Baethen’s kin hadn’t either the coin nor the inclination for servants beyond some hired hands needed for heavier work like clearing away any fallen hailstones or brimstones after the Rounds of Sumarot and Fulzun, respectively.
But, from the little he’d shadowed his mother Volentia at the dye vats, those that toiled took to remaining ready for new commands once they’d done their own individual part. It was a matter of coordination, of being able to time the various pools of pigments and divine spices and gemstone dust so that they wouldn’t curdle or go too thin.
The maleficar hadn’t moved after the first command, caught off-guard by Baethen having scryed its {Gnosis}. It had then quickly adapted, letting its host of moths ferry it around as its namesake implied.
“Pluck out your wings.” Baethen bleated out, his lungs on fire and his throat hoarse from all the yelling and kindling—[Salamadara], though reformed, was still greedy as any dragon, exacting Her usurious toll and shrivelling him up from the inside-out.
The order took hold, the rainbow flames scouring its ivory bones of any erstwhile moth or insect, felling the angel as if it were being cast out of Heaven for a second time. With Rounds of experience coordinating manoeuvres, the cadre worked like a well-oiled clockwork machine; Lac was there when the feyry was about to touch down, dismembering its left leg and arm from the rest of its body with a cut that rivened the scoric earth and sent a series of widening cracks out from the epicenter.
There was no flesh or bone within the spirit, only unfired alabaster and porcelain, the wet clay threaded with thousands upon thousands of festering worms and wriggling maggots with the faces of crying children; they wept a clearish, brackish liquid like milk-o’-the-poppy. The maleficar’s hand that had a mouth from which extended a long prehensile tongue shrunk into a mummified, black charnel the moment it was severed just as the same happened with its left leg.
The maleficar screeched a shrill scream in response that raked across their souls, staggering the cadre one and all. It was a queer, alien sound that spoke of unimaginable pain for physicalised spirits of its ilk were gestalts equal parts body and spirit and so felt excruciation across both unlike with mortals which possessed a greater divide between the tangible and intangible.
Its escape card activated again, translocating the feyry another seven strides away from its attacker. So it functions off of damage or threat and sends it away from the latest attacker or greatest danger. With that information in mind, Baethen began to plan out a play he might use, drawing and discarding them as he searched through his arcanums.
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With him already having a play in mind, Baethen was the first to use his triumphs.
[Scoric-Wormscale-Hide] in a moment of apophanic ecstasy clad his skin and armour both. The Devil’s own accursed arcana burned oh so very good in his throat, burrowing from the outside-in into his being; that comfortable discomfort like prodding at a mouth ulcer with his tongue.
He charged straight to the maleficar with a mind on fire; it hadn’t the time to set up spirit-rivers and so he was unimpeded in his chase.
Baethen hadn’t had the opportunity to use them afore and so for the first time he called upon the arcana of Betrayal and that of the Worm; whatever font that was under the feyry’s dominion was {Extinguished} from this world like so much dust thrown to the five winds.
His eyes were twin portals into Gehenna’s fiery Hels, {Branding} the feyry with {Fear} itself and {Sealing} a random card within its soul. Oh how that power felt natural, to take what belonged to another, to steal something right out from under them at their weakest moment and leave them none the wiser.
And then, Behemoth was upon it, breathing-out wormfire and miasma in a great gout that festered midnight blue and xanthous scarlet. His metallic maw was unhinged such that it rested against his chest, the lips rusting and rotting away as the Helsfire ran its course.
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Oh but he was not nearly satisfied to just burn the fallen angel. No, Behemoth wanted to rip and to tear, his claws reaching out to grab the fey in its iron clutches so that it could not escape what was to come.
A kill-thief was coming in hot from his left and that just would not do—the feyry was his prey and he did not share. With a backhand parry from [Cruciata], the sword-spear’s butt against his armpit so as to hold it one-handedly, Behemoth played [Fourfold-Cruciform].
