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After the events of The Fractal Prince, Jean le Flambeur and Mieli are separated and their sentient spacecraft Perhonen is destroyed. The two protagonists, each in their own way, struggle to decide where their loyalties lie and how to proceed in the catastrophically altered situation: Mieli joins the Zoku on an flat, world-size platform orbiting around Saturn, while Jean attempts to discover what happened to Mars and recover the Kaminari Jewel, currently hidden somwhere by the Elders of the Great Game Zoku, while trying to prevent the copy of young Matjek Chen to become evil like the original. When the Sobornost attack the Zoku around Saturn, Jean hacks into one of their guberniya where he meets the All-Defector, his arch-enemy. Jean understands that the All-Defector is a part of his own mind, stolen when he was in the Dilemma Prison. He manages to defeat it, and the Kaminari Jewel somehow is passed to Mieli, who uses it to destroy Saturn and create her own private universe.

(Adapted from Wikipedia)

Wikipedia

Casablanca, 1941. Rick Blaine owns a saloon where many refugees seek authorisations to fly to Lisbon and from there to America. Such authorizations are hard to get. One day, Rick sees Ilsa reappearing in his life, after she disappeared in Paris while they were fleeing the city just before it was invaded by the Germans (because she had just learned that her husband did not die in a concentration camp after all). Rick is still in love with her, and her with him, despite being married to Victor Laszlo, one of the leaders of the resistance, whom the recently arrived German officiers want the local chief of police to arrest for them. Rick has hides in his saloon authorizations given to him by an accointance for safekeeping, just before getting arrested and killed because of having murdered the German officers from whom he stole the papers. Rick plans to flee with Ilsa using those authorizations, but eventually decides to give them to Victor, because Ilsa convinced him that many lives would be saved if Victor remains alive.

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Mirror, Mirror, Off the Wall

Kedrigern and Princess visit an old friend. He owns five mirrors who keep prisoner a famous witch: one contains the real one, the others only 2-dimensional images. Releasing an image instead of the real one would be dangerous. Princess finds the solution: she asks each image if they could manage to go through a small crack in the wall to escape an imaginary fire. Only the real witch claims she couldn't do that.

Nest Egg

Kedrigern is asked to tend to a sick griffin. He eventually discovers that the griffin needs the contact of gold to get better, since gold is very abundant in his place of origin.

Floored

As payment for curing a cursed king, Kedrigern receives a battered, slightly magical carpet. The carpet is a flying one, but who hates flying and dreams only of lying on the floor in front of the fireplace. Kedrigern eventually transfers the flying magic into a chair.

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Princess convinces Kedrigern to attend a convention of wizards. Alas, she is accidentally transformed back into a talking toad. Kedrigern decides that only Arlebar will know how to safely transform her back into a human. In the meanwhile, Kedrigern reluctantly accepts to visit King Panglunder, whose young fiancee Lalloree has been put under a spell by the King's jealous sorceress Memanesha. After some diplomatic discussion, Kedrigern accepts to take Lalloree back to her parents, who leave not far from Arlebar's. Kedrigern ignores where Arlebar exacly lives, but expects to get directions once they reach the Inn on the Outer Edge. From the Inn, they depart with a company of questing adventurers led by Conrad. They are attacked underway by a magic mist, leftover from ancient magical wars. Kedrigern and Princess are transported into our present by the wizard's emergency escape spell; Princess is abducted by crooked showbusinessmen. Kedrigern replenish his magic at a monastery who still cultivates simples, then saves Princess and both return to their time using the escape spell in reverse. Upon arrival, Princess is human again, with the addition of small but functional wings. Their travel companions are all transformed, Lalloree and Conrad are now talking toads. They leave to Arlebar's just before Death takes him, but he cannot change back the two toads. They then take the toads to Lalloree parents who are very understanding. Kedrigern and Princess then go back home.

Deuxième version du Noursella, cette fois-ci tartinable à température ambiante.

Ingrédients

• 20g chocolat au lait
• 50g sucre glace
• 30g huile neutre (navette)
• 25g cacao
• 80g pâte de noisette (100% noisettes, grillées puis broyées)

Préparation

Faire fondre le chocolat au lait (p. ex. 1 min au micro-ondes). Y ajouter le sucre glace et le cacao tamisés, et mélanger. Délayer avec l'huile puis avec la pâte de noisette. Laisser reposer une nuit.

Commentaires

• Liquide visqueux juste après préparation, devient tartinable après un temps de repos.