RE:Shuffle

The first night at the Evergaol was one of far too much drink. Last that Baethen remembered he’d taken the umpteenth swig of some hooch or another; the expedition had been a dry one until now given alcohol’s propensity for dehydration and adverse effect on vigilance and general ratiocination

Baethen awoke in a stranger’s bed and it wasn’t Miro’s. He looked around the tent, realisation dawning on him that it was the captain’s.

“Finally, awake, greenhorn? Good.”

“How’d I get here? We didn't…?”

Haviershan’s expression stilled for a breath as the cogs and gears turned inside head and then he barked out peals upon peals of laughter. Drying a tear at the corner of his eye, he said: “Numbered-Gods, that was a good one. Nay. Didn’t plough your field. Nor did anyone else for that matter; wouldn’t be right in your sorry state of yesternight. You couldn’t string together a sentence without speaking in tongues. Probably don’t even remember that you took a bet against Tratvgar to see who could drink the other under the table.

“Long story made short: you both lost, you fools. Tratvgar’s on bed rest on account of having attempted to wrestle you—never seen a lad actually knock himself out before but there’s a first for everything. Oh to be young again in the liver, but I digress.” He chuckled before continuing: “After you drank enough swill to drown a sea-serpent, we thought it best to put you somewhere safe; namely, in the care of an insomniac in case you choked on your own vomit.”

Haviershan really did not mince words though that was probably because he quite liked the sound of his own, admittingly-smooth, voice.

“Now that you’ve your wits about you, go on and get out of here before they begin to call you Sleeping-Beauty; it’s noon already and this band is far too old to go around telling feyry-tales. Go on, git.”

Baethen’s belongings were by the foot of the bed and undisturbed. He took them, thanked the captain and then went on his not-so-merry way. The sunlight hit him in the temples like a sceptre to a church’s bell. Hungover as he was, he’d need a draught of hair-o’-the-dragon from Lazarra lest he keel over and die.

Those tasted worse than Scaduphomet’s taint but better momentary discomfort than one that lasted a whole thrice-damned day.

({Archetype}: [Prime]) Selected; {Player}’s ({Hand}: [3//3]) {Drawn} as follows:

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

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

[Mercurial-Inksmith] ★ ({Single-Card} - {Unlinked})

{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-Mercury]

➤[Major] I (Allows {Player} to {Expend} a {Metallic-Font} to {Empower} a {Font-of-Mercury} or vice-versa {Once} per {Hand}.)

[Arcana-of-Smoke]

➤[Minor] I - [Resonant] IV (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 contra, allows {Player} to {Convert} a {Font-of-Air} into a {Font-of-Smoke} or vice-versa {Once} per {Hand}; as the fourth and final contra, allows {Player} to {Convert} a {Font-of-Illusion} 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}.)

➤[Intermediate] I - [Resonant] I (Allows {Player} to {Magnify} a {Font-of-Mercury} or {Font-of-Fire} {Once} per {Hand}; as a contra, allows {Player} to {Expend} all but one {Font} within a {Confluence-of-Fonts} so long as it possesses a {Font-of-Mercury} to {Empower} the one that remains {Once} per {Hand}.)

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

[Arcana-of-Deceit]

➤[Intermediate] I - [Resonant] I (Allows {Player} to {Magnify} a {Font-of-Illusion} or a {Font-of-Smoke} {Once} per {Hand}; as a contra, allows {Player} to {Magnify} a {Font-of-Night} {Once} per {Hand}.)

A visit to Lazarra later in her mender’s wagon and Baethen was ready to begin his morning practise; he’d begun to focus on his arcanum rather than the cards themselves as those were the interstice that bound a deck together. In praxis, the more resonant or complete an arcanum’s dominion was, the higher the chance to incur a fusion be it sets, confluxes, or decks themselves so long as they were of compatible arcana.

Baethen sat by a felled tree at the border of the Evergaol’s clearing, going through his once-per-hand casts like they’d burn a hole in his purse. The metaphor almost turned to reality as Baethen accidentally played [Cinderspark-Spit] when he attempted to spit out the bad taste in his mouth from the hair-o’-the-dragon draught.

By the end of the stund, Baethen had wrung his arcanum dry of its petty magicks. Seeing as he still had a whole new font source to practise with, he spat some sparks into his palm, kindling them with his breath and then expending them just as fast so that they’d become vapour.

By then, the arcana of smoke held sway, so Baethen played the conflux [Parlour-Tricks], transforming the smoke back into flame. He held onto the wisp until his mind began to grow numb and his hold over the arcana slipped under his grasp from sheer exhaustion.

Just as acts of body put pressure upon the flesh, willpower sapped the spirit; overdraw could inflict a whole host of maladies of the soul including melancholy, mirror-hunger, madness, and lunacy.

Probably gave some people the conniptions as well though that was just as likely being Baethen’s errant thoughts than stone-etched fact.

