Just a day before they set off to the next rung, Baethen did his preparations for his most difficult to play back-pocket cards; among them were [Echo-of-Alabastron], [Mercurial-Inksmith], [Nightvault-Painted-Prison], [Leaden-Stomach], and [Flawed-Steelheart].
Starting from the bottom-up, [Leaden-Stomach] and [Flawed-Steelheart] came as a near-indistinguishable pair. In place of a drum-like muscle, Baethen’s very core was wrought of a flexible metal, a living font of iron. This imbued his blood and the rest of his body with the arcana of amalgamy, allowing him not to die from mercury poisoning.
Fleshwarping cards were looked down upon for this very reason—Baethen’s bodily fluids were, both technically and practically, poisonous to any but himself. Had Miro not possessed a [Trull-Liverspawn] card to filter out the quicksilver from his body…
Well, suffice it to say that the veteran adventurer was not a spitter.
To continue living, as he was wont to do, Baethen had to ingest metals. Usually, in the form of lead-tokens. To that end, he had stockpiled the Death-God’s obols within his Tabula. The bond-card made the back of his mouth taste perpetually of bitter copper, as if his gums were bleeding, but otherwise superseded his need for thirst beyond a cup every notch.
His ability to go for long bouts without either food or drink had been what let Baethen go in place of Miro, seeing as the latter had seen his fair share of battles twice-over. It was a matter of resource conservation.
Having subsisted on monster-flesh and amalgam of lead, mercury, and iron for thereabouts a round or two, whenever Baethen cut his palm to check the colour of his blood, he bled liquid cinnabar. The very alchemy of his blood had changed and would begin to spread further still as the turns passed him by. Many sorcerous bloodlines of spellscarred began in this manner, their progenitors having changed themselves through cards that polite society held as taboo. Notwithstanding, of course, that Woeden’s High-King had an extra pair of arms and hands like an asura of Stribog or a cherub of the Fourth-Arcana, His Majesty’s royal lineage entirely suffused with physically-evident arcane influence. Rather than seen as unsightly or unholy, their spellscars were things of divine mandate.
Next came Baethen’s as-of-yet to be played [Nightvault-Painted-Prison] set-card. Without access to a night-sky with which to scriven and scry, he couldn’t do much of anything with the card. They did not have a night-mirror either, seeing as those artefacts were rather rare. They were artificial portals into the ether beyond the moon that allowed magi to read the stars no matter what time of day or what place of the various realms within or without Eot.
But that was enough of the set’s capstone couldn’t do; what the set card did was grant a new dominion to play with in the lonesome, quiet hours away from the cadre.
That of night.
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[Arcana-of-Night] ★
➤[Intermediate] I - [Resonant] I - [Dissonant] I - [Granted]
Origin Φ: [Allows {Player} to {Magnify} a {Font-of-Night} {Once} per {Hand} so long as their {Cast-Shadows} are not in {Touch} with {Light} or held in {Thrall-of-Gaze} of another {Player}.]
➤ [As a contra, allows {Player} to {Expend} a {Font-of-Day} to {Expand} a {Font-of-Night} {Manifested} under their {Dominion} so long as their {Cast-Shadows} are {Caught} within the former {Once} per {Hand}.]
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Where dominion prefixes were discrete instances whose {Bring-Into-Play} clauses were separate, contras were bound directly to their origin and shared per-Hand casts.
This made practicing with the dominion difficult and sparse. Fonts of night were any related to darkness and quietude, similar to how fiery-fonts could interface with each other. This granted dominion really just expanded Baethen’s ability to use illusions, allowing him finer control over those he wove through [Parlour-Tricks] or enhance his veils of sky to obfuscate the reach of his weapons. Even the arcana of worms benefitted from night as Baethen could expand his cast-shadows into a cloud of darkness and then transform it accordingly into a higher-order font which only he could see through.
