Can a person ever truly change? And if they could become something irecognisable, ireconsilable with their past selves, did that absolve them? Do they simply carry that weight forevermore, that burden that you cannot help but carry on your shoulders for you cannot escape the wages of guilt?
Baethen knew not the answer to any of that, young as he was at twenty-one turns of age. He imagined that Miro at thirty did not know either; even Haviershan at forty-eight would struggle to answer that. There were no simple solutions to what he felt, only a long, drawn-out path that he must trod to its conclusion.
They had set up a ramshackle smithy by their house so Baethen took to hammering steel as he did much the same to his thoughts, attempting to fold them into a shape he did not despise so much.
It was difficult to work with metal without another hand to hold it steady on the anvil so Baethen had to lash it in place at the tang to draw out the core and get the edge right. At the very least, he’d gained some resistance to heat and flame through his arcanums so he did not have cause to worry over burns so long as he did not plunge his only good arm into the coals of the forge.
Coin had become a problem as of late—cartomancers did not come cheap and neither did the remedies they sold. Concoctions of hebane, chrysamthemum, dogtallow and Yggrdrazil ashes had to be drunk once every fiveday and dreamless hellebore-incense was needed if Baethen was to get any sleep before midnight. The other alchemicals he took did not agree with milk-o’-the-poppy so he’d have to contend with comparatively-expensie vapours in its stead.
Smithing blades, horse-shoes, nails, pots, pans, and plates helped with the expenses as he didn’t want to rely on Miro’s wages as a beast-hunter. Though it was possible to live off of the man until he recuperated and paid his debt to him, Baethen’s pride would not have it.
Were it not for his latest card, a product of the last rivening, Baethen would be confined to his cot, unable to bear his own shadow.
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Cards Collapsed: [Pillarspine] ★★★
Draw: [One-of-a-Kind]
Drawback: [Yours-to-Bear-Alone]
Arcana: [The-Hanged-Man], [The-Broken-Tower], [The-Reverse-Pillar]
Number: [XII//XXI]
Suit: [Back-Pocket]
Gnosis Φ: [‘When the skin is split apart, the muscle endures and when the sinew snaps, the bone below persists; and so the Broken-God though dead yet still holds up the Firmament from collapsing upon Creation’s head’. This {Card} grants the {Player} {Complete-Dominion} over the {Arcana-of-Burdens}, {Metamorphosing} their {Spine} into a {Living-Font-of-Adamant} that is {Empowered} by the {Weight} it {Bears}. The {Player} cannot {Share} their {Burden} with any other; should they attempt to do so, they incur {Brand-of-Sloth} which {Enfeebles} their {Spine}. This {Card} is {Always-In-Play} and cannot be {Discarded} from the {Player}’s {Hand} or {Archive}; should this {Card}, through {Exemption}, be {Discarded}, the {Player} incurs {Brand-of-Hubris} which shall {Quadruple} their {Burden}.]
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The collapse of [Scarwright] did not absolve its Drawback from Baethen’s soul. The phantom burden was focused on that spot in between his shoulders, right at the base of the neck. This changed his centre of gravity towards the back of his lungs where it met his spine. It made it so that he always stooped in his posture like a hunchback trull to alleviate the pressure.
[Pillarspine] was a flesh-warping card through and through and its living font was indeed quite good: adamant was a divine metal formed from within the bowels of Eot such as the bezoar-hearts of ancient hillocks or the spirit-cores of greater earth elementals. It could withstand shear, pull and press without deformation of any kind and resisted all heat but that of Eot’s fiery womb.
Rarely was there a full suit of adamance in possession by any one person and most weapons wrought of it were mere alliages with, at most, a fourth of the stuff. Baethen kept the card’s existence close to his heart, even from Miro, given many would kill him without a second thought to harvest the precious metal in his spine and forge from it an object of great power.
The card made it so that Baethen could otherwise move when he should not be able to though there was no middling amount of stress put upon his bones at all times. His joints creaked and ground against each other and his muscles ached something fierce. Furniture could no longer bear him so he’d have to contend with a cot against the floor instead of a proper bed—which, speaking of bedding, he could not lay on top of another lest he crush them.
