Baethen knew this readily, his descent into madness having begun with [Lesser-Wormscale-Hide]. For every new card of greater parity, for every leap in might, he paid for in the debt of fate and an increased appetite for risk. Slow and steady increases were sustainable, they were safe.
Even though he’d not set out to forge something which would make nations topple each-other to possess, Baethen had none to blame but himself. Could a fool really justify himself that it was not his fault for lack of knowledge? No, he’d remain just that.
A fool.
Beyond the intoxication that comes with the trappings of power, he’d also garnered the attention of a goddess. At best, he might end up being turned into a wyrd-toad that need only be kissed by a prince or princess to return to his humanity. At worst, he would serve as the eternal thrall of an archfey.
These were paths that his mind trod as his body ventured across the Feywilds towards the Gate-Guardian—a mixture of hopeful hopelessness where the sense of power in his veins raged against his flagging spirits, body and mind at odds.
The cadre forded more feyry rivers, forcing Baethen not to Redraw prematurely or else be left without use of his most useful cards. Slowly, the root-ground grew sparser as it transitioned to actual soil—a verdant, rich loam filled to the brim with mushrooms of all kinds, each more poisonous than the last.
The more colourful a cap, the deadlier and all that.
Having broken through the treeline into a clearing, their furthest foes were hunchback matriarch goblyns known as hags. Upon their backs were great fungal hives infested with feyry-flies while from their cast-shadows swarmed blood-flies, Yurnmagog’s realm bleeding into this one through proximity. The cadre had fortunately brought with them fey-repellant so they’d not risk any sort of wyrd-plague, having already slathered the stuff before leaving the sanctuary.
It reeked of rotten tallow but would otherwise repel feyries and, should that not be enough, stop any would-be sores from gestating more of their ilk.
There were feyry-rings about the clearing, already summoning lesser goblyns in the form of eyeless redcaps and bigger trull-like forms. Subliminal, rainbow flame burned around each circle, binding light and shadow to call creatures from the deepest recesses of Phantasmagoria.
<
Though the feyry-rings were invested with fey-fire, they’d not resist either water or flame. The mushrooms were and would-ever be weak and easily destroyed—the only problem lay in getting through the advancing hoard and razing each and every one of the myriad rings before they drowned under a sea of monstrous fey.
Even with such vast foes arrayed before them, Baethen did not yet Redraw, knowing that the boggart, that maleficar spirit, still yet awaited them at the end of this road. It had goaded him in the night just beyond the sanctuary for notches now and Baethen was going to kill the thrice-damned thing even if it was the last act of this mortal life.
Without [Lesser-Juggler-of-Fire] there was no [Imp-of-Serpents] and instead he drew upon the poison-gift of Fata-Morgana, calling it to his hand through a flourish of cinder and smoke.
[Cruciata-the-Curse-Fire] was a thing of sudden and striking beauty, enthralling any foolish enough to stare at her in the midst of battle. With the sword-spear clutched tight in Behemoth’s lockjaw claws, Baethen charged into the fray.
He’d already heated up his war-suit before fording the rivers, most of the remnant swelter still cooking in the armour’s guts. Through arcanum and card, Baethen cowled himself in flame, becoming nothing more than a walking meteor crashing through the gigantic feyry trulls and redcaps alike.
Without the Language, Baethen made due with [Cycle-of-the-Crucible] and his dominions, using the limited casts per Hand sparingly. He would only Redraw when it was time to face the Guardian.
Driven by fear and fire, he cut through the goblyns to reach the first feyry-ring, an errant gob having just poked its head through the aperture between realms. Even without them, the fey creature still had a wide-eyed look about it as Baethen stomped down with Behemoth’s clawed-foot, rendering its head into bloody, fungal paste.
A fiery whirlwind wrapped around him from the stomp, courtesy of [Run-like-the-Wind] and [Throat-of-Salamadara]. Death was beginning to build in his throat though not yet thick enough to release.
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The problem with Behemoth was that it was a lumbering mountain of metal and took time to turn and pick-up speed once again to reach the next feyry-ring. Baethen was halfway to his third out of ten when the goblyns mounted a strong-enough defense fast-enough to matter between him and his quarry.
The larger trull-like goblyns, known as wart-ogres in many a bestiary, could rival ten men in strength and weighed about half as much. These were the corpses of gluttons reborn in Phantasmagoria that craved to eat the flesh of their previous vessel so they might attempt to become human once again.
Knowing better than to charge a wall of wart-ogres, Baethen instead opened Behemoth’s maw to spew out a gout of balefire; ghost-light, miasma and worm-blood mixing together to produce a poison so foul that a devil would run from it.
His breath misted out in the wake of the stream of balefire, black and umber like burning sulphur and reeking of rotten eggs, burnt hair, and carrion—reeking of death.
