It had taken them half an hour to get to the grove from the candy shop.

Skywing Lord returned them on its back in under a minute. And to Tay, this wasn’t nearly quick enough.

Cari seemed to agree, patting the Skywing Lord on its feathered neck and urging it to hurry as it tried balancing them in the wind between the rooftops and Peace and Quiet’s upper ceiling. But they broke over the final line of buildings and came down onto the abandoned street that the sister’s had called home for years.

Cari had only one word to describe what they then saw, “No.”

There was nothing left of the candy shop. Certainly, there was rubble and ruin, but nothing resembling what the shop had been only an hour or two ago.

The window was completely shattered, with glass strew about in the street. Its door rested off of its hinges, half shattered and half dented. What was worse was what they found inside.

As if someone had a vendetta against candy, every single barrel, crate, and shelf in the shop had been overturned, with candy spilled all over the floor. Stepping on the wooden planks beneath became an impossibility as they climbed over piles of sweet-smelling debris. None of them said anything as they just quietly surveyed the destroyed shop that had been their lives when they’d woken up that morning.

How quickly it’d all changed—but what?

“Where’s Mond?” Sally asked.

Cari, ahead of them and moving destroyed shelving on her way to the rear of the shop, glanced back, but ultimately said nothing. Sally looked back at him, and asked again, her eyes so wide that they might just pop out of her head.

Then, Sally added, “Skywing Lord couldn’t just summon itself. It’s Mond’s revenant.”

“Can you ask it what happened?” Tay asked, quietly, so Cari would not overhear.

Sally shook her head and responded, “Not all revenants can speak. It’s worried—I know that. But Tay, it couldn’t be Mond’s. If Mond was hear, Skywing Lord would’ve reverted back into a card long before it got to us in the grove. It couldn’t be Mond’s.”

And while Sally shook her head in disbelief, and traipsed after her sister through the rubble, Tay knew there was another option. But he wasn’t going to think about that. He couldn’t bring himself to think about that.

His life had been perfect. For a week, he’d had a family, a job, steady coin to work by, and a motive that kept him moving throughout his days. He’d had everything that he’d always dreamed about when he’d been rotting in that decrepit orphanage.

And in the blink of an afternoon, all of it was gone? How could that even be possible?

In the back, they found chairs smashed against the walls and the table broken completely in half. The lollipop mixture Mond had been working with had hardened in a puddle against the floor. He hadn’t even finished pouring it into the molds. That meant all this had to have happened not long after they had left.

Cari shook her head, and said, “This isn’t happening. Not again.”

“It’s not happening again,” Sally said to her sister, grabbing at her hand.

Cari squeezed Sally’s hand, and the two of them shared a look. Cari then looked up at him defiantly and said, “We have to find Mond.”

Tay nodded. There was only one place Mond could be. Skywing Lord remained outside the shop, peaking in from the smashed window. Its pure white eyes kept a firm stare on the three of them, even as they ascended up into their home.

Or, more accurately, what was left of it.

There were scuff marks along the walls, but even more than that, there were thick gashes too. Three claw marks appeared along the floor, the table, and the doors upstairs, all glowing with faint black mist. There was no mistaking it—these came from the attacks of a revenant.

But these weren’t from a duel. Duels were structured. They were fair. These were wild blows that could have only come from pure combat.

The dining room table was cleaved into three different pieces, all glowing with the same black mist. Same with Cari and Sally’s beds. And even Mond’s room was nothing more than a a wasteland. He wasn’t in there though.

But they did find him.

Curled up against the far wall, in Tay’s room, with three black gashes glowing against his bloodied chest, Mond lay.

His eyes were closed, but his mouth was open and contorted, as if his last few moments had been ones filled with nothing but pain. And to further that, his giant hands were tightly gripped around something at his side.

His deck box.

As Cari and Sally held each other and came to stand over the limp body of Mond, Tay felt all feeling in his body flee as he bent over and picked up the deck box.