This all contributed to him becoming something of a lumbering sloth, always slow about to anything. It also made any blows of arm of his like those of a giant—the hammer sang as the steel trapped between it and the anvil squeeled. There was a heft to his movements that would make it difficult to affect his balance even with the heightened centre of gravity; his very spine was forged from the adamance of the World Itself, of the enduring persistance of earth’s very bones.
Baethen lacked a word in his vocabulary to accurately capture the feeling but it was as if his being was heavier, more resistant to change. It was a subtle and implicit magic but it served the purpose of making him into a walking mountain, able to shrug punches at ease in regards to structure. From the little bit of light sparring he’d done with Miro and Tratvgar, neither had been able to out-wrestle him or break his poise, his composure.
“It’s time.” He intoned under his breath as be brought down the hammer one last time with only his hand. Baethen had been cautious with using or slotting in any new cards, his soul still raw from his abuse of it. He’d taken a tenday to simply practise with the remnants of [Echo-of-Alabastron] and get back into the rhythym of things before folding in another ore into the alloy of his Hand.
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[Tools-of-Dehadolon] ★★ ({Three-Card-Set} - {Unlinked}):
[Fingernail-of-Sekharot] ★★ ({Single-Card} - {Unlinked})
[Hammer-and-Tongs] ★★ ({Single-Card} - {Linked} [Inchoate-Anvilsong] ★)
[Steady-Is-the-Hand] ★★ ({Single-Card} - {Linked} [Inchoate-Anvilsong] ★)
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The first and most obvious one to play was [Steady-Is-the-Hand] which endowed him with the ability to define grooves into the fabric of reality, making it so that the path of his hand was resolute and inexorable. It was not unlike Lac’s sword-slab in that regard; a thought that threathened to spiral into darker ruminations were it not for Baethen bringing up the card’s gnosis within his mind’s eye.
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Card Earned: [Steady-Is-the-Hand] ★★
Draw: [Of-a-Kind]
Drawback: [Heavy-Is-the-Arm]
Arcana: [The-Hand], [Paths], [Air]
Number: [XVII//XXI]
Suit: [Sleight-of-Hand]
Gnosis Φ: [‘Steady is the hand that follows the path and reaches the end’. This {Card} grants the {Player} {Intermediate-Dominion} over the {Arcana-of-Paths}, allowing them to {Enforce} through {Will-of-Mind} a {Predestined-Path} for a {Sceptre} held in {Thrall-of-Arm}. So long as this {Card} is {In-Play}, the {Player} incurs {Brand-of-Sloth} upon the {Sceptre} influenced by this {Card}, {Doubling} its {Weight} only upon the {Arm}; should the {Player} {Falter} in their {Predestined-Path}, this {Card} is {Discarded} until the next {Hand} is {Redrawn}.]
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The little lore snippet was a verse from the Church-of-Eot’s holy book, known simply as the Path. It was a piece of philosophy intersped with travelling advice as Eot’s lot were a wandering sort that braved uncharted waters and ventured through barbarous hinterlands to commune with the World. After having completed their holy pilgrimage of the Path, a pilgrim would settle-down and become a druid, rooted to their End. Not every pilgrim o’ Eot was an avid itinerant and some merely stayed within their druidic circles from cradle to barrow.
Though a known quantity with its draw being {Of-a-Kind}, this permutation of [Steady-Is-the-Hand] was a two-star variant and so came with the {Enforce} clause instead of the {Reinforce} clause which could outright convert mental effort into physical force and not merely enhance or better preserve momentum; as a plus, the card had dominion endowment that was a step above others of its line.
There were other cards of the line that dealt with blades and staves but, seeing as it was the reward for the conquest of a divine tower’s rung, the card had been purposefully drawn from the akashic archives. Or, better said, the odds towards it been picked instead of a lesser card was greater.
