“To arms!”
“Devils come a-knocking better be prepared to eat the door they’ve opened!”
A hundred other such war calls and shouts and jibes reported through the night.
Baethen started by casting the first lot of his hand, spitting a glob of phlegm onto his gargantuan club. Without wasting a second, he exhaled, kindling the cinder into a blazing torch.
“[Burn].” He spoke in the Language, his lungs filling with ash as [Kindlers-Breath] bledover into [Imp-of-Serpents]. Every Word would worsen his cough until he choked to death inside-out. The club’s outer-surface turned into red-hot quicksilver in an instant as his cards stacked atop one another, their effects meshing together to form something greater than the sum of their parts, an indistinguishable whole.
With a swing, Baethen sent the tongues of flame forth with [Juggler-of-Lesser-Fire], his club in place of stave. Once the first apparitions appeared, he played the card [Slag-and-Scale], converting the next strikes’ projectiles’ mass into momentum, ripping apart the newborn phantoms and those still-gestating into being with razor-sharp and red-hot iron shavings. Force of will became exertion of physical effort, knitting might and magic into a singular cloth rather than simple and disparate threads.
The spell-strikes bought the expedition time to rouse. From then on, Baethen was careful to only use his breath to kindle his stave lest he over-draw and drown in ash. [Kindlers-Breath]’s drawback could worm its way into him should he not be careful—expending fonts had become second nature, especially so with the set [Imp-of-Serpents]. He did not call down fire as that cost too much metal and he’d already burnt half of his mercury font in his opening move.
The first apparitions were insubstantial phantoms with a mass of claw-tipped arms. Most of these had fallen as their constitutions were all attack and no defence; expendable front-line infantry, in essence. The second wave of devil-spawn were skeletal, having possessed the bones of the nearby wildlife and rearranged them in a simulacra of the human form. These did not possess the recklessness and abandon of the first and were more cunning to boot.
Baethen, like the rest of the defenders, fought two shadow-clad skeletons at a time, breaking their frail bones with his club when the opportunity to do so arose during the flurry. After the first one scored a deep gash on his forearm even through the plate, Baethen began to tap into the heat of his mace and the breath of his lungs to esquive the nastier lunges from the monsters. [Run-like-the-Wind] eschewed raw power and offence for dexterity and defence; a worthwhile trade to live to fight another day, in Baethen’s very much unbiased opinion
Leaden weight pressed upon lungs as if the world bore down upon Baethen’s very soul, fear and terror and exhilaration taking root and blossoming like a wild-fire. His wage was a cowl of wind that wrapped around his ankles and calves, granting Baethen near-preternatural speed and grace. Just as his chest felt heavy, his feet were light.
He’d split open a skull when the last wave began to fester into being. His breathing was turbid, having been overtaxed by a variety of cards and his iron had gone entirely cold. Even after turns of practice, efficiency had been forgotten amid all the chaos, the fog-of-war blinding.
With nothing for it, Baethen spoke once again a Word in the Tongue-of-the-Gods.
“[Burn].”
The last of the metal of his club grew incandescent from cold-grey to white-hot in a flash. Tongues of flame licked at his armour, Baethen’s will having slipped and caught some of the plate. This was his second-to-last Word for the fight. He’d only use one more should he need it and then he’d be coughing-up dust for the whole night.
First shadow, then bone, had been impregnated by the will of the Red-Dragon. Now, unholy flesh traversed the great divide of the ether from Gehenna to Eot, baying and howling in its quest to snuff out the light. From the penumbra, desiccated, timeless horrors clad in ebon chitin and umber scale charged the front-lines.
The scriptures of the Twenty-One knew these as the Forsworn. Human souls, one and all, twisted beyond recognition in service of She-That-Broke-the-Tower. Such was the fate for those that took upon the arcana of wyrms; that trafficked with the agents of the Twelve-Hels; that played with forbidden cards. To accept the Fifteenth’s power was to cast away one’s humanity; the only vestige that could mark them as once being children of Leizuziel were their passing resemblance to a featherless biped.
In response to the newest cadre of dæmons, Baethen did not cast, keeping his spells to himself lest he become dead weight or just plain-old dead. Others threw magic in his place, spears of wood growing from seeds sown about the air to impale devil-spawn and sand becoming flesh-scouring whirlwinds that kept the enemy on the back foot, disoriented.
By the time that the last wave reached the line, they were down to three champions of Gehenna. Large and brutish, the ogres tracked them by some esoteric means because they had no eyes, only mouths and gaping holes in place of noses with ears like those of bats.
Unfortunately, that was not where the abominations’ horrifying visage ended.
Exoskeletons, thick as a man’s wrist, protected their bodies no different than armour though these were wrought of a callus-like, waxy substance rather than steel.
