Corbin had probably seen this particular monster before, but couldn’t place where. It gave him a twinge of familiarity between his shoulder blades, and the strange Pavlovian want to stab it really hard until treasure fell out.

The thing was as shaggy as you could get, like a mountain made up of nothing but wooly little dreadlocks, mostly in reddish brown but some in deeper ochre. He couldn't even be sure where its eyes were in its head. Assuming it even had eyes, of course.

He wouldn’t eat them if there were eyes. He wasn’t a complete psychopath.

But he was a raven.

His stomach gurgled. He dreamed of what wide-eyed juicy delight might be hiding underneath all of that cover.

For staring at it, after a while another prompt came:

You have inspected the monster:

Fur Mound

Level 2 abomination

121/121 HP

Who knows what’s under there? Tip: Increase your Inspect skill to learn more.

Prissy the pissy Brit kitty lady snuck quickly through the ruins north of town. Though the place was thick with autumn leaves on the ground, she didn’t make so much as a rustle when flitting over them. It was one of her powers, apparently. She had a card equipped, because the pop-up prompt in his face told him she’d engaged Silent Step. A Scoundrel power. She’d also produced a pair of long daggers (practically short swords on the smallish cat person), but she held them backwards.

“Don’t hold those like that,” he suggested.

“Wot? Why not?”

“‘Cause you are just as likely to cut your own wrists as you are to kill the enemy! You’ve… never done this before, have you?”

“Yer father’s lover ‘as never done it before!”

Corbin stared at her for a second.

“My father’s lover? My mother has never killed a monster, that’s true. Look, daggers backhanded might look good in movies but like that, you’ll have to get way closer in. And you’ll have more blocking power.”

She flipped the daggers frontways and growled some curses under her breath. “Feckin ‘ell, there was more than your mother in ‘is bedroom,” she grumbled.

“What kind of offensive cards do you have?” he asked.

“Nuffink.”

“None?”

“Well you ain’t got none eever, do ye? S’ what happens when ye get repeatedly killed: first all yer loot, then yer cards, then ye lose XP an’ levels.”

She’d been repeatedly killed, which made him feel for her a bit. Although if she died here, he could just snatch up the card and be done with it. Seemed a heartless thing to do, but at least she wouldn’t truly die forever. He stashed this factoid away and stuck with the original plan.

He dove down at the hair monster and tried to get a couple of talons full, but no good. It wasn’t that his attack was off or that his talons weren’t powerful enough to grasp them, it was the startling fact that the seemingly hairy abomination was actually one massive comb over wrapped tightly about itself. He tore just a few strands away from the middle-aged nightmare, and stared as he soared away and the deserted landscape beneath his torn patch.

The fur mound shuffled to attention when he swooped away, and started in the direction of Prissy.

“It’s coming toward you. Can you get to high ground?”

She changed direction right away, and the thing was slow to course correct, but soon it was on her tail, chasing her up a ridge, heaving and gasping as it did so. She’d also chosen a place where the woods got denser, where it had to squeeze through the trees, and that too slowed it down, until Corbin started seeing not two, not three, but at least four hands coming out of the fur and grabbing onto the trees in order to haul itself along.

“It’s catching up,” Corbin warned, his voice rising to a raven’s octave in the pulse-pounding excitement of it all.

“Dunna see how. Damn thing hacks worse ‘en me chain-smoking nanna!”

She turned and abruptly slashed at several of the hands, scoring HP damage that came and went in Corbin’s periphery. Before the hands could grab onto her though, she danced backwards through more trees, and forced it into an even tougher spot.

She scored another two hits on it, but had only gotten it down to about a hundred HP left when it surged forward and around a tree trunk, and swiped her feet out from under her. She landed hard, and one of her daggers went clattering off.

“Come on, get up!”

He swooped in low, thinking hard. Well, the card had said something… Yes!

Three icons appeared in his vision, and he pecked at the one with the evil looking blob with angry eyes.

You’ve activated Unsettling Aura.

Suddenly the sky around them seemed to darken, as though storm clouds had just whooshed in front of the new day’s sun, and the temperature dropped a good amount. A deep, basso sound came out of nowhere, and when he cawed, it sounded like a hundred ravens, a thousand. Below him Prissy let out an impressive shriek.

