Divorarel

Neo Babylon

Despite of their best efforts, the Rats were unable to get the drop on the travelers.

The drug-addled vulture was the first to wake and the first to react, screeching at them in her horrible alien language that somehow only became more unbearable as the city’s barrier began to translate her screeching into something passably human, but it was 017 who demanded all of their attention. Although not much taller than a child she released a blinding white light that lit up the entire street as if it were day, and though the effect diminished the further one was from her, not a single soul in the retreating tide of flesh left that evening without spots blooming in the corner of their vision.

And run they did, all of their confidence evaporating like shadows in the daylight.

Some were fast, some were slow, but by the time 017 was railing against the warehouse door there was not a one left to tell her that these storage units were not only locked but well protected too. Nothing but the rattling chain as she pulled and the presence of a relatively new lock. Perhaps the large man in stone might be able to split it if he applied a bit of the herculean strength he must have but given the minimal presence of rust this close to the ocean it stood to reason that this place was not quite as abandoned as the howling wind and empty alleys seemed to imply.

Then there were the three.

“That’s fucked up,” The man snarled as he wrenched his way out of Hafadac’s grip with a visible limp. His disposition was not nearly so pleasant, losing the life he’d clearly left behind had embittered him, being beaten by a glorified flashlight before the first blow had landed only made things worse. If allowed to keep pulling away he’d half-fall and half-sit on the ground before the group with smoldering hatred in his eyes.

thunk

Not long after the largest of the Rats surrendered too, in spirit if not verbally. Dropping the piece of rebar stuck in concrete that he’d been preparing to use like a sledgehammer after one look at Gregor, fighting was hopeless, his black face littered with visible scars that only made the defeated stare towards their leader all the more profound. ‘Say something’ his eyes pleaded, less prepared to die than he’d first imagined.

“P-please don’t kill us.”

It was the girl who swallowed her pride first, hands in the air, face so smudged with dirt it had become a part of her complexion and knees shaking as she stepped to the fore. She’d seen Rats beaten to death just for showing their faces in other parts of Neo Babylon, but these were travelers, and perhaps on the off chance that they came from somewhere mercy was still a thing she pleaded again.

“We won’t do it again, we promise, so please don’t kill us.”

“Or at least get it over with,” The sour man spat. “Your little light show is bound to attract attention and I’d rather die quick than be turned into an example by syndicate scum.”

***

Somewhere on the distant moon forty-nine members of CNTRL ALT ELITE that had logged into the Mega Dungeon alongside Haia awoke to find themselves in space, standing upon the pock marked ridge of Luna’s bleeding crust with a distant blue marble staring at them in the background, oddly they’d no trouble breathing in space and their UI seemed largely absent in favor of a more…

Immersive experience.

It took a minute for them to wake up and chatter among themselves, discovering what powers they retained and which ones had been removed with the latest update to realize that they were not alone. For somewhere roughly approximate to the crater’s center there sat the makings of a lonely city formed entirely of crystal, barely visible if not for the stark contrast it cut with the landscape and which each gust of stellar wind it seemed to whistle for them to come closer.

@Shinny @Circ @THE ADORATION @odium

Celestial Duel — Shinny Vs Anshin

I KNOW

“How unexpectedly childish,” Beramode’s mask did not have any discernible facial features and yet still managed to capture his disappointment perfectly in the abstract dance of shadows across its smooth black surface, then he draw one card and placed a second face down in the spell/trap zone. “Very well then, I shall squeeze the information from you once I’m done demolishing your deck, until then I play the Black Dog Justicar in attack mode. Like all Black Dog Mercenaries he gains a bonus for every member of the corporation on the playing field. The Pack of Dogs then lowers your Zombie Knights defense points with suppressing fire leaving him woefully exposed to my Justicar’s attack.”

As he spoke, another metalloid appeared amid the crowd, it took the form of a bolder mercenary. Like all the others its power armor still had that faintly canine aesthetic, especially the helmet, but this one carried a large electrified blade which it proudly stabbed through the largest of the ghosts whilst it was busy being peppered with little metal flechettes and seemingly banished the wailing spirit to oblivion merely for existing.

“And that will be all for this turn.”

Beramode had two cards in hand, two monsters on the field—one in attack and the other on defense, and two face-down spells. Momentum was seemingly in his favor but Kur had control of the field. Things could take a nasty turn next round but then that was the fun of this sort of thing was it not…?

