Chapter Four - Amber Falls

Readers Note: Chapter Four had a very sketchy and poor set of write up notes, so a considerable amount of embellishment was required to produce the below.

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Once Kyle had departed for Amber, Corin remained alone in the quiet, sun-dappled glade where Corwin’s Pattern lay inscribed - its spiralling lines etched not into stone but into the very earth itself. Grasses rippled gently in the breeze beyond its borders, and a small stand of trees swayed nearby, as if whispering secrets to one another across the hush that followed the divine battle. At the Pattern’s glowing centre, motionless and silent, lay the small figure of the Unicorn.

 

It was a tragic and unsettling sight. The great beast, so long the symbol of Order and purity, lay slumped at the centre of Corwin’s Pattern, its limbs tucked loosely beneath it, its radiant coat dulled to a ghost of its former brilliance. Its breathing was shallow. Its eyes, when they opened at all, were clouded and unfocused. There was no blood. No sign of physical trauma. But the sense of exhaustion - spiritual, cosmic - was palpable. Something essential had been torn from the creature, leaving it frayed, hollowed, barely anchored to reality.

 

Corin lingered at the edge of the Pattern, her gaze fixed on the Unicorn. She had never before walked any Pattern – let alone Corwin’s Pattern - newer than that of Amber, different in essence but no less absolute. It shimmered faintly in the light of the open sky, a lattice of Order carved into the bones of Reality itself. A thing of terrifying structure and law, alien to Chaos and her Logrus-forged instincts.

 

But she had no time for doubt. No time for fear.

 

Perhaps it was madness that seized her in that moment - or some spark of divine instinct still echoing from her earlier communion with the Unicorn. Whatever the reason, she stepped forward.

 

One foot fell onto the shining lines. There was a sudden, but small eruption of sparks around her feet, and a touch of uncomfortableness, but it was clear that The Pattern did not resist her. Instinctively knew she must continue, for to stop during a Patternwalk was to invite certain death, she took another step, and another.

 

With her heart hammering in her chest, Corin began to walk in earnest. The curves and coils of the Pattern unfolded before her, drawing her into a test of identity and endurance that pushed at the limits of her being. Time lost meaning. Her every step required total commitment - an assertion of self against the resistance of the Pattern. And yet, she did not falter. Whether it was her heritage, her recent transformations, or the mark the Unicorn had left upon her, something within her was enough.

 

Eventually she reached the centre and stood over the Unicorn. The Unicorn lay before her like a monument to a dying age. Corin knelt, placing a hand lightly on its neck and gently stroked the soft fur. With only a thought, she wrapped them both in the power of the Pattern and bent the lines of reality to her will.

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With a whisper of displaced air and a faint glimmer of light, they vanished - departing the glade, the Pattern, and that moment in time.

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The two figures blinked into exitance in a distant Shadow, one that Corin had chosen instinctively - remote, quiet, and as yet untouched by the great forces unravelling the cosmos. Here, tall crystalline trees shimmered in the windless air, their leaves chiming softly in tones that resonated with no earthly scale. A stream ran near her feet, moving with sluggish, almost reverent purpose. But amidst all this alien beauty, the Unicorn lay motionless in her arms.

 

Corin lowered it gently to a patch of mossy earth, immediately beginning her work. She conjured water - pure, laced with subtle healing magics - and bathed its muzzle. She summoned warmth, shelter, an illusion of safety around them, hoping that comfort alone might coax back some spark of vitality. Her command of Logrus, of sorcery, of raw creative will, was matched by few among her kin - but against this profound inertia, her tools felt like children’s toys.

 

The Unicorn did not respond.

 

Its chest rose and fell in shallow rhythms. Its eyes fluttered only once or twice, and then not at all. No matter what salves Corin applied, or what enchantments she whispered into the air, the being remained insensate - caught in some fathomless exhaustion, deeper than any spell or poison. It was not merely weakened; it was unravelling.

 

She sat back on her heels, breath tight in her chest. For all her power, she was helpless.

