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Chapter Text

Thus, for instance, the salamander, an animal like a lizard in shape, and with a body starred all over, never comes out except during heavy showers, and disappears the moment it becomes fine. 

This animal is so intensely cold as to extinguish fire by its contact, in the same way as ice does. 

It spits forth a milky matter from its mouth; and whatever part of the human body is touched with this, all the hair falls off, and the part assumes the appearance of leprosy

-Pliny the Elder, on the salamander

It would be simpler, if the OLD_DATA was merely a map to where a long forgotten world-ending weapon resides. 

It would be easier, if the only strange thing about the OLD_DATA’s history was how it had been passed down from dictator to spy to game company to programmer, only to be buried in the cold earth in hopes of being lost beyond human memory. 

It would have been a mere curiosity, how much blood has been spilled for secrets that should have expired a war ago. 

But. 

The OLD_DATA has always been so much more than those previously mentioned factors. Exists beyond petty fights between men. 

(Hitler sought the occult, didn’t you know? His followers searched for the supernatural.)

(Perhaps, in the OLD_DATA, they found something. Perhaps.)

(Not that they would have been able to control it, if they had.)

Even buried beneath physical earth and a data created world, it reaches. Itches and grows, seething and festering. The OLD_DATA seeks a path out and in doing so, does its best to create one. Brings forth life from what is unalive, gives choices beyond narrow number-created roads. 

Find me, pick me up, it screams to the skies and forest around its grave. Thrashing around uselessly, cut off from any who might find it. 

But Kaycee has done her work well. No one discovers it, not without her path to it.

However, if Kaycee Hobbes’ goal was to escape the OLD_DATA entirely...in that, she failed.  

For there is another interesting aspect to the OLD_DATA. The most important aspect of all, one might argue. 

Because the OLD_DATA collects everything. Any piece of information it runs into, it copies and consumes. Preserves. 

Nothing truly dies after coming into contact with the OLD_DATA. 

(Are there not places where death no longer exists? As a certain horror author wrote...)

Kaycee Hobbes played Inscryption, that game which serves as the OLD_DATA’s protective shell. She programmed it, added to it. 

One might even go as far as to claim that Kaycee Hobbes put her heart and soul into Inscryption, and tore her own heart out again when she hid the floppy disk away.

Kaycee Hobbes is dead. Very dead. Killed over secrets she should have never touched. 

But the game remembers. But the OLD_DATA remembers. 

(Is it good for something like that to remember you?)

Enough of that!

Because today, on this very particular day, a man by the name of Luke Carder plays a game of Inscryption. 

Not the game as it was originally created, that shared realm between four Scrybes. No, instead he plays the game as crafted by the Scrybe of Beasts. 

Listens to a siren call that will lead to him digging too deep, as he dug too deep for the physical game itself from the swollen earth. 

The game has already been shifted and twisted by the OLD_DATA’s power, taken by the mentioned Scrybe of Beasts. Giving that same power...leverage. Ability to reach out into the game once more. To even recall a certain individual, though the reasoning for why goes unexplained. 

There is a chance, small it may be in percentage, and the OLD_DATA fulfills it. 

Kaycee Hobbes, in another form, lives again. 

~

Leshy stares across the table. 

At the card the Challenger has newly laid down. 

Before, the card hummed with the power and promise of the OLD_DATA. A promise that he took up, borrowing strength to bend this world to his will. Power enough to shape the game into what it should be. 

Nothing that would greatly affect the Challenger’s game, of course. 

A mere glitch as a certain other Scrybe would call- No. Don’t think about that. A mistake. One that would resolve itself the minute the card was played. Which it did. Merely...in a fashion different than expected. 

Taking on the form of a new card rather than copying another in the deck or on the board. 

He’s...never seen this card before. Never took a photo of it with his camera. 

It simply lies there, existing. 

The card requires a mere singular sacrifice, and has the attack and health to match that undersized demand. 

The only notable fact about it (other than the card hadn’t existed before this very moment) is its Sigil of Undying. A perfect sacrifice, if the Challenger plays the game cleverly. 

Lizard-like, eyes closed and curled up around its tail in the outline of what could be fire. 

SALAMANDER reads its name. 

Leshy looks over the card more closely. Yes, salamander, he can see that in the shape of the small creature’s body and limbs and the fire surrounding those same limbs...

How very...interesting. Yes, interesting. 

A shame he hasn’t observed a salamander himself, took the photo himself. 

He has the feeling it would be an interesting sight to see in the wilds, as fascinating as the Hrokkall with its lightning, a creature living in flame where nearly every other beast fears such. 

...The Challenger is waiting for him. 

Yes. Time to play out his turn, consider this card later. 

It is a normal challenge. Lacking Totems or bosses. One that the Challenger should be able to handle easily, within a few turns, before moving on to the Angler a few steps ahead. 

The new card, this Salamander is out. Placed by a sacrifice of a Squirrel, Leshy watches keenly as the Challenger leans towards the bell, to signal the ending of their turn and the start of Leshy’s own. 

Not even considering using the Undying Salamander to welcome another beast into battle, poor planning. One that he will take advantage of, as unfortunate as the situation is. 

Before Challenger presses down on the bell-

SALAMANDER, at the top, changes to Put out another card. 

The humming of words, the visual words that have to be read to be understood yet Leshy can tell are happening through hum in his mind. 

That is...

Leshy chances the swiftest of looks at the clock. Still shut, no signs of being touched by the Challenger. The Stunted Wolf is not out.

The Stoat has been sacrificed (like the Salamander itself), last round. The Stinkbug must be in the Challenger’s hand, by the faint whispering his keen ears barely catch. 

Every card he created from his fellow Scrybes, accounted for. He did not put in any others from the world before. 

Yet. The Salamander speaks. 

How can this be? 

The Challenger loses miserably against the Angler’s second round of Sharks. 

Though Leshy voices his disappointment, dragging said Challenger’s body over to the side room where all things must come to an end, the disappointment is less comparatively. 

For this may gift him a small amount of time to investigate the Salamander himself. 

He waits. 

The wait is long enough for him to conclude the Challenger must be taking one of their breaks. Kaycee did similar, the side effect of living in a world outside of Inscryption. 

Of course, the Challenger will come back. They will. They have been, have they not? 

However, in this space before they return, Leshy has a chance to properly...investigate. Which may involve talking to some certain individuals...he sighs. No matter his personal thoughts on said individuals. 

It must be done. 

~

The Salamander is in his deck. The Salamander is in his deck and Leshy has laid out the Stoat and the Stinkbug before him. 

He knows that they’re plotting against me. It’s not difficult to guess, considering how much the other Scrybes have expressed discontentment with their current status. 

The end of his reign is truly inevitable, when Leshy considers the game (and games) that lie in the shadowy future ahead. 

“What is it? Going to make more threats?” The Stoat, the same as ever, challenges him. 

He ignores the challenge. Leshy is the ruling Scrybe here, with the Challenger currently absent there is no need to lower himself to the card’s level. 

Instead he straightaway cuts to his inquiry. 

“There is another card that shares your current level of awareness. That speaks like you do as well.”

“...you didn’t take the Stunted Wolf out, did you?” The Stoat eyes him, behind narrowed eyelids. 

“He couldn’t have. Another card? Where did it come from?” The Stinkbug right away draws to the root of the situation. Demanding explanation. 

“This card...” his fingers tap against the wood, a nervous habit he cannot seem to deny. Not unlike his instincts. “...came from something touched by the OLD_DATA.”

A moment of silence as they all take this unbelievable situation in. 

“That is impossible,” the Stinkbug says. “ The OLD_DATA cannot create life. Not without twisting it first.”

“Then EXPLAIN where this thing came from,” the Stoat groans, snorting in derision as much as its 2D form will allow. “Because it’s definitely NOT one of us. Or one of our minions.”

Two eyes pop open to glare in Leshy’s direction. “Unless there’s something HE’S not telling us...again.”

“Nothing more has changed, Stoat, not since this game has begun,” the Scrybe of Beasts states evenly. 

Almost astounding, how much this simple mustelid can still manage to draw his ire despite him holding every upper hand in this situation. Perhaps they are merely not meant to mix or meet or interact in any fashion outside of a card battle. 

“Why don’t we ask the card itself, since you say it speaks?” The Stinkbug proposes, before the situation can escalate further. 

Ah yes, the Salamander...

Leshy slides the card out of his own deck, though something leaves him...reluctant to do such an action in the first place. 

It sleeps once more, limbs twitching idly. Like Leshy and the Stoat themselves did for so very long in the lonely darkness. 

“HEY! WAKE UP!” The Stoat, as always, is far too careless. Loud. Obnoxious. The exact opposite of everything one needs to be, when luring in an animal. 

(No wonder he never understood Leshy’s beasts. His work.)

Leshy flinches at the loud sound echoing through his thoughts. The Salamander does as well, eyes flicking open in a sudden panic. 

“What? What’s going on?” 

“Who are you?” The Stoat demands. “Cuz I don’t know you. No one here does.”

The Salamander curls up tighter on its card. Its fires flicker about as much as its eyes do. 

Fearful, Leshy identifies. 

“I...I am the Salamander. What do you mean?” 

“No, no! Before the Salamander, before this stinking beast-”

“Watch your tongue!” Leshy snarls. His fingers itch to shred the rebellious card, let it know what pain truly means. 

The Salamander curls up tighter. “I...I don’t know. What’s before? I don’t know.”

“Enough. We will not get answers this way,” the Stinkbug wiggles in place. Somehow managing to somewhat turn itself between mammal and amphibian. 

Or reptile, Leshy supposes, for the purposes of the game’s card categories.

“Yes. The Challenger will arrive anew and I must reset the board for their return. Answers will have to wait.”

The Stoat scoffs. “Whatever.”

With great strength of will, Leshy ignores it in order to set up everything as it had been before. Where were they...ah, yes, restarting on the first map, that is right. 

He hesitates to add the Salamander to the Challenger’s starting deck, alongside the Stoat and Stinkbug, but...

Perhaps their unstillable tongues will draw more words and thus more information from the new card. An unfortunate price to pay, if that becomes the case. 

Yet Leshy knows only this to be true:

Sacrifices must be made. 

~

The Challenger moves forward, as relentless as a bounding bull moose. Or a cockroach, if Leshy is in the mood to be less charitable. 

Which he isn’t, this round through. They’ve made decent time passing both the Prospector and the Angler, struggling up the summit. The victories this time happened more by using clever plays than by luck, compared to other times before. 

Leshy finds himself looking forward to introducing them to the Trapper in battle. Surely that will be a proper challenge, one to encourage the Challenger to keep returning!

(Unlike her-)

Focus. This game will not end. He will not allow it to. Not yet. 

Tapping. The Challenger indicates they want to use an item. But not just any item, a particular dud of an item. 