Though it did not outright kill the trulls, the miasma did blind their senses and take their breath from their would-be lungs, boiling their skin all the while. With a thought, Baethen spent his arcanum over wind, pushing the miasmic font towards the matriarchs to cull the coming storm of feyry-flies and bloodflies.
With the trulls distracted or otherwise weakened, Baethen prodded at them with [Cruciata-the-Curse-Fire], poking at flesh and shadow both. With each stroke and thrust, he left burning lines of burnished amaranth, festering with curse-brands that sapped the body of vigour and the mind of energy. The tongues of hoarfrost from [The-Blade-Alone] and the illusions from [Parlour-Tricks] mixed together so that his sword-spear blazed like a rainbow sun, smoke collected and turned into flame once again.
Had he God-Tongue to complement the curses, the trulls would’ve shrivelled into husks in a few spells’ time. Instead, Baethen held his ground as he brought death to them in a thousand cuts. The wart-ogres did not possess clubs but rather the very same grew from them, bone and meat twisting under fungal duress to produce tumour-ridden pillars that struck like stars fallen to the earth.
Each blow that Behemoth took roiled the mercurial sea in which Baethen floated, the sorrow-steel denting the layers of amalgam below crumpling—the latter was a purposeful design choice, making it so that the armour absorbed force that it could not deflect instead of transferring it directly into Baethen.
Dodging with Behemoth was not possible and so Baethen had to make ample use of [Sunder-the-Mirror], conjuring planes of reality-glass to shield himself from the blows and striking at them to dispel them so he could once again call upon the arcana of the Mirror.
The card-chain had earned its name as the shield-maiden for its inspiration. It was the stalwart and fierce protector that forswore Baethen’s demise and doled it back upon his foes twofold. Slowly, he came to realise something rather interesting about the card—it reflected any physical force applied to it exactly so as to make it unbreakable; why not amplify that force?
He’d devoured the dying breaths of so many feyries, {Empowering} himself in body and soul—with the increased power, certain limits of cards could be eschewed, the lines could be read between and the rules made for thee but not for me.
This was the Wyrd realm, the place of strangeness and where arguments could warp reality so long as you had the rhyme and will to do so. For every strike that he received from the trulls, they too suffered, reflected across the axis of the Mirror. A blow that hit the plane’s reflection cotermination-point that coincided with that of the wart-ogre’s shoulder also struck the ogre upon the shoulder.
For every attack, his enemies weakened themselves, retaliation brought on by their own folly. Bone by bone and joint by joint, Baethen broke the trulls down until they were but quivering heaps that could be felled with a single, well-placed downward thrust of Cruciata.
In this manner, Baethen broke through the blockade of bodies, going after the next feyry-ring and then the next. For every ring, he had two or three trulls to defeat, the hive mind of the gobs having bae them to defend the apertures into Phantasmagoria.
With each swathe of the dead and the dying, power accumulated in his chest, breathed-in through the [Throat-of-Salamadara] the Worm-Reborn. Life taken from death fomented in his lungs, aching to be released so that it might reap more.
It was a battle in and of itself to temper his use of miasma, each exhale leaving him breathless from restraint alone. The cards in his soul wanted him to burn bright and fast, to expel all that he kept tightly controlled but still Baethen held himself back, channeling his magicks through the [Budding-Bifrost-Blossom] so that the waters of Hypnagogia calmed his spirits of their restlessness.
When his lids became as heavy as the lead coffin he found himself in, he invoked [Scoric-Wormscale-Hide] so that he might rouse from the clutches of slumber. When Baethen began to realise that the sin-brands were cumulative, he stopped drawing on either of the cards that produced them, his mind addled by the effects such that it was difficult to think and each thought came oh so very slow.
There was one more feyry-ring to destroy but it was heavily guarded by the goblyn matriarchs and the last remnant wart-ogres and redcaps. It was their last stand before annihilation, the bastion that staved off the cadre from culling them in a single swoop.
Rather than charge into it, Baethen retreated back to his comrades, not showing his back to the gobs. He knew he reached them when Narancan tapped a sign into his armour.
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Baethen did so, stitching back his wits into order and smoothing out the scars of battle within Behemoth’s metal flesh. He yawned and flexed the gauntlets again and again, a strange numb dumbness and raw, visceral hatred about him. It was like someone woke Baethen in the middle of the night to call him craven.
Confused and a little mad, in both senses of the word, he marched lockstep with cadre once the signal to advance came.
Arcana Interlogia
Map of the Kolithil Worldshard
Cruciata the Curse-Fire
Bloodsun has been agonisingly slow. I’d’ve thought it would be done by now but splitting my attention between two fictions is a bit too much. I’ll be focusing on RE//Shuffle for the time being and then pivot back to Ralphy boy once this one’s done.
Ta-ta.