 

And then the wind changed.

 

Not a real wind - there was no breeze in this still corner of Shadow - but something older, colder, threaded through the folds of reality. Her skin prickled. The leaves of the crystalline trees ceased their music. Somewhere, far away yet utterly immediate, the substance of Shadow twisted. Something vast had entered the region. Not merely a power, but something akin to a sovereign authority.

 

Corin stood, eyes narrowing. She stretched her senses out across the filaments of the Logrus, feeling the tremble in the skeins of possibility. And then she felt it - coiling forward, immense and ancient, slicing through the layers of nearby Shadows like a scythe through wheat. The Serpent had come.

 

With a grim efficiency born of long practice, Corin began constructing her defences. Wards sprang up around her, glowing in runes of burning air and inverted probability. She wrapped the area in distortion fields, twisted perception, laid traps of inverted causality and reflected intent. All her arts were bent to the task of buying time. Of holding.

 

A ripple of reality slithered toward her - and then the Serpent emerged.

 

It slid forward into the Shadow like a continent moving beneath the sea, its sinuous body towering high above the trees, scales gleaming with an iridescence that shimmered in patterns too vast for the mind to track. Its head reared up above her, tongue flickering. There was a moment’s pause as it evaluated her preparations - clearly impressed, but unmoved.

 

Then it spoke, not only with words, but with the weight of its attention, its intention made manifest.

 

“Give me the Unicorn!”

 

Its voice, if it could be called that, echoed and reverberated not only in the air, but in the very substance of Corin’s being. The Serpent’s gaze never wavered from the Unicorn’s crumpled form, and at the moment of its demand, the creature stirred - for the first time since their arrival, the Unicorn began to shake, a tremor seizing its limbs, as though some resonance between the two ancient entities had been triggered.

 

Corin stepped forward, placing herself between the Serpent and the Unicorn. “No,” she said, simply and unyielding.

 

The Serpent turned its gaze to her. That single, glacial moment felt like the universe pausing to reconsider its shape. Its expression - if such a thing could exist on the face of a snake - was one of disbelief. Not anger. Not threat. Just sheer, unfiltered astonishment.

 

And that was all the moment she needed.

 

Corin didn’t hesitate. With a flick of thought and will, she drew upon her near peerless Exalted Powers of Logrus and split Shadow.

 

Reality itself tore like silk. Layer upon layer of alternative realms and variant possibilities were thrown between her and the Serpent in a blur of colour and noise and gravity. Worlds stacked atop worlds, hundreds - thousands - of them, each piled in frantic succession to form a near-impassable gulf. She felt the tension in her blood, the shudder of protest from the Unicorn as it was caught in the backwash of her flight.

 

She reached down and swept the creature into her arms. And then she ran.

 

A hell-run - like no other she had ever attempted, empowered by her Logrus power and new found Pattern power - unfurled before her. A tearing flight through reality’s tapestry, one thread after another, desperate, reckless, fuelled by adrenaline and a growing certainty that she had just burned every bridge behind her.

 

She could not return to the Courts. Not now. Not after defying the Serpent itself.

 

With her defences stretched, her options dwindling and her endurance failing, she did the only thing she could.

 

She reached out across Shadow with a Trump card, fingers trembling, mind blazing.

 

Kyle.

 

And just before the horizon shattered behind her at the rapid approach of an oncoming, rage filled storm, he answered.

 

She fell forward into the waiting contact, drawing herself and the Unicorn through the portal, utterly exhausted, back to Amber.

 

 

Kyle had only just returned to Amber, his mind still churning from the events that had unfolded since the great battle. Random - his king, his kin, and for all intents and purposes, a father figure - had been entrusted to the care of the finest physicians Kyle’s personal Shadow could offer. That world, Terra Prime, had medical technologies decades ahead of most in Shadow - coldly efficient, surgically precise, and staffed by minds that bowed to no tradition save results. If there was a place in Shadow where Random might stand a chance, it was there.

