And I was worried about sneaking onto the mainland, how stupid can I get. That was about the easiest part of the trip. The biggest problem with getting ashore was the necessity of ignoring Sir Ion kissing the ground as soon as we made it to land.
There was no one waiting at the shoreline to kill us so we walked inland until we came to a fortified manor house. Cordelia managed to get us horses there and we made good time until darkness forced us to stop for the night. We needed to gain surreptitious entrance to Castle Amber so, after a good nights sleep, we rode around to the opposite side of the mountain on which it sits and started climbing up some narrow trails.
It took us a day and a half but there was never any real problem Cordelia knew exactly where she was going and soon we where on a ledge overlooking Castle Amber. The most disturbing part of the trip was the view of destruction that had been visited on the sounding area by Brand’s Forces; someone was obviously taking the phrase ‘scorched earth’ literally. We decided to wait for dusk before we started our Assault.
It took us a few hours to go down the path to the castle; it came out in what was obviously once a beautiful garden. Cordelia, Daada and Ion had to kill a few guards for us to gain entry to the keep proper, they may have had to slow down enough to break stride, possibly. Cordelia lead us down a spiral stair deep into the ground so we could take a look at the Pattern. The door to the Pattern room was guarded by Brands elite demonic troops definitely a cut above the ones that had been haplessly massacred above. The terrible trio (Cordelia, Daada and Ion) actually found that they had a fight on their hands. Cordelia and Daada blinked in close to gain the advantage of supprise and had each managed to down an opponent immediately. Before Ion managed to reach them to back them up the remaining four demons had turned the tables and without Ion’s intervention things would have looked dicey for Daada and Cordelia.
This used to be a guard post for castle Amber and although the former inhabitants can no longer help us, being in the same state we have just reduced the current guards to, Cordelia believes their weapons might be useful. We manage to find a pair of Muskets designed to work in Amber, should be useful. We took a look at the Pattern and it is definitely not feeling well. Large patches were covered in Black and the luminescence of the remaining areas were very dim compared to Corwin’s Pattern. If Brand is trying to destroy the Pattern it looks like he is not doing badly.
From the Pattern Room Cordelia guided us to a trump portrait that gave us access to Dworkins tower. Brand had got there before us and ransacked the place; there was no sign of a struggle so Dworkin must have got out before Brand arrived. From there we paid a brief visit to the Primal Pattern (I like that ‘a brief visit to the primal pattern’ as if its something you do every day). Brand had been there first as well Blaze and King Random’s dead bodies where decorating the place. We left there and Cordelia shadowwalked us back to Amber where we had left our horses.
Daada and I took first watch while the others caught some sleep, about half way through our watch Charity walks into our camp. She is less than straight with us about what she has been doing and when I looked at her through the Logrus something has marked her Aura. I know I said that I didn’t think she would sell us out to Brand but she was not telling us about what had happened to her and started getting very aggressive. I was just considering finding out whether she could survive being shot in the chest with a musket at point blank range when the world went gray, the thirteenth hour had arrived again. Strangely Charity was frozen with the rest of the world; something has definitely changed her. I woke the others up before the world started moving again. We eventually got Charity to admit to visiting the abyss; Cordelia decided that even though the Abyss has tainted her we should just keep an eye on her, after his previous statements I am supprised that Ion went along with that.
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| Hero of the Hour - Sorcha | The Keep of the Thirteenth Hour |