The arcanum granted the ability to reverse the course of a single act once a day—a strike could be stopped at once by canceling an object’s inertia, a mistep that would lead into a fall could be rewound as if thread on a spool, or an arrow could be returned to its quiver after having been shot from a bow. The arcanum’s magnitude was not great enough to affect material conditions such as mending a crack in armour or a chip in a sword’s blade though he’d heard of similar abilities at higher ranks and resonances with other arcana such as that of Time or the Wheel E’er-Turning.
Stolen content alert: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.
Baethen held up his hammer, his tool of office no matter how small that office of smithing might be, and played [Steady-Is-the-Hand].
He did so slowly, letting the card unfold within his soul as drawn-out as possible. This was to get a feel for the card’s boundaries and functions, to grasp all the little intricacies even a seemingly simple magic could accomplish.
His will, as if a phantom limb extending from his glabella, wrapped around his hammer, claiming that mote of reality with its authority. The next step was simple: Baethen imagined the hammer falling down and striking the steel he’d drawn out as a comission for a hunter’s falchion.
With the path charted, the card did the rest, removing the universe’s resistance before the hammer and its grasp behind the hammer. A weight like the hand of an invisible giant brought the hammer down in a resounding bassus that could be felt within the chest.
“Now this, I like.”
It wasn’t a simple [Power-Strike] or [Surge] that offered a plain-but-reliable enhancement; though harder to actually pull-off mid-battle, the potential of the card was higher as it had more metaphorical levers with which Baethen could pull.
Baethen could see the card easily slotting into his deck; he already had some ideas on other cards he could buy to supplement it or even provide a synergy in the case of [Heavy-Handed-Blow] which added weight to an attack without affecting inertia and thus not infringing on the {Predestined-Path}. At least, in theory as he hadn’t the card on hand to test it in praxis.
Which, speaking of clause infringement: the {Falter} clause of [Steady-Is-the-Hand] clashed with [Sunder-the-Mirror] a bit seeing as breaking a plane-of-reflection to conjure another could cause a sceptre to mistrike. Mayhaps a [Pass-Through-Glass] card could settle the two cards’ different reckonings.
Generally it was a glassmaker’s card but Baethen thought he could put it to work for what he planned. He had enough coin to buy a spare off of a general craftsman and then some. Even if he saw [Steady-Is-the-Hand] as an outright better card than [Power-Strike], he might just get a variant or near-close copy of it. War-cards generally erred towards being more expensive than their civilian counterparts—especially in a newly founded settlement—which he hadn’t been able to afford back when he was but a smith’s prentice-boy.
There were also the arcane materials he’d scavenged in the tower to account for; everything from card-shards bearing full sufixes and prefixes that could be grafted with the help of a cardsmith to reagants which an alchemist might be able to use to make an elixir that could temper flesh into steel or embolden the senses. Certain body parts of a godspawn might survive the disincorporation of its vessel which could then be harvested; though, with the proper card and skill, a person might even be able to stabilise the gnosis of a physicalised spirit without having to rely on luck.
The second easiest card to play was [Hammer-and-Tongs]; excited as he was to test a new card, Baethen had forged most of the falchion the long and boring way without any sort of magicking to hasten the process. There was a rawness to his soul-deck that made his insides ache ever since he’d overdrawn his Hand and incurred a rivening. He’d wanted to save his limited energy and willpower for he needed it most.
It had been a hard-bought lesson but a lesson he’d learned nonetheless.
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Card Earned: [Hammer-and-Tongs] ★★
Draw: [Of-a-Kind]
Drawback: [Ironbound]
Arcana: [Iron], [Lodestones], [The-Pillar]
Number: [XIII//XVII]
Suit: [Sleight-of-Hand]
Gnosis Φ: [‘Just as iron is drawn to lodestone, iron by itself draws a man to mold it and use it and with it bring about his own ruin, knowingly’. This {Card} grants the {Player} {Intermediate-Dominion} over the {Arcana-of-Iron}, allowing them to {Affix} a {Font-of-Iron} to a {Locus} through {Will-of-Mind} so long as it is held in {Thrall-of-Gaze}. So long as this {Card} is {In-Play}, the {Player} incurs {Brand-of-Pride} which shall {Sap} them of {Strength-of-Spirit}. Should the {Player}’s {Thrall-of-Gaze} be {Interrupted} before they can {Willingly-Unplay} this {Card}, their {Dominion} over the {Arcana-of-Metals} is {Forfeit} until the next {Hand} is {Redrawn}.]
