An Important Card.

"Follow me.", Walburga said as she saw Loki entering the hall where she was waiting for him.

"Good morning to you too Misses Black.", Loki said bowing low while Princess Rapunzel, on his shoulder, mimicked him and bowed towards Walburga.

Walburga rolled her eyes at Loki's antics and did not let his sarcastic greeting affect her mood.

Stepping down low and into the basement, Walburga spoke softly to Loki who was busy giving a shiny nickel to Princess Rapunzel for his earlier act.

"Have you thought about it?"

"About wha- You mean my pathway? Is it already time?" Loki asked in a panic.

"Yes, I thought this would be the best time. Since your malnourished body has healed quite a bit, there shouldn't be any risk of losing control from the first potion."

Loki immediately fell into a pinch as he wondered if he should let Walburga know about the Sefirah castle or he would gulp down the sequence Nine: Sleepless potion and wait for an opportunity to change his path like Emperor Roselle later down the line.

As they walked deeper into the basement, Loki looked around at all the various mystical items and charms stored there in an attempt to distract himself but it just would not work.

'This…do I tell Walburga that I have control over a Sefirot?'

Reaching their destination at the end of the long inventory in the basement, Walburga paused over a glass case that was standing on an ornate golden table stand.

"Come closer.", Walburga said and Loki followed, his eyes coming to rest on the objects placed inside it.

His mouth hung loose and his eyes nearly popped out of his sockets with how wide they had turned.

He couldn't believe it.

The items had turned him speechless.

Looking at his reaction, Walburga could only smile with pride.

"Why are you so surprised about the card of Blasphemy? Didn't I already tell you that I had the one for the darkness pathway!?" Walburga asked with a smile on her face.

And Loki who still had a shocked expression pointed at the glass cupboard and said in a horrified whisper, "You! Can't you see that?"

"Haha! I know. I know. It is a blasphemy card, don't be so surprised. The Black family wouldn't be the most ancient and noble house for nothing if we didn't have even one of them."

'HOLY SHIT!' Loki cursed in his mind forgetting the training he had been given about cursing till now.

'HOLY SHIT!! THERE'S THE BLASPHEMY CARD FOR THE ERROR PATHWAY IN THERE!'

'WHAT THE HECKK!!!!!'

Walburga pulled out her wand and unlocked the glass case that no doubt had a ton of wards placed over it. The wards glimmered a shiny milky white as they were deactivated.

Walburga to look at Loki again.

"Go on then. Take it out."

Loki, who was stun locked broke out of his shock and looked at Walburga who was urging him to pick up the Card of Blasphemy and automatically extended his hand to move it through the glass case.

He snatched the Darkness Pathway Blasphemy Card, but along with it he also picked up the Blasphemy Card for the Error Pathway.

'My heart's thundering.'

'How's this possible?'

'Did a Darkness Pathway true god really hide the Blasphemy Card for the Error Pathway?'

'But why hide it in the first place!?'

'So that the Celestial Worthy Of Heaven And Earth does not revive?'

'But then, where are the Blasphemy Cards for the Door and the Fool Pathways?'

A whole host of conspiracy theories rung inside Loki's head like the gong of a Buddhist monastery, the waves his thoughts created reached far and wide, turning every corner of his mind.

His lips trembled, his eyes twitched, his fingers quivered and his entire being shook, yet he kept his calm as he stuffed the seemingly invisible Blasphemy Card into his pocket while holding the Blasphemy Card for the Darkness pathway in his hand.

"Pour your spirituality into it.", Walburga said with a calm mind.

Loki who was internally a typhoon of emotions used all his training on how to be a noble for the past two months and barely managed a half-decent performance and poured his spirituality into the card.

On its front face, the card had the picture of a veiled woman dressed in a fashionable mourning gown holding two earthen pots. The pots were tilted to let the water in them flow freely, forming the beginning of a river that glimmered under the stars of the deep night sky.

But as Loki poured in his spirituality the image was being slowly replaced. 

The woman stood up with little difficulty as her pots vanished. She bathed in the starlight that shone in the deepest and darkest of nights and her entire body shimmered as if it existed but was invisible at the same time, like a mirage over the desert sands.

Loki grew entranced as he watched the image form and the card in his hands turn into a book.

A wave of calmness passed over him once the transformation finished leading him to believe in the authenticity of the cards.

The card had begun to exude the same effect as the pathway it belonged to.

'This truly is a Blasphemy Card of the Darkness Pathway.'

'Just holding it calms me down and brings the feeling of serenity that would only come about from a deity's presence.'

"Aren't you going to open it?" Walburga asked snapping Loki out of the stare-off contest he was having with the woman in the card which had turned into a thin book.

"Yes, yes Lady Black I shall."

With a slight increase in the amount of spirituality he was pouring in, Loki watched the page in the book turn and crack its pristine spine that had remained untouched for a long time.

Loki first looked at the image above the potion formulae for Sequence 9: Sleepless and came to a simple conclusion as he looked at it.

The image was of a woman who was standing casually on the balcony of a house under the bright night where the sky was littered with stars.

'It's not Roselle who made this. A woman did? Is she my senior? Transferred to the world of Harry Potter before me? Like Roselle?'

"Who's the woman in the pictures Grandma?"

"No one knows." Walburga shook her head with a slight sigh. "Just like no one knows about the origin of magic, no one knows how these cards were made."

"I see." Loki nodded and began to read the potion ingredients for the first potion in the sequence.

"The spleen of a Vampire Bat."

"Three stalks of Fluxweed."

"A pinch of Cowbane."

"Hundred Drops of Rose Oil."

"Four Nettle Leaves."

"Five Knotgrass Stalks."

"Hundred Drops of Distilled Water."

"Do we have all of this Granny?"

"Yes, they're here. Now, I want you to make the potion in front of me."

"...yes. I'll do it." Loki said feeling resigned.

'I don't want to drink this potion.'

'Is the only way to drink the Error Pathway Sequence Nine potion by revealing the Sefirot?'

'Is there truly no other way?'