Baethen preferred enemies that came at him with apparent bloodlust rather than all this conniving and social combat. A foe that was charging at him from the front with spear in hand rather than at his back with a smile and calling themself ‘friend’ while hiding a knife up their sleeve.
What was the correct thing to say to a group of people that did not so much as trust you? They wouldn’t want him near them without great investment from his part and that meant exposing a secret which could end Baethen’s adventuring career right in its infancy. Haviershan had been a kind fellow that looked out for him and his but, right now, he did not look at Baethen as belonging to the company.
Unadept but not unused to lying, Baethen drew a knowing smile from the corner of his lips and said with an unwavering tone: “Keep your cards close, no?”
Rhetoric had nothing to do with words but rather inference. Simpler, more direct and honest folk had no need for hiding meaning in between breaths but those that went after power had to learn the art of tongue wagging right quick. Monsters might kill you but swindlers made you do it yourself.
Baethen let them stew in the silence, relaxing his stance and creasing the edges of his eyes as if to taunt: ‘well, speak your part; I am waiting’. Though his flesh took after an aspect of utter tranquillity, his soul tightened like the legs of an alabaster nun after a vow of celibacy. He was ready to play his cards should the worst come to pass.
Seeing as Baethen did not leave him any recourse but the more heavy-handed approach, the Captain just nodded and then turned to address the cadre.
“You lot reckon we’re good for another rung?”
“That Guardian was stronger than we thought.” Escoriot said, seeing as he was the second in the line of command, the would-be tactician. “In any other situation, we’d have to fight a fighting retreat. Dæmons aren’t supposed to be four-stars until after the third rung.”
That was the first that Baethen heard the sphynx’s star parity and he still couldn’t quite believe it. The dæmon was most likely on the weaker end of four-stars, with just enough magic to push it from three to four but not much more. Its Language abilities had been what’d made it so dangerous.
“Wounds are mostly scratches and bruises and the like.” Lac said, beginning to at least look in Baethen’s direction with a side-eye glance. “No broken bones in need of resetting or any open punctures. Some wyrd-ointment should be enough to fend off any pox-spirits so we don’t go sour with gangrene.”
Narancan, as Field-Sergeant, was responsible for supplies and rationing; he spoke up when the Captain’s gaze fell upon him.
“We’ve enough to see us over for another three rounds—four if we stretch rations thin. The hardtack hasn’t spawned any fey-weevils and the dowsing rod is working fine. The purification rune-brands on the water-sieves show no decay, not even a nick.”
Haverishan made a show of looking around for dissent so that he may take measure of it. No grievance was aired though Baethen knew that those eyes talked amongst each other of the enemy within their ranks.
“Then my judgement is settled: we’ll continue ascending the rungs. To the tower’s heart, we go.”
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Though Baethen had thought he’d be thrown out without so much as a single snort of protest, he’d over-estimated their willingness to part with a player. Sure, they could force him to forfeit and leave but then they’d also have to wait for another to join which might risk incensing the tower’s ire.
The first rung had been rather deserted, with nary an enemy in comparison to Haviershan’s previous delves. What it lacked in numbers it had made up in star parity, its Guardian a force not to be reckoned with. Not because it was not powerful or worthy—it most certainly was—but rather because any victory achieved over Ruination would be pyrrhic in nature.
Essentially, Haviershan was gambling his life and the lives of his soldiers-o’-fortune on the predicate that Baethen would be more friend than foe. He saw the odds of Baethen betraying them as low enough in comparison to the archdæmon rousing fully from slumber; should the fallen angel of the Dead-God Babylon awake, it would marshall the forces sleeping within to invade Eot.
The Helmouths of Gehenna might be spoken of in gibbering terror but the Evergaols of Babylon were whispered of in despair. God-beasts and divine spirits insensately-enraged from æons of torment and confinement within the corpse of their slain father could rival any cavortation of devils or host of wraiths.