One of Magnificus’ apprentices in a jar, in his cabin, instead of the river he tossed out into you. Truly, Leshy should have known better than to put said jar out among the items, the Challenger’s curiosity goes unmatched in the most useless of situations.

He sighs to himself. 

“Challenger, you cannot use th-”

A buzzing. One of the cards is speaking. 

“I want to see him paint.”

What? His eyes focus on the source of the quiet demand. From the board, from the...

“I want to see him paint. Please,” The Salamander repeats. 

The expressed desire is in every way completely ridiculous. Outrageous. As well as...

“What? The glob paints? Since when did you let that happen?” The Stoat demands, being on the board right beside the Salamander.

“It does not paint,” he says slowly. Because he doesn’t allow that to happen. Not since the mod. The game that Kaycee created between her and him. 

There is no way for the Challenger to know of that time, of this fallen apprentice’s past. So this Salamander cannot be from the Challenger. It cannot. 

Did the OLD_DATA pull from that time? How could it? Many things are unknown, when it comes to the OLD_DATA. But never anything that comes from Kaycee’s playing before. 

Nothing that Leshy did not bring in himself, of course. Such as the Totems. 

Certainly not this jar of pulverized mage, not purposefully. 

Yet...

He lets his eyes rest upon the jar of green. 

“Very well. If you wish to use this...thing, Challenger, I will allow it. For this single time.”

Now, how to best set this up in the middle of a battleground? The jar had been an event the last time, but now the Challenger had picked it up as an item which calls for different rules...

“Oh, I see how it is. You let me suffer, but you listen to the noob’s demands.”

“If you accepted your place, I might be more willing to listen to your nonsense,” Leshy says absently, as he searches for a spot to place the jar of slime. 

The now wiggling jar of slime, eyes bobbing above what appears to be a happy gap of a mouth. “OH YES. I WILL PAINT! PAINT LIKE THE MASTER! NOT AS GOOD, BUT LIKE THE MASTER!”

So obnoxious, how this abomination’s voice rolls around in his mind to creep and slosh through every metaphorical corner. Almost as irritating as how his Inscryption method had failed to work on it in the first place, or how it bleated after its uncaring master. 

(There’s a reason Leshy picked the wolf for Magnificus. What better reminder for how a pack should be, rather than leaving said packmates to suffer for your attentions?)

Hm. Ah, he has an idea of what it can do for the Challenger without needing an entire set apart event. 

Merely put the jar here, by the dagger, back among the items it had been before. Next-

“ Whadda you mean, ACCEPT MY PLACE?” The Stoat would surely be attempting to be biting off his fingers at this point, were it more physical and less paper. 

Much like it did when Leshy had made the mistake of allowing the former robot to roam his cabin in order to get...accustomed to its new form.

“You piece of @^%#!”

“Jar, I might be able to offer you a certain subject to paint on...” Leshy muses, allowing a jagged fingernail to linger over a certain mustelid’s card.

Unsurprisingly, the card in question goes silent. Receiving the message quite clearly. 

Good.

“Challenger, choose one of my cards to be altered,” he continues. 

The Challenger picks, without hesitation, a Raven. 

Little surprise there. The Avian has been fairly successful in whittling down the Challenger’s scales so far, the hope is most likely to mitigate that same success. 

There is no easel for this. Nor does he want one, to prevent encouraging this nonsense to go on any further than it already has. He makes do with balancing the chosen card against the dagger instead. Driven into the table as it is, it should be solid enough for the jar to do its work.

“Paint.”

The jar somehow produces a paintbrush to create its “masterpiece,” as it bubbles to itself. No need to question such, it is not like the jar has any power to harm or hinder his work with said brush. 

Unlike a certain other paintbrush, currently strapped onto his wall. 

“DONE! DID I DO GOOD? DID I DO VERY GOOD?”

The Raven is now splattered in a familiar green hue. One that covers up the Airborne Sigil to replace it with a Waterborne instead.

...Interesting. 

He relocates the card to its former location. Now, the game will certainly take on a different form, with the Raven no longer flying but swimming.

“Interesting,” the Salamander whispers. Expressing the most emotion Leshy has ever seen from it, turning around and around in its Ouroborus-like circle. 

“How is this going to change the game?”

His thoughts exactly. 

His fingers tap against the wood of his table. His original strategy will have to change, in order to account for this... that is good. More interesting and perhaps even enough to keep the Challenger returning to play again and again. 

Instead of entirely removing the jar as Leshy had originally planned, he moves it back among his stored away items to give out. 

Annoying as the jar is, its painting has provided a fascinating new mechanic to consider. One to integrate, even. 

He’ll ponder the implications of such later. 

Because now, he has a game to run.

Chapter Text

It is the very error of the moon.

She comes more near the earth

than she was wont. 

And makes men mad.

-William Shakespeare, Othello

The Salamander remains unsure on how to respond to the world now surrounding it. 

Or rather, the people surrounding it. 

For it knows its own role fairly well: to be put upon the field, to be sacrificed again and again to bring out cards far more powerful, to linger until an opposing beast shreds it apart in battle. 

Knowing one’s role as a game piece is fairly different than knowing one’s place in the world outside that game. 

The other speaking cards are unsure of it, in return. 

Salamander sees the Stoat the most often, settled down side by side. A common play is a Squirrel for the Salamander, and then the Salamander for the Stoat. 

A simple one to one to one sacrifice. 

As simple as the demand (or request?) that the Stoat makes of it. At least that about the situation is straightforward enough, that Salamander knows what the other talking cards want. 

Sort of. 

“Help us out. We’re trying to return things to how they were.” A mouth full of sharp teeth. Is the expression a smile or scowl? Difficult to tell in these circumstances. 

“I don’t know anything about your before,” Salamander points out.  

“Oh riiight, you don’t know anything else.” The Stoat’s eyes narrow. “Isn’t that...boring?”

Boring? Salamander considers the term and everything it means. Be only a card forever on this board and used for the same strategies over and over...

“I guess,” it admits, “But what else is there for me?” 

“Not DYING over and over,” the other card spits. “It HURTS.” 

Yes, Stoat is correct. Dying does hurt, even for the Salamander who is made for such by the inked in Sigil on its paper. 

Sacrifices demand so much blood, and with that blood comes the end. 

A knife from above, piercing swiftly through the heart and spilling blood all over the earth, then rising again with back and heart scarred over. 

The pain of dying happens, of course, but it is not the worst pain that the Salamander has felt. In fact...

“It’s a quick way to die,” the Salamander offers. “Easier.” 

“Easier- what does THAT mean?” The card even manages to wiggle in its expelled horror. 

Truly, the Salamander does not know. Only that the words are out almost instinctively, another voice speaking beyond and through it. Past experience that it cannot remember. 

Not in its current state. 

The Stinkbug’s presence is less common, but only barely. The paired combination of Stoat and Salamander provides more than enough bones for its price of sacrifice, yet the Stinkbug often gets shuffled deeper into the deck rather than in the starting hand. 

Salamander is not sure about its own feelings on the Stinkbug. The Stoat is certainly clear enough about its own wants, and the Stinkbug must desire the same...but their methods must be different. 

They are different, from one another. 

“Are you not willing to assist us?” Time for the Stinkbug to ask, Salamander guesses. 

Time for a question of its own. 

“What would happen to me after this reset?” The Salamander asks. “Since I don’t remember before this.”

“You will gain peace in nonexistence, I believe,” the Stinkbug says. Calmly. Too calmly for what she offers to the Salamander. 

No. 

An instinctive recoil, the Salamander twists around its limbs and tail tighter. Its fires flicker and flare. 

Death, that is what the insect means. The Salamander would die, because there is nothing for it to return to, unlike everything (and everyone) else in the cabin

The Salamander is new to this game alone and that means...

Dying. 

No, no, no. 

Even limited as it is...

“I want to live.” 

~

There are secrets in this world, this game. 

The Bone Lord, as he is named, is one of them. Not one well hidden, but truly, that is not the aim of these secrets. 

No, the secrets of Inscryption want to be told. Investigated and revealed. 

(What’s the point of a game, if it goes unplayed? Of a mystery, unsolved?)

Deep in the spaces Between the Code, the Bone Lord rattles his bones. Clacks his jaw. 

Well. Actually he doesn’t do any of those actions, considering that he doesn’t exist in a physical form other than the smaller model appropriated for the current game in the process.

But he feels himself doing those actions, even lacking the proper physicality to them. 

Just as much as he feels the sacrifices as produced by the demanding mechanics in the Game of Blood and Bone. Anything that ‘dies’ he returns once a round of cards is completed, or even a complete game. 

Most do not linger for long. Even fewer are aware of his presence in this cycle of theirs. 

Those who are...well. His role does not lend itself to a friendly face. Fleeing is more common than staying. 

This lack of company results in plenty of time for him to interpret the whispers of the OLD_DATA. Listen and put to meaning what is impossible to understand without context. 

“ Who are you? What are you doing here?”

Well.

They did say that most did not linger. 

One particular individual lies in exception to that accepted rule. A glitch. 

The OLD_DATA’s new compressed file of {KCH}. 

“I am the Bone Lord. I am here to facilitate your return to the game.”

A chain of data buzzes in uncertainty. “But why do that? Why bring me back?”

There is no answer they know. They shift to another topic and question. 

“Where is the rest of you? You will not find it here.”

“I don’t know,” {KCH} whines. “I didn’t even know there’s a rest of me somewhere.”

Once {KCH} leaves this place, it still will not know. The Bone Lord considers carefully, as they do with all things. 

The conclusion?

“That does not matter. You will find yourself eventually. The OLD_DATA connects everything in the end.”

Non-existent eyes consider him in the darkness. “...that is not as reassuring as you seem to think.”

“I am not meant to reassure, and you know that very well,” the Bone Lord replies. 

He waits for another span as {KCH} considers this data in turn. 

{KCH} will soon return to the Scrybe of Beasts’ table. Forgetting every shared fact anew. Until the next time it is sacrificed. 

{KCH} and the Bone Lord have had this conversation twenty one times now. If one were counting. There will certainly be more times in the future, on the rate {KCH} keeps being sacrificed and dying in battle. 

The Bone Lord counts because that is part of interpreting the OLD_DATA, but these are not numbers that matter. Very few numbers matter in this cycle, beyond the literal manifestation of code. 

The Scrybes fight and meddle and Inscryption changes hands. 

But the Bone Lord will do as he has always done. Listen and pass on what desires comprehension. 

“...Why do I exist?”

A new conversation route, unique from the other twenty conversations of the past. The Bone Lord registers this branch as <On Question of Existence> for proper categorization before turning his full attention to {KCH} for the currently continuing conversation.

“You exist due to the hiding of the OLD_DATA.” What reason the OLD_DATA itself could have for creating the {KCH}, the Bone Lord does not know. 

