Ahedmir Tavesh Tyrsson woke up Baethen at the crack of dawn.

  “Miro.” The crippled adventurer smiled weakly but there was a fire in his eyes that hadn’t been there before. “I had a thought of throwing you over my shoulder once I returned from the tower and carrying you to bed—unfortunantly, fate had other plans in store.”

  Miro chuckled though the pain at the corner of his crow’s feet still shone through as he looked at the ruin that was Baethen’s left arm.

  “Sorry ‘bout the delay lad. Got caught up in hunting rogue godspawn that fled the tower, I did. Yer a sight for me sore eyes, ye know that right?”

  Baethen grinned and uncaring for the pain that wracked his body, lifted himself up by his right elbow and said: “Kiss me already, you fool.”

  ////

  Miro had helped Baethen back to their house with an arm under his left pit. Lazara had forbade him from any card-playing beyond the mundane kind for the next nineday so he could recover enough for the cartomancer. This included most physical exertion.

  Most but not all. The next nineday, though utterly devoid of any true magicking, was not a boring one. Not at all.

  ////

  “Alright, lad. That’s enough for today—ye’ll suck the life outta me if this continues. The spirit is willin’ but the flesh is spent.”

  Baethen lifted a brow as he got up from the cot and stretched, naked and languidly, knowing the reaction he was provoking with a rakish grin.

  “Last I saw, you were the one who couldn’t keep his hands off me.” It was midmorning so there was some gravel in his throat. “Don’t forget to drink the potion—your trull liver can’t neutralise all the lead and quicksilver by itself.”

  “Aye, aye—go on, git.”

  ////

  Baethen hardly recognised himself in the mirror any longer. His hair had turned a burgundy scarlet, owing to the high amount of iron and his skin was now entirely grey like that of the Nezarri on the other side of the Dreadsea; there was a metallic sheen to it and a durability not unlike treated ironhide leather. A blade would be hardly cut him without force behind it though he now had to ingest various metals lest he die of starvation.

  It was the strangest thing to feel a hugner towards lead of all things but Baethen made do with a nail a day—specially made of an amalgam of all the metals he needed, he suckled on it like a cane of moonsugar though decidedly bitter rather than sweet.

  Water no longer agreed with him much, making it so that he had to change to a semi-solid method rather than downing a slurry of metals.

  He wore a tunic of burgundy thread with a filigree of false-gold—a gift from Miro—and some Nezarri breeches tightened around the calves but left to billow above the knees with pointed shoes that were all the rage this side of the Sapphire Isle. It had been a bitch and a half to fold his left sleeve lest it billow and he wore an eye-patch to cover his blindness so that he did not appear as some revenant returned from the grave against the will of Nagalfaram.

  Today was the day that Baethen would attempt to purge the devil from his soul.

  ////

  In a Turn-of-Eot’s time, the settlement of Towerfell would become a proper city like that of Reordranhall though it would scarcely compare to the Woedenite capital of Amn which was kept anchored to Eot through the Evergaols of the five major holdfasts of the Isle. Baethen had yet to visit the City-of-Nowhere, having merely heard the tales of its vast splendours. He reckoned it would be bound to Deadman’s Point by the end of the turn.

  Rimare-Tul had already grown by leaps and bounds with highwalls needing to be erected further out in concentric circles like those within the heartwood of an oak. Hallow-lights were scattered about every which corner to ward-off any Gehennic manifestation—so long as there was fear in the world, Scaduphomet had a breachhead through which to enter into Eot.

  The streets were made of flagstones and yet-to-be-paved, so there was a goodly amount of muck about it owing to the Azure Forest’s nature. It was the start of summer, balmy enough that all were covered in a lather of sweat from the heat of day or a layer of dew from the cold of night. The expedition had arrived at Deadman’s Point in the turn’s second round, on the Seventh of Ragnvald, and a whole round had passed with the cadre within the tower, their exit being on the Thirteeth of the fourth round, that of Volsung. A tenday had passed since then so it was on the Tenth of Abidan that Baethen quested after the cartomancer’s tent.

  It was located near what was tentatively-called the Numbers Quarter, where other itenerant priests and sages had set up shop. Lazarra had erected a middling temple to Morophesh there which Baethen promised to himself that he’d visit after the cartomancer’s abode.

