Ari was still trying to blink away tears when she heard Ballad's curse.  Having been a connoisseur of curse words since she was a teenager, Ariadne laughed out loud at Ballad's "colorful metaphor".   She laughed  until she was crying even harder.
"I'll admit that I never expected to hear that from your poetic mouth.  Nicely done!!"
She kept laughing, cradling her mother's axe like a newborn babe.

Jade brought her attention around to Ariadne and Ballad having heard her name.
"Yes, I'm fine. Ariadne my apologies for the ax. I was just kind of stunned. Lance oh he left after his confession. "
Confuson and bewilderment clearly on her face.

Maybe Deirder's ghost was here in the room. The other thought that entered her mind was unsettling.
Jade's nose crinkled slightly.

Ariadne manages to catch the axe safely without anything getting sliced, but she rams her shoulder into the floor hard. (Ariadne takes a -1 on her next STR or DEX roll today (effect wears off tomorrow if it doesn't kick in today.)

Oh no. Ariadne’s laughter is infectious. It sparks an in-spite-of-herself grin, pleased as punch to have surprised Ari out of crying. “Thanks,” she says, laughter around the word like moisture in the air around a storm; that’s in spite-of-herself, too, and Ballad covers her mouth as she shuts the door, because it’s all she needs for Jon to convince Lance to come back just as the girls start cracking up. Is there a lock? Twist!

Back against the door, she folds her arms, and bows her head to laugh silently but helplessly. Then the laughter sluices away; replaced by that great, rare indecision again: "I don't know what I should say. Probably something brilliant, but you know, brilliance. It's a rascal, comes around only when it feels like it." She seems to be talking about two different things right now, note, worry the insidious shadow is back. She kicks the floor, looks up suddenly: "Is it the enchantment, shaking itself out of the axe? What kind of magic does it have, Jade?"

"It's subtle, the magic is there but it will take a bit of time to learn more. It is much more hidden then another weapon I sensed. Also might as well mention it now don't drink anything from that bottle. I opened it to sense the magic better and it took a good deal of will not to immediately drink it. A trap or at least a warning to one."

Ariadne stood up with the axe, wincing in pain from her shoulder colliding with the floor when she dove.
She tried to look annoyed, but was mostly emotionally exhausted
"What was Lance saying when he ran out?  I missed it"

"He had to go relieve himself and you know how men always go to the restroom in groups, Jon left too."

It would’ve been awfully nice to blame an enchantment in the axe for all manner of sins! Present day and yet to come. Ballad unlocks the door once laughter’s gone, sliding to the side so she’s not leaning on it any longer. Her hand stays on the handle, though: stay or go. Jade’s answer catches her by surprise, and she shoots the green-haired princess a sharp, inquiring look.

“But as he left, he said he was afraid; that he was not worthy. That he was not worthy compared to Jon, which is I think why Jon followed.” Ballad is, for all her good nature, a very self-assured woman; even so, she doesn't want to echo Lance's confession. She wants -

There we go. Wanting something always sees her through! From indecision to decision in .5 seconds: "Friends, I'll see you later, Ari, thank you for showing the axe, even if... I should see whether Lance is still up for a visit this afternoon."

Ariadne looked at Jade in suspicious confusion, but shook her head and put the axe back.
'Um....okay.  Did you say that you think that the axe did this?  I was playing with it last night, and nothing happened. "

"It could be something that my spell to detect magic brought out of the Ax. I did say it was subtle, wanting to hide it's enchantment."

Jade shook her head, "Something certainly happened."

Ballad opens the door, but is still looking at Jade and Ariadne. She listens to Jade's assessment of enchantment replying to enchantment, the lack of any ill effects from the night before. “So we shouldn’t poke it with more magic?” Ballad smiles, faintly, though there's a lingering somber note: “It really is a beautiful weapon. If I dreamed you wielding such a thing, then that's the very ax would feature in my dreams." She rests her forehead briefly against the door, then she salutes (flashy!) her cousins and heads on to the next adventure.

Ariadne nodded, still looking confused
"So...maybe the axe reacted badly to your singing?  This is just bizarre.  Definitely not what i was hoping would happen "
She shook her head, putting the axe back and closing the closet.
"Hopefully this visit to.town will be less...dramatic "

She led Jade out into the hallway, if the other woman was feeling okay

"Usually such interactions don't happen. I was surprised by it myself. I wish I could tell you more about the ax beyond it being magical." Jade was more then happy to put herself a distance from where that had happened.

