Today was the day that his parents would give him his inheritance at twenty-one turns of age. A single card from their archives. Though this wasn’t a product of an inheritance-type proper, it was the closest thing that most commoners had access to, allowing a person to store six cards total within their soul but not within their hand.
Tomorrow was the day that Baethen would disappoint and worry his parents at the same time because he’d run away to join an expedition into the Evergaol of Rimare-Tul. Just as the Red-Dragon spewed Her devils from the Gates-of-Gehenna, the House-of-the-Gods descended upon the earth with their splendours and surprisingly-blood-thirsty angels. These towers dwarfed even the tallest of mountains, hewn of marble and blackest alabaster and within whose hearts lay an archdæmon imprisoned for aeons; hence, Evergaol.
“Son, are you with fever? You seem awfully glum for a day that’ll see you with a card of three stars.”
With a fake smile on his lying, two-faced mug, Baethen shook his head and bumped his shoulder against Mother’s. He hated himself for what he was about to do but the guilt wasn’t near enough to stop him from going through with it in the first place.
When his mother touched her breastbone and removed a shimmering-bright transparent-black card, Baethen’s breath caught in his throat, burning something fierce. He read it and each word brought tears to his eyes.
At the sight, his parents smiled, twisting the knife that Baethen had buried into his own heart. They thought he cried of joy but it was the opposite. Their perception couldn’t be further away from the truth, from the falsehood that their one-and-only son had kept up for a decade.
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Card Given: [Celestial-Dew] ★★★
Draw: [One-of-a-Kind]
Drawback: [Don’t-Cry-Over-Spilt-Milk]
Arcana: [The-Chalice], [The-High-Priestess], [Water]
Number: [III//II]
Suit: [One-at-Dice]
Portfolio Φ: [‘The first bead of dew that fell from the sky became the seas, the last tear of the Weeping-God-of-Sorrows’. This {Card} grants the {Player} {Complete-Dominion} over the {Arcana-of-Water}, allowing them to {Revivify} themselves via {Expenditure} of a {Font-of-Water} through an {Act-of-Libation}. After this {Card} is {Brought-Into-Play}, it is {Discarded} from the {Player}’s {Hand} and {Archive}, thus {Banished} to {Babylon}.]
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If Baethen hadn’t loathed himself before, he did so now. His family had kept this life-saving card for generations—this could return an elder to the peak of health, granting a person twice the normal lifespan of a mortal or thereabouts. [Celestial-Dew] could mend back a person from the brink of death, a panacea in the palm of his hand.
“I-I can’t. This is too much. I—”
Mother folded his outstretched hand, bending his fingers around the three-star card with her own. “It’s yours son, not simply by right but freely given. You owe nothing and are beyond both reproach and expectation. This is yours to do with as you see fit. Just as I got this card from my mother and my mother got it from hers, I now give this to you.”
Baethen understood now why his mother hadn’t used it on herself. She had become his mother and no parent wants to bury their children. They’d much rather die before it came to that and this card guaranteed the rightful order of things, as it were.
He imagined that it must’ve been quite the sight seeing a beast of a man, wide as an ox and with just as much muscle, weeping into the embrace of his mother. Gods, how he’d miss her. When even his curmudgeon and ever-stoic father joined in, the already-broken floodgates turned to dust.
In another life, his parents would jest that the neighbours thought they were slaughtering a particularly woeful donkey.
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For the hundredth time, Baethen scratched at the corner of his jaw, pulling a few errant strands from his beard so that he might ignore the boiling, turbid cauldron that was his skull.
Baethen did not let himself think because if he did, he’d never leave the walls of Reordranhall. His better sense would get the better of him and the guilt would bind him to a fate that would strangle his soul from within. Always wondering what his life would be like if he wasn’t such a coward and had instead ventured forth into the unknown.
Ironically, even after he left the walls of Reordranhall behind him, he was a lying, two-faced coward all the same. He’d never again see either his mother or his father; he’d die of blood loss with a shank to the kidneys, dead in a ditch like the thousand-thousand other fools that thought themselves invincible. Though he did not know this then, he felt the premonition of his death like a sliver of iron drawn to a lodestone, walking towards the compass of his doom: Rimare-Tul.
The age-old adage of ‘damned-if-you-do and damned-if-you-don’t’ never felt so right than today.
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Having grown up within the rough-hewn stone of a city, the Azure Forest was an alien place to Baethen, just as foreign as any nation that spoke a strange tongue even though this forest was well within the borders of Woeden.
Marching along the Kingsroad with the expedition’s train of wagons and carts, Baethen spotted mushrooms taller than most men and vegetation that moved before his eyes, roots strangling each other at the behest of their respective sovereigns. The barks of the trees were black, the canopy casting a sempiternal penumbra that had the expedition lightning hallow-lanterns to ward-off the encroaching whispers. Darkness of any kind beyond the consecrated grounds of a city was prone to spontaneous generation of monsters; wherever humanity dared tread, their fears were not far behind. First was the chittering, then the gibbering, then the unintelligible words and then, finally an apparition would materialise from the ether and waylay them.