  The canvas was amaranthine, the colour of amethysts and bruises and wine. Censers hung from the rafters of the large tent, hallow-lights and opaline prisms dancing to the hot and heavy sirrocco wind. This cartomancer, evident by their dream-catchers and other fatal effigies, was sworn to Fata-Morgana rather than Evenhanded Hsarash or Broken-Babylon; the Triune-of-Lots which governed the laws of the Divine Gamble. A magi-of-cards could stake their soul upon any of the Triune or even all three for that matter though it was difficult to balance the jealousy of the Lady Luck.

  Though his only encounter with feyries had been a troubled one, Baethen entered the tent all the same, passing through the veiled threshold of tinkling beads. Not all angels o’ fate were black-hearted monsters, he told himself. The Seelie Court were known to be kind though strict, and he would trust in Their reputation given such was from whence They drew Their power. All gods trafficked in the goods of faith and no greater coin was there than worship and clout.

  The interior of the cartomancer’s tent was a study in organised chaos. Mommets of all kinds littered the place, set upon collapsable furniture that was decorated with feyry-script and tassels that ebbed in invisible winds. Will-o’-wisps floated within jars and the eye-sockets of gilded saint-skulls to illuminate the space with warm, welcoming firelight—an alternative to hallow-laterns that did not keep require a holocaust offering to maintain.

  It was the cartomancer that took Baethen’s attention the most: an elderly woman that had not lost her beauty through the years but rather only attained more of it through a healthy dose of magicking and good humour. She did not have crows feet for only laughing gulls perched upon those smiling, crescent eyes of hers. Her dress was that of a wytch, coloured a sungold yellow with a dandelion pattern that, though simple, had the air of quality about it.

  She sat at the crux of that storm of objects and strange sights, a calm, orderly eye of a scrying table breaking apart the disorder. It was a circular slab of blackest-alabaster, a tarot-deck placed upon the very centre of it all, waiting to be drawn so that she might read another’s fate. The divine-stone was anchored through a series of woodwrought lattices, some manner of ebony run through with cold iron.

  The rhythmic sound of child’s feet alerted Baethen to a housely spirit, a hoblyn, pitter-pattering about the shadows of the tent, dusting it and removing feyry droppings that smelt of mint and took the form of fallen-leaves coloured like the Bifr?st.

  “Sit, my friend, sit. What brings you to Old Coriska’s doorstep?”

  Baethen looked back at the beaded tapestry that the cartomancer placed upon the threshold and jested: “I’ve come to sell you a door.”

  ////

  Old Coriska was jovial woman, her laughs though shrill were hearty in the sense of mirth. She poured Baethen tea spiced with mirrh and black lotus petals, the latter of which was a potent elixir for the cultivaiton of the arcana of holy Death; just a whiff of the stuff got him coughing and feeling the grey take root in his little hairs. Though not fresh and considered dregs of the true harvest, the spirit-herb was sold by the sanctioned necromancers of the various noble catacombs of Reordranhall. Black lotuses could only gestate within water blessed by Nagalfaram, gathered in great stone bowls within sepulchres, away from the rot and impurity yet close to death all the same.

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  “Tricky, lad. She’s got you by the stones, all right.”

  Baethen coughed though this time it had nothing to do with spirit-herbs.

  “You’ve already incurred two rivenings so far; a third needs to be done with great care at your rank.” With her brows scrunched up, the wytch tapped at her chin with a long and wicked talon lacquered with tar. “Place your hand upon the black-alabaster and let me scry your stars. I need to know the details of your soul-deck before we begin in earnest.”

  He did as he was bid and saw the godly-glyphes etched themselves upon the scrivening table under the cartomancer’s coaxing. Her gnarled hands wove about the air, drawing sigils unseen yet heard of within the spirit—hand-seals were just another manner in which to conjugate Omniglot.

  <<[Unblind me before the Tower so that I might see the Rungs of the Ladder-that-Leads-to-Heaven.]>> The wytch Wove, fingers in place of tongue. It wasn’t unheard of to have an Omniglot card that functioned off of the {Gesture-of-Hand} clause instead of the more common {Word-of-Mouth}. Though common was relative as cards that granted one the ability to speak in tongues were few and far between, concentrating within the Magus Invesititure or, in the case of rarer lordly sets, that of the Tower.

  Just as all akashic towers had rungs divisible by five, so too did one’s Babel have five layers or floors, each corresponding to a star-parity. Baethen’s was given a visual representation, inverted within the reflection of the scrying table’s dark stone, a deck of cards placed at its centre. Beyond the foundation of his tower, there were the begginings of divine scaffolding, his soul having begun its acension to cleave closer to Babylon the House-of-the-Gods.

