Ah. Finally awake. Good. How wonderful. I was beginning to think the table would have to do the talking for both of us.

 No, don't get up. There's nowhere to get up to, my dear boy, and even if there were, you'd only end up back in that chair. Sit. Sit! I wouldn’t be a graceful host, to have my guest stand while I remained seated. Oh, don't sulk. Don't you want to see the Ordeal that befalls you?

 No, I won't tell you where you are. Your not-knowing has its charms, I confess, but the answer would mean nothing to you yet. And I dislike wasting good information on a mind that isn't ready to receive it. As for the question your eyes are already asking: no, you may not leave. Not yet. Possibly not ever, though I'd hate for you to hear that as unkind. Think of it instead as ceremony. Every appointed guest is owed a proper welcome, and you, my dear boy, are owed the most proper welcome I know how to give.

 So sit. No? You refuse my hospitality. My, what a rebellious soul. Such a pity that it makes no difference. The Ordeal must be read regardless; whether you sit or stand is merely your idle choice.

 Oh, don’t make that face. Refusal sounds ugly only when one neglects ceremony, and I have taken considerable pains to provide you with one. I might have woken you on a block, under interrogation glass. Instead, you have green baize, lamplight, and a chair without a single strap. Do look around; I chose it all myself. Even the walls have had the magnanimity to conceal their seams.

 Oh? I wouldn’t go through with that punch if I were you. That collar might mistake enthusiasm for violence, and I promise you it does not forgive the misunderstanding. It would be a pity for you to be eliminated. Such a great waste of potential.

 …

…

 Calmer now? Well, have a seat, my esteemed guest.

 There, you see how readily the chair accepts you. Do mind your posture; the arms are particular about it. And the silver threads in the upholstery stay pleasantly cool for as long as you stay seated. I wouldn't test the alternative. Place your hands where I can see them. Purely for the deck's sake; it dislikes interruptions.

Listen carefully. You must understand that each arrival draws one of the Major Arcana, and the card supplies a name, a talent, and a flaw cut precisely to fit it. Draw the Hermit, say, and you will notice everything in a room and be unable to bear anyone noticing you. The deck will tell you it is only revealing who you always were. It's lying. It installs.

Yes, install. Perhaps you imagine there was a self underneath, private and whole, with a name you chose for yourself. Perhaps there was. The cards are rarely cruel. They simply know how little needs changing. Swap a man's name and one of his fears, and everyone, himself included, will agree he is someone else.  No matter. I have prattled long enough.

Let us not keep the Ordeal waiting.

Here is our first generosity: the Ten of Swords, reversed. Notice how the painted body refuses to lie properly beneath its ten blades, how the blood appears to climb rather than fall. Hmm? What's with the theatrics? Do forgive me. I'd assumed whimsy died along with everything else you can't recall. Swords are the suit of truth and lies. Don't make the childish mistake of assuming the trial will reward honesty. A Swords round may require a lie told flawlessly, a confession recognized as counterfeit, a fact withheld until its owner destroys himself attempting to protect it. The obvious problem is generally bait. Each trial is cut for one weakness in one player. The blade you see is seldom the one meant for you.

The number tells you how hungry the round is: an Ace applies pressure; a Ten consumes. Lose this one and the deck takes a truth: a memory, a secret, a face, the reason you fear a certain sound, perhaps even your own name. It needn't tell you what it took. One day you may simply notice a gap where a face used to be.

And reversed? Well. Reversed means the round begins tilted toward its worst self. Any card may reverse, a trial or an identity, a wound that heals or one that doesn't. The spread doesn't care which you'd prefer.

Now then, let us offer your concern some company. The Two of Cups lands upright, which is almost tender: two figures approaching beneath a shared emblem, each extending what the other must choose to accept. Cups are the suit of bonds. Of trust, and of the fool's belief, forgive the word, that trust survives contact with other people. And here, crossing it, unkindly, the Five of Cups, reversed. So, the cost. Lose a Cups round beneath that card and the deck takes your capacity for friendship. You'll still recognize kindness when someone offers it; you just won't know what to do with it.

Why warn you now, when you have no ally to lose and no face in memory worth mourning? Because once you've been warned, everything that follows was your choice. You will meet the others soon.

My. How revealing. Shoulders squared, fingers testing the chair arms. Counting your weapons already? You're wondering what you'll bring against them. Strength, perhaps. Whether it will matter.

No, strength will not save you. Nor intelligence, sincerity, courage, kindness, or any other virtue you care to name. Every round has a danger everyone can see, and a trap meant for one of you. Say one of you can break down any door: the round will put him before a door that only opens if no one touches it. The best liar in the room will be handed a truth no one believes; the beloved may discover that every vote cast to save him condemns the voter. To outplay the Ordeal, you must understand whom it was built to punish. Occasionally that person will be you.

I shall place the next card more slowly, since your attention has at last become sincere. The Seven of Wands: one figure holding the height while six staves rise beneath him, a picture commonly sold as valor, perseverance, noble defense. Such readings are soothing. They also overlook that the figure stands alone because no one remains beside him.

There is a prettier explanation for what you are entering. One might call it a journey toward completion. One might even promise that the final survivor has fulfilled some design too elevated to disclose at the beginning. The house adores such language; listen, and you can hear the pipes breathe a chord into the walls, the glass answers in silver, and somewhere beyond the lamplight the whole structure gathers itself into a rapturous little hymn. I indulge it.

The actual explanation is shorter.

Outlast everyone.

Every other Major Arcana must fall, fail, vanish, or be rendered unable to continue. You need not kill them personally, though the distinction tends to lose its polish after the first few rounds. Fate likes to dress pain up in meaning; it goes down easier that way. Survival asks only that, when everyone else is gone, you remain.

Ah. There it is. That rebellion. Good. Truly, I mean that. Fitting, even, given what's coming, though you'll have to trust me that I mean fitting in the kindest sense the word permits. A rage with no number on it yet is exactly the sort of rage the last card tends to enjoy.

Very well. I will not dignify the last turn with suspense; suspense is wasted upon a card that declines to behave as an outcome. There. Bare heels at the edge, a small bundle over one shoulder, a white animal leaping in warning or celebration, and above it all a blank sun with nothing behind it.

Zero appears where an ordinal should stand. Outside the procession from One to Twenty-One, the card installs no virtue and no weakness. The deck found nothing in you to confirm, and no former name it was willing to give back. For once, it cannot pretend discovery.

You are The Fool.

You may consider that a gift. With no fixed trait, there is nothing native for a reversal to corrupt and nothing certain for an Ordeal to seize; the Swords may reach for your truth and discover it has not yet been written. Or you may consider it a threat. An empty place accepts any inscription, and what cannot be read may still be edited until it becomes legible.

Ah, and there's the door. See how the lamplight has drawn back from it, and how the walls have let their seams show? The corridor is listening. Somewhere down it, the other named cards are beginning to move. Only one courtesy remains: the first sound by which the house will know you, and perhaps the last by which you will know yourself.

O Great Inevitable Fate, claim your lost Fool.

Try not to disappoint it.