After my last little adventure, I mostly just coasted until the next reset. I’d taken the time to get familiar with how damn useful [Journey And Destination] was. The sub-task it assigned to me of making a trip, usually a short one, and in a specified manner, always paid out two max pool increase points, which was eternally useful. If for no other reason than it let me walk around most of the time with [Triage And Stabilize] ready to go. It was really the only Compassion card I’d kept in the rotation, and at a cost of twelve I was always on the fence about when I should or shouldn’t pour my points into that pool.

It also kind of highlighted something I hadn’t noticed before; namely that refilling my moods got harder, the higher the stat was. That general fuzzy feeling that I got occasionally when I saw some kid having fun in the park was enough to push Compassion up to ten, for example, but it wouldn’t get *over* it. Being pissed off at tenants at work was good for a few points of Spite, but again, it didn’t seem like it could get me over ten unless it was something a little… stronger. Bigger? Eh.

By the time the reset rolled around, I’d gotten to spend a little more time playing around with [Forge In Flames], too, and boy was that one flexible. Turns out it didn’t really consider the looming spectre of economic collapse to be a ‘threat’, exactly, but it also happened that bulletproof vests were considered simple enough for me to shape one. And after a few practice runs (or nine or ten failed attempts, depending on how you looked at it), I managed to cast the spell while running, and materialize the armor already on my body. It was no luck-based counter, but it made me feel infinitely safer to know that I had a backup means of protection.

Especially with the Oathcurse in effect.

A long, long time ago, a friend of mine and I had been doing some casual worldbuilding. If you’ve never had a conversation with a good friend about inventing fictional worlds, I highly recommend it. Anyway, the point I’m going for is, at one point we came up with an idea for an order of paladins. I forget the name, obviously, but the general idea was that if you wanted to be a full member, part of the initiation was that you got cursed. Because the problem these make-believe knights in shining armor ran into was that they were never where they needed to be in order to actually save people.

So the Oathcurse was the solution. You get a permanent curse that warps fate, and ensures that anything bad that was going to happen *anyway*, happened to, or around, *you*.

Over the five days before the reset, I’d helped a lost kid find his dad, pulled a guy out of the way of a runaway lawnmower, and stopped a tenant at work from setting his apartment on fire. That last one, though, might have been because the apartment complex I worked at was full of idiots. But even so.

I already knew that weird stuff was going down, but this was starting to get ridiculous.

That reset had happened four days ago, and there’d been a lull going on so far, with only a couple events of note. Which was good, because it gave me time to aggressively make use of [Journey And Destination]. If I had to walk around all day at work anyway, I may as well get myself ready for the big thing this week while I did it.

That big thing was one of the Tasks I’d locked in last week. I’d noticed that my Tasks list had refreshed after I’d cleared (Entrepreneur), and been mildly shocked at some of the new options. Also shocked at the lack of any reward beyond ten cardbucks, but whatever.

Mia's Tasks

(Savior) - Rescue one person from danger.

(Shake Hands) - Meet two people.

(Challenger II) - Emerge victorious from a Challenge 1+ single conflict

(Manipulation) - Solve a problem without direct action

(Grand Guardian) - Eliminate the largest threat to your current region

(Elevation) - Climb 30 feet.

(Blacksmith) - Improve a personal posession.

(Delver - Blood Mask) - Complete the Blood Mask zone.

(Show Off II) - Affect more than 20 people with one Card

(Pacifist) - Go three days without harming another person.

Of my options for the upcoming week, some were gimmies. (Pacifist) was probably going to be impossible to *not* get if the lull in danger continued, which I hoped it would. If not, then (Savior) kicked in, and I actually locked that task right away just in case it rotated again. Most of the others were either silly, like (Elevation), or legit impossible to actually assess how to accomplish, like (Grand Guardian). What the fuck even was a threat to the region? What *was* the ‘region’?! Again, I felt like the Tasks menu didn’t understand that the biggest problem for some people was that half of California wanted to move up here and it was driving living expenses up. But that wasn’t the kind of ‘threat’ I could…

Okay, that wasn’t the kind of threat I could deal with *now*, but maybe someday I’d be able to build cities. I’d already gotten some creation-esque Cards. I wonder how far that’ll go?

What caught my eye most, though, was the color I’d never seen before. (Delver - Blood Mask). What a delightful name, with a delightfully vague description. And yet, it felt… it felt like it was a dare. A challenge, straight to me. Just looking at the option made my heart race like someone had just told me “you can’t do this”, and I’d responded with “fuck you, watch me”

The biggest problem with some Tasks, especially the (X Explorer) series, was that they didn’t give out exact information before you locked them in. It was, in theory, possible for me to have scored (Wilds Explorer) without knowing exactly where I was going, but… that seemed unlikely. Similarly, this one had the same kind of taste to it. I could commit to it, and know more, or I could let it pass, play it safe, and…

Oh. I’d already tapped it with an idle hand and slotted it into one of my two locked slots. Okay then. Thanks, past me, you make great life choices.

So the rest of that week had been spent convincing myself that this was gonna be fun, and, after I’d started to believe that, designing my deck.

