Ariadne:
Ariadne winced in pain, almost stumbling. The pain was immense, worse than anything she'd ever experienced. Nothing from any of her movie stunts, her most rigorous workouts, and even the few bar fights she'd been in, compared to the pain ripping through her body.
She had to finish. Her family was counting on her.
OOC: 17:29, Today: Ariadne rolled 8 using 2d6 with rolls of 3,5. Constitution
There. She'd done it. Enough to keep moving forward, anyway.
(Ariadne takes one more point of special tiredness damage.)
There was a right-angle turn, then another, then another.
Ariadne, princess of Amber, she thought to herself.
Another curve began, and it is as though Ariadne were walking in glue as she moved slowly along it.
One more step, two, three, four... she raised her electric footwear, over and over, and sets each down again...
Her head throbs and her heart feels as though it were fibrillating to pieces.
Amber!
The name of the land, and the city, and the castle, from whence the royal family rules over possibly-infinite Shadows, because they're just shadows of Amber...
Amber, which spoke to something deep inside her soul... and she hadn't even seen any of the other worlds it ruled yet, as such, hadn't seen any of the other apparently-infinite Shadows yet, but she could feel it all calling to her... She could barely remember what the castle looked like from the outside... What the city looked like, the land... She wished, now, that she had had even more time to come to understand Amber before walking this shimmering electric-blue yellow-brick-road...
Ten more paces, then a swirling filigree of shadowy fire confronts her... she essays it, her sweat chilling her as it springs from every pore...
It's tricky, so devilish tricky, and it seems that the air of the room suddenly moves in great currents which threaten to sweep her from the path of the Pattern. She struggles on, resisting them...
She dares not raise her eyes from the places of light that lie immediately before her, to see how far she has come, how far she has yet to go...
The breezes subside... She tries to focus on anything, her whole life, which seemed, Hollywood and all, so empty and meaningless compared what she was doing now, and especially compared to everything she could do if she could just finish this...
Her mother had made it through the Pattern. Ballad and Lance had done it. Therefore, surely, she, Ariadne, could manage it, no matter what the resistance...
She emerges from the filigree and marches along a long, grand curve, feeling the forces that shape the universe fall upon her and beat her into their image...
Unnatural fears rise like black clouds, and then vanish, gone again, burned away by the Pattern-- only to return, moments later, their strength redoubled.
She walks the Pattern, and she remembers all, all her days upon the Shadow Earth, all her dreams, all the places of that Shadow, so few of them special and dear to her, it now feels...
She walks three more curves, a straight line, and a series of sharp arcs, and she shouted inside her own head.
Ariadne. Ariadne, daughter of Deirdre. Ariadne, princess of Amber. Ariadne, princess of Shadows.
Ten tight arcs which left her dizzy, then another short arc, a straight line, and...
Oh.
A Final Veil.
Is that Ballad shouting
"Not far now...!" ...or is it just inside her own head?
It is agony to move. Everything tries to beat her aside. The air is cold, then it feels boiling. It seems that it constantly pushes against her. She struggles, putting one foot before the other. The sparks reach as high as her waist, then her elbows, then her shoulders. They are into her eyes...
They are all about her. She can just barely see the Pattern itself.
(Willpower check, please...)