Seeing as Baethen was itching for something to do, he found a way to lure Tratvgar out from the cot for a quick spar. He’d never been able to sit still as a lad much less now that he was a man full-grown.

“First-blood or a score-game?” Baethen asked.

“First-blood. Can’t focus enough to begin to count scored points.” Tratvgar responded.

The lanky man was a turn younger than Baethen, washed-up from some farmer’s guild or another. Scapegoat for petty politics, Tratvgar had decided he preferred braving the wilds and contending against beasts than residing amongst the cities of men. The former, at least, did not hide behind the guise of civility so as to justify wanton exploitation.

Tratvgar was tall and slim, a long stave of living wood held in his right. Stillborn fruits and seeds hung from the stave’s head, the wood at that end knotted up something fierce such that a blow from it felt more like that of steel than bark.

Baethen knew as much from their many friendly mock-fights between Reordran and Rimare-Tul. Rung his bell as if to summon the faithful to mass, Tratvgar did.

The game began abruptly as Tratvgar pointed his stave at Baethen and launched a salvo of seeds forth. Mid-flight, they germinated into roots which weaved themselves into needle-thin darts.

Unlike Baethen, Tratvgar erred towards missiles rather than melee, his cards purpose-made for ranged combat; {Touch} clauses exchanged for clauses of {Line-of-Sight}, {Eye-of-the-Beholder}, and {Thrall-of-Gaze}. The ultimate article replaced {Thrall-of-Arm}, the penultimate stipulation negated cover so long as the object beheld conformed to the {Player}’s prejudices and the antecedent clause was there to activate the card-chain and make seeds sprout.

Bone-haft in front of him, Baethen twisted his wrist, forging the font of mercury into a shield with the haft as a handle. The needles, though ravenous against bare flesh, did not have enough mass to penetrate liquid steel. He spun the stave, layering cards into the chain so that he had fonts of fire and smoke to work with.

“[Exhale. Smolder. Darken.]”

A thick smog quickly coalesced around him, obscuring Tratvgar’s line of sight and incurring his deck’s many drawbacks. He could manifest root-spears and curve their trajectory but only so long as he knew where Baethen was—{Eye-of-the-Beholder} worked wonders against foliage and partial sight but still required the player to know where his foe lay. Normally, the card [Sow-the-Fields] was used for its namesake, needing the user to be able to see the soil upon which they wanted to sow. Here, though, it was used to devastating effect as a weapon of war, a scythe modified to reap souls rather than wheat.

Given there was dense mist between Tratvgar and the earth, he could not designate a field and thus could not sow.

A massive shadow waylaid the green-magician from his left but he was no fool and called the bluff for what it was. He simply brought up a wave of roiling substrate from his feet to dispel most of the fog around him, catching sight of an umbilical-cord of smoke unravelling as its bound apparition did much the same.

Tratvgar followed its path and then launched first a wave of roiling roots to snuff out the fog and then a salvo of sower’s spears just after it.

Caught in the double-bluff, Tratvgar had only a blink to react to Baethen ambushing him from the direction of the apparition. He’d woven a circle of string-smoke all the way around Tratvgar, tightening the noose around his metaphorical foot now that he’d gotten him right where he wanted.

Chicanery was the way of [The-Charlatan], child of Unnumbered Loken and Yurnmagog the Hanged-God, blessed by Balphas the Magus for the working of spells and welcomed by Scaduphomet for cunning and loved by Alunariat for the employ of secrets and omission. The arcana was one that required great wit and greater conniving.

The strike stopped just a knuckle from caving in Tratvgar’s skull. A third bluff as Baethen scored a shallow cut against his foe’s bicep, thus incurring first-blood. The metal shiv in his hand was quickly welded back into Baethen’s hammer-head.

“Gehenna’s Twelve-Hels, that was a devious one. Didnae think ya’d master that arcana quick enough for it to matter. My head’s all full o’ cotton which didnae help either.”

The Woedenite accent was thick about him given Tratvgar was born a field-tender in the outer ring of Reordran’s walls where travellers made themselves sparse. Baethen himself had lived in the middle-rung though he was closer to the outer than the inner ring; Mother was a dye-mistress while Father was a card-tender—these were people who were loaned guilder decks to form sets and links within them.

“Gotta always have a couple tricks up your sleeve.” Baethen told him. “Always practise and make up new card-chains so that you’re quick on your feet and have sharp wits about you.”

The shield-disk card-chain was one that Baethen had to devise in response to Tratvgar’s reach whereas the bound-apparition chain was one that he’d simply conjured up through experimentation and boredom. Lastly, the fog-o’-war chain was the second one he’d made just after he’d gotten the [Lesser-Narguile-of-Night] card, the first being smoke-burst.

“I’m all but dead on my feet, Baethe. I’m putting up my hands and goin’ back to my cot. Didnae want to spoil your fun but I gotta do what I gotta do and I gotta do nothing but close my eyes right about now.”

With that, Tratvgar gave Baethen a nod and off he went into Babylon the land of dreams.