The boggart, once a housley spirit of the Seelie Court, there to bring fortune and merriment to its hosts, had Spoken a single Word-of-Power. Through the Turns of acting as serf and bondsman, it had come to resent its masters, the children of Leizuziel. It wasn’t a single insult that had turned the boggart into a gob; it was a thousand little slights, left to linger and fester for a millennium of Turns.

  One day, it snapped.

  There hadn’t even been a mistreatment then. There needn’t be. Rancour turned into disgusted pity and loathing for the lesser creatures that the feyry served, their short lives and grievances but dust in the wind of its sevenfold wings.

  In that single Word of [Duende] was all the rage and indignity of a millennium, petty things brought together to become so much greater than the sum of their parts. This working of magic arcana was a thing of the old ways before Man made game of the spirits of the world, before He played miracles upon the Board and when only the Twenty-One Gods and That-One-Without-Number could cast their lots upon Eot.

  The hate of a broken thing, refined over long enough to see a bezoar tighten within the belly of an ancient hillock, was fuel to this sorcerous fire—act the role long enough so as to become a river stone upon the river of existence and the waters of fate must part before you, causality and all the rules of reality acknowledging the weight of such a thing, paling before it.

  No-Longer-Serf-but-Master was what the spell meant and it impressed itself upon those that stood before the fallen angel of Fate. They could not help but obey, to kneel before the boggart, their joints buckling and hardening, their mortal minds bending lest they break.

  All but one.

  For how do you make a god kneel?

  Baethen would only know the answer to that question when he did battle with the Grey Hordes of Nezarrem in the life after, after this; when the demigod born of War Himself, Hazadriel the Unbroken-Spear, was brought low by the shadow of Pagat, the God-Killer Blade. Right now, in this life, there was only the thought of how to fell, once and for all, the fey spirit before him.

  There were no more battles after this one in this rung and so, he Redrew his Hand, both Left and Right. Arcanums, dry and without a lick of water to their wellsprings, grew to the point of overspill. Sets that could not be brought into play for their lack of certain cards now ached to be set upon Eot or, better said, Feyrie.

  How intoxicating it was, to have power in the palm of your Hand.

  “[Burn. Smoulder. Sunder.]” He said in the Language, each Word the rattle of an asp and the hiss of a serpent. They burned in his salamander throat, low and terrible.

  The boggart had been clever, clearing away the vegetation around the Yggrdrazil sapling. It wasn’t enough, not nearly.

  A single step brought the fires of Hel to the surface, scoria cracking apart the earth to bare the molten ichor of Gehenna that dwelt beneath all things. The spell was woven along with the manifest arcanum of Scoria, empowered by the bellows that were his lungs and scales. {Brand-of-Wrath} sizzled against his mind like a raw wound plunged into saltwater, and how it hurt so good.

  But Baethen was no fool—now, at least—and so he did not mindlessly charge after having conjured a vulcan-mount around the feyry. Instead, he drew upon his {Blinded-Eye} so that he might {Scry} the fallen angel before him and know its weakness just as it knew his own.

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  Player Scried: [Decadence-Lieth-On-the-Wings-of-Moths] ★★★

  Drawback: [Once-a-Serf-Always-a-Serf]

  Arcana: [Wyrd], [Decadence], [The-Traitor]

  Number: [III//XII]

  Gnosis Φ: [‘A feyry spirit Turned goblyn, courtier wicked of the Unseelie and cast-off’d from the auspices of Fortune to that of Ruin; defiler of the earth-bones and the Convention, a fallen angel knows only malice to the shape of scars’. This {Player} possesses {Utter-Dominion} over the {Arcana-of-Decadence}, {Imbuing} its {Vessel} with the power to {Decay} {Metals} to {Rust} so long as they are {Held} in {Thrall-of-Wing}. For every {Servant} in the same {Locus} as the {Player}, they gain a {Brand-of-the-Master} which {Empowers} {Tokens} of any ilk. This {Player} must {Obey} the {Commands} of the {Children-of-Leizuziel} lest they incur {Brand-of-the-Lesser}, {Lashing} their {Spirit} with the {Burning-Light} of {Serephic-Castigation}.]

  A three-star card was nothing compared to a three-starred player.

  The sphynx, Ruination, had been a parity of three Themself and it hadn’t been an easy fight either though They were decidedly weaker than the boggart after having been doused in flame by that nameless god that had possessed Baethen then and slept insensate in his shadow now.

  He did not count on divine intervention to see him through the battle, especially after the poison-gift that Lady Luck had saddled him with.

  Baethen recognised the {Serephic-Castigation} clause from the [Gaolsaint-Idol] card; a near-relic but not quite there yet. Though Judgement, especially that of a soul, fell under Nagalfaram, it was done by Gwynedd-Sol under order of the Merchant-of-Death. Punitions of the flesh and other physical tortures were the commission of Yurnmagog while damnations of the spirit were the commission of the Empyrean Sun.

  “[Melt the Chains.]” He said in the Language. “And set them free, unharmed.” He spoke in Woedenite. To commune with a feyry was to argue with a corrupt magister who’d writ the law to benefit only themself; Baethen was doubly careful so that his own words, be they of Power or mortal tongue, could not be used against himself or his fellows.

  Godspeak did not leave room for interpretation, intent branded onto it and then laid bare for it was a tongue of the spirit and the soul and all such naked functions of the psyche. It was in the vernacular that he might damn himself, he knew.

  The feyry obeyed his command like a common sorcerer’s familiar, letting his companions free of its thrall. Just as the cadre staggered to their feet, the goblyn did not remain idle, instead casting about spells and hexes from the cards in its Hand.

  Most recognisable among their host was that of the rounded barrier of moths’ wings that now encircled them all within.

  <> Baethen signed, his fingers not possessing the word for moth. Though he could not {Scry} the barrier itself, as his arcanum could only sight a player proper and not their Hand or the cards {Brought-Into-Play}, Baethen had a suspicion about its effects. He’d broken it once before and would do so again.

  Feyries of all types loved a good reckoning, using an enemy’s own attack against them through the use of reflection and the like. With its Yggrdrazil wings now bare to the bones, any strike done to it would instead become a curse spat back upon the one who dealt the blow.

  The perfect sphere that gaoled them would ignore any attacks not potent enough to stick upon the surface of feyry skins and iridescent insectile wings and shells. They were smooth and utterly without purchase.

  In one well-practised motion, Baethen sleighted tokens of iron and lead into his furnace-mouth and breathed out, unhinging Behemoth’s jaws to set loose a gout of molten slag. Even occupied as he was, he could still Speak in the Language, weaving the spell with a single intonation.

  “[Break]”

  The maleficar’s gaol broke like glass as the incandescent spittle melted through it. Trapped within shards of sublimating ice, the moths writhed and blackened having come too close to the flame they’d so desperately sought.

  With the initiative taken back by Baethen, Haviershan returned to the command, his orders tapping away at Behemoth’s shell by way of Narancan. It was a simple plan and one that Baethen agreed with readily and wholeheartedly—waylay the maleficar, do not let it recover its wits and distract it at all cost but for life and limb.

  On raged the battle.

  Arcana Interlogia

  Map of the Kolithil Worldshard

  Cruciata the Curse-Fire

  Arcanum of Hypnagogia

  Arcanum of Fire

  Ta-ta.