Currently playing good luck charm of The Last Coin










How is it that I have parents, but feel like an orphan? That I have every comfort, but still feel poor and destitute?

Sevetrin looked up from his book with a sigh.

His home's courtyard was paradisiacal. Palm fronds swayed beneath Byzmara’s inscrutable white sun. Branches of begonia and hibiscus intertwined, a riot of red, white and pink. Thick black-green foliage bordered pools of deep, clean water.

Beauty. Desert beauty. In a harsh land, tropical elegance carved free from the earth.

I should feel something... but I don't.

If anything, Sevetrin felt like part of the scenery. Another mute flower that would bloom for a season, then fade away...

His family comprised part of the Thirteen. Intellectually, he knew that they held great wealth and power, and that being head of anything in wealthy Byzmara was an accomplishment.

And yet...

His father Polanthus appeared at the mansion's back door. Sunlight danced along his scales, dotting the grass with shining faerie lights. Sevetrin hurriedly buried his nose back in his book.

He didn't get to see his father much. Seeing him felt awkward. Especially because Sevetrin didn't know how much his father knew about him, and his clandestine nighttime activities.

Sevetrin tried to picture himself as the studious, serious head of the family and failed. Even as the only main heir, it was hard to imagine.

Lost in fruitless daydreams, he didn't notice his father squatting beside him, a smile crinkling the corners of his eyes.

"You are bored," his father rumbled. Before Sevetrin could deny it, his father leaned forward. "You're bored, and it's dangerous. Your mother's court mystics sense some kind of power hidden inside of you, but none of us know not what. Especially because we don't see you much — and some of that is my fault."

Sevetrin's eyes fell on a passage in his book, The History of Fortune:

You have given yourself over to Fortune's rule, and you must bow yourself to your mistress's ways. Are you trying to stay the force of her turning wheel? Ah! dull-witted mortal, if Fortune begins to stay still, she is no longer Fortune.

A tiny bead of sweat gathered at the corner of Sevetrin's eye. "I'm... sorry."

"For what?"

"I do not know." When Sevetrin looked askance at his father, he saw a shrewd, calculating look on his father's face.

So: his father knew more than he was letting on. That made sense — one didn't rule a house in Byzmara without being aware of everything within one's scope, and many things outside of it.

Sevetrin sweated harder. "I — I —"

"Though we don't grow older here necessarily, I can feel myself growing less sharp. And in Byzmara, that's a dangerous thing. You might find yourself on the other side of the wall at nightfall, in the worst case."

Sevetrin’s heart quickened. "What do you mean?" Is he going to throw me out?

His father closed one eye in a long, long wink. "I think it's time you made this House something to be reckoned with."

---

As with all internal powers, Sevetrin discovered his slowly, from a combination of his own observations and those around him.

Before becoming a melancholy youth, he was a happy, active child. When he was a hatchling capering about the mansion, a priceless black obelisk toppled over toward him — and missed him by a thread. He pranced over it, declaring that he had defeated evil. But a housemaid who had seen the event fainted dead away.

A few months later, while chasing imaginary phantoms across the mansion's roof, he fell onto one small bush from a great height — cushioning his fall.

His mother grew weary of worrying about him and began constraining him to one part of the mansion. And some believe this is what made him turn toward melancholy, then rebellion.

Once he became studious, he began finding things. A cache of long-forgotten golden lorum someone had hidden, a servant-girl's long-lost handkerchief. Whenever a servant had lost something, they came to him, and he sniffed it out.

He took to investing his small allowance and quickly made handsome profits from it. On the rare occasions they met, his father asked Sevetrin for business advice.

Still, no matter what, there was a small, cold empty space above his heart that nothing could fill.

And that's why he turned his attention toward one of Byzmara's greatest scenes: gambling.

One of the servants, more shrewd than the others, snuck Sevetrin from his house late one night and escorted him to a fine casino. The gambling joint was happy to have anyone related to the Thirteen. Sevetrin enjoyed being catered to by handsome young men and women.

And women and men alike crowded around his table, watching his gold pieces grow to monumental stacks. They whispered about cheating. The gambling house grew concerned. But without proof, there was nothing they could do to trouble the Son of a House.

It was while gambling that night that Sevetrin finally noticed the full extent of his power.

If he gazed intently enough at a person, object or group, small filaments appeared behind them. Clear, glossy. Thin. Like a spider's web.