As for [Mercurial-Inksmith], that card depended on what Baethen could forge-up with [Echo-of-Alabastron]. And Baethen forged a weapon of war and utter devastation.
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Brands-of-Sloth stagnated that which they sealed. They preserved whatever form the branded object had; not perfectly, but good enough.
This meant that no matter how unstable an imbuement was, and how prone to explosion it became, Baethen could just continue layering more and more magicks therein. Up to a certain point, of course.
Baethen dubbed his newest toy the Godkiller after the artefact of legend, Pagat, itself. The name meant ‘little, inconsequential thing’ in the Carothian parlance. Shaped like a perfectly-ordinary carving knife, the artefact acted perfectly-like its form.
Even to divine flesh which no mortal blade could cut.
Which avatar had fallen to Pagat, no one knew—the Nameless Death-God had been felled by Loken while Babylon was slain by Scaduphomet. The hero which had killed this god was also unknown, her story told as an allegory for corrupt kings brought low and the haughty put in their place.
The age-old adage of ‘pride cometh before the fall’ originated from the feyry-tale of Pagat.
Beyond weaving insubstantial magicks, Baethen also dabbled in the more physical side of alchemy, packing the sceptre’s markings with a pinch of dragonpowder he’d bought from Haviershan at quite the mock-up. Strictly regulated for its heavy use of infernal sulphur harvested from wormling-broods and drake-dung, dragonpowder was a thing of beauty. Father had brought Baethen to see the cannonade demonstration the day after his Lynchpin ceremony and he remembered till this day the thunder that reverberated in his chest.
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To work on his Godkiller project, Baethen had made a makeshift anvil by welding his slab of black-alabaster to a framework of lead-tokens and then affixing that to a large and sturdy stone. With use of his cards, he carved various runes and chanted spells of durability into the sceptre. The former functioned as a player’s mark while the latter was done by use of the Language and wouldn’t amount to much beyond a minor increase in tensile strength.
Before he added the odorous dragonpowder into the sceptre’s creases, Baethen pulled a tried-and-tested set of cards from his temples. These were the best combination of arcana and raw power with the least likely chance to explode before he could get it inside his shadow.
Card imbuements were products of their parents but entirely their own and thus subject to their own rules—like water being poured into a cup, they conformed to the vessel’s shape; namely, that of a sceptre.
[Forge-Maw], [Gullet-of-the-Sky-Gorger] and [Kindlers-Breath] all depended on a player’s ability to breathe; without being able to exhale or inhale, they’d not be playable, no matter the small fact that whoever lost said ability was most-assuredly choking if not already dead.
For most, the incompatibility would have stopped them from attempting an imbuement in the first place. For Baethen and other fools whose lives were ended short and violently short at that, it was the threshold by which he tested himself.
In the Language, Baethen spoke a Word-of-Power, a simple one and the first he’d ever learned. Big Yldira hadn’t expected him to form a Magus confluence from a set of cards picked for blacksmithing but she had taught him then the best she could. She was no runespeaker who could inscribe brands and speak them into life, but she’d picked up a few tricks ‘ere and there.
“[Breathe.]”
When it came to spellcraft, it was a meagre effort at best. Baethen, as he was, would never rival a sorcerer of the Lodge. But that was fine for this was enough.
For every thing bought there was a price and so Baethen felt the life drain from his lungs, air escaping as if liquid poured from a carafe. Thirst came upon him and a tightness about his throat as if he’d run throughout a winter’s coldest night and scraped his voice-box raw.
His living breath flowed into the roughshod brands of the sceptre before him as he struck down with a hammer wreathed in flame, hot and willing. The strike reverberated in his bones and made his teeth clatter like fine porcelain shaking about on a rickety wagon.
Laid beneath his shadow cast, crying out as if a newborn, was an artefact.
