Despite the distance that had grown between them, Tratvgar returned to sparring with Baethen. The green-magician had been the one to offer a tentative olive branch, apologising when the both of them found themselves alone for but their shadows.
Too craven to speak with me together with the others. Traitors, the lot o’ you. Baethen kept those bitter thoughts to himself; he was not yet foolish enough to let his resentment take root within his tongue. It might fester within his heart but that was part and parcel to being an adult, to disregard pangs of passion and the spurs of emotion when they risked harm.
It also helped that Baethen was going to beat the ever-living wormshite out of Tratvgar during their spars but that was neither here nor there.
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The best manner in which to improve a part of oneself is through isolation thereof.
Baethen forwent most of his cards, especially those of his two first sets [Imp-of-Serpents] and [Strike-While-the-Iron-is-Hot]. He limited himself to only the [Nightvault-Painted-Prison] set, its constituent cards, and his arcanums be they granted or intrinsic.
The battle they held within a ring of fire-caught roots, large enough to move within yet small enough so that they’d have no choice but to enter direct confrontation. The writhing vegetation was one part dead-growth set ablaze and one part plant-life; it had been purpose-made by the both of them so as to produce elemental fonts during the spar. Tratvgar had gotten a card that allowed him to sap the lifeforce of plants around him to empower his own verdure as he wished—the arcana of Zartaxia the Empress was one of the natural world, of moss and bark and root.
They began the spar with the traditional Hsarashian Crucifix; with two fingers of his destreza in the gesture of benediction, Baethen crossed his heart from glabella to solar plexus and then left to right from shoulder to opposing shoulder. There was a whole rite with mores and all to follow but most only spoke the oath’s conclusion.
“Cross my heart.” Tratvgar swore.
“And hope to die.” Baethen finished.
With a glass-shard gripped within the palm of his hand, Baethen played [Sunder-the-Mirror]; a plane of air froze into being just in time to intercept a blunted dart of living wood. It had not been easy to procure glass-shards—though a common spell-reagent for many scrying sorceries and the like, there weren’t any markets within the Evergaol’s first rung.
The barren dirt had just enough sand to vitrify through extreme temperature into fulgurite. It took about a stund of his time and effort to produce two dozen shards of passable quality; the font-of-reflection was influenced by the reagent expended to bring it into being.
The dart clinked against the near-invisible plane of practically-immovable reality and fell to the ground. With his damascene gladius, Baethen struck the conjured slab of nothing-stuff, shattering it into rapidly-sublimating prismatic shards.
Using his sword as a stave, Baethen bound the rainbow smoke to his strike’s wake, taking it with himself as he charged after Tratvgar. Normally, the phantasmagoric fumes would evaporate back into the ether, but like with the false flesh of godspawn, so long as Baethen had a use for it, they remained tethered to physical existence.
Baethen approached at an oblique angle, dodging blunted missiles when he could and striking them out of the air when he couldn’t. He did not call upon the arcana of worms to clad himself in infernal armour, rather going about it with some hastily-put-together plate made from lead-tokens welded as one then bent to form.
Tratvgar did not cast tendrils from the ground to trip Baethen for the simple fact that he too was limiting himself as practice. Instead, a cape of roots extended from his shoulders, writhing about in anticipation so as to intercept strikes of all kinds. The green magician had lacked defence in their last bout thereabouts two rounds ago; but he was defenceless no longer and Baethen had to account for that.
When they met, Baethen conjured a shield of glass ethereal and then drew upon his dominion over the Mirror.
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[Arcana-of-the-Mirror] ★★★
➤[Major] I - [Resonant] I - [Dissonant] I - [Granted]
Origin Φ: [Allows {Player} to {Move} a {Font-of-Reflection} in the {Form} of a {Discus} {Once} per {Hand} so long as their {Reflection} is {Held-in-Thrall} therein.]
➤ [As a contra, allows {Player} to {Expend} a {Reflective-Font} not under their {Dominion} to {Magnify} another {Font-of-Reflection} {Manifested} under their {Dominion} so long as their {Cast-Shadows} are {Caught} within the former {Once} per {Hand}.]
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The thing about clauses was that they were, by their very nature, interpretable. With the right knowledge, one could bend their rules by reading between the lines so as to apply them to outlier and fringe scenarios.
What counted as ‘move’? Baethen could move something as a singular, discrete action from one locus to another. This was a rather primitive way to see the clause and Baethen was anything but pedestrian.
He couldn’t manipulate the shape of a font-of-reflection, needing to adhere to its base manifestation form, but so long as it was always in movement in a way he could perceive as movement, then he could continue to move it. Rather mind-boggling to explain to others but otherwise intuitive.
