16. Hull - Heavy Hand (Patreon)

Chapter 16

The Cost of a Card

Seeing my father smiling down at us like the world’s smuggest asshole while my head was still full of finally meeting my mother made me feel like I had a headache inside my heart. I’d been ready to unleash demonic fury on Edaine – and I wasn’t going to miss the chance to attack first this time – but then Hestorus had to show up and steal the one clean, uncomplicated joy I had. It almost made me want to refuse his shitty little Artifact gift just on principle. Not quite, but almost.

“Treledyne students, you are released for the duration of our session,” Edaine called. “Be wise and choose well. Hull, you’re off the hook for now, but I expect you to perform next time as if you’d gotten three full rounds of practice and feedback, understand? You can seek me out later if you need pointers, and the same holds true for all of you. The rest of us will continue. Harganut, you’re up. Let’s do our best to remember the advice we’ve been given so far, shall we?”

The king had already floated off toward the treeline as if he expected us to follow automatically, and it made me even angrier that we all did without question. I watched his ermine cape fluttering behind him and imagined yanking him to the ground and stomping my foot down into his face. It was a satisfying little daydream at first, but after a moment I found myself souring on it. It’s not about kicking in dear old dad’s teeth because he abandoned me – not anymore. This is about removing a bad king who plays with the lives of everyone in the city because he thinks he’s the only one with a brain. I need to be more strategic about hating him. It felt wrong to draw back from the expectation of immediate violence, but I could feel in my bones that it was the right move. If I ever wanted to be more than a hurt little street kid, I needed to stop thinking like one.

Hestorus faced us when he arrived at the edge of the remaining forest and reached into the recesses of his cloak, brandishing an ornate cube of filigreed silver. “Few now living have stepped where you soon will,” he said with an arched eyebrow. “The winners of the Rising Stars and a few trusted associates, no more. Even my own blood has not set foot within – isn’t that right, Gerad?”

The Prince gave a terse nod, looking sour.

“The Tenders tell you to elevate yourselves, to make the most of yourselves and the Souls in your Mind Home, but they often forget to mention why.” The King looked at us intently, all traces of his silly, fickle exterior falling away to reveal a hawkish gleam in his eye. “Humanity is the youngest of the world’s races. It has to claw its way out of the dung heap it was born into. When you see the heroic efforts the bulk of our army is undergoing just to clear the land for a fourth city and make it safe…? Our world rages against the Order we bring; it wants us to be frightened, hairless apes living in caves and scrawling on the walls with soot. I say no. Every one of you that reaches to Epic and beyond elevates the all of us a little bit higher. You think I wish to be the only human Legendary? I have spent more years than I care to remember gathering power, gathering possibility, and to those who show promise I am willing to share. You are learning to master your cards, and that is primary, but we have to use all the resources this world can give us.”

He tossed the cube offhandedly at the tree line, and it halted in mid-arc, hanging in the air between two massive oak trunks. At a snap of his fingers, the cube unfolded, expanding in an eye-bending display of magical mechanics until it was a broad doorway of finest silver leading into a dim, globe-lit space. The forest surrounded the free-standing portal on all sides, but within its borders stood a different place.

“My Immaculate Vault holds treasures ranging from the prosaic to the sublime,” he said, looking at the doorway as a proud father might at a baby taking its first steps. “The oldest of my Artifacts were made by unknown hands tens of thousands of years ago, channeling the raw energies of a young earth, while others are the work of talented Artisans that entered the Vault mere weeks ago. Artifacts are not classified as simply as cards, you know – there’s never a handy border of silver, gold, or ruby to let you know how valuable an object might be – but I have spent great effort sorting them into power levels that more or less approach the rarities that you know.”

“Afi, you are here as Losum’s replacement, but given that his father the Grand Marshal has renounced their family’s claim on 5th place, I see no reason why you should not receive the Common Artifact he was promised. The rest of you know your ranks; restrict yourselves to the chamber indicated as Uncommon, Rare, or whichever you earned. Should any of you set foot in the room reserved for Legendary artifacts, you will die.”

Gerad gave a quiet snort, thinking it was a joke, but his father turned a flat look at him, and everyone got very still. I hoped the rooms were clearly marked.

The King drifted through the door. We all stood motionless, and then Esmi visibly steeled herself and strode in after. That broke the logjam, and we all piled in one after the other. Gerad was right in front of me, and he gave me a cold look, lengthening his step to increase the distance between us. And I’m supposed to fight side by side with that son of a bitch? He’d stick a knife in my ribs as soon as look at me if he could get away with it. And he will try to get away with it.

