He flipped the token end-over-end around his knuckles, savouring the surprise and then greed he saw in the others’ eyes as they realised what he held, how he flaunted it before them and that he wasn’t so meek so as to bend over backwards to bow before them.
He knew they knew.
Rather than risk them attacking him and robbing him of the [Tabula-Rasa], Baethen swallowed the coin. He did so with the rabid glee of a serpent devouring eggs before their parents and then scurrying away.
Eyes were the windows into the soul and Baethen’s burned incandescent white as if two stars placed within his skull. The sheer power did not so much as course through him as it did blaze like a tree struck by a spear of Stribog and hollowed out by the fires raging within.
He opened his mouth and spoke a Word in the Language, the tenth to be spoken in the Game, heard only by the first ten gods of the Numbered-Pantheon and the one which came before all and bore silent witness: Balphas, Sybil, Zartaxia, Woeden, Nezen, Leizuziel, Rephatamon, Stribog, Alunariat, and lastly Fata-Morgana for She spoke it:
“[Wyrd.]”
The turn of the tongue and of the wheel twain; severing and binding, e’er-turning and never waking, woven and unravelled. The Word added no power, shaped no spell; it was nought more than a simple recounting, a remembering of the bygone age before even the concept of wars came to be.
Eot faded away, replaced with the desolation of Babylon.
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Hearken, the [Dealer-of-Fate] stirs awake! As {Eldest}, [Fata-Morgana] takes {Rearhand} as {Dealer}.
Scouring [Akashic-Archive] for compatible {Arcanum-Deck} […]
Compatible {Arcanum-Deck} found; shuffling probabilities set to {[Base]: [One]} over {Mean} […]
Shuffle complete, [Three-of-a-Kind] {Sets} {Drawn}; please select {Three} {Cards} to form a {Set}.
*Selections are final; results are blind; only {One} {Card} of each {Set} may be selected. Should a {Set} not be formed in the {Allotted-Time} of {Ten-Licks}, a {Set} will be selected at random.
➤ Set I: [Remain-Steadfast], [Covenant-of-the-Damned], [Catharsis-of-Absolution]
➤ Set II: [Death-Reversed], [Blood-of-Vein], [The-Mirror]
➤ Set III: [Night], [The-Crucible], [Fire]
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His first set choices had advanced to rareform permutations of the last; [Stay-the-Course] became [Remain-Steadfast] and would preserve the particulars of Baethen’s cards so far. It would further cement what he’d already slotted with little to no deviation on his card-links such as melds and deck capstones.
[Catharsis-of-Absolution] would purge his cards of the arcana of the Red-Dragon but that was too little too late; the token could not reach into his arcanum and cleanse it of the accumulated filth so what was the point?
With a foot already in Gehenna, Baethen stepped fully in league with the Worms, choosing [Covenant-of-the-Damned]. It was a foolish choice borne of immaturity and resentment but one he made without second thought for there was thought within him then. It was power, plain and simple.
In regards to the second set, Baethen wavered between [Death-Reversed] and [The-Mirror]. The first offered the chance of an immortality meld which could prevent a fatal blow or heal him from the brink of shuffling off this mortal coil. The second would compound and synergise with [Mercurial-Inksmith], [Sunder-the-Mirror], and [Nightvault-Painted-Prison]. He already had a mending play with [Scarwright] so Baethen opted for the arcana of [The-Mirror].
For the last choice, Baethen did not need to deliberate, grasping for the arcana of [The-Crucible] like a man grasps at dead coals in the depths of winter. The Round-of-Tzenect was called the Round-of-Bones for reason of deprivation. A time where the boughs are empty of leaf and white with snow; a time where men survive the winter as nought but sleep-still bones and thus not at all.
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{Hand} chosen as follows:
➤ [Covenant-of-the-Damned]
➤ [The-Mirror]
➤ [The-Crucible]
Fusing {Arcanum} into {Deck}; please wait [...]
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Baethen let go of the token, the coin falling past the barrier that separated his reflected halves and into the nothingness on both sides. He felt the cards within his soul shift, shuffling the foundations of his being.
Many played cards without much thought about how they worked. Cards were extensions of the soul, tools and mediums through which to channel will upon the waking world to tangible effect; they interfaced directly with what you were so that the world became what you wished it to be.
Rivenings left broken men, women, and leirites in their wake for shards of broken arcana lay within them, tumours of divinity growing where they should not. The spellscarred were much the same though more adapted to the changes wrought upon their most base level of existence.
The process catalysed by [Tabula-Rasa] was mostly done without conscious input from Baethen, his will only interceding to quarantine two cards from the rest so that he might remove them without fear once he returned to Eot. Here and there, he prodded at the invisible hand that shuffled his soul’s deck to change which card went into which set and influence his card links so that the resultant melds weren’t wasted.