Baethen blocked the strike of Tratvgar’s stave and then the subsequent blunted tendrils with a towershield wrought of frozen-over reality. He’d bound the mirror-shield to his front with an imaginary thread, pinning it at a parallel axis and then moving it in a clockwise fashion so as to never let it still and lose his dominion over it.
This defence proved inviolate like the skin of Scamander, the demigod dipped within the waters of Hypnagogia and who could not be cut by mortal blade, pierced by mortal spear, or hurt by mortal hand. This defence also proved uniquely vulnerable as that of the Woedenite hero-god of legend—Baethen could not strike where the mirror-shield lay lest he break it and thus lose it until his next Hand was Redrawn.
Through the sympathy that bound him to it, Baethen could feel where the manifested font lay; no different than any other part of his flesh. This, at least, allowed him not to flounder utterly before Tratvgar’s onslaught.
Where Baethen could only strike as one, Tratvgar struck as many.
Blunted serpent-like tendrils, heavy darts of livingwood, a morphing stave that could assume any number of forms—these methods of attack were as varied as they were vast. To riposte in between the waves of verdure, Baethen used the trailing ribbon of prismatic-smoke as it proved just as durable as any other font of reflection. Rather than slash, he whipped, cutting through the thrice-braided roots with a lash of molten-cold glass.
The battle devolved into one of martial might, footwork becoming Baethen’s foremost concern. He spun around Trae, attempting to waylway him from an opportune angle of attack while the latter slowly mirrored him.
Changing course, Baethen modified the angle of his shield then and again, redirecting tendrils further away so as to leave Tratvgar’s dominion and to catch him with a lashing unawares. Unfortunately for Baethen, the writhing-cape was thick enough to stop him from scoring the first blow.
A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.
The problem with tricks though was that they only worked once or twice and so Baethen had to continue innovating as he fought. He mixed in bright sparks conjured from dominion over fire to blind his foe; he blurred his form with minor illusions from his dominion over deceit to set up a flurry of attacks; so on and so forth until his bag of tricks was well and truly empty for but a single ace up his metaphysical sleeves.
Seeing as this bout was going nowhere—a war of attrition which would see who could outlast whom—Baethen drew upon the arcana of smoke and then of worms as he lashed at the direction of Tratvgar’s eyes. The trail of prismatic vapour that extended from his gladius exploded into shadow, then smothering blindness.
A font-of-true-darkness was one that no mortal sight could pierce; it was the fear of the unknown made physical. As the caster under which the font’s dominion fell, Baethen saw through the smoke just fine and with that advantage, he grasped Tratvgar by the arm and said: “Gotcha.”
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“You still have that [Lesser-Hailstone-Strike] card?” Baethen asked as they sat down, recomposing after the hard-fought bout of battle. It was nice to stretch his muscles and focus mostly on his body after having been so enraptured with his crucible-magicks. Though, Baethen had had to burn his cast-shadows entirely to enhance his cover to even be able to approach Tratvgar as the latter had a much longer range of both defence and offence.
It was the strangest thing to look behind yourself and not cast a shadow; it didn’t quite feel real, the dissonance between what your mind thought should be and what truly was. Irreconcilable such that dysphoria was unavoidable, an unease grinding between Baethen’s shoulder blades like wheat beneath the millstone.
“Aye, though it’ll cost ya.”
Baethen had debated ever since they’d begun sparring as to whether or not to trust in Tratvgar. His thoughts had sorted themselves into two divergent paths whose consequences and hidden dangers mirrored each other like Gehenna does to Babylon. To share a card’s description was already intimate enough through speech but as to actually show another player your deck was something else entirely
He could confide in Tratvgar and in so doing offer to enchant the man’s weapon as well as his own—this way Baethen wouldn’t have to use his hard-earned tokens. Even though it was a one-star card, [Lesser-Hailstone-Strike] would probably cost him seven silvers and all his damascs. He’d gotten twenty silver-tokens as a bonus from trading in the [Gaolsaint-Idol] to Haviershan in return for keep of the damascene gladius. Though weapons of Damasc were prized, the tokens themselves were valued less than silver but higher than iron.
Seven silvers, though, might be a worthwhile price for keeping his cards close to his chest. It would remove the risk of his drawback being found-out and also give him peace of mind amid the growing sea of paranoia and suspicion—he’d lost trust with the cadre, both ways.
They saw him as a devil inside their former comrade’s skin and he saw them as turncoats whose confidence was prone to change, as mercurial as that of a coin toss and twice as impartially unfair to the gambler whose life hung in the balance of odds.
Baethen brought a hand to his temple, grazing his glabella and tugging at the deck of cards within his skull. He hesitated, knowing that this might cost him everything, either way and there was no more time to think. Anymore and he’d just be running in circles, ruminating and chewing over cud he should’ve spat out.