“Gone and bloody pissed myself, haven’t I?” she whined. Before her, the monster froze and shifted, a single eye visible through its torn combover. Prissy used this opportunity to leap to her feet, retrieve her dagger, and slash at it another three times.

“Keep doin’ that!” she told him.

He cawed again, swooped in from another angle, and cawed again. Now closer, he saw the red HP bar over its head was around halfway empty. He let loose with another crazy, dizzying crow, and the trembling thing leapt at him.

Like eight hands grabbed out for him, and one caught him, but he flapped hard, pecked at it, and noted with satisfaction:

Success! You’ve succeeded a Luck (Serendipity) check!

Feels good to get lucky, huh? Tip: Serendipity means you get a bonus from your success, and from your corresponding Luck success.

He was suddenly free of the thing’s grip, and flapped away from its reach, then cawed once more. The effect was already fading; he only sounded like a hundred ravens, and the darkness was lifting.

Luckily Prissy hadn’t been idle with her blades. She had whittled the thing down to about a quarter of its health, and it panicked and tried to flee. The cat girl dove after it, and scored another two strikes. It had only a teensy bit of life left, and Corbin was up to the task. He dive bombed the fur creature and pecked at the top of it several times, until the HP meter disappeared and gave him another prompt:

You have defeated the Fur Mound!

You gain 25 xp

You have gained 50 silver.

Error, you cannot carry items or money.

You have gained Large Filthy Pelt.

Error, you cannot carry items or money.

You have gained the card Spectral Blade.

Error, you cannot carry items or money.

Yeah that wouldn’t get old in a hurry. Each item appeared in front of him, just suddenly springing into being, before dropping to the ground. Another card with the swordsman Val Kilmer illustration sat next to a huge pelt and a small mound of coins.

“I’ll be taking that,” Prissy said, and swiped the items up into her inventory. “Ooh, would you look at that, a manifest card.”

She flexed her hand, and a dagger composed of ghostly purple light appeared there, crackling with some dark energy. Apparently she’d equipped it.

He settled onto a branch. “See, that’s how teamwork goes. I help you, you give me my card back. What’s the specs on the dagger?”

“Noice! If I make it a core card I’ll be a Shada Walker.”

“Shada?”

“Ya kna, the bloomin’ darkness that falls all behind ya in the sun, dolt.”

“I don’t know what that means, but I believe you. Shadow Walker. Huh. How about the damage and special effects?”

“Low mana, ‘igher damage than me regular knives, ignores me armor, and drains 1-3 ‘ealth for me to grab. Seems loike a right Robin Hood Ian Beale deal to me.”

Corbin stared at her with one beady raven eye. He knew they were words but he didn’t consistently understand them. He just let it slide, diving into the system errata.

“Draining is one of the best abilities,” he told her, knowing he knew but not knowing how. “It’ll keep you alive even as you take damage. What you need is a bonus for backstabbing.”

“Wot kinda girl you think oy am?”

“I meant sneak attacks, not being cruel out of earshot.”

“Oh, yeah, roight.”

“What’s the rarity on the card?”

“Wot?”

“Uncommon, rare, mythic, that kind of thing?”

“How the ‘ell should I know?”

“Right side of the card, across from where it says Manifest… look, if you take it out and put it on the ground I can help you.”

She narrowed her eyes at him for a moment, but seemed to think better of it, especially when he explained that he had no inventory of his own, and couldn’t carry money. The best he could do was a single coin in the beak.

The card appeared much like his own, without the rainbow holo foil effect. On top was an image of the ghostly blade clutched in a human-ish hand, title above that, Manifest Dagger just below it. Across from that was a yellow icon, and the bottom half had a box that explained about the card:

level 1

manifest a ghostly blade (minimal mana cost)

3-12 damage (ignores non-magical armor)

Additionally, each strike drains 1-3 HP

When thrown, activate the blade again. It appears in your hand.

If you equip this card to a Core Slot, you become a Scoundrel.

The icon for rarity was in yellow, a rare. His was metallic orange, for masterpiece.