What I’d come down on after much personal deliberation was a blend of options. I mean, most of my stuff was options, but I tended to be kind of… well, I was a bit lazy, sometimes. I really loved using my supernatural powers beyond the understanding of man to just improve my day to day life. So, it was a triumph of personal discipline that I’d sacrificed so much to put together my game plan.

[Triage And Stabilize], obviously. Both [Journey And Destination] and [Potential] to ramp myself up to being able to basically ignore mana restrictions by the end of the week. And then a whole bunch of options for sneaking, maneuvering, or defending myself. [Aura Of Unconcern], [Once Unnoticed], [Forge In Flames], [Headache], [Blast], even throwing in [Bite Of The Water Wolf] as a backup way to maybe stab someone with a lake if I really needed to. Anything that could get me out of trouble, distract the trouble away from me, or murder the trouble if the trouble started looking at me funny.

So I felt like, when the reset hit at midday last Friday, I was pretty comfortable with my choices. Like that feeling that I’d packed my bags properly before a trip and all that was left was to get on the plane.

Then I’d spent the front half of *this* week having that feeling slip away bit by bit as I cast [Potential] and [Journey And Destination] every chance I got, and spent those assigned travel distances going to the local sporting goods store to consider buying a longbow and football armor. It turns out, there really isn’t anything quite like the feeling of preparing to intentionally put yourself in a stupid situation to motivate someone to go buy weapons. Someone should sell the NRA the idea to open up an adventurer’s guild and start handing out quests.

Arming myself was a bit of an issue, though, since a quick reconnaissance run to the location that my locked in Task pointed me to showed that it was a shopping mall. And unless an anime convention happened on short notice, I probably shouldn’t be walking around with a quiver of arrows strapped to my back. Also I had no idea how to actually shoot a bow, I just thought it would be cool; which, really, hasn’t everyone? I’m sad to say, my common sense prevailed.

Which brought us up to today.

It was the last day of my weekend. I wasn’t going to get a better chance or more free time than today, which was why my engine was idling in the desert of a parking lot in front of the local shopping mall while I tried to psych myself up.

“Okay, it’s fine. You can do this. It’ll be easy.” I lied to myself. “What’s the worst that could happen?” I paused for a moment, then spread my hands in an admission of guilt. “Okay, death. Death-like symptoms. Maiming. Other injury. Death again. All of that possible, I guess.”

Good job on the pep talk, self. You suck at this.

Despite my own self-directed sarcasm, I was feeling a layer of excitement that acted as a barrier to all the fear. This was something new, something *weird*. Sure, the title of “blood mask” was a bit… abjectly horrifying… but I still felt that thrum of a challenge. I hadn’t felt this in a long time; not since moving out here in the first place and starting my downward spiral into complacency.

It also felt like my curse agreed with me, because in preparing myself for today, not a single crisis had shown up. Which was either a sign I was moving in the right direction, or that this was a near suicidal plan. Either one!

So when I finally popped open my car door and chilled my skin even through the long coat I was wearing in the October air, I wasn’t surprised at how easy it was to smile as I strode through lines of cars toward the main door of the mall.

The place was packed, as you’d expect for a Saturday. Row after row of cars, dull metal shells resting under the cold sun while their masters flooded into the concrete and glass mecca they surrounded. I didn’t hate malls, but I didn’t have much use for them either; there just wasn’t anything here I needed that I couldn’t get off the internet, or at my local thrift store. Still, despite my mild distaste for the omnipresent muzak and weirdly objectifying clothing stores, I didn’t begrudge anyone who wanted to spend their weekend shopping.

Inside was a press of people, especially since this entrance I’d chosen had the stairs to the food court. I took the opportunity of the crowd and a quiet spot to lean underneath the white tile stairs to pull open my menu and check where I was going, camouflaging the action with checking my smart phone. Eying suspiciously a couple of goth kids on a bench across from me by the mall’s fountain water feature through the blue shimmer of the main page, I double checked the spot I was being pointed toward. Somewhere up ahead, looked like must be in the middle of a store.

Nodding, I disguised my last draw action before going in as a particularly aggressive swipe on my phone, picking up my copy of [Forge In Flames] with a smile. Closing everything down, pretending I didn’t see one of the kids on the bench watching me, I pushed off the wall and maneuvered nervously back into the crowd. I dunno why, but ever since getting my Cards, I’d felt almost irrationally anxious about anyone finding out. This nagging feeling in the back of my head that someone, or maybe everyone, was *watching*, just waiting to jump on my secrets.

I didn’t think I was a bad person, most of the time. I did want to find a way to leave the world better than I’d found it. But I also wanted to keep this to myself for a while. Selfish, I knew, but at this point, even though I had the capacity to do the job of an entry level spy, a shock trooper, an EMT, and a barista all at once, I didn’t feel like I had a lot to contribute aside from solving problems and…

Ah fuck, I was a stereotypical fantasy world adventurer, wasn’t I? God dammit, this was a setup and I'd walked right into it.

‘Well’, I thought as I started walking through the aisles of ugly Christmas sweaters that were out way too early, ‘It’s not like I’m against that.’

