Dexter Drake Alhazred’s Illusionary Alimony

The darkness creeps closer, hungry and heavy with the primordial secrets of creation. They think they can seize me with claws of pure shadow. They forget who I am. My name is Dexter Drake. And this? This isn't just sorcery. This is ALHAZRED’S ILLUSIONARY ALIMONY—the eternal, bloody tribute I wrench from the cosmos to shatter its natural laws like cheap carnival tricks!A tremor ripples through the damp, cold floor. Something nameless writhes within the ether. The abominations of the mythos demand my sanity.Not on my stage. Not today.I reach into the velvet sleeve of my coat and unleash sheer chaos: SLEIGHT OF HAND whirls through reality, tearing the space-time continuum wide open, allowing me to hurl a set of THIEVES' TOOLS onto the field for next to nothing! Yet, the hunger for knowledge never sleeps. With my other hand, I open the leather-bound dread—THE NECRONOMICON flings its moldering pages wide, and I feel raw, calculated madness flood my brain.But every debt in the cosmos must be settled. I play FAVOR OF BAALSHANDOR, and the tribute is demanded instantly: a searing pain cuts deep into my chest, my flesh gives way, and I inhale the hot steam of my own blood. Yet at that exact moment of agony, the inferno blooms. The COSMIC FLAME erupts in violent purple lightning, incinerating the flesh of my pursuers into ash-pale clumps!Behind me, the lament of a lonely trumpet swells. JIM CULVER steps out of the mists of the Great Beyond to join my side. The haunted musician feeds upon my torment. He sees me bleed, he hears the groaning of my soul—and his bone-chilling rhythm drives my mind into a ruthless ecstasy. Every single time I suffer, Jim’s music tears the veil away, forcing fate to drive the next powerful cards straight into my burning fingers.And if they think doom will catch up to me? A mocking laugh escapes my throat. I channel the WILL OF THE COSMOS, place the encroaching doom upon one of my cheap trinkets, and abuse the RRG-timing of my investigator ability to banish the cursed thing into the void before the clock strikes!They demand their alimony. I pay them in illusions.