Loken—known to the Nezarrem as Lapopeth the Mad-Reveller and to the ancient, bygone Byzantine empire as Astaroth the Sleeper-that-Must-Not-Be-Woken and to those that worshipped Him as Goghiel-Assiah the Moonless—had stolen the Name-of-Death so that the Thirteenth Arcana could not speak it before the Gods and so bring death to the immortals nevermore, forevermore. The Fifteenth Hand was not the first betrayer among the Major Arcana nor was She the last—that dishonour lay solely upon the Unnumbered Arcana.
This stolen name, Loken now spoke a permutation thereof, conjugated through the paltry, linear time that men could but witness with their mortal senses; for, to speak Death in the transcendent realm of the Godhead would bring the End-of-All-Things and this did Loken fear for the God-of-Fools was no fool Himself.
Golden, resplendent fire screamed into being around the sphynx, the dæmon’s form once again cloaked though this time in flesh-scouring flame rather than supple, velvet scarlet. ‘[Babylon, Babylon, how far You’ve fallen, O Brother Mine.]’ was the last thought of the Faceless-God before He fell, once more, into a dreamless pyrite-masked sleep—uncaring, insensate in the lowest bowels of existence.
The dæmon howled in anguish and all-encompassing, abject horror; the voices trapped within its throat, one and all, shared that common denominator as it clawed at its mouth for air that would not come.
Baethen came to, then, from the trance that befell him, at a loss for how he’d come into the strange world he found himself in. He remembered everything from being born to hearing the dæmon speak but between the sphynx’s manifold tongue and this infernal tableau, he could recall only dreams of dreams of dreams.
Which was to say, in less flowery words: nothing.
One moment, the sphynx’s shadow bore down upon them and in the next instant this.
The others looked at him in what he could only call numb and dumb, wordless disbelief and he looked back at them much the same until he found his voice. He took a step forward to better speak but they, his comrades-in-arms, flinched back from his presence more harshly than they’d done with the dæmon and that hurt near as badly as Baethen’s lies to Mother and Father.
But there were worse, more immediate and imminent dangers, so speak he still did, regardless of what had changed between them. For, even in the midst of that storm of flame, the sphynx still thrashed; in place of its shadow, heat like that of the furnace's mouth bore down upon them.
“The beast is not yet dead.” Baethen heard himself say, distant like a man watching the world end around him and at a loss for better words than ‘lay down and die’. “Just as lightning, miracles do not happen twice—let us not wait for another that never comes.”
With that, Baethen dug into the empty pockets of his belt and pulled out a fistful of already-bloodied, lead-cast tokens and then he charged into the conflagration’s wall. Heat beat down upon him like a tidal wave come to sink an isle into the poison waters of the Dreadsea, seeping into his armour without any resistance whatsoever.
What had possessed Baethen to so recklessly and foolishly wade into what could only be described as living death, he’d never know for not even a single, numbered, god knew. Not All-Knowing Alunariat, not All-Wise Nagalfaram, not even the one staked to his soul.
Like a man dying of thirst in the Dreadsea, Baethen drank of the poison water, drawing on the [Lesser-Wormscale-Hide] meld such that he drowned in it and became one with the Beast-Within.
He sank deeper in, nearing the eye of the fiery storm; each step excruciation and each breath torment. The shell of metal around him was a redundant cask then, shed from him like so much dead skin. Beneath, wormscale clad him horned-head to taloned-toe, redolent in the Devil’s arcana. Cloth turned to ash in an instant until only a stave of behemoth-bone and a blade of sorrow-steel were left.
Naked as the day he was born, Baethen forgot his own name until the only part that was left of him was that of the beast. That low aspect that knows but survival and unbridled violence, to shy away from pain and to bask in pleasure and nothing more.
The man-beast struck the dæmon, again and again, with blade and bludgeon. Though thought vested with flesh, the sphynx still flesh was. Able to bleed and be broken, able to fear and, oh, did it fear for only those that could die truly feared.
The sphynx lashed out with its flail-headed tail, swatting at the man-turned-animal. With stave in hand, the beast breathed-in the arcana of fire of air around it, that blazing-dry sirocco, and clad itself in a zephyr. Its limbs become the sails of some great vessel, steered by the wind with great force and speed.
The beast bent back over itself, letting the dæmon’s tail pass over it.
The moment it did, the beast struck back, jumping upon the sphynx’s hide and plunging its unmelting blade deep within. It held on for dear death on the sword’s handle as the dæmon thrashed, its many hands coming down upon itself as its wings attempted in vain to shield itself against the churning inferno that lay around them.
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In its desperation, the dæmon cast a spell, the Words of the Language freezing the world around it: “[Ekpyrôsis—for all things must burn, even fire itself.]”
But all things had their price and so the fires around it ceased in an instant and so did its flesh-set-aflame become forfeit, ash falling from the dæmon’s many gouges such that it appeared more dead than alive. All that the flame’s tongue touched had been turned to dust; all but a bone-stave and an argent sword and a beast-turned-man.