 

But Kyle had not lingered. There was work to be done in Amber, and though his worry for Random lingered at the edges of his thoughts, he knew the realm needed him.

 

Amber was stirring. The smoke had begun to clear from its shattered courtyards, and already, servants and soldiers moved about with the dazed discipline of those too exhausted to mourn. The bodies of enemies had been cleared. The blood washed. The broken banners were being gathered for repair. What had once been a throne-city of stories now looked like a fortress barely holding the line.

 

Kyle stood atop one of the inner parapets, watching the activity below, when he felt the Trump begin to activate - its cold mental fingers brushing his thoughts with urgent familiarity.

 

Corin.

 

The contact opened like a crack in the world. He reached for her without hesitation, anchoring the channel, bracing for whatever she might bring.

 

And then she launched herself through. Kyle saw and felt the maelstrom of anger coming behind Corin, and closed the Trump contact off as soon as she stumbled through.

 

Corin’s form was streaked with dust and exertion, her eyes sharp with urgency, but it was what she carried that turned heads and stopped hearts. Cradled in her arms like a wounded fawn was the Unicorn - small, limp, its breath barely visible. Its golden-white coat was dulled with grime and shadow-dust, and it stirred only faintly as she crossed the threshold into Amber.

 

There was a moment of silence on the parapet, broken only by the wind.

 

Kyle helped her the rest of the way through, and together they descended into the heart of the city. All around them, those who glimpsed the Unicorn stopped in their tracks - servants froze, guards stepped back, even minor nobles bowed instinctively, eyes wide with something between reverence and terror. The Unicorn was more than a symbol. It was the soul of Order, the mother of the Pattern, the hidden force behind everything Amber represented.

 

They brought it to the solar orchard - a small, open air green space in the west wing, untouched by fire or blade during the recent attack. The Unicorn was laid on the soft turf and put under heavy guard. There was nothing else they could think to do.

 

Soon, other family members arrived, drawn by the psychic disturbance of the Trump and the whispers spreading through the castle. Bleys came swiftly, his clothing still scorched from the battlefields, his hands stained with old blood. Despite the chaos of the last few days, he had retained his usual composure, his eyes glinting with knowledge and experience. If anyone might understand what had befallen the Unicorn, it would be him.

 

But even Bleys, for all his learning and magical insight, stood baffled. He knelt beside the creature and reached out, his fingers hovering just above its flank, as if afraid to touch it. His eyes narrowed. His mouth pressed into a grim line.

 

“She is... unmoored,” he murmured. “Not broken, but untethered. Her essence... scattered. There’s no simple healing for this.”

 

The others exchanged uneasy looks.

 

So, they did what little they could. The Unicorn was made as comfortable as possible. The orchard placed under constant guard. The family could offer only vigilance. And hope.

 

 

Several days passed. In that brief lull, Amber breathed again - shallowly, cautiously. The dead were buried, the wounded tended, and the golden halls of the castle rang once more with the clipped cadence of command. Broken walls were patched, flags re-hung, and the sentries doubled at every gate. Kyle and Bleys coordinated efforts to stabilise the city, while Corin remained a silent presence, ever watchful over the chamber where the Unicorn lingered in its troubled slumber. No word came from the Courts of Chaos. No further signs of Corwin or his Pattern. The storm, it seemed, had passed.

 

Until the first reports came in.

 

Messengers, breathless and bloodied, arrived from the outlying settlements: farmsteads and watch posts gutted by a force moving across land - fast, disciplined, and precise. At first, it seemed no more than a raiding party, perhaps a desperate feint by Annael, testing Amber’s defences in the aftermath of their last engagement. But then came the warnings from the skies.

 

Witnesses spoke of black shapes wheeling high above the countryside - metal beasts that flew without wings, silent and gleaming, each bristling with unnatural weapons. They moved in precise formations, scanning, targeting, firing. The unlucky few who survived described the carnage in fragmented whispers: whole villages flattened, stone crumbling like sand under barrages of ballistic fire. No army of Shadowlings or mutated Chaos beasts this time. These were machines. Machines with purpose.

