He’d later learn from Narancan that the Field-Sergeant had had to return three more times to remind him that he wasn’t needed to finish the battle. The latest card he’d gotten from the cubic stone did not discern from friend or foe, blinding all to his presence so long as it was in play.
The last trull fell from a blow from Lac, her sword cleaving the feyry ogre down the middle from the temple to the toes. Even Behemoth wouldn’t have fared much better under such sheer, nigh-unstoppable might—that was her ace [Scar-and-Sunder], a once-per-Hand deck capstone that allowed Lac to completely and utterly annihilate any resistance in her path. Its deadliness was that of the double-edged blade she carried, making it so that should she {Mistrike}, all her healed wounds would come undone.
Warrior that she was, Ensign Lacariah was held together by scars and grit alone.
Perhaps it was his blood having been riled up and his general lack of wits but Baethen decided then that he wouldn’t mind a valkyry such as her ferrying him away to the Merchant-of-Death’s embrace. Not at all.
Snapping fingers dragged him away from his day-dreams but it was by mere sight than actual sound, the incessant ringing still robbing him of hearing.
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Well, at least it's good fodder for arcana.
Phantasmagoria did not distinguish between flora and flesh, instead marrying the two through fungal growths and wyrd chimeras. Though the others had avoided it so far, they too had cards like Baethen’s [Leaden-Stomach] to allow them to digest spirits. Godspawn generally did not taste all that good given the fact that they were wrought of gnosis and so more akin to ephemera than lasting matter, prone to releasing noxious rainbow vapours.
Baethen wasn’t an alchemist so that was where his knowledge ended—he knew his metallurgy, how to bind a threefold alliage, and when not to fold weld more than was reasonable lest the internal scaffolding of the steel disincorporate into the ether.
Trull meat—specifically that of a ‘wart-ogre’—tasted like piss and reeked of vinegar. It was too chewy, too stringy and filled with a nonsensical amount of sinew and nerves with miniscule worm-like organs strung throughout the fibres. After some amount of mastication, the substance gave way, sublimating directly into ephemera and gnosis, feeding flesh and soul both.
Hearken, the {Player}’s {Arcanum} rouses with {Unbound-Arcana}!
Scouring [Akashic-Archive] for compatible {Dominion} […]
Compatible {Dominions} found; shuffling probabilities set to {[Base]: [Two]} over {Mean} […]
Shuffle complete, {[Minor-Dominion] over the [Arcana-of-Hexes]} {Proscribed} upon {Player}’s {Arcanum}.
[Arcana-of-Hexes]
[Minor] I - [Resonant] III - [Dissonant] IV
Origin Φ: [{Once} per {Hand} {Player} may, through {Will-of-Mind}, {Hex} an {Object} that they {Hold} in {Thrall-of-Arm} so long as no other {Player} {Holds} said {Object} in {Thrall-of-Gaze}.]
? [As the first contra, {Player} may {Empower} {Accursed-Arcana} {Once} per {Hand} through {Expenditure} of {Tin-Tokens} and an {Act-of-Sacrifice} by {Burning} an {Effigy-of-Loathing}.]
? [As the second contra, {Player} may {Magnify} the {Manifest-Locus} of {Accursed-Arcana} {Once} per {Hand} through {Word-of-Mouth} in the {Form} of {Malediction} so long as no other {Player} {Witnesses} said {Malediction}.]
? [As the third contra and final, {Player} may {Hex} a {Confluence-of-Fonts} so long as it already possesses {Accursed-Arcana} {Once} per {Hand} through an {Act-of-Sacrifice} in the {Form} of {Bloodletting}.]
Another forbidden arcana—Baethen wasn’t surprised one bit by that turn of events. Seemed that evil took a liking to his soul like leeches took to water serpents. Just as flame was a branching off from fire, hexes were an offspring of curses. The more specified an arcana, the greater its authority over its given element, even for concepts there were seemingly synonymous.
The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.
Shame that artefacts didn’t grant {Dominion} to a {Player} instead restricted to only the relic’s physicalised {Vessel}. The arcana-of-hexes would’ve synergized well with that of curses, like completing a hand of cards in a game of Regicide.
Perhaps it was a matter of resonance or exposure or some other deep set of rules, but the rest of the cadre did not become spellscarred for their efforts of wolfing down the feyry flesh. Baethen had a sneaking suspicion that it had something to do with star parity—their soul-decks were too strong and so entirely resisted the foreign arcana whereas his crumbling Babel had many breaches with which spirits could take root and roost within.