  Generally, most tradesmen—or even soldiers for that matter beyond those lucky few born to clansmen or having survived a tower-delve—would never pass the first threshold. It was the first crossing where a player shed their mortality and grew closer to the arcana, not merely a vessel to hold the numinous but a semi-numinous being in their own right.

  ////

  Player Scried: [Baethen-Locke] ★

  Lynchpin: [Reshuffle] ★★★★★

  Arcana: [Death], [Mercury], [Fire]

  Drawback: [Cat-Got-Your-Tongue]

  Number: [0//XXII]

  Gnosis Φ: [‘The longevity of a god and the mortality of a man, within a single soul’. This {Player} possesses {Absolute-Dominion} over the {Arcana-of-the-Traveller}, allowing them to {Fool} the {World}. This {Player} can never {Reveal} the {Secret} of their {Lynchpin} for it would {Unravel} the {Wyrd} and {Upend} all of {Creation}; and so, their {Tongue} is {Bound}.]

  ////

  “By the Ravening of Amon-Toth! Never seen a five-star Lynchpin; you the king’s bastard, lad? Did your mum get buggered by a wandering archangel?”

  Thank all Twenty-One, Numbered Gods and the One-Without-Number that Baethen had already signed a soul-contract with the cartomancer before making use of her services. She would not and could not disclose his secrets to anyone nor could she break the binding oath without losing her memory thereof; standard fair for this sort of augury.

  “First time I’ve actually had any in-depth information on my own soul-card.” He said, drawing his Lynchpin from his heart and placing its manifest-form upon the augury-table. The black-alabaster rippled as if a pool of blessed death-water.

  “Strange! Downright wyrd, I’d say.”

  Baethen entirely agreed with her—nothing placed within a person’s soul could hide such secrets from the bearer unless they were a foreign, incorporeal spirit taking possession of a new vessel. Which, given the appearance of an avatar of Loken, might actually be the case.

  “Curious and curiouser. Say, lad, what did this wandering god say to you? What were its words, exactly.”

  A sudden and impending sense of doom took root in Baethen’s tongue then. By his strangled fit of cough and convulsions, the cartomancer got the gist of his drawback. It felt as if a cascading set of chains had erupted from the depths of his very soul, wrought entirely from himself, his essence, ceasing any attempt to speak from the inside-out. His mind was bent about itself such that he doubted even a truth-teller or inquisitor could force the words out of his throat.

  “Drawbacks in the manner of [Cat-Got-Your-Tongue] tend not to appear directly within the clauses of certain cards and are implied instead though rarely omitted to this degree—by my reckoning, you’ve never had this difficulty before going by your reaction?” He nodded. “Aye, guessed as much. Scrying, as an art, is about revelation of the hidden and the invisible. This newly-awoken restriction has likely been, well, awoken, by my auguries. Like prodding at a sleeping beast and it swatting away the pest that threatens its slumber.”

  Old Coriska tutted and tsked, her gnarled talon tapping away at her scrunched mental protuberance—that fleshy bit at the chin with a habit for wrinkling when one was deep in thought or lunacy.

  “The Devil and the Fool fight over your soul. One chases after your shadow and the other seeks to take your flesh.” Her voice took on the quality of profundity then, not merely that of a mortal woman but instead a magi. “Fate circles above, the great vulturess of opportunism seing a toy that Her sibilings covet and that She must take for Fate suffers no masters but Herself.”

  Her eyes blazed with the cerulean of the afternoon sky, cloudless and translucid in its intensity. “I see many threads binding you—chains yet to be linked, shackles now apparent and manacles you seek to free yourself from.”

  It seemed as if she might reach out and pluck at the tapestry of his destiny then but mayhaps that was mere performance. At his sceptical look, the wytch chuckled goodnaturedly but not without a certain amount of patronising knew-better-than-you infused into her tut-tut.

  “We are all actors on a stage, young Locke. Some of us merely know it better than others and can adjust the direction of the narrative, having peered past the veil ignorance. What might seem like smoke and mirrors can become very real indeed.”

  She tapped then at the representation of his card-meld [Parlour-Tricks] upon the scrying table and he came to understand: there was power in belief, theatrics, rituals and roles.

