As one, the cadre advanced.

  Within Behemoth, Baethen could wade into foes without need for a dedicated formation, ignoring the redcaps and matriarchs in favour of contending against the ogres, his only equals in brute strength. Now, he was needed to guard the others, to be another shield along with Escoriot so that they could best the last of their foes.

  They knew that the goblyns hadn’t exhausted all their cards—the matriarchs were hiding an ace up their metaphorical sleeves so caution would serve them best. Where running springs a trap, walking might reveal it before it springs.

  With the shield-warden conjuring domes of solidified-air to corral them and Baethen spitting out balefire to destroy them, the feyry-flies were taken care of. Their dark brethren, the bloodflies, were more difficult to destroy, owing to their ability to dwell in shadow. Incorporeal, they could not be cut by mundane blade wielded by mortal hands.

  Cruciata was no mere mundane blade though the hands that wielded her were very much mortal. With every scythe of the sword-spear through the coming plague of locusts, Baethen cursed through fire, proscribing death by flame. A single brand did not kill more than the one bloodfly it was branded upon but when the swarm’s cast-shadows overlapped, they shared the wages of their curse.

  Frost-fire spread through them, freezing and burning both in cascades that turned them into smoking shadows fallen to the ground. It was too perfect an offence against the bloodflies, having been spun by the Lady-of-Fate Herself.

  Then came the drawback; Baethen felt his shadows festering with the very curses he’d wrought. Though he’d burnt them away to ease the burden of [Stigmata-Mundi], there were always a few dregs, a smattering of shadow-sinew that could not be done away with.

  It was through these veins that the poison did its work, dulling him in the aspects of his soul. Were it not for the dying-breaths in his lungs, his spirit would’ve shrivelled into a husk then and there, irrevocably damaged by the foulness that suffused him.

  By the time that the cadre reached the line of trulls, Baethen had long stopped to use Cruciata’s artefact-card, relying only on its physical vessel. The curse-brands had already run their course, spreading from bloodfly to bloodfly—a plague devouring its own kind.

  Now, only the swarms that infested the hags were still present. The matriarchs did not send them one by one as, by themselves, a bloodfly couldn’t do much but irritate. It was only in vast numbers that they could drain a man into a husk. The cadre would have to slay the broodmothers right quick lest they launch another salvo of Yurnmagog’s spawn.

  <> Haviershan signed. Escoriot had to relay the message through taps due to Baethen’s limited sight.

  His mind was slow to the take so it took some time for Baethen to even remember what his call sign was, much less what a ‘manoeuvre’ meant. Onslaught was just a pretty way to say: ‘attack recklessly with all the cards you have in your hand.’ Variation one meant to conserve some energy for afterwards and not let yourself get too caught up in the melee.

  Lac played her aces, becoming a whirling force of nature, each swing of her sword-slab sending out corruscating arcs of azure. Each one was an echo of her weapon, branded by runes and suffused with enough magic to beggar a sorcerer. When they struck the gathered trulls, they staggered them like an unexpected slap, ringing their bells something fierce and cutting in deep. Once their damage was done, the conjured constructs broke into rune-brands and then evaporated into the ether.

  Baethen played two of his strongest arcanums—crucible and phlogiston—along with that of:

  [Arcana-of-Scoria]

  [Intermediate] I - [Resonant] III

  Origin Φ: [{Once} per {Hand} {Player} may, through a {Strike} to the {Body-of-Eot}, {Crack-the-Earth} in a {Locus} around the {Strike}, {Transmuting} {Earth} into {Scoria} in their wake.]

  ? [As the first contra, {Player} may {Transmute} a {Locus} of {Earth} into {Scoria} so long as they’ve {Trodden} upon it since {Redrawing} their {Hand}, {Once} per {Hand}.]

  ? [As the second contra, {Player} may {Condense} a {Font-of-Scoria} into a {Tephratic-Seed} {Once} per {Hand}.]

  ? [As the third and final contra, {Player} may {Imbue} a {Font-of-Scoria} that is held in {Thrall-of-Gaze} with a {Font-of-Phlogiston} through {Will-of-Mind} {Once} per {Hand}.]

  Down came Cruciata, limned in fire, striking while the iron was hot.

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  The earth trembled under Baethen’s might, crumbling into brittle and ashen scoria. The arcanum charge enhanced [Strike-While-the-Iron-is-Hot], making it greater than it was and further staggering their enemies so that they’d be caught flatfooted. Phlogiston nursed the billowing wave of heat, transforming fire into concussive wind.

  The arcana of the crucible wove it all together so that they fed into one another, veins of molten and ember-laced mercury flowing through the impact like the conflagratory birth of a vulcan-mount, spilling Eot’s innards bare.

  Oh, how intoxicating the power was to make the very world quake in your presence.