In the dæmons’ mangled hands were swords of ancient stone, the slabs carved with fell glyphs that were an affront to the eyes as if not meant to be seen—the markings, a dark reflection of the Language’s divinity; black where it was meant to be white, sullied where it was meant to be pure.
Misshapen draconic wings grew from their backs like malformed foetuses, far too small and weak to sustain flight. Spiralform, keratinous horns erupted from their skulls only to twist backwards and ingrow into the bone.
“Scaduphomet’s wrinkled, hairy arse-cunt,” Baethen heard someone curse. Though he’d like to agree, he thought it better to remain silent. Best conserve his breath and not poke the Beast-Herself. Besides, Mother taught him better than to swear.
Ow! Hels’ bells, that stung. Reshing piece of dragon-shite.
Aloud, that is. Baethen uttered all manner of profanity in the privacy of his own mind where no one but himself and perhaps some omniscient-and-voyeuristic god could judge.
The rear-guard had set bonfires to blazing to supply elemental fonts of fire; this was Baethen’s second wind as he dipped his club into the conflagration’s heart and brought most of it with him. There was an ephemeral beauty to the dense swelter that assailed him through the helmet, choking the life out of him. Curlicues of smoke and tongues of flame and stars of cinders, all dancing to some faraway song that could just barely be heard so long as he did not pay direct attention to it.
The lack of air was doing strange tricks to his mind. Of that, Baethen was now certain.
With a group of front-line combatants holding back the tide, he stepped forward to engage with one of the ogres. Baethen drew deeply of the well of phlogiston atop his club, juggling it with his mind and then transmuting it to wind along the sails of his limbs. The pyre dimmed to half of what it once was.
For a beautiful seven blinks, Baethen became a dervish, a warrior-priest of Rephatamon the Chariot. He’d never drawn so deeply and would regret doing so in the morning. Will-power was the muscle of the soul and it got sore quite easily and recovered slow as can be.
Baethen smacked the ogre from so many different angles so many times that his left shoulder popped out of its socket—both his and that of the dread-thing. There was no pain in the immediate. Waxen, callus-wrought chitin cracked, then wended, then shattered to bear the grotesqueness of the preserved corpse-flesh beneath. With a final blow, employing [Strike-While-the-Iron-is-Hot], he relieved the ogre of the burden of its ancient blade.
The overdraw and backlash hit Baethen all at once, staggering him such that he fell to his knees and had to be dragged behind the wagons. A diminutive old lady chided him for his stupidity and recklessness—expeditions like theirs drew a lot of attention from the Devil which meant that there was more of this coming for them in the following nights.
He should’ve coordinated with the other fighters and not finished the monster by himself. They’d not distribute tokens by contribution but rather equally, independent of heroics. Cards coalesced from the Gehenna-spawn were doled out by basis of need and seniority.
Giving the nice old lady a promise that he’d be careful the next time that dæmons appeared from thin, night air, Baethen wandered towards the man that was currently popping joints back into place. A whole lot of people had bent fingers and dislocated shoulders; the expedition had brought on greenhorns which was how Baethen had hopped onto its coattails to begin with. The cheap pay was immaterial—ha-ha—in comparison to the opportunity to explore.
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With a scream, Baethen lost consciousness for a blink as his arm was put back into its rightful place. A swig of a sleep-draught he’d been given by the caravan’s mender and the pain went away along with his awareness of the outside world.
He, in the manner of all {Players}, dreamt of his arcana and his cards. The dominions to which he’d belonged to and the arcana which he possessed, borne before him in the Language atop the black-alabaster mirror of his immortal soul. There was a great deal of symbolism to be read within the sleeping world of Babylon though he’d forget most of it once the dawn broke.
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{Player}s {Arcanum} {Read} as follows:
[Arcana-of-Fire]
➤[Minor] II (Allows {Player} to {Manifest} a {Font-of-Fire} in the {Form} of {Cinders} {Twice} per {Hand}.)
[Arcana-of-Air]
➤[Minor] I (Allows {Player} to {Manifest} a {Font-of-Air} in the {Form} of {Drafts} {Once} per {Hand}.)
[Arcana-of-Water]
➤[Complete] I (Allows {Player} to {Refund} a {Spent} {Font-of-Water} {Once} per {Hand}.)
[Arcana-of-Phlogiston]
➤[Major] II (Allows {Player} to {Expend} a {Font-of-Air} to {Empower} a {Font-of-Fire} or vice-versa {Twice} per {Hand}.)
[Arcana-of-the-Crucible]
➤[Minor] I (Allows {Player} to {Convert} a {Font-of-Mercury} into a {Font-of-Fire} or vice-versa {Once} per {Hand}.)
