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Message: <blockquote data-quote="BoldItalic" data-source="post: 6806616" data-attributes="member: 6777052">After a time, they spied a rag-taggle group of demons of all shapes and sizes, moving ahead of them. The demons were listlessly following a well-worn trail as if compelled by some inner force towards ... something. That 'something' was a strange edifice that was so warped that it boggled the mind just to look at it. The structure was half like a small fortress and half like a grove of lifeless trees and half like neither. But whatever it was, it was clear that the brass columns rose upwards from it, into the sky."There is another group of demons moving away from the building, off to the right," remarked Rylnethaz. "Hard to make out at this distance, but they seem to be leaping about and wrestling each other. If I didn't know they were demons, I'd believe they were happy.""Something is wrong here," said BoldItalic looking puzzled and trying to reason it out. "Unhappy demons approach the building then leave it happy. Is it feeding them? Surely not, for demons do not eat, not as we understand it. Yet they are being recharged with some kind of vital essence that they crave. What is the essence that sustains demons? They are creatures of pure chaos.""The essence of Chaos? Is there such a thing? Drawn down from those brass pipes like an upside-down well?" offered Rylnethaz.BoldItalic looked strangely at the elf, then smote his own brow as if insight had suddenly dawned. He looked visibly shaken. "Arh! How could I be so blind? My friend, I fear I have led you astray in a most terrible fashion. Gods forgive me, we nearly made a most awful mistake.""Be careful, my friend, a vizier who makes a mistake is something of a liability," said Rylnethaz. He was half in jest but only partly so. A king has responsibilities, after all. "You had better explain.""The chaos engines that the gnomes were tending? They are not drawing chaos up from here in the abyss and spreading it over our world, as I once told you. I was utterly wrong, it is quite the opposite. They are cleansing our world of chaos and pumping it down here where the demons thrive on it. We are looking at the bottom of a sewer. The sewer into which runs all the madness of our own world, sucked out like a leech sucking out poison from a wound.""I see. So destroying the machines, as I am sworn to do on your advice, would not be so good after all?""Regrettably, that is so.""And you came to this conclusion now, after sleeping overnight in the abyss?""Yes ... but ...""This place has unhinged your mind.""I do not think so.""You wouldn't, would you?"BoldItalic paused for thought. "I see your point," he conceded. He looked bleak. "If I cannot trust my own mind, I am lost. I must know. But how can I know?""D-D-Divination," suggested Clotbert.BoldItalic saw the sense of that and drew from a pocket seven short sticks of ivory and a miniature book of closely written text and strange diagrams. The others looked on with interest. He enunciated a single, very precise question and held it in his mind as he performed the divination. Seven times he threw the ivory sticks in the air and caught them on the back of one hand, studying the patterns that they made each time. Then he said, as if to himself, "Pilgrim - Curse - Vixen - Chain - Essence - Fang - Pulpit." and riffled through the pages of his book. He looked perplexed, and double-checked. Then he heaved a great sigh."What does it mean?" asked Rylnethaz anxiously.BoldItalic took a flask of cordial out of another pocket and drank deeply. A wild look came into his eye and he began to talk very loudly. "I am insane," he began, "but not in the way we thought. I might have to give up wizarding." And so saying, he sat down heavily on the ground and turned into a rose bush."That's not helping," said Rylnethaz.</blockquote>

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