“It’s rare… see that yellow icon there?”

She peered closely, then nodded. “So this Silent Step… white icon. Issat… good?”

“Common. There are good common cards, but not many. Not sure what Core Cards means, but I’d choose the rare one over the common. But I’d guess Silent Step also makes you into a Scoundrel.”

“Piss off, who ‘re ya callin’ a scoundrel then?”

“Uh, right, sorry.”

He’d been a gamer before he’d been a raven, he could feel it. If not a guy who made money off gaming, then a guy who played games in his free time. He really wished he knew more about the mysterious girl with the black hair rather than in-depth knowledge about collectible card games, but the card stuff was pertinent in the present.

Actually, in Mad Card Again! each of your Champion cards could have three cards attached to them in order to do battle with your opponent’s Champions. Then you could play spell cards and extra items and abilities and whatnot from your hand of seven cards.

“Yeah too late. I din’t want the last card stolen, so I put it in the bleedin’ Core slot fing. Now I’m a Scoundrel.”

“Huh.”

“Well I’ll be, now the spectral blade one says I’ll turn into a Shada Walker instead of Scoundrel.”

If he could’ve shrugged he would’ve. “Your call I guess. You could sell it… dunno how much it’s worth. Seems like it’ll be real helpful in clearing up your four hundred silver debt… or keeping you alive.”

She nodded, thoughtful.

“Even wif me nine lives species ability I’ve been killt dead more times ‘en I care to remember. Tell me what to do to make me strong.”

Corbin cocked his head.

“I wouldn’t want that to be stolen… but it sounds like once you put a card in your Core, you can’t get it back out.”

She nodded. “Shada Walker ‘tis then.”

***

The process of becoming a Shadow Walker appeared as a wispy purple magic starting at her feet and swirling up around her body, along with little violet will o’ wisps dancing hither and thither. The final touch was another of those cool deep bass sounds (mixed with some flutes and a bit of violins), with an aura of purply magic rotating around her feet. She didn’t get any free new clothes or items, or a free bath, which Corbin would’ve preferred, but she was probably a good deal more dangerous, which was good for his eventual goal of getting his card back.

“Wot happens if I do up your card into the last Core slot?”

“You can’t hold your end of the bargain and give me my card back like you promised. Don’t you dare.”

“Huh, the card says I’ll change into a Mystic Assassin.”

“Don’t–”

“Mystic Assassin sounds pretty classy, donnit?”

He made very sure she understood with his tone of voice: “I won’t help you if you do it.”

The faraway look in her eyes vanished, replaced by another hard expression, and she glared at him.

“In fact, I’ll make sure everything has the best opportunity to kill you.”

The staring contest between cat girl and raven probably didn’t go on as long as he thought, but the intensity of her gaze left him unsettled. He wondered what this girl had been through to make her like this. Probably the same thing that had ended him up like this.

“Foine.” She nodded sharply, as if that was the end of it.

“Good, then let’s get it on.”

He ended up being hungry enough that he didn’t even notice himself take a strip off the dead body they’d just created and then looted, and had swallowed it by the time he realized what he’d just done, and froze. He very quickly squashed the urge to vomit it up, as there’d already been too much vomiting this morning. Then, before they started up the hunt for the next set of monsters, he surreptitiously got in a few more bites of corpse.

Their next targets were monsters that appeared to be a mix between a scorpion and a wasp: about ten legs each, thankfully no tail that curved up and around, but two nasty looking pincers and the sort of yellow and black markings that clearly told you ‘better left alone.’ Oh, and they were the size of your typical golden retriever, and they came in packs of at least five Corbin could see.

You have inspected the monster:

Warpion

Level 1 insect

33/33 HP

Venomous AND angry? What a lovely combination.

Warpion also had a decidedly dangerous ring to it.

“Do you know how aggro works?” he asked.

“Eh… no.”

“It’s when you get one of your targets pissed off and bring it back at you, rather than all of them. Do it wrong, and you’re surrounded and killed. Do it right and you can finish off every one of these things without taking a single damage.”

He sensed her considering what he’d said. Finally, she said, “All… roight.”

