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See this color and font for the original story, Ariel's notes like this.

Well, maybe I should tell you more about the adventure Tindalasse and the rest had. It is just snitty of me not to. Though I find myself thinking that if they had only included us on this one, Amber and I wouldn't have found ourselves looking for something else to do and getting in the trouble we are in now.

Enough, I promised myself that I wouldn't get distracted.

Anyway, they all got together. Parakyle insisted on taking a couple mechanical men to carry everything (traders use mules, dwarves use mechanical golems to carry things). He also suggested that we see if we couldn't get some fu dogs to go with them. Left me a message, I talked to Amber, she talked to Porkchop and next thing you know, Parakyle had a thousand dollar bill at the local butcher and eight fu dogs who decided that they needed to go along for the trip, just to keep everything safe.

Indigo also gave each of them one of her tokens. While they were just going through the gate in Amber's house to the gate in the middle of the ruined city, she felt "better safe than sorry."  I can sure see that.

So, they showed up, what a crew. Tindalasse riding his horse, Wolfie pretending to be Indigo's dog, Parakyle and his two mechanical men, each carrying many small bales of silk or wire (Parakyle carried the remaining dragon scales close to his heart), Marie was on guard with the dogs.

Good thing, because right there in the middle of the market, the sun shining, people chattering, three caravans full of merchants from the South trading and exchanging with four caravans from the North, we were attacked by some spindle folk and some Tiev.  Seems they and the dwarves are ancient enemies, not to mention they were hoping to attack us, steal our stuff and be through the gate before it could respond.

The city magic was still strong and the gate rang shut with a great "gong" sort of sound. The market place boundaries turned bright yellow with white lightning in it. Everyone grabbed their short swords or spears and magic sprang up in the hands of a half a dozen people you wouldn't have suspected. The fight, I hear, was brief, but sharp, with the fu dogs taking down those that Marie's arrows missed. So much for the quiet entrance they hoped to make, though the weavers noticed them and were immediately all eyes (I guess I should say "all ears" but the weavers are more like all arms and eyes, if you know what I mean, spidery types).

Parakyle, meanwhile, had immediately headed for an apothacary he had noted before, then he caught up with the group and they started talking with the weavers. Next thing you know, Parakyle and the weavers have spent a week's worth of time working and weaving and forging and doing, with Tindalasse mostly standing and being dressed and undressed and Wolfie laughing when Indigo walked in on it. Tinda's an elf,  and a noble, and is as comfortable with people when he is stark naked as when he is fully dressed. Indigo appears to have seen a lot more of him than the rest of us, and all she did was blush when we asked -- she isn't talking.

Anyway, Parakyle took a number of breaks, took Marie with him on a trip to a tower that was older than most, and broken in half.  It seemed to always be kind of in shadow. The two did some exploring and he gave her some special arrows he had found that carried water.

You know from what I wrote last how that went. The tower had been a star gate, long broken and clouded by Tekel's evil. It's breaking was one of the six wonders that presaged the first fall of the city (each time the city was rebuilt they used a different type of archetecture and building -- it is why the city has the different types of buildings).

Before long, Parakyle had the weavers working from that as a base for the clothing they were trying to make for Tindalasse.

Of course Parakyle had just accidentally prepared them all:

• First, they all had antichaos powers or focuses. That is just pretty much the way all of us have ended up. Some people embrace chaos (ugh and ick!), some don't care, and some of us have the right feelings for the things that crawl out of the elder hells.  
• Parakyle also had some electric blue woad that he brought in on the last day from the apothocary (who had been working on it the whole type -- a great sign that Parakyle had planned this all along), some cloaks made of wire, and some little na-paviase sized sheild disks with spinning runes on them.
• Indigo had a fate stone and a song she had practiced with me.  Wolfie had some traps and an accumulated magical hunger (in a bottle so he could drink it if he needed to).  Marie had those water arrows they had gone out and found the parts for and then forged, as well as her mist cloak was strengthened with some dragon essence. Jean-Robert showed up when we had been gone for a long time, and Parakyle was glad to see he had his ring. Tinda had a philtre filled with light.

The lightning forge just happened to be in the tower, fully consecrated by the use they had put it to with the weavers. They were in a broken high tower, open to the sky, lightning stricken, with a great prism window. The fu dogs stood guard against anything coming up the tower to interrupt them, and both of the mechanical men stood with leavenbolt axes at the ready guard.

Parakyle began the forge chant of a master while the weavers wove and sang and light came through the prism from a lost star. Tinda struck the forge with lightning and a bridge sprang from the forge to the star path that suddenly appeared, riding the beam of starlight. Parakyle splashed everyone with woad (as Indigo said, if he hadn't splashed her with it by surprise, she sure would not have put it on the traditional way).

