Chapter 68: An End to Begging for Luck

Samantha’s eyes shifted to Canmore and the chain around him. “Bast… would a non-damaging Icebolt weaken it still?”

Bast was moving down the steps of the castle top, perhaps uninterested in being so exposed without his protective circle. “Maybe! Do it now!”

As Samantha was preparing her spell, Tashome was moving in on Wraevaus, whose back was turned and had an axe still stuck in his enemy’s helmet and skull. He had to leave it there temporarily as he spun around to parry Tashome’s thrust with his other axe, then moved in with an open hand to grapple.

Wraevaus only caught hold of a cut-up buckler, which Tashome simply let go of and pivoted into another sword strike…

On the other ship, Telekek was rising, holding her head with a sour expression, and gesturing to recall her platform to her, this time kept simply flush upon the deck…

“Hold completely still, Canmore.”

The Icebolt launched from the staff head of Orswyth to burst upon the chains binding Canmore — the frost seemed to spread over the entire chain, hopefully weakening it.

“Ah, c-cold, cold! Oooh…” Canmore squeezed his eyes shut, his teeth chattering as he shivered.

It’s for your own good… I hope.

“Double-buffed, a Rogue’s Luck use…” Bast seemed to be thinking to himself, yet at her at the same time. “The weakening… bonus for metals. Maybe it’s enough. Here goes nothing!”

Tashome soon had his guard battered aside and an axe slash at his side… where it simply splintered the wood instead of being a killing blow. The pirate captain seemed surprised the armor had protected his opponent, who soon backed away again for more space.

Tashome shrugged. “It has a strong spirit. And it doesn’t like you.”

“I’m an acquired taste, it’s true.” Wraevaus hopped over to the corpse to finally rip his axe out of the skull. Sammy noticed his crackling aura had disappeared, and his wound — which should’ve bled him terribly by then — was raw but sealed over. Healed as if over many productive hours. His other minor cuts were also healed.

The potion… I bet it’s regeneration. He’d be a lot weaker by now after his rage. This bastard…

Seeing Bast casting a spell, Wraevaus looked as if he was about to make a leap to stop him, but the captain of the ship roared with a cry and charged him, forcing engagement with steel on steel. Tashome was only a step behind him.

The pirate boarding party finally was getting the better of the Strip’s men, the melee that had spilled out over the deck more to their advantage without the choke points to control. Sailors especially were going down left and right…

Orswyth stood up from healing Galynth — who remained unconscious — and with the firm, carrying voice of a battle commander, called, “Men, hold that bloody line! Put your backs into it! For Lowbarrow! For the Stripping Josephine!”

He raised his staff, and answering cries came from soldiers and crew… they all seemed to have a surge of strength and energy. Sammy realized he’d just dropped some sort of commander-centric buff.

She took the opportunity to also angle a dazzling cone at a couple of pirates who weren’t too close to allies — while the blinding effect was technically useless, it still stunned them, and their opponents cut them down in their momentary helplessness.

The chaotic melee was otherwise hard to find AoE angles on.

Bast’s spell resolved, a vibration extending from his hand to enshroud the chain, to cause a loud chime and echoing ring, attempting to shatter it… the chain cracked, the chain seemed to loosen… but it didn’t break. Canmore remained held and struggling. Maybe he could get out… if he was Houdini. At the least, a rogue. But he wasn’t.

“Fucking shit!” Bast cried in frustration. “Even shot. She had the edge. Fuck!”

“Do it again, Bast!”

“I can’t! Not enough mana! Even if I did, the spell level won’t degrade, and I barely matched it with the temp effect…”

Sammy felt as if she’d been deflated like a balloon. She dropped backward onto her throne. “Now what?”

The shaman was back on her platform — now no longer floating above the deck — and looking ready to cast something again.

“Archers!” Orswyth called out, “All fire on that shaman! Don’t let up!”

Telekek’s eyes widened as an entire volley was dropped on her, forcing her to block with her magic shield…

Follower died. 1 Daily FE lost (total: 23).

