RE:Shuffle

Days passed them by as did the many nights filled with strife. By the second notch, Baethen had learned how to better conserve his resources, leaning on the tips and tricks that Miro gave him—practice playing a card-chain as efficiently as possible; don’t blow all the dragon-powder for one glorious shot; lone heroes die in ditches while armies survive with scars. The last one did not rhyme but that was on purpose.

Not everything fit perfectly together. Some things were brutally mismatched and uncaring to any rhyme or reason. Okay, maybe Miro was a bit of a poet but back to fighting devil-spawn: card-chains were more effective in that, with practice, they could negate bleedover between a set’s many drawbacks. This was especially useful against a variety monsters that would otherwise bleed you to death through a prolonged fight.

Take the insubstantial, hundred-armed spectres, for example. They were known as night-wraiths, or simply wraiths, and embodied the fear of the dark and unseen predators. They were quick but many and forced Baethen to truly dig in, so to speak, lest he waste too much breath so early in the fight; he couldn’t be too passive either as letting wraiths accumulate was a good way to get a shanked in the back.

For these, Baethen had perfected a card-chain he called rain-of-fire; he spat on a few bullets of metal, no larger than a wad each and then combusted them with the minimum amount of will possible before welding them to his club and then launching them at the incoming host of wraiths through a particularly strong swing.

Once the bullets hit the bastards, he took back the newly-made font of phlogiston—the arcana of air and fire conjoined—on top of his club to fuel [Run-like-the-Wind]. This completed what Miro called a ‘cycle’ or card-chain. These were more resource-efficient than simply playing cards at random as they had somewhat defined effects once the user practised with them enough.

The shadow-clad skeletons were simply called bone-walkers and embodied the fear of the dead, the grotesque, and of revenant spirits. They didn’t need to be taken out first thing in the fight like wraiths and couldn’t without paying an untenable amount of resources that would see them in debt. The taxman that came to collect was none too kind either.

For the amalgamations of animal carcasses, Baethen had devised the cycle of snuff-out-the-lights. These required a specialised resource he took to calling ‘iron-candles’; long, thin stakes of rusted metal taken from the ancient weapons that the devil-spawn wielded. He always had a few in hand and was ready to stake them near the bonfire so they’d accumulate fonts of phlogiston and mercury—a third-order arcana that could be reached through a handful of ways from iron and fire, moon and water or as a variant of [The-Lovers].

With a flick of his will, Baethen could kindle and then snuff out an iron-candle to achieve a burst of phantom speed, catching bonewalkers off-guard and pummeling them back into the grave. Once a candle was extinguished of its phlogiston, it would begin again to accumulate said font; this way, Baethen didn’t have to douse the fire of his club to play [Run-like-the-Wind]. The card did not have a {Thrall-of-Arm} clause and so did not require being held—the player could only keep so many staves within their mind’s eye at once so the boundary was one of spirit rather than flesh. Baethen’s limit was, currently, three.

The real dangerous foes were the chitin-clad ogres known as dread-knights which embodied the fear of Gehenna, teratophobia made flesh, champions of the terror of terror itself. These fell horrors had all the cunning of a bonewalker but twice as much durability. Whole teams had to coordinate to take one down though thankfully only three-to-five of them spawned during each Gehennic conjunction.

Baethen hadn’t come up with a resource-effective card-chain for dread-knights yet, instead using [Strike-While-the-Iron-is-Hot] to remove an ogre from the board early on. Iron-candles, once welded to the club, could be shot forth like crossbow bolts so long as they were launched as one ‘strike.’

Were it not for the ogres’ ancient-stone blades, Baethen would’ve long run out of fonts of mercury. There were veins of wrought-iron among other low metals laced throughout the leftover slabs of sharpened rock; these armaments were all that were left in the wake of dread-nights—barring cards that is—as their bodies decayed at an obscene rate into smoke and nothingness, especially so under the canopy’s shade.

Though there was a general taboo around interacting with devil-touched objects, spoils gained fighting Scaduphomet’s spawn, or in service of doing so, were exempt. So long as it wasn’t a cursed artefact or a forbidden card, it was fair game. The expedition didn’t care that Baethen was scavenging metal from the infernal swords as he was destroying them in the process. As long as Baethen didn’t wield an intact ancient-stone blade, he was left to his own devices.

Which, speaking of, did not last long. The lad was sitting down near the dwindling bonfire, unscathed if winded from the latest fight, when Miro approached him, a rare smile on the curmudgeon’s lips.

Baethen was so out of his wits that it took him a moment to realise that Miro held out a spell card before him, transparent-black with shimmering lines of water like the pattern-weld of a damascene blade.

