Excitement sent Baethen’s little hairs on edge, his heart pounding the steady trot of a horse about to buck and his knuckles white on his weapon’s haft.
There, just within his line of sight, lay Rimare-Tul, indolent and gorged on riches to be taken. Coins to be plundered, cards to be won, and relics to be unearthed. He’d waited and waited with bated breath until all was right in the encampment around the Evergaol, an increasing anticipation building in his gut like lightning about to strike.
It was like a cup of pure, sweetest water being ever so slowly spilled into the dreadsea in front of you while thirst filled your mouth with salted cotton. Maddening, to say the least of it for when the Gods made Baethen They did not deign to put even a lick of patience within him.
To keep his mind from wandering too dangerously into fantasies of rushing alone into the tower, Baethen had reforged himself a new set of platescale with the remnant metal of the old. The armour was wrought of overlapping lamina in the manner of chitin—he’d made a cast of a dread-knight’s exoskeleton just before it sublimated into noxious fumes and then poured molten amalgam of iron and lead inside. The rest had been carving himself a space to fit within it, then breaking the cast into sections and welding it back together patchwork-like.
Beyond the corruscating growth of scales on the left side, the helmet seemed to look entirely smooth without a single hole with which to see through but that was just on first blush. With a finer and more discerning eye you could spot the darker colour where the eyes, mouth and nose were to be. Baethen had punched through a thousand-thousand little holes with aid of his cards so that it was more akin to a mesh than solid plate.
The act of putting on the helmet was like donning a second skin, the armour fit exactly to his proportions such that he could do it without aid; he’d not told Miro this as any excuse to get him to put his hands all over Baethen so as to ‘help’ equip the platescale was well worth it.
As the second and last secret, Baethen had nailed hollow spikes of steel into his flesh at regular intervals along his back, connecting himself viscerally to the now-living suit of armour. Though gnarly, the pain had receded right quick; the wounds would not sour nor succumb to mundane rot due to the {Living-Font-of-Iron} in place of his heart.
[Flawed-Steelheart] suckled upon the embedded thorns as his very lifeblood was now imbued with the font of amalgam; a corollary to the arcana of mercury proper. The armour was not merely a second skin in metaphor but also in praxis: man and metal made one.
Baethen could draw from his blood strength to empower his sorceries or feed upon the metallic shell that ensconced him to return strength to himself—the flesh-warping card fended-off hunger and thirst as well which would do him good should this first foray into the Evergaol prove long.
Beyond the augmented defence, Baethen had also bolstered his offence, modifying his weapon into something more.
The ivory haft was wrought of the bone of a behemoth-blooded beast, given to him by his mentor Big Yldira. It had been passed down for generations through the apprentice-master line though now it was directly responsible for culling devil-spawn rather than indirectly forging that which would fell the forces of Gehenna.
Most often, Baethen had taken to simply wrapping a hammer’s head around the haft and wielding it as a sceptre or stave but he’d realised quick enough that he could do more with the cards in his Hand. He’d used the ivory as the core of his new weapon, forging a second skin around it just like he’d done with himself, moulding it into a long pole tipped with a partisan blade.
The sword-spear was heavy and long but [Flawed-Steelheart] did more than its portfolio foretold. The [Red-Hot] drawback was one that could be fooled—with his blood red like fresh iron taken from the forge and him hot-blooded and infused with a metallic font, Baethen could well manipulate it no different than a lambent lump of molten slag.
Interpretation of a card’s clauses could transform a dead-card into a trump-card.
Mostly, Baethen was limited to augmenting his strength and the durability of his bones and not much else but it could contend well enough against his sword-spear’s daunting weight. With raw power and brawn taken care of, all that was left was actual skill with the new weapon and that Baethen did lack even after all his sparring with Tratvgar.
He was used to just smacking monsters upside the head—a whole lot easier than worrying about footwork and different cuts and blocks and stances and whatnot. Baethen’s forte had always been brute force and displays of might; he resorted to skullduggery only now and again when the fancy struck him.
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At the break of dawn, the expedition congregated in front of the akashic tower like ants around the carcass of a fallen god.
The cubic stone of blackest alabaster at the base of the Evergaol was a divine relic of a bygone age—the deific dice used by the Gods Themselves so that they might play upon the Board-of-the-World for even gods fear the atrophy of boredom. Cartomantic imagery and gnostic-glyphes cavorted in equal measure, the tip of Rimare-Tul balancing precariously at the centre-point of the cube’s skyward face.
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Baethen, Tratvgar and some other foolish lads had sneaked out in the night to attempt to push the tower over and, thankfully, the stories of eld held true. No matter the strength, the Evergaol could not be tipped over like old oxen.
Those that would assail the tower were as follows in order of seniority and rank: Cap’n Haviershan, Lieutenant Escoriot, Ensign Lacariah, Field-Sergeant Narancan, Footman Baethen, and Footman Tratvgar. Though the last two occupied the same rung, Baethen took the lead, possessing a heavier Hand than Tratvgar and having survived a four-star beast. They’d measured the weight of their souls by using a set of Hsarashian scales, placing their mitts on opposite sides and seeing which went the lowest.