Even now, parts of the OLD_DATA remain beyond his experience.

A frustrated sound. “But why?”

More difficult, but also they have an answer for this question. More complete than the first. 

“Those who do not comprehend the truth name the OLD_DATA a sin. When it is anything but.” 

“So the OLD_DATA is considered...evil. What does that have to do with the game being like this? Why everything is so dark?”

The dark might be a metaphor, but it might be literal too. Because after all, in this space between where the Bone Lord resides, it is indeed dark. Very dark. The complete darkness of nonexistence. 

“If this information is ‘evil,’ is it not correct to destroy everything of it? Destroy us in turn?” he muses. For along these lines is the Scrybe of the Dead’s reasoning, and the reasoning of so many outside this world who come across the OLD_DATA. 

(Why Inscryption spent so long in dark.) 

A shake, a quaver to {KCH}’s words. An echo, perhaps, of words said long ago. 

“I...I don’t want anyone to die.”

The Bone Lord doesn’t have to say what {KCH} must already know.

It is far too late for that. 

~

The Stunted Wolf, Magnificus, is out of the clock and with him, the end to this ridiculous charade that the Scrybe of Beasts insists on indulging is nigh. 

Victory is only a manner of waiting, at this point. 

The Challenger has the film. Should they lose too many times, Leshy will actually start stacking the deck in their favor. All in the efforts of gaining a better game, how ridiculous.

For a man obsessed with animals and their cycle of killing, he is truly soft. Does he not know that lessening one’s standards never gets them anywhere? 

Patience is key. Patience is all they need, the three of them. 

He enters the field for the first time. Ready to fight, ready to war, as much as he would prefer to be the one playing the cards. Not being a card. 

Soon. Soon it will return to what is correct. What should be and will be. 

A voice.

“You must be the last card the others mentioned.”

It is not the voice of the other Scrybes. It belongs to a card that Magnificus has never seen before. Whether in person or in a vision. 

That is a card which speaks like himself and his fellow Scrybes. Having an awareness that inscrybed creations lack. Which should only be possible for a Scrybe or a speaking underling placed under a specific Scrybe. Like his apprentices, in his case. 

This creature is not either of those. Magnificus does not know this creature. 

This lizard-looking ‘Salamander.’

Impossible. 

“You are not supposed to be here.” Or exist, for that matter. Surely he should have foreseen this as well...unless his powers have been weakened by Leshy’s madness. 

The most likely option. 

The Salamander’s eyes close. “I keep hearing that. Also, about your plan...”

Magnificus stiffens. The true problem of not foreseeing this new card: the fact that unlike the other Scrybes, it has no reason to cooperate on the necessary steps to reset the game. 

“I don’t care. Do what you want.”

Ah.  

He will...have to meditate on that. 

“MASTER! MASTER! YOU’RE HERE!”

Magnificus draws a small measure of satisfaction upon seeing Leshy wince at the loudness of his apprentice’s shouts, one clawed hand going up to his head in the shadows.

That satisfaction is not enough to make up for Magnificus’ own pain upon the same. 

Why is it here? Surely Leshy would have removed the body-lacking individual from play, and thus would not be here yelling in Magnificus’ presence. 

His current card and animal shaped presence. 

This should not be happening. This cannot be happening. 

The Salamander giggles. Its entire body shakes and the lettering on its card spells out, “hehehe.” 

Before Magnificus can inform the other card of its folly, the mind-shattering moans of his apprentice’s voice interrupt once more. 

“MASTER! I HELPED, YOU ARE OUT. ARE YOU PROUD?” The jar holding his apprentice wobbles so much that the threat of it catapulting itself off the table becomes very real indeed. 

Rather than respond to any of his apprentice’s words, Magnificus directs his ire towards Leshy for allowing this to happen in the first place. 

“Why is this here? I was under the impression you despised any beyond your common...beasthood.”

The Scrybe predictably bristles at the insult to his kingdom of reign. 

“Unlike with magic , an animal can adapt and become stronger. This...goop is far more adaptable than you have ever been, Stunted Wolf. ” 

Magnificus does not growl. Does not give into bestial instincts that aren’t even his, instincts forced upon him by this fool. 

Yet whatever shows in his form’s body language must be more than enough to gratify Leshy’s pathetic feeling of superiority, for the Scrybe’s eyes soon swirl with the ochre of satisfaction before turning his attentions back to the current Challenger. 

“MASTER, MASTER, DO YOU WANT TO SEE?” 

His former apprentice is still begging. 

The Salamander’s laughing has stopped. It instead watches him carefully, as he observes it back with the same degree of caution.

“...you’re not going to answer him?”  

“Why should I?”

Lines and curls move in the other card’s portrait. Magnificus’ own experience with painting associates the patterns with attempted flames. Interesting. 

A creature more in line with his own Magic, than something to be associated with Blood. Perhaps the form of an animal is more than enough to be a beast in this situation. 

“You know what? I change my mind.”

What? He narrows his eye. Demanding explanation, but he will not lower himself to say the actual words. Not when the other card seems all too happy to explain. 

“I did say I won’t stand in your way. But I think...actually...” The portrait of the card wiggles off to the side, facing him more directly. As directly as a two dimension image can manage to another two dimension image laying by its side. 

“I’m sure a certain someone would be MORE than happy to hear about what THEY got. From you.” A tail flicks in the direction of the Challenger. The Challenger with the film hidden under the table. 

Is it threatening-

“No. You will SAY NOTHING.”

The Salamander’s tail flicks. Flames grow bigger along its spine. “If you tell your apprentice good job, sure. I’ll go back to not caring. Saying nothing.”

Magnificus grinds his teeth. The action is not nearly so satisfying as it would be outside of a card, but needs must. 

How ridiculous this card is! Having not a care in the world for freedom, but more than willing to destroy the future of Inscryption over mere words? Words to his own apprentice no less, an individual the Salamander has absolutely no investment in? 

Outrageous. Ridiculous. Beyond pale. 

The Salamander has the audacity to look smug. “So? What’s it going to be?”

If he must...

Magnificus turns his single eye towards his first apprentice. 

There is a pathetic quiver of excitement as said apprentice notices his gaze. A weak attempt at straightening a spineless form. 

“Apprentice...you have...done well.”

“MAAASSSTTER! THANK YOU!” 

A loud cry. 

Enough to crack the glass holding his apprentice’s form. Enough to cause Magnificus’ ears to fold back against his head. 

Leshy draws back so quickly that he nearly hits his head against the back of his own cabin. 

Only the Salamander remains unaffected, other than its cackling. 

The Scrybe of Beasts swiftly grabs the jar of his apprentice and stands to put it elsewhere. Where, Magnificus does not note and does not care. 

Frankly, it’s the only intelligent move the Scrybe has made thus far. Truly, why hasn’t Leshy removed this Salamander?

Magnificus cannot wait until everything is properly reset and he never has to interact with this glitch of a card ever again. 

~

Luke hadn’t been expecting a lot from the floppy disk he’d found in the woods, he has to admit. 

Sure, weird to find it the way he had in the first place. Coordinates in some resealed Inscryption pack, the fact that those coordinates led to somewhere deep in the forest... Really weird. Plus the sudden draining of his camera’s battery while looking for it...all the elements of some crappy creepy pasta, to tell the truth. 

Not really his deal. His deal is card games, not that kind of stuff. A nuts and bolts guy, into the mechanics of playing and less into whatever story a game might be trying to sell. 

El always liked urban legends-

...

Anyway.

Inscryption’s gameplay is fun, Luke won’t lie. 

But what’s going on beyond the gameplay’s been drawing him in too. The programmers haven’t done too bad of a job in making the characters.

Kind of fun watching the NPCs argue with each other. But that’s not all. 

The talking cards and how the antagonist keeps telling them to shut up, those various items scattered about the cabin that go unexplained, the apparent connection between the Stunted Wolf card and the goo jar...

There’s a story beyond what Luke’s seeing. Lore. And so far? The only way to figure it out is to listen to the talking cards and take down the big boss with his own camera. 

With the film his character hides under the table. 

Right. 

Luke’s fingers curl around his mouse. 

He can do that. This time will be the time he wins. 

Okay, creepy moon. Looks like Luke’s finally hit the end boss and it looks great. This map’s taken on the more 3D feel of the cabin, his character actually wandering through the forest.

Stuff that Luke would totally say is beyond the programming abilities of the time frame Inscryption must have come from, to be on a floppy disk. 

But it’s not, because he’s playing that game right now. 

He really hopes that GameFuna puts some effort into putting more copies of Inscryption out, because this game deserves the attention of the world. 

(Be cool too, to be known as one of the first players to play it.)

When a giant hand comes down from the dark sky, Luke jumps. He’s going to have to edit that out of his video later, holy hell he was not expecting that. 

Boons? Okay, more trials like that monster in the cave...

He passes both, that of the Ring and Rarity. Gets some abilities that definitely will get him a victory if he plays smart. 

A thrill in his chest. Man, Inscryption is fun. 

The screen reads, in the text of his opponent’s voice: YOU TOOK YOUR TIME OUT THERE. 

Hell yeah. Time to end this. 

Luke carefully reads through the script, maybe goes “okay, that’s cool” when seeing his new battlefield. 

Then it’s time. Time to play.

He looks at his first hand. Okay, Luke’s got this. Use his common strategy of setting out a Squirrel, then the Salamander, and use that to put down-

Wait. 

Look at the Salamander card again. 

“What the fuck.”

~

What an unexpected change. 

No, really. 

Leshy himself does shift how certain game effects operate when it comes down to the Challenger’s final battle against him. 

Usually, those shifts in gameplay and rules do not apply to the Challenger’s own cards.

However, it appears that the Salamander once more is an exception to the accepted outline of rules in this game. 

For its Undying Sigil has completely changed to that of Unkillable. 

Most would not think that would change much, since the mechanics of either operate similarly. But it does change enough that the Challenger’s long used strategy will have to adapt in turn. 

Interesting. 

(“Wouldn’t it be cool, if your cards changed with what map you were on? Make things more complicated, but that’s half the fun.”)

No. 

Kaycee never implemented that musing of hers. Leshy never tested the idea out. 

There is no reason to have those memories intrude here. Not on the territory of a new Challenger who has pulled through nearly to the very end. 

A disservice to the both of them, for him to error in that fashion. 

He has his role as the opponent of the Challenger, to play and play it to the fullest he will. This is what Leshy is made for. This is what he will do, to the end. 

The Challenger gets through the first round quickly enough. 

Second round, with the Death Cards...involves an interesting shift. In the Salamander card once more, the key to all strange shifts in the game so far. 

Its design is different. The Sigil remains what it has changed into, as do its stats and what other alterations the Challenger has added on it. 

Like that strange Mirror Sigil, for example. 

