"It's called initiative and the library is the answer." David said, not wanting to take the attitude lying down. He made sure to catch up to Jack. "I wanted to see a map for Amber, the same map for Amber included Arden. I just put two and two together." Which was indeed enough of the truth to answer his knowledge.

"I have no idea how different walking is compared to cards and the pattern. Or the danger of Shadow-Storms for that matter - which I've read about." He quickly clarified before Jack decided to find offense in, like people tended to try finding when David was being frank or honest.

Alec gets a backpack, a bit of food, food for his horse, a flask of whiskey (for medicinal purposes, of course) and a first aid kit. He then collects some feed for his horse, named Locke, and packs the saddlebags up. He is impressed that someone sewed the tear in his leather coat last night, and begins riding. He is somewhat amused by the banter between David and Jack.

He shakes his head while they go back and forth, but clearly, he is amused by it, and no doubt appreciates having company, which he has missed for some time.

It is one of the things he missed whilst traversing Shadow. Women flocked to him, everyone liked to buy him drinks and some wanted to adventure with the son of Deirdre. But there was something missing from those people.

They weren't of the blood of Amber.

He looks over at David. "Did you bring the map? The only map of Amber I've seen was carved into a table."

"Well I couldn't bring a table, but I did make this to bring." David said as he passed on the drawn up map, a copy of the map he had seen in the library.

The detail of the map covered Amber, sailing routes around it, the mountain it sat on, the valley and the Arden forest.
It had enough detail to note one or two important locations within like the Unicorn Grove. It wasn't an ordinance survey, much to the annoyance of David, but it would do.
"It was in a book about Amber history, I wanted to get my bearings on here and the Golden Circle."

"The map will be useless for our purposes, but it's not a bad idea to have one until you get the hang of the Circle," Jack says as they ride, his head panning slowly from side to side as he keeps a watch. Even here before they've entered shadow. One hand resting on the pommel of his blade, the other hanging casually onto the reins of his horse.

Riding through the forest now, he continues to keep the horse going at a decent clip.

Alec looks at the map while they ride slowly. "Yeah. Mom did a pretty job with that map." He hands the map back to David with a laugh. "I think a table would have been encumbering."

Then he turns to Jack. "Having never ridden in or out of Amber, will we ride through the Golden Circle, or are there ways to get around them? I was told that a couple of them are at war on and off. I'd like to avoid riding through any wars."

David was a little curious that Alec seems to have have only moved from Shadow to Shadow. Or only came to his home both ways through cards.

But his eyes were caught on the beauty of the woods around them. The trees, the undergrowth, the flowers and more besides.
That "realness" that he had been feeling of Amber extended to here as well. Arden was the reason that so many Shadows had the natural beauty of the wilds. The things he could find in there.

Though David had heard Alex's question and wanted to ask further on it, he thought it better to hear how Jack would answer.

"The Golden Circle is the name for the shadows nearest to Amber. Each has enough relevancy to the greater pattern, and sometimes even a bit of the pattern itself, or a reflection of it, that they are 'golden' and worthy of respect for their proximity. We cannot avoid going through at least one of them, but as with all shadows, we can pass through them in moments once we are clear of the Pattern's proximity," Jack explains as best as he can and soon enough he indicates something with a sort of gesture with his hand.

"I think we're about there, okay, David, what color is the sky?" he asks.

What was Jack getting at? It was quite daft that such a question needed asking. No aspect of twilight remained  and the sky was clear when they entered the forest, so the answer should be obvious. "Blue of course. What next? Do you want me to dig the earth and tell you what breed of turtle we're riding on too?" David asked rhetorically with relentless sarcasm, his response to the inane line of questioning.

If the weather had changed, David knew he would be the first to notice such a transition. He looked up to the sky, trying to see past the canopy of trees above their heads, to see the expected hint of blue that answered Jack's query.

Oh, yeah that is blue indeed, David thought to himself. Little patches getting through the treeline - though he noted the blue was purer then Earth, part of that "Realness" that makes Amber fall into the uncanny valley in David's mind.
Along with that blue came God rays, golden curtains piercing through the greenery.

"Yup, blue as can be. Oh how I should have made a bet. Oh woe is me." David proclaimed like a thespian town crier giving the speech of his life.
This message was last edited by the player at 00:51, Fri 25 Jan 2019.

"Good now remember that color and everything you can about it, now let's walk for a moment," Jack suggests and starts to walk again, reaching out into shadow and grabbing hold of the color of sky he has in mind, he subtly pulls and starts to change the color of the sky as they walk, turning it from blue to a deep purple with a hint of lavender where the light is brightest. Simple enough changes, and turning in place, he looks back at David.

"Okay, what color is the sky now?"

A moment there to hear the answer.

"Excellent, now take us back to Amber. All I changed is the color of the sky. What you'll want to do is picture the color of the sky as it was, the feeling of the air, the way the light felt. Sort of see if you can assemble a full 'feeling' of how the light was, and that color, and beckon it with your .. being.." he explains.

Huh, that was surprising,now the question made sense. In David's mind, he imagined the shadow-walking to be something else, what else exactly he didn't know.
Maybe he expected it to feel like he turned a proverbial page? Maybe he expected to feel like he had globe trotted?

To put what he witnessed to words, if felt as though the three of them had transformed the universe around them, or repositioned it underneath them. Like a child had lifted their pieces and pulled the map. Maybe this is what Max had been meaning at the Hall?

