There was no day-and-night cycle within this instance of the Feywilds, time instead dictated by direction—it having been ‘night’ in the sanctuary for two notches now. Baethen looked up into the stars above and was excited to begin trying to bind them to himself through the [Nightvault-Painted-Prison] card; for that he had a lesson with the Captain.
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“See that constellation, to the right of Woeden’s Crown but to the left of Zartaxia’s Sceptre? It takes each sign’s respective arm to form a face of leaves. The Green Man, the Wildwood—it is the male aspect of nature; conquest and wisdom made one. Where Stribog is the Sire-of-Beasts, Gallathwaín is the Father-of-Verdor.
“The Arcana, you’ll come to realise soon enough, lad, are always in a complex game of push and pull. All things have their shadow and not all shadows fear the light.
“Now, go on and trace out the Diadem-of-Petyrnlote I showed ya just a lick ago.”
Haviershan was rather fond of mixing explanation with practice. Every few sentences, he’d ask Baethen to trace a constellation and would make him repeat others he’d already been taught or knew of. He’d even blindfolded him and then spun the lad about before removing the blinders and making him identify three different starsigns. All in all, it was an eclectic-if-effective way of teaching.
Stars, Baethen came to learn, were multifaceted creatures.
All magic originated from them, carried through the vast, infinite ether by way of astral highways—these lines between confluences contained a great deal of power. It wasn’t merely the stars themselves that a magi drew upon but the connections between them, the invisible gossamer threads that bound the cosmic forces of the universe.
Omniglot, just like with normal speech, required breath and without the rarefied air ferried by the stars above, it would not function, choking the soul from the inside-out. There was a wyrd-plague by the name of spelldrought which was caused by the dysfunction of one or more of these leylines; babes born under blackstars were born stillborn, the breath of their souls exhausted in the womb such that they died a death of spirit before ever drawing breath proper.
Cepheus, portent of the Thirteenth Arcana, signalled a coming of spiritual famine and all soothsayers, divinators and the like, watched the skies like eagles so as to prepare for such tribulations. Whatever path that the Black-Star took was like a scythe, cutting through leylines and leaving spelldroughts in its wake—Haviershan warned against binding any constellation with Cepheus in its midst, lest Baethen traffick with powers best left alone and forgotten.
There were other devils beyond Scaduphomet.
As for truly binding a starsign, the act was rather simple. [Nightvault-Painted-Prison] was, like all cards, written Omniglot; the Words-of-Power were already spoken, etched into a thin sliver of black, alabaster stone. Baethen needed only to let his soul do as the card bade it and he could will the pinpricks of light into his mind’s eye, into his Tower-of-Babel.
For his first binding, Baethen took the sign of Daedolon. The constellation was the astral body of the God-of-Iron-and-Steel, patron-deity to craftsmen of the smithing trades and the thirdborn son between Gwynedd-Sol and All-Father Woeden.
He had the most affinity for the aspect of the Crucible so the choice had been like water through a riverbed. The constellation above disappeared, reflected across the mirror of his eyes into the black of his mind. He held the sign there, its presence wriggling against [Nightvault-Painted-Prison] like a dove in his hand, wanting to be free but unable to break from the cage of his fingers.
The card had two main resources to juggle—the first being a starsign and the second being light. For the latter, Baethen had prepared a chalk-striker of pyrophoric metal that he heated with nary a movement of his fingers, striking the steel-laced rod against the flint. The chalk incandesced, growing blinding in an instant such that it would leave phantom images in its wake for licks to come.
Baethen took the constellation within his mind’s eye and cast it over the chalk like a net, trapping it within; a mass of darkness-made-tangible descended over his hand. The card then reeled the net back into his soul, binding its web within his shadow. Now, a starsign floated within his shadow where it was cast, light sealed within. Every now and then, Baethen would catch sight of the pinpricks of light and the threads that bound them.
“Good work lad, now for the rest of them.”
It was going to be a long night of parsing through pinpricks, that Baethen was sure of.
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Disentangling star-roads from each was difficult, constellations overlapping such that Baethen had to choose one over another and sometimes he just outright lost one or two or three to the ether, star-blindness overcoming him, novice that he was.
Each sign would colour his manifestation of light in its own unique manner and would require further practice to master but he was no astrologer, not really. Baethen was interested in the card’s ability to store a secondary resource seeing as light was the shadow of heat—having a font reserve at his fingertips would be useful to reignite Behemoth in the midst of battle, for example. Now that Baethen couldn’t subsume another sceptre owing to [Pagats-Shadow], the new storage method was a godsend, quite literally too now that he thought of the providence of the [Nightvault-Painted-Prison] card set.