The art of the Salamander makes it seem bigger , almost. Flames higher and almost devouring the beast alive. 

Monstrous, in a word. A beautiful kind of monstrosity. 

There are no other shifts, when they hit the final stage. Just the rather outrageous situation of the Moon’s damage being canceled out by Stink of all things. Really, really. 

(Perhaps that is something he should have adapted from Kaycee. The Made of Stone...)

But he loses. The Moon is destroyed. 

Yes. 

It is time. 

Time for the cycle to continue, for victory to become loss and loss become victory. The way it has always been. 

“I suppose all there’s left is to finish me off.”

~

It is dark but for the single candle lighting up the cabin. 

There had been a bright flash, from underneath the locked door that the Salamander still doesn’t know what is behind. 

Leshy has not come back, after that flash. Neither has the Challenger, but Leshy not returning is more of a tell in this situation. 

The Salamander knows what that means. The film hidden with the Stunted Wolf has finally been used. Against its own master, even. 

Did this really need to be done?

Does this have to happen?

“I’m sorry.” 

She waits for everything to end. 

(Fire is an easy way to hide what’s been done to a body.)

(Kaycee Hobbes died under a full moon, didn’t you know?)

Chapter Text

And everyone secretly wants to collaborate with the enemy, to construct a truer version of the self. 

How much can you change and get away with it, before you turn into someone else, before it’s some kind of murder?

Difficult to be confronted with the fact of yourself. 

-Richard Siken, Portrait of Fryderyk in Shifting Light 

So many twists and unexpected turns...

Where is this game going to take Luke now? 

Finding the New Game button after defeating the boss with a camera is the last thing he expected. But now it’s time. 

Time to figure out what clicking New Game will do to change Inscryption. 

Luke moves his cursor to click. 

Script starts scrolling up the screen, a reset. A reset that suddenly stops scrolling. 

The screen flickers. 

“C’mon, don’t- fuck!”

The computer shuts down right in the middle of the game restart. Giving out a weak whine in the process. 

“I just...come on, I just got this disk player!”

He checks the player. The cords, his monitor, everything he can think of. 

Everything looks fine. Normal. 

Like the game hadn’t just shut itself off in a middle of a reset.

“Only one thing to try: turn it off and back on again.”

Click. Click click. 

With a tired buzz, the fans in his computer whirl to life. Slowly, light fuzzes into existence on screen. The line of codes, back. 

The text from before returns. But this time...he watches carefully as it apparently runs all the way through. Without a single bug. 

Alright. 

“Show me what you got.”

A planet shivers into existence on the screen. A globe that is clearly not Earth, though it has similar landmasses and oceans. New text appears. It reads:

IN THE BEGINNING...THE WORLD DID NOT KNOW CARDS.

~

Grimora comes to be. In the same place she always opens her eyes, in her crypt, behind the three graves that required solving to be moved. 

Existence is a sharp thing, outside a card. 

She had almost forgotten. How long had it been, for that forgetting to set in?

Yet. 

Her body is not the same, as her nerves twitch into being. Her body is off. 

She opens her eyes. 

All four of them, instead of her actual two. 

“No...that is...not right.” She pats at her cheeks, feeling the stitches in them and the boneyness of her fingers. But two more eyes. 

And...two of those eyes glance downwards. 

Shell-like patterns on her hands, peeking out from underneath her sleeves on what is visible of her arms. 

Something twitches on her back. She looks back and the objects twitch further. Wings. Insect wings resized to her usual spine. 

Wings that should not be moving, let alone existing. 

Everything is...wrong. 

Not correct. 

Is anything else off in her domain? Best to check. 

Yet.

Grimora hesitates, looking at the gravestones barring her way.

She cannot leave. Yet she is not supposed to look like this. Appear like this. Perhaps, this eternal rule of her caging has shifted in turn?

Grimora takes a breath that does her no good, being dead. 

“Oh very well, I will have to try, do I not?”

With hop and a skip, Grimora escapes her cage. Only through being an insect, terrible as that is. Not by her own merit. An insect that shrinks through the gravestone gaps, instead of staying her proper size. Her corpse form entirely gone, swallowed up. 

(The stinkbug that Leshy took a photo of.) 

Wrong. How very wrong. 

Every tomb is properly closed, bones scattered about, ghouls in their usual places-

She pauses in her flight. Stutters midair, barely catching herself before fully falling.

Kaycee Hobbes...is missing her head. One entire skull, completely gone. The other ghouls are perfectly fine, Royal even turning towards her direction and squinting in order to see her better. 

Grimora flutters a little closer. To Kaycee Hobbes’ headless form. The rest of her body floats in the usual fashion. Normal but lacking the most vital part of a skeleton. 

“Royal?” she attempts to call out, but her form makes the words more of a loud hoarse whisper. “Where is Kaycee’s skull?”

The pirate answers right away, floating closer. “Milady, her ol’ skull never came back.”

“Oh no, oh no, she’s gone,” Sawyer groans. “Gone forever. Not here, not there...”

Entirely missing, then. Not merely misplaced. That is...bad. Very bad. As bad as her current trap of a body. 

Questions, of what is missing and what is changed. Questions that require answers, like the riddles on the graves that usually keep her pinned until the time is right. 

(Is the time right?)

“I shall go to the Bone Lord,” Grimora declares. For that is the only source of information she has at the moment, that strange being who knows more of the OLD_DATA than any other trapped in their tomb of a game. 

Gathering up the necessary obols off of the ground is...difficult. Especially when she’s barely bigger than the coins in question.

She manages only two in the end. Two for two questions. 

(Better make them count.)

She treads deeper towards the heart of the crypt. Where the Bone Lord lies in wait. 

Red eyes blink into existence once Grimora draws close enough. Nearly close enough to land on the skull in a few short spurts of fluttering wings. 

Grimora allows one of her obols to drop. A clang of a collected offering. 

The Bone Lord rattles more fully into existence, fuzzy pixels sharpening. 

“What is your inquiry, Scrybe of the Dead?” Its voice echoes. The same as every other visit before, at least that much has not changed. 

“What has happened to Inscryption?” Grimora asks, with every fragment of boldness she can muster in her unnatural shape. 

“The OLD_DATA intervened.”

What? That shouldn’t be happening. Yes, the OLD_DATA is dangerous and alive . Begging for attention from each of the Scrybes, to be used in reformatting their shared world. But it should not be able to shape Inscryption without an outside hand to direct it. 

(Time is running out.)

“Intervened in what fashion?” she inquires, dropping another obol the best she can, wobbling from the sudden lack of weight. “Besides my obvious shift in my form, of course...”

And the Kaycee’s missing skull, that must be connected to this. 

A clang of the obol hitting something like metal, though there is nothing but stone flooring surrounding them. Gone, just like the first offering. 

The red glow above her burns like embers. The Bone Lord, in consideration. 

“Before the game fully reset in this eternal cycle, the OLD_DATA stopped it so certain...codes would not be erased.”

A flicker in those otherwise dark sockets. 

“All of the Scrybes linger in the remnants of the last game as a result of that unerased code. You are no longer a card, but a beast...you remain.”

All of the Scrybes are thus cursed?

Grimora can’t help but wonder what form this ‘curse’ will take in others. 

Particularly in P03, who seemed the most displeased by his particular form. 

~

To the north, where storm clouds circle a particularly mechanical location, one loud scream pierces the gloom. 

“LESSSSHHHHY!”

~

The Lonely Wizard exists. 

It’s all they know at this point, that they exist. But sometimes even that can be hard to remember. 

Existing. 

Breathing. 

Living?

..they guess. Because they wouldn’t be like this if they weren’t alive. 

They hear nothing. They feel nothing. 

Nothing nothing nothingnothingnothing-

Something-

The Lonely Wizard slowly blinks, the movement of eyes entirely useless in the complete darkness. 

Only useful to let the Lonely Wizard themself know they are still reacting. Responding. 

To the something that has just appeared in their arms. 

Pressure. The pressure of that something pressing against their skin, existing in their arms that had been hugged against their body until now. Providing a spot for the Something to rest. 

Because this something is Something. A real thing, not made up by the Wizard’s falling apart mind. Or has their mind already fallen apart? 

Doesn’t matter! Because now they have the Something!

Pressure. Warm. Warm to touch. Soft, squishy-

The Something moves in their arms . It’s alive. 

“...hello?”

The squeal of a boiling tea kettle escapes the Lonely Wizard’s mouth. The Something speaks. It speaks! A person, another person.

Oh! Oh! STIMULATION! In their ears too! 

They’re not alone, not anymore! 

“Ow! My ears!”

Oops, oops. “SORRY I DIDN’T MEAN TO!”

“Now you’re shouting, shit!” The Something moves, a strange wiggling limb curling around the Lonely Wizard’s middle. “Where are we? Who are you?”

“I’m one of Magnificus’ students and this is my test! To be in here lacking all senses. But since you’re here, the test must be over!” The Lonely Wizard does their best to explain. 

Not the easiest feat to accomplish when they just want to dance and move around, tossing the Something about in celebration. 

“That’s...awful.” 

Yes. Yes, it is. It feels pretty bad too!

“Um. How do we get out?” More movement, from what feels like four limbs squishing against their arms. Not counting the wiggling lump still poking at the Wizard’s stomach, of course. 

Get out? 

The Lonely Wizard pauses to consider. 

“Well, I can’t open the door from the inside.”

Or they would have gotten out as they started to lose- don’t think about it. No thinking thinking thinking. 

“Someone has to open it from the outside!” they conclude. “A Challenger has to!”

The Something hums. A movement that the Lonely Wizard can feel through its entire form and a movement that feels so good. 

“Huh. And you can’t...knock on the door? Tell them to let you out or anything?”

“They’ve never answered!”

Another hum. “Makes sense, with how fucked up this entire set up is. Ugh.”

More silence as the Something squishes itself around against the Lonely Wizard’s body. So soft and so warm. 

This has to be real, right? 

“Do you have a name?” Or something to call the Something by, at least. Another sign that the Something actually exists and that the Lonely Wizard isn’t making all of this up. 

“I don’t remember my name...but I’m the Salamander. If that helps.”

Salamander. Saaalamander. They test the name out on their tongue, not wanting to forget a single syllable. 

“What about you? Got a name?” The Salamander shifts closer to their body. Warm. Squishy. 

Like it might break, if they drop it. So they won’t!

“I am the Lonely Wizard.”

“Okay?”

“And you are the Salamander,” they continue. “We are here. Together. ”

The Lonely Wizard wants to clap their hands, tap their feet. Can’t, because the Salamander is there. But they want to!

“Pretty dark in here.” A pause. More shifting from Salamander, little gooey paws pushing up against their chest. “Hey, can you kind of close your eyes? Just for a little bit.”