The Twentieth Arcana of Judgement was just as feared as the Fifteenth Hand. Where Scaduphomet was disdained and scorned as the antithesis of Man, Nagalfaram was respected for being the Judge-of-Man’s-Fate, fomenting temerity within their hearts, inspiring the fatherly white-fear of justice. The fear of punishment, of the rod, of divine castigation.
He, afterall, had been the one to curse Scaduphomet’s womb barren after Her betrayal and fratricide so that She would have to cut off Her own heads to spawn Her vile progeny, the lesser worm-gods.
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They did not advance onto the next rung in the same day, nor even the next or the one after that. They would recover and acquaint themselves with their new cards—everyone had gained some new power or another.
A notch or two would be enough of a refractory period to see them stronger than before and ready to contend against the next Divine Arcana’s manifestation. Perhaps it would be another aspect of Yurnmagog, erring towards the World-Shadow rather than the Scapegoat, with rootwalkers and wortlings in place of harpies and hags. These writhing, moving plant monsters were the inversion of the pale gallowswood trees around them—where their bark was bone-white, the rootborne were pitch-black with cerulean leaves in place of scarlet. The Azure Forest that encircled Rimare-Tul from the West was the remnant of a previous god-bleed when the domain of Yurnmagog bled into Eot during the Time-of-Upheaval in the previous Game.
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Baethen kept to himself, only keeping company with the rest of the cadre so that he could close his eyes undisturbed from the blood-harpies and their brethren. Either they would kill him in his sleep or they wouldn’t—either way, it wasn’t worth losing sleep over as he couldn’t strike out on his own without certain death.
No man was an island nor army; alone, he would die.
It was during his long bouts of solitude that Baethen practised his new cards and he was not disappointed in the slightest. His deck had been piecemeal before, certain powers mutually exclusive due to the constraint of his Hand. Now, he could use all of them without worrying about juggling risk, reward and utility.
Baethen struck a gallowswood with his sword-spear blunted into a long, bladeless stave. When it made contact with the pale bone-bark, the metal exploded with lashing tongues of flame, incinerating the white into ember-veined black.
He could only imbue a single card within a single stave lest the confluence of energies within grow turbulent and backlash. He’d placed a simulacra of [Strike-While-the-Iron-is-Hot] meld within his weapon’s mace-like head and had played it to devastating effect on the inanimate and unfortunate tree before him.
Since decks were more stable than single sets, even with an odd number of cards not divisible by three, Baethen could remove it from his soul to play with still keeping it within his Hand—it was the same process as removing a token from his Tabula or discarding a linked card to his Archive due to a {Bring-Into-Play} clause; a paradoxical sleight-of-hand that was hard to explain. The best that Baethen could surmise to another person was that it was like juggling with your eyes crossed while balancing on a gossamer thread of steel.
Tricky, finicky, fickle, and strangely satisfying like picking at your gums with a splinter.
The arcana and the overall power of the card was still inside his soul but its manifest physical-form was outside, both connected by an invisible thread like that of iron to lodestone.
Beyond being able to play his whole kit interchangeably, Baethen had traded [Inchoate-Moonwell] with Escoriot for a meta-card with the arcana of the sceptre so that he could modify his casts to include {Thrall-of-Gaze} as well. This way, he didn’t have to always physically move and could use his will in place of body.