He instinctively knew what effect pulling on one or the other could create.

So: this is what he had been doing. Tugging the strings of fate.

Having no word for it, and no close friend, he never told.

He simply plucked the threads that spun the wheel a little longer, and waited just as breathlessly as the other casino-goers for it to land on his color, and cheered just as hard as they did when he won.

---

"A house," he said to the architects. "I want a house."

Behind him, his father stirred. "You've already got a house."

"Not this house," Sevetrin said, quaking lightly. He began to describe it to the builders, praying that they see his vision. Something to end the loneliness and fill the space above his heart.

It must have a dome — a crystal dome — for a roof. Couches of finest red velvet. Paintings, murals, of the deities looking away.

A pool as if from Olympia, with ever-blue waters. A tile mosaic beneath it of the Tidelord. A gambling den. A concert hall. A massage parlor with furnishings of ebony and leather.

And the only repeating theme would be golden slabs inlaid in the very walls, with ancient runes carved on each of them: The House of Delights.

His father listened to him, astonished. He had never seen his shy, bookish son so emphatic. So fiery, so motivated.

As the architects unpacked extra abacuses to calculate the endless cost of such a project, his father breathed slowly out.

He noticed an unfamiliar look on Sevetrin's face. A kind of animal cunning. Avarice.

Yes, he was glad his son would have his own house.

---

It is said that the House of Delights is the crowning jewel of Byzmara, and that the Gilded King holds sway over the crown.

The Palace — for that is what it is — crawls day and night with Byzmara's elites.

The Desert Star's ascetics send their young monks there to try and resist the perils of the flesh. The younglings leave terrified of the flesh’s excesses. Some have even gone mad.

As for Sevetrin, the Gilded King, he presents himself as the most unlikely caplin, and perhaps the greatest.

His shining golden scales cut an impressive figure wherever he roams, from pool to balcony to casino.

He is most visible during sunset, when he ushers out the daytime guests, and ushers in the night.

---

With his ability to manipulate luck, it soon became easy for Sevetrin to get whatever he wanted. There had at first been a wild thrill to it, the knowledge that he no longer needed to ask for whatever he desired—he could acquire it himself.

While the House of Delights was being constructed, there had been plenty of obstacles, other caplins who had wanted the land for themselves or who had attempted to seize the project when it was halfway through. The young Coatl had taken care of them on his own. It had been frightening at first—after all, he'd never gone up against a single caplin, let alone several at once—and then it had become incredibly exciting. He'd felt like a hero of old, up against impossible odds, guaranteed safety by sorcery and the gods.

And then, inevitably, it had turned monotonous. The House of Delights was completed in peace, and Sevetrin sulked, torpid and despondent. His house was indeed a place of wonder, but excess of any sort gets boring after a while. He needed something new. On a whim, he threw his cloak around his shoulders and fluttered out into the sunshine.

Most dragons knew of him, the reclusive, bookish son of one of the noble families. They looked at him with new eyes now, taking in the proud tilt of his head, the confidence with which he strode past. Sevetrin could feel their gazes, and inwardly he smiled. Perhaps they were hoping he would notice some of them and grant them his favor.

"And indeed," he thought, "I can grant them favor, of a sort..." He saw the threads of luck that bound each dragon, some of them shining strong, others as faint as sighs. It would be so easy to tug those strings and lead them to prosperity...

But things had been easy for too long. Sevetrin didn't like "easy". Furthermore, who were these dragons to demand his favor? They had to prove that they'd earned it first. And what better way to do so than to please him?

Sevetrin craved excitement, and he would get it—a whisper here, a message there, and he selected visitors from among the dragons he'd passed that day. They stared in awe at the invitations they'd received, at the gold-stamped profile of the sender: Lord Sevetrin had invited them to his House of Delights.

Some of them tossed their heads, believing that their greatness had finally been recognized. Others wept with relief, convinced that their luck had changed. All of them arrived at the House that night, expecting to be showered with delights.

The young Lord welcomed them, smiling genially. In a way, the visitors' expectations were realized. Their greatness had been recognized; their luck had changed—but not the way they had imagined. For indeed, they had come to the House of Delights... but the house was Sevetrin's house. And they were the delights, there for him alone to enjoy—and dispose of—as he pleased.

---

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Chibi by @VoodooVixen

Adopt by @Lestyn Pixeldopt by @UserOfShadows

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Adopt by @tysm

Adopt by @nonaline