It would prove to be his fourth mistake since entering the Tower and it would not be his last.
The Fool witnessed the Folly and did nothing to stop it for a court jester cannot stop the king nor stay his hand, only condemn him after the fact with mockerous tongue and cutting wit. The Sceptre and the Crown and the Cloak were not Loken’s vestments of office but rather the Mallets and the Mask and the Motley.
The irony of it all was not lost on the Unnumbered-God but it was played-out and a tad cliché. A balatro knows better than to believe that history repeats—they know that it rhymes and does so to the detriment of those that have the most to lose by the will of those with the most to gain. This song and dance, oh how it was oh so very old.
Exempli gratia: unwitting betrayal orchestrated by a schemer to ease their need for utter and total control.
[Fourfold-Cruciform] required an internal sense of self-righteousness in a given exchange to be brought to bear but this was only half of its course run. The other half was recognising the wronged party and deciding whether to {Negate} an {Attack} or {Double} it.
A beast, no matter how cunning, is still but a base creature and so knows right and wrong only from the axis of itself; of pleasure and pain, of exultation and fright. Animals do not hearken to the arcana of Justice, only honouring that of Strength and the Many-Horned-God.
So then, how does the card decide who is {In-the-Right} if its own player cannot be called upon to arbitrate?
Outside—within Eot, that is—it would weigh the collective world-spirit’s sense of morality, especially that of the Sapphire-Isle, against that of both the player and its attacker. But the Beast was not in Eot but rather Feyrie and so the final word, the arbitration of which would spell someone’s likely end, was that of Fata-Morgana.
And how fickle and cruel a mistress was Fate Herself.
The scales were Hers to tip and She decided—for no other reason than petty child-like spite and curiosity—to choose the worst of all outcomes. It had been, afterall, Her doing to put these cards into play, so why not see it to the end?
This song and dance, oh how it was oh so very old and sisters like Her loved breaking toys They thought precious to Their brothers. No matter that said toys were not toys at all but rather living, breathing souls invested into vessels of flesh capable of suffering and higher thinking and art and war and so much more.
Only a fool would seek to break the mirror through which they saw themselves just because they did not like the image within.
Ensign Lacariah Engalsdotter had been a hair away from decapitating Decadence, the fallen angel o’ fate in a deliciously precarious position. As Folly was parrying her attack so as to defend the feyry so that he might kill it himself, Phantasmagoria reckoned that he was in the right; the Wyrd ignored any fact that was not to its liking, any argument or line of thought that would not see to Its own selfish designs: the strike was negated and so a mistrike. Her trump card, [Scar-and-Sunder]’s drawback came into play as a result.
Warrior that she was, Ensign Lacariah was held together by scars and grit alone and when those came undone, so was she.
Phantom lacerations unseamed her from the nave to the chops. Tendons snapped and fingers fell dismembered, having remembered the wounds of times since past. Her belly wore thin such that her guts spilled out in a glorious shower of arterial spray, baptising the Folly in the most horrid of ways.
It was enough to see the Man-Within-the-Beast awaken and despair at what he’d done, at what he’d wrought. To see the bloody lucre of his actions and know that he’d chosen the wrong path a long time ago and was too far along to change course.
Anger did not make you do anything you didn’t already want to do and the Folly wanted power for its own sake, to deal the killing blow that might make the Dealer-o’-Fate award him through the Hearkening of the All-Tongue.
And so was how the cards fell: the Folly got exactly what he’d wanted and would hate himself for it forevermore. No matter how many times he would submerge into the waters of Death, to Dream again of lives thereafter, he would never find himself clean of this sin.
Guilt was his warden, thoughts his accusers, and himself his own prisoner.
Mayhaps this one had some potential afterall
Arcana Interlogia
Map of the Kolithil Worldshard
Cruciata the Curse-Fire
Arcanum of Hypnagogia
Arcanum of Fire
Ta-ta.