Shen took parhen on the floor, right there in the hall, in the early morning hours before many walked the corridors of the palace. He cared enough to take it, but not enough to bring it outside. Today it didn't matter; he could somehow feel the wind right through the walls, and it was rising still.

In his mind, there was more order to things. The Pattern, etched and burned into him in ways it had not been before, hung like a tapestry behind all of his thought. The worlds of Amber, all of its shadows, the darkness of Chaos, the somehow sideways universe of the Dream, and the Void within which it was all wrapped, all took their place in his mind. The mechanics were still unclear in places, the edges fuzzy, but these things were not important. The higher truth, the hybrid means of thought that even Cecily maybe could not see, was starting to rise and glow like the morning twilight, and in it, Shen found a kind of peace.

The past weeks had been interesting, and much had been accomplished. Now, the time of action was nigh. Soon the Tir would rise, and it would begin. It would be the beginning of the end, one way or another.

Shen didn't know if he would survive it, in all honesty. He was far from the most able in the ways of battle, and he recognized this. He wasn't sure how he felt about death; in some ways he was prepared for it, in others it seemed a waste. It didn't matter, however, because it was time.

One can sit forever waiting for the perfect moment that will never come. Any task, great or small, can be pondered indefinitely, if that is one's wish. The universe, however, will not wait, and one must recognize an opportunity for what it is: a window where something becomes feasible. In the clouds of universal condition ever pushed by an endless wind, something will always change, and such a window may not come again.

In truth, there is no way for one to know. As always, one can only walk within the world that one can see. For those who walk between worlds, or between whole universes, the law is the same, and only the scope changes. One is always within the space of one's view.

It was time, one way or another.

Shen was surprised to find that his hopes had largely boiled down to a simple, and perhaps rather human, singularity. He hoped that, at the least, he would survive to face Zamorna. He wanted to see him, real and equal, whatever the outcome. He wanted to stand before the man that had pushed and threatened them for so long, the man who sent demons and cursed dreams, the man who took Cecily's eye and even tried to break her spirit, the man who killed his father and slaughtered his tribe, stained his homeland. Whether he would, in that moment, find the means to end the sorceror's reign or instead die at his hand, Shen wanted to look him in the eye, and if old Osric had any true vision left in his twisted mind, he would see what Shen wanted him to see. That, at the very least, would be enough.

In his core, Shen felt the Pattern shine. He felt its anchoring, how the universe spun around it and hung below it like an evergreen tree suspended from the sky. He felt the part of him that was capable of carrying it, his link to it. He was Shenrakari of Salome of Deirdre of Oberon. Of Amber.

But he was his father's son, and the blood of Erisrakari charged through heart and veins, through muscle and sinew and bone, and in his name, and his father's, and the names of all those that came before him, there was another pattern. Generation upon generation, the line built upon itself, weave upon lashing upon knot upon weave, a thousand years of family and of tribe and of Rheari. Of the Ni.

This was his place, his strength, his lineage. Even his mother did not carry what he did. He was the first to hold both, child of something unified, something that not Pattern nor Chaos nor Dream could touch.

Perhaps there was power there. Perhaps there was none. But there was peace, and there was perspective, and there was pride. And if those, in balance, were not power to one such as Shenrakari, then there was none, and no need.

Shen pushed his mind out beyond the hall, beyond the walls, and down into the mountain, to the Pattern burning far beneath him. He saw it from above in his closed eyes, held it, and then he pushed through it, on and on and on, past order and madness and emptiness, viewing the universe through it like a storm of colors inscribed in the fiery lines of a stained glass window. Somewhere in the swirling pool, he saw the weavings and songs of family, the patterns of home, the fingerprints of the Ni. In juxtaposition he held the two, and watched it all spin, for just a moment. And then, in a white hot flicker of thought, he drew back.

He sat still, and felt the energy suddenly settle within him as he embraced the silence of the stone around him. He drew deep a breath, and, as he exhaled, slowly opened his eyes.

He thought on home, on Nari, on his tribe, and on sacrifice. He thought on lessons, on Cecily, on balance, and on action. He prepared himself, slowly stretched his massive form, and rose to his feet.

He was in the present, in Amber, and, for better or worse, it was time.