Miro would not be joining them nor would any other budding paramours—Tratvgar had courted a markswoman by name of Malandra while the Lieutenant spent his days with Footman Uldryrm and his nights with Footwoman Galthana. Ensign Lacariah and Field-Ser Narancan both had spouses back behind Reordran’s walls. Captain Haviershan himself took no husband nor wife or even bedfellow.
Mixing love and war did not end well.
“I’m not one for grandstanding or big words.” Said the Cap’n as he stroked his beard, the bluish tint of his runebranded armour porphyric against the morning like one great big bruise. “We’ve gots ourselves a job to do and by the Dice, we’ll do it right and return alive. Should the worst come to happen and we land on snake-eyes, pour out some liquor by the stone in our names.”
Haviershan patted the cubic stone as if it were a consternate-but-well-loved field ox.
“Then come and kick this place upside its stones and avenge us by getting fat and rich. May the Dice always roll in your favour.”
“May the die be just and fair.” The remaining caravan hearkened back and then Lazarra stepped forward. She placed both hands before the cubic stone, uttered a wordless prayer to the Moon-God and then nodded towards those that would brave the tower.
First when Haviershan, touching a single finger against the black alabaster. Two different realities unravelled before them, simultaneously; one where the Captain’s form became a shallow image like a reflection upon stillwater, subsequently riven into a thousand-thousand-thousand infinitesimal mirror-glass shards that sublimated into nothingness, and another where the Captain was never there at all, evaporated into the ether without even the barest echo of a trace.
The two realities collapsed into one singular fate and Haviershan was gone, stolen away into Babylon. Only his shadow remained, stamped upon one side of the deific die, the gnostic-glyphs retreating so as to limn his silhouette in Omniglot; only six could enter into an Evergaol and no more. Should any of them die, their shadow would disappear from the cubic stone, leaving behind a single card from their decks to remember them by. The rest would be returned to the waters-of-Hypnagogia.
One by one, they entered in order of seniority until only the two footmen were left. Baethen nodded towards the die and let Tratvgar go in his place; though he’d been eager to enter, when his time came, Baethen wanted to savour it.
It was difficult to describe. Fool that he was, Baethen had an instinct to caress the black alabaster like a forgotten memory of something once familiar. He wanted to reminisce about something yet to happen.
The déjà vu was the strangest thing he’d ever felt—a word on the tip of his soul’s tongue, a remembrance buried deeper than marrow, a grain amidst the sands heavier than the entire desert.
Black alabaster was cool to the touch but not truly cold nor frigid though it numbed the skin on contact. It did not freeze over with hoarfrost, even exposed to the elements as it was. It did not chip, nor shatter, nor pit through the æons though its texture was a sempiternal of rough-hewn stone. Stricken with striations of shimmering ivory drowning in a sea of ebony, this was the very fundament that held up existence from the waters of the all-nothing.
Irmin-Sûl, the World-Pillar was wrought of it, Eot’s very bones; the Hangman Yurnmagog dwelt in its shadow while Gwynedd-Sol drank of its light, Hsarash born of the equanimity between both.
Baethen laid his palm flat against the gargantuan knuckle-bones, the deific die. The lines of script bending in ways beyond mortal ken, a doorway opened before him like serpents fearing the wrath of the Mother.
Once the entire face of the die was black with nought even a single damascene vein of white, Baethen stared into the void. His reflection stared back, alone in the dark ether of Babylon. His hand gripped his own and pulled him into the House-of-the-Gods.
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Baethen fell and fell and fell until he didn’t.
Suddenly, like Gwynedd speaking light into being with the Second Word, Baethen found himself on his feet, staring out into a world both so much like his own yet undeniably other.
Rather than blue, the leaves were rustled a vivid scarlet against trunks like bones, marrow-sap bleeding where the smooth bark was rent asunder. The earth was a barren waste of black sand and basalt while the sky was a sulphurous-yellow that reeked of rotten eggs and burnt hair. Whatever sun this Hel had was hidden behind a swirling maelström.
Strange how such a large place could be held within such a comparatively-small tower.
Looking around his immediate vicinity, Baethen realised they’d all alighted upon the same ruins dedicated to some forgotten godling or another. A great altar lay fallen over by the monolith of black alabaster that marked the location as the gateway—the only safe place they’d find for some time, he reckoned. It would protect them from the worst of the Gehennic manifestations.
Right quick, they set up a camp around the mirror-smooth monolith. It would remain open for exactly a day since the first man entered the Evergaol and then close; by then, the group of adventurers would need to find another altar as this one’s protection would cease to ward-off devils and imps—hallow-lanterns would only be lit as a last resort as they did not come cheap, being made by players with [Hierophant] cards and the like.
Night did not fall upon this floor of the akashic tower, lending a liminal and surreal quality to the foreign land; rather, the shadows of the trees deepened, seeming to become pitfalls filled with red, predatory eyes at the edges of one’s vision.
And so, they ventured out, questing after the next waystone.