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({Archetype}: [Prime]) Selected; {Player}’s ({Hand}: [3//3]) {Drawn} as follows:
[Echo-of-Alabastron] ★★★ ({Thirteen-Card-Deck} - {Unlinked})
[Clouded-Fiefsight] ★ ({Single-Card} - {Unlinked})
[Bloodfly-Husk] ★ ({Single-Card} - {Unlinked})
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[Clouded-Fiefsight] ★
Draw: [Of-a-Kind]
Drawback: [Eye-of-the-Beholder]
Arcana: [The-Tower], [Sight], [The-Eye]
Number: [IV//XXI]
Suit: [Triumph]
Portfolio Φ: [‘Wherever your eye falls upon, there does your dominion follow in its wake’. This {Card} grants the {Player} with {Minor-Dominion} over the {Arcana-of-the-Lord}, allowing them to {Rewrite} the {Thrall-of-Arm} {Clause} of a {Card} into the {Thrall-of-Gaze} {Clause}; only {One} {Card} may be {Rewritten} at a time. The {Thrall-of-Gaze} {Rewrite} born of this {Card} must {Contend} against the {Dominion} of other {Players}; should the {Player} lose {Clout} before a {Greater-Dominion}, the {Player}’s {Dominion} over the {Arcana-of-the-Lord} is {Dispelled} until the next {Hand} is {Redrawn}.]
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[Clouded-Fiefsight] was part of the [Lordsight] set which allowed sceptres to function through line-of-sight. Some cards of that set still required an {Act-of-Body} but with a ranged {Thrall} clause in place of something strictly melee. Apropos of its namesake, many nobles had a permutation of the [Lordsight] set so that they could command their forces from afar as sceptres fell under the Tower-Investiture, the investiture of warriors, leaders, and clergy. The [Leaguesight] set was the lesser cousin of the [Lordsight] set, erring towards staves as bows counted as that particular arcane focus.
The {Scoric} prefix added to his meld had changed the manifestation of wormscale. Instead of semi-smooth scales, crags of scoria erupted from Baethen’s skin, covering him in a shell of igneous rock. Because of this, he did not have need of armour of any kind any longer. His scales counted as metallic fonts due to their new composition and he could forge his magicks through them just as well.
The irony of forging a suit of armour from a dread-knight only to become one himself was not lost on Baethen. He’d worn the hide of a monster and could blame no one but himself when he found that it was no longer a cloak but something more intimate and binding.
As a consolation for whatever fate he had in store for himself after death, the power of the card was like a spiced draught of moonsugar—utterly intoxicating. He felt invincible, nothing able to penetrate his defences, nothing able to harm him.
He could put his hand through a pool of molten slag, he could strike at it with his damascene gladius, he could pound it with a stone; his scales, thick and cracked, sloughed-off only to be replaced by new scoria. In comparison to its previous incarnation, this permutation of wormscale regenerated faster, could take more damage overall, and resisted a new source of harm—that of staves.
Though Baethen did not have a single card which directly augmented strength or even belonged to the arcana of strength, he was certainly exceeding his previous mortal limits. He wasn’t past the natural upper stratus of what a man was capable of but he was certainly closer to it than before.
It was a confluence of [Flawed-Steelheart], [Slag-and-Scale], and [Scoric-Wormscale-Hide]; the first let him apply the second to his muscles intuitively and the third augmented what was already there, letting his dominion over the arcana of the crucible seep into himself more deeply.
He’d been scared, previously, that he would not recognise the Baethen that came out of the Tower. Now, he was glad for it—the previous Baethen paled before the power of the current.
Baethen grabbed an errant rock from the ground, one that barely fit within his palm. It was solid through-and-through, a singular, continuous object. It wasn’t brittle, it did not crumble with a little pressure into dust.
Within his scaled right hand, Baethen closed his fist around the unriven stone.
Man, without aid of tools, could not break such a stone by strength of arm alone. Not for lack of force, necessarily, but for lack of constitution. One’s tendons and bones would give before the pulleys of their muscles; physical might was not simply a matter of how tightly the sinews of a bow could pull but how that bow could withstand the forces impressed upon it.
Wormscale clad him from fingers to elbows, scoria cracking his skin into impervious, unfeeling rock. Though it gave no might directly, the meld reinforced his body along with the other flesh-warping card [Flawed-Steelheart]. It was certainly not to the same degree as a direct strength card but…
Stone once-unriven cracked in twelve, then seven, and then finally into many uncountable shards and dust that fell through the gaps of his wormclad fingers.
The grin that split Baethen’s face in two was downright feral.