The space beyond the door turned out to be a broad, low-ceilinged room made all of enormous limestone blocks with the doorway standing exactly in the center. Fire-elemental glowglobes perched on wall sconces, giving a dim orange glow to the whole place. It smelled of sand and dust, and some kind of foreign picture runes were chiseled into the walls on all sides. Broad, squat doorways broke the round exterior wall at regular intervals, and each one had a perfectly-cut gem or polished metal plate set into the overhead lintel. One was of brass, another of silver, the third of gold… looking to the other doors, each set with a gem, I realized that the corridors beyond those doors led to the Artifacts we each got to choose from.

“Waste no time, but do not hurry overmuch,” the King said, gesturing to the doorways. “I am willing to consult with any of you should you desire my input on your choice. I will be wandering between the vaults; do not be surprised if I address you informally. In this place, at least, we need not stand on formality.”

I looked to Basil, who gave me an encouraging nod. Wasting no time, I headed for the hallway with a silver medallion embedded overhead. A backwards glance showed the others scattering. I felt a pang of jealousy when I saw Esmi enter the emerald door, but she’d won the tournament fair and square; to the victor, the spoils. At least it wasn’t Gerad. The hallway beyond the silver door sloped downward, cool, dark, and ancient-feeling. The carved symbols in the walls could have meant anything. They felt like little canyons in the rough stone when I ran my fingers over them.

The hallway opened into a square room at least fifty feet on a side with a taller ceiling than the round entry room. I tried to get a sense of what kind of structure this great stone building must be and failed to wrap my brain around it. The amount of stone needed to encase a huge wheel-spoke structure like this boggled the mind – and who knew if there was more above or beneath? I didn’t even know if the cube doorway had taken us somewhere else in the world or if this space existed somewhere else, similar to a Mind Home. I wasn’t sure I wanted to know.

The room had stone shelves at all heights, each one holding an incredible variety of objects from the very small – I saw something that might have been a hairpin nearby – to the stupidly large, like a sword a good eight feet tall that had a squared-off stone blade with no edges. That one was propped in the corner. Each object had a small plaque stuck to the shelf in front of it that gave a few words of description as to what it was. The plaques, thankfully, were in Common Tongue instead of that weird rune-writing.

I could have spent all day in that room, slept through the night, and gone back for more, but I knew that Hestorus wouldn’t wait that long. I scanned the plaques, hardly glancing at the items themselves unless the description interested me. Despite a month’s idle pondering on what I’d get as I dropped off to sleep nearly every night, I still wasn’t sure what sort of thing I should go for. A weapon was the obvious choice – being able to alternate the Fated damage of my Hammer or Vampiric Blade with a more flexible Artifact weapon that might not hit every time but didn’t have to wait to refresh in order to swing again was something I’d been keen on for a while. It might not help me in a tournament-style duel, but that wasn’t what War Camp was training us for – and as far as I understood, the only kind of Artifact allowed in proper duels was fabricators like the one I’d given to Basil. Of course, I still had the replicating dagger I’d taken from Ticosi’s corpse, but I’d never learned to throw knives properly, and without that skill, the Artifact was mostly wasted on me. I needed something that fit my style.

I did see a goodly number of fabricators on the shelves, each one locked to a particular source, but I was working on cultivating Order already, and other than Chaos, I didn’t know what other source it might be useful for me to have. I really needed to find out who my card advisor was; the other students kept talking about how they were helping refine their decks. There weren’t any Chaos fabricators – no surprise, given that Hestorus was the one to outlaw the source to begin with – and I wasn’t sure I’d have wanted one anyway. Yes, it would have meant a wealth of cards at my fingertips, but I’d have to hide them from everyone, and when I remembered Ticosi weeping blood, my own ran cold. No, a fabricator wasn’t the right choice.

Many of the other items on the shelves were everyday kinds of things – a set of scales that, when one put an object on one side, would create a sphere of exactly the same weight on the other, an oblong case full of spinning cylinders coated with every single letter that rotated to form words that apparently showed the next day’s weather, a rod that could detect water up to two hundred feet underground… each was fascinating in their own way, but they seemed more suited to people living normal lives than to a duelist. They were civilizational tools, not warrior tools.

In addition to the fabricators were raw, calcified sources of Air, Order, Water, and so on. They looked like rough, misshapen, uncut gems of all shapes and sizes. I assumed that the larger ones would offer more source than the smaller ones, but I wasn’t sure who’d want to jam a source stone the size of my head into a fabricator and lug it around on their wrist. Maybe some source stones were more concentrated than others? I’d have to ask Basil; he’d certainly know.

