What were their names, these spirits of the Elder Arcana?

Exhausted from the sweetest kind of exercise, Adam let the question play in his mind, trying to view it objectively, neither as threat nor promise. He lay on the roof of the Salon, his limbs entwined with Alraune’s, on a pile of cloth that had been used to make an impromptu wrestling mat, and he regarded the stars and the twin moons in their slow race across the sky.

The Carnival of Endless Summer had played Magincia to great acclaim and the days that followed had been filled with pleasant revelry and the pulsing rhythm of life in Trinsic. The next carnival lay weeks in the future and this one would be held in the City of Honor itself, so Adam would not need to travel to make arrangements for the show. He would still need to attend to countless details, but he could do so in relative comfort.

And he was not alone. Alraune and Summer would help him – and provide pleasant diversion among the work. In truth, he had plenty of aid with the Carnival – Stewan and Mischief, Hildy, Rah’njar the jester, Jackal, Angelica, and all the others. He hoped he would see the amusing lady Sky again and her friend, the enormous dwarf, but such was the way of the Carnival that its performers came and went on their own terms.

Most of what had followed the Carnival had been pleasant, some of it wildly so, but a few things concerned him and he tried now, beneath the dome of heaven, to put the pieces together.

The book Decardo and Cherry found worried him most, with its hints of ancient spirits that might now be loose upon the world. The Elder Arcana they were called and Adam had met a few of them in visions or perhaps in the vales of madness, buried memories of times when man was little more than a beast, the primal things that ruled his life, that drove man out of the wilderness into tribes and then cities, putting walls and laws and armies between himself and his own nature.

In a frozen land, near a sealed coffin, Decardo and Cherry had found the ancient tome, most of its pages gone, its covers grimy with impossible age, and the book hinted that some of the Elders had a connection to the coffin. From all Adam could tell, the Elders manifested as cards, a deck of them with Major and Minor Arcana, like the Tarot. Four suits – Skulls, Flowers, Wounds, and Stars – and a set of emblematic trumps that expressed the most powerful elements of primitive life. Seventy-eight cards in all, though Fate only knew how many of them might still survive.

Adam had met some of them – and Alraune at least one. In fevered dreams, in the grip of strange magic and exotic drugs, Adam had touched Fire and Winter, the bloody, two-bladed spirit of Revenge, and one more. Alraune told him of meeting a spirit called Domination, deep in a dream, where she had felt shackles and dread.

This was what troubled Adam most of all. Alraune’s own touch with the Tarot might make her vulnerable to these beings and, indeed, the Arcana called Revenge had been quite clear in his words to Adam, “Tell your lady we will have her.”

And did the Elder mean the spirit of Revenge itself or some abstract principle of revenge? Surely that fever had once burned in Alraune’s soul, but now she had found other purpose, aiding the Duke, befriending young Chloe, teasing Jackal and Dust, helping with the Carnival. Adam had done his best to chase away Alraune's thoughts of revenge, because he knew the awful price she might pay if she sought unhallowed help to exact it, but he knew the feelings might return, especially if stirred by this ancient spirit.

Another thing that troubled Adam was the man Dust, Summer's friend. Summer uttered dark hints about his nature and the contest of wills between them -- though it seemed harmless enough -- might have stakes beyond mere bets. Alraune had entered into the games, as had Adam, but there was something troubling about the man. He looked at Alraune with open desire, true, but most men did, a perfectly natural reaction that Alraune would respond to or not, as she chose. Adam had no claim on Alraune, nor she on him, and each would find the pleasure they wanted, and yet Adam worried about her, because the look in Dust's eyes was not lust alone, but some darker assessment.

There were two others named in the ancient book.

One of the ancient spirits was named Summer, and Adam wondered if it could really be only a coincidence that the coffin had been unearthed at almost exactly the same time the beautiful blonde woman had appeared in Trinsic, when Adam himself had been under the spell of the Elder with an identical name. "A common word," Summer said, when Adam pressed her, in yet another round of the duel that seemed to be fought endlessly between them, with truth both prize and victim.

But she held him, held his attention and his desire, though he had not yet had her. She would trade her body, Adam guessed, only when he gave her his soul.

He thought, not for the first time, that the world is but the surface of a pool, with depths unknown and perhaps unknowable, where dark forces move always well beyond the eyes of men, serene and indifferent except when they hungered.

Or grew bored.

And there beneath the stars, the memory of the evening's revels still warming him, Adam remembered the last name, the card pictured on the peeling inner back cover of the ancient book, one of the Elder Arcana, but quite different from her brothers and sisters, timeless and triumphant, important to the long-dead scribe who had etched her shape, as though perhaps she might have been some comfort to him.

Hope was her name.

And Adam embraced her, even as he sank into the depths.

(Gratuitous OOC note: This is an open plot. If you want to help or want more info, please PM me. Thanks!)