And I wasn’t, not really. No matter how much it felt like I was being shoved into this whole thing, it was still just… just *better* than life had been for a while. I’d started noticing lately that work was feeling grey and bland compared to when I was pursuing a Task or fiddling with my Cards. Not just work, either, but my favorite activity of lounging around the house rewatching stuff on Netflix too. And I didn’t mean it felt grey in the sense that I didn’t have any kind of attraction to it anymore, I mean, colors literally started getting muted and dimmed.

Anyway. The store turned out to not have the thing I was looking for. It took me several instances of finding empty spots in the aisles to open up my menu and checking to finally figure out that I’d overcommitted, and what I actually needed to do was go back out to the main concourse, and then down a side hallway to the bathrooms.

The place felt like the nineties had resurfaced to take its revenge. Small square tiles in aggressive shades of tan and blue lined the lower half of the walls on either side. The floor had an inlaid strip of green plexiglass that wound its way back and forth like it was trying to be a river. A couple vending machines looked weirdly out of place on the wall as I passed by, modern styles against an ancient structure.

At the end of the hall, I saw where I was going. Just between the drinking fountains against the wall at the intersection that led to the men’s and women’s rooms. It was that same color that wasn’t a color that my last location objective had been in, and it hovered there, a small orb of nothing currently clipping through the shoulder of the dad getting a drink out of the fountain while he waited for his kid.

This was weirdly easy. For a system that had labeled the mall as a zone called fucking *blood masks*, I was expecting there to be enemies of some kind. I’d been on guard ever since coming in here, but with the exception of a couple snooty teenagers, no one had even looked at me funny. When I’d come in here, it had been with the fearful knowledge that half the mall was going to start acting funny trying to stop me, like the last time I'd tried a red Task. But so far, except for idiot teens acting like idiot teens, everything was more or less Earth-normal.

Those of you keeping score at home may have noticed that this was stupid. I’d be realizing that myself in about four seconds, when I waited for the area to clear out of people, and then touched the floating ball of Indicator Shade Four.

A ripple propagated through reality around me. A bulge in the spectrum of light that pushed outward, leaving everything changed behind it, in a ring around the spot I’d just touched. It whisked down the corridor behind me, turning the tiles grey and red, leaving the ceiling lights shattered and sparking. It shoved outward to the sides, transforming the swinging doors to the bathrooms into angry looking barricades. And right in front of me, the polished silver drinking fountains formed patches of rust and sputtered to life; a thick, dark liquid dripping down them to pool in their basins. When the wave passed over people, they just… vanished.

I wish I could say I’d planned ahead for this, but I’ll be honest, it was kind of a new experience. Even for a long time gamer, you never really expect the real world to abandon you so thoroughly, magical card game or no.

In front of me, a shimmering scroll of text made itself visible, and after jerking my head around in every direction to make sure nothing was trying to kill me, I read it as fast as I could. “Welcome to the Blood Mask zone. Thanks.” I read dryly. Under that cheerful greeting, it had three bullet points that, on study, looked like my objectives for this place. Destroy three Empty Hands, okay, creepy, and a sign that there was something hostile enough here to destroy. But if I had to, I had both [Blasts] in hand, and could at least pretend I was a monster hunter. Next item, ‘do not touch the Blood.’ “Fucking sold.” I muttered. That one wasn’t even up for consideration; I’d not touch blood all day long, and you wouldn’t even have to reward me. And then, finally…

“Ah, shit.” I spoke reflexively. Rescue the lost girl.

I looked around. No people in sight, and even the sounds of the mall crowd had vanished. Did this mean that someone else had wandered in here by mistake? Did the zone just kidnap people normally, or was it a special occasion because I’d challenged it?

Either way, I wasn’t going to be the one who left anyone in here. Which meant that job, at least, was getting done. At least I knew I didn’t have to do all three; the last line on the bottom of the ghostly scroll informed me that I could leave at any time through the Main Door, which I suspected would *not* be the actual main door of the mall. Because that would make sense.

Creeping forward, I made the unfolding gesture to open my hand up, and held it open. No one around to see me fidgeting with ghosts this time. Right away, I fired off [Under Cover Of Fortune], [Eight Step], and [Aura Of Unconcern] in rapid succession. I might not have caught on to the fact that I was going into a dungeon right away, but I *was* still a gamer, and the concept of buffing up before a fight was old hat to me.

Five cards left, most of my pools running near full, and my defenses up. Still didn't do much to dull the thumping terror in my heart.

As I crept to the end of the side hallway, I tried to keep myself as close to the wall as possible, avoiding the small stream of yeah-it’s-probably-blood that the glass path in the middle of the hall had turned into. The vending machines here looked like they’d long since been smashed open and looted, the plexiglass pane of the front showing jagged teeth and the snacks inside long gone. I wondered briefly what this place really was. An alternate version of the mall? A dark future? A clever illusion?

Either way, someone else was stuck here, and I was getting metaphorically paid when I got them out. Whether I was going to try was never a question; the last month had shown that I had a pretty brutal heroic streak in me, which was as inconvenient as it was rewarding.