“I’m going to work aggro, and draw these things to you. Stay out of sight, and see if you can’t get them before they even notice you.”

Whoops, the first one had already noticed him and was click-clacking its way over toward him. He hopped away from it, then hopped a little faster, and when that was clearly about to fail, took flight to land a little ways away on a low branch. The warpion paused and considered him.

“Your mother was a bumblebee,” he tried.

It cocked its head, then reared up so its butt was visible and pointed at him. Then it fired a stinger right into him.

You have taken 10 damage!

Hahaha! You just sat there and watched it shoot you!

Warpion has inflicted warpion venom on you.

He fluttered down out of the tree cursing and panicking.

“Wot the devil was that?” she hissed.

“The stingers… shoot…” he wheezed.

Suddenly his HP went from 3 to 13. Prissy had just taken the damage on his behalf with the Sympathetic ability he’d seen on his card. She also floated out from behind the tree on soft, silent tip toes, and plunged two daggers down into the warpion. The prompt announced that the offending creature had been brutally killed.

“Another… behind…” he managed.

She whirled and chucked the purple magic dagger into the next one, and danced aside while another stinger flew well wide of her and way too close to Corbin’s head. It thunked into the tree next to him… and made that wobbling sound.

You have taken three points of warpion venom damage.

“Back…” he told her. “Lead it away. I’ll grab the second one.”

“Not sure I trust that assessment there, lad.” Still, she summoned the spectral blade back into her hand, pitched it again, and ended the second warpion’s existence.

He flew forward and cawed at the remaining warpions, and this time dodged aside when several more stingers came at him. He also bolted up into the sky when they got near enough to clamp onto him with their stripey police warning sign claws. Meanwhile, they headed further into the Prissy trap.

She was behind the last one when he fluttered back down to earth, and easily dispatched it with another one of her blades-down double strike.

You have taken three points of warpion venom damage.

“Oh fer pete’s sake,” she muttered, and slashed at the second with the spectral blade.

Spectral Blade has healed you for two hit points.

A few strikes later, along with him dive bombing the last warpion, and the group was killed. He wasn't entirely sure he would get XP and a share of the loot if he didn’t deal any damage. He had, of course, taken the entirety of the damage in the encounter, though he wasn’t a tank. It was time to get a feel for the leveling up system, because he desperately needed some hit points.

He pecked at the level up button, and saw that he’d earned two SPECIAL points by reaching level 1. A bunch of up arrows appeared next to all seven of the attributes, and he tried to put both in Endurance, but the prompt informed him he could only put one point in Endurance per level, and that, get this, his max Endurance was 8. He backed the point out of Endurance and tried for Strength. Nope, same deal: one point per level and maximum rating of 8.

“Okay, but we definitely want one point there.”

He put one in Endurance and one in Strength. He took a couple of deep breaths and kept from shouting. It wouldn’t do any good, since only one person in this whole place could understand him, and he needed her to release him from servitude.

Luckily, his hit points went from 15 to 20. Max hit points anyway. He was still at 12.

Also luckily, the prompt informed him that, after 3 more points of damage, the warpion venom had run its course.

They’d earned 15 XP from each of the five warpions, and that was excellent news. Less excellent: they only doled out 5 silver each, so another 25.

“But I got me a carapace.” She wildly mispronounced the word. “And three stingers. Stuff I c’n sell, bet your arse.”

“Glad to hear it.” He didn’t mind getting no cut of the spoils, but did mind that she was holding him hostage. But they were an eighth of the way to finishing his indentured servitude, and he was level 1 already.

“I’d wager that the closer we head to the portal, the higher level enemies we’re going to get.”

She nodded.

“What level are you, anyhow?”

“Hm? Oh, level 3.”

“And you… lost levels before?”

He could hear the bitterness heavy in her voice. “Group a right twats runnin’ aroun’ here jes’ killin’ whatever ‘n whoever they want, anywhere anytime.”

“One of them got a guitar? Little guy?”

She nodded. “Twat reputation precedes him, eh?”

Corbin kept his encounter with the guitar guy to himself. He owed Prissy precisely nothing. Guitar guy had had at least three other friends, and one of them had ventured through the portal, so he knew that it was possible to go through. What lay beyond was another story.

