Tay was the first to rise from the dining table.

“What? You can’t do that.”

Mond unlatched the carved box in his hands and plucked out a stack of cards. They all glowed with that same signature snowy white that had encompassed the winged creature.

Mond set the box on the table and then began to leaf through all the cards while chuckling to himself. He even added the card from his belt—Skywing Lord—to the deck.

“Sure, I can,” Mond said. “Tomorrow morning, bright and early, I’ll have Quincy go around Peace and Quiet drumming up noise about how the one-time-champion now challenges the mighty House Polamund for hierarchy in Duskborough.”

Tay set his own box down and frowned. “I don’t understand.”

It was Cari who rose from the table next.

“But I do. Mond, they think you’re out of the city. How do you think Ramseth is going to react when he learns you’ve been here the whole time, right under his nose?”

Mond stopped shuffling his cards for a second, but then shrugged, “I’d imagine he’d feel pretty darn foolish. But that shows how much the Polamunds actually care about bottomside these days. They only cast their gaze down here when a rare card surfaces.”

“Yeah,” Cari said. “And if they can find these rare cards, I’m sure they could find you too, especially if you go and try beating any Polamunds that do happen to come down here.”

Tay could practically feel the rabid energy sparking in the air between Cari and Mond as she stared him down. He had no idea whether or not the sisters and Mond were related. But the way Mond looked at them, and the way they regarded him, spoke of a tie deeper than blood. And Mond was going to risk that on his behalf?

“Can someone catch me up on what’s happening?” Tay asked.

Finally, Sally rose from the table, and came over to give Mond a hug. “Mond used to be the best Runicka player in the whole world.”

Mond set down his cards and cupped his giant hand over her head. “Not the greatest player in the whole world, but I was up there with the best of them, kid. I told you that I had a history with House Polamund—well, they were actually my sponsor in tournaments topside.”

“So, you know who that man was with the spiky hair and the emerald robes?” Tay asked.

“Not exactly. I haven’t been topside in over twenty years, kid. And it’s been even longer since I’ve spoken with a Polamund. I left my Runicka life behind years ago, and bottomside has done me well since.”

Sally hugged him even harder. It was plain that Mond considered the sisters as part of the reason his life had done so well. Which made it all the more baffling that Mond would be willing to throw it all away for him.

“You can’t go out there and fight my battles,” Tay said.

“Sure, I can,” Mond said. “We’ll play for the cards that you stole. They’ll take the bait when it’s coming from me. Trust me.”

“I mean, you shouldn’t. I—I won’t let you.”

Mond’s smile slipped away, and for a moment, Tay could see the hint of someone who’d lost their way in Duskborough twenty years earlier. Instead of smiling again, or passing off Tay’s comment with some of his regular joviality, Mond shook his head and then pulled single card out from his deck. He handed it to Tay.

It was the Skywing Lord card that Mond had used to save his life earlier. The glow from the card warped around Tay’s fingers, curling, like living mist.

“Summon it,” Mond said.

“Come again?”

“If you’re going to duel a Polamund, you’re going to need to know how to summon the revenant out of that card. He’s not going to want to duel you across a table, like Sally and Cari. He’s going to want to use that scythe-wielding monster to run you through. So, if you want even a chance at being able to face him, summon the revenant from that card.”

“Mond,” Cari said, but Mond waved her back and looked sternly at Tay.

Tay held the card between his forefinger and thumb, and looked down at the artwork on the card. It was the only part of the card that didn’t fuzz out whenever he blinked. It was quite clearly a snowy-white eagle, with a set of foretalons and reartalons, swooping out of a sky like the king of the clouds that it was. The rest of the card was a mix of jargon he didn’t understand, even when he could read it perfectly.

Which he couldn’t, if he looked away for more than a second. The writing on the cards seemed alive, somehow. The script, when he focused on it, became perfectly readable. But every time he blinked, it was as if the words were trying to escape into each other. They were quite literally trying to become a different script altogether.

Regardless, Tay took a quick breath. The card was warm. Having his fingers against it was like feeling a pulse. That was a good sign. Maybe summoning one of these was easier than he thought?

Tay threw the card toward the table. It soared for a long moment, before catching a draft, doing a loop, and then plummeting straight down into his undrunk glass of water.

“Great,” Cari said. She plucked the card out of the water and handed it back to Mond.

Tay curled his hand into a fist, and then patted it out against his thigh. “No, it doesn’t matter if I can summon one of these or not. I never asked anyone to help me. Tomorrow, I’ll just go and return these cards back to House Polamund and we’ll all move on with our lives.”

Mond turned, so that Sally was on his far side, and met Tay’s eyes from underneath those heavy brows. “That’ll be the last mistake you ever make. These people, Tay, aren’t like us. I don’t know how people are wherever you’re from, but topsiders in Stormwall are the worst. And House Polamund is about as rotten as they come.”

