenix works for a couple of subjective days before she figures out how the Ittibya resist the Abyss.
Once she has done so, she thus modifies us all, and we leave the demon realms and make our way back up to the edge of the Abyss unscathed.
By the time we leave, the Rurrae still does not seem noticeably unwell.
We hope the ISSSV is still burrowing, though.
Upon emerging from the Abyss, we rejoin Brand in his tented encampment.
We tell him what seems to have set the Rurrae off, and what we have done about it so far.
"The protection from the Abyss might also protect against the Abyss Gun," Phoenix points out.
"Good," nods Brand. He seems to be actually wondering whether he can de-invent the Abyss Gun, and is not displeased at the prospect that it might not be all-powerful...
He picks up a new Abyss Gun, which has no arm piece, unlike the earlier models, and takes all of us, and the Ittibya, Oka, to Shadow Blasted Testing Range to show us how the new Abyss Gun works.
Upon arrival he fires it at a boulder, producing a jet of Abyss that dissolves the boulder and the shadow around it much as we saw before. It also produces a light frost of Order on the gun. "That's setting one," he says.
He adjusts the gun and fires again. This time a jet of white, frosty Order is fired while the Gun sheds swirls of Abyss. "Setting two."
"And setting three."
Brand adjusts the Gun again and aims off into the distance. A double helix of Abyss and Order is fired from the Gun. Where it huge explosion erupts, and a small Shadow Storm begins to swirl around that point. We can all tell that that part of the shadow is gone.
"Do you appreciate how fragile shadow is down in the Abyss?" Tristan asks Brand. "What would happen if it was fired down in the demon realm?"
Brand considers this. "It might collapse the shadow," he says. "Though probably not instantly."
Phoenix wants to have a go.
Brand hands her the Gun, still on setting three.
She aims at a point off in the distance, and fires.
BOOM!
She hands it to Ibrahim, who also looks interested.
He gives the horizon a three second burst on setting three. A massive detonation resounds through the shadow. We lose some of the horizon to the ensuing shadow storm.
Tristan shows Brand his Very Real Sword, which can resist both the Abyss and pure Order. Brand examines it interestedly.
Then Tristan realises that he has just showed Brand a way of containing raw Abyss, and curses himself for it.
Phoenix, on the other hand, has no qualms whatsoever about explaining to Brand that she has cracked the problem of resisting the Abyss, and does so. She also gives him a healing skin patch with the resistance built in to it.
"Thank you," says Brand.
"As Phoenix's conferred resistance to the Abyss it not permanent," Ibrahim suggests. "Perhaps we should modify Brand's bathysphere to include a docking collar. And it'll allow us to transport our equipment without all the magic on it being destroyed."
Brand nods. "Perhaps," he says, musingly.
With the demonstration of the new Abyss Gun over, Brand pulls out his Trump of his encampment and opens the link.
We all pass through, leaving the ruined shadow behind, and back to Brand's tent.
"How does the bathysphere work?" Tristan asks the tent at large.
"There was a lever," says Ibrahim helpfully.
"There is a protected, and protective, bubble of shadow inside it," Brand explains. This makes more sense.
Tristan uses the Pattern to summon Castle Corvallin, and the castle floats down out of the rotating sky of Chaos.
Going aboard, Tristan sets his people to moving Brand's bathysphere, and its support pier, winch and all, from where it is now and attaching it to Castle Corvallin. Brand supervises this quite major operation.
While this is being done, Phoenix, with his permission, also modifies Brand to make him Abyss-proof, at least for a while. He seems happier with this than relying on her Abyss-proofing skin patch.
Once the moving of the bathysphere is underway, Brand considers Ibrahim's suggestion.
"Adding a docking collar might take a while," he concludes after a while.
We discuss this, and eventually decide that we only need to be able to swing the bathysphere into the portal. "Someone can just jump out with a cable and pull in it," notes Damien.
"I'm coming with you," Brand tells us. There is a clear sub-text that he wants to play with his new toy...
"I don't like the Abyss Gun," Tristan comments. "If I want to destroy the universe I want to be able to do it myself, in person," he adds in a not exactly comforting manner.
Brand looks both disapproving and amused at this. "That way lies madness," he warns Tristan seriously.
Tristan also manages to offend Phoenix - who may be revising her high opinion of him as a near god-like entity - when he talks about damaged shadows and fixing them as though the latter was an essentially trivial task. Go him...