THAT'S WHY I STUCK

All around the perimeter choice members of the assembled Black Dogs drew electrified long swords, each one snarling with ether and carving deep burning gouges in those zomboids unlucky enough to make it past the hail of gunfire. Burns that did not heal via magic. For the time being it seemed as though their kill box was well-maintained with Rodrigo himself being the only one bold enough to penetrate it and that from the outside.

“Am I supposed to be impressed, Hector? You had the chance to rebuild the world from the ashes. You could have been a king, a hero, a god. Instead you choose to be a petty drug lord always nipping at the heels of men greater then you…” Rodrigo drew his own enlarged version of the longswords the other Black Dogs were wielding, in his hands it was a standard length weapon, but he was also an eight foot tall cyber mutant and the sword he carried was easily longer than this Cavalerio was tall. “Together we could have taken down Solomon, if only you’d had the foresight to see past your nose. Now you will die standing side-by-side with this gringo.”

The fight did not seem a fair one, Rodrigo was toying with it, parrying each blow with criminal ease. Even sending the hunk of junk stumbling with a well-placed kick that nearly tore it in half. But That honor was reserved for the final sweep of his blade—the snarl of electricity as it passed through the amalgamated sheet metal armor and the explosion that followed a solid cover for his next command.

[I have him distracted, take the shot.]

Rodrigo knew Hector’s tricks well enough, nothing short of obliteration would kill the Narco Lich… His friend though? David seemed to be a regular guy by all accounts and if he was a regular guy then he would die an extraordinary death as one of the Black Dog Scouts on a roof hundreds of meters away pulled the trigger, firing a single Ether Piercing Round, it punched through Hector’s barrier leaving a smoldering hole in the mystic barrier on its mission for a one-way meeting with David’s temple—his brain—and then the other side if all things worked as planned.

“You ought to take better care of your associates, Hector. Knowing you is liable to shorten lifespans.”

TO JUST ONE

Purr-fect Betrayal

Anfield was used to dealing with bickering women, with seven beautiful aunts and two doting sisters, he’d been trained in the art of handling the fairer sex since before he could walk . Always the charmer, there was nobody in their big bickering family who did not like the Serpent’s Second Son, even his big brother tolerated him and Mikhail very didn’t like anyone.

It was surely a shock to anyone familiar with Anshin’s reputation, infamous for being terse and rude, to find that the child who most resembled him physically was the least like him in terms of personality. By the time he was a teenager he’d become an infamous heartbreaker around Lescatie. Now that he was in his early twenties it would not be unfair to call him something of a man whore, though he’d bristle at the harshness of the term. He was also pretty strong. Every one of his siblings was required to train in the family martial art lest they grow up incapable of controlling the prodigious strength they had inherited from their father and he considered a burden, publicly, once upon a time he'd—no no—it wasn’t worth remembering that dream…

“Ladies, ladies.” Anfield’s voice was calming, smooth, and deep. “There’s no need to fi—YOWCH!”

KZZZAP

Before he could finish the first proper sentence one of the women standing beside his gilded cage jabbed him in the side with what looked like a golden fishing pole, its blunt head blue with electricity, the pain was more in the surprise of it but the way the static snarled at the air it was made clear that it could do much more if the woman on the other side wished it so.

“Your opinion is unwanted and unneeded by this council, male, your silver tongue is charming. But do not think that we have encountered your kind before. Now be quiet and await your fate.”

Anfield’s handsome brow furrowed into a pout but he said nothing further. Standing before them with a pair of golden shackles on his wrists that appeared designed to mitigate his supernatural abilities and bars of hard light beside him, they had stripped him to examine him earlier, but had been kind enough to return his work uniform to him after they were done including the scalped Krillian head that served as his hat. The amazon on his right was mousy for her kind and still a foot taller than him. The other one, with bandages over her still broken nose, was significantly larger than that and leaning as close to him as the shimmering cage bars would allow with a sneer on her face.

_{“I will enjoy being the first one to take you,”} She hissed.