They struck northwest again, with Corbin running recon from above and her almost continuously running her Silent Step.

The math told him she’d lost a good number of levels getting killed and re-killed. The danger level was another good factoid to know.

“You know what happened here? How we got… attribute levels and XP and that stuff? The whole–” He flapped his wings wildly at the world around them.

“No,” she whispered. “I just woke up a cat.”

“Wait, what?”

“Sorry, felinian. I wenna sleep a kindy teacher, woke up a felinian with a ‘orrific accent. Those five jackholes chased me away from the edge… you been to the edge?”

He probably had. In fact…

“You c’n see the real world out there. Tellin’ me I didn’a wanna go out there, it was much better in here. Pffff.”

“Chased you to keep you in?” He didn’t wait for her answer. “Hang on.”

He veered around and dove down to get up some speed.

“What? What is it?”

“Be right back,” he lied. Hopefully lied.

Going this fast, it was only about five minutes before he reached the pinkish, purplish film of the edge of the affected area. Behind it, blurry and indistinct, was the real world. He came in even lower to gather up speed, but pulled up short when he saw the crone standing there, staring at him.

“What in the nine circles of hell?”

The old woman was hunched over and making some effort to stand somewhere near straight on a y-shaped walking stick. She was gnarled all over: her hair was Einstein crossed with hurricane, wrinkles you could store a three day rain in, and clothes that looked like they belonged in an archeological dig site.

“Turn back, yon raven,” she called.

“Whadda you know, lady?” he asked. “I’m out of here.” He was even more surprised when she responded.

“I ken this much, corvid,” she admonished. “That way lies ruin. You remain a bird, and you lose yourself little by little. Perhaps a day, perhaps a week, until the man inside is no more. Ware that way, raven! Ware it well!”

He flapped at her angrily. This was not at all what he wanted to hear. He also didn’t want to believe her. His freedom was just a few feet away. No more needy cat girl, no weird bard who had a vendetta against him for no reason he could remember.

Although now that he thought about it, Corbin could kind of hear that tinny little voice scream ‘Noooooo!’ a shriek at the top of his lungs… and then… Hyacinth? Something nearly swam up out of his memories, then dove back in.

This was too much, while at the same time not remotely enough.

“How can you be sure?”

“Step outside, little bird,” the croned dared him, “and find out for yourself.”

He swooped up high, and noted a brass eagle not far off, circling in a wide arc. Below it, six people were hunched and clutching their weapons like they’d have to use them at any second. One of them had the distinct look about him, like a robo-man. He would’ve been more curious except the cat girl had his card, and that brass eagle looked like it could take him out.

Five horrible minutes later Prissy got back in contact with him.

“Corbin! CORRRRBINNNNN! BLOODY FECKIN’ BIRRRRRD!” It was a horrible reminder of a pair of plain old bad movies he’d watched with… his little sister? An ex-girlfriend? A cousin? Why on earth would he remember the chipmunks movie and not the people he’d gone to see it with?

“You don’t have to shout,” he told her.

“Ya weren’t there. Where’d ya get off ta?”

He did not need a codependent quote master unquote.

“I had to check on something. Anyway I’m back and I’ll find something. Did you find something? Are you hurt?”

“Don’t sound so eager to have me die,” she groused. “Half me inventory goes first, then the other half. By that time I’ll have your dumb card sold to me boss, sure as shite.”

“Just stay put and let me look around.”

It took him another ten minutes of heading up, heading out, and checking back in. She was paranoid now that he’d left her alone in the woods for such a long time, and kept insisting he didn't go far. After a bit of widening out a spiral pattern, the prompt appeared:

Success! The Survey skill activated.

You’ve found something.

BUT WHAT COULD IT BE!?!?!?!

He veered toward the thing, which lit up with bright orangey energy, and found a series of ruins so ruined he could barely tell they weren’t just random rocks. And in the center of them, a large, mostly flat stone with a small hole leading to what was probably a dungeon.

“Nice,” he said.

Dungeons meant high risk (and possibly her sicking up his card) but also high reward, like the other 350 silver.