“That sounds really childish, doesn’t it,” Riordan said with a groan. He hated how whiny and weak he was being. If he hadn’t felt so close to exploding with unprocessed trauma, he’d never have started this conversation on feelings. “Of course the world isn’t that simple. This isn’t some game or story, with the good guys and the bad guys all clearly marked and a happy ending where everyone rides off into the sunset to be blissful doing whatever it was they wanted. It’s dumb to want something so unrealistic.”

“Just because it’s unrealistic doesn’t mean it’s dumb to want it,” Duane responded. The large man reached out to run his fingers through the void grass. He tugged on it like he wanted to pull up a few blades of grass, but the spirit matter resisted. “So long as you don’t let your desire mask reality. It really would be nice if this whole mess was simpler.”

“Wouldn’t it just be,” Riordan agreed with a snort. He let the silence sit between them for a moment before sighing. “I need to check on the other side of the space tonight. After I finish giving you a full explanation of today’s shit show and try making some games for the pack, but still. I’m not looking forward to it.”

“You could leave it alone,” Duane offered, “The ones who remained turned you down. No one would fault you for not putting yourself and possibly all the rest of us at risk by checking on them.”

Part of Riordan was tempted to take that out, to say it wasn’t his task and leave it to someone else to solve. Yet, that had never been who he was. He hated leading, but he had also always chased trouble when he was young, trying to do good in the world. Riordan might have lost sight of that while he drifted, too torn up by the loss of his team and his culture and everything else that went with it to see a way forward, but that stubborn fire still burned in him. There was a problem in front of him, no one willing to give him a job to fix it, and tasks only he could do related to it. Hell if he was going to run from it.

That reminder of who he was inside helped ground Riordan. He sat up and shook his head, a fierce grin crossing his lips as he let his melancholy mood go. “Nah, ain’t happening. I’ve got work to do.”

Duane just shook his head at Riordan’s determination, amused but not displeased. “That’s about what I figured. It ain’t so bad to feel low, but I didn’t figure this stuff would keep you down for long. You’re a fighter.”

A fighter. That word had been a literal part of Riordan’s identity once. Apparently he needed to redefine how he fought and just get at it again.

“Right, I better get started then,” Riordan said before launching into yet another report to keep Duane updated on the status of things in the physical world.

Duane took the information about there being multiple death mages in the murderers’ organization better than Riordan expected. Then again, magic was new to him. Duane had probably been considering every one of the murderers, from the most mundane on up, as threats from the get go. As much as Riordan tried to be cognizant of his internalized prejudices, they still snuck up on him sometimes. Sure, a death mage could do some really nasty things with the power they had, but most of the things that had been done hadn’t even needed magic to accomplish.

Humanity sucked sometimes.

Fortunately, there were good people as well. Telling Duane about the two federal agent mages had been odd. Agent Ahlgren was about what Riordan had expected. He was uptight, by the book, professional, and likely competent. He hadn’t performed any magic himself in their relatively short interactions and Riordan wasn’t sure what his affinity was. If he’d known the mage families well enough, he could probably tell just from the man’s name, but Riordan had never really been privy to that information. It hadn’t been his job.

And then there was Quinn. The man was an agent and a death mage and dressed like some sort of punk, but he acted like none of what Riordan expected from any of those things. There was something about him that reminded Riordan of himself, but he couldn’t quite pin down what it was. Perhaps it was just the way that his best friends seemed to be ghosts.

With that depressing observation, Riordan pried himself up off the ground and wrapped up his meeting with Duane. Things were stable in the glade at least, which counted for something done right. Now they just had to move from stable into improvement and ideally counterattack.

To start it off, Riordan had some games to make. He waved to the other members of his pack as he once again returned to his meditation labyrinth. This time he was there to work instead of leave though. He began to walk the maze pattern as he thought about the task at hand.

He had Frankie’s safeguard spells on him. There were three of them, a slowing shield, a spirit-speech facilitator, and a power limiter, but it was that last one that mattered most for this task. Under its effect, he couldn’t just will something into being here now. He had to think out a spell, define its effect and scope, and then actively cast it in some manner. What manner that was didn’t seem to matter much, just that the actions carried the intention of releasing the spell. Ideally Riordan would settle on something that didn’t make him feel utterly ridiculous to use when casting. He couldn’t see himself doing some elaborate song and dance to make magic without feeling like a fool.

