[Spookhouse]

He would morph. He would become the bridge between the deity of fate and humanity. It was not what he desired. The jar dimmed, until the aura emanating from it was no longer a light at all, but a perfect mix with the darkness that gathered within the obsidian dome.

Shel felt as though he might lose his mind in this heavy, thick, oppressive silence. At least it was not a room of four, but a dome, where no number gained more power over another. He was content to evolve, to think freely, to formulate his own decision. Should he fail in the chamber, then humanity would already be doomed. The order did not have the luxury of another seven hundred years to cultivate a twenty third replacement.

He shuddered as the pull seized his mind, his nerves ---- burrowing in at the nape of his neck and slowly sweeping over his entire body. Get up, rise, walk forward. OBEY US. PORTCULLIS. PORTCULLIS. OBEY. PORTCULLIS. YOU ARE THE HIEROPHANT. COME.

He was a marionette, being led blindly by the strings of fate, and yet he found himself able to move more freely than those who had passed before him. During his first, second, and third readings, he'd felt helpless, as though there were a colossal magnet on the other side of the portcullis gate, threatening to flatten him against the dome if he did not succumb to its drawing energy. Shel bowed his head as the opening groaned open again. OBEY.

His muscles shook, his body forced forward by the hands of fate herself. He watched himself move hypnotically in the darkness, the glow within his chalice now having faded in to a black, inky liquid of foulness. He grabbed the jar with his hands and felt as though he'd be ripped apart if he didn't obey soon.

The shattering of his urn echoed around the dome until it was swallowed whole by the jet blackness. Shel opened his mind's eye and gritted his teeth, fighting the portcullis and its persistent pull. He could hear someone coming through, but the cartomancer never left his chamber. It had to be one of the order. Here to fetch their last prospect. By force.

He saw Kascht step through the gate, and yet he was not Kascht. He was Loki, the lord of the Chariot, here to wage war on those who tempted fate's absolution. Shel's chest heaved, and then the dome wasn't dark anymore.

He was surrounded by them. Soldiers with their silver shields and sharpened spears. The glorious sheen of Chariot's hammer reflected off the pinnacles of their helmets, blinding Shel, wracking his head with the pain and pull of the tarot. Kascht's voice had an ethereal quality to it... brazen, brash, impossible to escape within the dome.

"We are the might of the Order. We enforce what cannot be obeyed." Chariot's grip was like that of a titan, crushing in to his collarbone, dragging him to his feet. The pull strengthened. Obey. Embrace the reading. Move forward. Obey.

Shel approached the portcullis with the legion of soldiers at his rear, armed to the teeth, prepared to cut him to ribbons at the first hint of any further hesitation. He stood on the precipice, and the warmth of the chamber called to him. He turned to face the Chariot, and in turn, he saw the others who had been transformed.

Shel stared at the Empress, and he saw the cheekbones and soft facial features of Sariah. He'd been correct. She stared at him with unfamiliarity and emptiness. One of his peers was the Emperor, standing next to her, his fingertips gliding down her curves. At least it was not Kascht. He did not see the Hierophant among them. So it would be, but they were missing others. There were only seventeen, and so surely, some had failed before him. They needed him to BECOME the Hierophant, but that didn't necessarily mean he would. His fate, his persona, decided before his fortune would ever be read. Fate was not as genuine as they made her appear to be. Shel knew they would skewer him through the heart where he stood if they knew what his aura would betray to them. He'd broken the jar. He had a force of will too soon, before he ascended. It was strategy. A game. They had to ignore its significance, and yet he was aware of the small amount of power he still held in this place, surrounded by the new Order.

He felt the heavy, searing head of Chariot's hammer pushing in to his side.

"Spiritual balance. You must offset the Hanged Man. Two fingers up, two fingers down.... the perfect bridge. You must ascend." His voice was commanding, booming through his helmet with the authority of ages.

"And so I shall to appease the balance and restore faith in mankind. Is this what fate would require of me?" Shel asked.

"It is." Authoritative. Powerful. But a hint of uncertainty.

"Then I might ask one question, if she would allow."

"Then you may, as ordained by fate." Chariot said.

"I see seventeen of twenty three behind your soldiers that you used to wage war against the Hierophant of old. What of Death? What of the Tower? What of the World and the half-goat Devil?"

