6. Basil - Cards by Candlelight (Patreon)

Chapter 6

Cards by Candlelight

After collecting my wayward Headsman – who had ended up in the pantry of all places – I spent the rest of the evening pondering the Water cards my family had and whether or not I should reconfigure my deck list. The grimoire was part of my mother’s dowry, but she rarely summoned anymore, focusing instead on using the power of her soul to help the local crop yields, not to mention running the many charities she led and perfecting our gardens in her leisure time.   

The collection was impressive, with a mix of Souls, Spells, and Relics, the cards ranging from Common all the way up to a ruby-rimmed Epic. Each one I lingered on, trying to figure out if there was a way it could help me win, either in general or against a Spell-heavy Fire duelist. The staple Soul of Water decks were troglodytes, just like kobolds were for Fire, kestrels were for Air, and humans were for Order. On the whole, troglodytes were cheaper Souls with some interesting abilities, like the Dart Thrower, who could do a single point of damage upon being summoned, or the Shaman, who could regenerate – an extremely useful trait when paired with Water Source’s Power to transfer damage between Souls. 

While those effects and others – like the Warrior’s increased strength when attacking – could have great utility, none of them synergized particularly well with my deck. The Shaman would buff my Executions, true, but that was the only spell I used which dealt damage, and a 6 point strike was usually enough to eliminate Souls I targeted without assistance. I did linger on the Leecher; Lifesap was a rare and highly sought after ability since it returned destroyed cards to the duelist’s deck. However, the Leecher’s high casting cost and low attack eventually made me turn the page.

Other Water Souls were actually similar to those I already used, and so I pondered if including them would increase my deck's effectiveness. The Troglodyte Tracker had Hunt, just like my Assassins and Master Assassin. The advantage of the Tracker was that it was much cheaper than either of my cards, only 2 Souce total, versus 4 and 5, respectively. However, it wouldn’t always kill what it struck with its Attack of 2, unlike the Assassin’s Venom, which automatically destroyed Souls that they damaged. The Water Moccasin did have Venom, but with only 1 Health, a Human Archer, Troglodyte Dart Thrower, or countless other things could easily remove it. 

My regular Assassins only had 1 Health, too, but they had Stealth, which hid them from view, while the Moccasin had no such defense. I could give it my Scalemail Relic, I supposed, granting it Armor, which would eliminate the first point of damage it sustained from combat or Soul abilities, but that would mean I wouldn’t get to use the Scalemail on me, which was much more important. In a deck with more Water Source, the Mocassin would be easier to protect, since I could slide damage off of them with the Source Power, but with only 2 Water, I wasn’t confident that I’d have those Source out and ready when it was under attack. So, all in all, I decided on “no”, even though there was a full complement of three Water Mocassins available to use.

Besides troglodytes and swamp creatures, my mother had three levels of elementals, from Lesser to Greater. Lesser Elementals would give me access to more Water Source, which made me briefly reconsider the Water Moccasin, but other than that Lesser Elementals were fairly useless. So, I’d be adding multiple cards to my deck to achieve the affect my basic Assassins already gave me. Perhaps if my Mind Home could hold more than 20 Summon cards it would have been a good option, but as it was, every card I added would force me to remove one, and the trade felt far from worth it to me. 

Standard Elementals on the other hand had very good Attack and Health values, and their Overkill ability meant that any damage they did beyond the target Soul’s Health would rollover to the enemy duelist. 

They were just good cards, simple as that, hard to kill and hitting like a battering ram when at full Health. My hand twitched above one, wanting to remove it from the grimoire and tuck it behind my ear. What stopped me was the casting cost of 4. If it had been a mix of Water and Any it wouldn’t have been an issue, but as far as I knew, elementals always required pure Source of their own type. With 2 Water Source I could get to 4 if I devoted them, wringing them for everything they were worth, but how often would I have both available to me? Every moment I didn’t the Water Elemental would sit in my hand, unsummonable. I could add a few Lesser Elementals in to increase my chances, or bank some Source with a Relic like the Bowl of Tides, but that went back to the problem of using up more card slots than I wanted to. 

If I was to include something new, I wanted it to be able to work on its own. Anything else felt too risky to me. Maybe that was just pre-tournament jitters, but I only had myself to rely on for this; neither of my parents had dueled in ages, my brothers would make a jest of it at best, and Tipfin had decided to go on early holiday after I ran from our practice match without his leave. 

As for the final elemental, I barely let myself glance at it, a glorious Rare, because it simply cost too much, and I needed to spend what little time I had focused on things I could actually use. 

For the Spells, my mother only had two: Ice Arrows and Whirlpool. 

Ice Arrows could pair well with the Shaman or even the Dart Thrower, and I was sure that was how my mother had employed them in the past, but as I had already decided, I wasn’t interested in any Water combinations. Also, my deck was focused on all or nothing kills, like with the high damage Execution dealt, the Venom my Assassins employed, or the ability my Headsman had to remove a devoted Soul. Pinging a few targets for 1 damage wouldn’t help my gameplan. The Whirlpool though… what I wouldn’t give for it to do two points less damage or for Carrion Condor to have 2 more health. If either were true, Whirlpool had the potential to power up my Condors to an absurd degree, since any enemy Soul not damaged by the Condor that was destroyed would increase its Attack value. The reality, though, was that Whirlpool would wash away my Condors along with other weaker Souls, and I couldn’t even afford its casting cost, so there was no point to any of my wishing. 