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Artefact-Card Forged: [Pagats-Shadow] ★★
Draw: [One-of-a-Kind]
Drawback: [One-Foot-Already-in-the-Grave]
Arcana: [The-Sceptre], [Fire], [Night]
Number: [XIII//XIX]
Suit: [One-at-Dice]
Portfolio Φ: [‘Once there was a sword, mighty and old, riven into many and mended without word, fashioned into scythe that would not blood reap but rather wheat bleed’. This {Artefact-Card} possesses {Minor-Dominion} over the {Arcana-of-Metempsychosis}, {Imbuing} its {Vessel} with the power to commit {Deicide}. For this {Artefact-Card} to be {Brought-Into-Play}, the {Player} must {Strike} a {Deity}’s {True-Form} that is {Near-Death}, {Dying}, or already {Dead} with its {Vessel}. After this {Artefact-Card} is {Brought-Into-Play}, it is {Discarded} from its {Vessel}, thus {Banished} to {Babylon}.]
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Normally, such information was beyond him, seeing as Baethen didn’t have a spiritsight card of any sort. However, as the sceptre was under his shadow and had been forged of cards still within his Hand, a link, a tenuous resonance, had been wrought between creator and creation.
“Mighty useful for the next archdæmon.” He whispered under his breathless breath, metallic sweat dripping from his brow.
Just as quickly as he’d brought the artefact into being, Baethen cast it away, letting the sceptre dissolve into his shadow, layering his form with even more heaviness than before. Along with [Stigmata-Mundi], he was beginning to falter in the burdens he bore. Every movement was delayed by more than it should’ve been; every two steps forward, there came another to drag him back.
It was like straining against shackles you couldn’t see, an anchor staked not to your flesh but to your very soul. Sleep was an act of excruciation, of shuffling back and forth on the cot while the weight festered on your chest no matter what position you settled in.
A hellish experience, aye, but better sick than dead.
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The cadre approached the cubic stone as one with Baethen at their backs. They were mostly on the mend in regards to treating him with a modicum of human decency, no longer fearing him to stab them in their sleep.
Baethen’s frustration at the whole thing paled before his need to be rid of the Gallowswoods’ eternal daylight. He wanted dark and he wanted rest, to be away from the monotony of this instance of Yurnmagog’s domain.
Just as they’d entered the Evergaol, the adventurers went one by one, touching the black alabaster and then vanishing as they were reflected across an unseen axis.
When his time to pass the threshold came, Baethen reached out with a hand, his mirror-image reached back. They grasped each other's forearms, one of flesh and the other spirit.
From across the infinite divide, the interstice which no thing can cross unaided or pass unchanged, five words were whispered.
“[Come O brother, brother mine.]”
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Baethen tumbled through the blindness of the ether until his feet met the terra firma of Eot once again or, at least, a pale imitation thereof. Confusion wracked his skull, the world a cacophony of colour and lurid visions. Discoherent thoughts wove together to birth apophanic half-dreams as if his soul was too big to fit inside his body.
Still with a foot on the other side of reality, Baethen realised then why night did not come upon that paltry shadow of the Twelfth Arcana. Thieves and murderers rarely met their ends upon the gallows for hangmen were so made not by the gravity of their transgressions but by the vicissitudes of the ruler which they’d offended.
Thieves and murderers got their throats slit behind closed doors; traitors of the state and deserters were hanged before the raving-silent masses.
Executions were, by their very nature, spectacles. They were less about proportionate punishment that fit the crime than they were cautionary tales wrought in drawn-out, torturous death. Made to remind the gentry that the state stood above all, that the authority of the land was not to be trampled upon for the law was inescapable, that one may run but never truly hide. The Scales-and-Blade would have its pound of flesh, inexorable as tide and time.
From Justice came the Gallows which led to Death—Gods Eleven, Twelve, Thirteen, respectively. That land never darkened because it wanted you to witness the blood being spilt upon it. It wanted an audience, it wanted to be seen.
Just then, an errant thought in a voice he could not remember said three spine-shivering words.
“[You are watched.]”