"Alright, I am going to see if my mother is in then get a carriage ready for us."

Ari followed Jade out

A quick search for something fit for a concert and mingling, yet also for Ariadne's style and colors. The addition of purple to the traditional black and silver.

Long earrings of silver to accentuate her tall throat and shorter hair.

Jade flits a bout like a butterfly wanting to do her best for her cousin.

Ari's personal style seems to be "elegant but dangerous", sort of a glamorous warrior queen.

Some ideas

I'll admit that I kinda like the second one

Jade gathers up the second dress and some elegant earrings as well as some amethyst beads.
If the make up is not preserved well Jade says, "It is alright, let's go to my room I have a lot of new make up and we shall bring out your natural beauty."

Jade is all smiles and seems to know what she is doing when it comes to helping someone get prepared for events.

Ariadne followed along.  She was no novice to cosmetics,  but this was clearly a whole other level.

*From the Pattern Room*

OOC:  A quick redo of my last Pattern post, mostly for my reference.

Ariadne had only known about the existence of "real magic" for about a week or so now.  But she was adapting, she thought, fairly quickly.  Admittedly, she hadn't actually seen a whole lot of it yet, she had to qualify.   There were a few "magically" lit torches here and there, and certainly stories everyone seemed to tell about "adventures in other worlds" and whatnot.
But, to be brutally honest, in many aspects, Amber felt more like a high end, very expensively done, Renn Faire, than a place of actual fundamental magic.
The Pattern, though, was something else entirely.   Still, of course, there felt like there was room for plausible deniability.   Sparks and little shocks went up her legs and seemingly into her soul when she walked it, and she felt like the very life essence was being leeched from her body with every step, but that could, conceivably, be from some kind of electrical field, carefully calibrated.  It was a bit of a stretch, as explanations went, but it still kind of fit the facts.
Reaching the center of the Pattern, Ariadne felt a sense of accomplishment that surpassed anything she'd ever done before in her life.  Sure, it felt more like she'd run a gauntlet of tazers and exposed wiring, rather than a Fundamental Power of the Universe, but it was still damned impressive.

But now...what to do?   She'd been told, by various people throughout the castle, that once One reached the Center of the Pattern, One go simply...wish...to go, well, anywhere.
Literally anywhere.
She could go to the Amber kitchens, or she could go back to Boston, to her father's house.  To her LA apartment.
To that cool hole-in-the-wall restaurant in Boston's Chinatown, Tung Chow's, where she'd had her first crush.  To her old classroom back in Catholic School, Sister Mary Of Constipation, as she and her friends had called it.  Wow, she was tempted by that, she had to admit.  To magically appear in front of a Catholic Catechism class, and watch nuns' heads explode.
And that was just the tip of the proverbial, magical iceberg.  She could also go to any world, any place she could picture, or even imagine.
She could go to a world of futuristic spaceships, or one where the Old Wild West was alive and well, or a world where donuts and bacon grew on trees.  Heck, she could go to that world where the Teletubbies lived.
It was a mind boggling idea.
And one that she hadn't really given a lot of thought to, because, frankly, she wasn't entirely positive she'd have survived the experience, especially since she knew so little about what to expect.

Now, though, she was in the center of the Pattern, and could go anywhere.

Honestly, she just wanted to go to her room, for a nap and a bath, and a change of clothes.
And not necessarily in that order.

She thought about her mother's room, where she was staying.  The large, luxurious bed, with ornate wardrobe with its secrets, the expensive and fancy drapes and bedspread.
And she thought about it, VERY hard.

It was like falling, in a way.  Like she was being pulled through reality, stepping through a doorway, all the while standing still.  Like that spot in front of her bed was being brought to her, rather than her being sent there.
It was a giddy feeling.  Empowering.  Intoxicating.  If she didn't think that the Pattern was such a death trap, she'd love to do that again sometime.

Then, she was there.  In her mother's room.  Ari blinked her eyes, looking around.
"Um...hello?"
She wasn't sure why she spoke out loud.  It was as if she wasn't entirely positive that what she was seeing in front of her eyes was actually real, and speaking would knock down the illusion, showing her cousins and the Pattern still there.
Reaching out, she felt the soft, thick bed spread, the one that kept her so warm in this drafty castle.  Ari squeezed it tight, gasping in relief, as if the blanket was some kind of lifeline that allowed her to know that what she'd just endured had really happened.