It was empty.

Of all the things that could’ve made Tay’s blood boil, seeing Mond’s empty deck box was what did it. It wasn’t the sight of the man, who had given Tay another chance in life, dead on the ground in front of him. It wasn’t the fact that his whole home had been overturned.

No, it was the fact that whomever had done this had stolen Mond’s Runicka cards, as if attacking him in their home hadn’t been injury enough. Tay chucked the deck box against his bed and slumped to the ground beside Cari and Sally, putting his hands on Mond’s chest.

“No,” he said. “This can’t be how it ends. I’m just figuring it out now—who I really am. You can’t be gone.”

Sally was balling her eyes out, but Cari had assumed a straight face, just staring forward with blank eyes, as if she could no longer see what had happened to Mond. Her lips were pushed together, and she was lost deep in her thoughts, but she said nothing and didn’t shed another tear with her sister.

Tay had warned them. He’d warned them all—Mond especially. This was what happened whenever people helped him. They suffered. They tried to give him everything to protect him from the cruelty of the world, and the world always came back to remind them that it wasn’t so easily dissuaded.

His life was meant to be suffering, and nobody—not even Mond—could change that. If anybody could, Tay would’ve figured it out ages ago.

But accepting that the world wanted to kick his teeth in at every chance wasn’t going to bring Mond back. No, nothing was going to bring him back.

Mond rested there, cold, with his head slumped backward, and arms limp at his side. He’d taken his arm out of the sling finally, and Tay didn’t miss how it seemed a whole lot darker than his other arm. In fact, it looked as if it had never healed from his wounds in dueling against Rantho.

Of course, Mond must’ve known that, and kept it a secret to prevent Tay from feeling guilty. Mond would’ve held the whole world on the shoulders if it had meant protecting the three of them from the dangers of Runicka.

“This is my fault,” Tay said aloud.

Sally kept weeping, but Cari only regarded him with a blank expression, lost in thought still. It was as if she hadn’t yet thought about blaming anybody yet. Tay would do her the favor.

“I did this,” Tay said. “Mond helped me against people that only wanted to see him dead. And now they’ve won, and I’m nothing but a plague on those who want to help me.”

Tay rose suddenly, and Sally stumbled to her feet to fall onto his legs.

“He can’t be gone, Tay,” Sally said. Tears were streaming down into her open mouth.

“He is, Sally,” Cari said, abruptly. And Cari looked up at him.

Those amber eyes unmade him. They were full of concern when they met his own gaze, which then morphed into anger as her brow creased. Cari looked like she wanted to yell at him—to rage against him for bringing danger into their home and risking her and her sister’s safety. But she said nothing more. She just looked at him.

So, Tay helped her out again and left. He strode out of the room—Sally quick at his heels—and did not stop. Sally was saying something incoherently, unable to string her thoughts together long enough to form intelligible sentences. Cari followed for a moment, and then stopped as Tay reached the stairs.

“Where are you going, Tay?” she asked.

Tay gripped his own deckbox, and felt pain deep in his chest. It was like the claws that had done this—had sliced into and through each and every wall—were also inside of him, clutching at his heart. Mond had been the one to buy him his cards. So now, maybe, instead of using them to win pointless tournaments, he could use them to avenge his fallen friend.

“I’m going after them,” Tay said.