An eternal instant later, it was done, the razing of his very soul down to its foundations so that he might build it anew with the fallen brickwork of before.
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({Archetype}: [Prime]) Selected; {Player}’s ({Hand}: [1//3]) {Drawn} as follows:
[Echo-of-Alabastron] ★★★ ({Thirteen-Card-Deck} - {Unlinked})
[Empty-Slot]
[Empty-Slot]
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[Echo-of-Alabastron] ★★★ ({Thirteen-Card-Deck} - {Unlinked}) shuffled as follows:
➤ [Imp-of-Serpents] ★★ ({Four-Card-Set} - {Linked} [Echo-of-Alabastron] ★★★)
[Lesser-Juggler-of-Fire] ★ ({Single-Card} - {Linked} [Parlour-Tricks] ★)
[Cinderspark-Spit] ★ ({Single-Card} - {Linked} [Forge-Maw] ★★)
[Kindlers-Breath] ★★ ({Single-Card} - {Linked} [Forge-Maw] ★★)
[Gullet-of-the-Sky-Gorger] ★★ ({Single-Card} - {Linked} [Lesser-Wormscale-hide] ★)
➤ [Cycle-of-the-Crucible] ★★ ({Four-Card-Set} - {Linked} [Echo-of-Alabastron] ★★★)
[Flawed-Steelheart] ★ ({Single-Card} - {Linked} [Lesser-Wormscale-hide] ★)
[Leaden-Stomach] ★ ({Single-Card} - {Linked}
[Slag-and-Scale] ★★ ({Single-Card} - {Linked} [Strike-While-the-Iron-is-Hot] ★)
[Run-Like-the-Wind] ★ ({Single-Card} - {Linked} [Strike-While-the-Iron-is-Hot] ★)
➤ [Nightvault-Painted-Prison] ★★★ ({Three-Card-Set} - {Linked} [Echo-of-Alabastron] ★★★)
[Lesser-Narguile-of-Night] ★ ({Single-Card} - {Linked} [Parlour-Tricks] ★)
[Mercurial-Inksmith] ★★★ ({Single-Card} - {Linked} [Scarwright] ★★)
[Sunder-the-Mirror] ★★★ ({Single-Card} - {Linked} [Scarwright] ★★)
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His previous false or half-step deck [Cycle-of-the-Crucible] and its constituent sets had been cannibalised in the shuffling process, reforming links with each other to preserve the previous melds. Baethen hadn’t gained any new melds—disregarding the deck conflux, that is—but he had breathed in new life to his deck, transforming it into a proper one that took up only a single slot within his Hand.
What truly blew away his expectations was what deck’s capstone and namesake. Beyond the set changes which allowed him to fit more cards into his Hand, the [Tabula-Rasa] token had left him a parting gift. It was the product of all his powers, be they bought and commissioned within Reordran, earned within Rimare-Tul or taken from the jaws of defeat.
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Deck Formed: [Echo-of-Alabastron] ★★★
Draw: [One-of-a-Kind]
Drawback: [True-Name]
Arcana: [The-Crucible], [Night], [Mercury]
Number: [Zero//XVIII]
Suit: [Back-Pocket]
Portfolio Φ: [‘Riven from the mirror, the first to escape was fire’. This {Deck} grants the {Player} with {Utter-Dominion} over the {Arcana-of-the-Crucible}, allowing them to {Fabricate} {Simulacra} of {Cards} by impressing them over a {Font-of-Mercurial-Shadow} and {Striking} it with a {Sceptre} {Resplendent} in the {Arcana-of-Fire}; and, in so doing, {Expend} said {Fonts} and {Imbue} the {Stricken} {Card} within the {Sceptre}. Should the {Player}’s {True-Name} be {Uttered} before them, this {Deck} and all {Cards} {Linked} to it, shall be {Forfeit} to the {Utterer}.]
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Baethen had never been more joyous or dreadful—he’d signed a soul-binding contract with Haviershan to jump onto the expedition and should the Captain find out his deck’s drawback, he could not only lord it over Baethen but take it from him wholesale.
His cards were like the spheres, the god-planets, orbiting around the blazing light of Sol; should the sun either wink out from existence or grow gluttonous to devour the other arcana, it would spell the doom for all that depended on Him.
Were it not for that particularly pernicious drawback, the deck might’ve not even formed a three-star capstone as it was composed of so many lesser parities. Still, it proved worrying.
How would he avoid disaster? How would he thread the needle to stay within the cadre and thus the Evergaol? How would he balance on the knife’s edge between keeping his cards and becoming utterly ruined while doing so?
Baethen would have to answer those questions right quick for in the next blink he returned to the waking world, his former-cronies looking at him expectantly as they surrounded him in a circle. Though no weapons were drawn, hands were at the ready to do so.
“Well, lad. I’ve got to say I wasn’t expecting that.”