"They will arise when you have birthed them with your coming. The Hierophant is the next arcana in the cycle. Without the bridge to form between us, we are nothing. You must allow them to be, by being." Chariot ordered.

"And if I am not the bridge? If my trump is not the arcana of benediction?" Shel felt as though he were talking to an element, a force with programmed responses ---- not a person. Certainly not his former classmate.

Chariot's arm went taut as he swung the blazing hammer upward. It stopped just below Shel's adam's apple. He felt like it was going to burn straight through his neck as Chariot shoved him backward, up against the portcullis edge, suspending him against the wall with his feet dangling like eroded, thin tree trunks in an arid desert storm.

"The cartomancer is never wrong, Querent. The number of four represents balance, stability, and goodness. Every Hierophant in the past has been surrounded by this number. It is what the new Order requires. If your goal is not that of fate's, then I must destroy you, for the wrath of the tarot lies within the responsibility of the Chariot and Justice."

Shel didn't recognize Justice as he stepped forward through the gauntlet of soldiers. His blade was the opposite of the Chariot's hammer. Frigid --- a honed and sharpened edge of absolute zero that now pricked lightly against his the side of his ribs.

"Go through. Too long has the world been without true guidance." Justice said.

And then, Shel was dropping, prodded through the opening at the behest of armaments of fire and frost. The heavy iron of the portcullis slammed shut, and the dome shuddered. Silence except for the sound of flickering candles and the scratching of a quill on aged papyrus.

"Welcome again my friend. Sit and close your eyes. You've done this before, yes?" The Hermit's voice was like the ripping of velcro. Rough. Ancient.

Shel sank in to the lush cushion, flattening his hands against the wooden table. They still shook, even when he willed them with all his might not to.

"The rest of them have ascended. I am the last, and yet they are missing some of the arcana. What has happened, cardcrafter?" Despite the Hermit's involvement with the order, he was bound by fate. His answers were always earnest, insightful ---- the truth, at the very least.

"It's a bureaucracy now. Not like the days of old. Subsequently, man's society has fallen in to decay and ruin. They stamped out your would-be court." The Hermit flipped over a card. The number four. Of course.

"But if I am the Hierophant, my court is outside, Hermit. The Emperor and the Empress await the benediction. I don't understand."

"You are not the Hierophant, Shel." Another four.

"Then who is, Hermit?" Shel asked.

"He will not manifest. Three of your peers before you became the Devil, the Tower, and the World. They were murdered. Fate has been taken hostage, and they're trying to manipulate it. They want the Garden of Eden on earth, and a utopia here, without consequence. It can't sustain itself, Shel. There will be no Hierophant, and what must be done now can not be prevented." The last numbered card. A four, of course. Of wands.

"What do you mean, without consequence?" Shel saw behind the Hermit now. Three of his mates from the order, slashed across the chest and throat. Their heads were crushed in.

"I would have been your ally. The Hermit is opposed to the false tendencies of the Hierophant. I am true wisdom. But now, I am a tool for them to read your arcana. You have one card remaining, and then they will kill for me for fulfilling my purpose. They can't have a member who is true to the old Order, true to fate." The Hermit's sunken lime eyes bored in to Shel, and he shuddered before the cartomancer turned over the last card.

Death.

The old man rose to his feet as he watched the young man's eyes glaze over. The transformation started with the peeling of skin from his forehead. The cool blue gaze of a normal youth was quickly engulfed by voids of a black, infinite depth. They were like maelstroms in a sea of decay; they drew in flesh and blood from the cheekbones, the eye sockets of the bared skull continuing to pull the life from Shel's body, consuming it in nothing. It was that black nothing that opposed the twisting of the Order. It was the thoughts and memories that Death consumed to arrive at this pinnacle, now.

Soon, there was nothing but bone and leathery wing and scythe. Tattered remnants of the Nexus robe hung from cracks and splinters in the bone visage. The pits of the skull flared to life, burning with omnipotent darkness that held an absolute purpose. Death rose, his wingspan flailing outward to shield the Hermit as Chariot's hammer smashed the portcullis in to small pieces of disfigured iron and bent bronze. Death smiled at the booming of Chariot's voice, for he had not entered yet.