We retired to our hotel room to discuss our options. Christina (krîs-tê¹ne) nipped off for a short while and returned looking slightly older. (Apparently, the result of a couple of side adventures, one in Cârnford, and one in a shadow Victorian England).
Suddenly, we noticed a ball-bearing floating in the air about 6 feet off the ground in the entranceway to the foyer. Drake (drâk) approached it and disappeared in a blinding flash of light. In his place was a person with a big black visor, a huge black cloak, and dressed all in black--except for a large white question mark on his chest. He had a huge maniacal grin on his face, and he placed what appeared to be a bomb in the room. Handel (hànd¹l) grabbed him, and they crashed out the window--thirteen stories up.
Handel managed to break his opponent's back and float to the ground in some alternate form. His opponent did not survive. He discovered that the person he killed had been possessed by a demon calling itself "Mr. Why." The demon entered Handel's mind and gave him the message, "a sacrifice."
Meanwhile, as the bomb slowly counted down from 2 1/2 minutes, Christina and Jyfféer (je-fêr¹) discussed how to dispose of the bomb. Finally, at about T-minus-a-minute, Christina took the bomb and disposed of it in the shadow Sahara Desert.
On the other side of the ball-bearing, Drake found himself on a blasted plain, with three other people--a female named Miss Wonderstarr, a tall blond male, and a large gentleman laying in a pool of his own blood. Drake witnessed an altercation between the large gentleman, whom we later learned was named Ben, and the others. It was a rather violent fight, with Miss Wonderstarr hurling Ben about 50 meters, and Ben ripping Miss Wonderstarr's head off. After the dust had settled, Drake healed Ben. He was unsuccessful in attempts to probe the ball-bearing, but was able to establish mental communications with the rest of the group.
The party questioned Ben through Drake, who seemed to think Mr. Why's bomb would summon primal chaos and destroy completely the entire shadow. With mere seconds to spare, we effected a judicious retreat from that shadow.
Christina attempted to teleport us to the Victorian England she had previously visited. We ended up in a cemetery watched over by Death. Death was kind enough to give us directions out of the cemetery.
While we were considering our options, a blue and white horse appeared out of shadow in Drake's location, and carried Drake and Ben through shadow to the location of the rest of the party. Then, the horse led us all through shadow until we got to a forest grove with a stream running by it. In the grove was what looked like a polished limestone slab about 30 feet across. It looked like a maze, with a glowing blue line running from one edge to the center.
We recognized it as a Pattern, but weren't sure if it would be safe for us to touch it. Handel experimented by trying to drop a bug on it, but his hand was knocked aside by an arrow that came out of the woods. Then a 6 foot tall, red-haired man wearing a red shirt and brown khaki trousers came out of the woods. He seemed rather annoyed that we had been disturbing the Pattern, and prevented us from doing anything else to it--going so far as to physically restrain Handel. He told us that his name was Rinaldo, and he and Jurt guard the Pattern, which was created by Corwin.
Drake addressed the Pattern, and we learned that we could communicate with it. It told us that the rift between our shadow and the Zenith shadow had been fixed. Unfortunately, we were on the wrong side of the rift to enable us to return home. The rift had provided a gateway between the Primal Pattern universe and the Corwin Pattern universe, which was now closed. We were in the Primal Pattern universe, where Corwin's Pattern was etched, but we needed to get to the Corwin Pattern universe, where Cârnford was located.
The most direct route was through the Pattern. Unfortunately, we learned from the Pattern that none of us had Amber blood, meaning we would not be able to survive walking the Pattern. We had two options. One was to go through the Courts of Chaos, since the Logrus was the opposite anchor to both Patterns. The other option was to find another rift. The Pattern told us there were only two or three rifts remaining.
The rifts had been formed by the Lloigor (loi¹gôr´). We had previously learned from Ben that Mr. Why had been possessed by Lloigor. The Pattern told us that the Lloigor were trying to establish their own form of the Pattern, called the Omnihedron. If they succeeded, they would form an alternate reality, in opposition to both the Pattern and the Logrus. We were attempting to close the rifts in order to disrupt their plans.
Complicating matters was the Logrus. The aspect of the Logrus
maintained for Corwin's Pattern was trying to separate itself
from the Primary Logrus, which would serve to totally separate
the universes.