Bree duplicates herself to tackle two separate tasks. She’ll merge into which ever one isn’t done yet. Trumps will be routed by contact to the appropriate Bree. Isabelle has the failsafe to trigger the merge manually.
If this Gerhardt is fully activated, the real one will die. He begins to walk the pattern, making appropriate preparations first. Odd things happen as he walks. He’s exhausted — more than he expected. He feels like he may be pushing the limits of his facade. The darkness comes to the front of his mind and he becomes aware of its presence. Nonetheless, he perseveres.
Brigid is at Castle Amber training with Natasha. An odd storm blows in. The “boss music” gets louder. She trumps Dworkin, who is rather nonplussed by the news and says not to worry about it. Trying to destroy a primordial entity is just going to have repercussions.
Natasha asks if anything needs to be killed. “No, no, all good,” Brigid quickly replies.
Bree joins hands with Gerhardt at the center of the pattern, and as that happens they streak across all of existence. Gerhardt notices they are creating ripples and tears across shadows. They land in darkness and have difficulty wrapping their heads around how long this is taking. They reach a place with pseudo-organic pods and feel drawn to a particular one. There are at least a few hundred, but it’s hard to tell in their ethereal state. As they approach that one, they feel Gerhardt inside it. There is no obvious way to open it, so Bree attempts to cut it. Finding their ghostly forms useless on that front, they decide to just enter the pod.
Gerhardt Actual awakens, realizing that the actions he “remembers” were not his own, he now sees the purple nimbus of his former self. Bree unleashes her blade of doom on the thing. It screeches an ungodly noise and drops to the ground. Someone is approaching! Trumps are not working. SHIT. RUN!
What the heck is going on? The words they’re saying make no sense. It’s utterly indecipherable gibberish. As Anti-Gerhardt’s wound worsens, they all become concerned. Gerhardt Actual calls upon the pattern and a GONG rings out. There is dead silence. Well this would work, but it’s not going to be subtle. Gerhardt teaches Bree a song and as they start singing it, a murderous rage overcomes the people. Strangely, they are not getting any closer. In fact, Bree and Gerhardt are getting further away.
Brigid goes to see her mom up in her tower. She’s is doing something with the Pattern and a pentagram, floating over them both. Brigid nervously babbles all her concerns, and her mom is also a little dismissive. Not totally, but she’s not freaking out or anything. She’s mostly irritated that Dworkin didn’t mention it to her when they talked just now. She’s going to continue her mission of ensuring Amber’s safety through wards and trip warnings. Performing magic in Amber is really difficult, so Brigid assists by figuring out how things work and seeing if they help or hurt her efforts.
Jericho and Silas work on moving troops into Chaos using trump gates. Silas seems to have forgotten he has an excellent trump artist in the family. Like a close ally. Really close. Anyway, he also needs to hide the evidence of what they’re doing. Should he reach out to Dara? They talk and she’s totally onboard. All she wants is for Amber to give support to a few minor houses; create trade and be supportive. He gets the impression she’s going to use them to do something else. Isabelle finally gets a call and agrees to help once Silas explains that she’s the best for this task.
Gerhardt and Bree end up in… Ireland? Finnegan makes an epic entrance. “Do you WANT to die?” Gerhardt explains that is exactly what they were trying to escape. “How can I be sure it’s really you?” He calls Brigid who vouches for Bree and comes through to help sort out things. He grills Bree to find out how Gerhardt overcame his mimicry. Bree explains the ritual from Dworkin and volunteers to forget his song if he wants. He thinks she’s a little off and familiar. He chalks it up to her being an Amberite shape shifter.
The Red King did his piece and 90% of the troops fell down. The ensorcelled undead are not recoverable, which is the vast majority of them. Jericho decides it is not important to finish off everyone and instead quickly proceed to the well. The small strike force led by Jericho arrives to find the tower shifting in and out of reality. Silas peeks in the underground and finds an insidious horde writhing around. Not going that way!
Jericho jumps across the threshold with his dozen in tow. And now there are six. Silas loses the outside of his right (non-dominant) hand. It’s bleeding, but he bandages it without slowing down.
Isabelle notices body parts falling to the ground as they go through. She can’t easily tell what belongs to who, so she doesn’t really worry about it. It’ll grow back if it’s Silas or Jericho. She’s got a job to do anyway.
They see the Emperor! Silas takes his shot and blows off half his head. The emperor turns and looks from the other side. “That was uncalled for,” he mildly complains. He reaches into the ground and hurls a broken tile at Silas, pinning him up on the wall by his right shoulder. Jericho rushes in and the emperor stands slowly. He grabs one of Jericho’s forces and throws him through the rest of them. All gone.
His raw power is astounding! There doesn’t seem to be any magic at play. Jericho slashes into him and blood spurts everywhere. The emperor flexes a muscle and grips the sword. Jericho transforms his sword into the perfect weapon and a white-yellow flame erupts from it. It is finally causing some pain, but to both the emperor and Jericho.
Silas blows a hole in the emperor’s chest. “You’re starting to piss me off,” he grumbles. Jericho goes for a leg and as he does, the emperor leaps to the ceiling and launches off the ceiling back down at Jericho. On the way down, the emperor loses an arm to Jericho’s blade. Jericho swings again but the emperor catches his wrist and breaks it. Jericho catches it in the other hand and cuts off a leg. After a little more massacring, Jericho calls Brigid to confirm if he is a corpse or not. She comes through and confirms it. Dead dead.
Brigid does her best to patch up Silas for now. Dworkin’s plan requires that they bring Bree there and then he will secure it. She fiddles with the trump contact to make it safer and comes through without issue. She trumps Dworkin and he comes through. He then throws them out through trump. Gerhardt is told to next walk the death pattern and wait in the middle.
Lowen makes Jericho a huntsman for some reason. I dunno, he has horns now. Whee.
Bree and Dworkin catch up with Gerhardt at the center of the death pattern. Dworkin casts through her and into Gerhardt. Later Bree will remember this as quite painful, but right now she’s disassociated from it. He pulls out the Jewel and then it becomes all of reality around them and then he collapses it back down. They lose consciousness as they hear Dworkin scream in agony and terror, crumpling into different forms and breaking bones. Something oozes from his mouth and everything goes dark.
A column of power and darkness breaks loose at the citadel. Everyone with psyche below 2 passes out. A colossal demon arises from the blast. Alice tells Jericho that it’s her brother! “They” have no idea what the colossus demon thing is. They didn’t do that. They did do what they intended. Oberon’s task of ending the Sorcerer Kings is complete — this is not their problem.
Silas trumps to the Phoenix Empire for better medical treatment.
Gerhardt and Bree wake up to the pattern crackling with dark energy. Dworkin is breathing, but that’s about it. The well’s energy is now “integrated” with the pattern. Not quite the right word, but it will do for now.
Omg PUPPY!!!! I am so sorry I missed some stuff… but did you see Biscuit??
Gerhardt talks to ___ about the place with all the pods.
Lowen chases the last Sorcerer King? He ends up in the Winter Court. A woman with dark hair and black eyes is curled up on the stairs playing a harp. The Queen says there are no more Sorcerer Kings; they have all renounced their titles. Lowen actively investigates her and the Queen politely objects. She says that as long as the woman is a member of her court, she would instigate no threat to Amber.