Baethen remembered once again his own name, flayed of the wormscale hide that clung to him. Charred gristle and exposed muscle now in its place, he looked just as grim as the dæmon, a foot already in the grave.
He’d been flung from the dæmon during the last of its throes before the spell and now he stood, numb to the agony that he now wore in place of skin. He’d been through it once already, had been burnt to the Hels and back—he still had his limbs this time around, owing to the sorcery within his blood. The arcana, just as they guided act, they infused flesh.
Two broken vessels of divinity stared at each other and then the stalemate broke as Baethen silently charged at the dæmon. There were no war cries to be had for his tongue had been burnt to ash once again, having channelled a power greater than he could bear.
Somehow, through whatever act of sleight-of-hand that governed that aspect of the Game, the tokens in his hand were still there, fused into one big lump. As Baethen ran, he ripped the fistful of coin, bloodied and thus {Red-Hot}, from the charred remains of his fingers and used it to bind his gladius to his stave and then he was upon his foe.
The sphynx reared back, afraid of a man that, by all rights, should be either dead or thrashing in agony on the ground rather than fighting.
Still clad in a zephyr of speed, Baethen struck out with his newly-wrought sword-spear. He played a litany of cards, everything from the [Imp-of-Serpents] set and near all of the [Strike-While-the-Iron-is-Hot] set.
Fire and smoke, air and phlogiston, mercury and lead—a confluence of fonts so great that it blazed around his arcane focus like a second sun. The resonance of his dominions had granted him, long ago, the ability to expend all but one font within a confluence to empower that which remained once per Hand.
And Baethen was a sore-loser down to the marrow of his bones; he was a liar and a cheat at cards; he was a two-faced, serpent-tongued, scheming fool.
No one can predict the actions of fools, not even themselves.
All-encompassing light blinded the dæmon, its gullet-eye closing as it flinched yet no blow graced its illusory flesh. Light turned to smoke, and then shadow, and then {True-Darkness}. No matter where the sphynx’s all-seeing eye turned to, it could penetrate through the veil of night around it.
Baethen brought down his sword-spear’s blade on the sphynx’s serpentine neck. At the last moment before it made contact, he {Refunded} the spent font of mercury, bringing with it heat. All fonts were, by their nature, confluences of fonts—you couldn’t have a font of air without water and couldn’t have one of fire without air.
Even though he’d brought back mostly the majority of the mercurial font, he brought its remnant flame along with, aiming at the wounded flank of the dæmon’s neck. Trailing in the wake of his spear, a cowl of molten slag rammed into it, further adding to the blow’s force.
Baethen played [Strike-While-the-Iron-is-Hot] and [Mercurial-Inksmith] at once; the first multiplied the deadliness, the second added more of it in the form of an unstable stave already about to explode.
There were a thousand other nuances to that one fell swoop but suffice it to say that it was devastating, it was brutal, it was glorious.
Its thunderclap resounded like the proclamation of a god, throwing Baethen off his feet and deafening him with cicadas in his ears. Had he any skin left to lose, it would have been ripped from him in the resulting blastwave as it carved a crater at the point of impact.
When the dust cleared, the shadow beneath stirred.
The dæmon’s neck hung by a thread to its body, the divine remnant near death but not quite there.
He couldn’t lift a finger—Baethen had charged past the limits of his limits and now he could only watch, helplessly, as the sphynx’s gullet-eye oriented on him.
Owing to its supernatural composition, the beast spoke even with its throat all but destroyed.
“[Anathema.]” It cursed. “[Betrayer-deceiver.]” It spat. And then it charged and limped towards Baethen’s fallen form, its thought-flesh beginning to mend as tendrils slithered through its wounds, reknitting by the invisible hand of its soul.
Just as Baethen accepted his fated death, the dæmon stumbled and then looked down at its hands and hind legs rooted to the ground. Vegetation writhed underneath, emanating from a spear thrown near.
And then the cadre struck.
There wasn’t much if any tactics or stratagems, only a bombardment of sorceries one after another. Baethen only realised that the dæmon was dead when he saw its neck finally fall to the ground, having been decapitated by Lac’s gargantuan slab-blade. The arcana of the Executioner was a deadly thing to behold—it had cut through without even a lick of resistance.
A step behind the pace of the world around him, Baethen became cognizant that he was being carried by Tratvgar when the lad laid him down on a bench within the ziggurat’s antechamber.
He felt nothing, the numbness taking hold as the edges of his vision closed in, darkening. Nigh succumbing to the delirium, Baethen pushed away Tratvgar and redrew his Hand, playing a card-chain of [Cinderspark-Spit], [Forge-Maw], and [Gullet-of-the-Sky-Gorger].
A corona of fire erupted from his mute, howling mouth, enveloping him in an inferno much like the one that had orbited the now-fallen dæmon.
Baethen played [Scarwright].