As a god could not, say, directly take control of another’s gnosis and unravel them from the inside-out like a mere mortal, they had to resort to combat and killing each other with Their bare hands, as it were. Many a divinity had ascended and been utterly flummoxed that at the highest echelon of existence They were returned to the very start.

  It was a lesson that all learned far too late.

  Thus, fights between gods tended to be much the same as those between mortals, just with a good deal more collateral damage—hence the term Godbleed, where the fallen ichor of a deity spawned a pseudo divine realm, the essence so dense that foreign arcana could infiltrate into Eot’s domain through even such miniscule breach.

  No matter the distance granted by the Crossroads from this shadow realm of Phantasmagoria sequestered within the waking Nightmare of Babylon’s death throes, Their battle unmade the rung like so much rotted fabric. Its reality wasn’t near enough to sustain Their own, like a thin, weak spine attempting to hold up a head which Dreamt an entire world into being.

  It was with a heavy hand that the Loken’s Emissary upon Eot brought down the Dog-Star and sundered the mirror once more like so long ago.

  Its force struck like a fallen child of Seirios, the comet’s tail its shadow. Liminal reality cracked, shards of the alabaster mirror giving way before the boiling darkness below All Things. Like bergs of ice floating amidst the Starsea, Low of the Saphire Isle, the remaning shards of Alabastron provided the only respite from the encroaching chaos of unreality.

  Where gnosis brought both physical and spiritual reality into being, the liquid ignosis that simmered below the now-sundered plane was anathema to even Death Itself. Nagalfaram would be hard-pressed to brave these dark waters, the sheer density of unworldly nonexistence dangerous to even the prime avatar of a Major Arcana.

  Morgana was terrified of that bubbling not-stuff for even a drop of it would burn through Her divine flesh like it was nothing. But even terror was not enough to stop a god and so She darted from isle to isle like a grasshopper, jumping leagues of distance to escape the fathoms that sought to consume all that was.

  The Fool, in contrast, walked upon the surface of the waters, uncaring for their eld touch upon the soles of His feet for in his veins flowed [Arahagamakat]; primordial oil and amniotic liquid both, it had born Him and all the Numbers after.

  This was a place where even devils did not dare play, only Masquerades—disembodied masks affix’d to large forms of inky shadow. But no masks found their way to this particular Crossroads; else, Morgana might summon more angels o’ fate for all good that did Her. The dimensional membrane was an ouroboros of gnosis, a serpent eating its own tail such that nothing could penetrate through it without considerable power.

  Power which Morgana could not bring about for she had only the already-unravelling shadow realm to draw from and its gnosis had been nearly all spent to supply angels long since dead.

  They met, Dog against its Fate, at the center of the Crossroads.

  The Compass drew its strength from inevitability but no more dogged a power than that of the Stars. Day dawned upon the dark, a second sun forming where Zevagōth clashed with Iahdram. It was more blinding than noon, light so briliant it hurt the very eyes of the soul—a mortal would’ve had the arcana of Enlightenment proscribed upon their arcanum had they witnessed it.

  Any remnant physical reality of the shadow realm was utterly annhilated then, now merely motes of gnosis floating in the void. Ripe for the taking, both gods called the glyphes to them, the greatest share of them going to Morgana for it had been Her realm, afterall.

  Though short-lived, the power was enough to tip the scales.

  Though the explosion pushed them back, it was that which came after that made Them not return to Their previous locus lest the gods let Themselves be consumed by the shadow of a dead star.

  The shards of reality glass were being pulled toward it even now in its f?tal stage, no larger than a seed of purest black. The battlefield rearranged itself around the star-shadow as if the halo of a planet, the gods dancing among the spinning accretion disc.

  Morgana finally managed to get in between the Emissary and His Shadow, having played the triumph card, [Dance-of-the-Ice-Feyry], to translocate even in such a dimensionally-unstable astral space. So long as She had thrall-of-gaze, She could switch places with a reflection among the host of thousands borne by the shards of Alabastron.

  She ran through the unsurprised avatar with Her fatal sword; skewered by the heart, the Fool was stuck in place as His life fled before His eye. It was a poison no antidote could cure, a writ of execution no king could overturn, and a death whose clutches no priest could ressurect a soul from. Even a god could not contend against the certaintity of Their doom before Iahdram.

  If you encounter this story on Amazon, note that it's taken without permission from the author. Report it.

  The Compass transformed all it felled into a card, trapping its victims souls within its blade’s flat; no doubt that Morgana had planned to use it on His Folly.

  “[Foolish Brother, you should know better than to tempt Fate.]”

  The Fool smiled as holy tar from [Arahagamakat] bled from His lips, the substance of His blood darker than night, boiling and bubbling as it began to sublimate into invisible vapours and strange, unnameable shapes that could bring about madness merely through the sighting thereof.

  “[Tell Us, Sister Ours, what happens to a reflection trapped betwixt mirrors twain?]”

  With great horror and greater haste, Fata-Morgana turned but it was already far too late.

  All abyssal angels used their shadows for a variety of bodily functions, chief among them that of the heart—their blood could only pump through the veins of their pale and dead flesh by way of darkness.

  The Fool could be torn to shreds, could be dismembered limb from limb, staked through the heart, or burnt to ashes and scattered to the winds and that would still not be enough to destroy His vessel. It would reconstitute from the ether under [Arahagamakat]’s influence so long as His Shadow still yet lived.