There were a few helms and shields, but at the Uncommon level none seemed worth choosing – there was one helm with no visor slit that let you see through walls or even hills, a buckler that let the arm holding it move faster, and a pair of greaves with boots attached with would not let the wearer fall. A pair of Charbonder wedding earrings that would protect the wearers from lightning. Nice, certainly, and each one helpful within its narrow use case, but not worth picking. The far wall held an assortment of weapons, and I hurried over to them.

At first I thought they’d be more of the same – one tiny dagger promised cuts that would not heal, a flanged mace would apparently stay in the user’s hand no matter what unless they chose to put it down, and one very strange crystalline blade could only sever relationships – but then I saw some further down the row that held promise. The club that would always block a blow sounded good, but it didn’t say anything about not breaking, and it looked to be plain old wood. The short bow whose arrows would aim themselves at Air Souls was extremely useful, if only under the right circumstances, and I lingered over a heavy mallet with an infusion of Earth that would allow it to repair itself forever. 

I got to the end of the row and felt a twitch in my pocket. Jumping, I clapped my hand to my trousers, realizing a moment later I was clutching at the stone my mother had left me. Feeling foolish, I pulled it out. It looked like any old rock. I wondered if it only looked purple at night, or maybe under the light of the moon. Had it moved, or was I still just hung up on the fact that long-lost mommy had given me a toy? For one irrational flash I was tempted to summon my Hammer and smash it. Damn her for showing up and not having my card. Just when I’d calmed down enough not to break it and had convinced myself that I was imagining things, it vibrated in my palm again. The feeling got stronger when I turned to face the shelf. 

Following the strength of the vibration led me to the tail end of the weapons shelf where, tucked in the corner, I spied something very familiar. My grimy little gutter-rat self couldn’t help but pick it up. It was a lumpy, oblong piece of brass that was pitted and black with age. Four finger holes ran through the center, and the butt end curved to rest in the hollow of the palm. The upper ridge had three prominent protrusions that could easily break a cheekbone or jaw. It fit my hand like a glove. Brass knuckles, the heavy hand, the boxer’s bane – in the Lows it had as many nicknames as a neighborhood whore and was even better known. I wanted it on a gut level, but when I looked at the plaque, it was so old and corroded that I couldn’t read what it did.

“I wondered if you’d find that,” the King said from right behind me.

I whirled around, falling unto a defensive stance without thinking, the brass knuckles raised and ready to strike.

“Not that you’d hurt me, but hitting the King usually doesn’t go well,” he said with a smirk.

I lowered my hands, flushing with embarrassment and thwarted anger. “I wasn’t gonna,” I said.

“You’d like to,” he said quietly, his eyes piercing. “But wait until you’re sure you can get what you want before you try.”

My tongue stuck to the roof of my mouth. He knew I wanted to kill him. Was this just a general I-know-you-hate-me bit of advice, or had I said something he might have overheard? Had he heard me planning with Ticosi during the tournament? My mind raced, and I didn’t dare say anything. He didn’t know everything, I was sure of that, but I’d be a fool to think I’d hidden everything from the Sun King.

“It increases Nether damage,” he said, ignoring my awkward silence and gesturing to the brass knuckles. “One of my earliest finds. If Nether weren’t so damned scarce I’d have grouped it with the Rares, but as you can see, it’s moldered here for a long time. I approve of your choice.”

The very fact that he approved made me want to put it back on the shelf, but I reminded myself that being petty worked against my own interests. Examining it more closely, I saw a faint imprint of a crossed hammer and pick with a suggestion of a star underneath. The Deepkin maker’s mark. I remembered Harganut’s words and wanted the piece even more. “So if I channel Nether and hit with this…”

“You’ll do half again as much damage as usual,” he said, smiling. “What’s more, using your source will make the damage Fated, meaning you can’t miss, but since it’s not a card, you can still swing as you please and not be constrained by turn refreshes. It’s the best of both worlds.”

That sounded amazing, but I wasn’t going to tell him that. “If someone had kept the plaque cleaned I could have known that already.”

He cocked his head. “You and I should spend more time talking. You have more promise than I first thought. If only you can put your infantile abandonment anger behind you, you could learn much from me. Any noble would kill for a private audience like this.”

“Yeah, because the nobles are all so smart,” I muttered. Hearing him echo what I’d been thinking about being less petty made me squirm.

His smile was so knowing I wondered once again if he could hear my thoughts. “Press the maker’s mark,” he said.

I blinked at him for a long moment before the words registered, but finally I did what he asked. With a metallic snik, wickedly curved metal spikes jutted out of the knuckle-top protrusions. They were a good four inches long – longer than it seemed ought to fit inside the device – and were perfect for ripping and tearing.

