“Is it time?” Chase asked, as soon as she'd woken enough to be coherent.

“No,” Cagna said, helping her out of the bed. “The big green guy says it's going to be soon.”

Chase's stomach growled, and Cagna chuckled. The dog-woman offered her a loaf of journeybread, and Chase got herself around it while she pulled on her armor. It had been mended while she slept, and she expected she had Renny to thank for it.

“Anything you want to do? Last-minute preparations?” Cagna wondered.

“Maybe. I got a bunch of skills back when we were fighting Zenobia, I need to make sure I understand them. After that... another fortune, I think. One last turn of the cards.”

A few minutes later she was tucking into a proper breakfast, and paging through her status screens, trying to figure out what was useful for the situation.

The first new Grifter skill had possibilities, especially if the dragon had a fear power like their ally did.

Bluster

Cost: 30 Mox Duration: Until ceased

Sometimes the best defense is to ramble loudly in a distracting fashion. While this skill is active, all members of your party (except for you) gain a buff to their mental fortitude, cool, perception, and willpower equal to your grifter level. Unfortunately, while this skill is active you can't use any skills that require speech. Your mouth is busy flapping! This skill has no levels.

The second one explained why she'd been feeling braver than usual lately.

Mega-Moxie

Cost: N/A Duration: Passive Constant

At this point your personality is off the charts! You gain a bonus to your moxie pool equal to your Grifter level, converted into a percentage. (Thus a level 16 Grifter gains 16% to their total moxie pool.) This skill has no levels.

The Gambler skills looked useful... but random. Very random.

Slot Machine

Cost: 100 For Duration: 1 Use

Pull the lever, and watch the numbers fly! Summons a slot machine that unleashes random damage upon your foes. Occasionally it backfires against you and your friends. Powerful but risky, do you dare test your luck?

Suit Sorcery

Cost: 10 For Duration: 1 Attack

The next card you draw for an attack will gain an additional effect based on the card's suit. Clubs equal Earth, Hearts equals water, Diamonds equal fire, and Spades equal air. Kings, queens, jacks, and jokers may have additional effects; experiment to find out!

That left the Medium skills. One of them was nice but not really relevant to the situation. The other... the other looked like a fancy version of the Oracle's random buff.

Object Reading

Cost: 25 For Duration: 1 Vision

This skill allows you to handle an object and gain a short insight into its relevance or its past.

Draw Fortune

Cost: 10 For Duration: 1 Minute

Allows you to draw a card to empower an ally with a related buff. Effects vary by card, experiment to find out!

Chase sighed. Aside from that Slot Machine power, they all looked fairly random or situationally useful at best. Nothing to build a strategy around.

Given that their current strategy was “hit it very hard,” she had been hoping for something a little more useful. Straight-up fights had never worked too well for her. And now she had her friends to worry about...

Pushing aside her worries as best she could, she found a quiet room in the Basilica and laid out the cards.

“Fortuna. How can we defeat the corrupted dragon?” she asked, shuffling the cards and laying out the cards one by one.

The first card was the two of hearts, and Chase growled in frustration. But... but hearts had meant Vitaly, hearts had signified Yubai as well. She wasn't just asking for herself, but the whole city then? Perhaps. Or perhaps the reading was one of the inaccurate ones, the fickle ones that meant nothing.

Too early to tell. More cards were required. “And this is the problem at hand,” Chase whispered into the darkness.

The Healer reversed. Twisted female energy. Twisted fertility...yes, that was a good analogy for spreading corruption. A good reading after all? Well, a valid one. Good was a thing she had yet to determine.

The ally card came next.

And she looked down at a landscape, filled with tiny castles and rivers and dungeons and any number of little people and monsters fighting and crafting and generally existing. “The Game,” she read. She'd not seen this one before.

Everyone and everything in the world would help her fight the corruption? That was heartening.

Next came the choice.

Ten Knights ringed a lone man, plunging their swords into him from every angle as his face registered anguished betrayal.

But...

The card was reversed. Chase let out a breath.”Regeneration. Resisting the inevitable.” Well. That was simple. They stood against the rising corruption or they didn't, and that would determine their victory or loss.

Which left the card of their enemy.

An acolyte stared up at her, kneeling before an altar with a mitre and crook placed upon it. He was lifting the mitre, trying to peek under it.

“Creativity? Curiosity... How is this our real enemy?” Chase shook her head. It made no sense.

The cards seemed to tremble on the table. She held her breath. Was the Fortuna skill actually doing something?

The page of clerics jittered right off the table. No, it wasn't the cards. The whole table was shaking.

