Chapter 69: Nice Move

Zalire was an Elven assassin and alchemist in a high-magic world of floating islands and airships. He executed rulers, priests, technologists, wizards, whoever he faced, thriving again and again off of the sheer challenge. He sought the most dangerous missions out. He was utterly fearless, seeming to seek out death as much as he dealt it. He was haunted by past lives, phantoms of seeming divinity, ghosts of a broken bond forever out of his reach to grasp…

He’d been crushed, aching of spirit, and remained so. He came to believe he always would be… Unwhole, divided, cursed, even into the embrace of death. More than anyone he understood how much it was all the same. One life into the next. And it gave him a kind of power.

He refused to worship any ‘local trash gods’ as if he knew what that meant (more than his instinct of greater, more precious things). Instead, he credited and spoke of Fate and Fortune, his Mistress, even as he was seen as a madman. Everyone knew Taksin Shoon was the god of Luck and Fortune, only a fool would risk his wrath.

That’s exactly what Zalire did though — flippantly, again and again, and gained a terrible foe in the process. A god, an entire powerful church, and even allied gods and goddesses. But Zalire snubbed his nose at them all and defied them, even as his body became barely alive from the magic needed to sustain him.

He knew in his heart of higher things he’d dedicated himself to in ways surpassing death. Even time itself. He could never truly be unbound from them.

He was a fool for something of more meaning than statistical contracts. So fuck them. Fuck them all. He’d be a vagabond of the spirit into the next life… and the next… and the next… until he finally could forget. Bury it all in a million pointless lives.

Because if he couldn’t remember, what else was there?

Back at the table, they both felt a deep harrowing from the ordeal. A sense of the cruelty dealt to him… the strange implications of higher powers… and then the unstated, yet obvious thing… that the life was old in the progression of time. They could both feel it. Somehow raw, somehow new, where the tastes of lives before were like a bundle of flowers rather than some vast, inconceivable panoply of slurried-together paints.

“Tashome,” the rather hoarse Fortuneteller intoned, “Fate has granted you the special skills [Assassinate], [Alchemy (Master)], and [Death Defiance].”

He was still staring at the card, wide-eyed. He reached over and picked it up with a shaking hand. “To live so long… just to suffer like this… is there any relief?”

“I don’t know, Tashome… but that is the way it always is for mortals. Heights of happiness and the lows of sadness. Varying, interesting lives.”

“I’d give anything to know more. To go further back… to know what happened.”

“There’s no guarantee you ever will.”

“Nonetheless, I would come here again.”

“Foolish, and an issue for another time. Now, we must deal with the Present.”

Tashome nodded, then his eyes went to the next card. The Fortuneteller turned it over.

A man with a hobo stick over a shoulder and a white rose in the other hand walks toward a cliff, his eyes cast up and blind to the danger he’s approaching. He has no shoes, only stockings — a little white dog chases after him, perhaps trying to warn him.

It was upright.

“The Fool Major Arcana, upright,” the Fortuneteller declared. “You can push back the boundaries confining you, you can disregard your fears and take a leap of faith. Will you?” The words echoed through reality ominously.

A little glittering question mark floated in the air at height above Tashome. It slowly revolved there. He looked up at it… stood up, to reach toward it with a hand… still too high. He took a deep breath, glancing at the Fortuneteller, who just watched him without reaction.

Tashome smirked and shrugged, then hopped up on the table, jostling the cards upon it. He reached up on his tiptoes toward the spinning question mark… and the damn thing moved up slightly!

The Fortuneteller’s tremendous poise broke. An attempted held-in laugh became a long snort, then laughter that bubbled out as she covered her mouth with a hand.

Tashome, with a frown of frustration, turned his annoyance onto the Fortuneteller with a glare, hands on his hips. “Sure, laugh it up! Are you doing this?”

Sammy shrugged helplessly as she tried to regain her composure, ineffectively restraining laughter that had her body shaking.

Squinted eyes and suspicious faded and relented, then couldn’t help but break into a fond grin. He shook his head and threw his hands up. “Bah! Fuck it!” Then he turned and jumped upward to slap at the glittering curiosity hovering above.

As he managed to touch it, it burst into glitter that rearranged itself into a text box. Meanwhile, Tashome landed back on the table and briefly was like a man surfing for the first time — the table rocked and almost toppled, the cards tossed everywhere, but he did finally get his balance crouched down with his hands out.

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To Begin, In Foolishness

What are you waiting for? Close your eyes, speak your task, then take a leap of faith. But don’t open them until getting to the bottom of the matter.

Only a fool would ask if this has a duration.

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They both stared in amazement. The System never had such color to its words.

Not exactly the System here, is it? Am I altering even this with what I’ve changed? But how could I?

“I hope you stick the landing a bit better in the real world, Tashome,” Sammy quipped.

“Ha ha.” Adjusting his robe, Tashome carefully moved to the edge and hopped off of the table. “I guess I was never a trapeze artist in a previous life.”

“If you were, only briefly.”

They shared a smile as the man of uncountable tortured lives returned to his seat. Despite what he’d seen and experienced, despite the awful shadow over him, he seemed joyful. A little more relieved, a little tightness relaxed from his muscles.

The Fortuneteller looked down at the table and blinked. It was chaos. Shockingly, there were even cards exposed from the deck… but that didn’t seem to have done anything. She quickly began collecting and ordering them, then froze as her eyes came to the three chosen cards.

Past and Present had not moved at all, but the hidden Future card was tilted slightly, uneven with the rest.

Is it… still the same card?