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The card could only affect objects with iron within them but was otherwise another recourse for defense not unlike [Sunder-the-Mirror]. Baethen had a hunch that the card was stronger than it let on and tested it then and there, taking a blank rod of treated sword-steel and affixing it in front of himself.
He focused on one end of the rod and close the eye opposite that end. The card still held but only on the point in which he focused on, makign it so that the rod of sword-steel swung on an invisible axis.
Objects in motion required more mental effort to stop, comensurate not with speed but rather momentum. How fast an object was only affected Baethen’s ability to react to it; a few days of practise could make it so that he could stop arrows through sight alone. Enemies that wielded metallic arms andnarmour would find their strikes halted and their movements hampered.
Now that he had a better alternative, Baethen unlashed the blade he worked on from his anvil and used only [Hammer-and-Tongs] to hold it in place. Ironically, the card by itself could function as an anvil if at great expenditure of mental focus. Baethen wouldn’t need to take a mobile repair anvil with him any longer when he delved which was a blessing alright; the things were thrice-damned heavy on the lower back and he already had more than enough burdens to carry.
The card-link [Inchoate-Anvilsong] was one that he’d have to test outside Towerfell or else risk upsetting his neighbours. It, just like the two previous cards, was a known quantity for forge-blades, able to produce a sound so thunderous it could crack stone at a distance. Though the {Inchoate} prefix limited its strength and reach, it scaled off of how much power was poured through its somatic component—that of a {Strike} like with [Strike-While-the-Iron-is-Hot].
The only other card that was playable then beyond [Fingernail-of-Sekharot]—a flesh-warping card—was the set capstone.
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Card Earned: [Tools-of-Dehadolon] ★★
Draw: [Four-of-a-Kind]
Drawback: [Moonbane]
Arcana: [The-Crucible], [Mercury], [Moon]
Number: [I//XVIII]
Suit: [Back-Pocket]
Gnosis Φ: [‘Before His acension, Daedolon’s mortal nomen was that of Dehadolon for, in his life as a man, he was born under the Dehad, the Eye-of-the-Moon’. This {Card} grants the {Player} {Complete-Dominion} over the {Arcana-of-Forms}, allowing them to {Transform} an {Object} that is {Wrought} of a {Metallic-Font} through {Expenditure} of {Blood-of-Vein} so long as the {Object} {Bears} a {Mark} {Infused} with their {Blood-of-Vein}. Should either the {Player} or their {Marked-Objects} {Touch} {Moonlight}, their {Dominion} over the {Arcana-of-Forms} is {Forfeit} until the next {Round-of-Morophesh}.]
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Unlike with [Slag-and-Scale] and his other elemental manipulation cards, [Tools-of-Dehadolon] did not require constant resource awareness. Baethen wouldn’t need to heat metal to work it through magic—a whip of flowing, quicksilver chains, for example, was now very much possible. With his lessened mobility, he would need a few card-chains to pin down any particularly quick-of-foot foes.
The card only required a little bit of preparation to set up; just like [Mercurial-Inksmith] it had a {Mark} clause. Marks could come in many forms, be they that of a noble clan’s heraldry, a guild’s emblem, the insignia of a sorcerer or, in the case of a lowly smith, a maker’s mark. Baethen chose his own little symbol he’d been tinkering with for the past turns: a circle encased within a diamond and then bisected vertically by a straight line.
It was a tad simplistic though not nearly as cliché as using the Woedenite letters for his initials. He’d based it off of the sygaldry on Big Yldira’s masterpiece [Wormbite]—just as he had a card that could create pseudo-relics, his mistress had the same. She’d made a longsword inset with the eye-bones of a demigorgon, able to turn flesh into stone. The lesser devil’s harvested organs had been preserved through some runic means and it was the script that wove around it that Baethen had taken as his own mark.
