In the silence of Baethen’s cold loathing as he stared a god in the eye, the angel Decadence took up wing to escape his reach. Fate was the first to blink and with that, Her presence fled.

  The boggart stopped its ascent once it realised that the vault of heaven had silently broken like so much glass, shards of sky floating amidst the dark of the ether beyond the moon, dissolving in acid of the nothing-waters from which the world had arisen and would one day return to.

  There, oh so very far away and yet oh so too close, two gods did battle, Their blows reverberating across the firmament, Their Words resonating within the marrow of the mortals’ bones. Witnessing a higher power was humbling in the same manner as dying surrounded by family—that your time has come and there is nought that you may do before the coming, inexorable doom.

  Baethen was beyond care for himself and plunged his hand into his chest, the limb traversing through the skin as if it were a placid pool of water, waves ebbing. He ripped a card from his soul, uncaring for the damage it did as spiritual tendons ruptured from the moorings of his self. Gnostic glyphes twisted and writhed upon the Hearkening, the divine text unreadable as it was defiled by his very hand.

  Eye for an eye—he’d broken another’s flesh, fitting that he paid for it in spirit.

  Ensign Lacariah was nothing more than a broken vessel, her life hanging on by a fibre of a thread. Were it not for the metaphysical weight behind all the cards in her soul-deck, she would’ve instantly died. But though still mortal, she was not entirely in the realm of the natural and so she endured but not for long.

  Baethen placed the card upon her chest and then dove [Cruciata] through her breast into her soul like a fallen star come to witness Eot. Artefacts were gnosis given physical form and he abused such as a means to violate the sanctity of her spirit and forcibly implant the card.

  “[May the Ember be Stoked into Flame amidst the dead Salt.]”

  He beseeched then with the tongue of Salamadara, the Worm-Reborn, the first of the infernal dragons to rebel and return to the light of Sol through the waters of holy Death. Just as serpents were the spawn of dragons, salamanders so too were but whereas the former had no legs due to the curse of the blood-sin, the same could not be said for the latter.

  “[Rekindle.]”

  In quick succession, Baethen played [Fourfold-Cruciform] and [Scarwright], using the accursed spear of flame as a mirror plane, reflecting Lac’s wounds unto himself. As her flesh reknit, her soul-deck grew stronger in sympathy and repelled the foreign and now-broken card back into his Hand.

  The angel Decadence did not dare interrupt him, the mask upon his face invoking absolute terror upon the mouths of its palms. They gibbered half-formed, incoherent Words for in the hierarchy of spirits, it was prey before the predator.

  Baethen’s bones broke as his shadow’s weight grew gargantuan, his knees bending as his fracturing spine forced his temples to the earth. He had no scars by which to unravel, having been consumed by [Stigmata-Mundi]. So, in its stead, the Arcana of Justice balanced the scales by increasing the drawback’s burden. So dense was his shadow that he could not even burn it away; like trying to light a log of wet gallowswood with no more than a spark, the darkness boiled but did not catch fire.

  And it was no miniscule thing, the weight of his sin.

  There was no strength left in him to fight beyond it, all of his focus concentrated in merely surviving to draw in another shuddering breath. The battle would fall upon his comrades. There was nothing more that he could do.

  Nothing more than Speak his mind and set things right.

  He did not borrow the Worm-Reborn’s tongue, his was not a kind repentance but rather an inward hatred of himself turned outward. He Spoke with all the spite he could muster, with all the of the suffocating guilt lodged in his throat.

  “I [Curse] you.”

  Baethen Locke paid the blood-price willingly, throwing all of his tin-tokens upon his wretched left arm and setting it ablaze as his effigy.

  In sympathy, in mutual suffering, the curse-brands seared into the angel of Fate burned to second life with accursed fire. Oh how it screeched then, beautifully, its body engulfed by a conflagration.

  Already expecting him to appear then, Baethen drew a sceptre from his shadow and handed it to Narancan. The sceptre glowed with everincreasing incandescence, its spiritual weight dreadful, speaking of a singular purpose: to kill a god.

  “Use it—quick. And run afterwards.”

  Mist took him away along with Baethen’s memory of him which made Baethen attempt to draw Pagat’s Shadow only to find it missing; the confoundment only lasted long enough for Baethen to witness Decadence being struck down.

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  Blackness took him and he knew no more.

  It was his first dreamless sleep since entering this rung of the Tower.

  ////

  “[Come O Sister, Sister Ours.]” The Emissary Spoke, His tone grim as the grave and happy as the toll of the morning bell. It was a multitude and a singularity, a host of voices united under a single banner that none but He could divine.

  Morgana unsheathed a sword of chalcedony from the crux of Her breast, the blade double-edged and the hilt in the likeness of a cartographer’s rose—the Compass-of-Fate, or more accurately, a lesser reflection thereof. An eye opened on Her sternum to release the Artefact into the Crossroads; [Jyggylag] was an archfey carded-familiar on par with the archd?mon at the centre of the Tower though It was mostly utility in form of extra-dimensional storage and passive amplification of other cards.

  Fate’s opening strike was a descending thrust from on high, Her three eyes ablaze with azure flames—[Endsight] was the ultimate precognitive card; it could and would see all possible futures within ten blinks. When it came to scrying, though, being able to see did not mean being able to react.

