[==== On To Part Two:]

[Wake up the next day]

[Trump to Ember.]

[Flashback as walking steps -- memories of the first time Corrine came
to Ember, with Juri and Makoto.]

[Reaches castle, head within, down to pattern chamber.]

[Flashback Two -- Encountering the original royal family portraits.]

[Redrawing.]

[This section and ashes.ember.2.txt cover Corrine getting the
DemiJewel from Tylor out of the vaults, then heading for Ember.
Include the two flashbacks -- one of Corrine, Juri, and Makoto heading
for Ember for the first time, and then of Corrine encountering the
original Ember Royal Family portraits.]

[Then of course the actual repair, with fragmentary memory flashbacks
to things in Corrine's past, both good and bad... Culminating in the
Final Veil repair, and it going REALLY intense.]

        [Need to write all the stuff prior to this. ^_^; But these are
the points most desperately hitting against my head at the
moment... it effectively picks up at part 12 of the outline.]

        I could see the dark, charred stain that was the Final Veil in
the periphery of my vision, even through the sparks that flared about
my body as I walked through the Grand Curve.  The moment was
approaching, as grandfather had warned.  I braced myself as I lifted
the DemiJewel in front of me.  The ruby gem glowed from within,
brighter than before, and the golden three-dimensional pattern tracery
caught the light and looked like a slice of flame frozen in time.  But
at the same time, as I studied its depths, I could see something more
within it... me, somehow, walking as I was walking, moving as I was
moving, slowly approaching those steps that I would need to take...
        I continued my walk, the flood of memories playing back within
my mind, a lifetime's worth of experience repeating itself as the ruby
sparks played around my torso and chest.  My steps took me out of the
Grand Curve, and into the turns that would lead me towards the last
section of the Fire Pattern.
        I could not hesitate or draw short to gather my thoughts, even
though a part of me desperately wanted to.  I was committed on this
course of action, had been so ever since my first footfall onto the
Pattern.

        [].  I was...
        ...I was...
        ...I was through.
        With a gasp, I collapsed forward, falling onto my hands and
knees in the center of the Fire Pattern.  My breath came in ragged,
desperate inhalations.  My pulse pounded in my ears, in time with the
flickers within the depths of the Fire Demi-Jewel, its chain still
wrapped around my hand and wrist.  My head swam, my vision blurred,
but somehow through the haze the thought occurred to me that I had
made it through.
        I had repaired the Fire Pattern.
        With that single thought my limbs gave out, and I fell the
rest of the way to the floor.
        I lost consciousness, and darkness claimed me.
        
        My eyes opened.  I blinked, and blinked again, trying to clear
my sight.  The world was a vertical mandala of black, shimmering red,
and orange shades.  I looked at the arrangement in confusion.
        Where was I?
        Memories trickled in, as well as bodily sensations, and I
remembered.  I was in the middle of the Fire Pattern of Ember.  My
mind was fuzzy, but I remembered walking it, repairing it, reaching
the center, and then collapsing in a heap, finally at the limits of my
endurance.
        It did explain why the world looked so odd -- I was still
lying on my side.
        I had no idea how long I had been out.  Then again, I didn't
care.  I was alive, and that was what mattered.  I tried to chuckle;
it came out as a hoarse, hacking cough.
        I groaned, forcing my limbs to move, my arms shifting under
me, lifting my torso off the black basalt stone of the Pattern
chamber.  My view of the world shifted, righting itself, returning to
true.  I squatted on my knees and wobbled slightly as I forced myself
upright.
        I felt a hardness in my left palm, and looked down at it.
        The Fire Demi-Jewel of Judgment continued to rest there,
clutched within my fingers.  The gem's pulsing glow had dimmed during
my period of unconsciousness, but it was still warm to the touch.
        I nodded, and looked up at what I had wrought.  My vision was
still fuzzy, but I could see the lurid ruby tracery of the Fire
Pattern spread out in front of me, curving to both sides.  In the
distance, I could barely make out the rectangular shape of the door
opening, and the small mound next to it which was my lamp and backpack
with supplies.
        I frowned.  I was in no shape to realistically do anything.  I
knew my own body enough to tell that I had stretched myself past my
capacity for any form of action aside from collapse.  I needed a place
to rest and recover, and that place was not here.
        Fortunately, I knew of such a place, and was in the perfect
location to head to it.  That is, of course, if the Fire Pattern would
act just like the Patterns in Amber, Rebma, and Tir'na-Nog.  But I had
little doubt of that.
        I thought of my Stronghold in Arden, a place of comfort,
safety, and security.  I presented the mental image of my bedroom in
the stronghold to the Fire Pattern, along with my desire to sleep and
rest within its safe confines.
        In less time than it took for me to blink, I was there.
        I was still on my knees, but now they rested against the
hardwood floor of my bedroom instead of the black basalt at the heart
of Mt. Vesuvius.  I took no notice of the angle of the springtime
sunlight through the partially drawn curtains.  I didn't care; my eyes
were solely for my bed, looming in front of me.  I crawled over to its
side, and climbed up over the edge, pulling myself into and under the
bed's blanketed depths.  I barely had enough mental willpower left to
kick off my shoes.
        Still clutching the Demi-Jewel in my left hand, I curled up
under the blankets and closed my eyes.  I slept the sleep of the truly
and utterly exhausted.