“Oh, shit,” I breathed, watching them glint in the warm elemental light. “This is the one. I want these.”

  *

I found Basil sometime later in the central room of the Immaculate Vault. Once my choice was made I’d forced myself to look at everything else I’d passed on, but nothing had made me second-guess my decision. The brass knuckles sat heavy and reassuring in my pocket, but not on the same side as the disguised Nether stone. I didn’t want it constantly buzzing against my leg.

“What’d you get?” I asked, excited. I’d show him mine in a moment, but I wanted to see what the Rare vault had gotten him.

“Ah,” he said, reddening. “Well… I asked the King if I could defer my choice to a later date.”

“What?” I gaped at him. “Fortune’s sweaty sack, what’s wrong with you?”

“There is nothing wrong with me,” he said primly, “and you should really cultivate some more urbane oaths.”

I took out my brass knuckles and shook them at him. “We’re supposed to be gearing up. We’re going to war, Basil. You’re not going to find battlefield solutions in a textbook, and whatever enemies we face won’t wait when you say, ‘Pardon, dearest chaps, could you hold the hostilities for a moment while I pop back to the Immaculate Vault for a quick consultation?’”

“I don’t talk like that,” he said crossly.

“You talk like a Tender who’s sixty and never touched a woman,” I told him, “and you know it. Now get back in there and choose something. Come on, I’ll help you.” I took him by the arm and steered him back toward the gold-topped door.

He planted his feet and gently pulled his arm free. “Thank you for your concern, my friend, but I have thought this through thoroughly. There are a number of excellent Artifacts that drew my attention – Farseer spectacles, for instance – but I have my eye on one item in particular that will only be useful should certain situations develop favorably. I must wait until more clarity presents itself, and I will not waste this opportunity. The King has already agreed.”

I sighed. Esmi was approaching, and I turned to her. “Talk to this idiot, will you? He says he can’t choose until later.”

She smiled at me and then turned an even warmer gaze on Basil. “I trust his judgment. You should do the same.”

I threw up my hands. “You both need to spend a week not knowing when your next meal is.”

“Be that as it may,” Esmi said, her eyes sparkling mischeviously, “I believe I will keep my own counsel. After all, it has served me well thus far.” With that, she drew a tiny crossbow from her pouch, showing it off proudly.

All my complaints were forgotten. “Is this it? Your Mythic?” It was a beautiful piece, all worked brass and polished wood, no bigger than her hand. It had no visible drawstring, and an ornate metal pull-tab protruded up where a bolt would normally sit.

“It is.” She beamed at it. “The problem with a swarm deck like mine is facing control opponents who can stall my Kobolds until they have big Souls and expensive Spells to kill me with, and this is the most elegant solution I think I’ve ever seen.” She pulled back the metal tab, and suddenly a green bolt of energy sat in the firing channel, ready to be loosed at the pull of a trigger.

“That looks deadly,” Basil said.

“It does no physical damage,” she told him, “but if the bolt hits bare skin, it caps the number of source a person can summon at 5.”

“Oh my,” her fiance breathed. “That would hamstring nearly anyone.”

I know!” she chirped, bouncing excitedly. She eased the pull-tab back into neutral position, and the energy bolt disappeared. “It wasn’t an easy choice, but I feel Twins-blessed to have found it.”

“Did the Twins bless you, or did I?” the King said, floating into the room. “I haven’t seen them creating treasure vaults to share with anyone.” He was back to his fey, thoughtless-ruler self.

Esmi curtsied to him. “Begging pardon, Your Majesty, but the world around us is the greatest treasure vault of all, and only the Twins can claim responsibility there.”

“Hm,” Hestorus said, sounding unimpressed. “So we’re told. I wonder sometimes.”

Esmi stiffened slightly at the casual blasphemy, and Basil’s smile looked strained, but both of them were wise enough to keep their mouths shut.

“This one,” Gerad said, approaching his father and holding a large object in one hand.

“Oh my,” Esmi said, covering her mouth. 

The Prince’s prize was a gruesome one. He held what looked like a human backbone, all interlocking bones and sinews like a dead snake. Scraps of dried flesh still clung to it, and bloodstains made a spatter of brown down one side.

“That is without a doubt the most powerful Epic Artifact in the Vault,” Hestorus said to his son. “If you had a freshly dead body and the person’s card you could bring them back to life.” He tilted his head. “Is there someone you wish to revive, Gerad?”

The Prince did not look his father in the eye but held his ground. “This is my choice.”

The King was silent for a long moment. “It is not.”

Gerad saw our little group watching and turned his back to us. “May we discuss this privately, father?”

