[Text] / [Location: a cafe in Speares]

[personaldemon]

Does anyone know if transfer of credits can be accomplished from one person to another, here? So far all I have managed is using them at the stores or with the hatches, and as it happens this 'allowance' they give us isn't really adequate.

Where I was from, I offered my services in a consulting capacity, but if I cannot get payment for such here, then that isn't incredibly practical.

....on a similar note, if anybody wishes their tarot read, it appears I'm doing this for free until I figure out a way to return an investment on the deck I just hatched.

If so, I'm at the version of the Café Procope that they have apparently stolen from Paris and transplanted here. It is in the Speares district. I may be found at one of the upstairs balcony tables.

Comments

[dustandhope]

Raziel shifts, nodding slowly, gaze mournful. "Yes. The land of the white pillars. They stretch as far as the eye can see and then onwards to the heavens, white marble that cannot be marked and cannot be broken. They are the nine aspects of our world, binding ancient evil from the world." He shakes briefly, shoulders trembling and it may be apparent that he's laughing, as one does with no voice or lungs.

"Of course, Kain managed his own unique brand of evil. Read my cards, I would know what you see."

[personaldemon]

Jason listens. He listens to two conversations, as he usually does; the person speaking to him-- or in this case, speaking in his mind-- and Etrigan, since Etrigan often has things he will share about what is being said.

Etrigan doesn't seem to care to wax nasty about Nosgoth, though. Perhaps the other entity's home plane is removed enough that they do not know of it in Etrigan's hell. Jason is grateful for the small respite, at least, and shuffles the deck once.

"As you would. Do you have a question for the cards? Or a preference as to their layout?"

[dustandhope]

Raziel shakes his head. "I do not know this method or type. I am curious about it and if you have the skill you claim."

[personaldemon]

"I made no claim of skill," Jason counters, but all the same he gives the deck another shuffle in preparation for the draw. The same three-card spread he's been doing for everyone, then--

The man who calls himself Jason Blood has shuffled a deck of cards perhaps ten thousand times, in his long stay on the earth. To say he doesn't think about the action is an understatement; to say his fingers know what they are doing is likewise. He does not drop the cards; he does not mis-shuffle.

As a rule.

Fingers are suddenly clumsy. Muscle memory fails him. The cards, instead of shuffling neatly, sputter out of his hands and spread, some across the table, others fluttering to the ground in a scatter of wands and cups, swords and pentacles.

Jason blinks down at his hands for several seconds, his expression blank.

Then he wordlessly pushes his chair back and begins to gather up the dropped deck, lying all over the terrace floor like so much colorful confetti.

It's going to be like that, is it.

[dustandhope]

Raziel keeps watching, intent and interested. The show of clumsiness doesn't draw any mirth, just a slight curiousity. The cards don't want to be shuffled. He suspects that drawing won't go any more successfully, but he still watches. And waits.

[personaldemon]

It takes a good minute before he has the deck shuffled again. Jason concentrates on what he is doing now, fixing the cards with a grim look. Setting his own will against the factors that would muddy this reading.

Not that he thinks he can necessarily overpower whatever fate-- or lack of fate-- clings to his unique querent-- but that doesn't mean he won't make a fierce stab at it. Professional pride, perhaps.

The freshly-shuffled deck of cards is in his left hand; he moves his right to draw. He can feel his hand leaden, dragging, reluctant. He moves it anyway.

First card. His fingers slide off the surface, unable to find a purchase, attempting to lift several cards rather than just the first one.

It's a good thirty seconds of silent effort before he persists in drawing the card. It no doubt looks strange, comical even if one has no understanding of the forces in play. But there are no witnesses save the two of them, and the mindless Extras.

Jason himself is far from amused. There's a faint gleam of sweat on his brow as he successfully gets the damned thing drawn and puts it down forcefully on the table.

Usually he draws face-down, only to turn them over one at a time. His fingers twitch; the card hits the table on its edge, wobbles, then falls face-up.

Raziel's past, if the cards are to be believed, is 'Death'.

And his present, and possibly his future, Jason thinks darkly to himself.

[dustandhope]

"Enough. I see you truly have the sight." Raziel lays his claws over the single card. "You cannot draw my present nor my future. No being alive, dead or in between may. I am Fate's free agent and my choices are my own.

"But explain to me this card. I would know."

[personaldemon]

Jason grunts to himself and settles back in the seat. He's unsure if he's piqued or relieved that Raziel is choosing to end the reading there-- it would have been work to try and continue, the sort of effort he does not usually expend without having planned it in advance-- and apparently futile effort at that, as well.... but still.

It doesn't help that Etrigan is seething, stirring, beneath his skin. Etrigan ... dislikes the proximity to Raziel, and Etrigan can make it hard to tell his own emotions and his responses from the demon's.