Samantha was shocked as she had trouble even remembering the person that died without her being there… but she did finally. Neswyr. A quiet soldier… a man she barely knew… yet had failed all the same. A pirate’s spear had impaled him through the neck.

Once more, almost subconsciously, she dropped a Dazzling Spectrum, angled high. A pirate had gotten the better of a sailor and was dropping an axe for a killing blow. Instead, he got a blast of hypnotic light in his face, which made him stumble and drop his weapon in bewildered senselessness… shortly, he was smashed in the skull by a marine’s mace.

Wraevaus fought Tashome and the ship captain at once — Tashome fought him off heroically with sword-and-dagger, and the pirate captain wasn’t quite as quick as he had been, but after a brief exchange, Tashome took a cut across his arm, then a boot in his chest, sent crashing to the deck and stunned, sword flying free. Wraevaus pounced…

Only to be harried again and blocked by the captain in a clash of steel.

The Naugite roared in fury and surged onto the offense, soon disarming the parrying dagger and scoring a hit on the captain’s torso — fortunately, he had the magic armor, which took the hit but shattered and disappeared.

Orswyth dropped a protection spell on the captain, but this was soon lost as well from the cancellation of a slash of the leg that should’ve broken it… and the captain was backpedaling, red-faced, barely fending off the berserker assailing him…

Tashome got up and picked up his weapon. Somehow, he’d lost half of his war mask so that his bloody chin and mouth showed. He was too far… but he moved anyway, he ran…

And he sent to Samantha, “Things like to come in threes, and the third is special. I think you know what you have to do.”

“No! The price is always too much-”

“If you don’t, I’m dead. The captain” — and Wraevaus knocked the sword away of the one so mentioned, buried an axe in his chest, then decapitated him with the other — “is dead, and soon I’ll be, and then Bast when he blasts the bastard in the back with his dwindling spells…”

Wraevaus spun toward Tashome. “Nice to see brave men fighting with grit. One more dance, man of cold skies!”

“You’re one of the best I’ve seen or faced. One of the ugliest, too.”

Laughter. “My wife says the same thing in the sheets!”

“A lie!” she called from the other ship, still pinned down by multiple archer fire, though she was pulling something from her belt...

“Fortuneteller,” Tashome called in her mind. “Please speak the question. Lives culminate into a moment, some from many. I was meant for this. Don’t deny me it or we’ll both suffer!”

Sammy wasn’t sure if she’d ever heard the man so adamant, or even raise his voice.

Did he hear that title from-

From the staff, a voice called to Tashome, echoing with power from afar, “Would you submit to fate and change your fortune for better or worse, User?”

“I would.”

The mountainous top with the card symbol, the revolving panels. The System Deck. The androgynous, cheery, synthetic voice speaking from everywhere at once, “Welcome to the System Deck function, Users. Here, the current life of-”

“Shut the fuck up, System Deck!” Sammy yelled.

To both her surprise and expectancy at once somehow, the voice stopped. Even the spinning panels stopped. Everything waited.

Waiting on me. Waiting on the Fortuneteller.

“Things will be done differently this time.” Sammy glanced at Tashome, who was… in a robe, hands in his pockets, at his ease. His eyes only glanced at the rest before he met her eyes. Nodded.

Sammy closed her eyes, and in her mind, she visualized the changes she wanted, then willed it so. The faux reality shifted on a dime. There were no questions, no requests, none of that — such things weren’t of the System Deck at all. Just declarations and executions.

Suspended in a black void, they sat at a table much like the one in Tashome’s dream — low to the ground, cushions for seats, sitting cross-legged. The table was black, with a large shape of a card with a question mark in the middle. Sammy was in her comfortable gown as well, the one she’s had tea with Tashome in.

The cards were in front of her on the table. The whole deck.

“I see the top is with us too,” Tashome said, eying her. When Sammy shook her head in confusion, he pointed to his eyes with two fingers.

It isn’t something I want to see.

“Did you overhear that I was the Fortuneteller?”

He made a vague shrug. “From Orswyth? No.”