If he had to guess his overall parity, it would be one and six-tenths or thereabouts. Baethen didn’t yet have cards of high enough star parity to be considered a two-star {Player}—a fourth-rank, as they were called. But he, sure as Gehenna was hungry for souls, was closing in on that threshold.
Due to the manner in which star parity was calculated, all {Players} by definition were at least one-star or fifth-rank after their Lynchpin ceremony. Having a Lynchpin meant having a single card within one’s deck, setting one as the denominator—having more cards did not necessarily mean more power, up to a certain point, that is, as diminishing returns closed in and it became hard to juggle all those cards into proper plays.
Though quantity was a quality unto itself, it could not transcend a qualitative jump in strata.
At the threshold of two-stars, a {Player} would become something more than a mere mortal, would hearken back to the grandeur of the firstborn of Leizuziel, the pillar-men, the Seneschem—no longer possessing magic but rather being wrought of it, remade and reborn in the image of one’s arcana. Even having taken a flesh-warping card did not yet put Baethen over the first threshold. It was a matter of saturation, of density, of purity.
Not even Haviershan had crossed the first threshold though he would most likely pass it by the end of the Evergaol if not this very rung. That man had a deck of thirty-two cards with sets that nearly beggared Baethen’s in quantity of cards alone. Two twelve-card sets and one with ten. Everything from warding against heat and cold to improvements on gaining proficiency in new tongues; [Wanderers-Bindle-of-Many-Things] had, as its name suggested, a little bit of everything in it.
With his thoughts mirroring his own vagabond march, Baethen and the cadre threaded through the thick woodland of Phantasmagoria like snakes through grass.
Where the gigantic trees of before left great cavities, the underbrush of this section of the Feywilds was dense and tight. Brambles and briars, ashen of bark and ivy, writhed at their feet, attempting to breach their armours like slippery leeches—hagroot was what they were called and they were a pest and a half to deal with, spawned whenever a wytch was hung, drawn, and quartered for trafficking with powers most wicked.
A final curse cast at the time of death by all those compacted with Addolorata the Sorceress, Archfey of Misfortune, Daughter-between-Fate-and-the-Devil, Sister to Urd the Doom-Herald, and Mother-of-Blights.
Hagroot didn’t burn owing to the fell blood that ran through its veins and whenever a limb of it was hacked off, it would wriggle back into the ground, spawning more of itself. To deal with the blasted carnivorous plants, Baethen soaked the ground in his wake with amalgam of lead, poisoning the hagroot to death.
Since hagroot did not breathe, its dying breath could not be stolen and so Baethen couldn’t use miasma to hasten their forward march; he had to sacrifice a whole lot of blood to boot as the weeds wouldn’t drink up the poison otherwise. This didn’t mean the rest of the cadre were useless either.
Lac took the front, slashing her way forward through the host while Narancan scouted ahead, unmolested by the hagroot. Haviershan gave orders ‘ere and there, steering the cadre towards the convergence point of his compass-clock—something to do with scrying fate through the use of star-roads.
Escoriot held back the sea of hagroot from overwhelming the cadre entirely, his planes of protection fending off the worst of it as his temples sweated profusely and the tendons in his neck stood in stark relief. The [Heavy-is-the-Head] drawback transferred the weight imposed upon those invisible scales to the shield-warden’s shoulders, burdening his bones just as [Stigmata-Mundi] did much the same to Baethen’s shadow.
The difference lay that a man could live without a shadow but could not without his head. There was no reprieve for Escoriot as he maintained the barrier throughout their march. Every lick or so, great writhing horrors with glowing, scarlet taproot hearts emerged from the lesser masses of hagroot, helsbent on slaughter. Corrupted verdor elementals with a skew towards rot and a hunger for blood to boot.
Tratvgar hadn’t been sitting on his arse as all this happened, sapping away the strength of the hagroot and guiding it away from the cadre. Every time an elemental approached, he’d distract it by draining the life-force of a section of it and then go for the kill with [Varunas-Living-Cloak], burrowing under the ground and spearing the taproot cores with pin-point precision. He had to lull the corrupted elementals into associating his physical presence with [Sup-Upon-the-World-Root] so he could slither through their otherwise impenetrable defenses.
Baethen couldn’t yet Redraw his Hand as another feyry river could appear at any time and force him to discard as he forded it. So, in essence, his more fiery abilities were lost, the sheer destruction he could wreak nipped in the bud, as it were.
When it would seem that Escoriot would fall limp to the poison-slick soil from exhaustion, Narancan returned and signed <
Arcana Interlogia
Map of the Kolithil Worldshard
Cruciata the Curse-Fire
Ta-ta.