In this world, Magic is Everything. All people, all races, are granted with the power to perform mystical and magical feats via grimories, mystical tomes granted to each and every child on their 15th birthday. Those blessed by the mana can have their names written down in legend.
Shattered Grimoires is the work of the mind(s) of Ardere & Shattered Grimoire's staff. All characters and content are copyright their creators, and may not be replicated without their creators' permission. Black Clover is owned by Yuki Tabata and published by Viz Shonen Jump. All images belong to their original owners. The theme you are currently viewing was made by Eliza of ElizaCodes exclusively for Shattered Grimoires.
Post by Kallos Heinrich James Benjamin on May 17, 2020 0:22:33 GMT -5
Arrested for a crime he totally did commit, the injustice filling the clown knew no bounds! The monsters had taken his precious clown horn, his glorious colourful clothing, sacred makeup and … and even his clown shoes. Kallos had to make do with what he could, already having gnawed his bedsheets on the first day for a few little titbits of cloth to place on his cheeks. It wasn’t true makeup and he would need to improvise making some clown makeup later. This morning was dedicated to the pursuit of entertainment!
Leaning on the wooden table that they had to forcefully remove the previous occupants from, Kallos stared directly at Gaius, his partner in crime but mortal enemy … in cards. Smirking arrogantly at his rival, he prepared the deck of cards with a quick shuffle and sleight of hand performance to help intimidate his foe. He then grabbed the metallic cup he’d found and slammed it on the centre of the table with a loud clatter! With another shuffle of his hands, he then started expertly placing the cards in a circular fashion above the cup. The final cards 14 cards however, he split into two hands and pushed one face down towards Gaius’s side of the table.
“A game of Kings?” He offered with a smug grin, Kallos had never lost this game, though he also never really played it.
It was a game unlike any other, most have little understanding of the rules, much less the great depth of understanding required to truly ‘play’ the game. It was for gaming kings as it were, the rumours spread that the first games rules were designed by the king that created the diamond kingdom, a place known for their advancements.
“Because we’re lacking the 30-sided die …” He pondered with an eventual small shrug, he would need to try and find the wood for one later, “I’ll allow you to have the first turn. Might as well give you a sporting chance!”
Post by Gaius Stonewall on May 17, 2020 0:45:53 GMT -5
Gaius had been imprisoned, and it was the best thing to ever happen to him. Oh, she was everywhere, all around him! The walls, the floor, the ceiling! Enclosed in mother earth's body like never before, his only two regrets was that he hadn't been caught sooner and others were there to spoil his intimate moments with the earth around them, guards and inmates alike. Well, Kallos wasn't so bad, he may have been fleshy and not earth-like at all, but it was as if meeting a cousin rather than some ignorant, some nephew that was born of earth's sister or brother, not astranged but not quite similar in the ways that mattered. And so, in such a relationship, had they become prisonmates together. Kallos had had another prisonmate, guards not wanting to put the two people in the same gang together in a cell, but he had quite literally driven them insane with his talking and rambling that they just put Gaius, one of the few capable of hearing Kallos's voice and not wanting to kill himself after five minutes. Looking at the cards carefully stacked atop a cup that Kallos presented this time, Gaius smiled. He loved this game, though truthfully had little idea how to win. He still won half the time.
"No problem, we can use this," Gaius said confidently as he ducked beneath their bedmats and found a special little something he had been keeping, showing it to Kallos up close between his fingers: a pebble. Indeed, this pebble had chipped off the walls, and so Gaius had kept it with him as he slept as a sort of security blanket. But now it was its time to shine! Using it as an asymetric dice, Gaius drew five cards from the deck and tossed the pebble, then drew three more. He then handed Kallos two of the eight cards before making a scream akin to a dolphin and lion hybrid. He placed three cards, which was half his hand, down on the table spread out and turned horizontally, indicating that they were now trap cards. With his turn over, he hit the table twice with his knuckle, two knocks to indicate he was done. "Check."
The two cards Gaius had handed Kallos was a pair of jacks. Now pairs would usually be associated with a good hand, but in the Game of Kings there was a lot of danger in keeping such powerful compatriots by one's side, best to exile them early than allow those jacks time and room to conspire against him! Paranoia, perhaps, but let's see who the crazy one is when the jacks rally the rest of the deck against Kallos like what had happened the third time they played. Of the trap cards he had laid out, two were low value diamonds and one was the queen of spades. Perhaps it was risky to use the queen like that, but if he used the special ability of the diamonds well, Gaius was confident he could keep the queen around in case there's a large enough danger to get back her value. The earth mage kept his eyes on Kallos, all the while tapping his finger rhythmically on the table like a metronome. While most found it hard to read the clown, Gaius had a keen sense for it and even went so far as to use the jester's seething hatred and disdain for order against him, thus the tapping at regular intervals. In a sort of reversal, this stable beat will be the thing that drives the clown mad in this anarchical game.