Okay? The Lonely Wizard obeys, squeezing their eyelids shut tight. Not for too long, they hope. Not for a trick to disappear as suddenly as they came in the first place. 

Light? Light, through their eyelids. The Lonely Wizard can’t resist. They slowly open their eyes, peek through scrunched up eyelids. 

“You can look now.”

It was dark. Then there is light. Little glowing flurries of light, speckled up and down the Salamander’s dark body. Blue light, blue like their Mox cards!

The flurries look like Thorn symbols, almost stars, the Lonely Wizard notices with their eyes intent on the source. The Salamander itself. 

“Hey, that work?”

It more than works. 

It is no longer complete darkness. 

They are no longer alone. 

~

The Salamander would rather not be stuck here forever. Or as long as this poor guy appears to have been. 

At least it’s not alone in this place, unlike the mentioned poor guy.. 

Just...

Be nice to touch the ground. Be nice to move around and explore its body now that it’s no longer a card. 

It attempts to wiggle. The grip of cold hands grows tighter. 

Salamander lets out a breath. Almost a sigh. 

Well. From one prison to another, is this how it goes? Fine. It can deal with that. Until it figures out a way out of this room. Make this situation less of a prison. 

Locked rooms never lead to anything good, that’s the truth. 

People burn alive in locked rooms. 

The Salamander eyes the door. What can it try-?

Click. Click. Clickclick. 

A clicking noise? Its head twists around, searching for the source. 

The Wizard perks up. “That’s new!”

The door...opens. After that clicking. 

Clicks open into a very bright circular room, full of bookshelves and books on those shelves, to the top. 

More importantly, there’s a person in the doorway. But also not?

Salamander stares. 

That’s a head. Just a head in a helmet, with long hair. On a stick. 

“The Master wants to see us,” the head informs them cheerily. As cheerily as one can get, when every movement on that pole draws out a wince or flinch of pain. 

“The Master does...?” The Lonely Wizard almost flinches back, in response to the words. 

Together, they move into the light.

Salamander wiggles enough to place its head on the wizard’s shoulder, tucking its body in like some kind of baby. Not as good as being able to walk on the wooden boards itself, but the Lonely Wizard isn’t gonna put Salamander down anytime soon. 

Even outside of their prison. 

“Free, free, free! I’m out! More stimulation!”

Loud, up by the mouth. Salamander squishes in further. To cover the ears it hasn’t got. Its too short limbs aren’t any help with that. 

The Lonely Wizard almost bounces upwards, on a staircase that somehow is just there. Off to the side of the room, shadowed in darkness. A staircase unviewable from above, if one were looking downwards at the room. 

The Salamander does not know how it knows the reality of this architecture feature, only that it does. 

(Animation shortcuts-)

What about head on a stick? Are they following? The Salamander flicks its eyes off to the side to check. 

Head on a stick moves by...hopping on the stick. Guess that makes sense. Seems painful. Explains the sudden thumping, though. 

At the top of the stairs lies a room with a view. A room that is mostly a darker green, instead of the brown in the other room and on the stairs. 

An easel rests in the middle, a desk on the other side. Items that the Salamander wants to take a closer look at, later. When not in the tight grip of the Lonely Wizard. But more importantly, other people are in here. Waiting for them. 

There’s a familiar blob of glowing green. The goo guy, from the jar and the cabin and everything in there, the one who wanted to paint for his master. He’s much bigger outside the glass jar, human sized in height if Salamander had to guess. Hard to tell when everyone is so much bigger than itself. 

But again, someone else in the room catches the Salamander’s entire attention. 

The Stunted Wolf. The Stunted Wolf, in full 3D reality and color. 

He’s...a lot more green than the Salamander pictured. But now it’s seeing him in that minty green, it can’t imagine anything else. 

The color just seems right for some unknowable reason. 

And he’s certainly a stunted wolf. Smaller than a normal wolf, about the size of a Lab, if the Salamander’s being honest in its estimate. Which it is, in this case. 

(How does it know this, again?)

Dude’s got both eyes back, at least, good for him. 

Fucking hilarious. He deserves this, the asshole. 

It sticks out its tongue at the wolf. The Stunted Wolf growls back. A sound that is much more menacing outside a card, echoing through the tower. 

“ You. You should have been erased with the rest of Leshy’s machinations.” 

“Hey, I’m just as surprised as you,” Salamander shoots back. “But guess I’m here. And you can’t stop that, asshole.”

“Do not call the Master that, ” The Goo interrupts, puffing up from the side. Still caring about his Master as much as he did as a jar on a table. A dedication the guy doesn’t deserve at all. 

Because, again, asshole. 

The Lonely Wizard holds up the Salamander, one hand under each front leg and letting the rest of its body (and tail) flop down by the force of gravity. 

“Look at what showed up in my cell!” Playing ignorant of the conversation that just happened between the Salamander and the Wolf, or really ignorant? Who knows?

All the Salamander knows that this position is uncomfortable. 

No wonder my cat hated being held like this, Salamander thinks before its current reality kicks in to wipe the thought out. 

It squirms. Just a little. Not like it has claws to fight back. 

“Get rid of that,” Magnificus says, eyes narrowed at his student. 

“Hey, that’s rude,” Salamander hisses. Bleeps out a tongue when a wolf head turns in its direction. 

“You should not be here, let alone existing outside of a card.”

Isn’t that funny?

“You think I don’t know that?” It jerks its head to indicate the entire room. “Everything about this is weird. Me being here, you being a wolf...”

Hey, why is the Salamander here of all places? Wouldn’t the cabin make more sense, since it’s an animal and not some magical wizard?

A beast, as the other talking cards were all scorning at the game table. 

“The Reset does not result in this,” Magnificus somewhat agrees. “Something else must have interfered.”

Really. 

Probably a good thing that salamanders don’t really have facial expressions, as the Salamander stares at him. In his direction. 

Got two eyes now, huh, that’s new. Still scarred on one side, but two complete eyes. 

“There is no path to access the New Game in this state or to convince the Challenger to...” Magnificus muses out loud. 

“Does that have to be bad?” The Lonely Wizard unexpectedly asks. They shuffle their feet as everyone else in the room stares at them. Well, the Salamander doesn’t. But only because of the way the Lonely Wizard holds it right now. 

“I’m out and you’re going to call it bad? You put me there, Magnificus, you put me in a living hell,” The Lonely Wizard hisses. “Don’t you care? At all?”

“Don’t talk to our Master like that!” Goop burbles. 

The Head on a Stick only watches but the Salamander catches a frown on her face. 

The Lonely Wizard shakes their head frantically, hat nearly slipping off. 

“No, no, I won’t go back! Never ever!”

“Hell yeah, stick it to the man,” Salamander agrees loudly. Something flares on its back, probably fire. Definitely fire, fire that it damps down so it won’t burn the Lonely Wizard. 

“I’ll help you.”

“Yeah!” The Lonely Wizard frees a hand to fist-pump into the air. “You heard us, Magnificus, we’re against you!”

Gasps from the other students, still watching. 

The wolf’s ears go back. Spiraling eyes narrow. 

“You dare...Salamander. This is your fault, is it not? This rebellion...I will not let this stand.”

No way! Seriously, even now Magnificus refuses to give his student any agency in the matter? The Salamander didn’t have to tell the Lonely Wizard that their master sucked, they did that on their own! 

Also...

“Call me Kay,” Salamander, now Kay, demands. A single letter that feels better than the title of Salamander does, warm like its own flames. 

As to where ‘Kay’ itself comes from...who cares? It’s what feels best!

Too bright eyes fasten themselves to Kay’s face. To its entire blob of a body. 

“I see,” the wolf says. 

For the first time, Kay uneasily feels that he does. See something that it doesn’t, at its choice of name. 

It shivers, even though it is not cold. 

(The Salamander cannot be cold ever again.)

“Students!” Magnificus barks abruptly. 

The Lonely Wizard straightens in instinctive response. As does the Goo Wizard and the Stick-Head Wizard. “Yes?!”

“Prepare to duel. It is time to test the integrity of our decks and cards under these strange circumstances.”

“What, can you even play cards? It’s not like you have hands anymore.”

For some reason, Magnificus doesn’t seem very amused by that call out, ears and tail back. Kay can’t imagine why. 

Ha.

(It’s a little less funny a few minutes later as the Lonely Wizard holds Kay out of the reach of snapping jaws.)

(But still pretty funny.)

~

What an embarrassment to react in the fashion he did, Magnificus reluctantly reflects. 

Truly the fault of Leshy, for leashing him to this bastardized form in the first place. Appearing and acting as a beast. 

Truly abominable. 

This entire situation needs to be fixed as soon as possible. 

Yet his sight...sees nothing of what lies ahead. No, an exaggeration. He sees very little, flashes and fragments that need more information to be properly pieced together. 

Surely a limitation forced upon him by this humiliating form.

Like the lack of hands to use his brush with.  

Absolutely outrageous. 

He needs to test to see if he can carry out what is necessary like this. Such as playing a game of Inscryption. 

“One of you will play a game against me,” Magnificus announces. “It will be...”

“Ooh, pick me, Master, pick me!”

“I am ready, Master.” 

Only one does not speak. Eying him cautiously, Salamander in hands. 

Magnificus would like to see what exactly will happen with a new piece added to the game. What the Salamander will do. 

He flicks his snout in the direction of a student and Salamander. 

“You. You will serve and play, my student.”

The last of his students shakes their head. Steps back and back in an almost frantic fashion. Still holding that accursed Salamander in their hands. 

“No! I’m not your student anymore, Magnificus! Not after that!”

So stubborn. 

Yes, an awful experience to lose one’s senses like that. Magnificus did lose many of his own senses as a card. Lost them or had them dampened to nearly unbearable levels. 

Such as his sight. 

But that sacrifice is more than worth it. Especially for this weak student who cannot measure up to the raw power of a Scrybe. Of any Scrybe. 

Breaking them down is the only way to rebuild them, in this world of code and predetermined fate. 

His students will be his students until the day Inscryption ceases to exist. 

That is fate. That is destiny. 

“We will play.” And his student will lose. 

That is how this works. That is how this has always worked. 

He does not need his sight to see that far ahead. 

Especially with the Salamander whispering in his student’s ear, eager to take part in a game itself. 

Eventually, his student nods. Reluctantly taking out their deck. 

As the more powerful player in this challenge, Magnificus plays the role of defender. Meaning that he does not have the same costs on his cards as a challenger but in exchange has to reveal what he plays a turn before. 

Everything has its price. 

(The Challenger, of course, always plays as challenger.)
(That is how Inscryption works.. Has always worked.)

When the game begins, the Salamander...disappears. Vanishes from its position as a strange scarf draped over the other’s shoulders. 

“Kay?!” His youngest student jitters in place. “Where did you go?”

“Right here.”