Tay could have named a few people off the top of his head, who would’ve been willing to resort to violence, or worse, if they didn’t get their way. Pyrewood might’ve been a lot quieter than Peace and Quiet, but that didn’t mean it didn’t get its fair share of bad apples. This wouldn’t be the first time Tay crossed someone threatening to kill him, and it wouldn’t be the last either.

It was, however, the first time someone else was willing to stand in his place.

And so, Tay found himself short on words. Taking his silence as a victory, Mond sent the girls to bed and set Tay on a cot in the kitchen instead of teaching him how to play Runicka any further.

“Sorry about the cramped space,” Mond said, nudging the ramshackle bed he’d pulled out of a closet against the wall and next to some jammed cupboards. “Sometimes Quincy spends the night on this thing when he’s over too late. But I never hear him complaining about it, so you should sleep just fine.”

Tay tucked his small chest underneath the coat, hesitated a moment, and then sat up on the bed. “Why are you doing all of this?” he asked. “Really? I have to know.”

Mond ran his hands over the top of his bald head—a habit that hadn’t gone extinct, despite his hair having done so. Then he sighed and said, “Because when I saw what me winning for the Polamunds did to others, I swore to myself that I’d never let anyone lose against them again. I haven’t always lived up to that promise in the years since, but I’m not going to let you go out there and die, Tay. I’m not a monster. Everything will be fine. Really.”

And with that, Mond left Tay alone in the kitchen to his own thoughts. A shame, really, because every one of these thoughts seemed determined to keep him from actually falling asleep.

What if Mond got himself hurt, or worse, tomorrow trying to defend him? Running wasn’t an option either, because then the Polamunds would turn Duskborough inside-out looking for him, and he couldn’t let that happen. Not after this family had been so kind to him.

And finally, there was the matter of the amulet. Remembering how Cari’s so-called Talisman had looked, Tay reached into his tunic and produced a similar-looking golden amulet attached to a braided string. It was thin, like Cari’s, with intricate symbols carved into its design.

But its most distinguishing features were what had stopped him up the most earlier—the three gemstones that all but glowed while embedded into its face. One shone a cool green, while another pulsed with violet arcane mysteries. The final gemstone was as red as his own hair, and flickered every now and then like a crackling campfire.

It was the only thing of value Tay actually owned in the world. And the only thing he had left of his mother.

A shuffling sound quickly alerted Tay to the fact that he wasn’t the only person left awake in this house, and he patted his amulet back under his tunic. As his eyes adjusted in the darkness, he saw a shape in the dark of the kitchen, slowly creeping toward the bed.

Tay could feel the hairs the back of his neck rise, and he held his breath as he saw it nearing the cot. Was this the Polamunds making their move earlier than intended? Had they found him so quickly? Well, he wouldn’t so silently go down without a fight.

As soon as the shape was near enough to the bed, Tay launched himself out of the sheets and onto his would-be attacker.

“Ow! Ow!” his attacker said. “Get off me!”

Tay relented, because he knew that voice. But before he could do anything, his attacker hissed, “Get off me!”

Even though Tay had tackled her, Cari had no trouble in shifting her momentum to not only throw him off of her, but to then follow it up by pinning him to the floor underneath her weight. Chest underneath her knee, slowing his breath was all Tay could do.

Even in the darkness, he could see her amber eyes squinting at him, as her dark locks fell loosely around her head. It was surprising how little of her he needed to see to think she was quite beautiful. And doubly surprising to have her get the drop on him twice now. He normally wasn’t this clumsy.

“What are you doing?” he coughed out.

But Cari put a hand to his mouth and then took her knee off him to put a finger in front of her lips. “Quiet. Got it?”

Tay nodded, and Cari released his mouth. Tay scooted back, until his back was against the side of the cot, while Cari sat across from him on the floor of the kitchen. In a whisper, Tay asked, “What are you doing?”

It was really hard to tell in the dark, but Tay could’ve sworn that Cari’s cheeks reddened a bit. But that moment was quickly gone, as she snapped forward with her finger outstretched.

“What am I doing? I should be asking you that. You come into my home, and—and—you just have to have Mond fighting your own battles for you, don’t you? Don’t you know what he’s gone through to make sure he’s safe? That—that we’re all safe?”

Tay felt his heart drop a little in his chest, and he slumped. “I don’t think it matters what I say. He seems determined to face the Polamunds.”

“Of course, he’s determined. He’s been hiding from them for the past twenty years, and Mond doesn’t hide from anyone. We had such a good thing going for us, and now you’ve gone and ruined it.”

“I—” Tay fumbled for words here. Why did talking have to be so hard sometimes? “I—I’m sorry.”