Hestorus gusted out a sigh. “You try my patience more every day. Come on, then.”

The two of them retreated to the Epic vault behind the ruby door, the King leaning down as he floated along to speak quietly in his son’s ear, leaving the three of us with raised eyebrows and pursed lips. I had yet to see the King have even a single pleasant interaction with his heir. Not that I cared in the slightest for Gerad’s feelings – he acted more like a snake every day – but I wasn’t sure what Hestorus gained by keeping the boy angry and off-balance. It certainly wasn’t for my benefit. Now that Gerad knew who I was, my danger increased along with Gerad’s insecurity about our father’s approval.

Afi emerged from the Common vault, seeming pleased in her dry, clipped way to have found a journal that never ran out of pages. I could think of a thousand things I’d have rather picked, but the choice certainly fit her.

Eventually Gerad and Hestorus re-emerged, the Prince’s face dark with anger as trailed our father. He no longer held the spine. Instead, he had a flat silver disc clutched in his hand.

“What have you chosen, Your Highness?” Basil asked politely. 

Gerad’s face flashed with disdain, but he answered in a calm voice. “I have selected a foe-finder.”

“It’s an excellent choice,” Hestorus said, sounding bored. “Show them.”

Gerad dutifully held up the disc and tapped its surface. Shaped, contained lights flickered into being above its surface, showing a series of flattened squares connected by tubes. Several dots of different colors speckled the middle shape, which was more of a flat circle than the others surrounding it above and below.

“It’s a map,” Esmi said, her voice breathy with wonder. “It’s the Immaculate Vault, and all of us in it.”

I blinked, not sure what she meant, and then suddenly I saw it. The shapes were the treasure vaults surrounding the central chamber where we stood, and the dots showed the souls in the room – red Gerad, white for the King, yellow for Basil, Esmi, and Afi, and gray for me.

“It will sound an alarm if any of the souls in its range have intent to harm,” Gerad said, sounding as if he were carefully controlling his tone. “I am grateful for such a gift.”

“Yes, very good,” the King said. “Champions, these gifts are yours until death, at which point they will revert to the Immaculate Vault automatically. Use them well, advance quickly, and make the most of yourselves, for all our sakes.” He snapped his fingers, and the portal back to the War Camp fortification snapped open again. “Return to your studies. I have my own business to attend to here. Goodbye.”

There was nothing for it but to bow and file out. We found ourselves on the edge of the forest. The cleared field was empty; apparently Edaine had finished the morning’s exercises and sent the paladins, elves, and Deepkin back inside. As soon as Afi stepped through the portal, it winked out of existence behind her.

“Well, that was a fruitful morning,” Esmi said brightly. “Let’s get back and meet with our advisors. I can’t wait to see what they have to say about our new Artifacts.”

“I still have to figure out who mine is,” I said, falling in next to her.

“I was told it would be the Deepkin mentor,” Basil said. “Badgou is her name, I believe.”

“Another Deepkin,” I sighed. “I can’t get away from them.”

“They have more experience with Nether, being trade partner to the Demon Realm,” he said, patting my shoulder. “I’m sure she’ll have endless good ideas for you.”

“Or she’ll try to steal my cards,” I grumbled.

“You can’t hold an entire race responsible for the shortcomings of a single half-breed,” Basil said. “Basides, if you’ll recall, if you had simply waited for me the whole situation would have gone much more smoothly.”

Then he gave a guilty jerk and fell silent, realizing that Gerad was only a few steps behind us, and that it had been the card intended for him that I’d been cheated out of. We walked in awkward silence until we approached the gate. Esmi and Basil put their heads together, talking quietly. I found myself alongstride Gerad and did my best to ignore him.

He wouldn’t let me. He held up his foe-finder and tapped it meaningfully. “You won’t be able to sneak up on me. I’ll see you coming.”

I frowned at him. “I don’t want to sneak up on you.”

He sniffed. “That’s because you lack the instinct needed to compete at this level. You’re still a child of the streets at heart.”

“So what?” I was getting irritated, and I didn’t bother to hide it. “Listen, we can just leave each other alone and that’ll be the end of it, as far as I’m concerned. I don’t want what you’ve got.”

“You will,” he said, deadly quiet, his eyes cold. “But you won’t win. I’ll see you coming and you’ll get nothing.”

I searched his eyes. He looked dead inside. I reached into my pocket and slid my fingers into the brass knuckles, for comfort as much as anything else. “Something’s wrong with you, Gerad.”

He stepped close, head high, back rigid. “There’s only one way this ends, Hull. You’d better take your shot, even if it’s hopeless. Because when I come for you, you won’t see a thing. Count on it.”