But eventually the bathysphere is secured to Castle Corvallin, which manoeuvres to above the position of the gate into the demon realms.
We climb aboard, and the bathysphere is lowered into the ever-changing black swirling star-filled expanse of the Abyss.
It takes quite a while to descend to the level of the lower portal, but eventually we get there.
Ibrahim takes the end of the cable and jumps from the bathysphere to the ring with it. Damien follows without a cable.
They brace themselves and haul the sphere in. With that done, we concentrate on the portal, opening it before unloading all of the equipment we do not wish to have to re-enchant.
Oka advises that we do not bring the sphere in. Instead, we leave it outside the portal, in the Abyss, waiting for our return.
We walk the Path of Madness through the Fractal Maze, blasé as can be, pass through the slow-time entrance chamber, out of it, and along the accelerating-time passage to the vast entrance chamber where we are met by the waiting Ittibya and demons.
"Anything new?" Tristan asks them.
"The Rurrae is showing signs of distress," an Ittibya tells us.
"We need to find out where the centre of the Rurrae is," Tristan comments.
"The Adretti we rescued might have an idea," Ibrahim suggests.
A good point.
The Adretti is summoned, and when it arrives, we question it.
It takes us quite a long time for us to formulate the correct questions to get the information we want from it, as, like so many of the other inhabitants of this place, the Adretti seems to have almost no initiative. However, it eventually tells us that the large chamber that we found it in was where the Rurrae first began growing out of control.
We head off in that direction.
"I shall accompany you," Oka insists.
"OK," Tristan tells him. Then leaves him behind a few shadow veils later.
We proceed on alone.
Before long we arrive at the same passageway as before, with the hole in the floor leading down to the chamber of the Rurrae.
Peering in, we see that the chamber below is still filled with a mass of demonic flesh. However, rather than a single unified mass, the patchwork of demons now seems to have become un-stitched, each one detached from its neighbours, writhing, fighting, and generally unhappy.
"Can you tell which bits have Pattern energy?" Tristan asks Brand.
Brand considers this. "Over there," he says, pointing out a part of the Rurrae close to the point from which we rescued the Adretti, and also close to the point from which Phoenix obtained her Pattern-rich sample.
Brand moves to fire with the Abyss Gun in a rather trigger-happy manner.
"As far as your gun is concerned, a kilometre-wide cavern counts as a confined space," Damien notes to him.
Brand reluctantly nods, and adjusts the Gun to setting one.
Phoenix takes the other, old-style, Abyss Gun.
The two of them alternate shots at the Pattern-rich area.
Abyss eats away at the disjointed fabric of the Rurrae. There are no big explosions, so it would not appear to be that rich in Pattern. Some tentacles do swarm up towards us, but they are hesitant. Some blunder into the Abyss-beams and are severed. Others collapse into their constituent parts as they climb.
Tristan fires at other tentacles with his multi-barrelled lightning gun, keeping them from bothering us.
Ibrahim uses Chrysanthir to lop off the few remaining tentacles that reach us. They burn.
Damien stands around in case he is needed.
After a while, the expanding area of Abyss in the cave beneath us begins to spark. A fish-like shape is outlined in the intermittent light ... then there is an explosion of Pattern energy. ['Releasing its Inner Fish', perhaps?]
We all feel the shadow shudder. "I think we have about twenty seconds before the shadow disintegrates!" Tristan tells us.
Phoenix wonders whether she can retrieve the outlined thing in that time ... but then the twenty seconds are up.
Damien quickly tosses Brand and Tristan down the corridor towards the shadow veil out of here. They land running. The rest of us follow them at speed.
We pass through the shadow veil out of the Rurrae's shadow and on through the ones beyond. Some strands of Abyss leak after us, but we manage to outrun them.
As we go we encounter the Ittibya, Oka, who is more than a little displeased.
"I was supposed to accompany you!" it complains.
We basically tell it to live with it, and ask if it recognises the fish-like shape that we saw. It does not.
"We can ask the Adretti," Damien suggests. "They probably fed it to the Rurrae in the first place."
After a while we arrive back at the first chamber, and locate the Adretti.
We ask it about the creature we saw.
"It was a Psenag," it says. "An Abyss-scavenger. We used to catch them and feed them to the Rurrae when required."
"As far as we can tell, the Rurrae is not happy," the Ittibya tell us.
Hmm...
We make ready to return to see whether there is anything left to retrieve where the Rurrae was.
"Give it an hour or so," comments Brand.