  A flash of blackened bone-flesh was all that two of the five hags saw before death claimed them by the heart. Narancan’s suite of cards made him easily forgotten so long as none had him in their sight, lulling the mind into complacency. Now that he revealed himself through the attack, he had to retreat lest he be swarmed and turned into a husk by feyry and bloodfly alike.

  For this, he played [Tattered-Mistveil-Cloak], hiding himself under a blanket of fog through which only he could see. He hadn’t been fast enough to escape all the flying pests without a few bites but he’d been faster than his death which mattered more. And then Baethen forgot who had killed the two hags in the first place.

  Huh, what was that?

  With their foes harried by the two hags’ sudden death—probably a well-placed bolt by Haviershan or some roguish gambit by Narancan—the trulls were whipped into a frenzy.

  [Sunder-the-Mirror] reflected their blows back against them while hoarfrost laden with subliminal feyry-fire coated their skin, spreading insidiously along with verdant roots that erupted into thorned spears. A slab of greatsword pushed the trulls back so they’d not get at any weaker member of the cadre easily. Bolts infused with dragons-flame struck joints and disrupted attacks but still, the might and resilience of an ogre was not to be underestimated.

  Rarely did brutes of their ilk have any triumph- or ace-suite cards, at least at this star parity. Instead, they relied on physical qualities entirely, forgoing special attacks in favour of brutal and consistent strength.

  Misfortune struck for Man plans and the Gods laugh.

  It took less than a blink for Baethen to forget where he put his last plane-of-reflection, the chaos of the battle having blinded him. As such, the thing ceased to exist with none to witness it, breaking the chain of [Sunder-the-Mirror] and Baethen’s ability to play it again before he Redrew his Left Hand.

  Forced to call upon Cruciata’s artefact-card once again, he couldn’t help from thinking himself a fool—the feyries had well and truly learned his weaknesses, the boggart’s constant surveillance hamstringing him. Without [Imp-of-Serpents] to give him access to spells, he had to rely on curses lest he die. Though the latest drawback had been brought to play coincidentally there was no coincidence in Phantasmagoria.

  Again and again he cut through shadow and flesh both, branding maledictions through Cruciata’s blade. He did not possess either the skill or card to control the hexes beyond runes of weakening and illness and death—he simply wove through sword-spear forms, parrying when possible and taking places when not.

  The lacerations proved the undoing of the trulls though that undoing was coming rather slow as the poison in his shadow nipped at his heels, taking his ability to form coherent thought beyond ‘protect those behind you and attack those in front’. Magicks became unwieldy and strikes clumsy but that did not matter for trulls were nothing if not enormous targets of lumbering sloth.

  Damned if he did, damned if he didn’t—and so the only question to be had was whether to die now or die later and everyman but the most hopeless wretch chooses later even if to live for but a lick. Like a man fishing for answers at the bottom of a bottle, Baethen drew himself deeper and deeper still into the poison such that he felt himself adrift from this mortal coil.

  The moorings of his being were becoming undone, layers of soma and psyche unravelling at the seams and spilling whatever ephemera that lay within. Inside his mind’s eye, gnostic-glyphes bled into the darkness, never to be seen again, taking with memories both precious and then not for he could not even remember their absence.

  And then threads of purest gold like silk spun from sun bound the fleeing gnosis and dragged those it could back from whence it came, binding it lock and key behind a mask of fool’s gold that the holymen of Assiah called Tentramon the Erudition. There, within the womb of imagination that all ensouled beings possessed, the gilded face ebbed affix’d, cleaved in twain with one half crying and the other laughing, euphoria and sorrow made one.

  All of this happened in the blink of an eye and then Baethen was brought back to near-lucidity, having forgotten all of what happened in the manner of dreams—finest sand through the cracks of his fingers. He did not remember where and when he was for a moment, that is, until a trull whacked him upside the head and flung Behemoth a good two strides back.

  By then, another two hags had died, taking their bloodflies to the grave with them. The remaining feyry-flies fled further into the wilds, not being bound by shadow. There were too many to kill and too weak to be worth it when three trulls and a hag yet still drew breath.

  Like a giant awoken from its slumber as a hillock, Baethen puppeted Behemoth so that the war-suit would stand. Its sinew and tendons were near-all either torn, shredded, melted together or frayed like old rope. He could barely pilot the armour and any repairs were rendered impossible without his full faculties, be they of mind or soul. The reverberations from the strike still echoed in his skull, a ringing bell inside his ears that would not abate.

  Without warning, Narancan appeared in his sight. <> Were it done by word of mouth rather than sign of hand, Baethen wouldn’t have understood a single lick of what the Field-Ser wanted to communicate.

  Baethen did as he was bid, the confusion that plagued him making his head whirl. His attention and mind both escaped him then and again as he caught only snippets of the fight like flashes of lightning in the night.

  Arcana Interlogia

  Map of the Kolithil Worldshard

  Cruciata the Curse-Fire

  Ta-ta.