24. Tess Caught Boy (Patreon)

The bright light faded. Arthur found himself lying face down in the middle of a forested clearing.

He jerked up and back — a delayed reaction from the spear coming at his throat.

Jerking to his feet, he stared around with wide eyes. He was in a different area than he’d been a moment before. Second was nowhere to be seen. Neither was the body of the dead dragon rider.

The clearing looked familiar, and it took him a few seconds to figure out why. This was the campsite the caravan had used last night. The one they had taken off from in the morning. Now that it was clear of carts, burden-animals, and people, it looked completely different.

Too bad it wasn’t far enough from the eruption. Scourgling whistles lifted through the forest in all directions.

Cautiously, he touched the base of his stinging throat. His fingers came back red with blood. It was only a deep scratch and could have been so much worse. What had the card done?

He turned his attention inward to the shining card that had been nudging at his mind for attention.

It was a deep metallic blue, shining like the finest polished steel. The color was cool and deep at the same time as if he were standing before a waterhole and looking and down. Clear water without an end.

As with the Master of Skills card, as he read the card, the description imprinted itself on his mind.

Return To Start

Rare

Trap

When the wielder of this card is attacked with another card’s power, they will be instantly transported to a previously keyed-in location regardless of distance. If no location has been designated, the wilder will be transported to the point they last started that day — either one second after the stroke of midnight or at the moment they last woke, whichever is later.

This trap card has a once-per-sunset usage restriction.

After that was another message. The one that had attempted to get Arthur’s attention.

Would you like to key in your location start point now?

Slowly shaking his head, Arthur dismissed the message.

A Rare-ranked card. He suspected once the shock wore off, he would feel smug about that.

The answer as to why this card had not saved the rider was plain to see: The card activated when its wielder was attacked with another card’s power. The brassy orange and sky blue dragon had attacked the pink with teeth and claws only.

It had been a brutal attack and showed they knew enough about the card and how to kill without their prey getting away. Since dragons linked their cards with their rider, the pink dragon likely had something similar in its deck.

They had meant to kill the pair of them. Planned it out.

A scourgling whistle cut through the forest. Arthur turned toward it, tense. His dagger was gone, and his new Trap card wouldn’t work until after the next sunset.

He was also more than a half day’s journey from the caravan. And there was an entire valley of scourglings between that point and this one.

He vaguely remembered the small valley on Red’s map. It had been surrounded on three sides by mountainous ridges with a lower lip on the southeastern side that led to a wider plate. This camp was somewhere on that lip. That meant scourglings would be spilling from the eruption on the other end of the valley and slowly filtering in this direction.

Quickly, Arthur searched the cold fire pits. He came out with a hearty branch with wood too dense to burn easily. It had a bulbous end. Better than nothing, though he wished he had something sharper.

The memories of how that other group of men was bowled over so easily, swords and all, were fresh in his mind. It was easy to imagine his cards being plucked out of his heart and swallowed down the gullet of a scourgling.

He didn’t think he was imagining it: The whistles had become closer and had a sharper tone at the end. It sounded like an excited hunting cry.

Did they smell him? Did they… Wait a minute.

Arthur’s hand drifted to his heart. He’d seen the scourglings go straight for the cards, first. Like it had smelled it on the downed man.

Doshi the silver dragon had smelled his legendary rank card. Now Arthur had a rare card to add to it. What if the scourglings could sense them?

He had to get out of here.

The heavy branch in one hand, he started down the road, opposite the way the caravan had gone.

Arthur felt a stab of regret for that. He wished he could go back right now and tell Red everything that had happened — that he was right and shouldn’t have gone with Second. That Arthur was sorry for… well, everything.

But even if he could find his way back to the caravan, if Second lived, he would kill him. Red was not a carded man. He didn’t have the strength to stop Second. He’d pretty much said so himself.

Arthur’s only hope was to put enough distance between himself and the valley. Hopefully, the town the caravan had last left would take him in.

He had to get there first.

The hunting whistles continued. To his anxious, racing heart, they seemed to draw closer. Worse, Arthur couldn’t pick out the exact direction they came from. The trees were all a tall pine variety with thick underbrush that seemed to distort and bend the sound, somehow. Or maybe there were so many around that all were whistling.

Arthur broke into a faster walk. Then a jog. A prickling on the back of his neck made him shift into a run.

A sharp whistle made him twist to look back. Behind him, a scourge-wolf leaped onto the road. The path it had broken through the brush was already shriveled and dying.

The scourge-wolf’s mouth was a mass of teeth stuck out in all directions. Seeing Arthur, it let out a shrieking sound the equivalent of a howl, and broke into a run.

Arthur screamed and dropped the branch, sprinting with every ounce of speed he could pull on. He’d been fooling himself. A little piece of wood wasn’t going to do any good against something with a mouthful of teeth like wood saws.