➤[Complete] I (Allows {Player} to {Refund} a {Spent} {Font-of-Mercury} or {Font-of-Fire} {Once} per {Hand}.)
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When next Baethen awoke, the sun was beginning to crown through the canopy, its rays tinged a cerulean-blue from the vegetation. Though it trapped moisture well enough, there was still a slight chill in the air from the antecedent summer night.
Mouth dry, Baethen didn’t really want to play [Cinderspark-Spit]; instead, he used one of his two minor arcana charges to manifest a tiny mote of cinders. He kindled it with his breath, barely registering the ash beyond the scent of smoke given how lightly he drew of the card’s power. Cards, though largely legalese in nature and seemingly writ and set in stone, were far more subtle than people gave them credit for; with the right amount of interpretation and practice, you could play a card in a dozen different ways.
Case in point was a arcanum-cast cantrip done through one’s arcana rather than through a card proper. Everyone had potential access to cantrips though many did not live up to said potential power. These spells were far too nebulous for most to use when they could just play a card instead which was plain easier without having to learn a whole new skill.
As another example, [Kindlers-Breath] had done more than its portfolio described yesternight; {Clad} was usually a fixed clause that did not allow a player to keep converting fonts into more instances. With enough practice, the limitation could be overcome through sheer force of will alone though this was not always guaranteed nor even recommended as it could scar the soul. Limits were put in place by the Gods for a reason, the Deific Tarot kept in balance by the divine foresight of the Twenty-One.
A smattering of lesser spells and dominion-charges later, Baethen was warmed-up, having stretched and gone through most of his morning ablutions. As always, he took to a random caravan member, asking anything and everything about the trade and the forest itself; nothing much to do but speak and fraternise, afterall.
The beasts that called the Azure Forest home were some breed of dragon-spawn or another; this meant thick, scaled hides and a surplus of chitin and horn which was readily harvested. Baethen had taken up a tentative friendship with one of the older Nezarri men; a scarred and old brute, Ahedemir was alright once you got past his rough exterior. Though the veteran adventurer was bordering forty—retirement age for this line of work—he had a handsome ruggedness to him that Baethen kept to himself.
Nearly twice his age Ahedemir might be but muscles were muscles and he did not lack them. Not. At. All. Gods, Baethen had broken his fast no more than a notch ago but he hungered something fierce just now. He could barely remember the last time he’d bedded a man. His last lay had been a bar wench by the name of Ryrcene, a woman of the same age of twenty-one turns as him and just as drunk during the Festival-of-One-Thousand-Lights.
“Ye listenin’, runt?” That was tall coming from him. Ahedemir was a good head-and-a-half shorter than Baethen given his thicker Nezarri blood.
With a none-too-well-hidden smirk, Baethen shook away his daydreaming and said: “Sorry, you were explaining how to keep the hide beneath the exoskeleton intact…”
Seeing that his font of mercury would not last with the coming fights, Baethen took to fashioning plates of umber exoskeleton to his chest and shoulders, stashing away the salvaged metal for later use—he could weld it to his club when the need arose. He’d worked with chitin before though never skinned it himself. Him and Ahedemir were going through the finer intricacies of monster harvesting when the train stopped for midday break.
The expedition had a dowsing-priest with them, a disciple of the Weeping-God-of-Sorrow of Morophesh. She was the nice old lady that had rightfully chided Baethen for his foolishness, responsible for conjuring fonts of water so the caravan did not risk thirst. The Azure Forest, though humid, lacked bodies of water as the thick strangler-roots drank them before they could even form.
Lazarra’s wrinkles spoke of her age and her whiteshorn braids spoke of her status as one given to the God-of-Waters, black ferrous pearls bound within the locks of hair. Curious and a bit dim that he was, Baethen asked her what she had to expend to bring forth matter from the ether. That earned him a smack to the hand from her ivory stave though, in the end, she did indeed tell him.
“To cry one must be either sad, happy or insane. Though I suppose the latter counts as all three. I must give up joy to Morophesh so the lot of you don’t drink the poison water that surrounds Woeden. The Dreadsea has its namesake for a reason; any sip brings but ever-increasing thirst and fear. Imbibing, fully, of dreadwater drowns the mind in visions of torment and hallucination.”
Baethen received his waterskin back with reverence, thanking Mother Lazarra and trying his damndest not to pat her head. The diminutive dowsing-priest reminded him of a cranky lizard-dog, a kalegor; all bark, a tiny bit of bite, but still cute in that ugly sort of way.
Thank the Gods she was chosen by Morophesh and not Psychopomp the God-of-Dreams which was said to peek into the minds of men and read their thoughts so as to weave the waters of Hypnagogia that connected one to Babylon when asleep.