“It's hatching!” Renny yelled from a few rooms over, and Chase scooped them all up, threw them into the case, and ran to the roof to join the others.

And there, in the light of the setting sun, sat the black oval covering the northern part of the city. Covering the entirety of the piazza that Chase and her friends had inadvertently doomed. It writhed under the sunlight, wisps escaping as it bulged, and muddy green light smoked through the cracks.

But as outlandish as that was, something was off. Something was wrong.

There were dark pillars on either side of the egg, black lines that stretched up into the sky and poured out to the horizon on either side.

“Oh no,” Thomasi whispered.

“What is it?” She tried to turn to look at him... and couldn't.

Instead, her perspective jerked, and then Chase was looking at herself from behind her own head. Around her the others were looking back and forth frantically, waving their hands in the air, and trying to sort things out. Only Dijornos and Thomasi were standing still.

“It's a cut-scene,” Thomasi said. “We literally can't do anything but watch this happen until it finishes. We're stuck.”

“I didn't know this game had these!” Dijornos said, glaring at the distant egg.

“Is it just us?” Chase asked. “Or is the whole city stuck in... whatever this is?”

“It's an overused game storytelling device,” Thomasi said. “I didn't know this one had them! Beyond the opening, I mean.”

“It's supposed to be sandbox, so no cutscenes except for world-events,” Dijornos said. “I guess this qualifies.”

And that's when the words flashed above Chase's head, as the egg finally gave and the black, winged nightmare within first took flight.

WORLDBOSS: DRACOLUPUS OMEGA

LOCATION: GNOME, LARAGGIUNGERE

VICTORY [email protected]!%#%@%#532553

The rest was garbled nonsense.

Then, abruptly, the scene shifted. Instead of watching themselves watching the dragon rise, they were seeing a metal-lined stone corridor, with alcove after alcove of still armored forms holding spears. Glowing, sparking rods were flaring to life, as rails in the ceiling charged up with lightning one by one.

And in the center, nestled in a steel egg of his own, was Vitale. Metal rods had been driven through him, cocooning him in some sort of wire-wrapped framework, and Yubai and the other beastkin were running back and forth between strange devices bearing large wrenches.

Vitale cast up his arm and pulled downward.

BOOM.

The view abruptly shifted again to the streets south of the Basilica; over to where the lightning road began its run.

And to a blur of motion that resolved, as the group followed the perspective behind the sixty-foot-long steel rod that Barriano's men had loaded into its cradle for just this moment.

Yes! Chase's heart soared with the spike as it flew through the sky... fast, so fast that only the strange magic of the cut scene let her follow it. Time slowed as the thing whirled... up close, it wasn't as draconic as she'd thought, some strange cross between a reptile and a wolf—

—and then the spike struck home.

It fell from the sky, howling, and the perspective followed it down...

...to where it crashed among the ruins of its hatching ground.

Twisted figures fled, all hair and jaws and red eyes, and Chase gulped as she recognized a few familiar sets of clothing. The vigilantes had been corrupted all right. I'm sorry, she thought as the dragon-thing writhed on the ground, pawing at the spike in its chest.

For a few seconds, she dared to hope that would be the end of it. For a few seconds, she thought it really would be that easy.

But then the spike crashed to the ground, and the beast stood... and Chase realized that the massive wound in its chest was closing.

It lifted its scaly, jagged-tooth muzzle to the sky and howled fire.

And a single word flashed across her vision, in letters fifty feet high;

BEGIN!

Chase stumbled as her perspective landed solidly back in her head, and around her almost everyone else was staggering... all except the players.

“She's still a werewolf! That's Tabita, only she's a dragon now,” Chase said, barely avoiding panic. “The spike wasn't silver! It'll take silver to really hurt her!”

“Chase,” Cagna said with dread. “When is the full moon up next?”

“Tomorrow—” Chase paused, staring in horror.

Tomorrow the full moon would rise.

Tomorrow was when Nebs had declared the world would end.

“If this thing is still alive when the full moon rises,” Chase said slowly, “then there's no stopping it. It'll rampage and that will be that.”

“And everyone it bites will become something like those things down there,” Renny said. “Or maybe not the bite, maybe the fire or whatever, I don't know.”

“The dragon's shadow,” Chase said. “This is bad.”

“It's worse than you know,” Thomasi said, squatting down next to her. “The cut scene establishes a narrative. It sets up a story. In this case, I'm betting that the thing that damaged the dragon to begin with is going to have to be the thing to end it.”