“Up and at ‘em, runt. Yer the first greenhorn to get a card. Read it and weep.”

After doing so, Baethen couldn’t help but comment on its synergy with his deck.

“Well, o’ course it fits in nicely—we distribute cards based on affinity and arcana. Dæmons tend to coalesce cards according to their core-fear; got that one from a pack of night-wraiths. In a flick, I’ll be handing out another card to Tratvgar so take it before I get second thoughts and slot it in my deck.”

Baethen swiped the card, thanked Miro with a tired-if-elated smile and then laid down on his cot, slotting the card through his breast so that it’d fall into his soul. He’d never slept so soundly before the night after he almost died twice.

Card Given: [Lesser-Narguile-of-Night] ★

Draw: [Of-a-Kind]

Drawback: [Shadow-Burn]

Arcana: [The-Puppeteer], [Night], [One-of-Staves]

Number: [VII//II]

Suit: [Sleight-of-Hand]

Portfolio Φ: [‘Shadows dance along the wall for the puppeteer makes them all’. This {Card} grants the {Player} {Minor-Dominion} over the {Arcana-of-Smoke}, allowing them to {Move} {Fonts-of-Smoke} through {Will-of-Mind} so long as said {Fonts} are in {Touch} with the {Cast-Shadows} of a {Stave} held in {Thrall-of-Arm}. So long as this {Card} is {Brought-Into-Play}, the {Player}’s {Cast-Shadows} incur a {Brand-of-Shame} which will {Burn} the aforementioned {Cast-Shadows}; once the {Player}'s {Cast-Shadows} are {Absent} through {Brand-of-Shame}, they remain so until the next {Hand} is {Redrawn}.]

By morn’, the kinks in Baethen’s back had knotted up something fierce, muscle not so much as tied but contorted. The ground that the train made camp by was always a rock of some sort and thus bad for the health of the spine among other bones most likely. Though he wasn’t a mender, Baethen knew enough to buy a better sleeping cot at the next township.

Though the day’s march was ruthless, Baethen’s spirits remained high—he’d gotten a card, afterall. It sat in his archive, teasing him to slot it in place of [Celestial-Dew]. The [Imp-of-Serpents] three-card set could also be removed from his hand without incurring a rivening though it’d leave Baethen without most of his magicks. [Strike-While-the-Iron-is-Hot] was a two card set and thus not divisible by three which meant that it might break should it be discarded from his hand. Broken sets sometimes damaged their constituent cards, sometimes cannibalised them to form the singular conflux, sometimes nothing happened at all. Baethen wouldn’t tempt fate by risking a discard of a half-formed set.

It’s best that I wait, he told himself. I’ll consolidate my two sets into one set of five and then I’ll begin to work this one into it, too.

Baethen’s self control did not last long.

I mean, I could just work this card into one of my other sets—[Strike-While-the-Iron-is-Hot] has been resonating for an awfully long time, waiting for something compatible. It should be faster than attempting to condense two sets into one.

Though a hand was usually set while asleep, it could be done while awake so long as it hadn't been changed recently. For this, Baethen told the rest of the lot that he’d take a leak. He needed to close his eyes for it and then, a literal blink later, it was done.

No {Archetype} Selected; {Player}’s ({Hand}: [3//3]) {Drawn} as follows:

[Imp-of-Serpents] ★★ ({Three-Card-Set} - {Unlinked})

[Strike-While-the-Iron-is-Hot] ★ ({Two-Card-Set} - {Unlinked})

[Lesser-Narguile-of-Night] ★ ({Single-Card} - {Unlinked})

He spat a glob of fire on the ground, letting it sizzle and then puppeteered his club’s shadow to catch its smoke in its thrall. The little strand of grey was easily caught and trailed after the club’s shadow-puppet. As always, cards were usually weak on their own and required a set to function at an acceptable level or an appropriate card-chain.

But, even just by itself, [Lesser-Narguile-of-Night] could do some incredible things, so long as Baethen had time to prepare. With this in mind, he returned to the train of wagons and practised with the card. The single arcanum-casting didn’t amount to much given its weak strength, accumulation, and Baethen’s general inexperience with the new-fangled arcana.

Curious as to what effect it would give him, Baethen called upon Babylon.

{Player}’s {Arcanum} {Read} as follows:

[Arcana-of-Fire]

➤[Minor] II (Allows {Player} to {Manifest} a {Font-of-Fire} in the {Form} of {Cinders} {Twice} per {Hand}.)