‘As if…’

Anfield may have seemed sleazy to anyone who knew about his body count but he was pretty big on the whole consent thing, and this wasn’t it, even if a few of those body colors were pretty interesting to think about he just wasn’t terribly interested in women who were that much bigger than he was. Being shorter than six-two wasn’t that big an ask was it? With long dark brown hair and tanned skin, he had the same pretty face his dad had when he was younger with all the charm he’d never had to pull it off, emerald eyes and sharp teeth and a big—not now. And when the women weren’t looking he smoothed his hands over the large golden padlock that chained his wrists together at the center, one on top and one below, using vibrations he figured out the lock mechanisms so that when he plucked out one of his eyelashes and used it as a pick he was able to flip it in a matter of moments.

_{‘Unaru no Hebi: Persistence Opens All Doors’}

“Hey, is he like, whispering something stupid right now?”

Click-Click

Just like that the shackles on his wrist came undone and the padlock dropped to the floor between his feet with a heavy ding. Thirty angry stares closed in on him from all around the room. The two guards on the other hand seemed almost excited to finally have the opportunity to take a swing at him as they thrust their staves into the bars, and right before they struck he jumped, using naught but his palms he gripped the near smooth roof his cage and coiled his legs up over the twin thrusts. Then in the millisecond that the friction died he came crashing back down heels first. The golden staves snapped beneath his feet and died sputtering deaths while the very solid floor fell out beneath the three of them, bars unbroken and cage unbent, he’d still managed to free himself via the path of least resistance before using the shackles that had fell from his wrists like a pair of whips to smack one guard in the face then the other.

“Sorry to disappoint you ladies, you’re all lovely, but I am very not interested in your proposal.”

Struck by the incredulity of it all the amazons didn’t move an inch as he jogged out of the chancery, only to come jogging back in half-a-second later so he could yank the keys from the hip of the very mean one whose nose he’d fractured twice on one day. And that was too much. Alarms sounded behind him and where first guards were too befuddled to do anything about the bright orange shrimp rushing just beneath their line of sight now they started attacking, up and over and below, he dodged every swing along the way as he tried his hardest to remember where the other prisoners were kept. Likely below ground. But just as his brow furrowed the sweetest scent hit his nose, food—glorious food, he’d eaten nothing but the Krillians protein bile for the past three months he’d been at sea and the smell of it struck him so hard he very nearly tripped into a wall.

“Sh-shit… they can wait for a few minutes.” He muttered with hands splayed before him. Waiting until the last moment to juke out of the way of an incoming strike and between the woman responsible’s legs, tripping her into the gaudy picture frame of some teal-skinned noble that was too high-up and too-tall for him to truly appreciate, and most importantly freeing him to dash towards the kitchen. “Just a detour lads, that’s all, to get my strength back, I promise!”

The Family Biz [Open To Apply]

I made a post and it's just pawful.

The Family Biz [Open To Apply]

Samantha Ansegisel—Sammie if she liked you; and she didn’t like you—was a girl on a mission. Marching through the streets of Aeternus with her back straight and her nose in the air. Once upon a time she might have right there beside the devils and demons of this blighted city bargaining for the souls of the unaware but not anymore, she’d turned over a new leaf, she was an agent of high heaven.

An angel, in-training, an intern if you will.

So determined was she that Samantha walked right past a man being turned into stone by a gorgon. Drunkards pissed in fountains and dragons tore through buildings and she ignored every one of them, marching all the way up to Pleiades Casino & Resort with the black gym bag carrying her magic staff clutched against her side. Samantha was not particularly large by any standard. Only four-foot-ten, but that made her two inches taller than her master and exceptionally large for a cat, which she almost certainly was. Don’t be fooled by black sailor uniform with its pink ascot and pleated skirt. Samantha was covered in fine white fur from head to toe, despite trotting on two legs, with cat ears hanging lopsidedly out either side of an off-kilter black hat. Sure she had pink hair but some cats do. Do not be fooled by the fake wings on her back or the mask that she wears, depicting a cats face, because only an idiot would think a cat (demonic) would disguise herself as a cat (also demonic).

Samantha strategically times her approach behind a man she did not know was named Aleck with all the confidence of a bodyguard before breaking away as he exchanged a—frankly absurd—sum of money and turned her attention to the front lobby. A demons age did not correlate with its height. Some of them were very tiny and would always be that way, like imps for example, but they were oft bullied because of it which is why there was no ‘short people’ service desk beside the one that she could barely peek over with slitted feline eyes and stare at the attractive vaguely female thing they put up front.

“Can I help you, young lady.”