It had really happened.  She'd walked the Pattern.

Though, frankly, at the moment she felt like the Pattern had "walked her".   Chuckling to herself, she started stripping off her clothing and gear, getting ready to wash a marathon's worth of sweat from her body.
Ariadne paused, and, with a wry curiosity, pulled her cell phone out of her carrying case, and tried turning it on.   She wasn't really expecting anything from her phone, something that had been essentially a paper weight for the last few days, but she was curious.

Ariadne sighed tiredly, arching her back and stretching with a satisfying, if mildly painful, crack and creak.
"Maybe we're not doing that again.  At least not for a LONG time."
She chuckled wryly to herself, shaking her head at what was, she had to be honest, a near death experience.

Walking towards her bed, she started cleaning up.  She considered calling for a servant to fill up her tub with hot water (she sighed deliriously at the thought of a hot bath, admittedly), but decided she didn't want to deal with it.  There would be a few minutes, easily, before her cousins might swing by to check on her.  That long trudge up the stairs would keep them busy for a long time.   Then she pondered her odd situation.  Would they know where she even went?  They might presume she went back to Earth.  Or Candyland, for that matter.   But she was sure someone might stop by, so she hurried up to get a quick "bird bath", like she did back in her early stuntwoman days.   She looked at her bed again, somewhat longingly, but realized that she was too giddy and excited to sleep.

Ari checks all her gear. All is as she would expect it to be.

Her phone screen does a thing like it lights up black, like "I'm on, stand by?" and then even that fades, like "nope sorry I take it back, I can't even."




(Ready to try to follow your lead... slowly...)

Ariadne smirked and gave a rueful chuckle at her phone.  She should have known better.  Oh well, it was worth a try.
She looked at all the gear she brought woth her, hoping for "Pattern magic" to possibly enhance them.   Now, though, she realized that just Surviving was all the "magic" she needed.

She changed into a more casual outfit, a longish skirt with a somewhat androgynous tunic over it.  Looking at the pile of weapons on the bed, she had a weird feeling of guilt by the compulsion to arm herself before going to meet her family.   But, she knew, with freakish looking monster assassins running around,  it probably wasn't a bad idea.   Ari chuckled to herself, realizing that weaponry was practically as much a fashion statement to these Amberites as a stylish tunic or a pretty dress.
Going with what was becoming her "personal style", she armed herself with a slim sword on her belt scabbard, two custom made metal throwing axes on thigh holsters,  and a fancy dagger in her boot.

Ariadne looked in the large, ornate mirror in the room, deciding she looked good enough for now.  Granted,  she mostly wanted to go to sleep more than anything else,  but she didn't want to keep her family waiting.

She left to meet up with everyone.

From Amber Hallway.......


Ariadne walked into her suite of rooms, looking around with bemusement.
Her first impulse, whenever walking into a room, was to reach for a light switch, and she stopped herself, her hand halfway to where an imaginary light switch would be.  She chuckled.

The room was reasonably well lit with candles, specially made ones, in fancy glass containers, that she presumed could burn for hours unattended with no danger to the room or furnishings.
Quite clever, actually, though most things here in Amber were.  While this whole culture seemed stuck in the Medieval period, Ariadne had to admit that they were REALLY good at it.  They might never invent the electric light bulb, but they had advanced candles and torches and lantern "technology" to the point where it was practically magic.

Or, she mused, the candles were lit because a servant knew she was on her way back to her rooms and snuck in here a few minutes ago to light them.  Which was super creepy on one hand, but also very impressively professional on the other.
Being a servant to a finicky and unpredictable royal family was also something that these people had elevated to a high tech artform.


She sat down in one of the comfortable chairs in the sitting room that was the beginning of her suite of four different small rooms that made up her quarters.  The fancy chair was soft and comfortable, looked like it was a million years old but felt like it had been made or at least renovated yesterday.  Just like most of the castle.  Once again, Amber had mastered the weird combination of "Ancient" and "Modern" in its surroundings.

As she sat, she pondered her future.
A month ago, as she finished up her latest project in Los Angeles, she was certainly feeling restless, as if she wanted, or needed, to do something very different.   However, if asked for clarification, she would have talked about going camping or some kind of Las Vegas vacation, not taking a trip to a magical castle world to fight monsters.
She sighed and shook her head.   This whole thing was definitely getting....real.