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The afternoon was spent, you guessed it, marching. The excitement slowly died, giving way to content boredom. Baethen took to practising his cards to stave-off the encroaching ennui, channelling short, wordless spells and strikes. He spat globs of burning slag onto the ground, extinguishing them with his other cards just as fast lest he risk a wildfire, unlikely as those were with the loamy, bare earth of the Azure Forest; leaves here did not fall all at once like on the other side of Woeden, instead piling slowly atop one another and then decaying into mulch.
The ground squelched slightly but did not have enough give to be called a mire much less a swamp though it almost got to the status of bog and some could argue it a marsh rather than a forest. How such things were measured, Baethen did not know, he’d just thought it strange how many words there were in the Woedenite tongue for places such as this.
“How’s yer grasp on yer arcana?” Ahedemir—Baethen had taken to calling him Miro—asked him while fiddling with the paper-sword belted at his hip.
“I’ve invested deeply into the elements of fire, earth, and air, branching out to connect it with others through some second-order intermediaries—phlogiston, mercury, that sort of thing. Mostly Magus with a slight skew towards Tower, what with my use of sceptres. How ‘bout you?”
Miro tapped his sheathed blade.
“Took to the arcana of severance, I did, building all me other fonts to reach it rather than taking the roundabout route ye’ve walked. Invested mostly into tower, strength and sovereign in that right-specific order. Trying for executioner as me fighting style tends to end fights quick.” Miro punctuated his words by forming a peak with his finger and then splaying them horizontally—specialisation versus versatility; Baethen could still find work as a blacksmith once this was over and done with but Miro could only ever be a swordsman with his deck. As the Woedenite saying goes, you do not trust a barber that wields a big sword in stead of a small razor. Woeden tended to discriminate one’s status according to their cards, even those no longer present within one’s soul.
“Paper-swords work best with severance as them can be sharpened to an edge that beggars even the finest steel. Though, they ain’t all that durable as ye might imagine. Can’t enter a clinch or blade-bind with a material as flimsy as godsleaf.”
Baethen, impressed, asked if he could take a swing of the man’s sword. Yes, he did think of it in that other sort of way but hadn’t voiced it as such. Gods Asleep, older men are the bane to my peace of mind.
“Careful—the thing can take a finger so fast ye’’ll only know it when it's fallen to the dirt.”
With that morbid image in mind, Baethen did a few good swipes and then handed the card-blade back to Miro. The sword was constructed of the same paper as a carte-blanche; tarrocht, which is made from Yggrdrazil leaf-pulp pressed into shape and then fired within a kiln of black-alabaster; hence, godsleaf. The World-Tree was said to shed Her leaves only once every millennium to mark the beginning of a new age—whether there was truth to that aspect of the Twelfth God, Baethen did not know.
Each Major Arcana had their own set of masks or faces, reflected across the many cultures of the world. The Merchant-of-Death Nagalfaram was known as Acheron the Judgement in the City-of-Mirrors and as the Godhead-of-Dumat in the Alabaster-Desert of Nezarrem, though all peoples, through some great act of serendipity, knew the god’s number as twenty. This did not diverge across the many tongues of Man.
“What sort of strikes can you do?” Baethen asked Miro.
In response, the man unsheathed his blade just a notch, not fully drawing it and a branch was cut perpendicular to its direction, falling to the loamy earth. Baethen whistled at the display and, uncaring of the rudeness, asked the man what his sacrifice was—to tell another of the particulars of their soul-deck was an act of utmost trust or utmost folly. Most times, it was both.
“For that little trick, I had to play a whole chain of cards across two four-card sets. The playing cost wasn’t upfront—had to bank it beforehand; back-pocket suites tend to do that. See all the scars? Well, most of ‘em I did meself. I can only conjure cuts that I’ve suffered meself.”
Baethen’s horrified expression got a chuckle out of Miro.
“Relax—they don’t hurt none. I do ‘em a round in advance of an expedition and with a mender by me side to boot so the wounds don’t go sour on me. Makes the men and women alike swoon at the sight of a rugged, handsome bastard like meself.”
A shameless braggart, this one. And, unfortunately, it’s working.
Miro tapped a scar on his finger and repeated the half-draw of his tarrocht-blade then another branch fell; when Baethen looked back at it, the scar was gone.
“See? I’m safest when I look the ugliest. Some of the bigger scars I’m loath to part with given thems also influence the shape of me phantom strikes. Kind of how the amount of metal ye got on yer club limits yer damage potential.”
With that they settled into companionable silence, the march taking hold as their eyes scanned the Azure Forest in search of threats.