The current safe-haven was a large one in comparison to the ones in the previous rung. Perhaps it was to compensate for the inability to speak aloud in or otherwise interact with a realm as hostile as that of Phantasmagoria. Instead of a cottage-sized and intimate affair, the altar stood as a mausoleum fit for a line as blue-blooded as they came; utterly ruined, said blue-bloods had died along with Babylon a millennia of turns ago. Around the central structure, was a spacious clearing of wild-flowers demarcated by a crooked fence of slabs, a dome of Bilröst shimmering into being so as to ward any fey from trespassing upon the threshold.
At the centre lay a temple where stout pillars held up half of a stone ceiling, red marble riven in form but not waned of colour—the gildings of damascene alone could feed a clan through ten turns, much less the stone itself, a blood jasper of some sort.
There was a fire crackling in the center of the refuge, cradled between fallen plinths erected to forgotten gods felled in the wake of the War-In-Heaven. A cookpot bubbled merilly, the cadre laying about that central warmth in rest.
Captain Haviershan Bjoren twiddled the locks of his saffron hair, be it pate or beard, into neat rows and bound them in rings of brass as he took measure of the stew. His boltcaster was disassembled atop a cloth with a canvas beneath, already oiled and each gear accounted for.
Lieutenant Escoriot Son-of-Kol sat in deep meditation to his patron deities, Irmin-Sûl the World-Pillar and Woeden the God-Emperor; the shield-warden’s sceptre lay across his legs and his plate-pauldrons, each the general size and shape of kite shields, lay before him, one for each Number, engraved in religious iconography and purity seals.
Ensign Lacariah sharpened her sword-slab with an arcane whetstone of lightening; she did not look for an edge but rather to make the blunt weapon faster. Through the magicks of her cards, the sword was light as a feather to her hand but heavy as a tomb to those she struck. The rune-brands of the whetstone lit up from within, cerulean embers ebbing as if breath and casting shadows about her ivory skin and black mane—pure Woedenite that one, without a touch of Nezarri, Carothese, or Rōnarian.
Field-Sergeant Narancan played tricks of skill with a steel knife, sharpened to a fine edge and hafted in a pitch-lacquered wood. His sleight of hand drew no blood as he wove the blade between his frostbitten fingers—not for his knack to the art but for the fact that those digits were entirely bloodless. His shirt exposed a large scar raking across his sternum, grey against the swarthy red of the men of Rōnaria who were said to still carry some of the blood of Qadmon till this day.
Footman Tratvgar coaxed about a writhing vine. His living cloak rested against the Feywild’s root-floor, extending a single tendril to interact with its master. It had all the inquisitiveness of a newborn pup, prodding and grasping any item given to it—by namesake, familiar spirits such as these tended to be passed down a familial line as their pseudo-souls dwelt within the card that birthed them. It had been a lucky find, purpose given by the cubic stone of the last rung.
Lastly was Footman Baethen, holding an empty cup in his hands and utterly lost on how to approach the fact that he was no longer an invalid, a lunatic, or possessed by the Devil Herself. The vermillion tea had been a rich one, heavily spiced with saffron, turmeric and even shavings of divine bezoar; Baethen had only tasted hillocks-heart when his master had found him no longer wanting as an apprentice and declared him a journeyman.
What wouldn’t he do then to return to such a simpler time.
Well, he’d most likely do anything but attempt to do so—bittersweet things had to be, by their very nature, sweet. And no sweeter thing than the power that dwelt at the tips of Baethen’s fingers.
“I’ve returned from Babylon.” Baethen said. “The Land-of-Dreams said it had no space for a layabout like myself.”
The jest incited no true laughs and half-born, miscarried chuckles that could nary be heard over the crackling of flame. The feyry crickets were loud but the tension was louder.
The Captain brought the ladle to his lips and supped the boiling stew.
“Needs salt.”
Aloof, he set the ladle’s hook against the pot’s loop-handle and then turned to fully address Baethen’s existence.
“We’ve a lot to talk about, lad.”
Baethen did not like the way he said ‘lad’. It had all the righteous disappointment of a parent and all the gravity of an executioner reading you your last rites before they put you in the ground.
Rather than let himself be cowed, Baethen narrowed his eyes and waited for Haviershan to elaborate. Had he the ability to do so, he’d be sweating pails upon pails of water. Instead, his pallor took a metallic sheen to it, not wet but rather gilded in a heavily-adulterated sterling of silver.
The silence stretched until Haviershan lost his patience and sighed, the act drawing deep of his being. He’d undone his rune-branded suit of Woedenite plate, only his chausses and sabatons still donned. The cuirass, pauldrons and gauntlets hung on a branch, tied on the inside with leather thongs.
“We can’t keep pussyfooting around the topic, lad—you’ve got a problem and it’s a dangerous one. Wildman cards are taboo for a reason; what’s the fiercest warrior worth when he can’t differentiate friend from foe? A beast don’t fight, Baethe, it just hunts to satisfy itself.”
Sore-loser that he was, Baethen wanted nothing more than to argue back like an indignant child. He hid his left hand then for he knew it was covered in scales, having drawn instinctively on his cards without his explicit consent.