  It could swim through the nothing-waters of the sea-of-night for ?ons, just another nameless leviathan among the stars, unfindable and unreachable as it fed on the corpses of Seirios’ children.

  Fata-Morgana, the Tenth-Hand of Fate, turned to find Herself waylaid by a parliament of starving dogs just as the Fool struck from behind with His stave.

  From Sahaqiel’s severed shadow came a host of gibbering horrors, their bodies that of emaciated mongrels wrought of boiling tar. They were eyeless and in place of limbs had broken wings each tipped with talons more wicked than any harpy’s. Beaks esconced their long, vulpine snouts, serrated teeth made for maceration waiting within—whatever was caught in those maws would not escape without losing a pound of flesh. Their saliva was the stuff of nightmares, despair made liquid.

  Fata-Morgana was dragged kicking and screaming and wailing and pleading into Sahaqiel’s embrace. Her father, the Ninth-Arcana, awaited Her on the other side.

  What happened to Her would only be known to the God-of-Secrets.

  The Emissary shuddered at the thought, remembering all the different Dreams in which He’d been laid atop the Wretch’s dread altar of interrogation and torture. There were fates worse than death and others worse even than ever being born.

  With Her gone from the Board, the Fool closed His fist, snuffing out the star-shadow before it could mature into a phantom-sun. There was one more thing to be done but it would have to wait until the die was cast.

  ////

  Expecting to awake atop Maraflagan as It wound its way through the pale river of souls, Baethen felt downright confused to open his eyes to Lac slapping him in the face. It was a delicate slap, if any could be called such—reminded him of what he usually did to his lovers when he bedded—

  “Finally awake?”

  “No.” He answered still thinking this was some strange dream in between this life and hte next. When Baethen looked over to see the angel Decadence split in half with Lac’s sword-slab stuck into the earth, he realised that he did not mind this fever dream. It was rather nice.

  Baethen attempted to stand only to fall back to the ground, having lost his left arm from fingertips to elbow—he’d sacrificed it as an {Effigy-of-Loathing} to curse the maleficar. After having used [Celestial-Dew] to ressurect himself from the brink of death after that harrowing in the belly of a worm, it had become covered in scales; the physical representation of his soul having accepted the tainted arcana of Gehenna.

  His tumble back to the ground prodded at wounds both old and new. Baethen felt all the bones in his body turn to blades that cut him from the inside out. Shards of white poked out from under his skin while some extremeties were bent at all the wrong angles.

  The only bone to seemingly survive whole was his spine which did not make any lick of sense given he remembered that horrendous grinding and cracking that came upon him. [Stigmata-Mundi] had bent the pillar of his body in half twice over; he should be dead.

  Well, not one to look a six-legged gift-horse in the mouth to see if it was long of tooth, Baethen simply chalked it up to a stroke of good luck. The pain was distant but gaining, a thousand cries ravaging across his broken flesh.

  “I—“ a cough as a rib that punctured his right lung was driven deeper; at least he had his left still intact and able to inflate”—sorry, Lac. Didn’t mean to—y’know.”

  She suprised him then, first by slapping him again though less gently than before and then giving him a kiss on the only other unbroken bone of his body: his forehead. She wept openly, a warrior of her strength, but her voice did not crack.

  “Gods—you fool! Never do that again. Hurt like my lass back home whipping me to fix up tilted roof.”

  Baethen contemplated whether to ask Lac whether she meant almost killing her or almost killing himself and then realised it was probably both.

  “Ei, laddie, up and at ‘em. The sky’s fallin’ on our heads and we need to leave the Tower fast. Dunno whether it’ll hold or crumble—those two gods are tearing this place apart with their battle just as fast as they’re doing so to each other.”

  Huh. He’d forgotten about that.

  There, just beyond the broken mirror of the firmament, he saw a gold-masked reflection of himself. It brought a shudder through his unbroken spine, seeing something that wasn’t himself wearing his face. Worst still, wearing that suffocating mask conjured from his deepest, near-forgotten nightmares.

  “Why’s it look like Baethen?” Escoriot’s voice was shrill, his throat hoarse for some reason or another.

  That, he did not know quite how to answer but it seemed that he was still a bit knocked up the head because he spoke without meaning: “Did my mother get buggered by a god? What’s that make me?”

  He did not like this fever dream any more.

  The cadre dragged Baethen’s broken body to the Divine Die so that he could have his reward and leave the Tower; a dessicated d?mon corpse with its heart torn-out and ribs splayed like perverse wings lay atop it—same schema as the sphynx Ruination. The Unseelie feyry had ascended to this rung’s peak by consuming the godspawn’s soul which, for Babylon’s children, rested solely within the chest if the nursery rhymes were to be believed. Most likely the Turned boggart had tricked the d?mon into offering its own heart with its own hand going by the dark stain on its decrepit seven-fingerered claws.

  If he never saw another thrice-damned fey for the rest of his life, Baethen would die a content man.

  “Bloody feyries.” He spat, first metaphorically and and then literally upon the ground before the Die took him back to Eot and away from Feyrie.

  ////

  Arcana Interlogia

  Map of the Kolithil Worldshard

  Cruciata the Curse-Fire

  Arcanum of Hypnagogia

  Arcanum of Fire

  Ta-ta.