“We're going to have to spike it again?” Chase blinked. Then it sunk in. “Oh no. We ARE going to have to spike it again. With the weapon that we can't turn, and that can only fire every few minutes.”

“And that's if we're lucky. We might have to spike it two or three times. And the last one will have to be silver. It's probably better if they're ALL silver.”

Chase grimaced. “Beautiful. Great. Just... great.”

WHUMP!

Across the way, tiles fell from rooftops as every building in Gnome shook. She looked up to find that the green dragon hadn't been idle. He'd dropped from high above onto Dracolupus, and the two were fighting, crashing through the buildings of the old Piazza as if they were balsa wood.

“We need to get in there!” Dijornos bellowed. “Come on! Time to Do the Job! Forced March!”

Then it was down from the roof, and they were charging towards the bridge. Chase used the time running to organize her thoughts. “Cagna, whisper Vitale. Tell him we need to silver the spikes. Then tell Barriano his troops will need silver weapons. We're up against werewolves, he has to hold them back until they're properly equipped.”

“And what should I be doing?” Carmina asked.

Chase did a double-take. “You're supposed to be back with Greta!” she yelled.

But no, here the catgirl was, easily keeping pace with her. Even under the effects of the Forced March, even with half her levels gone, Carmina was bounding with easy grace over cobblestones, occasional patches of rubble, and the occasional very surprised militia troop.

“I got bored,” Carmina replied.

Chase grimaced. “Follow along and try not to die,” Chase said.

“Oh! I'm good at that! I've been doing that my whole life!” Carmina said, relieved. “So, do you think the lady will be here?”

“No!” Chase yelled as their feet rattled on the bridge.

“Oh,” Carmina said as she ran along the warped and twisted railing with consummate grace. “That's too bad.”

“Contact!” Dijornos shouted from ahead of the party.

“What?” Cagna barked back.

“Bad guys!” Thomasi clarified, unfurling his whip.

“Why not just say hey, we got enemies ahead?” The Muscle Wizaard asked.

And then the foes were upon them.

They wore torn and tattered clothing, and bore jagged, broken weapons, and Chase wasn't sure why because their fanged and scaled muzzles were miniature reflections of the thing that had been Tabita. Some of them had twisted, useless wings on their back... two, three, even four of the things.

“Renny! Set up the ring!” Thomasi called.

“Phantasm, Manipulate Air!” Renny cried...

...and instantly posts snapped out of the ground, and ropes materialized between them, as the section of street they were on turned into a wrestling ring.

“OOOOOOOOOHHHH YEAH!” The Muscle Wizaard roared, tearing his robe off. “Whatcha gonna do! This is my Squared Circle! Theme Song time!”

Chase caught the flash of silver on his knuckles as he bounced off the nearest set of ropes and swept toward the surprised weredrakes, with both arms outstretched.

“And in this corner, Direct Attention to the one, the only, MUSCLE WIZAARD!” Thomasi barked. “Spotlight, please!”

A beam of bright light shown out of the heavens and onto the Wrestler, as wolf-things howled and went sailing back out of the ring. They landed hard and didn't get up.

But the seething horde pressed forward, scrabbling to get into the ring...

...and failing.

Ropes twisted, posts seemed like they'd been slicked down with oil, and of every five who tried, only one got in.

“I am the master here!” Called the Muscle Wizaard, spreading his arms wide in a beefcake pose. “And you! Shall! Not! Pass!” His theme song swelled and rang out from the street itself, an invisible orchestra sending his challenge to all around.

Then he was too busy fighting to talk any more.

The others weren't idle, Chase saw. Thomasi was using his whip to trip and tangle some of them, while Dijornos was content use his immense strength and a battle axe to hack them down. Renny was busy maintaining the illusion and solidified air constructs, and Madeline flew overhead, keeping an eye on it all. Cagna was running toward her, with a concerned look on her face, and Chase hustled to meet her halfway into the ring.

“What's wrong?”

Cagna pointed. “Thomasi and Bastien have most of them focused on us, but eventually some of them will break away. If they get to the bridge before the troops are re-equipped with silver, it'll be bad.”

Chase glanced around the lines. The bottleneck was slowing them, letting in only a few at the time, and the party was handling those, but already a few around the edges seemed to be breaking from Thomasi's attention control.

Even more worrisome, some of them were hauling out crossbows and slings, even a few guns here and there.

“Got any silver bullets?” Chase asked.

“A few. I want to save them for bigger prey.”

As if on cue the street shook. Water jetted up in the distance, and a building crumbled as a green clawed hand grabbed it, and Therasimalazyn hauled himself to an upright position. His scales were cracked, and he had raw gouges in his side that bled torrents of blood.