“Then how?”

His eyes lowered to the deck. “My soul is heavy with the lives of the past. I’ve wandered trying to make sense of them… cheating death… seeing patterns others can’t… reading fortune in the dice. When I heard the voice, I knew what it was, I remembered it… when I met you, I remembered the name. I’m irrevocably tied to it, tied to this, tied to you.”

“I’m just a Transplant, Tashome.”

He had a tiny exhale, a tiny smile, and said nothing.

Sammy looked down at the deck. It was time. She grabbed the deck and flung it over the table, scattering the cards haphazardly. None of them fell face-up.

“Assemble them.”

He did so with a mild smirk on his face, shuffling it back into a deck. Despite his humor, his hands were not without thought. He understood the assignment… he moved some in one direction, others in another, mixed some up, and simply bundled the rest. She watched… watched and thought she understood…

The sacrifice. I see it… I see what way to change the cards, or leave them… I see what his soul wants… I can read it…

Finally, he assembled the deck, then pushed it back to her.

Sammy shuffled it with neat cuts and stacks, re-ordering the cards, touching them, feeling them, making the order right for him. Part of her telling, part of her manipulation and alteration. Finally, she understood that was what she was there to do. To stack the deck, alter fate… at cost.

Why? Why do I know this? How can I do this?

She held her hands over the deck and met Tashome’s eyes. “Do you understand what I am doing, Tashome? Do you choose to put yourself in my hands? There is always a price.”

“Yes. I’m a cheat. I know a cheat when I see it.” He grinned. “The cheated always bite back. One day or the next.”

She returned the smile… sadly. Then she splayed out the cards before him in one smooth motion. “Choose three. As inspired, as drawn toward. Don’t second guess.”

He did so, pulling three cards from the deck out from the mass. Sammy furled the cards back and set them aside but for those three.

She closed her eyes and touched the cards… spun Present around. Exchanged Future and Past.

Pay it here or there, I know that’s how it is. Pay it here, have a little control. The soul determines the rest.

She looked up at Tashome one more time. They both nodded, no need for words exchanged. With that, Sammy turned over the card for the Past. She did not know what it would be, only that it was what it needed to be for the solution of his soul.

That is the entire reason why this is here. Why we’re here. Why I…

A demonic figure of horns and bat wings with a harpy’s legs was perched on a black pillar, one hand up in an open-handed salute, the other with a flaming torch pointed down. An upside-down pentagram lies above his head. To the pillar is chained a naked man and woman, both of them with little horns atop their head, one with a tail of grapes at the end, the other flames.

It was upright.

“The Devil Major Arcana, upright,” the Fortuneteller intoned, at once the System Deck and Samantha, two parts interlaced into one. “In a past life, you were caught in dark obsession and conceit, yet excelled greatly in force and violence. Furthermore, a piece of your puzzle is revealed. Prepare for memory synthesis, Tashome.”

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Samantha, Virgin Goddess of Mirrors & Illusion
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Goddess Level 2; Minor Deity

Domains (2/3): Mirrors, Illusion
Faith Energy: 1084/2000
FE (Illusion): 0
Followers: 17 (Daily FE Gain: 23 [25])

Devout: 3
Priests: 3

Brute: 0
Rogue: 0
Wizard: 1 [8/20]
Bard: 0 [2/10]

MP: 1/25

Special Skills: First Aid, Tarot Reading, Priestly Ordination, Holy Relic Investiture, Read Runes, Spell Construction, Detect Magic

Special Traits: Token User, Immortal, Demiplane Domain, Conceptual Body, Fueled By Faith

Spells: Identify (5 MP), Icebolt (3 MP)

Powers: Faith Energy Utilization, Grant Prayer (Illusion), Mirror Sense, Mirror Communication, Create Illusion, Grant Invisibility, Dazzling Spectrum, False Auras, Mirroring Duplicates, Reflect Force, Mirror Maze

Status: Token User Promotional Bonus (7/30), New Deity Grace Period (7/7), Free Minor Divine Enchantment (Accessory; 1-use)