At the end of the hall, I peeked my head out and looked around. The shops were all dark, the only light was the sick, red glow that filtered in through the smashed skylights overhead. Those small open areas between shops that normally hosted squares of benches and potted plants were turned into sunken craters; the now-living foliage leaning out over sunken pools of liquid that I refused to believe was water, and small drops constantly dripped up from the lakes into their leaves. Everything looked broken and messy; there wasn’t a window intact that I could see, and garbage and filth littered the floors.

It was silent.

Absolutely silent. In a way I’d never heard before.

I lived in a suburb. I worked in a suburb. Cars and humans and the dull roar of airplanes passing overhead or trains at night were common. There was always some source of sound like the urban roar of waves. But even when I’d wandered out to climb a mountain, there’d still been the noise of life. Animals and birds, the crinkle of trees in the wind, that sorta thing.

And here there was nothing, and it was freaking me the fuck out.

Just dead silence and stillness and dull red light. It took me a good ten minutes to steady my breathing and stop hyperventilating, and another five after that to work up the courage to step out into the open concourse, keeping my eyes *wide* open for anything that might try to kill me. But nothing did, and I started moving on shaky legs.

I didn’t really know where I was going, but I did know that I needed to get out. At this point, just leaving before I got jumped by the local monster spawns was a win. So I decided to just take the mall in a long, slow, loop. Go down each hall, look for a noncolor distortions that would probably be the exit.

Still feeling like my skin was trying to crawl off my back, I pulled a small flashlight out of my back pocket and clicked it on, giving me a little bit of light to see into the dark stores around me. I made sure to give the pools of blood a wide gap, and spent several minutes checking through each window before crossing in front of it. I wasn’t taking any fucking chances with this place now, and I should have known better in the first place.

Hell, maybe the sporting goods store was still here. I could go get a gun.

By the time I made it to the wide open area that held the escalators up to the food court, it’d been almost half an hour. Maybe more. Broken glass crunched under my shoe as I stepped out to look around; the only noise in this place had been me walking so far, and every small scrape and crackle made my heart pound. I stopped and looked down at the mall directory and map, trying to get my bearings. There were a couple of small shatter points on the covering of the kiosk, but I could still make it out, and while it looked ancient and faded like everything else here, it was the same mall I’d just left. I assumed. I didn’t have the mall layout memorized.

Food courts upstairs, a kind of figure-eight loop of the main body of the building, and then three longer wings that each led to a big department store. Searching those was going to be…

I froze. In the dark around me, something had made a noise.

It was tiny, a small scrape, but it wasn’t my imagination. Whirling in place, flashlight in one hand, I ripped a copy of [Blast] out of my Hand and held the ball of power at the ready to my right. I wanted to say something, demand that whoever was there come out and face me or something, but I couldn’t even open my mouth. I just stood there, frozen in fear, until nothing emerged from the shattered remains of a candy shop across from me, and I allowed my muscles to relax. I needed to get out of here

Fuck, I still hadn’t found whoever was lost in here. How could anyone *be* lost in here for more than an hour without going insane from fear?

I glanced back to the map, and confirmed my route, burning it into my mind. I didn’t know why I felt like I was about to be ambushed, but something about this absolutely empty place just stuck in my head as…

God dammit, there was another noise. Like the softest step, a cat padding forward and freezing, but in the still air I could have heard a bird chirp from a mile away. My eyes snapped up again and I looked for the source, but of course there was nothing there. Just the ruined trappings of a decrepit mall. A rotting wooden bench, a pair of those reverse-gravity blood trees, a one armed mannequin…

No.

No, no. Fuck this. I refuse.

Okay, okay. Maybe it’s not a big deal. Clothing stores have mannequins. And this one looked just like everything else here; dirty and scuffed and covered in dust and broken. Calm down, my heart, it’s just part of the background scenery. On some perverse instinct, my eyes trailed upward, and I looked at the name of the store that it was standing in the window of; the sign had been clipped in half at some point, but part of it remained illuminated in the red glow from above. And the unmistakable logo of the candy store I used to go to as a kid looked down at me.

Candy stores don’t have mannequins.

As if on some invisible cue, the monster jerked into motion, moving far too quickly for how blocky its actual motions were. Porcelain skin caked in dirt and dried blood cracked and moaned as the thing - almost certainly one of the Empty Hands - sprinted toward me with jerky twitches.

I screamed. Loud. Fuck you if you’re judging me, *you* try having an animate mannequin bear down on you like some kind of faceless person-shaped wolf.

Don’t worry, I didn’t just scream. I also lashed out with [Blast] before it could close past the crumpled pile of rubble that used to be a hanging sign. The explosion caught it on its already damaged side, sending shards of floor and debris spraying back at me in a hail of shrapnel. I held up my arm to screen my eyes, backpedaling to push my back into the wall of some outlet store, but when I cleared the specks of dust out of my eyes and forced them open again, the only thing that was left of the nightmare creature was part of the upper torso, half its face, and the stump of its other arm.

And it was still moving, dragging itself forward inch by inch, without any concern for its injuries.