Baethen was both dreading and chomping at the bit at the thought of his first fight. He’d come prepared, clad in full-if-shoddy plate he’d forged himself. It was ugly and piecemeal because he just did not have the dexterity to articulate the joints. Nonetheless, it would see him through a fight with devil-spawn. He had a scrap-metal club belted to his hip and a waterskin resting on his lower back, satchels taking the rest of the space on his sash, filled with bandages and flint and what-have-yous that were needed to survive in the wilds.
Most of the other fighters were Nezarri-blooded like him as the soldier’s trade was the last choice for those that have none left. When you’re piss-poor, selling it to the tanner to stave off starvation for another day, you’d rather take your chances with an imp than piss in a bucket in front of a man for a measly ten tokens.
Whores were paid better but Baethen did not have the disposition for peddling flesh.
He settled into the slow march through the forest quickly enough. Having a mind to check and an old habit to boot, Baethen brought up his Hand while he walked. He could still see inside his mind’s eye with his real ones open after having practised it for long enough. The skill wasn’t all that uncommon though most didn’t care enough to cultivate it.
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({Archetype}: [Prime]) Selected; {Player}’s ({Hand}: [3//3]) {Drawn} as follows:
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[Celestial-Dew] ★★★ ({Single-Card} - {Unlinked})
[Imp-of-Serpents] ★★ ({Three-Card-Set} - {Unlinked})
[Strike-While-the-Iron-is-Hot] ★ ({Two-Card-Set} - {Unlinked})
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Once a set was formed, it couldn’t be broken without risking the loss of the constituent cards—the process was known as rivening and it left just as many men broken as it did cards. To remedy this, those who had the tokens to do so formulated a wide-range of archetypes they could swap out with based on the day’s need. A sort of pseudo-set, as it were, that did not fuse together to offer any sort of benefit.
Baethen was not one of those lucky-and-wealthy few, so he had only his prime archetype. The rest of his cards were tucked away safely in his archive.
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{Player}’s ({Archive}: [2//6]) {Read} as:
[Leaden-Stomach] ★ ({Single-Card} - {Unlinked})
[Bloodfly-Husk] ★ ({Single-Card} - {Unlinked})
[Empty-Slot]
[Empty-Slot]
[Empty-Slot]
[Empty-Slot]
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He’d bought both [Bloodfly-Husk] and [Leaden-Stomach] in preparation for the expedition. The former could cure most poisons, recover lost blood, and mend superficial wounds into scar-tissue within stunds—a one-at-dice, or ace-type, that could only be brought into play once before the card disintegrated. Baethen would use it in place of [Celestial-Dew] if he could. The latter was a backup plan in the slim chance of either getting split up from the rest of the expedition and thus without his rations or the expedition’s rations just drying up for whatever reason. A lifeline, as it were.
Next, Baethen idly read his latest set [Strike-While-the-Iron-is-Hot] while he kept an eye on his surroundings. Babylon-script, afterall, was read by will alone, not sight. Even a soulless, thrice-dumb devil-spawn from the ether could read the Language.
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Card Bought: [Slag-and-Scale] ★
Draw: [Of-a-Kind]
Drawback: [Red-Hot-Iron]
Arcana: [The-Crucible], [Mercury], [One-of-Sceptres]
Number: [IV//XIX]
Suit: [Sleight-of-Hand]
Portfolio Φ: [‘Shed the worthless scale and draw a pure core’. This {Card} grants the {Player} {Minor-Dominion} over the {Arcana-of-the-Crucible}, allowing them to {Manipulate} a {Font-of-Mercury} through {Act-of-Body} via {Expenditure} of said {Font} so long as it is {Red-Hot} and in {Touch} with a {Sceptre} held in {Thrall-of-Arm}. Once this {Card} is {Brought-Into-Play}, {Fonts-of-Mercury} in {Touch} with the {Player} through a {Medium} thereof held in {Thrall-of-Arm}, will begin to rapidly cool through {Dissolution}.]
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The scrap-metal club was awfully big to wield by human strength alone, especially through a protracted battle. Once Baethen warmed-up, both figuratively and literally, he could swing it with both his force of arm and force of will. It would eat away at the club’s metal but that was fine because he’d brought a heap of scrap from the smithy with him.
Sceptres were similar enough to staves that Baethen did not have much difficulty transforming his club into both. An arcane focus required intimacy of use and emotional resonance, channelling one’s spirit through it whereas a martial focus, a sceptre, conducted might via movement. Staves did not require much in the manner of physical exertion whereas sceptres needed them. Though the nomenclature was sceptre, it could also include swords and other bladed weapons.
All-together, his hand allowed Baethen to fight on the front-lines while also offering a ranged-option before entering close combat. Within twenty blinks, he could rain down bolts of fire and bullets of molten slag in a large cone before him. Short as casting times go—there were decks that took a whole lot longer to set up to do as much damage. The material consumption was the price he’d paid, efficiency exchanged for speed.
