I awoke this day to a golden yellow sunset in Chaos. It was brief, quickly changing to orange and brown before being consumed by a hungry horizon that lifted itself up and swallowed it whole with a maw of rose red and black. It is difficult to tell wether such a thing is auspicious or not in Chaos, but it was beautiful. It left me alive, awake and hungry for breakfast and a good fight. I wonder if Bleys is up for it today? The only other one who is both skilled enough to fight me and willing is that Borel, and he's a pompous ass.

I recall Gizette inviting me to join her in shadow today. She said something about nursing some dinosaur or reptile thing back to health. As much fun as it sounded, I told her that if she was going to be away I'd rather take the opportunity to work up a sweat with her husband. Wow. Someday when I get that old will I pick up such boring hobbies too. Between her and her husband there is one really interesting and fun person and one extremely boring one. Too bad you have to go back and forth between them in order to avoid the latter.

I decided to follow through and asked Bleys to spar with me. We rarely do this when Gizette is around, first of all, because she gets antsy. Something about sparring with weapons the mean each others certain death should we be careless. Also Bleys like to flirt with me when we fight. I play along because I know he isn't serious, but for some reason I get the feeling that if she were around I'd be defending myself on two fronts.

Father once told me about a fight he had been witness to between Bleys and Benedict. Never before had he seen such a display. He said it was a testament to his work that such a battle was fought with instruments of his craft. The fight had taught him something. No one was undefeatable. Not Bleys, not Benedict, no one. I think some profound lesson the story was supposed to convey was lost to me. I already knew that no one was invincible. The look of awe on his face caught me off guard, however, and he interpreted my silence as confirmation of his parable. Now to be fair, Bleys is darn good and Benedict is even better. They are both certainly better than I, but we live in a world of infinite possibility strewn amongst infinite universes. No one is undefeatable.

Bleys received a trump call from Gizette in the middle of our duel, which proves he isn't serious about the flirting. Something like that would be difficult to hide in the middle of psychic communication, and he didn't seem particularly defensive.

Why is it that other people cannot find the comedy in tragedy. Tragedy practically floods with it, yet people seem to think there is this sacred taboo that exists to prevent us from utilizing it. Apparently King Benedict is in a paranoid rampage and is targeting the family. Benedict, whom I shall from this point on refer to as Genben(General Benedict) in case this diary should fall into enemy/his hands, really deserves a good pranking some times. Of course, by deserve I mean desperately needs and by pranking I mean stabbing. Unfortunately, I am not qualified to do said stabbing. Maybe I can, at least, put him in an equivalently foul mood. Bleys seems up for it and so does Dierdre(I didn't even know she was around Chaos until Bleys mentioned it.).

I was all ready to get everyone together when everyone else showed up. Aunts and Uncles, and even a few relatives I didn't recognize. The horse was on Julian side of the family. (I always thought everyone had been kidding about that.)

Hmmm... Attack Amber with an army of demons. Sounds familiar. Didn't Genben himself try that once? Wasn't he shut down after traveling a few shadows by the family? Julian went so far as to show me his army. It was, indeed, incomparably larger that Genben's old force. It was so large that I had seen it's like only in dream. Then again, I have also dreamt of forces that would have put this one to shame. What can I say, 'only in dream' is a measurement that encompasses quite a large variation in scale.

I parted with Julian after telling him I would assassinate the king in the confusion of war. Yea right, as if that's going to happen. The only opportunity the battle was going to provide me with was to allow me to see how Genben reacts to a serious military threat. Now to be clear, should the king leave himself open I most certainly would kill him, but that's got nothing to do with Julian.

Gizette provided me with the opportunity I needed to get into the castle since trumping into the courtyard would have both been too dangerous and it would have destroyed any secrecy. I should have walked.

I guess I've been away from Amber for a while. The first two people we bumped into (literally) were family. They were two very militant cousins whom I had never met before, Thomas, and General Durus. Durus, seemed like the proud macho type that I oh so love to toy with. Thomas struck me as the aforementioned type who doesn't appreciate the taunting of open wounds. How do you expect to heal if you don't constantly poke at the scab. Hmmm... that doesn't seem to fall very well into metaphor. The two of them almost caught us by surprise. They would have too, had Durus not narrated their approach to the room. "Carefully, as to not make a sound, Thomas reached for the door", and the like.

After an extended cat and mouse chase through the castle, as well as a little sabotage in the throne room, I finally got a chance to watch the battle. Yep, Julian was losing all right. Silly guy. I had just fetched myself some popcorn and iced tea and settled myself in for an extended viewing when Thomas showed up again with foul news. I get the feeling that I should have just killed him there. It would have made me feel better and it might have just been a mercy killing after I found out how the king conducted business.

I do not wish to write about what happened in the throne room next for it is too fresh in my memory, as painful as it was. I will only say that I tried to teach everyone present a lesson. That lesson was that the kings could not predict everything, that he could be surprised, that he could miscalculate. I proved it twice, but I think my family is too blind and cowardly to learn without his approval.

Oh and Borel is a coward and a pompous ass.

-- GhenkiTseng - 23 Jun 2007

Very nice!

-- BenBernard - 23 Jun 2007