 

The Blood Droids had returned.

 

And this time, they came for Castle Amber itself.

 

The initial assault was swift. Explosions rocked the outer gates. Thunderous projectiles tore through the watchtowers. Amber’s mortal defenders - veterans, all - fought bravely, but their weapons barely scratched the hide of their attackers. The Blood Droids moved with inhuman precision, their movements calculated, their strength enhanced by Pattern-infused cores that hummed with terrible power. The family of Amber, seeing the slaughter unfold, had no choice but to intervene.

 

Bleys was among the first to charge into the fray.

 

Clad in fire and crimson, he danced through the battlefield with his usual flair - sorcery flashing from his fingertips, swords flying in tandem with his will. For a moment, it seemed he might turn the tide, his spells disorienting even the most advanced of the Droids. But then, from above, a hail of gunfire rained down - pure lead death, conjured by rotary weapons that hadn’t been seen in Amber since the days of Corwin’s return with his Guns of Avalon.

 

The bullets struck home.

 

Bleys staggered as machine fire ripped through his chest, the force lifting him from his feet. His body crumpled to the bloodied cobblestones, limbs splayed in finality. One of Amber’s brightest lights, extinguished in an instant.

 

Not far away, Gerard roared in fury and charged headlong into one of the Droids. With raw, unmatched strength, he tackled it to the ground, bending its limbs, slamming his fists into its armoured chest. For a heartbeat, it looked as though the brute strength of Amber might prevail. But the construct responded with mechanical precision: gears whined, hydraulics surged, and the machine lifted Gerard into the air with casual power.

 

It hurled him against a boulder with a sickening crack.

 

He rolled off, gasping, and tried to rise - but before he could find his footing, the Blood Droid stepped forward and brought its full weight down on his back with a thunderous stomp.

 

He did not move again.

 

Elsewhere, amid the chaos and fire, Joshua moved swiftly, his thoughts not on the battle, but on the possibilities that might lie among the fallen. He reached Bleys’ body just as another figure appeared from the smoke - Caine, ever watchful, ever opportunistic. The two men locked eyes. No words passed between them. They knew.

 

There, upon Bleys’ fingers, glinting faintly even through the blood and dust, were two rings - Spikards. Artifacts of power, ancient and potent.

 

Each reached for one.

 

Joshua was faster.

 

Caine snatched the second ring a heartbeat later, but a sudden burst of gunfire caught him across the ribs, spinning him sideways. He snarled, wounded but alive, and managed to stumble back into cover, the Spikard clutched tight in his hand.

 

The field was lost. The Blood Droids were advancing. The city could not withstand them.

 

The family made the decision. Trump was the only escape.

 

Kyle, now fully in command of the Trumps in the region, took swift action. Through one card after another, he pulled the wounded and the weary from the battlefield - Gerard’s broken body among them, as well as Corin, Joshua, Caine, and others. One by one, they vanished from the failing field, retreating not in defeat, but in survival.

 

He sent them all to his Shadow, Terra Prime.

 

There, Gerard was rushed into the care of Kyle’s medical team - advanced facilities unlike anything Amber could offer. He was stabilized, placed into a drug-induced coma to halt internal bleeding and reduce neural trauma. The others received treatment, rest, and - if not peace - at least a reprieve.

 

But Kyle’s work was not yet done.

 

Even as his allies recovered, he opened another Trump, this time back to Amber. He emerged into the castle’s halls, moving quickly through corridors choked with smoke and rubble. The guards barely acknowledged him - those who hadn’t already fled or fallen. He raced to the solar orchard, where the Unicorn still lay in guarded silence.

 

No one stopped him.

 

He stepped into the room, crossed to the creature, and gently gathered it in his arms. The Unicorn stirred faintly but did not resist.

 

Then, with one last glance at the ruined of Amber, he activated his Trump once more - and returned to his Shadow.

 

To safety. For now.