Frantically looking around, I found myself a chunk of faux-marble from a crumbing decorative pillar, and, careful not to get within touching range, smashed the monster’s head into the floor.

*Then* it stopped moving.

Holy fucking hell, I couldn’t stop myself from shaking like a leaf in the aftermath. The thing hadn’t even triggered [Aura Of Unconcern], would it have also slipped through [Under Cover Of Fortune]? I didn’t want to think about that. Fragments of glass tinkled down from the shattered skylight overhead, making a sound like sharp rain in the renewed silence of the old mall. Then it was dead quiet again.

The glass falling, probably shaken loose by the explosion I threw out, drew my attention upward to the skylights. Like every other window in this place, I didn’t see a single one of them intact. But it opened up a disturbing thought; there was a *moon*. Which meant there was an outside, which meant…

How far did this nightmare landscape stretch?

As I recomposed myself, I also spotted something else while looking up. A small patch of a color that didn’t exist hovering, in midair, just past where the crumbling ledge at the top of the escalators ended. Well, there was my exit.

I sighed a breath of relief. Just knowing that the way out was in the open like this was super comforting, but I didn’t move to start scaling the unmoving staircases. Sure, I could just bail out, but there was still another human trapped here. That was, fundamentally, unacceptable to me. Before anything else, I took my Draw, and added a probably-useless [Once Unnoticed] to hand.

“Okay.” I took a deep breath. “Hey!” I yelled into the silence, deliberately dropping [Aura Of Unconcern]. “Hey! Anyone here?!” Nothing answered me as my words echoed down the halls. I started moving deliberately, striding without hiding to the next main intersection, trying to get used to the feeling of [Eight Step] lightening my steps every so often. I kept an eye out on the stores, but didn’t see another mannequin in any of them; not even the places that sold clothes. I wish I could say their absence was creepier than their presence, but seriously, no, fuck mannequins.

When I got to the next intersection, I repeated the yell again. Again nothing moved. I knew this wasn’t the smartest thing to be doing, but I had both copies of [Wanderer’s Step] in hand, and a full bar of Grace. *I* could leave whenever I wanted. I hoped.

At the third intersection, halfway through my loop, I swept around with the flashlight to verify it was empty of dummies, and then shouted again. “Hey! Is *mmph*” I cut off a a filthy hand clapped over my mouth. A filthy, *human* hand, flesh and blood. Still, while my brain processed that, I was already trying to scream again, so, don’t get your hopes up for my dignity.

“Quiet. They hear.” A voice whispered in my ear. I nodded frantically, and she removed her hand. I turned a bit to see my assailant, or maybe rescue target, and got a hell of a shock.

Hair that looked like she’d hacked it back herself, kept short and patchy. Clothes that looked like they’d been scavenged from dusty racks and rotting shelves, covered with a heavy leather coat. She smelled like a wet dog that’d been out playing in the mud all day. How she’d snuck up on me in the absolute silence of this place, I didn’t know. But what really threw me off and turned my stomach wasn’t the smell or the creepy sense of quiet that she emminated, it was the caked blood ringed around her mouth.

If it weren’t for the signs of vampirism, she’d almost be cute, with that pseudo-goth look. But there were enough signs of exhaustion and hard living that she looked less like she was ready for a night at the club, and more like an abuse survivor. I quickly pushed aside the vampire comparison, when I realized that there might not *be* food in this place except for… My eyes darted over to one of the small craters in the ground, filled with upwardly dripping blood, and I shivered.

If she noticed, she didn’t react. In fact, she didn’t move at all. Just standing there, almost lazily staring at me. It was a bit horrifying, in fact; she looked almost like one of the mannequins herself.

Maybe that was the point. Camouflage.

“Listen.” I started to say. “We have to go. Come on, let’s get out of…”

She shook her head. A tiny movement that made no noise. “Too late.” She whispered in her clipped way of speaking. “No help you. Sorry.” The last word was an excess, almost compassionate. But it told me what she meant more than anything else.

I wasn’t the first one to fall in here. Neither was she. She was just the last.

And all of that was gut wrenchingly sad, but there wasn’t time for it. “No, you fucking idiot.” I told her firmly, but kindly. “I’m here to help *you*. Come on, we’re getting out.” I turned and pointed back the way I came. “The exit is this way. We… oh, fuck.”

Another mannequin. Standing there from the direction I’d come, casually leaning against one of the trees with its arms crossed, exactly like it had been posed to show off a leather jacket and a backward baseball cap. And not just that one; there was a second standing behind a fallen chunk of concrete with its hand on a hip, and a third in the middle of the other two, one hand pointing out at me as if to accuse me of not being welcome here.

All three of them were facing us.

“Too late. Goodbye.” The girl behind me whispered in a voice that did not carry. I glanced back, but she hadn’t left. She’d simply stopped moving; if I hadn’t known she was there, I never would have seen her. Her eyes showed regret, but no chance for help. Guess that’s how she dealt with these Empty Hand things. My way was a lot more direct.

