There’s a reason why I waited until sunset before calling on the Inverse Sun’s power to deal with the Inverse Moon. That particular servitor, despite being based on a tarot archetype, is very much tied to the physical environment. During daylight hours, the Inverse Sun could affect my physical environment (unusually high UV levels, unusually bright despite cloud cover, the AC in the office kept being set to Heat and no one knew who was doing it, etc.), but at night, the Inverse Sun’s power was available for shenanigans and direction.
Funny enough, it doesn’t appear that the Inverse Moon is tied to the same type of limitations. But I haven’t observed it for a lunar cycle yet, either. I have little tolerance for self-deception and I did not want to hold still and allow a web of lies to be tied around me.
I knew one of the best traps is to convince your opponent you are weaker, more stupid, or less agile than you are. If your opponent can be convinced to use less power than necessary, you can easily overpower them in surprise. This was what I suspected was the Inverse Moon’s gambit. Allow me to think it is crazed and suffering delusions of grandeur, and once I step into the shadows to pick up the apparently tantruming child, seize my sanity and undo twenty years of self-repair.
The light of the Inverse Sun is cruel and exposing. Just what I need to counter the lies of the Inverse Moon.
What the Inverse Sun and I found surprised us both. Mask after mask either melted under the Inverse Sun’s unrelenting glare or shattered when my disbelief struck it. It felt like I was repeating the process of removing the lies and false truths I had grew up with. But instead of finding a wounded abandoned child under the layers, the IS and I found [a hollow Moon].
Without a mask to wear, without a role to play, the Inverse Moon whimpered and cried pitifully. “If I’m not [those things represented by the broken and discarded masks], what am I?”
The Inverse Sun’s attention warmed my face. This was a question only the master of this deck of servitors could answer.
“You are the Moon of my Servitor Deck. What faces you will wear, will be remade or rediscovered in time. You are my servitor, and as the name explains, you serve me. Do you accept this?”
I have no idea why it felt so important to ask that question.
The Inverse Moon crawled to my feet and gripped them in surrender. “I accept it. Master.”
I called a representation of the Tarot Deck of Major Doom to my hand and pulled out the Moon card. “Then come home.”
The Inverse Moon placed itself in the card. I put that card back in the deck. The Inverse Sun celebrated my triumph by turning night into day with a cheerful heat wave. (It was how Fontana feels in August so nothing unbearable to me.)
As I left the environment, I brooded over the differences between the small scale of effects by the Tarot Deck of Major Doom, and the personality altering effects of challenging my [Bastardized] Tree of Life.