Then a black blur of fur and scales, and Chase nearly lost her footing as green and black behemoths fell and another bulding shattered, sending dust up against the setting sun.

“Right,” Chase said. “We need to tie them up more... ah...” wait a minute, she remembered. I have silver weapons, now don't I?

Chase pulled out Enrico's last hand, and started looking for targets.

She found far, far too many of them. The weredrakes hadn't been distracted by the warring titans. They'd started making their way around the ring, pushing through the broken and shattered remnants of walls, or climbing with unnatural agility.

Too many targets. Unless... “Thomasi!” she called. “Send in the Clowns!”

The Ringmaster paused, drew his whip back, and took in the situation in a heartbeat. “Send in the Clowns!” he ordered.

There was a chorus of sad honking noises, as brightly-clad forms leaped out of abandoned houses, through free-standing doorframes, and in one case, up from a ruptured sewer main.

Chase knew they were useless in a fight.

She knew they had the resiliency of a whipped cream pie against draconic talons.

And she knew that all things being equal, the twisted wolf-dragons would tear through them like Dijornos' battleaxe through a rubber nose.

All things being equal, that was the phrase that Chase had no use for.

In her experience, there was no such thing as a fair fight, and anyone who wanted one of those had no business fighting anyway.

The only thing she needed the clowns to do was get in the way.

And that they did, as they died and gave Chase a few precious moments to work.

“Double Down, Demoralizing Shot,” Chase commanded over and over, casting card after card of Enrico's last Hand at the weredrakes in the lead.

The wrestling ring filled most of the street. The way through was narrow enough, and the clowns took a few seconds to kill whenever a furry abomination got to them. And as Chase rained down silvery fear.

The ones up front broke, trying to flee back, hampering the rest of them and forcing them back.

And then dragonfire burned, as Madeline dive-bombed the clustered masses.

Your Double Down skill is now level 2!

Your Demoralizing Shot skill is now level 7!

Your Double Down skill is now level 3!

Your Double Down skill is now level 4!

Your Demoralizing Shot skill is now level 8!

She lost track of the messages as she aimed and threw, over and over until they abandoned their attempts to bypass the party, and focused again on taking the ring.

But it was too late by then. Though he was bleeding from half a dozen wounds, The Muscle Wizaard was the undisputed master of the squared circle. Unconscious and battered scaly-furred bodies lay twisted before him, and the ones Dijornos had chopped to bits weren't doing too well either. Their unnatural regeneration seemed to be slowly mending those particular beasts, but judging by the rate they were going, they had a few months before they'd be an issue again.

The few remaining monsters fled, and Chase sighed with relief. Then she moved up to Bastien, a sudden concern tugging at her mind. “Diagnose.”

Muscle Wizaard (Bastien)

Debuffs: Bleeding

Conditions: Curse of Obscurity, Curse of LycanERROR 00:01:12

Chase sucked in her breath, and pulled a worm out from her jar. This was the moment of truth... “Absorb Condition, Transfer Condition.”

You are now afflicted with Curse oferrORERROR 00:01:08

Skill failed!

“No, no, no... Transfer Condition!”

Skill failed!

“Chase?” Bastien's eyes found her from behind his spectacles. “What's wrong?”

“I... I need to...” she watched as the diagnose box ticked his warped curse down to fifty-eight seconds. “I need to think! I...”

No success without risk. Have to gamble here. “I have to chance it,” she said. “Double Down. Transfer Condition!”

And she breathed a sigh of relief, as new words appeared.

You are no longer afflicted with ERRORERROR 00:00:32

You have afflicted Worm #2.85e+17 with ERROR!

Your Double Down skill is now level 7!

Your Transfer Condition skill is now level 17!

The worm twisted under her hands, thrashing frantically. She crushed it beneath her heel, then sliced it with a silvery card. “Hold'em,” she commanded, and her card case filled once more. “Okay. You're safe.”

“Kinda banged up still. Ooh yeah, a level!”

And he wasn't alone.

You are now a level 10 Archer!

DEX+3

PER+3

STR+3

You have learned the Crippling Shot skill!

Your Crippling Shot skill is now level 1!

You have learned the Flame Arrow skill!

Your Flame Arrow skill is now level 1!

Chase smiled in relief, then started the slow process of healing The Muscle Wizaard up.

Renny let the ring fade away, and sat on the ground. “Good work! This wasn't too bad. Maybe this'll be easy—”

A roar shook the streets.

Buildings fell.

Fire blazed to the north.

And then came an answering roar, and green light spilled into the world.