When she touched it to straighten it, she didn’t feel as if she should mess with it. Such a special occurrence, if it had happened, could only be fate.

“This has to be the price, hmm?” Tashome asked, looking at the Future card with a mostly resigned expression.

“It does not have to be. It is the one you can deal with, it is the price that you need even if you hate it. Pay it so here, or pay it as something you cannot out there. Cannot unless you are evil.”

“I understand… I think. Regardless, I am ready. Turn it as you will.”

The Fortuneteller nodded in approval and respect, then turned the card over.

On a background of darkness, a woman sits up in a bed, her head in her hands as though waking up from a terrible dream. Above her, nine blue-white swords glint. Her quilted blanket is sewn with red roses and patches of zodiac symbols. A carving on the wooden bed bottom shows two figures fighting, one on the ground.

It was — of course — upside down, as facing the Fortuneteller.

“Nine of Swords, reversed,” she said softly. “The past will haunt and taunt you the rest of your days in the unconscious realms of your mind. You will struggle to rest, struggle with yourself, and only by the power of your will can you resist this darkness. I pray that you master it and find a light within.”

A ghostly text box appeared above the table.

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Vivid Nightmares

You have exceptionally tormented dreams that can cause you to lose sleep, be lost in distraction throughout the day, and/or suffer from other temporary maluses depending on the specific psychosomatic stress. Lost sleep can cause the [Sleep Deprivation] effect, which can only be removed with proper rest.

Every night requires a hidden test at an even level, with failure resulting in a nightmare for the night. You are at a slight disadvantage the night after a restful sleep. Nothing can prevent the nightmares except a passed test.

Attempted dream manipulations by outside agents will result in psychic absorption into the nightmare with the user. Interruption of a nightmare before ‘resolution’ will cause the user to re-experience it the next time they rest.

Temporary maluses can become long-term in some cases, as determined by user experience, interpretation, and will.

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They both stared up at the text soberly.

Sammy realized something else about it, though. Her intonation. “You heard… me… as well, hmm?”

“Haunted by the past… the nightmares will be of past lives?”

“I believe so. Fragments at least, right?”

“I said I’d give anything…” His eyes drifted back down to the card, thoughtful as he nodded to himself. “So be it.”

Sammy returned the cards to the deck, then stood. “There is nothing else but to return now, Tashome. Are you ready?”

He stood and nodded to her. “Of course.” He gave her a final smile. “A fool has to return to their folly, after all.”

“That we do.” But when she snapped her fingers, she sent him back alone and lingered herself. It didn’t matter… she’d return to the time she’d entered, regardless. Some things, by the role she’d accepted, by the role she’d taken in that place, she simply had to know. So she did. It wasn’t much. Hopefully it was enough.

Another thing she knew was that being there idly was somehow wasteful and wrong. Like littering, on the scale of the multiverse. But she wanted to say one thing…

“This place is mine now, System Deck. I don’t need you to introduce yourself, or say anything at all. I’ll set the stage with my mind as we enter.”

“Acknowledged, Fortuneteller,” the voice replied warmly. “Thank you for your service in the enrichment of user experience. Hopefully your time here will be entertaining and elucidating.”

“We’ll see. You’re welcome, I guess.”

Back to the ship. The struggle of fighting men, the torrents of arrows, the groan and sway of the great wooden constructs sailing together. Bast was angling, readying to cast possibly his last spell. Telekek was blocking the arrow fire as she pulled some sort of potion bottle out and hurled it across the distance, apparently at Bast…

But an arrow caught it mid-flight, where it exploded in a cloud of grey-green mist — it fell on some of the fighters on both sides, and they screamed from what looked like acid burning and smoking on them. Telekek screamed too — in rage.

Bamm, with a miracle shot. It would’ve been a lot nastier hitting the deck.

“Nice,” Bast said as he nodded his thanks to the archer. Then he saw someone wounded by acid and he grimaced. "Not for them, though."

Tashome was charging at the pirate captain — he slowed briefly, and like a madman, he closed his eyes and said, “I’ll slay Wraevas with swiftness!”

A multicolored aura like the sheen of oil enveloped him — and his sword — as he and Wraevas met, the latter laughing derisively at the idiot apparently coming blind to his death. The axes came in for an execution… Tashome ducked one, then dodged the other with a ridiculous 360 degree spin, blade flaring out to slice his foe across his semi-exposed chest.

Tashome was the one to laugh then, as the pirate captain growled in pain… then was hit in the back by Bast’s spell, causing him to stumble and almost fall… but he steadied himself, then turned to pursue, roaring again with a forceful rage.

The axes flared and spun around as furious as ever, but the man with his eyes closed danced and shifted away as though possessed — after his nose was almost grazed by a heavy blade of steel, the fool’s multihued sword came up and sliced the pirate berserker’s fingers dead-on, lopping them off and making the axe clatter to the deck.

With a shrill, incensed cry, Wraevas charged and swung the bone axe… Tashome parried and pulled him off-balance by his own momentum, spun around him, almost back to back… and then just stood there.

When Wraevas spun around, the fool swordsman moved with nigh-supernatural, perfect synchronicity, staying completely back-to-back — though not touching — and out of sight. For a split moment, the berserker was perplexed.

Grinning wildly, Tashome danced forward lightly, then arced his body backward and spun his blade around in a ridiculous, mad arc behind him without even turning around. The blade went cleanly through Wraevas’s neck and decapitated him from behind.

As the head rolled off, Wraevas’s body went to its knees and then flopped over dead.

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