Artemis’ Journal Entry #3
Life stinks when you’re standing at butt level with the rest of the world. But that’s the situation I found myself in, so what are you gonna do? Okay, let me back up and start from the beginning…
Maeve, Kailani, and I were still in the Courts of Chaos. We’d been there about a week, so I figured, with the time flow difference, no one in Amber was missing us yet. I’d shown the ladies around Chaos, introduced them to my friends in the Bregan D’aerthe and to my family. They even got to visit briefly with their cousin, Merlin, King of Chaos.
We were in a Shadow near the Courts enjoying a nice cliff-side dinner outdoors with my oldest friend Driskel, when some kind of “energy wave” came out of nowhere and floored us all. The next thing I know Maeve and Kailani have doubled in size and are twelve feet tall. I’m not used to viewing the world from down here, but so far, I had no complaints. Maeve must have been working out recently…
Driskel excused himself to check in with Chaos. Personally, I thought he’d laid on the charm a little thick, but, hey, that’s Driskel. I thought the ladies would want to return to Amber to check in there but Maeve surprised me (maybe Kailani too, I don’t know; I’m not a mind reader), by suggesting we go to her personal Shadow. I wasn’t really sure why but I didn’t have any objections either, so we went along with it. I never did get the name of the place but we had to walk through a big hole in a huge tree to get there. Some kind of security check point?
Everything in her Shadow was smaller as well, but only by about a foot or so. That’s when we realized the ladies didn’t grow, everything else had shrunk. The stuff in her personal Shadow had shrunk by about 20%, while Driskel and I, and presumably everything in Chaos, had shrunk by a whopping 50%.
We’d barely arrived when I began to receive a Trump call. Weird. So few people Trump me and I’m standing next to the two people who do it most often. It turned out to be Mandor who was reaching out to let me know that he was stepping in for King Merlin, who was incapacitated from whatever was going on. He kept shifting dramatically in size from three feet to six feet and he seemed to be in a constant state of flux. Mandor was acting a regent until Merlin was back to normal.
Kailani tried a couple of Trump calls but got nowhere. Maeve suggested she call her mother, Llewella, and Kailani turned a little greener than normal. I really don’t know what Kailani’s problem with her mother is. Llewella seems perfectly nice to me. But I have no issues with my own parents so who knows. Maybe Kailani is holding a grudge because Llewella wouldn’t let her have a pet stingray as a child or something. Before Kailani could make her dreaded Trump call, Maeve received one from her father, Bleys. He confirmed that “Shadow stuff” had shrunk by about 20%. He suggested we all return to Amber, which is where he was headed himself.
Trumping into Amber’s main hall, we discovered that Amber itself had not been affected, just the castle staff. So, the Amberites and their castle were completely unaffected, while Shadow stuff shrank a little, and the Chaos side of things shrunk by half. Typical. Chaos is always getting the short end of the stick. See what I did there?
We all were gathering in the library. We met Gerard along the way who did a terrible job of hiding his snickering at my misfortune. I was expecting it from Random, but not necessarily the others. Bastards. Kailani’s cousin from Rebma, Edmund, was also here standing with Llewella, which Kailani found odd, but she didn’t have a chance to speak with him yet. After Random got done with his own guffawing at my expense, he told me that he had also spoken to Mandor and that some of the Houses of Chaos think its an attack from Amber. Why do they always think that? Of course, when that undead fleet was moving through Shadow toward Rebma, The Courts were quick to send me to ensure Amber that it wasn’t an attack from us. So, I guess that door swings both ways.
Random asked Maeve to Trump Fiona and pull her through to Amber, which she did, and Kailani was asked to Trump Flora. Now this is where the mystery begins. According to Flora, nothing was amiss or out of the ordinary on Shadow Earth. In fact, Flora had no knowledge of anything being out of the ordinary. Random insisted that she return to Amber, so Kailani pulled her through. She must have been at a resort or something because she came through wearing only a bikini and a sheet sarong. (Don’t stare, Artemis... Don’t stare... Don’t stare.)