He was alone in a strange place that wanted him dead—this was what he told himself as he decided to confide in Tratvgar. Beneath that lie was the simple if pathetic truth that he wanted a friend, an ally, an accomplice, anything, anyone. Baethen would befriend the Devil Herself so long as he didn’t have to be by his lonesome.
Trust, he’d later learn with a shiv to the kidneys, was a fickle thing.
As to whether it was this moment that spelled his doom, he’d never know. Memory fades and certainty fails before the human need to see yourself reflected across the eyes of another.
Baethen brought out a card from his forehead, its surface like glass, like a thin layer of morning frost atop glass, like a breath of blackest alabaster, just an echo, a pale shadow of something greater behind it.
He handed his life’s work to Tratvgar, a thin, ephemeral line of magic arcana binding it to his soul. A card couldn’t so easily be stolen through physical act, but had there been a player versed with the Hangman, they could’ve severed that strand and taken [Echo-of-Alabastron] without resistance.
“Read it; speak nothing of it. I’ll do the same for your cards. It has no imbuement limits but for duration—not instance.”
Those words Baethen could not obfuscate no matter how much he wanted to; he could not cover them up; could not smudge them; they were indelible, inviolate. The fundamental language of Omniglot could be read by will alone, even blind or entirely senseless, by any and all, regardless of previous knowledge, skill with other tongues, or native intelligence of the reader. Though Baethen perceived it as his native Woedenian runes, the ideographs were universally intelligible such that even soulless beasts could parse them.
Perhaps, if his dominion in the arcana of the Charlatan were greater, then Baethen might’ve hidden such a thing. But he could not let his spirit be occupied with thoughts of what-ifs and what-fors. He’d chosen his course and would reap it in full.
The more that Tratvgar read, the wider his eyes became. He was a reed-thin man, his frame tall and his limbs languid as if an aspen wrought of flesh and bone rather than bark and heartwood. With each line, he regressed further into a graven idol, seeming to petrify at a very particular clause that Baethen could not only guess at but feel.
Like a stranger’s gaze alighting on the hairs at the nape of your neck, having another witness part of the inner sanctum of your soul was inherently unnerving. Evidently, this extended from object to subject as Tratvgar shivered as if he chanced upon something he was not meant to see.
With a grim nod, Tratvgar handed Baethen the card back and removed a card of his own from his Archive and handed it to him. This was not like Baethen’s gossamer-bound card, having not been directly borne within Tratvgar’s Hand for rounds upon rounds of toil and strife.
Baethen would never understand how something could form a set only to sell it afterwards, dispassionately—such a thing was profane to his senses of right and wrong. Like kicking a lover out of your bed after the deed was done.
“We need to test all of our cards and see how the imbuements work. Are they static and dead like rune-brands? Do the dominion-granting clauses stack? Didnae think I’d be this excited since I left me hamlet.”
With a face-splitting grin, Baethen patted the man on the shoulder, laughing in that genial way that you always have to in response to something endearing.
“The dominions aren’t cumulative—that breaks the duplicity axiom. ‘A hand cannot hold two staves without letting go of both’ and all that. You can have a duplicate card with the same name within your Archive but can’t do the same within your Hand—arcane mediums are extensions of the Hand, so any card borne within them counts as much.”
“Then that makes the card useless without the help of another; makes sense why you’d ask for me aid then.”
Baethen did not correct him on that end—extensions were, by their nature, one step removed from that which they extended from. The dominion-granting clauses were not cumulative but he could still play the card simulacra concurrently with their sires. This was less an act of desperation as it was one of greed; Baethen wanted to keep his hard-earned tokens for something better.
The imbuements themselves were somewhere between a physicalised card-vessel and an artefact-card proper. Haviershan, as the leader of the delve, had been awarded a relic-card after the defeat of Ruination; a hilt of ivory wood so white as to be Yggrdrazil’s bones, gilded with gold so pure that it shone with an inner light.
The fragment of a divine artefact once wielded by heroes long since past or villains long since laid to rest, safeguarded by angels and coveted by devils alike. So long as there was a legend, a story so grand so as to become myth, an artefact would be born from humanity’s collective, living memory.
Since the imbuements were temporary—lasting only until the next Hand was redrawn, and thus needing to be maintained—Baethen believed that Tratvgar would not be too tempted to rat him out. Being able to, essentially, have extra cards outside of your Hand was no mean thing.
Sure, it could be said that Tratvgar could still retain access to the imbuements even after betraying Baethen but that was only in the event that Baethen didn’t attempt a rivening as a last resort should the worst come to pass. And he wasn’t called a sore-loser for nothing.
Baethen would light himself on fire before he let another take the clothes off his back. Afterall, he’d done it before inside the belly of a dragon. If he went down, he was taking the lot o’ them down with him.