We ask the Ittibya for the other Abyss Guns, but they refuse to hand them over. We leave the resolution of this issue for the meantime...
We head back towards where the Rurrae was when Brand thinks it is safe to do so.
We find that we cannot go more than about half-way; beyond that point the shadows are all dissolved away, and there is only the Abyss.
"Perhaps the bathysphere?" suggests Brand.
"Or, we could do the resonance thing again," Phoenix suggests.
We discuss this, and eventually decide to do both.
We head back through the (surviving) demon realm, out through the Fractal Vortex, and climb back into the bathysphere. Then we try the resonance trick.
With Tristan pumping Pattern energy into Chrysanthir, he does pick up a signal, and gets a direction to it. However, now we need to move there.
From what Brand says the cable does form a continuous link up to the winch that could be used to communicate, but the easiest way to direct the lateral movement of Castle Corvallin would seem to be to go up, determine where we want to go from there, and then move to the appropriate position before being lowered down again.
We do this thing.
From Castle Corvallin Brand and Tristan once again use Chrysanthir to determine direction to the Psenag. Castle Corvallin manoeuvres until it is directly above the faint echo of Bleys' Pattern Sword deep in the Abyss.
When we are in position, we once again descend in the bathysphere.
After some hunting around, we finally locate a cloud of thunder and lightning generated from Pattern energy reacting badly with the Abyss. Within the cloud is a twisted creature floating in the Abyss, being slowly eaten away by it. There is a lot of other debris in its vicinity too, also dissolving into the Abyss.
From what we can see, the Psenag was an insect-mouthed creature like two crossed manta rays (with their 'wings' in an 'x' shape when seen from the front), similar to the 'Doctor Fish', if much larger. It seems to be very heavily armoured, with metallic scales. It is also covered in what look like cancerous blobs. From what we can see it may take as much as another day to dissolve fully into the Abyss.
It is unclear whether any of the Pattern sword remains inside it, but the resonance does feel 'soft' rather than 'hard', as if it had absorbed or digested the sword.
Brand uses the grapples on the bathysphere to secure the corpse of the Psenag.
Once it is firmly gripped, Ibrahim climbs outside and, braving the Pattern discharges around it, uses Tristan's Real sword to chop up the body of the Psenag, making it dissolve that much faster.
The Psenag itself is all that is left of Bleys' Pattern Sword and its power. Once Ibrahim chops it up, it only takes a couple of hours for the last of it to eventually fade away and dissolve into the Abyss...
As the Abyss calms down, we head back up to Castle Corvallin.
The next item on our agenda is to retrieve the other Abyss Guns from the demons.
"I could shift shadow to the first working model," says Brand consideringly. "As it's the one I spent the most time working on as a complete unit. The prototype and the big one I'm less sure about..."
"I do have a means of disabling them, though," he adds. "A Trump sketch of the control switch for each gun. They are purely psychic links to a psychically operated switch in each one; we can't just reach through and grab them; these Trumps will not allow it. And we'd have to be inside the demon realm to activate the Trumps at all, of course."
Still, this sounds promising.
Castle Corvallin positions itself over the gate to the demon realms again and we are lowered down to it in the bathysphere, passing through the portal and into the demon realm once again. Damien is carrying the Mark II Abyss Gun.
Once we are in, Brand begins shifting shadow towards the first production Abyss Gun.
En route, we encounter one of the Ittibya. "The Rurrae is dead," it says.
We tell it that we now need the Abyss Guns to be returned.
"You cannot have the Guns, and you may not destroy them either," it says.
We shrug and carry on, dragging the Ittibya along with us through shadow.
We tell it that we are taking the Guns back either way. After all, they don't really need them, and in fact will probably end up destroying themselves with them in any case. So it would be better for everyone if they just gave them to us.
The Ittibya is unconvinced.
After a short while we reach a barricade, where a Joseg demon has the Gun we are looking for.
Damien distracts the demons and grabs the Gun. However, the arm piece still attaches it to the demon, and Damien does not actually break the connection. It seems to be too well made. A struggle ensures. The demon cannot wrench the gun back, but nor can Damien detach it. Shooting it with the Mark II Gun on Setting Two just dribbles small patches of Order on them.
Phoenix begins casting a Vaporising spell at the Joseg.
One of the Ittibya behind the barricade also begins to cast a spell.
Tristan Lightening Bolts them with his lightning cannon.