Growling to psych myself up, I pulled the second [Blast] out of my hand and readied my throw. “Back off.” I warned the mannequins. “I’m warning you, I’m armed.” I *felt* the derision from the girl behind me, and almost rolled my eyes myself at how stupid it sounded. One of the mannequins clearly thought so too, as it took an almost mocking step forward, puppeted leg wobbling a bit as it stood. “Yeah, that’s what I thought. Get fucked.”

I blew it up. The explosion terrible and obvious in the otherwise dead world. It shredded the Empty Hand into pieces, and I felt more than saw that it was out of commission. The other two jerked, but fear or pain didn’t seem to be on their radars and they both started loping toward me, casually closing the distance.

If I hadn’t spent all week practicing how to use the Cards I had, I might have panicked and broken right there. But I had at least some idea of what I could do, and I wasn’t done yet. My Determination dropped to three as [Forge In Flames] morphed in my hand, warping into a wicked looking trident which I instantly understood to have razor-sharp tines, that I braced against the ground and under my arm as the first Empty Hand bore down. It tried to duck, but I got unreasonably lucky, and caught it just under the chin with the points of the weapon. I didn’t even have to do much work; its ceaseless assault pushed it farther and farther down the tines until the one in its face hit something important, and it slumped into unlife, collapsing down and ripping the trident out of my hands with its weight as its momentum carried it forward and it slid down into the pool of blood off to my right.

Oh. It wasn’t luck at all, and I groaned as [Under Cover Of Fortune] burned away.

The third one was moving more cautiously; circling around like a wolf. It even moved like a canine in some ways, occasionally switching to walking on three or all four limbs before standing back up. The way it moved was interspersed with tiny pauses that gave the illusion - or truth - that it wasn’t alive at all, and just being driven by an operator somewhere.

Well, no time like now to see if this worked. I flicked out [Once Unnoticed] at the dummy during one of its pauses. Deceit drained away, and I knew it landed, but I was standing right in front of it. So then, I stood absolutely still. I tried to mimic what the other girl had done; somehow not even showing my breathing. Dunno how well it worked, but the mannequin suddenly froze. I don’t know if ancient shopping mall monsters get confused, but if they did, I hoped this was what it looked like. It tilted its head back and forth, swiveling the unbound joint around to look at everything around it, as if trying to puzzle out how it had gotten here.

I didn’t even lower my hand, trying to stay as perfectly in place as possible. I wasn’t here, don’t look at me. I’m just terrain; not a human at all. Don’t eat me you fucker.

Shit, I think it heard me thinking too loud. It started walking over toward me, head still doing the owl thing and scanning every which way in weird, unnatural motions. *Now* I started to panic. That was all my options right there, the only thing left was [Wanderer’s Step], and there wasn’t anything here that the Card would define as an obstacle to go through. For all that my testing this week had taught me how to use stuff, it had also given me some clear limits on other things, and that meant I was fast running out of hope.

The mannequin stepped to within a couple feet of me, leaning forward to peer into my face with empty eyes. If you’ve ever had a staring contest and thought it was pretty hard to keep yourself from blinking, hey, try doing it when blinking might literally get you killed. I did my best to not react, to stay totally still no matter how much my heart screamed at me to *run, run, you fucking idiot, run*, but there was only so much I could do. I felt my arm start to tremble, and that was it.

As if that was its cue, the Empty Hand jerked its own arm up and lunged for my face, and I closed my eyes with a soft sob as I had absolutely inadequate time to prepare for my own death. But at the last second, there was a hollow *thunk*, and I opened my eyes to see the girl from before standing right in front of me, small pocket knife driven into the side of the Empty Hand’s head.

It paused for a second, as if considering what to do about this, before slumping down to a frozen crouch on the floor.

The girl turned to me. “Not dead. Run.” She said, and grabbed my hand to guide me.

I shook myself out of my fearful daze as we sprinted down the open pavillion of the mall, dodging around fallen patches of glass and unidentified lumps of refuse. Behind us, I heard something moving in the red darkness, and I didn’t bother to look back. I would have fallen behind this girl if not for [Eight Step] helping me keep pace. And that realization kicked off another one in my brain.

I pulled at her hand, and moved to take the lead, seeing her confused look as I put her behind me while still gripping her, tried to convey that I knew what I was doing.

I did not know what I was doing. But I was going to try.

One, two, three, four, duck, six, seven, *eight*. Okay. I had the count now, and I could keep it while sprinting. Every eight step. Every eight step *didn’t cost anything*.

One. Flying past a hollow fast food joint. Three. Take the corner. Six. Lead her into a broken door of a jewelry store. Seven. Grab a card and aim it at the wall in front of us.

[Wanderer’s Step] fired, and a bubble of distortion rippled, then popped, as I took my eight step in a row.

I held onto her so tight it must have hurt, but when the visual static cleared, we were standing between shelves of shoes next door. And I was still holding the Card in my hand, unused. I didn’t even try to explain when I heard a confused “What.” whispered behind me, I just kept running. One to seven, feel the eight. Another one to seven, stagger the last step a bit, and then, [Wanderer’s Step], throwing us through another wall and into one of the main thoroughfares between stores.