Her tail crinkled with elation, the disguise was working.

“Purrhaps, I’m here on very important mission, can mew direct me to Mister Vileiro’s office?”

“I’m afraid he’s busy, can I help you with something?”

Expecting this answer already, Samantha had chosen her smuggest mask for the day, reaching into her coat pocket to produce a sky-blue business card that she promptly slid across the desk and in the demon’s direction. There was a golden cross on front and doves flying away from it. And in florid gold script it read: [Ansegisel Exorcism Services]

“It’s furry important that I see him as soon as pawssible, I’m here to kill him you see.”

“. . .”

“In the name of God, pawcourse.”

Celestial Duel — Shinny Vs Anshin

EVERY MAN IS GUILTY

Beramode could not help the invisible smirk that passed over his face when Krü revealed that he was not only prepared to duel but had been hiding his very own game mat in plain sight this entire time. Unlike Krü, the King of the Night had ascended beyond hatred long ago, had quite literally torn it from his chest and cast it out into the stars where it had evolved over the course of thousands of years to become its own lifeform.

What the people of Neo Babylon now called The Dragon.

With a snap of his wrist one of the shadows hiding up his sleeve shot straight out and then back, forming what by outward appearances was the blade of a scythe stretching back along the outside of his forearm. A modification of, one might even say edgier version, the infamous duel disk. When Beramode placed his deck against the bulky pivot point connecting the blade to his wrist it sank into the shadows, melding with them, disappearing from sight completely before depositing five into his waiting hands. “Excellent,” Was his only reply. Whether he meant the game or his hand unknown. “Tell me about yourself, Krü, I do not mean to brag but I am at least somewhat infamous on this side of the central finite curve while you have managed to elude my senses until this very moment.”

Beramode placed two cards face down on the bottom rung another face up.

“I play Pack of Dogs in defense mode, as you can see, they will open fire on any monsters you play. Suppressing Fire, I believe they call it, the overall effect will lower their attack and defense for the next turn if you don’t do anything about it and leave you open to my next ploy.”

Just as he spoke, one of the floating metalloids picked up on the divine exchange between them, it splits into five different bodies like a peeling fruit and each took the form of a Black Dog soldier. Crouching on Beramode’s side of the field, guns aimed in Krü’s direction, they too wanted to play.

OF ALL THE GOOD

[We’ve lost visual on the target.] [Switching to ether vision.] [Retreating to a safe altitude.]

The Black Dog’s comms were a buzz with chatter about the newest development but if the troops felt anything akin to fear or intimidation, it did not show in the hollow static of their voices, that alone pleased Rodrigo who did naught but raise his right hand to flag down his second-in-command.

“Maintain suppressive fire, I’m going in.”

With Ether Vision the world was a glow, the flow of potential energy laid bare for his men to see, Rodrigo did not need goggles when he had already upgraded his eyes to see the nascent dreams of the world. Stronger in living entities than in inanimate objects. Webbing itself through the fetid flesh of newly made corpses exposing the lich’s cursed magic for it really was, parasitism, he weaved around the nearest weed zombie with criminal ease moments before it exploded a second time from incoming suppressing fire and made his way towards the center.

Juanito Deleto had been Hector’s right-hand for quite a while, his nickname though silly had been well-earned, many of the drug lords enemies political or otherwise had disappeared from this life so to see him twitching back into being with fetid mold springing out of the gaping bullet wounds brought no small joy to Rodrigo. His body took to the mutagenic agents with frightening alacrity, growing stronger than before where already he’d been a massive man in every sense of the word, but even the crustacean claw that ripped out of the fragile flesh of his right arm was not enough to catch Rodrigo with its first sweeping snip.

“You’ve always been an arrogant prick, Rodrigo.” He said with blood bubbling in his throat. “Always bragging about how tough you are but all you ever do is dodg—”

With but a single tap of his knuckles the conversation came to a close. It seemed no faster than a pat on the shoulder but the ripples that flowed throughout Juanito’s belly pulverized what remained of his skeleton like crashing waves before all at once, he exploded backwards, broad shouldered back bursting open to shoot chunks of bone and smoldering gore in the direction of Hector and his friend. There was a lot of killing ground left between him and his quart. Plenty of time for them to bring a new trick to bear, but with the helicarrier drawing back into position and the scouts taking their bead, it wasn’t like Rodrigo planed to let his quarry rest easy while he stalked towards them.