Because things move faster in the Courts of Chaos, things… well, move faster. Mandor Trumped Random again to inform him that Chaos learned that Shadow Earth was unaffected by the energy wave, so they figured that was its origin point. At least they were no longer blaming Amber. (Side note: “They.” Since when did I start thinking of Chaos as “they” and not “we?”) Mandor also informed Random that House Malvora, among others, think the Lords of Chaos should travel to Shadow Earth and use Primal Chaos to destroy it. I guess they thought that that would fix it? Who knows? Some of the other Houses agreed, while others disagreed, so it was a deadlock. Meaning Mandor did not have the authority to make a decision. House Malvora did make a decision, however, which was to take it upon themselves to travel to Shadow Earth and destroy it.
After the Trump call with Mandor was over and all of this information was relayed to us all, Random asked me who the heel House Malvora was. Where do I even start? The Reader’s Digest version is that they’re rebel-rousers and malcontents. Nobody really likes them and my House (Entreri) has a feud with them going back several centuries.
Corwin and Flora both speak up (stop staring, stop staring) and say they both have an affection for the place and won’t see it come to any harm. If it means fighting some House Malvora goons, then I’m all in. Its decided that Random will stay behind with Vialle to you know, run the kingdom and such, while everyone else goes to Shadow Earth. By everyone else, I am of course referring to Benedict, Corwin, Bleys, Fiona, Julian, Gerard, Flora, Llewella, Martin, Edmund, Maeve, Kailani, and myself. House Malvora is royally screwed right now and doesn’t even know it. Despite being at crotch height and surrounded by mostly guys, this might turn out to be an all right day.
Maeve uses her fancy group teleport spell to teleport us to an empty theater in someplace called New York City. Fiona and Bleys immediately began using something called a Pattern Lens to look around the Shadow, while Flora went to look for the costume room for something more fitting to wear. Thank the Serpent. It was getting harder, uh, I mean more difficult, to not drool. For some reason I didn’t want Maeve to get the wrong idea. I wonder what that’s about.
Kailani finally got her chance to talk to Edmund. From what I gathered, he’s spent most of his time in Rebma and has had little interest in Amber or getting to know his Amber relatives. Apparently, he’s kept his distance because he’s Brand’s son. Something must have changed his mind, because here he is. Whatever. Not really any of my business.
It didn’t take long at all for Bleys to find a host of demons and Primal Chaos eating away at some city’s buildings. Once more with the mass teleport spell and there we all were. Fiona stayed behind to continue her own search, while Flora stayed with her to act as a communications relay, which I thought was smart since no one would be able to contact Fiona directly for updated information. This way everything could be relayed through Flora.
When you’re in a fight, whether it’s a 30 second scuffle or an hour long battle, some principles remain the same. One of which is this: emotions run high and you tend to act and react on instinct. This leaves you with the bewildering task of trying to recreate the events as you remember them, after the fact. Ever have an argument with someone and you can’t remember everything you, or they, said in the correct order. It comes back to you in pieces and you have to recreate the sequence of events in your head. Fighting for your life has the same effect. Or, at least it does for me. All I can tell you is that there were tons on House demons being slaughtered by various Amberites in interesting and unique ways.
Somebody threw down an ice “slip and slide,” which I’d seen Kailani do before, so I’m guessing that was her. She was fighting next to Llewella. It was nice to see them spending some mother-daughter time together. I was fighting near Maeve and Bleys. I’ve heard of Pattern swords before but never actually seen once used before today. I might have turned several shades of white when the slightest cut from Bleys’ Pattern sword caused the demon’s wound to spout fire. Yikes. Note to self: figure out every Amberite that has once of these Pattern swords, and never, ever, do anything to get on their bad side, or piss them off. (No Bleys, I swear your daughter and I are only friends…).
When the skirmish was over two members of House Malvora lay dead at our feet and the demons were retreating… somewhere. Trask and Wernia Malvora were both dead. Good riddance to bad rubbish, and all that. They were here against the regent’s orders, so who the Abyss were they to call me “traitor?”
Corwin Trumped Flora and we headed back to the empty theater. Fiona informed us that there were three more areas being attacked simultaneously with Primal Chaos. Benedict stepped in and gave us all marching orders.
Benedict, Julian, and Martin are headed to Hong Kong; Fiona, Corwin, and Edmund will defend New York City;
Bleys, Gerard, and Llewella are going to London; Flora will stay in here to be the relay point for communications;
Leaving Maeve, Kailani, and myself to look for the cause of the problem. Why do we always draw the short straw? You’d think they’d want someone with more experience on this. Wouldn’t Fiona be a better choice for this? Oh well. Its Benedict… I’m not going to contradict him.