Post by Kallos Heinrich James Benjamin on Jun 7, 2020 20:26:39 GMT -5
Kallos stared at his opponents move and did all he could to hide his shock at such a bold move. His adversary had done the lion-dolphin screech near perfectly to the rules … it meant he would need to play his turn carefully as a rash choice on the field could find himself at such a disadvantage as to force a turtle-goose play to even get back into the game. As he drew his first hand of 5 cards as Gaius did before rolling the pebble himself, his bad situation getting worse as he noticed he only drew one additional card. Grumbling to himself, he took a glance at his current hand of 8 cards. Only a clover ace and the two jacks Gaius had given him were of any note.
“Damn …” He muttered to himself as he tried desperately to ignore the constant tapping on the table, “You’re just asking for a double jack play aren’t you!”
Kallos preferred a very aggressive early start, it was what he was the best at. With the double jack in hand however, every turn he carries them he’ll have to roll to see if any troubles occur, naturally the royal pandemics effects coming from the mascot declaration of the turn. Gaius with his lion-dolphin mascot could cause havoc if he tries to play aggressive, especially if he has to deal with royal pandemic effects. There was only one move he hadn’t considered. Kallos handed over two cards to Gaius before hooting in a fashion akin to a dove and crow hybrid! With his mascot declared, Kallos relaxed into his chair and waited …
He waited for what seemed like days, weeks? Time didn’t matter in the Game of Kings, only the victory. Patience was an important part of the play, to make sure the player was as committed as you. It was only when Kallos remembered what day it was that he finally decided to play. As it was the 8th, the teams outside the prison should be making their moves … and this day was also the right time to play his cards!
“With the 8th day, I play … the 2nd of Diamond and the 6th of Hearts, in attack! Then, because of my mascot, instead of rolling for royal pandemics, my Jack’s host an event! The total number of face up cards on the field add up to 8 allows the event to be a momentous day! Letting me draw the first card from the tree.”
Smirking proudly, he drew the card from the edge of the tree, normally one would have to be careful doing so as knocking over the tree brings terrible consequences. However Kallos has been playing this game long enough to know which cards are the safest to draw at first. He placed the tree card facedown on the table away from the board, to be activated later.
Post by Gaius Stonewall on Jun 7, 2020 21:30:41 GMT -5
“Ah… wait a moment… I feel like we’re forgetting something,” Gaius said with a look of surprise and frustration, his face betraying a sense of annoyance. He wasn’t one known to forget things, especially important things, but time worked strangely in a prison where daylight was your only indication of time passing. Certainly this was usually the case, but not when playing the Game of Kings. Yes, Kallos had literally had them staring at each other for hours, then days, then weeks. This was no failure of him nor the game, but a purposeful double-edged tactic. Yes, in the Game of Kings, there was no turn limit unless you made one through some obscure or made up card rule, so without such it became a war of attrition, a battle of endurance and patience alike, to see who would physically or mentally break first. Gaius was a mental mountain, however, but Kallos had a way of chipping away at one’s sanity with his constant verbose chatter. So, between one’s hyper-stability and the other’s hyper-chaos, this move was a gamble for Kallos with only a fifty percent chance of success. Certainly it was preferable to Kallos’s flip-the-table tactic, though Gaius had successfully sealed such moves with his put-weight-on-table counterplay. Master tacticians in their own right, these boys certainly thrived in an environment without rules where they might impose their own sense of rationality or irrationality.
And thus, over this month of literally waiting for Kallos to do his turn, when it seemed like Kallos might have just forgotten they were playing the game in the first place (of course, that was also an ingenious play by Gaius’s great leader, to infuriate Gaius by feigning ignorance and stupidity), Gaius seemed to have forgotten some crucially important piece of information which was integral to many a scheme. He knew that he had forgotten this thing, but could not remember that which he forgot, of course. So now it was up to Gaius to jog his own memory, for Kallos would certainly only confuse it by adding false remembrances into the mix or red herrings that would lead him astray. Yes, his leader could not be trusted to aid in this endeavor, which was surely also part of Kallos’s ingenious leadership, to encourage his subordinates to resolve such issues on their own to become more capable and to push them to their mental limits to make them stronger in the long run. Oh, the charisma of this clown! It was unbearably pungent, second in Gaius’s heart only to the earth herself!