“Is this what you signed your life away, Hector? All I’m seeing are the same old tricks.”

HE DID NOT DO

Neo Babylon

Group one is green.

Neo Babylon

For a phenomenon that scientists routinely describe as falling through a crack between universes, the process of surprisingly gentle, one moment you are:

Fighting for your life in a battle you cannot hope to win…

Dying in the back of an ambulance…

Passing through the veil in search of a cure for the uncurable…

Blissfully binging a brand new game…

And the next you’re gone, the world goes black, and you’re dreaming.

***

When next you wake it is to the sound of a bell ringing in the distance, deep and loud, cutting clean through the midnight fog that crept up on you while you were sleeping and thrusting you into the stark reality of your current situation. Beneath you damp concrete. The sky is dark and waves can be heard breaking against the shore in the distance if your hearing is keen enough, the area is all but empty, empty save for you and the bodies around you and the many keen eyes peering at you from between the many locked warehouses that pen you in. You cannot see the ocean but you can hear it nearby. In the sky hangs the moon, just one, wide as a saucer but with a visible chunk torn from the northeastern hemisphere like someone detonated a massive bomb beneath the surface and the wound continued to bleed into the vast empty sky even now.

But most of all, you cannot sense anything; long range sensors, divine connections, spiritual bonds. You are completely and totally alone in this world. For some of you this means nothing, of course, you’ve lived your whole life an autonomous individual but for others separation is worse than death. What you can feel is an intense spiritual pressure pressing down on you from every angle.

This is the Wharf, the safest place in Neo Babylon, but you don’t know that yet. It’s also the only place in the city where the homeless population is treated better than garbage on the side of the road, frequent patrols and the presence of shelters make it the most ideal place to live a life on the street, as if such a thing were possible. And it has made the rats bold. In Neo Babylon those without power, money, or the technology to make up for a lack of both are better off death. The average survival rate of someone living on the streets can be measured in months and the possibility of bouncing back is next to none, once you’re there it’s over, nobody thinks about it with how widely publicized all the supernatural occurrences that happen on a daily basis are but most of the people who fall in through the so-called Rift are normal versions of whatever passes for human in their corner of the universe.

It’s a tough life, and it only gets tougher.

The man in the lead seems like he might have been someone once, he’s still a bit handsome beneath the unkempt facial hair and bolder than usual as he stalks his way towards the group in a low crouch, behind him two more follow. A large man and a mousy woman. His hands twitch in their emptiness. He’s sizing up the group, it’s easy to see maybe—he thinks—he ought to try and kill the man in the armor before he can make trouble for himself. The boy who glows could be toxic for all he knows. Though that overgrown chicken sure looks like a fine meal…

In the end he settles for the small one, the robot, grabbing a large stone with two hands. He figures that metal chassis of hers will stand up to knives and fingers but a heavy blow from a blunt object might crack her open, technology is valuable in the city, scavenging it is one of the few get rich quick schemes that people on the lower end of society still clint too and she looks so much cleaner and smoother than any other machine he’s come across. So he hefts the stone high. Will you stop him? He doesn’t look particularly strong, none of them do, the rats are starving and even a moderate blow would likely snap them like twigs. Excepting maybe the large one. Will you talk to them instead? Surely they have valuable information to share being so close to the ground floor of this new place than anyone else…

Whatever it is, you better do it fast, you can see more of them are beginning to slip out of the shadows. Emboldened by the adventurous looters before them. You could stomp out any one of the rats as easy as taking a step but as your eyes adjust to this new dimension you start to realize that there are more of them than anticipated, a whole swarm of them, and the prospect of fighting the tidal wave at its apex is unappealing even for those of you blessed with unusual strength.

@Shinny @Circ @THE ADORATION @odium

The Picture of Theo Spyredes [Odium]

Edited to add a little color to my text.

The Picture of Theo Spyredes [Odium]

"And in the evening the outlook is cloudy with a chance of rapture.”

And thus after ninety years of ghosting her every invitation Beleth had a front-row seat to Beth’s very last show, playing for one night only: The Death and Rebirth of Bethany Lavaeux.

Bloody.

Heaving.

Violent.