As they sprang on the bridge, wild lighting struck them, the woad absorbing and averting the damage it would have caused. Parakyle struck with his hammer and the wild lightning was bound to the bridge, strengthening it.

They were then surrounded by clouds, quiet clouds with the pathway lost. The confusion did not lead them to blows with each other, but they could not find the way and lost each other. Indigo was able to pull them together using her marks and Jean-Robert's ring found the way for them. The clouds began to fade then, and it became obvious that the clouds were the path. Marie expanded her mist and it caught everyone, but then the clouds began to condense randomly, and as they did, lighting would cascade and spark. The wire wraps caught it, sending it harmlessly on its way, and the cloak of mist that Marie wove, carried them through the gaps.

The path then broke out into the sunlight. Parakyle grimaced, it was obvious that he had hoped to be further along before the sun was this bright on the path, though when you go outside of time, things happen. Marie's arrows nourished the arc of cloud mist that was all that remained of the path (the path was down to a bridge of cloud mist, the rest had been melted by the sun, but the water arrows were perfect, giving it strength.

But riding down the sunbeams were fire sprites. Wolfie cast his traps on the sunbeams and they captured the sprites as they came (which I'm told made Wolfie smile as he would cast out traps and reel them back in, rendering the sprites into Tinda's philtre), until the group came to a great wall of blackness, from which came a demon of smoke and mist, its lower body a great serpent, its upper body like a man's with six arms, its eyes slanted and evil.  It blocked the sun and the shadow it cast was just enough to hold the pathway in place to the cloudbank in the distance that had resisted the sun's effect on the starpath.

Which meant that fighting it could be dicy, since slaying it could disrupt the path. Now most of them could walk on air and the demon was a trickster, known for its songs and always demanding new ones.

Which Indigo gave it. "Will you sing the song I give you?" "Yes, and not strike at you until I finish, but then you must sing my song or I will strike." Indigo just looked at it, ready to destroy the chaos it represented and not at all afraid of the striking, just of the path being lost.

Then she started singing the song I'd taught her one day as we watched TV, with the demon joining in.

"This is the song that never ends, it just goes on and on my friend, someone started singing it, not knowing what it was, and they will go on singing it, forever just because, this is the song that never ends" at which point she broke the fate stone and sealed the magic on the demon and they ran as it was caught between the song that never ends and the wrath of the sun.

Indigo knew the trick, that demon sings any song a hundred times faster than any human could, or faster, somehow its arms join in (six to the sixth times faster, actually is how much faster it sings), but with a song that never ends ... the demon became nothing but a  singing cloud blocking the sun as they reached the cloud bank.

Where they faced Scatterings, a type of lightning imp that casts darts. The rune shields caught the darts and spun them away, and then as the imps closed, Wolfie embraced the hunger he carried and ate them all, absorbing their close assault.

As they came out of the cloud bank, they faced a great hedge of lightning and the ancient enemy of this star path, Shadowfall.

Jean led them through the maze and Tinda jumped forward at the end to engage Shadowfall, releasing the light he had in the philtre and this spear pulling all the lightning from the hedge to strike the wound in Shadowfall's armor the philtre had made. Shadowfall was riven, just as it had riven and hidden the path so long ago, and they stepped into the realm of Starbrought (or Starflung) Lightning.

There Parakyle used the last of the hammer's magic and a dragon scale he had named to transform the Philtre into a true prism lightning stone which he gave to Tinda to lay upon the shrine's heart and capture the magic there in order to bring it back to his home.  As it did it, the lightning wrapped around him and the magic he had was sealed into the new armor. Then a beam of true starlight was cast from the heart of the star to Tinda's home and they all followed it home, with Tindalasse bringing back a star shrine's heart which The Bitter King used to found a shrine at the heart of his castle's keep.

Ok, I should have written about that before. Oh, at the end, as they realized just what they had accomplished and Parakyle gave a great leap, Wolfie actually kissed Indigo when he was carried away by the moment. First time Indigo was awake for a kiss, and she reports that she can't wait for another.

Tinda's father was surprised, then alarmed, then so happy he actually let a smile out. The stars honoring him and the light that shines on his castle's high window are the talk of the fae these days.

Well, the little girl had had quite the time with her new friend and a wonderful time with her grandmother.

That is the story of how I saved my grandmother, how I had such a good time with Amber and how I was able to really get to know my grandmother as a part of the summer.  I need to go back and rewrite what Amber wrote to catch the heart of that.

But there were other things calling her, and she had to take a special trip.