“You should be sorry! Mond hasn’t dueled in years, and I thought he’d left that life behind. You don’t understand—he wasn’t just a champion for House Polamund. He was the champion. The number one Runicka player in all of Stormwall. Topside, there’s plenty of coin to be made making bets on who’ll win and lose. In his final tournament, the Ramseth Polamund—head of their house—had asked him to throw the game.”

“And he won instead?”

Cari shook her head. “He never played. Mond fled into bottomside before that happened, and he’s been here ever since. Then he found us, and we’ve been with him since too.”

Well, that answered his question about their relationship. But that brought up another question. “What about you and Sally? Did you both flee to bottomside too?”

Cari inhaled, and her hair seemed to puff out like an explosion for a moment, before she shook her head. “No, we were born down here. And I’d prefer not to talk about it.”

“But do you have a family?”

“Mond is our family. And I’d prefer not to talk about it.” Cari’s eyes flashed and Tay decided he’d best drop the subject. Then Cari shifted, sighed a bit, and asked, “Do you have a family?”

Tay gripped his amulet through his tunic as he said, “I never knew my parents.”

Cari regarded him in the darkness and nodded.

“My earliest memories are of the orphanage where they dropped me off at before I could even talk. No one ever told me who they were. All I ever I learned was that my mother had left me. No one had asked her for her name, so they couldn’t give that to me. I’d want to know why she left me, but I’d give anything to just even know her name at this point.”

Cari leaned forward in the darkness and said, “Then you know how I feel—how I can’t just let you convince Mond to throw all that we have away. You have to go to this House Polamund—you have to do it so Mond doesn’t do something he’ll regret. He’s not going to—not going to… to…”

Cari deflated, and then shuddered. “I don’t know what I’m doing,” she admitted. “I’m asking you to go and die, aren’t I? I’m sorry, I really am. I’ve been so mean to you since you got here.”

“Well, I wouldn’t say that much.”

“I’ve thrown you across the ground twice in a day.”

“I definitely wouldn’t say that.”

Cari smiled, and chuckled a bit. Then she brushed her inky hair out of her face and tilted her head to the side. “So, what in the world possessed an orphan who didn’t know the first thing about Runicka to think it would be a good idea to go and steal a Runicka deck from some of the most dangerous people in the city?”

Tay tapped his fingers together, and said, “Well, I had imagined a large pile of gold.”

They shared a laugh, before Cari gestured to the small chest under his cot. “Let’s see them then. What are these cards that are worth turning the whole of Duskborough upside-down?”

Normally, Tay would’ve recoiled at someone asking to see his loot, but he had no problem sliding the small chest out and placing it between him and Cari. With a flick of his finger, he undid the latch in the front and revealed the stack of glowing white and black cards within. Their auras mixed and melded in the air escaping the chest, like two whirlpools caught in each other’s currents.

Without saying anything, Cari reached in with a hand and plucked the topmost card from the stack. It glowed with an almost-violet shadow against her face.

“Wow,” she said. “These are good cards. I can see why they’d be worth so much to the Polamunds. They must’ve paid a fortune for this.”

And she reached in and grabbed another, this time a white card. She whistled softly as she studied it, before then lowering the cards to regard him.

“What’s so good about them?” he asked.

“See for yourself.” And she held out the black card to him.

(10) Astral Bloodsworn Latent

Dormant: this revenant gains +4 Power.

Can only be fused with Rune Wyrms.

Barrier < 2

It was hard to make out its artwork in the dark, but the depiction was of a man looking to the stars. He had his hand outstretched and raised up to night sky. He’d cut himself, right through his palm, and his blood dripped down the side of the cliff he stood upon.

“What makes this card good though?” Tay asked.

“Generally speaking? Well, it’s a Chaos 1 card that costs only 10 Life, so it has that going for it. Plus, it’s a Latent-type, meaning you can play it without having to fuse it on to something, unlike some of my pixies. Then, after you take all that into consideration, it’s a revenant you can play on turn one, that has 2 Power and Barrier.”

“Barrier?”

Cari pointed to the card. “Yeah, Barrier. See, it says right here?”

It did, but that didn’t help him understand what any of that meant. “What’s Barrier mean though? Your cards had some different words there. What do those mean?”

Cari pulled the card back and had a bewildered look about her face, as if she couldn’t believe what she was hearing. “Wow, you really don’t know anything about Runicka. Here.”

She handed him the two cards, and then reached into the small chest, grabbed the rest, and handed it all to him.

“What am I supposed to do with these?” Tay asked.

“Shuffle them.” Cari reached behind her and pulled out her own deck of white and black cards. “It’s going to be a long night if I’m going to teach you how to play. Best not to waste any more time.”