Baethen held his hammer—a spare, wholly metal tool—in thin air in front of him with [Hammer-and-Tongs] as he chiseled his {Mark} into it with the precision afforded to him by [Steady-is-the-Hand]. There was another card that would fold neatly with the latter due to its similar name: [Steady-Hands]. It affected one’s hands sort of like a flesh-warping card but functioned through {Will-of-Mind} rather than {Metamorphosis}.
With the mark finished, Baethen reached out to establish his dominion over the hammer and pricked the tip of his finger, letting a single drop of blood infuse the recesses; there was no obvious magic reaction. The card, afterall, did not
Through the implicit feel of the card, he knew he could have more than one {Marked-Object} bound to him at a time but doing so would rapidly decrease his finer control. He couldn’t command the hammer into his hand but could force his will around it to confine it to a shape; solid metal flowed like quicksilver and then settled once again.
Touching a hand to the hammer while it morphed, Baethen could feel that its density remained unaffected throughout the process. The card did not require either {Line-of-Sight} or {Thrall-of-Gaze} though the difficulty to manipulate metal increased. Though he didn’t have a dedicated card to it, his arcanums allowed Baethen a greater connection to metals; this translated to a minor ability to sense the direction of metallic-fonts, their rough dimensions and density. The mark only heightened the sympathy which, he reckoned, was how he was able to morph metal even with his eyes closed.
There was a great deal of potential to the card—it was suprising that it was only two stars of parity. But, on further reflection, Baethen did not have a single card in his deck beyond the capstone that had such a stringent drawback. Simply touching direct moonlight would render the card exempt for a whole round. If anything, if the card had been more powerful its drawback might even affect his flesh-warping cards as the arcana of Metamorphosis was a close cousin to Forms, dealing with living tissue rather than inanimate material.
Baethen summoned a spark to his fingertips, drawing on his weakened arcanum of fire. It was majorly inhibited by the rivening’s avarice, now cofining him to but two minor manifestations per Hand. With the Worm-Reborn’s throat, he breathed life into the spark, transforming it into a burning orb the size of his head.
Once upon a time, he’d had to immediately bind the flame to a stave. Now, his will alone caught it and held it in place without a card. A natural progression of having an arcanum for long enough to some of it began to imprint upon his soul—not to the degree of proscribement but nearing it. Baethen had been burnt alive, afterall. He’d wielded the swelter of the forge since his Lynchpin awoke and so the arcana had become something of a life-long friend.
He often wondered why he’d gotten the arcana of death scarred into his being then but not that of flame. Someday, he would have his answer but that day was not today.
Baethen touched the orb to the hammer, speaking a Word-of-Power so as to preserve the mark. With a little bit of heat, the cards stacked into a greater whole as if the fonts were their living counterparts rather than simple, dead metal. The metal flowed at his command easily, venting heat through [Slag-and-Scale] so that it could move.
[Clouded-Fiefsight] {Rewrote} the {Thrall-of-Arm} clause into that of gaze; Baethen did not need to move his arm, using instead the muscle of his soul, his will, to manipulate the font. A thought happened upon him then, to add more of his blood into it.
His innate dominion over blood alowed him then to infuse his already arcane-infused ichor into the object, further growing the totality of his authority over it. [Flawed-Steelheart] imbued his veins with the arcana of amalgam and now he reversed the process, assimilating himself into an outside metal. It was a reflection of his eating of metals, only, now the metal ‘ate’ him, so to speak.
The marked object grew a deep burgundy as if on the verge of rusting but remained flawlessly scintillant in the light of the forge. It was the scarlet of his own cinnabar ichor, his own variant of bloodsteel—the divine metal of Yurnmagog the Hanged-God.
He could make it into a armament, be it an arms or armour, that grew stronger on bloodshed. It was the culmination of his own insight and study into the arcana of the Crucible and that of lifeblood. Though the latter was only a few rounds-deep, the former had been a decade of turns in the making.
And then there was one.
Ta-ta.
