The best way to preserve rations was to be proactive about it as a delve into an Evergaol could last anywhere from many moons to even turns. There were tales of adventurers entering and returning within a day of Eot’s time while inside they’d battled angels and devils for tens of thousands of turns.
A delve expedition could always exit at the end of one rung and the beginning of another but this was only done when there was no chance of breaching the Evergaol’s heart and striking it down. The archdæmon roused the longer it took for a group to clear each rung—invoking the cubic stone to return to Eot risked waking the gaoled-dragon as well. Instead of contending against just the native godspawn of the akashic tower, they’d have to fight against corrupted devilspawn, too.
So the cadre would have to hunt for game and forage for mushrooms, roots, moss, bark, berries, and the like. Within the liminal realm of the Evergaol’s first rung, the latter was simply impossible while the former was simply ill-advised. Baethen had volunteered to brave those dark waters in place of the cadre. The maggot-ridden fruit might incubate some strange wyrd-plague so it was best to avoid it wholesale.
Then again, they were about to eat the flesh of an angel and that was the sort of stuff told to incur the wrath of the Gods. Though, most likely, the Hanged-God would not take offence given He was the deific incarnation of consumption, known as the Scapegoat Faege-Fata by the alderfolk of Sancre-Tôr—’doomed-to-die-a-thousandfold’ was a common kenning that described men forsaken to the gallows and a direct translation of the Alderi epithet into the Woedenite tongue.
Baethen ventured alone into the red wilds and spotted a lone angel, the harpy focused on ripping open the maggot-ridden fruit without spilling their contents. His armour made no sound, form-fitted with interstitial-like joints that did not so much as creak. Though Baethen drew on no overt magicks, he felt the arcana of worms guide his every step under the shadows of the canopy.
Alunariat the Charlatan chided him away from dead branches; Stribog the Warrior whispered of his prey’s exposed vitals and where might a spear slip through with the least resistance; even Broken-Babylon, dead as He was, steered the movements of his body as if one greater amalgamate sum rather than disparate parts, muscle flowing into muscle in an unbroken chain like quicksilver poured from the crucible.
The influence of the Numbered-Gods was subtle, each one easily missed by itself, but as a totality? Undeniable. One’s arcanum was inextricably tied to their very soul, and in the wake of the spirit, the flesh followed in turn.
Baethen struck true, his spear piercing the vulture-angel of Yurnmagog through its neck in one swift blow. A single choking, gurgling caw from its beaked mouth and the harpy’s eyes glazed over.
Just as tokens required sleight of hand to manifest, the carcass of godspawn required interaction by another so as to not evaporate into the ether. The children of the Twenty-One Arcana were spirit made flesh and so tended to return to formlessness once deprived of life like a man made lucid inside a dream and so awoken.
So long as Baethen had a purpose for the beast, the world believed it to be real flesh and blood rather than inchoate thought given temporary physical form.
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He returned to the altar-of-refuge not long after, a gutted harpy hung across the shaft of his sword-spear. Baethen had scooped the offal, removed the head, the heart, the breasts and whatever else might make the creature appear similar to a human. He’d also had to defeather the thing like a chicken—shucking and whatnot ensued—while also having to remove sections of the pelt of matted fur as well. Though the godspawn had certain man-like features, it was well and truly not a child of Leizuziel.
By the end of it, Baethen was reminded why people did not like to find out how sausage was made. It was easy to take the food on your plate for granted without having to keep in mind the blood spilt to get it there.
“I caught it, now one of you’s gotta cook it.”
“Gimme ‘ere, lad.” Haviershan sighed, resigning himself to his fate. “Not the first time I’ve eaten godspawn. Won’t be the last either. Hope it tastes better than trull.”
As the Cap’n set up a small cook-fire, Baethen sat down next to Lacariah for company and tricks of the trade. It had nothing to do with those muscles that could lift him like a hay bale on her shoulder and carry him around like a prize.
Not at all.
He kept his lecherous thoughts to himself—he had Miro and she had a lucky lass back in Reordran, afterall. Baethen was content on asking the swordswoman about her general story and fighting style.
“Soldiered for a few turns in the navy. Got tired of the shite pay so I decided to strike out on my own. Got tired of the people trying to either fleece me on the pay or kill me for it so I decided to tack onto a mercenary caravan. If I get tired of something ‘ere, there’s always the next thing.”
Baethen told her of his own story and how he joined the caravan to escape the smith’s life. Lacariah chuckled at him and his ‘rebellious boyish spirit’ and he spat back goodnaturedly at her about ‘general wandering-about vagrancy’.
“Don’t worry, little one.” She teased as she sharpened the edge of her blade. “Yours will be this big one day. And even if it isn’t, it’s the way you use the sword not how long the blade is that matters.”
A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.
“Ha! Thank the Gods you’ve not a prick between your legs, Lac. You’d’ve sown oats from Rimare-Tul to the City-of-Mirrors. They’d name a new wyrd-plague after you—the wandering sickness of bedswerving or some other euphemism for infidelity.”
“Thank the Gods you’d not get it, Baethe. You’d have to lay with someone to get the crabs.”
They went on and on in this manner until Haviershan gave the news that he’d finished Baethen’s ‘meal’. They’d yet to reach jests about one another’s mothers for lack of time.
“I dub them ‘angel-ribs’ on account of the only good meat being on the ribs and the general blasphemy we’ve engaged in since entering the Evergaol.”