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As a consequence of [Scarwright], Baethen’s shadow was weighed down, making it so that he couldn’t hold as many starsigns as the Captain—his personal limit was five rather than Haviershan’s thirty-two. The latter used signs to sharpen his wits and senses while Baethen used each sign to seal away a ‘handful’ of light for lack of a better word.
By the end of the session, the night above was near-empty and pitchblack. Baethen was well and truly stricken with [Star-Blindness], losing sight even of the Lodestar, the guiding light that all men used to orient themselves no matter the world.
“Alright laddie, rest up for a stund and then we’re off. Remember to take a vial of wyrd-beast repellent before we leave—feyry-fly sores are no laughing matter. Still have them scars on me rump since my last going into Fata-Morgana’s mite-infested arse-crack”
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They left the refuge not long after Baethen wrangled his last star-sign into his shadow.
Walking within Behemoth was a strange thing, almost as if he were within his own body, the suit of living metal moving like a thing of flesh. Baethen lumbered along the matted root-ground, his clawed and spiked sabatons leaving depressions in his wake.
To keep the liquid mercury from going into his eyes, nose, mouth or ears and preserve most of his senses all the while, Baethen had fashioned a visor that he wore, goggles fitted with the purest glass he could refine through his magicks. The helm itself was fitted close to the front of his face, padded with the most insulation to counteract the lack of quicksilver. He could still speak through the lead coffin he wore on his head and he heard near-normally—the metal near the sides of his skull was thinner and hollowed out to boot, acting as a sort of drum that made noises sound strange, as if underwater.
The armour dulled his sight and entirely took away his olfaction beyond the strong metallic tang that seemed to bite deep into his nostrils. Owing to the liquid he was submerged in, Baethen, at times, felt as if he were under the Dreadsea, ebbing and floating. This happened only between steps, seeing as his feet were secured directly to the armour as were his hands as well to be able to pilot the fingers—wires ran through the Behemoth’s forearms, bound to him so that he could puppet them with a pale reflection of dexterity.
He couldn’t do any parlour tricks with them but he could sure-as-Hel hold his sword-spear with a death-grip and swing it with a love for life.
Just when the night was beginning to break before the dawn, the cadre having walked far enough towards the Orient, they happened upon their first impasse. It wasn’t a group of goblyns come to waylay them or an impassable chasm but instead a rather innocuous-looking river of reflective, Bilröst-laden water.
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Phantasmagoria was a land of trickery and chicanery first and foremost, a wild riot of colour and counterpart to the dark realm of secrets begotten to Alunariat—the adventurers knew better than to trust in this place’s falsities.
The liquid was thick and ran with a surface of quicksilver though distinctly cerulean like a cloudless afternoon sky, the edges shimmering with the rainbow stuff of the Godsbridge. To test its effects before it could affect them, the Captain threw a stone at the river, watching it float atop the mercurial waters as if on solid, if moving, ground. Though the rock was carried forth, its shadow was left where it had landed, shrived from its body.
Wherever they looked was this great divide of azure silver, cutting through the root-ground like a blade parts through flesh, leaving pools in its wake. Each pool was entirely round, the perfectly-still edges spiralling into a whirling, prismatic point at the centre; they measured them at around ten strides.
There was no going around the feyry river, no matter how long they marched the line between Lode and Low—after stunds of walking getting them no closer to the next shrine, the Captain ordered that they must ford over it.
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Set capstones required the use of all constituent cards. At least, for most and Baethen—though learned in the minor skills of cartomancy such as with arcanum cantrips and calling upon his Hand within his mind’s eye—was very much part of that ‘most’. He could not play a capstone while a part of it was discarded because of the [Running-Water] drawback.
Redrawing his Hand would lock him into those dealt cards for the foreseeable future, even if, say, a newly-won card could save his life like what had happened with [Flawed-Steelheart]. It was best he chose wisely whether losing access to [Imp-of-Serpents] through the discarding of [Lesser-Juggler-of-Fire] was worth it so long as he could still redraw his Hand should the need arise. Though he had no other cards inside his Archive, many of his brands and other spells required redrawing like with [Scoric-Wormscale-Hide] lest he succumb to [The-Beast-Within].
This was why speciality tokens were so prized: they didn’t take up space within a Hand. Where [Celestial-Dew] could net Baethen five platinum Hsarashes, thereabouts five-hundred-and-seventy-five Sols—more than a stone in its, quite literal, weight in gold—an equivalent [Celestial-Teardrop] was priced at nine platinum-tokens.
Baethen chose, then, to redraw his Hand rather than be without his cards. Better the devil you know than the devil you don’t and all that. Unfortunately, devils, even those you know, are still just that.
Devils.