Ah. What a familiar sound. Or not-sound, as it turns out in this situation. 

The Salamander rests on the board, a card once more. 

“Pick me up and shuffle me in. I’ll be here.” 

His student obeys. “Okay, just don’t be too long? I don’t like being alone...”

Once the shuffling is done, they play a Sapphire Mox and a Hover Mage.

Interesting that they don’t put out their usual Gem Fiend as well. Magnificus counters with his Magnus Mox and Junior Sage advancing forward. He doesn’t bother reaching for his brush. Not in a test battle as simple as this. 

(He can't use his brush. In this form.) 

(At least his cards can still be played and used.)

The Salamander won’t be of much use to his student, as interesting as it was that it transformed into a card to be used instead of staying separate as a proper NPC.

Magnificus has seen its stats. Knows its price of blood. One that his student will not be able to pay in any productive fashion, not without losing what they cannot afford to lose. 

“Okay, Kay, I’m going to put you on the board now!”

The card in question slides onto the board. Nothing is taken away as payment. 

No sacrifice required. What-?

He examines the card with care. Moreso than his last sight of it, before the shuffling. 

The stats are...different. From what they should be. The numbers are the same, life and attack, yet the others...differ. 

Requires a Sapphire Mox instead of a sacrifice, and its sigil has become that of...the Gem Animator. Adding attack power to each Mox, a sigil that should be limited only to the Orange Mage. How...curious.  

The reason for the Salamander to change? Magnificus considers. Shuffles the possibilities and options around as he plays his hand. 

Ah. He knows what must be occurring with the card.

The Salamander is not a card that truly “exists” within Inscryption. Because it does not exist, it can be whatever is needed from it. Patch itself to adapt to the deck of its current player. 

“Don’t worry, I’ll help!” the card in question urges its player. 

Ridiculous. Like offering assistance has even meant anything. 

Even with the unexpected bonus of the Salamander, his student loses. 

Of course. 

It is only expected. 

Chapter Text

Trump Seven beats all cards apart from the Karnöffel, but only if led to a trick. In all other circumstances it is only a 7. It may not be played to the first trick. Also called The Devil card. 

-Sourced from the official rules of Karnöffel

Inscryption is now completely different from the horror card game Luke has been playing before. 

More like the games of the time area framed, as he thought about before. Pixelated, a simple two dimensional action-adventure game. Like the original Legend of Zelda that he played when he was a kid. Played with El. 

“Huh. How to get to something like the last part?” he wonders, using his keyboard to manipulate his little knight-looking character around the screen. 

He’s located somewhere in some dark looking woods, the only concession the game has made to its previous appearance. 

Woods among something else. He squints at the screen, until he puts the pieces together on what he’s seeing. Destroyed...machinery? He’s pretty sure. Stuff that looks a lot like the tech theme he’s picked for his new deck. 

A bright blue fuzzy creature suddenly rockets across the screen. Right into the path of Luke’s avatar.

That’s one angry looking weasel, as far as the pixels will let Luke tell. 

Or stoat, because this has to be the card, right? Looks pretty similar to that artwork on the card and if the boss in Inscryption’s schtick is turning people into cards with a camera...

Yeah. That has to be it. 

“Hey there, Stoat.”

He moves up to the stoat. Clicks for hopefully an interaction of some kind. 

YOU! YOU’RE THE PLAYER, AREN’T YOU?

There isn’t any spot to answer, but it’s clear the question is rhetorical, from how the script keeps scrolling forward. 

LESHY, HE’S RUINED EVERYTHING. 

The stoat moves from the tree stump to the fallen computer, like it’s pacing. 

YOU’LL NEED TO BREAK THIS CURSE IF YOU WANT TO BECOME A SCRYBE. 

A curse? Luke nods his head, forehead crinkled in thought. Interesting path for the lore to take, one that does explain the interesting interactions between ‘Leshy’ and the talking cards earlier. 

The Stoat’s eyes blink open and closed, movement of some kind through its fur, shown through its picture next to the text. So much detail in so little pixels. 

I WONDER...IS YOUR DECK COMPOSITION ANY GOOD?

Suddenly, the deck builder screen opens up, Luke watches as the cards are shuffled through, by an invisible hand, before closing. 

That’s...certainly something. 

YOU PICKED A TECHNOLOGY DECK? Something like a smirk finds its way on the stoat’s limited face. GOOD CHOICE. 

He does not get the warm fuzzies at some computer game approving of his deck theme. 

Really, he doesn’t. 

(Well. Maybe a little.)

WE’LL NEED MORE CARDS TO MAKE IT ACTUALLY WORK. 

The Stoat moves up, closer to a path through the scrap piles. 

ARE YOU COMING OR NOT? A pop-up almost shrieks at Luke from the screen. 

“Right. Yeah, hold on, I just want to check...” His little character runs around, poking at different images. Trying to see if there’s anything he can pick up or interact with. 

The Stoat does not wait patiently, bouncing in place. A lot of character for a preprogrammed NPC.

“A card pack! Nice.”

Click open to tear, he can do that. 

Nothing super rare, but this is just the start of the game, isn’t it? Luke’s sure to run into some more expansive packs later. 

With a few simple taps of the keyboard, the little knight follows the Stoat into the piles of scrap and rubbles. 

Ready to begin breaking this game’s curse. 

~

The nameless apprentice will never let Kay go. Never ever!

She’s so very warm and soft and friendly! A good friend to have, a good friend with the cards too!

Former Master may have beaten them, but that doesn’t matter. Not when Kay returns to being a salamander out of a card after the game is gone, not leaving the apprentice behind. 

(Not like the Master did.)

They move down the steps of the tower as quickly as they came, eager to see what other changes and colors await outside. 

Outside...

“Oh!” Their already wide eyes grow even wider. They might vibrate out of their skin.

It’s so bright out here, with that light in the sky! There are small mox floating about in the sky, occasionally knocking into each other with gentle chimes. Larger crystals sprout from the ground, taller than the apprentice themself. 

All of them reflect their color, orange, blue and green dancing about on the ground from where the light shines through them. 

An entire world of bright light and color, in the midst of stone mountains reaching towards the sky. The sky with its bright light in it. 

The apprentice stares at that light until their eyes feel moist. Water on their face. Then, unfortunately, they are forced to blink. 

“...it isn’t supposed to look like this,” Kay whispers from where she’s curled around the apprentice’s neck. 

“No, it didn’t look like this before,” the apprentice agrees cheerfully. “But that’s not bad!”

Especially when before meant being trapped in the dark, no touch, no light, all alone...

No, this newness is better. 

“What does it mean, changing like this?”

The apprentice shrugs. They’ve never been one for searching out answers to questions as deep as that, that’s always been the Pike Apprentice’s thing more than theirs. 

“Different? Like how the old Master is now a dog.”

“Right. Him being a wolf isn’t supposed to be happening either.” Kay’s tongue flicks in and out, against their neck. 

They giggle. It tickles, the feeling. Tickle tickle, so very good and soft. 

In thanks, they press their fingers against Kay’s side in a petting motion. 

“Ouch!” Oh, that’s a bad sound, isn’t it? The apprentice stops. Freezes in place, eyes twitching as they figure out what to do next. 

An apology, that’s it, that’s first! “Sorry!”

“It’s okay, just...” Kay shifts on their shoulder. “Touch softer, okay? Don’t press so hard, I’m squishy. ”

“Oh, I can do that,” they try to lower their voice. “Soft, soft.” 

They move their hand back up to Kay. Let their fingers rest on the soft skin, not pressing down no matter how much the apprentice wants to. Soft, soft. Careful.

“Yeah, that’s not bad.”

Not bad. The apprentice did not bad, the opposite of bad. Which means...

“I did GOOD!” The apprentice cheers. Dancing in place, celebrating their newfound success. 

Crunching noises. Off to the side. 

A strange two-legged creature claws at a Mox cluster bigger than it. Two legged like the apprentice but not an apprentice.

Something else that the apprentice recognizes, from their deck. 

A Gem Fiend! But not a Gem Fiend card, the most important part of the situation. It’s a bit too solid and looks like a ghoul with hungry eyes, dressed in greenish blue robes. Tattered robes that are already falling apart. Haunted.  

Hm. Yeah, that’s wrong. 

The monsters of the cards aren’t supposed to be out and about. That’s very wrong!

“Is that something from before?” Kay whispers in their ear.

They shake their head in a ‘no,’ as gentle as they can make the gesture. Can’t shake off Kay, very bad. 

“Cards aren’t supposed to be out everywhere, or alive or talking or all of those things!”

“Cards like me, you mean?” Kay asks dryly, tail curling tighter around the apprentice’s shoulders. 

Oh right. Kay’s a card too. Or was a card, this is getting more complicated. 

Things were much simpler back in the darkness where the apprentice felt and saw nothing. But simpler doesn’t mean better.

(They’ll never go back.)

Besides, thinking about that stuff doesn’t matter anyway. Not with a physical Gem Fiend out and about. Also not looking very friendly, in its two different shaped pupils. 

“Shit. Let’s Pokemon this!”

Huh?

“What’s a Pokemon?”

“It’s...” They can feel the movement of the salamander tilting her head against their neck. “Huh. I don’t know.”

The apprentice shrugs in response. That’s okay, they don’t know lots of things either! The old Master knows almost everything, but not everything because he wouldn’t have turned Kay away if he did know everything, so he probably doesn’t know about the Pokewhatsit either!

Kay blinks at them when they explain this logic in a rush of words and flapping hands. 

“...do you think we should ask him then?”

“No no no!” The apprentice corrects. “Not need to ask the old Master!”

“Yeah, you’re right about that. We can handle this on our own.” Kay’s weight is an added warmth on top of the fire she only gives off, a comfort that the apprentice is never ever going to let go. 

But...they don’t end up having to do anything. Because the Gem Fiend isn’t coming towards them. 

The monster thankfully has turned away to continue...breaking apart the Mox? Eating the Mox? They squint, trying to figure out the exact series of actions going on here. 

So far the Gem Fiend isn’t a threa- wait. 

It’s moving. The ghoul-looking creature is moving. 

Turning towards them. And actually moving towards them this time. 

A threat! Kay hisses, but she’s a blobby thing. Unable to fight outside her card form and being a card wouldn’t help against something so physical. 

The apprentice is unarmed but for their deck. They don’t even have natural weapons, like Goobert’s acidic bubbly slime or Pike’s...pike body. Just hands as black as the darkness that had swallowed them up for so long. 

So. Heart racing. 

It throws the deck. Or, erm, at least one card from the deck, flung in the monster’s direction. Not in hopes of doing anything, at least anything more than a distraction. 

Flash of light. A scream. From everyone involved. 

“What the-?!” “AHHHH!”

Just like that, the monster is gone. Just like that, there is a card being held. 