  Especially when all possible futures were each more ridicoulous than the last; the Fool made, well, a fool of Himself. He danced, wept, told jests, juggled balls, all while still parrying the Compass a blink before [Endsight]’s scrying range came into play.

  [Revell-in-Chaos] was aptly named, [Empowering] any dodges and esquives so long as they were part of a jest or dance. Collapsed from banal cards such as [Jig], [Vicious-Mockery], [Contrapasso], and [Bellum-Tempo], [Revell-in-Chaos] punched up in metaphysical weight-class readily. Where a dedicated combat card might struggle against a higher star parity, the [Revell] thrived in absolute pand?monium, having been forged in the ruination of Babylon so that such a thing would never happen again.

  Oh how utterly intoxicating it was to see the furious rictus on that face of Hers as every strike, imagined or real, was met with a defense so unassailable that He had the time to mock Her in the midst of a battle to the death between gods.

  The Fool could not invoke Zefon beyond the use of its physicalised vessel in the fight, seeing as Fate’s arguments were stronger—He could not attempt to make an anathema from Her avatar as She held higher authority over Her own vessel. Just as Morgana could not infringe upon his dominion of buffoonery, the Emissary had to abide by Her arcana’s reach.

  “[Enough!]”

  In that Word was the power of cessation, of meeting one’s eventual and unescapable end. This, all Fools knew for one day a wrong jest in the wrong ear would mean the gallows. Along with the spell, Morgana folded in the card [Hand-of-the-Wode] casting it through the Word so that it would not require the {Thrall-of-Arm} clause’s addendum of {Touch}. Where Fate Spoke so too did Her Hand follow.

  The Emissary had always been envious of that bit of magicking as His Voice would never amount to that sort of reach. The world did not listen to fools and all that.

  [Hand-of-the-Wode] was a card endemic to all archfey, able to seal a card within another player’s soul-deck, regardless of star parity. It paid for it by sealing a card within the caster’s own Hand forevermore—the only way to release the geas was by killing the caster and ripping the card from their still-beating heart.

  With [Revell-in-Chaos] sealed from the Board of the Crossroads, the Fool had to contend against the Feyry Godmother with only a god’s speed of body and thought. A losing game, that, for countless gods had fallen before the auspices of Fate.

  Unfortunantly—[Har, har]—the Emissary could not divine what card that His Sister Dearest had sealed in return for His own. But, alas, no use crying over spilt milk; the Fool had more cards up the sleeve of His soul.

  A fool has their tricks, afterall.

  For every ten exchanges of blows, Morgana met another seven as the Emissary’s shadow peeled itself from the mirror and joined the battle. Instead of contending against just another god, She fought two that worked in complete and utter tandem.

  The Compass could not touch the Emissary’s Shadow even when it chose to physicalise itself. It could not be damaged by either radiance or flame, could not be bound by thread or sympathy, and was able to appear anywhere in the locus surrounding the Emissary. The Shadow had to be cast from Him but could do so in any direction or configuration, uncaring for mundane light.

  [Severed-Shadow-of-Sahaqiel] was fashioned from the corpse of an archangel of the abyss, Its wings taken to cloak another. Alunariat hadn’t been amused at the loss of Sahaqiel but it was nothing that a few tokens and secrets couldn’t fix—well, Its wings for that matter but the God-of-Night could simply repurpose the angel’s remnant gnosis to form another messenger of lesser rank. Though considered a face-card, [Sahaqiel] was more of a sleight-of-hand, the severance aspect only coming into play when the player willed their Shadow to life.

  Morgana fought with a martial Form that the Fool recognised as belonging to a sect of serpent-worshippers, Her movements coiled and fast. Though the Goddess did not move very far with each step, She was quicker than the Emissary—His cards focused on augmenting His momentum through a fight whereas Hers gave Her immediate but short-lived power.

  As it was, the Fool would lose if He did not delay.

  He fell back into His own Shadow, letting it steal Him away from the Goddess. The Emissary resurfaced far enough to put into play one of His aces, bringing together both staves. The closer they came to one another, the stronger the repelling force they exerted until, finally, the stalemate was broken through and they joined together.

  It would not be easy to unbind them.

  Gōph was Madness and Zefon, Revelation. When both occupied the same locus, they became Tzevagōth which in the tongue of the Kolithil meant paradox for Gōph was Truth and Zefon, Falsehood. The third stave of Loken, the Mallet-of-Contradictions, combined all the aspects of the previous two within a vessel of fool’s gold, the accursed holy-pyrite.

  The Stave-of-Paradox was born of the moonless darkness of the Eighteenth and the blinding lightness of Nineteenth made one—the Dog-Star of Seirios dissappeared across the night-sky of all worldshards, be they past, present, or future. The Dogless Night, it would be known all across Eot’s sundered body.

  Many societies and cultures until the end of days would disagree on which Turn it occured on and even which Game but all would agree that it had only happened once and never again.

  Arcana Interlogia

  Map of the Kolithil Worldshard

  Cruciata the Curse-Fire

  Arcanum of Hypnagogia

  Arcanum of Fire

  Ta-ta.