Damien drops the Mark II Gun, takes out Wilkes, shoots the Joseg between the eyes, holsters Wilkes again, and catches the Mark II Gun before it hits the ground.
Unfortunately the bullet bounces off the Joseg. Damn.
Then Phoenix's spell goes off, and the Joseg disintegrates into nothing.
Damien grabs the now-detached Gun and tosses it to Ibrahim.
The other demons on the barricade are attacking us too, but do not last very long.
"Well?" we say to the Ittibya who came with us.
"I need to consult with my fellows," it says.
That being so, we take it back to the vast entrance chamber.
Once there, it summons more Ittibya, and they confer mentally.
"What will you give us in return?" asks a spokes-Ittibya when they finish conferring.
"We'll leave you in peace," says Ibrahim.
"We'll let you live," says Phoenix.
They consider this, then give the order for the prototype Abyss Gun to be brought in.
While it is being transported here, we wonder whether the demons are going to try to double-cross us. It would be in keeping with what we have seen of them, but probably also hindered by their terrible inability to lie. That being so, Tristan begins concentrating on the Brand's Trump of the Abyss Gun off switch.
After a while, the prototype Abyss Gun arrives, carried by demons, and is handed to Tristan. He continues concentrating on the Trump off switch of the Big Gun.
Then the Big Abyss Gun arrives on demon-back.
And is pointed at us. "Fire!" orders one of the Ittibya.
The gunner demon pulls the trigger.
Nothing happens.
The demons look a little taken aback by this.
Phoenix shoots the Ittibya who gave the order with her Abyss Gun. It dies.
Ibrahim fires a Lightning Bolt at the gunner demon, which tumbles off the large Gun-carrying demon. He then heads for the larger demon to retrieve the Gun.
Arriving beside it, he slashes its leg with Chrysanthir, wounding it and setting it on fire at the same time. The demon falls as it starts to immolate.
Phoenix sprays the demons with Abyss Gun fire. She is pissed off and not taking any prisoners. The vast chamber we are in begins to dissolve into Abyss.
Damien and Ibrahim chat about the best way to carry the Big Abyss Gun.
Then they just pick it up and carry it off.
Tristan senses demons beginning to cast magic, and hoses that area down with Lightning Bolts.
Damien tosses down a 'Removed For Conservation' card and we all exit through the portal, heading back down the decelerating-time passageway.
Phoenix keeps firing her Abyss Gun until we are out of sight.
We do not seem to be being followed...
The demons in the entrance chamber seem to be oblivious to what has just transpired behind them, and let us pass back into the Fractal Vortex without incident.
Once outside on the portal ring, we haul in the bathysphere, clamp the Big Abyss Gun onto the outside, and climb in. We are now ready to leave.
"I think we should mess up the Fractal Vortex so the demons can't get out again," says Tristan. "It's for their own good, really."
"I'll help," chips in Brand.
No-one really disputes that this is a good idea.
So Tristan and Brand exert the power of the Pattern and comprehensively break the Path of Madness into the demon realms, barring the route to all of the powers that they can think of.
And with that done, up we go in the bathysphere.
On the way up we discuss what to do now.
Tristan is in favour of dismantling the Abyss Guns.
"We should get rid of the Big Gun and the prototype," Ibrahim agrees. "But the King should decide the fate of the others."
Fair point.
After a while we are hauled back up into Castle Corvallin, which flies us back to Brands encampment.
"Could I have a copy of the plans of the bathysphere?" Ibrahim asks Brand.
"Of course," nods Brand. "Would you like a copy as well?" he asks Tristan.
Tristan shakes his head.
On reaching Brands camp, Brand offers tea and cake all round.
Once everyone has the refreshments they desire, he removes the control crystals for the prototype and big Abyss Guns. And smashes them with a hammer.
"We should disguise the test range and destroy all evidence of its use, too," Ibrahim suggests.
Brand and Tristan think they could re-write that shadow and fix it up again to disguise what took place there. Good.
"I regret having to destroy my own work," says Brand a little sadly, "But..."
As we talk about what to do with the Abyss Guns we gain the revelation that Brand spent some seventy subjective years developing them.
"You could have spent the time more fruitfully developing traps for Anurerishkigal," Damien remarks pointedly.
"Oh, that would have been easy," replies Brand dismissively.
He and Damien begin to argue over the prioritising of his research. "I work as the muse takes me, not as you - or indeed even I - would necessarily wish," says Brand angrily.
The argument spirals out of control, then peters out with neither Brand nor Damien being impressed with the other.