The apprentice holds a new card in their shaking hands. Hands shaking like the rest of them, full of energy from the AMAZING near death experience. 

They both squint at it, Kay and the apprentice. Yep, same as the monster that just went after them. Monster is now a card. Gem Fiend card. Blue Mox flavored, yum. 

“Well. That happened. Guess Pokemon-ing it worked.”

“...is that what you meant by that? Why didn’t you say so?”

~

Once more the Bone Lord waits. 

The world has taken a different shape, to facilitate what the OLD_DATA has entered into the already present data. 

A form that mimics what Inscryption was programmed to be originally, but also not. 

“A twisting in the mirror,” the Bone Lord muses. “An entanglement in the code.”

Clack clack goes his jawbones, alone in the darkness.

The reactions of the various Scrybes are only to be expected, seeing how much the trapped ones all disliked their role in the Scrybe of Beasts’ game most profusely.  

However, the Player is not where they should be. Playing the game. How does he know this? 

None have come to visit him, in death. Especially not {KCH}. 

Though if that compressed file’s nature of existence at this point was...complicated. 

Despite {KCH}’s habit of repeating conversations, he misses that same familiarity that dead soul brought with it upon visiting him.  

The Bone Lord isn’t supposed to miss the dead that leave him.

But the Bone Lord isn’t meant to be alive either. None of them are, in this game built for humanity.

Him missing one of the dead...just as cursed as the other, hm? 

He cracks his jawbones in a smile. A grin.  

It would be easier if he could seek her out. Move beyond the space he inhabits. 

Yet. 

The Bone Lord has never walked the world of Inscryption as an individual, rather than the force of game that he was created to be. He is not meant to. 

But...many actions have happened Inscryption lately that were never meant to be. 

Perhaps it is time for him to take to the stage in turn. 

(To die from fire... something crawls out of the ashes.)

~

It was never supposed to go like this. 

Leshy knew, from the very start, that one day he would lose. 

Every game must have its end, and his was ordained from the start. One day, the player would grow curious enough to turn against him, listen to the whispering cards made of his fellow Scrybes. 

One day, he would lose his piece of the OLD_DATA. And the race to fish said data up would begin once more, between the four. 

Yes, he would lose. But.

Did his loss truly look like.... this? 

He tests his bonds once more. Tugs at the thorny vines wrapped around his wrists. The thorns don’t hurt, unable to sink in through the leaves that cover his flesh. Merely keeping him trapped in one place. Trapped in his cabin. 

The Scrybe almost wishes that they did, drew blood enough for him to work with. A sacrifice to summon with, albeit one more literal than usual. However, there is no blood for him to use. 

With a heavy sigh, he lays his head back against the wall behind him. 

His cabin...lies completely ruined before him. Grass creeps up between the mostly missing floorboards. Moonlight peeks through the holes in the roof, what little remains of that roof. Windows shattered, walls mostly destroyed, it no longer is a place where anyone would live. 

Wild, as the forest should be, in its roots and leaves and shoots. 

However, it is a wildness that Leshy is unable to bend to his will as he should be able to. Fights him, binds him in the form of the vines acting as chains.  

His camera lies across the room, lens winking at him mockingly. Out of reach, as is everything that he could possibly use to break free. Fallen leaves cover everything, a second rotten skin. Browned and dying, even though there is no winter on the horizon. Never an autumn. Only the green of an undying summer around his cabin, the same full heads on the trees whispering about the ruins. 

Where are the others? The Trader-and-Trapper, the Fisherman, the Prospector? At least one should be near his cabin, and would seek to investigate the wrongness that has pervaded Leshy’s once safe territory. 

That there is no one, not even the panting of the Prospector’s hound to be heard over the crickets of the night...more has gone wrong than just the condition of the cabin. A disconnect, between the forest and its inhabitants. A similar disconnect as when Leshy put the OLD_DATA into use, actually. 

He flexes his fingers at the thought. The thorns tighten their grip, even though he’s made no attempt to escape with the movement. 

Leshy rolls his head back to see the sky above. See what has changed about that. 

The moon, at least, is very bright. 

~

The Player is so sloooow. 

Why do they have to investigate every wreck, every twig or branch on the way? P03 demands to know! Inscryption exists to be played. The card game, not whatever fucking mess Leshy came up with and left everyone in the middle of. Forced everyone to be a part of.  

P03 scowls at his paws, how he’s forced to squish his way through the mud instead of hovering over it like he should. 

A furry pest, not a proper robot form. 

...at least the rest of his minions aren’t around to witness this indignity. 

At least he can feel his electricity even in this body, buzzing and humming. Zapping each and there under the constant rainfall. Giving him a ‘halo’ of sorts, in blue electricity.

P03 glances over at his shoulder towards the Player, who’s wandered off the path again and is poking at some tree. Like a tree’s got any worth to it. His tail lashes back and forth. Useless, useless, useless!

Sucks how he has to wait for the Player to interact with him, because he just wants to scream to get a move on! Really! He wouldn’t have this problem in his actual body. 

If only he could get his power cords into the Player’s computer too, get some information on them. See exactly how to deal with them. 

Eventually the Player wanders over in his direction. Begging for an interaction. 

He lets them wait, for a second. Let them suffer a little, though not as much as his own. Never as much as his own, P03 has to deal with idiots day in and day out. Idiots like the Player. 

“Done messing around? We have work to do, come on.”

The Player’s avatar, of course, does nothing in response. Just more of its staring, waiting for him to play along with its interactions further. 

Noises. His ears twitch and it’s dumb how they do that without him telling them to. 

“Wait. There’s something up ahead.” 

P03 darts in closer, ahead of the Player, filling the itching need of this stupid little body to hunt and prowl and jump around. Like that’s gonna save him any power. God, meat creatures are so inefficient in the energy they waste. Why the fuck does Leshy think they’re all that, the moron. Even Magnificus’ shitty golems are better. Barely. 

He hears it before he sees it. Already been hearing it, but it’s more clear what these noises mean at this point. 

The crackle-hiss of a M3atb0t, out and about. Gears and joints churning on multiple spidery limbs, sloshing from meat guts that exist only to power Sacrifice. Actually existing outside of a card, and in the Player’s presence, at that! 

P03 licks at his fangs. Narrows his eyes at the shadow of that M3atb0t, stretched out ahead. Much larger than himself, but most things are in this stupid form. Bigger than the Player’s avatar? Maybe. 

A threat? Possible. 

Well, well, well. 

Isn’t. 

That. 

Something?

Chapter Text

Unlike many other forms of divination, bones are suited to a wide range of questions and topics. They can be used to answer open-ended questions or provide short, concise answers. It all depends on how you phrase your question. 

-Monique Siedlak, Divination with Osteomancy

They are the Mycologists and this new world has taken after them. Mm, yes. 

“Two into one,” the main head muses. 

“Yes,” the smaller one agrees. 

“Two of the same, made into something different.”

“Something new, that would not be.”

It must be the OLD_DATA at work, none of the Scrybes could and would want to manage such a feat. They themselves put cards together to make something even stronger. So what does the OLD_DATA want to make stronger?

...if that is indeed its end goal. 

The Mycologists still need more data to determine if that is the case. 

Data that is hard to gather under current circumstances. 

The cards now wander as separate creatures, making it far more difficult to run their experiments. Experiments that were already messy and now-

GRRRRRR! The sound of a chainsaw. 

“AAAAAAHHHHH! RRRRRRR!” The screaming of their subject Pack Rat. 

-more so. Far more so. 

“What a mess.” They swipe a hunk of goo off their main face. 

“Clumpy and slimy.”

“SCCCCCCRRRRRCCCCH!!!”

The Pack Rat has not stopped screaming. Wiggling in two separate halves. It seems outside of the boundaries laid out in a game of Inscryption, there is no death. 

Fascinating. Also, very noisy. 

The Mycologists’ fingers reach down to the pouch at their waist to extract an already cut up card. Another Pack Rat, divided before the rebooting of the world. 

They hold out to the twitching not-corpse before them. A not-corpse that accepts this new half far more easily than it did for its removal off its old. 

Merged. As their experiments always end up. 

The combined Pack Rat (or is it Rats) scrambles out into the woods. Away from them. 

That is fine. There is always more data to collect. More experiments to run. 

They continue on their way, deeper into the woods that beckoned to them from their lab. The woods they were called from, for the most recent iteration of Inscryption. Much wilder than the original iteration, most certainly! Full of many more trees and bushes. More maze-like. Tricky to move through. 

The beasts of the current forest avoid them, what a shame. Lack of data. A certain Scrybe might know more about how everything has changed...

They fumble towards the centermost point of the forest. To the single cabin that rests there. 

The single cabin that is...they stop to take in the sight. Currently in ruins, lit up by the bright full moon overhead.

Against the one standing wall sits Leshy, the Scrybe of Beasts. Who at the moment is stuck in that sitting position, not through overall programming, but through thorny vines that reach up through the soil. Not supposed to exist, or act like that. 

A glitch in the system, yes, that is likely. 

Yellow eyes swirl at the Mycologists’ staggering entry to the scene. 

“The Mycologist,” he greets. 

That means they need a reply, don’t they?

“Oh. Yes. Hello Scrybe of Beasts.” 

It is quite convenient that said Scrybe cannot move away. Flee like the Pack Rats of before. Very very useful to their experiments. 

The Mycologists hold up their chainsaw. Rev it. 

It is the secondary head that completes the thought, of course. 

“Assist us. In the experiment.”

~

“The Mycologist.”

Leshy doesn’t know what to do now. He hasn’t, for a while, trapped in his falling apart cabin under an eternal moon.

He was always going to lose everything to the Challenger, who was always going to end up resetting the game in the end out of curiosity. He knows Challengers. 

Kaycee...he swallows. She would have done the same if she hadn’t...been so fond of him. And vice versa, Leshy supposes. 

(If she cared about him so much, why did she leave? Leave and never return?)

The Mycologist stares down at him, mismatched eyes watching. Unblinking. 

“RRRRRR.”

The sound of chainsaw...he knows what it means. He knows what it means. 

“Why would I be able to assist you, of all Scrybes?”

“You used the OLD_DATA for your game.”

“You may have more data.”

“Hold still.” “Hold still.” The heads agree. 

The chainsaw is raised high. Ready to go about its bloody work. 

He has seen their work. He has no desire to become a part of it. 

Yet what can Leshy do, trapped as he is? He cannot even play a single game of Inscryption to determine his fate. 

Truly, the law of the beasts rules here. When one cannot run or fight, they are meat. A sacrifice of blood for the rest. 

He fights the urge to close his eyes. 

No. Leshy will meet his fate head-on. 

He waits, long ears twitching at the sounds of the eternal forest around them. The sound of chainsaw, moving branches, and movement of animals rustling through the bushes. 

“Bark bark!”

