Chapter Two: Step Two:

Negotiate the Logrus. The Logrus stood before me. Like the Pattern the trump didn't do the real thing justice, as good as the picture was. The Logrus was the opposite of the pattern. The Logrus was a maze, but an ever-shifting one. In it were all the fear, footfalls, and stumbling blocks that chaos could imagine with an infinity of time to think them up. I was exhausted and realized that I didn't have what it took to get through it, much less even start… or something like that.

Mom, was no dummy tough, I'll give her that. I wish I had known her, Deidre, Lady of Amber. I took the last object that she had left me in the safety deposit box I had emptied just one hour and thirty seven minutes earlier that day.

It was a vile of liquid. It looked thick and very nasty tasting, with various colors of blue swirling around in it. Not unlike the Logrus itself. I contemplated the insanity of drinking such a potion based entirely on the handwritten letter from a woman I had never meet, but she hadn't steered me wrong so far. Besides the Pattern had cleared my head. I knew this to be true, either that or I was completely insane and didn't know it.

I drank the potion. Whole. The promise didn't disappoint. I was completely rested and ready to go… it beat the hell out of Starbucks! I looked at the engraving on the vile that was in a language that I could read now… it said, "pan galactic gargle blaster mark 2." The language was datascript.

I afforded myself a few minutes take a gander at the Logrus. It reminded me of a music video about a near death experience. It would be fun to negotiate this maze. Then again, I must admit that I was having more fun now than probably ever… Just the idea of AH4 sitting in that prison reliving the worst night with his worst girlfriend ever brought a smile to my face. Choose your girlfriends carefully, my priest had always told me.

With that, as I was getting ready to jump through the Logrus' front gate and begin to negotiate the ever changing maze / music-video-about-a-near-death-experience A-hole #4 suddenly appeared in front of me. I turned around only to find AH4 (pronounced "ah" like "ah-ha" four) on the ground in a bloody mess. He looked like he was in no position to put up a fight but I wasn't in the mood to take any chances. After all about two hours earlier (my time) AH4 had broken into a bank, killed several people that I'm quite certain didn't deserve it and try to kill me while I was studding the contents of my Mother's mysterious safety deposit box (more latter in the pre-quell).

AH4 was currently getting an excellent view of the orthogonal grooves on the inside of the barrels of the Jack of Spades and Ace of Hearts 45 caliber "bad guy stompers" that I had picked up in the "prison".

"Don't shoot" he pleaded with me. I could see now the AH4 was a vampire. He wasn't in good shape either.

AH4 whom I decided to call Auhfoor, which stood for "Ass Hole Number Four", decided to speak. His voice was raspy and definitely betrayed a man who had had a very bad day.

"You -

The eight and half minute dissertation that followed was not suitable to recount in case small children might read it. He began to tell me exactly what he thought of me and he didn't hold back. After about two minutes I decided that it wasn't suitable to print under any circumstances. I was however very impressed with it. In fact, after about three minutes I was really rather enjoying myself, although I did my best not to betray my amusement with my glance. Six minutes into it I was very impressed with Auhfoor's literary and oratory prowess. He said things about my mother that I didn't even think possible. The whole soliloquy was very well thought out and organized with a lot of practice. It occurred to me that if time had traveled 1000 times faster in the prison than here than he would have had about two weeks to practice it all. It showed. It was very polished in deed, almost like Shakespeare meats "Texas Chainsaw Massacre". As he was about to conclude his own personal "to be or not to be" from hell he sensed my amusement.

I was really disappointed. I'm sure the conclusion would have been spectacular. Oh, course my twin handguns dislodging 240 grain slugs at 750 feet per second towards his personal space would have been a real dampener on his conclusion.

He stopped his diarrhea of the mouth, his testament to over-acting and I spoke to him instead.

"How did you escape?"

"Password." He said, "That was clever."

"How did you finally discover it?"

"I made a boon with an arch-demon." I laughed hysterically. I could see this didn't go over well with him. That made it even more funny.

"And what did that cost you?" I asked of him, the vampire Auhfoor.

"You." He said with a smile. He knew something that I didn't. Something important.

"The demon now seeks you for his prize, and that he will consume your powers and install himself as a Lord of Amber over all of shadow."