Oh, how this man both infuriated him and drew him in, Gaius could never hate Kallos, I mean who could hate a clown like that? Still, this thing required to be remembered, so Gaius went to work as Kallos continued to not take his damn turn in the Game of Kings. With careful consideration of his environment, and so to not seem like he was attempting to break out or cause a ruckus to the guards, Gaius opted to use the option to activate his subconscious by means of random triggers, taking careful account of any stray thought which wandered or passed by his mind. First, there was a dust bunny in the corner of the room… yes, a sign from the earth, a sign of dust, made to help him! Oh, he loved his element in a way much more graphic than most others might appreciate their magical affinities. In any case, what could it mean? Was the meaning in the bunny, or the dust, or both? Concentrating on this thread of thought, Gaius let his mind wander into an oblivion.
“Dust… bunny… bunny… dust… hmmm.” Mumbling to himself as he was deep in thought, Gaius lost track of his environment. Bunny, like a rabbit. Rabbits like to hop, or skip, and have long ears. They are herbivores and are mostly prey, chewing on grass and doing nothing. They breed a lot, screwing this way and that, giving birth to tons of bunny babies… Okay, what about dust, then? Well, dust signifies, most often, a passage of time. When things get older or are left alone, they become dusty and must be dusted, as in cleaned. Dust is part of the earth, as well, the great stability of the world which holds everything aloft. But rather than carrying things, it sits atop them. Beds, seats, tables, and anything else that remains still collects dust. It signifies something not done or cared for. Yes… “Bunnies… breed… dust… time… hopping… skipping… not done…”
Just as he was on the brink of realizing what he had forgotten, Kallos had made his move finally. It was, unlike however Kallos thought of it, completely expected for Gaius. Yes, this was the exact position which Gaius wanted to lure Kallos into. Certainly, in such a position with two jacks hosting an event, Gaius drew two new cards and threw down the Queen of Spades and the Ten of Hearts in reverse position. With it in reverse, he could age down the Queen of Spades that many years, bringing her to a nice prime in her early twenties. In such a way could she attend the party without being suspected and get close to the twin Jacks, but being a Spade she was also trained from birth as an elite assassin capable of slaying foes with ultimate subtlety. With Jacks being famously perverse, when they rolled the pebble to see who seduced who at the event, the Queen will get a heightened chance for matching with one of the Jacks and taking him out. But that wasn’t all, reaching into his mouth, Gaius took out a poorly drawn fake Jack card from his mouth, hidden under his tongue. Unfolding it, he placed this false Jack beneath the Queen of Spades, indicating that he would replace the assassination target and then go on to act as a spy and informant and saboteur for Gaius so that he would know Kallos’s full hand afterward. If Kallos ever has more than one King in his hand, then, the fake Jack could then organize a coup by setting the Kings against each other and riling up the rest of the non-face card, the spy would then go on to lead a revolution of the normal number cards. If they successfully implement a democratic republic within Kallos’s hand, Gaius could rig the elections in the future and elect himself the leader in charge of Kallos’s hand. In doing so, Gaius would be able to forcibly lead the clown to eventual defeat like a puppet state. Just as he made this masterful twister of a move, Gaius finally remembered what he had forgotten earlier, and oh boy was it drastic, much more so than any sort of plan that their fellow roguish comrades were performing at this very moment!
“Oh my god, we forgot Bobby’s birthday!” The revelation came fast and hard, like a brick in the night, striking against Gaius thick skull as he stood up. One might not think forgetting a random NPC’s birthday to be important, but this NPC was not just any NPC. Nay, this was Bobby, the jail chef. Sure, he was also an inmate in for multiple accounts of murder, but that was par for the course where they came from. Certainly, he might have not gotten away with it, but that’s just because the guy had a gambling addiction. As it was multiple accounts, he pushed his luck after getting away with the first time and kept going. Some might even call Bobby a “psychopath” or a “serial killer”, and they might “technically” be right, but for Kallos and Gaius he was a father figure who imparted many a word of wisdom to both of them and fed them the finest cuisine that the criminal justice system had to offer, which was a low bar but it tasted as delicious as anything the nobles ate when Bobby threatened them to love it. Well, not that they would know what the nobles ate or what that would taste like, but something about the fear of having a fork sharpened into a shive shoved through your eyeholes just made them know that’s how good it was, or else.