As all births were want to be, with his third-eye Beleth saw the trillions of years behind preparing this ritual, stretching forward in time then twisting backwards until the heart of it beat like a drum beneath their very feet. He saw Narcissus scattered during his battle with the war maiden Christina. He saw Keith running for his life. He saw Mire, and Colossus, and Soran.

He saw the end of an era and the birth of a new one.

He didn’t bother to answer Bethany when she asked him about his motives, because it didn’t really matter, Beth as he knew it would be dead in a matter of moments and any answer he gave her would only raise more questions at this junction. There was no solace for her in death; she had committed too many sins to die quick. Her only peace of mind would come if she could accept that in dying she was to become part of a greater whole, and when she refused to accept that for an answer, she dumped a dead possum across his carefully arranged fortune table until his brow furrowed with frustration and his already bloodshot eyes bulged for a brief moment.

“Well now, there’s no need to be dramatic about it.”

Then she was gone, the thing that had been Beth stared at him with lust in its eyes, licking its hungry lips. Dangling one bony leg over the other like a pair of rusty hinges laid over each other and saying without speaking that it was curious beyond words about what a man who walked around in a three-piece suit and a giant stuffed teddy bear head might look like beneath the cover of night. Horrible was his answer; Skinless, raw, and red. Shared in the lidless blink of his bulging white eyes before Narcissus drew his next breath and became intoxicated with something else then something else again, swirling in half-remembered sensations until he was gone too, and Beleth realized with no small frustration that this was going to take a while…

***

Like most celebrities, there had been no shortage of rumors about Bethany’s involvement with the occult during her long and lurid career. Unlike most celebrities there was a somber air of truth about them. Where other A-listers flirted with the headlines amidst stories of cryptid sightings and new age sciences she dealt in human trafficking, mysterious disappearances, and in grand conspiracy. Beleth had not told her to do so. Rather, at some point she had deduced the true nature of her life’s great benefactor for herself and had made moves to follow in his footsteps, whether she believed this would someday wind up with her standing by his side like a lovestruck puppy or some instinctual part of her could feel the bars of her life’s cage closing in around her with every passing year was something even she did not know for certain.

All that could be said was that without ever having any children of her own the Leveaux Family was very large and the evil they had brought into this world was very real, they gathered now, standing on the beach praying in their robed whispers as the ocean heaved a great monolith out from the deep blue.

The non-believers, those who had gathered from the beach and the resort and its surrounding town, could not stand the sight of it and so began to devolve into the madness that had defined humanity’s time in this fragile cosmos up to this moment. But not the trueborn. As the sound of blood pleasure echoed through the air all around them the faithful remained penitent until finally their ascendant goddess was reborn in all of her glory, a coiled beehive of honey blonde hair atop her head, twirling with a song in her throat and her arms wide open. That one of their own had died to see her reborn did not register in the least. And as one they began to chant over the din of chaos, a loud penitent chorus that drowned out the chaos around them, that spoke to the very core of human nature and quelled the beastly instincts that had driven them into madness in the first place. And it went:

OOH EEH OOH AH AAH TING TANG WALLA-WALLA BING BANG!

Louder, and louder, and louder still until the walls of her chateau rattled. Until Beleth could feel it sinking its claws between the wrinkles of what remained of his gray matter, bulging at his temples and behind his eyes with every gross brainy throb until his fist slammed down on the table.

“Enough!”

The meat, bones, and viscera of some distant endangered island ancestor of the opossum shot from his table. Humans caught in its path collapsed in heaps riddled with a thousand small and not-so-small holes where the gore had passed through them. Any material that reached the dually named Apparatus struck with so much force that they quite literally atomized on contact, doing no damage to the casket or the body within, and that which missed splattered against the walls of her home. All at once the world seemed very much smaller now. Bethany was standing on a stage before Beleth, the mighty Apparatus beside her the size of an obedient dog, her family on their knees like many small children set to watch a play staring up with wide eyes and in a voice of forced calm he said two words: “Sit down.”

And, some distant part of Bethany that still lived on inside of Narcissus listened.

***

“If I had it my way, you would still be rotting in the deepest pit of hell, Theo. But it is not my choice. I am but the messenger for something greater than us both," Beleth went back to shuffling his deck. “You may have heard of him, or maybe not, my boss is Beramode Aurelius Pendragon—King of the Night, and he has heard of you. Before you ask, I don’t know why he’s interested in you. You don’t ask a man like Beramode things like why. You ask what you can do for him and what he will do for you in return, in this case, he went through all the trouble of bringing you back to life so he could send you on a journey…”

“And I am your guide.”

