The path they could follow towards the end of the rung forked, a signpost placed at the crossroads with a spirit sprawled upon it. The signpost’s letters were writ in some forgotten and flowery feyish script, one arrow pointing left and the other right. There wasn’t a single Woedenite rune which they could read and neither was it a glyph-o’-gnosis which could be read by even the blind.
The blind-cat godspawn that sat atop the signpost was known as a sphyntrixes, its feathered-fur rippling with rainbow lustre as it stretched its wings in languid sloth. It had no eyes, the sockets filled with fur instead and it spoke in Omniglot as most other spirits oft did—its voice was that of a whispering child, tinkling like a little bell in the dead of night as it spoke in riddles and rhyme.
“[Hail, my good sirs.
“[Pay me my toll,
“[And I shall tell, ybor,
“[The way the winds blow.]”
It was a polite bugger at least. The last d?mon hadn’t been so amicable, wanting instead to kill them and be done with it. Sphyntrixes were babylonic spirits that had turned coat after the death of their liege, the Broken Tower, becoming instead bedfellows to Fata-Morgana as the goddess had assumed half of the mantle of dreams, sharing that function of reality with Nagalfaram Boatswain-of-Souls. Sphyntrixes or will-o’-fates guided lost souls to their destinies and were seen as good omens to the desperate for they could not lie unlike a caitsith which could only speak in untruths.
Baethen wouldn’t trust the sphyntrixes as far as he could throw them. Not being able to lie did not mean they told the truth proper. He knew as much, liar and fool that he was. Omissions could be just as black as the blackest falsehood and twice as difficult to spot.
<
<
With a nod from Baethen, Haviershan returned to the spirit and spoke with it, careful not to utter anyone’s names lest the Wyrd tighten its shackles around them. The boggart might be anywhere beyond the clearing and names had power that it might use to capture the cadre in thrall.
“Tell me, O will-o’-fate, what is the payment you desire?”
He’d been smart about it and clever to—just asking the spirit what it wanted might imply consent to its bargain. The fey followed no explicit writ of law afterall, damning any and all through implication alone.
“[Why, my good sir;
“[I need only that which I have none of,
“[And ye of two possess,
“[And may live with but one of,
“[If so have ye the largesse.]”
Haviershan and Baethen shared a look as they stepped back to talk amongst themselves. They spoke in sign then, arguing this way and that. Stuck between a rock and a hard place by the auspices of fate, they were.
Either one of them lost an eye or the lot o’ them would be overwhelmed by hagroot. They knew that there was no winning against the blasted pest as it inexorably grew with each cut head, sprouting more of itself like a seven-necked leviathan. They could choose either path but it might mean fighting back a retreat if they happened upon a dead end—leaving it up to chance would mean their quite literal dead end, too.
Already knowing that Haviershan needed both eyes to shoot with his boltcaster, Baethen sighed and then gestured: <>
He’d been so eager to volunteer because cards were cards. Baethen had gotten a three-star set on the first rung—the second rung would be a beaut’ and a half and he was chomping at the bit to get an extra card. Losing an eye was nothing compared to another three-star; besides, the hagroot was beginning to overwhelm the cadre so it was do or die, as it were.
<
Baethen unhinged Behemoth’s jaws and approached the sphyntrixes and said four simple words as he pointed to his left eye.
“The sacrifice is mine.”
The blind-cat smiled, its whiskers wide as it starred with those vacant sockets of its, full of soft downy like the underplumage of a sybilant dove reared on nothing but milk and honey. Baethen knew better—the feyry had a second set of teeth just below their human ones as it grinned its wicked grin, all fang and sharp toothed about the maw. Though it hid it well, It was a meat-eater through and through; give it the chance and it would be gnawing on their bones.
“[Come hither, my good sir.]”
Dreading whatever pain that was to come, Baethen stepped forward and the sphyntrixes laid its paw on ontop of his left eye as he closed his right. When the will-o’-fate removed its paw, Baethen couldn’t see it a single thing from his left eye. In its place was a polished river-stone, an opalescent obsidian orb that shimmered with rainbows and oil-slick night.
This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.
There was no sharp tug, no stabbing, only an aching loss that would follow Baethen ‘Sore-Loser’ Locke to the end of days and back.
Hearken, the {Player}’s {Arcanum} rouses with {Unbound-Arcana}!
Scouring [Akashic-Archive] for compatible {Dominion} […]
Compatible {Dominions} found; shuffling probabilities set to {[Base]: [Two]} over {Mean} […]
Shuffle complete, {[Utter-Dominion] over the [Arcana-of-Hypnagogia]} {Proscribed} {Thrice} upon {Player}’s {Arcanum}.
[Arcana-of-Hypnagogia]
[Utter] III - [Resonant] I
Origin Φ: [{Thrice} per {Hand} {Player} may, through {Focus-of-Spirit}, {Scry} another {Player} to gain {Insight} of their {Gnosis}, {Arcana}, {Drawback} and {Divine-Number} so long as they {Hold} the other {Player} in {Thrall-of-Gaze} with a {Blinded-Eye}.]
? [As the first and final contra, {Player} may {Empower} a {Blinded-Eye} {Thrice} per {Hand} through {Expenditure} of {Tin-Tokens} and an {Act-of-Sacrifice} by {Drowning} an {Effigy-of-Regret}.]
Another spellscar joined the growing throng of others within the host of Baethen’s soul and he welcomed it like an innkeep welcomes a vagrant for he was not so unaware to mistreat an angel in disguise—this dominion was more than worth its weight in gold.
The feyry spirit touched its left socket with the very same paw that had taken half of Baethen’s sight and then it stared back at him with his own left eye, steely iris beset with a round pupil. Deals with d?mons were something else, alright.