"I haven't seen anyone else do anything about Anurerishkigal over the years," observes Phoenix.
"I made the suggestion, which I can't put into practise yet," points out Damien. "And I haven't heard anyone else come up with any ideas."
"The secrets of Life and Death will be my next big project," announces Brand.
"Jolly good," says Damien.
"I recall that Caine/Finndo collected some bits of Anurerishkigal in a couple of Soulstones, back when the unborn children were killed," Ibrahim interjects.
Brand, to whom this is news, is appalled.
"Someone to compare notes with," Damien comments.
Tristan manages to drag the subject of conversation back around to Abyss Guns.
Brand pulls out his Trump of King Random and concentrates on it.
When Random takes the call, Brand explains as much of the situation as Trump security allows, and Random comes through.
The Abyss Guns are explained to him, and he is taken to the test range where he fires a few practise shots with them. He seems more than a little perturbed.
"I think we should keep the two production model Mark I's and the prototype Mark II," says Brand. "But destroy the other two."
"Where do we keep them?" Tristan wants to know. "I'm not keen on Amber..."
"I think it would be wise to keep them disabled, with the enabling parts held elsewhere," suggests Ibrahim.
There is some argument as to how safe even the Primal Pattern is as a place of storage. Tristan is of the opinion that a Shadow of Destiny trapped to hell is the way to go.
"Shadow is not a big problem for Fiona," Phoenix notes.
"I agree," nods Random.
We dismantle the two redundant Abyss Guns, then Brand casts an anti-scrying spell on his laboratory. From there, he Trumps us back to the test range shadow.
In the midst of the blasted, Abyss-dissolved landscape, Brand dispels the magic on the parts of the two Guns, then destroys the Trump power on them. He then casts another anti-scrying spell on the remains before using a third spell to levitate the parts and then melt them all together into a homogenous ball of molten matter. A fourth spell causes the molten ball to fragment into a cloud and then vanish, its atoms randomly dispersed across the entire shadow.
Brand then encrypts his laboratory notebooks before giving them and the remaining three guns to Random.
The rest of us watch as Brand and Tristan then fix the test range shadow, essentially rebuilding and rewriting it from the ground up. This takes some time.
While the shadow is being repaired, we discuss the situation further.
The issue of who gets to know about all of this soon arises.
We decide to keep our own mouths shut, and leave it to King Random to decide who else should know about the Guns.
"Osric and Sandrine should be informed," Ibrahim suggests.
"Girasol might be a safer location than Amber, being less of a target..." muses Damien, less helpfully.
Random takes all of this under advisement.
Eventually the test range shadow is fixed, and is now just another rather dull uninhabited generic shadow of rocky terrain.
We Trump back to Brand's tented encampment.
In the laboratory, Brand extracts the control crystals from the three surviving Guns and gives them to Random too.
"Copies of the disabling Trump should be passed on to Random too," Damien suggests.
"I'll get on with it shortly," Brand nods. "And after that, once I've had a holiday, I'll contact you to discuss Life and Death," he tells us.
By now, from our discussions, our own priorities are to talk to Finndo about the fragments of Anurerishkigal in the Soulstones, and do something about the disappearances in Castle Amber.
"I think I would prefer an escort back to Amber for all of this," says Random.
Fair point.
Brand produces some small wooden crates and begins packing the Guns into them.
"Wine casks would be less conspicuous," Ibrahim comments.
Brand looks slightly long-suffering, but nods, and quickly locates three casks into which the Guns are re-packed. He also provides two identical-looking casks that do actually have wine in them.
And with everything ready, another anti-scrying spell is cast on the tent, and Random uses his super-Trump to return to the Amber Arrival Courtyard.
From there, Random leads us and the casks up into the main Keep of Castle Amber. "This'll do," he tells us when are well inside the place, and leaves us, taking the control crystals with him.
A short while later he returns without the control crystals and with the Jewel of Judgement.
He concentrates on the Jewel and he and the three non-wine-filled casks vanish in a flash of red Jewel energy, heading for Dworkin's cave by the Primal Pattern. "Well done," he tells us as he fades away.
Fifteen minutes later he returns with three identical-seeming casks with wine in them. "Fancy a drop?" he asks us, taking off the Jewel and putting it in his pocket.
"You realise those are un-taxed..." begins Tristan.
"Shoot him," says Phoenix to the group at large.
"I'm joking," complains Tristan.
"Hold up a sign when you do that," Damien tells him.