We make a quick plan, which is to Hellride (Hellwalk?) out of this Shadow and then Shadow walk back into the Shadow moving toward the anomaly. Man, Pattern is useful. Are they sure I can’t walk it?
So, we do this and end up back in Shadow Earth about an hour later, at some remote cottage on a hill surrounded by flowers. Even though the house is obviously abandoned, it’s picturesque; except for the weird lines of energy emanating from out of the house. Kailani has that look she sometimes gets like she ate a garden slug, and she rifles through the Trumps she found back in Brand’s room (when we were looking for Frakir). I remember they were all pretty scary and creepy except this once of a house on hill surrounded by flowers…. Uh oh.
We approached the house when all of the lines of energy coalesced into a vaguely humanoid shape… and charged us. One of the women, Maeve I think, remarked that it reminded her of the lines of the Pattern. I was too busy dodging and running for my life to notice much of anything. We retreated far enough away that the humanoid shape dissipated and returned to being lines of energy coming from the house. Maeve had the idea to use their Pattern Defense while walking past it to see if it would ignore them. All I had was Logrus Defense, which I felt would do nothing other than put a big target on my back and/or piss it off.
We approached the house from three different sides of equal distance. Our plan seemed to work because it formed up again and came after me. So, either the Pattern Defense thing worked or it just didn’t like me. How could it not though? I’m charming, congenial, and fun-loving? Perhaps that’s why it singled me out? It just wanted to play. Well, all right. While the women disappeared inside the house I ran around the exterior, getting closer and then farther away from the house. This made it take humanoid form and then revert over and over again. I was hoping this might make it tired, but no such luck. Then I tried hurling insults at it. That also didn’t seem to have any effect. Or maybe it just knew all my punchlines.
I was about to get brave (read: stupid) and try the Logrus out against it, when the ladies emerged. They said in the basement was some kind of 3-d model of the Pattern on a smaller scale – about 15 feet across. It was sentient and said it was built by Brand some fifteen years ago but had only just been activated. So, what woke this thing up? We still don’t know and, frankly, that might be the most terrifying part of this whole escapade. It said some short people came by and tried to destroy it. We’re guessing this was House Malvora, so it built the Pattern avatar outside to keep others out. It demanded his “dad” but since Brand was dead, that wasn’t gonna work. One of the women suggested getting Edmund and having him talk to it “brother to brother,” so to speak.
A Trump call later and Edmund is with us and filled in on the situation. They all pull up Pattern Defense and head back inside, leaving me hurl ill intent on the Pattern avatar watch dog. Once inside though, Kailani Trumped me so I could see what was going on inside. I thought that was very considerate of her.
The long and the short of it is that Edmund talked to the thing, told it that Brand had changed his mind about replacing the Pattern with it and was able to turn it off. Once it was off, another energy wave shot out of the thing and I was back to my normal size. The Pattern construct turned into nothing more than an intricate, one-dimensional pattern scribbled into the basement floor. Then Maeve cut her arm open and bled all over it. They Trumped in Corwin and Fiona who also bled all over it. At first, I thought this was some kind of sadistic ritual I was witnessing but then I noticed their blood actually erased the Pattern. In fact, I’d say 90% or so was erased, which I’m assuming rendered it powerless.
We regrouped at the NYC theater and everybody seemed no worse for wear (except Edmund, who had some minor cuts). While many members of House Malvora were killed, it sounds like a few got away and retreated back to the Courts of Chaos. We returned to Amber, leaving Flora behind to monitor the situation here on Shadow Earth.
Over the next few days, we learned several things. Flora reported that the people of Shadow Earth now know about, and believe in, the supernatural. Hard to argue with that little revelation when there’s news coverage of demons flying around various cities. Mandor also informed Random that Merlin was fine and the remaining three members of House Malvora were excommunicated from the Courts and stripped of their titles. So basically, they went into exile somewhere. I’m sure they blame Amber and not their own poor decision making skills. Something tells me that we haven’t heard the last of the Malvoras.
Maeve asked Kailani and I if we wanted to return to her personal Shadow. Kailani declined but I jumped at the chance (but I played it cool). We had a very nice time there and that’s all I’m gonna say about that. Except… I think I might have a girlfriend now.