Well...  I'm sitting here on a tree branch, trying to figure out what just happened to me.

I woke up this morning Queen of Rebma, or... Axis Rebma to make Arminius happy.  Like anything he rules.... excuse me, ruled, would ever be believed to be Rebma.  I'm going to sleep tonight Queen of Aerathis.  A formerly dead shadow.

Go figure.

The day started fairly routinely.  I guess.  I was on the Maxquest, sailing from Haven to Axis.  I still haven't figured out what to tell Archie about that one.  The trip to Haven was a complete disaster.  As usual.

I really dislike alter-egos.  White Cat is a friggin' pain in the ass.  I really feel for Max, but, seriously, he should have gotten psychiatric help before making a creation.  Maybe White Cat wouldn't have turned out as bad if he had.  At least the Haven cover-up machine was working fine.  Colmar had his work cut out for him.  Last thing I needed was even more problems with Reinhart.

Ok... I really didn't think this trip could get any worse.

Anyway, I'm finally getting out of Haven, Max is back in Correllium, the ship back to normal.  Then I get a frantic wakeup call from the Captain.

He's lost contact with Axis.

Even now, I still don't have any real idea what happened.  But none of my trumps to Axis, Axis Rebma or to anyone in Axis worked.  They weren't warm, but they were only cool, not ice-cold like they should have been.

By this point shadow storms were starting to hit our location.  We were too close to the Axis border when it started happening.  The captain turned the ship around and headed back to Haven waters.

I tried to call Carl, but even though his trump was cold, I couldn't get through the interference of the storm.  Great... stuck out on the high seas with a crisis at home and no way to get there.

After about an hour, and after I tried all my trumps about three times, I finally felt someone calling me, cutting through the interference like butter.  'bout time.

Except I didn't expect it to be Oberon.

I can't get that song out of my head right now.  The one that goes 'It's been awhile since I could hold my head up high...'.  It's stuck on repeat in my brain.

Ok.  He said we needed to talk.  Axis was dying.  He had a deal to make.  I let him pull me through.

I'm not going to go into what he said, or what we discussed.  Only two things came out of that talk that mattered.  The first being if I went along with the plan, we would save and protect my people.  The second?  That the past was the past, and sometimes it should just stay there.

So I said yes.

Oberon had to pick a few things out of my brain, like where the Rebma shadows in Axis were.  What the shadow and magic structure of Axis was like.  How tall the trees grew in Aerathis.  That sort of stuff.  It was very strange.  Only Ches had been in my head previously.  And others long dead.

Oberon then collected his jewel and we traveled to the Outer Patternlands.  And I watched him mold, and shift, and pull in every shadow of my realm out of Axis into this new place.

The bitch of it is, I knew this was probably signing Axis' death warrant.  They wouldn't have a chance with the realm destabilized by a such a massive shadow pull.  8 quadrillion people in numerous shadows pulled from Central Axis.

Make that 6 quadrillion.  Oberon decided Osric wasn't going to have supporters in this new land.  So Osric's people and their shadows were dumped in Ygg somewhere.  I don't think they were hurt...

Then again, what do I know about shadow stuff?  I've walked shadow exactly once.  Just to make sure I could.  Maybe... having the conflicting pattern/Axis dynamic removed from Axis would make it easier for them to stabilize.  That was Ches' reason for moving New Rebma.  Maybe... I was hoping too much.

When it was over, we stood in a chamber deep below a castle.  He left, saying unless it was urgent, he'd probably send any messages for me via Paolo.

Fine my me.

I climbed the stairs into the castle.  I wrote the press release announcing this act of creation, of manipulation, to the rest of creation.  Then I went outside.

Everything was exactly as I remembered it.  Of course it was.  That was part of the deal, the offer from Oberon.  The primal realm of this power was a recreation of the first realm I ever visited in shadow.  The one destroyed after my first trip to Haven.

I gotta stop going to Haven.  The things that blow up after I go there just keep getting bigger and bigger.

First off, I found the stairs and went down to Pallas, formerly Rebma.  I'm going to have to redo all my trumps. I sent the scouts out through shadow; figure out what we've got to work with.  I informed the population what had happened.  We moved again.  Surprise.  But, maybe, here we'd be safe.  At least we have the tools, the resources to start again.  We were alone here.

Then it all started to hit me.  I molded some shadow stuff and procured myself a baseball bat.  Every member of family I had was in Axis.  Closest not in Axis was... gods, Richard and Emma, I think.  No, Corwin.  My great, great grandfather.  And I've never even spoken to him.  He's not big on girls from what I understand.  Everyone else closer was either lost or dead.

So I took that baseball bat and I went to town on tigger.  Statues, that is.  It probably didn't solve anything, but it helped.  I think.  Osric will be pissed, but I think I burned that bridge when I accepted Oberon's help in the first place.

I broke things until I pushed myself to exhaustion.  Then I went back upstairs.  At least Town Portals work here.  I went north to my trees.  Redwoods well over a 1000' feet tall.  I went up near the top of one that looked familiar.  I kicked back and watched the sun start to set over the ocean.  My ocean.