It was during this speech that Beleth laid down the first card, a smooth vantablack rectangle with round edges, with an abstract assortment of monochromatic color as if several cut-outs from the same sheet had been arranged to form an image. An image that seemed to move whenever the eye was not looking directly at it. Upon this first card there were white stars. Just a few of them sitting against a wide canvas of perfectly black space staring up at him like little eyes that winked closed when he wasn’t looking and added new ones when he was: The Night.

He placed that card closest to him.

“Here he is, waiting for you at the end of the road.”

He placed another card right beside that one. A lone gunman with his mouth covered by a bandana and the brim of his hat pulled low, standing idle before a kneeling man in a blindfold and flirting with the hammer of his gun every time Narcissus was not looking directly at him, his eyes could not be seen but the audience would know without knowing they were bloodshot: The Executioner.

Placed just beneath The Night, tucked up against its right-hand corner.

“This is me.”

And a third one, a jester with a wide r grin, jingle bells hanging from the ears of his hat and the tip of his shoes. He was pranced proudly as he approached the long winding trail ahead of him unaware of the mocking crowds beside him, unlike a normal jester, he wore an odd out of place blue suit. How appropriate for The Fool.

It slid into place right in front of Narcissus.

“Would you look at that, it’s you, your road is long and treacherous.”

The first card of the first layer was upside down, facing towards Beleth, a bold knight cut in sharp pinks with flowing hair. A woman with her sword drawn against the darkness. The Paladin was always ready to stand against evil, wherever it may manifest next, with bright beams of light radiating from her sword and nary a shade of black on the front of her card.

But not entirely missing either.

“Now that would be interesting, unfortunately, she’s busy as far as I can tell. Another time?”

The second card showed an oriental dragon with its long body twisting around a mountain’s peak. Thunderclouds were clutched beneath its claws and fire thundered out from the inside of its maw. The Dragon all but spoke for itself and even Beleth seemed to have pity in his voice before he said.

“I do not think you are ready for this one quite yet, let’s see what awaits you a step below.”

The second layer had three cards all facing Narcissus. The King haughty upon his throne. The Beast tromping down the street with pride in its eyes, unaware of the damage it caused. And The Quiet lake sitting there with nary a ripple as tiny flower petals surfed across the reflection of a wide blue moon.

“My oh my, they’re all so eager to meet you, I’m almost jealous. But they’ll have to wait.”

The first card was green, an old skull stuck in the muddy ground with worms crawling through it, the dying leaves stirring occasionally in an unseen wind when Narcissus blinked and an eerie silence carrying into the room around them on behalf of The Forest.

Even Beleth was at a loss for words.

“. . .”

The next two cards fell together, pink and gold, The Prince may have been young but his grandiose ambitions could be seen playing out in the long shadow he reflected upon the wall in front of him. Adventure, women, fortune. Beside and beneath him was The Liar, or maybe it ought to be liars, judging by the number of masks hanging on the wall. Each one wearing a different expression with a hesitant hand reaching out for them from below that retreated any time Narcissus looked at him.

“Isn’t that cute, they drew themselves together. I hate young love.”

With a snort he wrenched them apart and hung them upside down.

“They’ll learn their lesson, but not from you, moving on.”

The Pariah crouched silver and cowardly in an alley while The Hound stalked down muddy streets. Each one cast their hateful gaze towards Narcissus, one born of fear and one born of rage, but were waved away with a gloved hand before he mused long and quiet. Looking first at the cards and then at his guest and then back again before he finally drew a line starting with The Forest up to The Beast and ending with an inevitable clash with The Dragon.

”For the crime of over consumption I sentence you to walk the path of Nature’s Wrath, Narcissus. Should you make it back in one piece then perhaps my master will be willing to tell you of his greater purpose, or maybe not, fail on your journey and hell will seem merciful compared to what I have in store for you.” Somewhere inside the hollow teddy bear helmet cracked lips audibly peeled away from moldy teeth as, for the first time in ninety years, Beleth smiled. “Are you ready for your journey, Theo? I will give you an hour to prepare but when the clock strikes midnight the stars will take you away whether you want to go or not. I do not think you the cowardly sort though. I think you very much want to go.”