Leaning forward into every step, he ran like he had not allowed himself to do since he had first gotten his skill card. Not even when he’d gotten word of Ernie’s sickness.

I need a running skill, he thought wildly. But that wasn’t in his range of skills. Stealth and his Card Shuffling skill had saved his life twice already today. He wasn’t sure what else he had left to draw.

Risking a glance behind, he was shocked to see the scourge-wolf was still loping along at the same distance as before. Arthur was pacing it. If he had better endurance…

A moment later, the wolf was joined by another. Then a third. Then, absurdly enough, some of the scourge-bunnies joined in to run him down as a pack.

True wolves and bunnies would never, but each one of these creatures was a predator.

Whatever luck the Gambler class had given him had run out. Arthur seemed to be pulling the scourge in from all through the forest.

He panted, legs burning. He could go all day running messages up and back to the moving caravan, but he could only sprint at top speed for so long.

One wrong step and he would fall. Then they would be on him.

One thing wolves and bunnies couldn’t do was climb. Hopefully.

Arthur looked around wildly and focused on a large pine with branches low enough for his use.

He turned sharply toward it. The tree was just off the road, but those few steps he took brought the scourglings closer.

Arthur jumped and grabbed a branch, that ripped at his palms. He hauled himself up with strength born out of sheer panic. He used the next set of branches like a ladder, climbing fast.

The whole tree shuddered as one of the wolves hit the trunk. One scourge-wolf leaped upward and hooked a branch with its paws, but then fell back. The branch it touched turned instantly black and started to die.

As did the trunk of the tree.

Arthur kept climbing. His only hope would be to find a spot to leap to another tree.

But there were none within a safe distance. He could try, but he would more than likely fall through the branches. If the hit to the ground didn’t kill him, the scourglings would.

He climbed on, hoping for some answer.

The tree was a tall one with the top ending well above the general canopy. The moment he climbed above the neighboring trees, he was buffeted by a hot wind.

Off in the distance, an orange dragon had summoned a fireball the size of Second’s cart. It exploded onto a mass of flying scourglings.

Arthur kept climbing until the branches became so small they snapped under his boots. He clutched the trunk for balance, feeling the tree wobbling. Though he couldn’t see it, he could imagine the base of the tree was rotting away under him.

“Boy!” Came a girl’s voice. “Tess comes!”

He looked up to see a small purple dragon shoot through the sky toward him. Its body was the size of Bella the donkey, discounting the tail. It had four wings: two on each side which flapped so fast they were a blur. It stopped to hover right in front of him like a hummingbird.

“Jump on Tess!” she said. It had been her voice, high and clear like a young girl’s. “Tess catch!”

A rider sat crouched low on the space between Tess’s wings and her haunches, with a tiny saddle like a horse race jockey. The head was encased in a leather helmet, goggles, and a cloth mask over the bottom of their face.

As Arthur felt the tree shudder, the rider extended a hand. They were still too far away for comfort, but Arthur had no choice.

Gathering himself, he leaped from the tree. His hand scraped at the rider’s arm for a stomach-dropping second before he caught the wrist. The purple dragon squealed and dipped to the side, thrown off balance by his weight.

Then Arthur’s other flailing hand caught Tess's back ridge. With the rider’s help, he pulled himself behind them. Tess righted herself with a flick that almost sent Arthur tumbling off the other side.

There was almost no space between the back of the saddle and the wings. Arthur stayed on his stomach, legs in the air. All he could do was stick his fingers under the saddle straps and hold on for dear life.

Below him, the tree he’d been climbing toppled sideways to the ground.

“Tess caught boy! Tess caught boy!” the dragon cheered like a girl who had just captured a butterfly.

The rider said something he couldn’t catch. Suddenly, the wind screamed as Tess lifted higher — straight up, using her buzzing wings. Then she darted forward faster than any galloping horse.

Arthur never thought he would be afraid of heights, but he was very aware of the sheer amount of sky between himself and the ground. His fingers had a death grip around the saddle straps, every muscle coiled tight as he clung onto the dragon and tried not to die.

Below him, the valley seethed with scourglings, though it seemed the hives were mobbing up the aerial battles. Tess shot back and forth, deftly avoiding the last scourgling flyers.

Arthur expected he would be taken to a safe spot: the town he had been headed for, or maybe even the caravan if he was lucky.

It took him too long to realize Tess was heading straight towards one of the rips in the sky. 

Tess was taking him to a hive.

“No, wait. Take me to the caravan—“ Arthur wanted to say, but between fear and the screaming wind, his mouth had gone dry, tongue glued to the top.

The rip loomed larger until it seemed to take up the entirety of the world, the iridescent green dragons still holding it open.

Then, they were inside.

Big apologies to everyone who thought it was a time-loop card. I may have cliffed too hard. 

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