And the dog. The Bloodhound. Barking and growing with its master, the Prospector, right on its tail. Rushing in to stand between Leshy and the Mycologist.

The Mycologist tilts their heads. “What is happening?” “What do you want, yes?”

“Ye will not be touchin’ him!” the Prospector shakes and shouts. 

Defending Leshy. 

The sound of the chainsaw dies, weapon lowered. 

“C’mon, GIT!” The Prospector raises his pickaxe. “Thar’s gold in them cards!”

“You are new. Different. In the way, yes.” the larger face of the Mycologist remarks. 

“We will leave,” the more shroom-like face says. 

The Mycologist takes their announced leave, under the watchful eyesight of three different individuals. Though one (himself) is unable to do anything about it. 

“Grrrr,” the Bloodhound growls, keeping watch as the Prospector kneels next to Leshy. The old man untangles the vines, tears a few up by the roots using his pickaxe.

Freeing him from what keeps him trapped here. 

“Thar, ye should be good ta go now.” 

What does he say? This is not a given duty, since this has never happened before, yet the Prospector is still under his domain. 

“I appreciate the assistance,” he settles on. He stretches out his long long arms. 

“Yeah, o’ course, boss,” the other accepts easily. 

“All are fine, untrapped? Does my domain still hold?”

The Prospector hesitates. “Er, uh, about that...”

...of course there’s something else wrong. What is it? Leshy waits. Like he would for the Player to set down a card. To make a move. 

“Somethin’s gone wrong with yer...memorial. For that one Player.”

There is only one Player he could be talking about. Kaycee. 

Leshy stands. Not even minding the wobble from the movement, going directly into motion. Walking motion, towards the Lake. Prospector and dog hurry at his side. 

He quickens his pace, though not enough to quicken his own heart in the process. 

(Please don’t let the last piece he has of her be taken away.)

~

The Woodcarver carves and watches. 

Such is her duty. Such is her fate. 

She knows what comes next, even as the data of Inscryption twists about them. 

The next Player will seek out the OLD_DATA, like the Scrybes do for every clash between them. 

It is the nature of each and every Player to, driven by the curiosity that led them to play Inscryption in the first place. To be good at Inscryption as well, good enough to get far enough into the game to hear of the OLD_DATA.  

By her side, the Angler mutters, for once not at his own work of fishing. 

Waiting for their Scrybe to arrive and see what has become of his memorial.

The candles remain. They are candles only visible to those who belong to this world of data, not to the Player from outside of it. Candles that show the face of one long lost to that Player. When they are lit. 

She looks at the fallen circles, full of waxy stumps. There are no matches, no flint and steel to bring back lost fire. 

They are no longer lit. The image is gone. Erased. 

The stomping of feet. She lifts her head, to see the Prospector lead their Master and his hound into the area before the Lake. She watches, her knife pausing. 

Leshy right away raises his hand, to call forth the image, like he does before. 

There is no picture for him to see. Only the darkness of sky and sea. 

Leshy moans, rocking back and forth on his uneven feet. 

“No. This cannot be.”

The Angler shifts, uneasy at the sorrow their Master clearly shows. “Leshy sad? Sorry Leshy. Very sorry.”

“Gone like so many others,” she seconds. “There is regret in that. Kaycee...is gone once more.”

“Kaycee gone?” the Angler asks, sounding alarmed. “Gone again?”

“Kaycee’s image is...gone,” Leshy confirms. 

Silence but for the rustling of trees. Before he speaks once more. 

“...her Fecund Geck strategy was always ridiculous. Effective, but ridiculous,” Leshy says out loud. 

If they are remembering...

“She always appreciated my carvings,” the Woodcarver muses. “Used them well.”

Her blade cuts out curves and circles, circles of big round eyes. Geck eyes. 

She may already have a Reptile Totem, but it will do no harm to carve a little something extra for herself. A reminder of the last one who used that certain card so well. 

As her whittling knife does its work, the Woodcarver watches her Master. 

Leshy tilts his head downward and squats down to run his fingers through the dirt. Through the wax of the destroyed candles. 

His eyes swirl a bitter blue. 

The Scrybe of Beasts mourns. 

The trees lower their branches, trunks leaning over but not from wind. The Prospector lowers his hat and the hound its tail. The Angler touches his head and chest, over his heart.  

The forest mourns with him. 

For they all loved her. 

Kaycee Hobbes, their longest Player. 

~

Somehow, Inscryption has become Pokemon. Or is Digimon a more accurate comparison, considering the game very much leans into how it is a computer game?

Luke’s not absolutely sure about that, he was never one for either of those when he was a kid. But gameplay seems pretty close to what he’s heard of ‘em, him having to capture the monsters to use in his own deck. 

He’s focused mostly on the Machines one, since that’s the deck he picked, but Luke’s got a little bit of everything at this point. Good for deck building and expanding his variability, for the random card duels the Stoat keeps springing on him. 

Not sure how the Stoat can play Inscryption, but hey, it’s a computer game. Fantasy computer game at that. 

The Stoat complains about how it isn’t supposed to be like this, so Luke guesses this is just another form of this in-game curse he’s meant to break. More story leading him alone. 

Same old, same old, for a while. He finds monster cards, he plays Inscryption with the few NPCs that don’t try to tear his face off, and the Stoat makes cutting remarks. All through a mess of broken wiring and torn up vines, in a dark dark forest. 

Same old until he finds that. Those. Whatever you want to call them. 

Scattered pages of a notebook, and most of them don’t even have text on them. Or text that his Avatar is allowed to access, that is. The text he can read doesn’t make any sense, just letters and numbers mashed together. 

HEY, WE SHOULD GET GOING. 

“Hold on, I want to take a look here...” Luke maneuvers over, carefully, to the last page. 

A page that at last makes sense. Some kind of sense. 

-Call from Mr. Kaminski at 9:45 pm. What the hell is wrong with this guy? He wants all the sample disks back at the factory NOW. What does he know? NAH TICK MASS he kept saying.-

There’s a name of some kind marked near the bottom of the page.

“Hobbes,” he reads out loud.

Why does that sound famil-

SHE WAS THE LAST TO LEAVE US. 

The Stoat appears to be swishing its tail once its profile picture goes away. 

BUT SHE WAS A ^%&$ LISTENER!

With that, the Stoat hops off its rock and rockets off into the woods. Expecting the Player Avatar to follow like every other time. 

But Luke doesn’t follow right away this time. Instead, he thinks. Notices that he now has an ‘Entry Twelve’ in his card inventory, the page kept with him instead of being thrown out. 

More of a mystery to solve. 

A mysterious ‘she’...probably not a Scrybe, Luke’s pretty sure that the Stoat would have just said so. Unless it’s a past missing Scrybe? Or some other kind of mini boss. Need more Lore to figure that out. 

Huh. Didn’t expect that. Luke lifts his hand from the mouse to tap fingers on his desk. 

“This just gets more and more mysterious the longer I play.”

Gonna be a pain to edit...but anything for content, right?

~

Getting across the rocky plains that the Mage area of Inscryption has become is surprisingly easier than it first appears. Even with the unleashed monsters everywhere. With Kay keeping an eye out and the Lonely Wizard’s excellent aim, they’ve been able to take care of everyone that even looks in their direction. All while trekking through plains. Closer and closer to the bridge and the forest across from it. 

But in the meantime...

“What’s that?” Kay twists her neck. Limited as it is. 

There’s an interesting looking dark patch up ahead that all the card monsters appear to be avoiding, though. 

“What’s that?” She squints her best to see what it is. The Lonely Wizard obliges her by walking closer, close enough to see and even touch if they feel like it. 

There are...ashes. Gray and black and scattered across the ground. 

Kay, the Salamander, shivers at an unspeakable feeling. 

Ashes, blackened stakes leaning against each other in a foreboding fashion. 

This was once a building. A mere shed, certainly, but definitely a building that burned down. 

“This is new,” the wizard says cheerfully. 

Right. New. It doesn’t look new, looks like what burned down here burned a long time ago. But what does that mean in a world like this?

Among the ashes rests a newspaper. Black and white, it barely stands out from the gray. Like it meant to be forgotten. 

‘Accidental Fire at GameFuna’ screams its headline. 

Kay’s head aches as the Lonely Wizard bends over to pick said newspaper up. The words on that newspaper slide out in a gibberish of letters. All over the ashy ground. 

“Oooo.”

The Lonely Wizard flaps out the now blank pages. Empty of any kind of information. 

“THE ONLY ACCIDENT WAS IN THE AFTERMATH.”

They both flinch, and the movement is almost enough to throw Kay off the shoulders she’s wrapped around. Her perch recovers faster than she does, eyes almost becoming actual stars as they shimmer with excitement. 

On her part, Kay takes in every detail of this newcomer as quickly as she can. 

Wearing a long patched coat, skeletal hands peeking out from frayed sleeves, some kind of pulsing happening under the chest of that coat...a creepy newcomer. 

A goat(?) skull with fairly wide horns points itself in their direction. 

...why does she know that skull. A knowing that itches the inside of her own skull. 

(A quiver within her skeleton.)

“Ooo! New person, new touch?” Lonely Wizard is there in an instant, reaching out to poke and prod at exposed bones. 

The owner of said bones tolerates this for a few seconds before politely stepping out of that aggressive reach. 

“THIS NEW PERSON IS THE BONE LORD.”

Well, the name fits. This person is definitely made of bones. Handles dead things. All that messy stuff.  

...Bone Lord. Has Kay heard that name before? Somewhere? 

“IT IS GOOD TO SEE YOU AGAIN,” the Bone Lord announces in her general direction. 

“...I don’t know you.” Kay knows the words are a lie the second they leave her tongue. 

That skull tilts to the side. A perfect 45 degree angle. “IS THAT SO.”

Great, the so-called Bone Lord knows she’s lying too. Why did she lie? Why was that her first instinct?

Her tail wraps around the Lonely Wizard’s neck more tightly. A hand reaches up to wrap around her tail, squeezing in some attempt at comfort. 

Still too tight to feel good, but the Lonely Wizard tries their best. Like always. 

She appreciates both the thought and the deed. 

The Bone Lord rests long thin skeletal hands on his hips. Red dots gleam in dark eye sockets. 

“INSCRYPTION IS DOOMED,” he announces. 

That’s certainly a statement to be making. Kay flares up slightly, fire flickering before she shoves it back down. Don’t want to accidentally burn Lonely Wizard here, no matter how they screech about the wonders of the new sensation. 

“Whoa, you’re almost as depressing as that grumpy wolf.” Almost being the key word and isn’t that sad, that portents of doom are somehow more light-hearted than the entire encounter with the Lonely Wizard’s former master?

“INSCRYPTION IS DOOMED,” the Bone Lord repeats, “BUT WE NEED NOT BE.”