[Eight Step] demanded a steep,steep price for this, sucking away at my Determination with every cast. This wasn’t how it was meant to be used, and it took a toll. But I wasn’t going to die here, dragged down by pale while plastic hands. I was getting out, I was taking this survivor with me, and nothing was getting in my way. And holding that thought firmly in my mind, I saw my Determination level off and hold steady at five, even as I started [Wanderer’s Step]ing us through more and more walls, driving through piles of decrepit knicknacks, a maintenance closet, and just a burned mess of wreckage I couldn’t identify before popping out at the main concourse, just below the ascension to the food court.

“What doing.” The girl I’d dragged with me stared at me with wide eyes. “What… what are you doing?” She spoke as if she hadn’t used full sentences in a long time.

“Wizard bullshit.” I responded. “Come on. Let’s get out of here. Can you see that?” I pointed up at the exit zone, and she looked at it with a quick glance and nothing more, before shaking her head. “Okay, well, you’re gonna have to trust me.”

She let go of my hand and took a step back “No.” She whispered.

Fuck, not only was she the last survivor, she had trust issues. That was just sad. “Okay, look, there’s a spot up there that I can leave through. But only me, and anyone touching me. It’s a one way trip. You’ve already seen me wizard, you know something weird’s going on. Please, just come with me.” I left off the ‘and maybe jump off a balcony together’ part.

She hesitated, but didn’t run. She wanted to get out of here way worse than I did, and this was the chance to do it, but I had this feeling that she’d been here so long that hope got forgotten a long time ago.

I shrugged. “You can follow me if you want. I want to get you out of here, but you need to come too.” I said, and started walking to the escalators.

Just before I put my foot on the first step, she whispered out behind me, audible in the otherwise still air, “Wait.” I turned and saw she’d almost caught up to me without making a single sound. “Traps. Use stairs.” She pointed to the other side of the underside of the food court, near the doors where I’d *actually* entered the mall, and the stairs and elevator that served as a way up on the back side of the pavillion.

I smiled at her. “Lead on.” I said.

She just hissed at me. “Quiet.” She snapped, taking my hand and pulling me along, like she was afraid I’d vanish if she took her eyes off me. Hell, maybe I would. This place was creepy as shit.

My shoes made deafening clicks as we took the stairs, and it was here that I noticed that she was actually barefoot. How she got around here without shredding her feet, I’d never know. But we made it upstairs without incident.

Once here, I regretted it instantly. Tables held trays of rotting food, left untouched for ages with the total lack of insects around here. Cups tipped over spilled endless trickles of blood onto the floor, forming slick pools that were almost invisible. I went to pull my flashlight out, and realized I must have lost it in the fight. So I stepped carefully as we made our way around the outside.

“Where?” The girl - I should ask her name when we get out of here - asked me, and I pointed to the shattered ledge. She looked at me with a glare. “Jump?” She demanded, and I shrugged.

Opening my mouth, I took a second to remember to whisper properly. Mine didn’t come out in the silent version hers did, and I wondered how long it had taken her to learn to speak in a way that didn’t carry at all. “I just need to touch the spot. If you hold onto me, I can lean out and get it.” I said. She nodded, suspicious but much more willing to try that than jumping.

When we got there, I was instantly regretting this idea. The balcony area here had crumbled away at such a weird angle, that I was going to have to be almost horizontal to reach. Out over a fall of twenty or thirty feet. There was no Card in my arsenal that would let me survive that, much less in my Hand. Still, there was no other way. She pointed, and I corrected her, and together we found a stable patch that I could brace myself on while she held my arm and I leaned out over the abyss.

I was maybe a foot away when we heard the scraping of something moving. I looked back, twisting my shoulder in the iron grip of the mystery girl, to see that two chairs had been pushed back, one of the clattering to the ground in an unbearably loud crash, as two mannequins that I hadn’t seen on the way in stood up. Or maybe just stood there. Maybe they’d just snuck up, or maybe they’d done that same thing the girl had done by just being so unmoving that they vanished from notice.

I met the eyes of the girl holding me out over an assuredly lethal fall. “Sorry.” She said again.

“Nonononono!” I grabbed at her wrist as she let go of me, feeling her arm slip through my grip as she twisted away to make a break for it; all of her remaining trust used up. But I wasn’t quite willing to give up on her just yet, and I held on for dear life. Her dear life, but still. With one last pull, before she could wiggle away, I let my feet slip off the edge and made the last few inches to let my fingertips brush against the exit.

Then I slammed into the floor, because I was falling. But, after my brain caught up with how much it hurt to crash into hard polished stone, I realized that it was bright enough to hurt my eyes, and there was sound all around me. Comforting white light, and normal human noises.

There was a thud as the girl I was holding onto hit the ground across from me, falling on her ass when I let go, probably shocked by the abrupt transition.

I lay there for a second, panting for breath and letting out a giggle that built to a full, uncontrollable laugh as I fully realized that I’d done it. I’d survived that bullshit, made it out unscathed.

