The fallen angel’s wings burst once again aflame, tongues of Bifr?st leeching at the armature of ivory so as to clad the feyry in a fiery, diaphanous cloak. A great mass of moths blotted a shadow before Baethen as they descended upon him, alighting on Behemoth and making roost there.
While some curses cast did not penetrate his war-suit, a spell or two did, uncaring for the physical barrier between him and the maleficar. A {Brand-of-Decadence} weakened his joints, making it so that the bones ground against the cartilage as if coarse sand had found its way in between the sockets of his limbs. Some illusion of one sort or another attempted to trick him into crossing a phantom river though his {Blinded-Eye} saw through it.
Rather than black ignorance, the magicked stream also appeared in the strange sight of his, clueing Baethen that it was a fey jilt for his eye caught only things not of this world. While his right saw a colourful river, his left saw a skeleton thereof stripped of its flesh and substance, parallel lines wending in tandem as if roots drawn to a lodestone unseen, carrying with them a series of glyphs in Godspeech that meant [Bones taken from the bed o’ the grave, run once again clad in the deathshroud of flesh unrotted; clamour the lament of drought from time out of mind; hearken the Dealer-o’-Fate’s summons and return to the fold.]
The cadre’s formation blossomed out as they encircled the feyry, Baethen at the fore, marching with Cruciata in hand, trailing pearlescent hoarfrost in his wake. Each step was a lesson in agony, reminding him of the frailties of the flesh, of every shortcoming that a body possessed as it came to know the harsh truth of life.
You will die.
War-suits of Behemoth’s ilk did not turn quickly and put more than its fair share of strain on Baethen’s already-cursed joints. Dodging the streams o’ spirits was no easy feat without crossing them—that is, until Baethen realised that his drawbacks required running water.
And so he plunged Cruciata into the serpentine, living rivers, freezing them over so as to cross them unimpeded. He had to pull strength from his other cards to empower the hoarfrost, increasing his flames’ heat and thus the cold’s reach as it sapped his blood of life.
Afflicted by banes both from within and without, Baethen reached the maleficar and struck at its breast. It was dogged, Twelve-Hels-bent stubbornness that saw him through so many footcatches and he was thrice-damned eager to take the pound of flesh he was owed.
The feyry was fast enough to esquive Baethen’s cut but not near up to par to do so with the ensuing attacks from the others. Haviershan had been casting bolts about with his wyvernarm since being freed from thrall, putting pressure on the maleficar so that it couldn’t split its attention any further than Baethen in regards to offence. Elementally-infused dragonpowder payloads exploded all about the Turned fey, washing over Behemoth’s scaled hide.
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Lac and Tratvgar approached from opposite directions, from Baethen’s left and right, respectively, and pincered the fey with blade and spell. Spears of root grew from the fallow earth, lancing the winged beast and entangling it in briars suspiciously alike that of hagroot—mayhaps a meld that the footman picked up in their mad dash to the cubic stone though that would remain to be seen after the dust settled.
The Lieutenant swung a flurry of blows with her magicked steel, forcing the feyry to play whatever defensive cards it possessed. Wards like domes of glass sprung to life only to shatter into moths wings before her might. Behemoth would be hard-pressed to survive such an onslaught, much less a naked Baethen.
Cornered and near-close to being felled, the maleficar spun about its wings and played an escape card of some sort, translocating seven strides away. Tratvgar’s roots lost their grasp on their quarry and Lac had to reposition lest she shear Baethen in half—a mistrike from her could split him from side to side right easily.
Having slipped through their grasp, the feyry took to the air with its sevenfold wings, flitting there and about, to and fro, never settling and never stilling. For to remain in a single place meant death.
Why then, had it remained motionless at the start of the battle and only moved after nearly dying? Why hadn’t it opened its wings first thing and not risked such unfavourable odds. A drawback, it had to be. Baethen hadn’t ordered it so all that was left was a card’s curse of some sort.
Perhaps only having the ability to move when it was attacked? No, that did not make sense. The boggart had been a servile spirit before so by that reckoning it had to have drawbacks owing to its previous nature as a bonded familiar.
Baethen, focused as he was on the fight before him, he didn’t realise the creeping rust that lathered Behemoth’s skin until it was nigh too late to salvage. The arcana of Mercury and that of the Crucible though sympathetic to that of Rust and Decadence could not so easily contest them, especially so against a card or arcanum of higher parity.
As a means to curtail the infection that threatened to wither Behemoth into a dried husk, Baethen released the floodgates of his suit. The quicksilver pool he floated in acted as a secondary reservoir in regards to elemental font; with it seeping out from between the joints of the armour, it could subsume the decay that gathered there, acting as a medium like oil around a blade so as to ward off rust.
The equilibrium would only last so long, seeing as without the quicksilver pool, Baethen wouldn’t be able to fully pilot the suit. Behemoth functioned off of the expenditure of mercurial fonts to move so much mass and use its momentum effectively; no metal to burn meant no movement and no movement meant death.
And so, as they played Ring-Around-the-Rosie with the fallen angel, Baethen wracked his brains for a solution. His inner compass-clock ticked away as new thoughts branched into being only to be discarded once he realised that it would bear no fruit.
He risked commands for the fey to ‘wait’ or to ‘be still’ but those quickly lost their edge as diminishing returns set in—the maleficar’s wings weren’t part of it, not truly. Instead they were dragged along by a host of moths which were separate entities from it. They were not even card summons but rather a working of Phantasmagoria and so did not fall under direct dominion of the maleficar which could be usurped by a command.
It was only when Baethen asked himself the right question that he found his answer.
Why does a servant stay still?
Arcana Interlogia
Map of the Kolithil Worldshard
Cruciata the Curse-Fire
Arcanum of Hypnagogia
Arcanum of Fire
Ta-ta.