He takes a slow, careful breath, filling his lungs and then letting it out again, counting to himself to provide an alternative to the whispered curses at the edge of his hearing.

foolslutprancingpisspotprisskillbitchrendripcrushfuckbreak...

"As you will," Jason says after a few seconds to try and regain his composure. He sits up straight, sets the deck to one side, lays his hands flat on the table's top. The burn on his left hand itches madly with the heat from within.

"Death. A card of transformations. Endings. Beginnings." His voice sounds like gravel to his own ears, the words dropped like unpolished chunks of rock.

Another breath; he tries again. "You can perceive Death riding over all-- kings, commoners, soldiers and children alike... death is the great equalizer, the universal humbler that every entity in the universe will face... eventually."

That felt half a mockery given his own overly-long life, and he knew from their prior encounter that Raziel himself claimed a lifespan of millennia. Nevertheless, even immortals died eventually. When the universe did, if nothing else.

"The card does not always-- very rarely, in fact-- refers to literal physical deaths. Although in your case, I am sure it could make the exception. You perceive the sunrise? New births, as well. Renewal. Transformation, as I said: one form to another, leaving one's old self behind again and again to become something new with each contact with death."

The words came faster; Jason felt they were true, but it was hard to be sure of anything over Etrigan's red noise.

"The skeletal rider has had everything extraneous withered away. He is pared down to his essentials: to the truths of bone. With each death, one's self-awareness expands. With each loss of the prior self, one's purpose clarifies."


riphiswitheredwingseathisfacearrogantlittleshit

[dustandhope]

Raziel hears with more senses than mortal shells. He can hear the angry hiss of the demon, like reality quivering and sparking at the edges of his awareness. If he could slip his shell, he has no doubt he could confront the creature itself, speak with it, kill it, feel it ebb out over his claws.

"Yes. I understand. I have died and been reborn many times, and I have been Death to eras and kingdoms and gods and men."

He is very old and he feels it sometimes. He has died and awakened to reality, after reality. "Your demon despises me. I would dearly love to see him splayed upon hallowed ground."

[personaldemon]

"I thought it seemed rather fitting," Jason says with a brief, terse nod.

The next words make him rub at his temples.

"He despises many," he says, a bit shortly, then exhales. "But you are correct. He certainly bears you no love."

The ending statement, though... Jason laughs, a hollow sound.

"Would you? I would too. You must forgive my lack of confidence in your ability to make it happen, though. I don't doubt your power. I am only far too familiar with his."

[dustandhope]

"What other people think or believe of my abilities means nothing to me. I know what I can do. Little else matters. Your beliefs change nothing to me."

He scratches his claws over the wood, making marks that are almost certainly the words of his home tongue, archaic and spiked shapes, similar to the marks on his scarf. "We are natural enemies. If not for the constraints of this cursed and miraculous city, I would have shad this corpse and dragged him from that husk of yours. But I cannot, so it is moot."

[personaldemon]

Your beliefs change nothing to me.

"Nor yours to mine," Jason says flatly after several beats of silence. For once, his silence is less due to Etrigan raging in his mind than it is his restraining the things he himself would say.

Husk, the reaver calls him.

It brings up memories. Many, many memories. The lies Etrigan had spun for many centuries that he was nothing, that he had never been, that the reason he had no memory of who he was before Etrigan was because he hadn't existed before him. You're nothing! A suit of skin that thinks he was once a man, created by Merlin's spell for me to wear....

So long. So long he's struggled to assert that most basic fact; that he is. That he counts as something, anything, in his own right beyond the monster who defines him.

Husk.

Jason picks up the death card and slides it back into the middle of the deck. Some other time, the angular letters being carved into the table might interest him, intellectually. For now, he merely wants this conversation to be at an end. His anger is dangerous; Etrigan will latch onto it, exploit it, use it to overpower his control.

"How fortunate for me," he says, voice emotionless and terse, to Raziel's admission that he cannot.

"Your reading is concluded. Is there aught else I can do for you?"

[dustandhope]

Raziel's view on the world is odd. All mortal are husks inhabited by brilliant souls that he cannot quite see without Kain here to complete him.

"No. Though one day, should I once again regain the ability to see as you do, I would know more on these cards of yours."

He inclines his head in a bow and slips off, over the railing and into the shadows beneath.

good thread!

[personaldemon]

Jason says nothing at all in answer. A short nod is all he feels capable of.

He slumps back in his chair the instant Raziel is off the terrace. Etrigan's voice subsides-- mercifully-- with one last growl before the demon slinks off into the metaphorical shadows.

His head hurts. He's sweaty from the various efforts. He's tired.

He signals the waiter for water, and puts the cards grimly back in their box.