“Did I hurt anyone?” He found himself asking, his mind distant, trying to remember. “Last I knew, I only had eyes for that maleficar. It was one, right? Not a brùnaidh or a gruagach. Gods forgive me, if it was a beneficar instead. Boggarts aren’t known for their mercy.”
“Boggart, already turned that one—it broke the implicit Wyrd first, wasnae you. Either born that way ‘ere or it retreated into the Feywild after turning. Goblyns are errant fey and can traverse the ether between Eot and Phantasmagoria through a feyry ring with ease; don’t even require a full moon or some other planetary conjunction.”
Though he took to the archetype of seasoned fighter, Haviershan was more brains than he was brawn. His boltcaster experienced more battles than the blade that nary left its sheathe; even within the unwelcoming Evergaol, he’d drawn tools of navigation from his pockets more than he’d drawn steel. The man had travelled the Dreadsea and beyond with nought but the stars to guide him, had walked upon the alabaster sands of Whiteshore, seen the spire-palaces of Nezarri’s greatest caliphates and broken bread with the vagrant tribes of the Asgorgorophs beyond the Drysea.
“But I digress—no one got more than a scrape or minor burn from you or your cards.”
The Captain made a show of looking about the place before he conceded some amount of face.
“Tell no lie. You did save our hides, lad. You single-handedly destroyed swarms of feyry-flies and made a thrice-damned greater, worming boggart of all things run with its wings tucked between its legs. It was no mean feat and we’ve done nothing to deserve such in the way we’ve treated you in the past days.
“But…”
The shame tied knots of his Qadmon’s apple, his throat hurting something fierce. There was an opportunity then to apologise and to make amends, to meet Haviershan halfway but his pride would not let him. Better said that Baethen was of two minds, one half thinking himself wrong for so easily falling prey to himself and the other unequivocally right such that it silenced the other, utterly.
“...It can’t go on like this lad. I apologise for shunning you, especially so quickly. In my discomfort I pushed ye away and the cadre followed in my wake. I should’ve known better—old enough to be your grandpappy, I am.”
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Such a silvered-tongue that one that Baethen had trouble hiding his growing grin.
“If I didn’t feel like a right bastard before…” He said, some mirth returning to his voice though his throat was still tight. Guilt, unfounded or entirely rational, did not go away easy.
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The return of rapport was not instant, it was not seamless and it was not without its aggravations and awkwardness. Haviershan, even as Captain, could not force the others to interact with a warlock; he could only encourage with the fear of death to the contrary.
All rungs before an Evergaol’s heart was subjugated were measured to a group of six—to lose one, especially a member with an equivalent parity of power, was to court Death and to tempt Fate. Barring none but the Devil Herself, the Numbers of Thirteen and Ten were one of the most pernicious.
Baethen agreed to only draw upon his fell sorceries should the need arise—in their stead, he would drill with his other cards with help from the others. Improvements did not come quick nor effortless and required constant rearranging of one’s goals and how to achieve them.
Byzantium was not built in a day but it surely did fall in but one night.
Currently, Baethen practiced with Escoriot as the shield-warden had skill in the use of protective dominions like that of the Mirror.
“Protection comes in many forms—subversion, mitigation, zero-sum nullification, deflection, and reflection like your own arcana.” The war-priest lectured. He’d been sociable before finding out that Baethen had trafficked with the Worm-God; even now, with Haviershan attempting to bring him back into the fold, Escoriot kept his distance.
“Manifest your shield.”
Baethen took a shard of fulgurite from his belt-pockets and played [Sunder-the-Mirror]. Reality fractured between the fingers of his hand, glass becoming a card of black-alabaster for an instant before it too shattered into nought.
The plane of reflection was bound in front of himself, interposed between Baethen and Escoriot.
“Don’t draw on your dominion too soon—it’s too precious a resource to waste at the start of a battle. Instead, cast your shield and break it in succession to reposition.”
Rebellious prick that he was, Baethen waited for the warden to finish his speech before he did the opposite of what he was told. Having worked out the trick beforehand, he showed Escoriot the exception to the rule.
“Cunning, that.” He begrudged matter-a-factly. “My point still stands.”
“Do enlighten me.”
“Gladly.”
He brandished his sceptre, the cerulean obsidian clutched between two gold-cast eagle’s claws revealing intricate rune-work. A single letter from the throng of carvings remained burning while the rest were snuffed out; a discus of hardened light coalesced between them.
“First—knowledge is power. Don’t expect the coming godspawn to rush at you mindlessly; they will scout and they spy and they will try and parse out your Scamander's tendon. Feyries are insidiously ingenious and will utterly take you apart if you let them.”
The discus unspooled itself into a rod five-span-long and five-fingers-wide.
“Second—the moment your shield stops moving, you lose it until the remainder of the fight.”
Baethen almost didn’t react in time. He brought up the plane of reflection between him and the coming missile; the strike did not push him back, seeing as the font reflected all force, thus nullifying it completely.
“That all?”
“No, son. Not nearly.”