The Relics, somewhat surprisingly, were the most interesting to me, and I hunkered forward over the grimoire to give them my full attention. The Bowl of Tides was a “no” since I didn’t want to worry about pairing cards together, and I didn’t often need extra Order or Air Source. The same was true for the Spawning Pool. 

Though the thought of having a horde of 1/1s was a fun, brief distraction, I wasn’t well versed in managing that many Souls nor did I think they would supplement my other cards particularly well. 

That left three ice cards: Ice Blade, Armor, and Wall. 

The Ice Blade and Armor looked exactly as I remembered from my time spent staring at them as a child. In fact, with the candles of the library burning pleasantly around me, and my shoulders wrapped in a soft woolen blanket, this moment was much the same as it had been for me back then, and a wave of nostalgia washed over me. I had loved the idea of freezing my enemies with the Blade or Armor, but now as a young man who had participated in many duels, I saw the effects from a different lens. Yes, slowing down opposing Souls and the opposing duelist was effective, but if a summoner decided to enter the fray with a weapon, the Soul or duelist they struck was able to hit them back. I knew some duelists used decks that made themselves the most powerful fighter on the field, but that was not how mine was constructed. My Scalemail and Helmet offered some limited protection, but that was all – not enough to be under constant attack. 

It was tempting though to consider adding the Ice Armor to my deck to have another card that would help me defend. Or I could even swap it for my Scalemail if there were no other cards in my deck I could bear to give up. But would it be worth it to use Water Source to gain access to a single card? Every Water source I drew wouldn’t help pay for any Order or Air Source specific cards I used. The only way I could justify watering down – I chuckled, likely due to the late hour – my Source deck is if the resulting benefit was extremely good. Ice Armor was just that, protecting me while punishing Souls for attacking me, but my mother only had one of them. Also, the ability Armor didn’t work against Spells, which meant including it wouldn’t help at all against my rival for Esmi’s hand. 

With a sigh, I moved onto the Ice Wall. I had always been fascinated by how soulsmiths had figured out generations ago how to capture a portion of the essence of things that were useful, like the Spawning Pool, or in this case a cliff face of ice. Ice Wall was perhaps an unassuming card since it had no Attack value, but it had the potential to pair very well with my deck. This was because one of my deck’s greatest weaknesses was the early stages of a duel. Since all of my Souls were specialties in one way or another, the cheapest of them was 3, stopping me from ever summoning one with a single Source. But with Ice Wall, I’d only need one Source out to create a defender. Its Tall ability, which let it block enemy fliers, was nice…or was it? I could already do the same with my Condors and Winged Knight. And while the 4 Health of the Wall would certainly stop an initial attack or two, what then? If I had some way to heal them it would be a different story, but as is, tossing them into my deck, was I just delaying how long it would take me to lose? 

Pondering that, I idly flipped to the final page, where the Epic lived. 

The Sea Titan was glorious, and my mind tingled at the thought of summoning so colossal a Soul. As Fate would have it, it was exactly the sort of card I’d want to put into my deck. The initial damage of 2 it dealt upon arrival could sweep away enemy hordes I might be facing, as well as power up my Condor without killing it. And that was far from the only utility the Titan had. With its 8 Attack, it could destroy nearly any other card it faced, even Mythics, and with Overkill all that extra damage it dealt would fall onto the other duelist. With 8 Health it could survive those fights, and with a Regenerate of 2 – which I’d never seen on any other card – it could weather multiple Spells, even Fire ones from Sir-No-Name of Charbond. Crushing my rival with such a mighty Soul would feel absolutely glorious, I was sure.

Alas, for all the good the Titan would do in my deck, its casting cost was even higher than the Greater Water Elemental and well beyond the paltry Source the fabricator gave me. So, with that, I closed the grimoire.

I looked to the side table where the gift Esmi had given me sat, still in its silken-lined metal box. The sapphires on the bracer reflected candlelight, looking like tiny, flickering ponds. It was a handsome, expensive gift, and I simply couldn’t use it. I hoped she wouldn’t be too disappointed; I had tried to make it work, truly I had. Out of the library’s eastern windows I could see the night sky lightening toward dawn, a testament to the time I had spent in the attempt. 

And then my thoughts dipped darker. What if she had known this was an impossible task to begin with? What if she had given me the fabricator in an effort to weaken my deck so that I would lose to her Fire noble when I faced him? That way she could be rid of me and wed someone with a soul that equaled her own. It was a chilling thought that lingered with me as I put the grimoire aside and picked up a musty textbook of Fire cards. My personal Soul ability wouldn’t work on this type of information, but I was determined to try and memorize as many cards as I could the old fashioned way before the tournament began. 

I had been through enough surprises for one sun cycle, and I didn’t need any more during my duels.