[Arcana-of-Air]

➤[Minor] I (Allows {Player} to {Manifest} a {Font-of-Air} in the {Form} of {Drafts} {Once} per {Hand}.)

[Arcana-of-Smoke]

➤[Minor] I - [Resonant] III (Allows {Player} to {Manifest} a {Font-of-Smoke} in the {Form} of {Curlicues} {Once} per {Hand}; as the first contra, allows {Player} to {Convert} a {Font-of-Fire} into a {Font-of-Smoke} or vice-versa {Once} per {Hand}; as the second contra, allows {Player} to {Convert} a {Font-of-Water} into a {Font-of-Smoke} so long as it is in {Touch} with a {Font-of-Fire} but not vice-versa {Once} per {Hand}; as the third and final contra, allows {Player} to {Convert} a {Font-of-Air} into a {Font-of-Smoke} or vice-versa {Once} per {Hand}.)

[Arcana-of-Phlogiston]

➤[Major] II (Allows {Player} to {Expend} a {Font-of-Air} to {Empower} a {Font-of-Fire} or vice-versa {Twice} per {Hand}.)

[Arcana-of-the-Crucible]

➤[Minor] I (Allows {Player} to {Convert} a {Font-of-Mercury} into a {Font-of-Fire} or vice-versa {Once} per {Hand}.)

➤[Complete] I (Allows {Player} to {Refund} a {Spent} {Font-of-Mercury} or {Font-of-Fire} {Once} per {Hand}.)

A dominion’s magnitude—from one to three—dictated the number of charges per hand. From four to six, it dictated a font’s manifestation form. And, lastly, seven to nine dictated font intensity and concentration parameters; think of these as enhancements to how hot a card-cast flame could be rather than its general presentation. Anything beyond a magnitude of nine went towards enhancing a {Player}’s ability to form sets, wield arcana in general, and bending the rules of cards to their whim. It was rumoured that should a person complete a given arcana, they earned an esoteric-card that was somewhere between the effects of an arcanum and a Lynchpin, not taking up space within a player’s hand and permanent such that the effects remained even without the contribution of arcana from a handful of cards.

A dominion’s prefix—minor, major, complete and the like—dictated the expenditure clause in the following order: {Manifestation} in the case of first-order arcana; {Conversion} in the case of second-order arcana; {Empowerment} in the case of major dominion; and {Refunding} in the case of complete dominion. Cards of utter-dominion had more unique effects according to their arcana, becoming ever more granular.

Resonance was a clause formed of a conflux of arcana that shared the same constituent first-orders. Smoke beget connections to basic elements such as fire, water, and air; and more complex ones such as phlogiston. Given smoke’s ever-shifting nature, it probably resonated with mercury as well though not nearly enough to appear explicitly as a clause within Baethen’s arcanum.

Resonant dominions within one’s arcanum had contras, expanding the options available and commensurate with the resonance magnitude up until the maximum of nine. Anything beyond that spilled over into subtler influences that were not so easily quantified.

When night ate away at the last of the day’s light, Baethen was ready. Gehennic conjunctions did not happen every night, coming in irregular intervals that ranged from one every notch to one every three days to one every fortnight—depended on the Devil’s mood on any given night.

Instead of dread, Baethen felt exhilaration when the whispers began to caress the edge of his ears. He spat on his club, igniting one side but leaving the other clad in darkness. Smoke was held in thrall so long as it was in contact with his staves’ shadow which counted for objects he held. The drawback was that Baethen’s shadow felt pain; the longer he held the spell, the more it burned away at him.

Once the first wraith manifested, blood-rush banished away the pain but Baethen was no fool—he could feel his shadow withering away into nothingness. It had become a resource just as his breath or phlegm and thus needed to be conserved, weighed for reward against risk of life and limb.

The arcana of smoke was the reverse of phlogiston, formed primarily of fire and water rather than fire and air. This meant that it could be tapped into to draw a font that would otherwise be wasted such as fire—Baethen generated a good deal of smoke during a protracted battle and generally couldn’t exploit it. Instead of the heat evaporating away into the smoke, Baethen trapped it within his club, a dark cloud wrapped tight around the unlit side of the weapon.

Rain-of-fire decimated the wave of wraiths, other spells contributing so that the dread-things were beaten back to more manageable numbers. When the bonewalkers rose from the darkness, Baethen was chomping at the bit to test out a few techniques he’d been working on.

Turning around his club so that the dark-side and light-side were reversed, Baethen waited until a bonewalker neared and then he played three cards simultaneously. First, [Slag-and-Scale] propelled his club forth. Second, [Kindlers-Breath] fed the first. Third, [Lesser-Narguile-of-Night] let go of the tight-packed smoke.