The rod unravelled into letters bound by threads, each end of a strand held taught by a rune. The latticework rearranged itself, spinning on an invisible axis, clockwork gears wrought of magic itself.
“Third—don’t ever let a foe set up a trap and don’t rely on any single tactic to see you through thick and thin.”
Baethen hadn’t been idle as the war-priest wove his runes, attempting to unbind the threads from his shield. They were inextricably stuck in place, affixed parallel to its surface no matter what he tried to the contrary, even as he clawed at it with his finger tips or spat fire at them.
The latticework completed, forming a silhouette around the discus of reflection; having been sympathetically bound to the working, the font reflected it, becoming still and affixing itself into thin air.
“I concede—foolish to think myself invincible.” That display of magic, though, didn't fit right with either Irmin-Sûl or Woeden. “Didn’t peg you as a wytch.”
The man scoffed in response, not willing to hide his consternation.
“All spellcasters draw on sympathy, not merely adulants to Fata-Morgana. It is the basis of magic arcana, of sorcery itself. ‘As above so below, as within so without, as Eot so Babylon’.”
To illustrate his point, Escoriot conjured rune-brands upon thin air, reflecting them across the crossguard of his sceptre. The war-priest’s arcane focus was a long affair, the end butting against the ground as the man rested his weight on its berm—the place where a standard, either royal or holy, might be attached.
“The arcana of [Runa] is that of [Valkyrja] the Shield-Maiden, of the Protector Herself, born of the tripartite union between [Judgement], the Wheel and Death. It is the manifest form of Omniglot, the secrets that Woeden unravelled from the roots of the World-Tree by hanging from its boughs with nothing more than a [Noose] for three days and three nights.” The Words-of-Power were heavy to the ear of the soul, like a millstone around Baethen’s neck, each one a peal of thunder, a hammer strike to the anvil, forcing its weight upon him like Escoriot did upon his sceptre.
He knew the kenning of Valkyrja in the Old-Tongue of Woeden.
Just as Rimare-Tul meant the Crags-Where-Men-Go-To-Die, Valkyrja meant Chooser-of-the-Slain. An aspect of the Merchant-of-Death, She was said to carry the souls of the bravest warriors directly to Maraflagan so that She might speak with Nagalfaram in their stead. Many a soldier before battle made prayers to the godling so that Her angels, the valkyries, would watch over them.
“When you see a man or woman or sybilant with blade in hand, they might be knight, bandit, or peddler. Not all those who carry a sword are deserving of it.”
Escoriot looked pointedly at the gladius in Baethen’s hand.
“Now, manifest your shield again. We shall only stop once you’ve got a grasp on repositioning the plane.”
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Sometimes, tricks aren’t as much innovation as they are crutches when you can’t do a skill unaided. A few stunds of repetition was enough for Baethen to get the hang of using his sword-spear as a shield—not to the degree to use in battle but nearing it, certainly.
When a strike neared, Baethen would manifest a reflective-plane and counterattack, lashing out as if the shard of frozen-over reality weren’t there. In praxis, it really wasn’t, shattering instantly without impeding his momentum though it did hinder aim.
It was like looking at something at the bottom of a bath-house’s pool, objects distorting through the intervening medium.
The problem of this new approach to defence lay in resource efficiency; as it was, Baethen was burning through his spell reagents right quick. He’d yet to find any sand with the minimum amount of purity to make fulgurite since venturing into the Feywilds.
He still had hundreds of shards with him, though they differed in qualities of shape, size and viability. So long as he could perceive a piece of glass as greater than a bead and jagged enough not to be considered a rather sharp pebble, [Sunder-the-Mirror] was none the wiser.
I could melt some of them together, purify them through my arcanums and such, and then cast them thin as can be—stretch it out like food in winter.
The refuge was spacious enough for each member of the cadre to have their own section to themselves, Baethen having staked claim to the only area bare of growth and verdor—a part of the temple proper, walled in by fallen pillars.
There, Baethen built a forge with coals of lead, his cards and arcana allowing him to turn metal itself into fuel. It wasn’t easy but he’d become familiar with the deck throughout the turns.
Fulgurite glass was entirely opaque and extremely impure—rock-solid and vitrified dirt essentially. It was rough and ugly, nothing like obsidian or jet or black-alabaster, more akin to slag and scoria than anything else. Baethen had achieved it through heating the soil of the Gallowswood until it blackened and then began to glow. After a stund or two of cooling, a jagged mass of brittle fulgurite was formed.
He’d then break it apart and harvest the better shards of glass; it had been numb and dumb work like boring through thick lumber with a dull drill.
To contain the glass he’d soon turn molten, Baethen made a crucible of iron and lead, tempering and annealing it so that the glass wouldn’t stick to it. As an isolating interface, he used ash from burning a few shoots and branches to cinders—these were then crushed into a fine dust using the holy stone of the temple to fabricate a rather shoddy mortar-and-pestle.
Hels-bound, Baethen was far and away past any compunctions or strong opinions about blasphemy.
With a bowl of coal-dust to coat his fingers, Baethen was ready to begin.