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Post by Admin on Apr 2, 2023 3:33:14 GMT
#s://i~ibb~co/KFmPccS/Natalia~png "Even in the Courts, it will not be easy to find someone familiar with such an obscure writing system," Jax says. The way up the mountain is challenging. Natalia is soon ahead of Kat and Jax as the way becomes closer to vertical. Kat catches up with Natlia after further hours of climbing, and Jaxiam is far behind. "I always tell him to get out of his laboratory and get some exercise, but he never listens," Nat tells her. "Do we wait or continue?"There is snow on the rocks up at this altitude. The air feels no colder than usual, and the sky is jet black except where Kat's Pattern burns bright. Kat can see a few places in the sky where the blackness seems to ripple.
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Post by Katerina on Apr 2, 2023 8:37:28 GMT
[OOC - Jaxiam never bought any END!]
"We need to wait for your friend. I wouldn't leave a friend behind and neither should you Nat. In deference to the help you both have given me I wouldn't ask you to do what I wouldn't do." Kat replies, though it is clear that despite her words she is itching to get to the top. With nothing else to do but wait, Kat decides to try some polite conversation as seh was taught by her tutors.
"So growing up with your father .." There is a pause as she mentally corrects the title she was going to use. "King Corwin. You must have had some great times with him. Do you live with your mother as well?"
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Post by Admin on Apr 4, 2023 5:27:58 GMT
#s://i~ibb~co/KFmPccS/Natalia~png OOC: And strength! .... at least compared to Kat and Nat. "I was born on an island far to the north of Paris. That's where my mother was from. Corwin brought me to his castle when I was still young. There were some good times, but they were brief interludes between his business away from home or other duties. He was once gone for almost a decade with no word sent to any of us," she shrugs. "That's the life of a king. And of a princess."She looks over the ledge, down to where Jaxiam huffs and puffs with the effort of climbing. They hear some swearing. "We don't have to wait since there is no danger up here. Although if we take the time to rest now, we can outpace him again in the last march to the peak."
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Post by Katerina on Apr 4, 2023 6:52:49 GMT
"That sounds nice. I never had a proper mother and father growing up. My adoptive father was always nice to me, but my adoptive mother not so much. That permeated a bit into the rest of the family and others in the Court in Eshanta. So I had a pretty lonely time growing up and I had to rely on my own skills to survive the politics and the machinations at the Court. It was kind of why the mirror version of me tried to kill them all, but I'm not like that. Well not completely anyway like she is."
Kat thinks for a minute and realises that she isn't making complete sense without all the information.
"I walked the Mirror Maze and it made a mirror copy of me. I guess it thought that having two Guardians was better than one, but my Mirror self somehow got to the Courts and made a deal with King Merlin that involved wiping out all the humans on Eshanta. She was wrong, but that's what happens when you have a mirror copy of yourself. They take the other point of view."
"Now I have nothing. Not even an adopted family. Just me, my stupid sword that I can't read and my cloak. If the Mirror Maze doesn't regenerate not even a purpose in life anymore." She adds sadly.
The swearing and cursing gets louder as Jaxiam reaches where they are. Kat's melancholy mood fades suddenly as Jax appears. She instead masks it with a fake grin and declares.
"Race you to the top Nat. Last one there is a prune!" With that she scurries up the path hoping to get a head start on her new friend.
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Post by Admin on Apr 6, 2023 5:27:28 GMT
#s://i~ibb~co/KFmPccS/Natalia~png "You stinker!" Nat laughs and chases Kat up the incline. Jax hunches over, hands on knees, and takes deep gasping breaths. This place continues its unnatural version of time and distance. Kat reaches the summit both quicker and slower than she thought. The view at the peak is breathtaking. At lower altitudes, only her orange broken Pattern was visible in the sky, but here the heavens are filled with Patterns of different colours, all broken in some way. Like Kat's, a few drain out sparks; the others contain their brokenness. There is an order to the Patterns, not a simple square lattice, but some more complex arrangement. A pattern to the Patterns, if you will. A few points are empty, and the ground below sprouts into mountain and colour similar to this place. Natalia reaches the peak, only slightly out of breath. "Cool, huh? We don't know what it means, but it must be important."
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Post by Katerina on Apr 6, 2023 7:16:44 GMT
The question to Kat's mind immediately is 'What happened to the missing ones?' In truth though she is wowed at the beauty and the spectacle of all the broken patterns. Whoever made this place had an eye for beauty.