Baethen brought up his Hand and exchanged cards with all the resilience of a man told to put his head through the noose—fitting, really, given the deity.
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({Archetype}: [Prime]) Selected; {Player}’s ({Hand}: [3//3]) {Drawn} as follows:
[Imp-of-Serpents] ★★ ({Four-Card-Set} - {Linked} [Cycle-of-the-Crucible] ★★)
[Strike-While-the-Iron-is-Hot] ★★ ({Four-Card-Set} - {Linked} [Cycle-of-the-Crucible] ★★)
[Leaden-Stomach] ★ ({Single-Card} - {Unlinked})
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Card Bought: [Leaden-Stomach] ★
Draw: [Of-a-Kind]
Drawback: [Usury-of-the-Damned]
Arcana: [The-Feast], [Consumption-Reversed], [Lead]
Number: [XII//XIII]
Suit: [Back-Pocket]
Portfolio Φ: [‘Famine makes even the best, most honourable men into base beasts’. This {Card} grants the {Player} {Minor-Dominion} over the {Arcana-of-Famine}, {Metamorphosing} their {Stomach} into a {Living-Font-of-Faminous-Lead} which can {Consume} near-anything regardless of {Malignance} to the {Player}’s {Body}. {Player} must {Consume} {Metallic-Fonts} to {Sustain} the {Living-Font-of-Faminous-Lead}. This {Card} is {Always-In-Play} and cannot be {Discarded} from the {Player}’s {Hand}; should this {Card}, through {Exemption}, be {Discarded}, the {Player} incurs {Brand-of-Famine} which is the {Manifest-Form} of the {Hunger} {Superseded} by this {Card} during its time within the {Player}’s {Hand}.]
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Just as there were dead-cards, there were deadmen-cards. Those that were brought into play only in the worst of times; these differed from bond-cards in that their incurred rune-brand could be removed by the local Hsarashian priest. The {Brand-of-Death} was the most pernicious of the rune-brands and could not so easily be absolved from a player’s soul.
Not even Death Itself knew Its name; how could a lowly mortal pretend to know better?
After the expedition Baethen would have to hire a mender and cartomancer both to convalesce from the [Usury-of-the-Damned] drawback but better that than dying wholesale from hunger.
After redrawing his Hand, the change in Baethen’s being was like a shifting of gears within a great apparatus, lines of divine script slotting into place and rewriting flesh into living metal. By the end of the delve into the Evergaol, Baethen would be more metal than man, he reckoned.
Baethen accepted the plate of angel-ribs from Haviershan and tore a strip off it with his teeth. He did this without time to let himself think given the whole near-cannibalism going on.
“Short-fowl really doesn’t roll off the tongue as easily as long-pig.” The Cap’n said matter-a-factly to himself in a volume that suggested he wanted everyone to hear.
Baethen choked as the Cap’n chortled and patted him on the back so he could spit the morsel of flesh out his gullet.
“Oh, stop it with the rumination, lad. It’s a monster—a spirit given temporary form. It is, by definition, soulless. It cannot accept cards so as to form a true deck. By the Dice, it would kill you in a blink by beak or claw without remorse.
“Fair enough that you take a bite back, no?”
Once Baethen chewed that over in his skull, he found himself chewing on the meat without gagging. The taste and texture erred towards beef rather than pork—thank every Numbered-God—and sloughed-off the bone without effort. Haviershan had brazed it over some coals he conjured through use of his many cards and then tempered it with some spices.
When Baethen felt a stirring within his soul, he’d first thought: ‘great, the Gods have decided to strike me down’ and then he read the glyphs inside his mind’s eye and realised that Yurnmagog was just as terrifying as Scaduphomet.
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Hearken, the {Player}’s {Arcanum} rouses with {Unnamed-Arcana}.
Scouring [Akashic-Archive] for compatible {Dominion} […]
Compatible {Dominions} found; shuffling probabilities set to base one over mean […]
Shuffle complete, {[Minor-Dominion] over the {Arcana-of-Blood}} {Proscribed} upon {Player}’s {Arcanum}.
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{Player}s {Arcanum} {Read} as follows:
[Arcana-of-Blood]
➤[Minor] I - [Resonant] I - [Dissonant] I - [Intrinsic] (Allows {Player} to {Manifest} a {Font-of-Blood} in the {Form} of {Droplets} {Once} per {Hand} so long as the {Player} has a {Bleeding-Wound} in {Touch} with a {Font-of-Air}; as a contra, allows {Player} to {Imbue} {Metallic-Fonts} into {Corporeal-Fonts} so long as they are already {Imbued} with a {Metallic-Font}.)
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Baethen did not have a single card within his Hand that granted him dominion over the arcana of blood. Intrinsic dominions were usually granted to the spellscarred; survivors of wyrd-plagues that were pox-marked with the virulent magicks that could not kill them and so their inoculated souls came to subsume the unbound arcana.
“Cap’n. Give me your slate. Right. Now.”
Haviershan, in any other circumstance, might’ve called out the insubordination. Being a veteran of strange circumstances and familiar with the manic tone of voice of someone that didn’t quite believe what was in front of their eyes, he handed Baethen his personal slate of black-alabaster.
The tablet was a thin thing framed in gilded iron. The glyphs that wrote themselves upon it were garbled to the eye and only legible to the soul. And what Haviershan read made his eyebrows crawl all the way to his hairline.
“Seems we’ll be feeding you the lot o’ the birdies, lad.”