I shrugged, and starched myself. This did not improve his disposition. I gave Auhfoor a personal introduction to the Jack of Spades and Ace of Hearts. When he died he simply turned to mist, and misted off. Vampire, bloody hard to kill. I made a mental note to get a magic flame thrower. Or a plus five super soaker filled with holy water.

God have mercy on my soul because I was actually enjoying myself. Among the useful things hardly worth mentioning from the prison was a key to a vault with enough money in it to buy Camelot, maybe even a seat on the United States Senate. I couldn't wait to open it. Funny, four vampires try to kill me, An arch demon sets his sights on me, my mother turns out to be a princess with supernatural powers, and the thing I'm most excited about breaking open the piggy bank. What can I say, it's the simple things in life that count.

The Logrus now lay before me. It was like a recurring nightmare that when you woke up you realized that you weren't really awake but you had just awoken in another nightmare, just as bad as the previous one. First I was being buried alive. When I by shear force of will dug my way out of a coffin with stones and dirt on top of it… I found myself on top of the graveyard, where ghosts, and goblins came for me. A shambling mound of a human corpse came lumbering at me, with a few dozen of his closest friends. I wasn't sure if a slug for a 45 would do anything against him, but what the hell I aimed and fired anyway. Much to my surprise the slug penetrated deeply into his chest, and black nasty smelling fluid poured out of his wound. He fell to the ground… with a groan just like the ones you see in the "B" movies. His friends fell just as easily, they weren't very fast but they were many. 30 or so slugs latter, with a lot of stink latter, they were disposed of.

Note to self: (Acquire shotgun 12 gauge or larger). King of Clubs would be a good motif for engravings on it.

The rank bile from the zombies began to soak the ground. It seemed that there was just more and more of the vile liquid. Soon the graveyard was becoming like quicksand, and the tombstones were the first to start sinking. I managed to walk six feet, which under the circumstances I was a very proud accomplishment and grabbed hold of a large crypt. As it slowly sank I managed to get on top of it. A tree branch hung low. The trees seemed to not be sinking into the ground so I found my way to the branch and clung for dear life. The crypt vanished beneath the muck and I was doing my curious George impersonation on the tree.

That's when the vines of the trees began to curl around my neck. I needed a sword. A pistol wasn't going to hack it. I started grabbing for branches, anything with a sharp edge on it… that's when I broke off a branch and it transformed itself into a long curved blade with a weighted point. I cut at the branches and made short work of the vines. I fell onto the much.

I looked at the blade in my hand and then began to understand the Logrus. As the chaos around me was ever changing trying to kill me… I to had power over chaos. I would will changes in it as well. The Logrus was brute force, but my will was skill and cunning. It struck me that this was much the opposite of essaying the Pattern. Which didn't strike me as surprising at all.

I sank into the ground up to my knees and willed there to be solid ground. A few solid stones appeared out of the much and I stood on them, but the Logrus was persistent. I began to jump from solid stone to solid stone only to have the Logrus reclaim each of them. But it was the Logrus that was fighting them… not the swamp. The swamp was a metaphor, a real one mind you, but a instrument of the Logrus non the less.

With the pattern the idea was to defeat it by getting to the end. Here you defeated it by simply escaping. As I walked from stone to stone I now walked with a purpose looking simply for the way that I had entered. It almost seemed to easy, and the gate from which I had entered appeared before me. The Logrus made one last attempt to grasp at me in the from of a dark hand made of a semi solid mist. He missed and I ducked through the entrance.

As I stood there. Back at the entrance I knew that I had successfully negotiated the Logrus. The hand that had attempted to stop me, didn't actually miss, but had clung to me and I pulled it out of the Logrus with me. It was much bigger than I had thought. It was mine to form, and make what I would with it. My mother's note had explained that this might happen, and that she instilled many memories and experiences in her diary, a diary that she had enchanted for me to use in the Logrus. I drew upon its magic now and there in my hands was my mother's diary. But its simple demeanor was not lost on me. As I picked up the diary it became a drawing on my own skin. I could take that drawing and transfigure it back to the diary. I did so and opened the pages. In it were my pistols and magazines. I could draw them out of the diary at anytime and put them into my hands. Like pulling a rabbit out of a hat.

There was much chaos around me still. I decided to refashion myself. I needed a disguise and it seemed like the time for a change. I made myself a new person. Ten feet tall, blue, with amber eyes, the Navi never had it so good.

Next stop, a ride through shadow…

8