"What do you call a collection of Patterns? A foci of Patterns or perhaps looking at this a Patern of Patterns." She thought out aloud. Looking at the beauty of all these Patterns, Kat realised that she was looking over all these Patterns in awe at their beauty like she would when looking at a batch of handsome men whilst her intended was in the room. As if to make sure that the Mirror Maze knew that she only had eyes for it, she added pointing to it.
"That one is the Mirror Maze and its the most beautiful of all."
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Post by Admin on Apr 10, 2023 5:01:13 GMT
#s://i~ibb~co/KFmPccS/Natalia~png "Greater Patternia?" Natalia suggests as a name. "Patternity? Wait, scratch that one," she says with a blush. "We haven't seen any full Patterns, just broken ones in the sky. Jax is fifty-fifty on the real ones floating here. And why this order and why the gaps between each of them?"
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Post by Katerina on Apr 10, 2023 8:09:44 GMT
"I'm going to take a guess here. The Pattern is a thing of order, so why wouldn't all the copies be arranged in some kind of order? The gaps represent the space in shadow between all the broken Patterns. If you can work out the spread from the centre, then you might be able to pinpoint the location of the Pattern in Amber." Kat guesses.
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Post by Admin on Apr 12, 2023 5:01:54 GMT
#s://i~ibb~co/LRYXrT4/jaxiam~png "From what I have seen these broken Patterns do not arrange themselves so orderly in Shadow so why do they do so here? And with so many of these broken ones how can we discern the real? Like finding a Pattern in a giant haystack of needles."Huffing and puffing, Jax manages to pull himself up to the peak. "If - puff - I only - puff -trusted - puff -magic this - puff- high up- huff- we could- huff- have rode."
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Post by Katerina on Apr 12, 2023 17:31:27 GMT
"Think of it like maps. They are not always strictly correct but they give you the idea of relationships between features.They are however very busy and the amount of detail on them ensures that you can't sometimes 'see the wood for the tress'. If you remove all the other features from around the Broken Patterns then perhaps you start to see the pattern underlying their arrangement. I wonder if I can draw this for later reference."
She turns as Jax makes it up to the top.
"But then you wouldn't have had a chance to have such a lovely walk to keep you fit. Isn't the view worth a little sweat?"
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Post by Admin on Apr 14, 2023 5:46:18 GMT
#s://i~ibb~co/LRYXrT4/jaxiam~png "No. Close, but no," Jax puffs. "Anything new?""Same as before."Natalia pulls out a pad of stiff sheets of paper and a few pencils. "Here. Draw. We have time. It'll take Jax half an hour to get his breath back, and then we can race him back down the mountain.""Half hour? I thought we decided that time doesn't exist in this place."
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Post by Katerina on Apr 14, 2023 7:08:56 GMT
"Only because you've seen it before I suppose." Kat says in reply as she takes the offered pad and pencils and begins drawing. She's no artist, but she has an eye for technical detail and she begins drawing and referencing the Broken Patterns, making notes on anything that she sees as unusual.
As she does, she starts thinking.
"When I met you we were up close to the Mirror Maze as it was 'regnerating'. Can you move here and get up close to other broken Patterns here as well? If so, might this be some sort of metaphysical inspection area for keeping an eye on the health of Broken Patterns? I mean we know where the Primal Pattern is, so they'd be no need to mark it on here, but someone watching the health of the Universe, they'd want to keep an eye on everything out in shadow and this might be the way that they were doing it."
"Time must exist here as we saw changes in the states of Mirror Maze. It must be reflecting something from the real Universe in some kind of time sychronicity."
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Post by Admin on Apr 17, 2023 5:24:52 GMT
#s://i~ibb~co/LRYXrT4/jaxiam~png "Primal Pattern?" Jaxiam asks.
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Post by Katerina on Apr 17, 2023 6:37:00 GMT
"The main one in Amber, not the Broken ones. I guess there's one in Rebma too as Princess Lorelei tells me, but they're almost in the same place. I think they like to call Amber, the Centre of the Universe, though I think that sounds a bit pompous personally." Kat replies.
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Post by Admin on Apr 18, 2023 6:11:08 GMT
"Father told me that Amber has one that is reflected in the sea and the sky. Paris has one and supposedly a reflection in the ghost city, but no one has ever found it."
"Too bloody many of them, if you ask me. We only need one Logrus."
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