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Card Bought: [Run-Like-the-Wind] ★
Draw: [Of-a-Kind]
Drawback: [Bellows-Out-of-Breath]
Arcana: [The-Dog-Star], [Consumption], [Desolation]
Number: [XVII//III]
Suit: [Sleight-of-Hand]
Portfolio Φ: [‘The wind runs from Death for it fears stillness’. This {Card} grants the {Player} {Minor-Dominion} over the {Arcana-of-Air}, allowing them to {Clad} their {Steps} in {Wind} through {Will-of-Mind} and {Expenditure} of a {Font-of-Phlogiston} in {Touch} with a {Stave}. Once this {Card} is {Brought-Into-Play}, the {Player} incurs a {Brand-of-Fear} which will {Halve} their {Breath-of-Lung} until the next {Hand} is {Redrawn}.]
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The cards were of-a-kind which meant there were others like them—a known quantity. Though there were a thousand-thousand variants of [Run-Like-the-Wind], this one was unique to Baethen. He’d scoured the card markets and when those turned out deadends, he commissioned a card-smith to modify the next-best thing, inserting words from the [Torchbearer] card—specifically the phlogiston expenditure clause—so that it would better synergize with his hand. Beyond this, Baethen hadn’t needed to pay extra to strike the {Thrall-of-Arm} clause from the card given that removing was easier than adding.
Counter-intuitively, it was best to stack cards of the same resource pool; that way, you’d have to manage less moving parts in the middle of battle. Cards had a tendency to bleed into one another as the mind unconsciously drew from what it had available, including drawbacks. If Baethen called upon [Imp-of-Serpents] he was also likely to invoke [Kindlers-Breath], especially so because it was a constituent card in the set.
Moving away from that ill-gotten set, Baethen had focused heavily on fusing [Slag-and-Scale] with [Run-Like-the-Wind], devoting most of his nightly meditations. It had taken a whole lot of dogged persistence to fuse the two cards into a set but it had been worth it. He hadn’t had enough time to buy and add another card that resonated with the other two so this was the best that Baethen could do with what he had.
He wasn’t disappointed even if it was only one-star.
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Set Formed: [Strike-While-the-Iron-is-Hot] ★
Draw: [Of-a-Kind]
Drawback: [Come-Undone]
Arcana: [The-Crucible], [The-Dog-Star], [Strength]
Number: [XVII//XIX]
Suit: [Triumph]
Portfolio Φ: [‘Cold metal knows no master; to beat it, you must be faster’. This {Set} grants the {Player} {Complete-Dominion} over the {Arcana-of-the-Crucible}, allowing them to {Concentrate} a {Font-of-Fire} and a {Font-of-Mercury} and a {Font-of-Air} within a {Single-Strike} of a {Sceptre} {Once} per {Hand} via {Expenditure} of said {Confluence-of-Fonts}. Should the {Player} {Misstrike}, this {Card} is {Discarded} from their {Hand} into their {Archive} and their {Sceptre}’s {Dominion} over the {Arcana-of-Mercury} is {Sealed} until the next {Hand} is {Redrawn}.]
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The drawback was that it was an all-or-nothing type of deal. [Come-Undone] consumed any contiguous font of arcana invested into it and required both mercury and fire which meant that, afterwards, Baethen would have to go through the laborious process of binding more scrap to the club’s petrified wood hilt and warming it up with his [Imp-of-Serpents] set.
A coup de grâce; a fight-ender. Once it was used, that was it for the day.
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Once true night had fallen, the train made camp, setting the wagons around them as a makeshift wall with a hallow-pyre at the centre. The pure, white fire gave off no heat and would require actual kindling and lumber to do so; the warmth wasn’t needed in the deep summer that Woeden was currently experiencing.
The Azure Forest was thrice-damned humid, a tundra-jungle that felt worse than the swelter of the Nezarri desert though Baethen was going by word of mouth as he’d never stepped foot on the White-Sands of the Continent proper. Though the Dreadsea was located in the southernmost point of the Kataban continent, its climate ranged the gamut from temperate to tropical, especially that of the Isle-of-Woeden and its cerulean vegetation that was wont to trap moisture beneath the canopy.
Baethen took first watch, looking into the darkness with his back to the fire to preserve his night vision. He spooked at every shadow which made his compatriots snicker in Nezarri. He did not need to speak the tongue to know they made fun of him. He just smiled and shook his head because nothing could douse his spirits.
This was it—his dream.
If only he’d known that dreams spoil quickly into nightmares and that Death and Fate laugh in the face of even the most prepared. First he’d thought it was the wind, what with the gales that howled through the boughs and canopy. Then, he’d thought it a birdsong of some sort—perhaps a nightingale.
When the first pair of red eyes opened up in the black like cinders amid soot, Baethen knew that the Devil was about them. With a piercing and shrill whistle, he along with three others alerted the rest of the expedition of the Gehennic conjunction upon them that was about to burst.