David put the matter aside for now, he had something practical to try now. Something to relish. "All right then."  He said as he looked towards his sky, his challenge to overcome, his world to command.

David got to work conjuring the image of the sky into his mind. Both the colour of the whole canvas, and the different shades from horizon to zenith.
When he was ready, he raised his hand, and  imagined him dragging the sky away from purple and towards Amber's blue.

Jack takes off at a slow trot, but not backwards, he makes sure that David heads his horse straight ahead-- the way they'd been heading, and piles on an additional requirement.

"Loop us back to where we were, as closely as you can, but this way," he suggests, pointing the way away from where they were. "Also, you have to be moving to move shadow."
This message was last edited by the player at 01:55, Fri 25 Jan 2019.

Alec rides behind the two, and he smiles faintly since parts of the conversations remind him of when his mother taught him how to shift the Shadows.

Knowing that losing your concentration while doing anything of this magnitude can be dangerous he keeps his mouth closed and rides close enough to Jack and David to ensure that he shifts with them.

Turning back on themselves was a peculiar extra layer to add to the task. But David was sure he could find a way of doing so.

David was certain he was moving along, but he must have stopped when seeing the purple sky. Ensuring that Acacia was pacing at a manageable trot, David tried to change the circumstance of the world, both in sky and direction.
This message had punctuation tweaked by the player at 20:07, Fri 25 Jan 2019.

It took a fair while, from how he felt, it must have been around 10 minutes, no more than half an hour.
David knew he finally had done it right when he passed the same set of flowers from when they started the shadow walking along the path. Except for them being on their left side now rather than their right, so David knew he had turned them around.

"All right, I did it. Let's see if I can take us all back to Earth then." He said with a smile of victory on his face.

The whole multiverse was open to him now, but he wanted to see home first. He turned his mind to his home on Earth, though sometimes the thoughts of his goals along the way.

Travel Through Shadow
20:03, Today: David rolled 8 using 2d6+2 ((1,5)).

Perception and horse bonus making +2, assuming no one tries to mess up David's first long stretch of shadow-walking

Travel Through Shadow:
10 or higher: you arrive where you meant to arrive or find what you meant to find.
7-9: you arrive at a place like your intention, but not the same thing.

The three men on horseback come to... a gravel road.

On that road, there is... a gas station. All righty...

However...

The gas station is surrounded by a high barricade of thick logs, pointed at the top.

The station itself is visible from the road because there's a large gate in the middle of the wall, on iron hinges, and the gate is currently open, apparently being repaired. A crew of five short, squat men, each around five feet tall, are working on repairing one side of the gate. "Hurry, men, hurry..." says one...

"You think we're not hurrying?" says another in reply.

"Look!" says a third, pointing to the young Amberites.

The men all stop and stare for a few seconds.

"Great Jupiter, lads," says the first man calls, "get in here, quick! What're you doing riding those around like that? You know how they are around horses...!"

"Play along," Jack side-whispers to his cousins and spurs his horse a few times as he goes along with it and rides in through the open gates, dismounting when he finds a place to hook his horse up, he looks at the squat men and wonders at their words but seems content to remain quiet on the matter for the moment.

David follows suit, though his face shows a concern, one he feels about how casually Jack rolls with the alien situation. Of the weird civilization that there are wooden walls around gas stations. David wondered what else he would come across when they went inside. What they were.
This message was last edited by the player at 20:18, Sat 26 Jan 2019.

Alec had seen some strange things and some stranger things and he had met a lot of weird people. These repairmen were pretty low on the weird scale. He rode behind David and Jack, looked at the log wall and the gate.

He wondered about who specifically are they. Or would that be them? Pronouns were always touchy when people liked to capitalize them. Oh. There was another one.

He looked around for great scorch marks, knowing that dragons seemed to like feasting on horses. No matter, he headed for the gate and rode in behind the other two.

"What wants our horses?" He asked once he drew even with the repairmen.

"You-- you don't... Do you really not know? Whe-- where're you lads from...?!"

"Across the sea. An island called Bentham. Small. You probably never heard of it. I guess we were lucky in our ride."

A tiny bit of impatience creeps into his voice, although truth be told he's intrigued with whatever is going on.

"I'm Jack, this is Alec and David. So you were saying?" Jack introduces them and then immediately inquires of the squat men as he dismounts and moves to put his horse in to cover.

David hesitates to follow Jack's lead as he wants to know what could possibly want horses so badly. He awaits the answer to Alec's question, which would have been his own had he jumped at the chance.

"Yes, yes, I'm Harald Haraldson, and no, I've never heard of yer island-- how do you not-- I mean, you... I thought everyone k--" He takes a deep breath. "Decades ago, when I was younger, though not exactly young, something happened to the wildlife around here, in a stretch several miles long and maybe half a mile wide... the plantlife all turned black and nasty, and the... well, we'd always had problems with wolves, of course, this is the United States of America, but-- after what we call The Black Road showed up, the wolves got... bigger. Smarter. Nastier. Hungrier, even. No better at climbing walls, thank Jupiter, but..."

"We'll have to be more careful then. I thought I saw some odd things. Thank Jupiter we met you when we did." David said with relief, mentally putting aside the Black Road as something to talk about later.

"Oh! Yes, we've heard of that, I thought it'd gone away though? I see. Do you have weapons against the wolves, and how smart are we talking?" Jack asks and glances at the walls, out of curiosity. Curious not just at the wolves, but the level of technology here. He'd have to explain to David later about the Black Road, but more importantly, about why they'd stopped.