After about ten seconds of that, I realized that I was in a crowded shopping mall, and my standard human shame reaction kicked in. I hauled myself to my feet, closing down my Hand as I looked around at the small ring of people deliberately avoiding us. Didn’t even need [Aura Of Unconcern] for that one; turns out people just avoided people doing weird shit.

“Excuse me miss, is this person bothering you?” I almost jumped out of my skin at how loud the guy was talking. I turned to see a man in a mall security uniform, gesturing to the girl I’d just hauled out of hell. I looked back at her, and realized suddenly that the one thought that this asshole had, was that both of us had fallen down, and one of us looked homeless. So he chose to check on me.

“What a dick.” Whoops. Hadn’t meant to say that out loud. No, wait. Change of plans. “No, she’s not. Fuck off.” I followed up, stumbling over to offer the girl...no, the *kid*, a hand. I was shocked to see that, with actual lighting, she probably wasn’t even eighteen. And how fucking long had she been in there? Hauling her to her feet, I figured it must have been a long time, because she looked like the crowd and the noise was going to give her an anxiety attack. “Come on.” I said to her as softly as I could to still be heard over the dull background roar. “Let’s get you out of here. Maybe get you a shower.”

The car ride home passed in silence. I’d decided to take her back to my place when she couldn’t tell me where she lived, or if she had family or anything. I didn’t want to press the issue. It seemed like, after god-knows-how-long in that dead place, any kind of noise startled her into a muted, curled up ball. So I’d turned off my car’s stereo, and we hadn’t spoken all the way back. The drive back *also* reinforced my desire to get this girl a shower.

When I’d parked the car outside my apartment, and offered her a place to stay for the night until we could figure out what to do, she’d started crying, and then those small sobs had turned into a full on wail when I’d leaned over to hold her in what I’d hoped was a comforting gesture. We’d sat there in the front seat, tears running down her face and dripping onto my pants, for a good ten minutes, before she pushed me back and said, simply, “Thank you.”

It broke my heart that it still sounded like she was having to make an effort to use more than one word sentences.

When we finally got inside - she’d frozen at one point in reaction to a squirrel rustling in the tree outside my place - I guided her to the shower and told her I’d try to find some clothes she could wear. That wouldn’t be hard; I had a lot of extra stuff, and I never bothered to get rid of it. Now seemed like the perfect time.

Also I was going to throw everything she was wearing in my fireplace. Maybe with my clothes along with them. The grime of that other world felt like it wasn’t ever going to come off.

While she showered, I propped myself up by the bathroom door, sitting casually on my floor. I felt better having traded stained clothing for a bathrobe, but I’d feel even better after I got my own shower. In the meantime, though, now was the perfect chance for me to catch my breath, and check what I’d been rewarded with.

I wasn’t saving the best for last, this time. (Delver - Blood Mask) was the first thing I cracked open, and it congratulated me on meeting two of the three goals. That *instantly* put me on edge, because that meant either I hadn’t destroyed those mannequins properly, *or* I had gross hell-mall blood on me somewhere, and I needed to scour my skin down to nothing. Still, it offered me something amazing.

One hundred cardbucks for one competed goal, and {Low Grade Staple Booster} for the other. But for completing my first challenge-type Task, it gave me something even *better*. Another tab on my little menu labeled “shop”, and an actual *outlet* for the hundred and sixty seven cardbucks I’d built up over the last month.

I’d never been so excited to spend money.

After that, I went through my Tasks quickly. (Shake Hands) got checked off, and gave me a 10% discount on my draw timer. Neat, but it was the *end* of a cycle, so that had limited usefulness. Still, if rewards were consistent, it was good to know if that ever showed up again. (Pacifist) had reset at some point, and I hoped the Empty Hands didn’t count as ‘people’ for that one, but it was only a white task so I shrugged off the loss. (Savior) on the other hand, now that one I had *earned*. And so I relished the gains of two copies of [Trustfall] and another two of [Anywhere North And West].

Next was (Challenger II), which was almost certainly from one of my dances with mannequin death. That earned me two [Stand In Glory]s, which sounded awesome, but also used Grace, which I still hadn’t figured out how to refresh.

Finally, I’d ticked off (Manipulation) somehow. Maybe by inspiring the girl...I needed to get her name...to stab that one Empty Hand? Either way, it provided me with a single copy of [Shimmering Fate], which I instantly regretted, because the description for the card simply said that it ‘produced glitter’, and oh my GOD why would I want that?

After that, I didn’t wait to open up the pack I’d been given. This one didn’t even offer a reason to save it, like the last one had. And from it, I got one copy of [Cadence Of The Bureaucrat], which might come in handy when filing my taxes, one of a Card called [Monk’s Bounty], and finally, another copy of [Blast].

This was my first time getting bonus copies, I think. And it felt *good* to have it be for something so useful. I sighed to myself as I leaned back into the wall. This had, on balance, been a good day. I’d done a good thing. And now I could access the shop, and maybe have a little more guidance on my future power development. I was exhausted, though, physically and mentally. And as I sat there listening to the shower running, and the almost unnoticeable laugh from my bathroom, I realized that I wasn’t getting any of that hot water at all.

Then I dozed off, and had the best nap of my life.