  Phantasms of all kinds, owing to their nature of being spirits and thus ethereal, could be interacted with through illusory fonts so long as they did not know of it. [Cruciata-the-Curse-Fire] enhanced his physical strength and speed so long as he wielded it as was its reckoning; just as removing tokens from one’s Tabula or an artefact from one’s Hand, the world needed to be tricked to make a falsehood into truth.

  He knew all this things to be evident though he’d never worded them so or strung them together into a coherent whole. His pragmatism had blinded him from the profoundity hidden within something oh so very simple.

  “So long as you play the part of the enigmatic cabalist, the Wyrd grants you power in accordance with the role.”

  Her mad-hatter grin split Old Coriska from ear to ear and her silence was answer enough.

  “The first step to severing yourself from these old threads karmic is to sow new seeds within the fallow fields of your soul.” She continued without further acknowledgement of his supposition. “In less flowery speech: you need to fold in your newest set into your main deck and be careful in its curation. This has three primary functions and a fourth to bind reason to result.”

  She lifted a finger, “to bolster your Tower so it can survive the coming rivening. Imagine adding struts to a wall so you can better remodel it without wasting the precious stone. Since the set is most compatible to your deck’s starting point, it should provide much-needed stability.”

  Then came a second, “to skew your arcanums towards your desired arcana and away from those you wish to excise. Like a well-cared-for garden, you must not suffer weeds lest serpents hide within grass left to grow wild.”

  Third, “is to give yourself something to work on without prodding at the scars and scabs. Cards, Baethen Locke, do not merely provide magical abilities or evident boons; they influence you from within, housed inside your very soul. Each and every card you add into your heart will change you from the core of your bones outward—a steadfast and stolid card will endow the very same upon your being.”

  Left unsaid was the fact that Baethen had thought himself clever for wearing the skin of a devil, In reality, it had worn his own and been subtly warping him to fit its ethos—that of fear, destruction and despair.

  “To tie all three into the final fourth,” the wytch made a circular flourish of her outstretched digits into a tight-fisted curl, as if gathering them into a singular whole in flesh would do so in spirit, “is to remind you of the man that had thrown his lot in with a band of brothers and sisters in arms; the lad who saw the world in so much greater joy and could look himself in the mirror without flinching or entertaining the madness of the serpent that eats its own tail.”

  Cartomancers did not merely work with the cards within one’s soul but also the soul itself; divesting oneself of their secrets and shames was paramount lest a cartomancer work off of a wrong supposition and cause more damage to one’s spirit. Like a mender o’ bone or flesh, if you did give them the full reckoning of your illness, they were likely to do more harm than good.

  And so Baethen had told her how every time he thought to look himself in the eye, an image would come unbidden to the forefront of his mind: that he would see himself in a monstrous fashion, horns unfurling from his temple and eyes alfame with sulphur and night. When he did not see that fear come bear, it felt wrong as if the world was mocking him or that he was making a jest of it all.

  ‘I should look like a monster,’ he knew this to be true in such an intimate surety and steadfast confidence that no one could dissuade him from it. The fact that the cartomancer hadn’t confronted him over it was testament to that fact. That he should be branded for what he was for all to see. That none would persuade him otherwise from that bone-deep certainty.

  “How?” He asked, so softly at first that he’d thought it a figment of his addled mind. When Baethen realised he’d given the black regret a breachhold into the waking world it was already too late and so his words came out one after the other. “How can I ever go beyond the shape of the scars I’ve wrought? The evil that I indulged in, willingly and without duress?”

  It was selfish he knew but he said it all the same: “I can never walk back the thrice-damned path I’ve set myself upon to a time where I did not run so desperatly from my sins or their wages—it’s like there is an uncleanliness about my soul that I cannot scrape away even with strong spirits or draughts.”

  He was clawed at the stump of his left arm then, drawing cinnabar as he raked loathing into flesh. Baethen only found the will to stop when it was evident he was staining the rugs. It wasn’t in him to be so self-absorbed. In front of another person, that is.

  “Forgive me—do you have a rag I can use to clean after myself?”

  Old Coriska did not offer him pity, did not give in to the empty reprieve of false promises and did not steal from him the surety that he’d never be the same. She did not console him and said simply: “I may do that myself; I know how to handle a spill of alchemical infusions. Please take the rest of the day to calm your spirits, lad, and return on the morrow for we’ve no middling amount of work to do.”

  Numbly and a little lost, Baethen gave her a grim nod and left.

  ////

  Ta-ta.