It wasn't fire. It was warped numbers, glowing obscenely green, it was a wave of unreality that ripped away everything it struck, twisting it or unmaking it, crystallizing it into a frozen parody of itself.

It was the same thing Chase had seen when Tabita's ritual had gone so very wrong, and she gasped to see it again... then slapped her hands over her mouth as she saw their green dragon take it on the chin.

He wasn't frozen.

But he drained of color, and for a second his skin almost seemed to disappear, showing bones beneath. Then it faded back in, and he turned tail to run.

He didn't get far. Tabita... or whatever she was now... lunged forward and caught his tail in her massive blackened jaws, and pulled him to the ground.

Therasimalazyn did not rise again. The abomination pulled back for the killing blow—

BOOM!

The blur of metal.

The snap of another spike launching past them.

And past the Dracolupus, as it missed the black form by dozens of meters.

The abomination turned its eyes southward, registering the threat.

And slowly, it started crunching through the buildings, heading toward the bridge. Chase saw why after a moment. “Its wings are in tatters!”

“Our dragon did something right at least,” Cagna snapped. “Now what?”

Chase considered her options. She was running out of cards to play.

But she had one for just this sort of situation. “Whisper Corinthia. It's time to wake the dead.”

CHASE'S CHARACTER SHEET

Spoiler: Spoiler

Name: Chase Berrymore

Age: 15 Years

Jobs:

Halven level 12, Cook level 5, Archer level 10, Gambler Level 10, Grifter level 16, Medium level 10, Oracle level 19, Painter level 2, Teacher level 6

Attributes / Pools / Defenses

Strength: 78 Constitution: 44 / Hit Points: 122 / Armor: 10

Intelligence: 74 Wisdom: 142 / Sanity: 216 / Mental Fortitude: 60

Dexterity: 153 Agility: 70 / Stamina: 223 / Endurance: 0

Charisma: 253 Willpower: 62 / Moxie: 315 (363) / Cool: 73

Perception: 148 Luck: 306 / Fortune: 454 / Fate: 55

Generic Skills

Archery – Level 1

Brawling – Level 8

Climb – Level 15

Dagger – Level 2

Dodge – Level 13

Fishing – Level 14

Ride – Level 10

Stealth – Level 19

Swim – Level 7

Throwing – Level 31

Halven Skills

Fate’s Friend – Level N/A

Small in a Good Way – Level N/A

Cook Skills

Cooking - Level 20

Dishwasher – Level N/A

Freshen - Level 12

Archer Skills

Aim – Level 9

Crippling Shot – Level 1

Demoralizing Shot – Level 9

Far Shot – Level 1

Flame Arrow – Level 1

Missile Mastery – Level N/A

Quickdraw – Level N/A

Rapid Fire – Level N/A

Razor Arrow – Level 8

Ricochet Shot – Level 21

Gambler Skills

Ace in the Hole – Level 2

Ante Up – Level 8

Assess Challenge – Level N/A

Cardsharp – Level 9

Deadly Dice – Level 1

Double Down – Level 7

Gambler’s Fortune – Level N/A

Hold’em – Level N/A

Slot Machine – Level N/A

Suit Sorcery – Level 1

Grifter Skills

Bluster – Level 1

Feign Death – Level 7

Fools Gold – Level 4

Forgery – Level 11

Master of Disguise – Level 15

Mega-Moxie – Level N/A (+15% Moxie)

Old Buddy – Level 7

Pickpocket – Level 21

Silent Activation – Level 36

Silver Tongue – Level 35

Size Up – Level 9

Unflappable – Level N/A

Medium Skills

Bad Fortune – Level 17

Crystal Ball – Level 10

Draw Fortune – Level N/A

Focus Vision – Level 5

Fortuna – Level N/A

Good Fortune – Level 18

Object Reading – Level 1

Palmistry – Level N/A

Séance – Level N/A

Stack Deck – Level N/A

Oracle Skills

Absorb Condition – Level N/A

Afflict Self – Level 1

Diagnose – Level N/A

Divine Pawn – Level N/A

Foresight – Level 47

Grant Vision Level 7

Influence Fate – Level 14

Lesser Healing – Level 51

Omens and Portents – Level N/A

Random Buff – Level 9

Short Vision – Level 17

Transfer Condition – Level 16

Painter Skills

Fast Dry – Level N/A

Painting – Level 5

Teacher Skills

Lecture – Level 24

Red Ink – Level 3

Smarty Pants – Level N/A

Unlocked Jobs

Farmer, Herbalist

Gear

Enrico’s Last Hand

Light Leather Armor