The following morning, Egil arrived at the guild hall, only to find a cleanup crew with a white haired body on a cloth stretcher. Bloody tears streamed down the sides of its face ...a victim of the abomination in the basement.
Groups of occultists conversed in hushed tones, within the marble halls of the guild's main entrance.
"This is your fault." Jack remarked, twitching.
"How is this my fault? I brought in the demon, following *your* orders."
"A demon nobody wanted."
"...under your orders!" Egil repeated.
Jack looked around, seeing the eyes on him. "There needs to be a punishment."
"Wha-?"
Jack flashed his blade out, cutting Egil from shoulder to check.
Egil took a step back. "WHAT THE FUCK!?" He reached for a butterfly sword. He could probably win this. Even if he blocks, Egil knew some tricks to blast through his defense.
...then he looked around... surrounded by witnesses. Fuck. That would be murder. Play the role.
Jack was visibly shaking. Was that anger, or fear? Oh my god, is he realizing leadership is out of his depth?
Crap. Wait too long and I'll end up owning this wound. Egil tapped into the hell layer, drawing on its entropy. One event... two outcomes. He closed his eyes, letting his third eye take over his sight.
He could still see Jack's outline standing before him, and could react to a follow-up attack if necessary... but, that wasn't the point of this act.
One thing, that was both a blessing, and a curse, was Egil never stopped asking 'why?' "Why did the demons have such an advantage during the war?" "Why were only the angels (arguably more terrifying than demons) able to fight them to a stand stand still?"
Well, it turns out, Hell is missing a lot of the rules that drove the mortal layer. Therefore, channeling entropy from Hell... which is totally taboo... allows for someone to bend and break the rules of reality. This was "Chaos magic" for the layman. Really though... it was more liken to 'probability manipulation.'
In this particular case Jack's attack had multiple outcomes. He could have missed. Egil could have jumped back. The offending sword, might have gotten stuck in its scabbard. In more than one of these outcomes, Egil wasn't actually cut, and the wound didn't actually exist...
When Egil opened his eyes again, the wound was gone.
Murmurs erupted from the cultists. The "wild card" was breaking taboos again. Nobody seems to care that Jack drew his sword on another member. This was one of the curses that Egil bore: the political outcome always seemed to favor the opponent. It didn't matter if it was Jack or someone else.
In his youth Egil tried to fix this. In his current state, he learned the harder he tried to fix this problem, the worse the results were. Then he decided to roll with it. What should you do when the outcome is always the same, regardless? Whatever the hell you want.
Jack wasted no time exploiting this, by pointed. "He broke the taboo!"
"But my hands are empty." Egil announced, indirectly referring to Jack's sword.
More exasperated murmurings.
The schools, the roads... Egil could deliver the whole city on a platter to the summoner's guild, and they would either respond with:
"I dont understand."
...or...
"You did it wrong."