When Baethen connected his club with the bonewalker, the card-chain came into effect all at once, kicking at his shoulder with recoil. He obliterated the dread-thing’s skull—that of a kalegor-dog—with a single well-placed strike, sending shards into the night. Smoke burst along with wind and cracked bone fell to the ground, lifeless. The effect was nearing the same potency of [Strike-While-the-Iron-is-Hot] but not limited to once a day as with the [Come-Undone] drawback.

Taking a quick look at his tattered shadow, Baethen reckoned he had two more of those strikes in him tonight. He saved them for when the ogres decided to show their ugly faces, otherwise fighting as he normally did. The only difference was that Baethen was accumulating smoke along the dark side of the club.

When the last bonewalker fell, Baethen could feel the ground begin to rumble under the weight of not three, not four, but five dread-knights. Chitin-clad and rust-wielding, they charged out from the darkness of the ether, silent if but for their hulking steps.

He did not engage immediately, letting his teammates employ their ranged options. When the first ogre reached Baethen, he had set himself at the middle of the makeshift formation, Miro to his left and Tratvgar to his right; both more forward than he but otherwise letting Baethen take line of sight so that they could waylay the stupid brute that charged him.

A single smoke-burst wasn’t enough to take a dread-knight out of the fight but it did daze the beast long enough for Miro to decapitate it with a half-unsheathed sword. Baethen had yet to see the man fully draw the paper-sword in battle and he both dreaded and anticipated the day that he did.

Baethen expended the last smoke-burst of the night to sweep an ogre’s legs out from under it, setting it up to be pummelled by Tratvgar’s root-wrought quarter-stave. Tendrils and thorns held the dread-thing in place long enough to finish it but by then they had to arrange a new formation further into the front as the corpse made the ground precarious. A single misstep could mean a fall and then, all it took was the slippery slope of death doing what it did best.

Maybe it was bad luck or maybe it was because the beast had seen two of its brethren felled in quick succession but the last and final ogre rushed them mid-reshuffle, catching them flat-footed. There were a handful of wraiths left in play and two bonewalkers. Should they break rank, those stragglers would flood past the wagons and into the camp itself, tearing apart the weak and wounded.

Thankfully, Baethen still had one more ace up his sleeve. To set it up, he spoke three Words-of-Power—his safe daily limit—each one filling his lungs with a handful of ash as bleedover from [Kindlers-Breath] into [Imp-of-Serpents].

“[Burn. Smolder. Blaze.]”

He played [Strike-While-the-Iron-is-Hot], feeding the card the remnant font of smoke—half of it was fire after all. Baethen missed the ogre’s head, clipping its shoulder instead. His club immediately lost its ability to be used as a sceptre for the night, thus removing [Slag-and-Scale] from play which was Baethen’s major damage-dealing card. The dread-thing’s sword-arm was crippled but it still had a good ten stone more than him. Cold panic took root in his gut.

Pulling at the last of his iron-candles, Baethen girded his loins and began to dance. Were it not for [Run-like-the-Wind] being a magus-card, requiring a stave rather than a sceptre, Baethen would’ve died then and there—sceptres were suites of prestige and visage, requiring sight by both the player and their opponent whilst staves took after witchery and chicanery, allowing one to play spells via will of thought alone.

The dread-knight attempted to claw and to tackle him but caught only empty air and frustration. This gave Miro time to dispatch the incoming stragglers and Tratvgar opportunity to strike at the ogre’s unguarded back, slaying it.

Breathing heavily, hands on his knees, Baethen pondered on his life choices.

Had he not slotted in the new card he would’ve died tonight. [Celestial-Dew] would not have kept him alive as it lacked any offence whatsoever—it couldn’t put down an ogre. He would keep it in his archive from then on and would only draw it to his hand when needed. [Lesser-Narguile-of-Night] was just too good to pass up on.

“Come here, you beautiful bastard.”

Miro was confused as all Twelve-Hels-of-Gehenna as Baethen tackled the man with a hug.

Pulling back for a breath and holding him at shoulder length, Baethen told him: “The card you picked saved my rump.”

With a grunt and a none-too-pleased expression, Miro said: “Ain’t that just dandy. Now, could ye please release me?”

Maybe it was the blood-rush or the close brush with death or even just Baethen’s impulsiveness but he planted his lips around Miro’s before he disentangled himself. That did not help the veteran adventurer’s present state of confusion—the bemused knot of his brow could contend with the Seas-of-Conundrum.