“[Time for me my dues to pay, good sirs.
“[Hearken, O weary travellers,
“[For mine is the truth and the truth is thus:
“[The left-hand path, that way lies death.
“[The right-hand path, that way lies madness.
“[Choose between certain sleep and the convocation of angels fell’d.
“[O good sirs, thank ye and fare ye well.”
The sphyntrixes did a little twirl, its wings wrapping around its feline body before it disappeared in a puff of feathers and fur, having stolen one of Baethen’s eyes. Babylon’s d?mons were not known to be so wily or mischievous but rather stoic and placid—becoming a feyry had corrupted the spirit and turned it trickster.
Tell no lie, the jest was on it rather than the other way around.
Having read the gnosis of his newest spellscar, Baethen didn’t regret the exchange one bit. He’d been hankering for a spirit-sight card of some sort for the longest time and he’d gotten it by exchanging the sight of his flesh. Had it been another one of their cadre, they wouldn’t’ve fared near half as good.
Baethen smiled at Haviershan with much the same grin as the disappear’d cat spirit, unnerving the older adventurer something fierce such that he sent a shiver down the man’s spine, evident even under his suit of plate. It just wasn’t right to be so excited after becoming half-blind or so he reckoned
<
The Captain signed to Narancan who was going this way and that to stab through the risen walls of loamy earth, targeting taproots. The Field-Ser carried the order to the others and they beat back a fighting retreat to the right-hand path.
Lac cut down any particularly aggressive verdour elementals that tried to capitalise on their withdrawal. Hagroot wasn’t particularly fast but it was stubborn so it would follow after them to the ends of Phantasmagoria but no farther than that.
As they withdrew, Baethen took the time to acclimate with his new-fangled arcana as he poisoned the earth with cinnabar blood. {Hypnagogia} was the realm of Nagalfaram, the waters that surrounded Babylon’s shore and encircled the Tower. It was the place all souls returned to after death and there they awaited the Boat-of-the-Damned to pick them up and ferry them to their next life.
As an arcana, it was not dissimilar to Akasha, being a prime dominion which couldn’t be abstracted any further. Where Death was a first-order arcana, Hypnagogia occupied a rung just below it in regards to metaphysical weight, as it were. It was the stuff of half-lidded dreams and visions of the yet-to-be, the shifting of shadows as you stared off into the night and the dawn breaking in the Rise.
This wasn’t anything that Baethen picked up from the expedition or even something he learned during his apprenticeship—this was the intrinsic knowledge of the arcane that had been stamped upon his very soul. He knew its meaning down to the marrow of his bones for it forwent flesh entirely.
To draw upon the dominion, he needed only to will it into being, and it would be so. Where the {Will-of-Mind} clause required conscious assent, {Focus-of-Spirit} could be called upon even during sleep which was fitting for the dominion’s arcana.
Implicitly knowing that he needed a target for the spell, Baethen picked a particularly large verdour elemental and then flexed an imaginary muscle inside his soul. Gnostic-glyphes etched themselves inside his mind’s eye, illuminating the form of the creature he held in thrall of blindness.
Player Scried: [Scarlet-Rotted-Hagroot-Briarwomb] ★★
Drawback: [Undone-by-the-Blood]
Arcana: [Ichor], [Sickness], [Roots]
Number: [III//XII]
Gnosis Φ: [‘An elemental spirit given physical form, inhabiting a vessel of once-verdant flesh now blessed by the scarlet rot of Yurnmagog’. This {Player} possesses {Intermediate-Dominion} over the {Arcana-of-Transubstantiation}, {Imbuing} its {Vessel} with the power to {Metamorphose} {Corpus} into {Scarlet-Rotted-Corpus} so long as said {Corpus} is {Bleeding} and in {Touch} with their own. For every {Scarlet-Rotted-Player} in the same {Locus} as the {Player}, they gain a {Brand-of-Gluttony} which {Empowers} {Cards} with the {Consumption-Clause}. This {Player} must {Consume} {Blood} every {Blink} lest they incur {Brand-of-Dessication}.]
Baethen’s blood ran cold as he grasped the connotations of what now lay bare before him. The bloodfly wyrd-plague was just another synonym for scarlet rot and it was an abomination. Though the ointment would protect from the worst of, say, bloodflies, being caught under the deluge of briarwombs would spell certain and horrid immortality.
Bloodflies could only infect so much as a wyrd-plague vector, needing to overpower low parity carded and uncarded players alike. They could not, wholesale, transform others into scarlet-rotted abominations just through touching a bleeding wound. Generally, only the cast-aways and destitute succumbed to the rot.
His {Blinded-Eye} couldn’t scry the Hands of the briarwombs so the particulars of their abilities would remain hidden. The gnosis provided more than enough information to get a basic understanding of a player’s capabilities, including their three major arcane dominions and prime drawback. Though Baethen did not know each and every card’s Scamander’s tendon, he did know the hagroot’s most glaring, general weakness: starvation.
They’d have to fight a war of attrition against them, seeing as they could share corpus with one another—a signature of scarlet rot. It had to be excised root and stem as even a single remnant of the wyrd-plague could act as a vector. The problem lay that scarlet rot wasn’t supposed to infect plant-life but hagroots were not truly so, instead a mix between flesh and verdour.
Baethen had yet to see any sickness about the colourful trees of the Feywilds but he’d not be sticking around to find out.
Arcana Interlogia
Map of the Kolithil Worldshard
Cruciata the Curse-Fire
Arcanum of Hypnagogia
Arcanum of Fire
Ta-ta.