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When you think ... it was really a beautiful day when I ran into Wolfie. The sky was clear, an azure blue without a cloud, the wind was brisk and friendly, I'd gotten "As" on all my finals and was thinking about fresh pastry. Wolfie was smiling. "Time to help John/Jean with his clothes?" "You bet, we need to do that so he will quit glowering all the time, especially before the next semester starts.  How were any of us to know the invisibility would keep spreading to whatever he wore?  Sure has been fun a few times before he figured out how long it took." Ok, so what if I giggled then, it has been too funny.  Guess I'm glad it didn't happen to me too. "Quit smiling, how would you like to find yourself naked in the middle of the mall, when you thought the invisibility only reached your armor?  What about trying to find his dirty clothes so he could have them washed?  Do you think I like using my wereform so I can track down dirty laundry? Anyway, it will be a simple side trip, a fun day and then back before nightfall. Think anyone else wants to go with us?" "I'll ask the rest of the girls, this should be fun.  Too bad Michael has those people from home visiting with him, I know Ariel would love to show him the city." So, we gathered everyone up for a quick trip to the city as soon as finals were over for Parakile (he had some sort of special final, one of those graduate seminars they asked him to participate in) and there we were, getting ready to go from the gate in the guy's room to the city gate, for another bright, clear day in that clear, lazy mediterranean weather. Michael said he would try to finish his reports and would join us when he could. Well, we got part of what we were expecting as it was a bright clear day, but that was about all of what we expected. Spells were shattering left and right, the gate was shuttering (kind of like being shuttered, and stuttering, it would let people out, but not in and was cycling in a pattern that kicked people out randomly if they didn't step smartly), and it looked like we had stepped into the middle of a war. Or worse? Man oh man, worse for some of us. The gate was cycling instead of just being shuttered.  Usually if a gate is shuttered, that means you bounce back to where you are coming from or you are inside the gate area with no exit (but you can return to where you came from).  Someone had tried to break the shutter, but the spell worked only to scatter everyone as they came in, which resulted in our group being scattered about, not always together or with all of our stuff.  I ended up with Wolfie's chain, he got my belt! Not that his chain isn't pretty, but a girl has to have her belt, what if someone saw me? Of course where I was it was just about pitch black, most of the glow coming from my magic and the chain, as it coiled around in mid air. I felt for Wolfie's mark (and prayed that it had stayed on him, if his chain was with me, who knows where the mark may have gone, though it felt connected, just like it should). I felt around for KoreShira, my scythe, and realized it had scattered somewhere, but I spoke the earth word and knew that if there was ground below or heaven above, it would be drawn to me. Then, gathering the anathraxis webs, I pulled myself to his mark. Where I found him charging a Khadda Kjttha demon-master. The section of the catacombs Wolfie was in seemed a bit more inhabited than where I had come to rest. He charged and the Kjttha set to engage him, but just as he reached within reach of the claws, he folded in his arms and launched a roundhouse kick, his arms brushing the Kjttha's deadly fingers aside, his kick taking out its throat. As he pivoted, his chain flew into his hands and he caught the two who had lurked at his back, while I unleased the anathrasis stored power web to erupt into those who had stood behind the master. In seconds, it was over and I had pulled on my belt before Wolfie quit probing the darkness for other enemies. But we were dealing with a different kind of Kjttha than I had seen or heard of before, though I knew this blending was possible, almost anything is with those undead sorcererous creatures.  The major Kjttha types are: Man/Ktthjj (Ktthjj based on the manshape, but actually leeches that walk like men,  "natural" bloodsuckers, not undead ones). Spider/Ktthjj Crab/Ktthjj Lizard/Ktthjj Snake/Ktthjj Many of them are undead of the Kar Manta path and chaos tainted cross-breeders.  But some are Khadda-style sorcerers demonspawn -- they transmogrify themselves into some of the demon orders -- and it only makes sense that they could form a broodmass that would spit out Demon/Ktthjj Kjttha. So, we had found a new species of them.  Khadda-style sorcerers (undead by sorcery rather than the kar manta path) and demonspawn, energetic, though they died like anything else. Next I pulled us both to Thalia, the one I worry most about. But she had summoned the bladestorm shield and the Kjttha prince and his court who had thrown themselves from the cavern walls to feed on her were a bloody mist in the air and shredded mud beneath her feet as she tried to probe the dark.  I'm glad I didn't fall into that nest. It was a deep warren, and it showed signs of a long sleep, with the drained bodies of the dead and eaten adventurers who had broken into the caverns beneath the city, though there was a feeling of deep silence here too, as if they had slept with something else. One escaped, but we didn't have time to chase it, not with worries I had about everyone else. You can see the bladestorm she sent after it, which didn't quite catch it either. Sure is impressive though! Looking around I would have guessed (wrongly) that some of them had stirred, probably the demonmaster, but had not been able to break the seals holding the others in until the men and sea-elves had come and broken the great signal that had bound them sleeping. Who knows what other chaos walked the earth right now, though I was pretty certain that it was the demon master who had provided the Red Shalgathi with the broodmass and had stirred them. The Shalgathi are in decline, a side effect from their success and the way that the estivating broodmothers now dominate them. A species in decline doesn't engage in energetic ventures like they had recently begun. But with the Ktthjj presence it made sense that they were stirring from their moribund state to spread evil as they had thousands of years before. But we still had Parakile, Amber and Ariel to worry about, and maybe Michael if he had gotten free from his meeting and decided to follow us through the gate. There was more peril than I wanted to think about. I was worried.  Wolfie or I would have been swamped if we had been the ones in the Prince's chamber, and without the Bladestorm shield to trigger, Thalia would be only a fading memory. What other terrible things were our friends facing? Here is a picture of my jumping into the abyss, with Wolfie greating me, as I hope for KoreShira while using Twisting Crane stance.

Os. I'll write more when I get time to breath,  but it is a war here in the city, no walk in the town square like we expected.

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