Riordan wasn’t up for a delve into the theoretical philosophies of magic at the moment, so he refocused on his specific goal: cast a spell in the spirit realm without causing a bunch of extra side effects. He decided to start with creating a pack of cards.

He closed his eyes, visualizing a playing card. They were thin but stiff, made from coated card-stock paper that protected them from casual damage but always seemed to let the edges get soft over time. They were small enough to hold comfortably but large enough to read clearly. He’d seen some travel cards that were tiny and a pain in the ass to actually play with. There were images printed on each side, one to represent the deck as a whole and the other to represent the specific card. There were four suits, spades, clubs, hearts, and diamonds, with cards from one to ten and then the jack, queen, and king. And two joker cards.

Absently, Riordan remembered something he’d been told, that modern playing cards shared a common root with tarot cards, though he didn’t know enough about tarot to know if that was true. It seemed appropriate somehow to think of that style of art as he envisioned the faces of the cards one by one. He was trying to do a deliberate act of creation via magic and wanted it to feel more magical than something you could buy from a gas station for a few bucks.

Bit by bit, Riordan built the image of the deck, both as its individual parts and as a whole thing. He felt the moment he truly grasped the spirit of a deck of playing cards because the pressure of the intention he was building became lighter, more unified and easier to manage. That made sense given he was using spirit magic to create something out of pure magic in the spirit realm.

He felt satisfied then that he had built a proper intention. He just had to pick a way to release it. When nothing came to mind as being particularly right for him, Riordan merely raised a hand, palm up in front of him, and spoke in Yiddish.

“Exist.”

A weight settled into Riordan’s hand. When he opened his eyes, Riordan found he was standing in the center of his meditation circle now, holding a deck of cards that looked just like he imagined. He hadn’t even realized he’d been walking the pattern while he worked with his eyes closed. He was torn between worrying about another thing he did without thinking and the desire to just trust his instincts. They might have side effects, some of them severe, but they hadn’t led him wrong yet either.

One deck of cards was just going to create fist fights over limited resources. However, now that he’d made his prototype, Riordan could reduce his intention to duplication rather than defining raw creation. He held up his other hand, envisioning the deck of cards in his right hand being duplicated to his left one as well.

“Copy,” Riordan commanded in Yiddish. A second deck appeared without much fuss.

He stopped to check his energy levels. Working magic here on the spirit realm cost less of his personal power for small effects. He wasn’t reworking physical matter, which would be difficult for him to do directly without the material affinity. He was working with the energies of the spirit realm using the spirit affinity. Riordan was sure he could be way more efficient than he currently was, especially if he resorted to more magical supports like spell components and patterns and chants, but this wasn’t a significant cost already.

He repeated his spell a few more times until he had five decks of cards to hand out. He doubted it would be enough, but it was another start towards improvement. Riordan had to pause to create little bags to contain the decks after he dropped one of the decks, spewing cards all over his meditation circle as he dropped more trying to catch the first one. Once they were neatly packaged, Riordan made the way back to the center glade and found Cole chatting with a group of people there again. It seemed the young man liked hanging out there and being social, which made sense given the sheer amount of nervous energy he seemed to contain.

“Hey, Cole,” Riordan called out as he entered the space, “Catch.”

He lobbed one of the bags of cards to Cole once the young man turned to face him. Cole still nearly fumbled the catch before clutching the cards to himself, blinking down at them in surprise. “What’s this?”

“A deck of cards. Don’t complain about my crappy art. I have four more sets I’m dropping off with Duane for now, but figured you could be custodian of that one. I’m sure you could rustle up some card players.”

Cole burst into a broad smile with all the enthusiasm of the sun coming out from behind a cloud. Riordan let a small thrill of pride touch his shrivelled little heart that he’d been able to put that expression there. It had been ages since he’d gotten much in the way of positive feedback from his interactions with others. It pleased him and made him uncomfortable at the same time. He held up the other bags of cards as an excuse and fled into the hedge maze, even as Cole called out his thanks again.