Boy, that kind of simplifies it. There was this strong pull that just got stronger until it was so strong I couldn't think of anything else unless I was on my way there. Worse, while I could resist it, my falcon couldn't, so I ended up following it until I found out what was at the heart of the call.  This was still when the curse was on us, so I really did not act too smart in the way I headed up north, up the mountainside, following a magical pull out of nowhere.

There was something pulling at her falcon, and she needed to solve the problem, so they headed north, up the mountain just out of town.  Whatever it was, it pulled at everything tied to cold and was centered at the top of the mountain, just out of town.  The mountain had a spring storm that had lasted unnaturally long.

That is, I followed the pull right into the heart of a storm. I could see the storm from a distance. It was early spring, school wasn't out yet and the weather reports had discussed a small localized storm front that did not seem to be moving. I was following a pull that seemed to lead right to it. I got to the end of the rapid transit rail, hiked up to the empty ranger station and spent the night, rolled up in the cold. The next morning I began to climb toward the storm.

She took the rail to the last stop and then hiked to the ranger station.  It was empty (the mountain was closed until the storm broke) and she spent the night there.  Early the next morning she began to climb.

The storm wrapped around her and the ice clung to her parka.  The falcon was alive in the cold, but had a hard time not being swallowed by it.  The strength of their link kept it safe.

Finally she came to the calm at the heart of the storm.

There was an oread -- a mountain nymph (like a dryad, but linked to the mountain rather than an oak tree).

The oread was linked into the storm and feeding and controlling it.  With the storm, creatures of cold, and ice and frost were being summoned and then swallowed mindlessly into the fury of the storm.

She looked like a beautiful woman made of stone and ice, as if she was sleepwalking, though the magic of the storm wrapped into her and around her. It was amazing.

But the oread didn't seem fully awake, as if she was caught by the storm as well.

The little girl decided to try and save the oread rather than breaking the storm by killing her.  She was a little girl, after all.

Ok, it never occured to me that if you have someone at the center of an offensive magical vortex the usual thing to do is to just strike them to break them and the vortex they hold. She was beautiful and she seemed asleep. I thought if I could just wake her up -- next time I'll be more careful, most people in that sort of magical trance want to be there.

She pulled out her true stone and used it to speak to the oread mind to mind.  The contact broke the binding that had used the oread as a focus and freed the oread, breaking the storm.

But the binder was alerted.

The result was worse than if the Oread had meant to be causing trouble. The thing that came was Nasty. I'd never seen something so foul and nasty looking. It was one of the Couranth. They are pretty powerful magicians and chaos masters, often seeking hearts of power. I think it was taking advantage of the weakness of the old Bitter King, who was chaos gripped, and had located the Oread as a potential anchor for a vortex to sweep up all the cold and mountain magic so that this Couranth could bind and consume it. Many of the Couranth wander the planes, seeking magic and I think that is what this one was doing.

It was tall, almost 7 feet tall, looking like a man-vulture with cruel talons at the ends of its hands, a twisted, chaos tainted one of the Couranth.  What it was doing outside the city the little girl never learned.

It came for her, its hands glowing with tainted chaos magic, and she struck at it.  The power of the dragon magic poured out of her, breaking the chaos power and blasting the Couranth.  Its left arm/wing hung broken and shattered.  It struck back, but her padded clothes and the rune power shielded her, though she was chilled beyond her limits.  Again she struck, and headless the Couranth's strength and magic failed it as the chaos power it relied upon was dissolved.

I learned right then and there that I might resist cold some, I wasn't immune to it. Good thing I had such a powerful anti-chaos charm from my grandmother or I could never of beat that thing. As it was, I should have died, except I had an Oread right there.  Oreads are powerful healers and this one was filled full of magic, and fully awake from being freed.

Then the focus of the cold struck her and she fell.

The oread saved her, after all, oreads are nature spirits and healing is a strong part of their nature.

It replaced the spell she had used with an oread gift of prophecy and it taught her of the mountain frost.

I learned more cold here, and mastery of the cold skills. The Oread is now like a second grandmother to me, though that is a long and different story than this one. I'm missing her too, now that i think about it, I'd better think of something else.

Then she returned home, with her falcon liberated from the storm's grip.

This is a picture of the city before its first fall, back when the sea was much closer to it and the water came up inside the city (after all, the first city was growing coral). Turns out this is part of a series of pictures and knowledge that Parakyle had that led him to seeking the starpaths and the forge.

(This is the trip where the little girl got the warding sticks and improved her mastery of frost.  She ended up climbing the mountain in a snow storm and confronting an oread who had merged with the storm and who was calling out to cold based creatures in a mindless state.  She survived the trip and woke the oread back to the world, though she lost half of the little toe on her left foot to frostbite.  The little toe was replaced by living quartz from the mountain (a power crystal and shaman focus).  She also gained ice armor, the magic spell, to 4 points).