And neither Cari nor Sally stopped him as he stormed back out of the shop.

~~~~~~~~~~

Tay was sure that flying on the back of the Skywing Lord was far preferable to flying in its clutches.

In a cruel twist of irony, Skywing Lord returned Tay to the grove where he’d just been training with Cari and Sally. The revenant soared lower and lower as they approached, and by the time they entered into the clearing, Skywing Lord touched down onto the ground. Its feathers—all glowing snowy white—dimmed somewhat as it crept to one side of the road, opposite to the edge of the grove.

On the street were four figures. And three of those, Tay immediately recognized.

Facing his direction, at the edge of the lichen grove, protecting her wagon of Runicka clockwork, was Qallaz, who had one hand held up to her guests, and one hand on her cart. She was babbling about something to them, but Tay couldn’t quite make out what she was saying from this distance.

And who better to interrogate her than Tay’s old friends—the guards who’d been with Rantho on his trip down into Duskborough. Tay wouldn’t mistake those shiny steel pauldrons and gauntlets anywhere, even if both of them did have on fairly large and thick dark green cloaks to keep themselves from being noticed.

His gut lurched, and he hardly knew what to think. He’d suspected that Mond’s attackers had been sent by the Polamunds, but seeing them there, standing too close to Qallaz with hands on the hilts of their swords, just burned him up on the inside. Tay wanted nothing more than to leap from the back of the Skywing Lord and gut them like they’d gutted Mond. But they’d run him through with their steel before he even got a chance to do anything. That couldn’t stop him from wanting to hurt them—to make them feel the pain Mond must’ve felt.

And there was another figure. For the life of him, Tay couldn’t tell how big this last person was, because they were completely at home in the dark—the edges of their body seemed to meld in with the few shadows left in Peace and Quiet. They wore a cloak even blacker and thicker than that of Rantho’s guards, and Tay couldn’t spot a single weapon on their body.

This last figure stood back, while the guards stomped even closer to Qallaz. Tay slid himself off of the Skywing Lord, because he couldn’t risk a glowing and four-legged eagle that was the size of a horse giving him away, and crept over until he was just across the street from Qallaz’s half-packed cart.

“We know he was here, you filth,” one of Rantho’s guards was saying to Qallaz. “You’re either going to speak, or you’re going to spill your blood.”

“What—what makes you Above-grounders think I know where he’s gone, even if he was here?” Qallaz shot back.

“No,” the other guard said. “He was here. Fourteen, this is a waste of time. We can’t waste our breath talking to a cursed Brux. Nothing that spends its life in the dark will ever reveal its secrets. Can’t we just use your hounds again?”

The guard asked that to the stranger of the trio, but there came no reply. Instead, the stranger raised their hand, and in it, Tay saw two Runicka cards—Chaos, from their glowing darkness.

One of the cards fell and merged into the strangers hands, shrouding them in a cocoon of darkness, and bringing them to Chaos 2. Then out from the shadows emerged a revenant that Tay had seen before.

It must’ve been what they were using to track him down, for it was indeed a hound and what creature was better at tracking through scent? Scamper had been able to smell him, so it stood to reason that this quill-backed hound could do the same, if not do it even better.

(20) Mourncrest Hound Unstable Volatile << 5

When Tay had seen this revenant before, it hadn’t been as a revenant, surely, but as a card. It had been placed onto a table in front of him, played by someone who had never spoken a single word, and had only given him smiles.

Purvon grunted to his revenant, and the Mourncrest Hound leaped into Qallaz’s cart, knocking the whole thing over and the woman to the side. Perhaps calling it a hound was a bit generous, since its size made it more akin to something like a rhino. It wasted no time in tearing the whole thing to shreds with its mighty claws.

Cold gripped at Tay’s ears. Summon me, Garudigas said.

“I can’t summon you,” Tay whispered. At the moment, he couldn’t summon much of anything. But if he was going to stop these three, he was going to have to try and do something.

Qallaz at least had the sense to give up her cart. She stumbled away and down the road, keeping her front to all three of her attackers. But Purvon wasn’t about to let her flee. He turned to her, grunted, and his revenant left the remains of the cart along to fling itself at her, fangs bared.

“No!” Tay shouted.

And he pulled out the first card in his deck—the Apprentice of the Warlock—and tried to force himself to feel his bond with it. He needed the connection to the card to bring him to Chaos 1, so that he might call the revenant forth. He’d already lost one friend today, and he wasn’t about to lose another.

But the Apprentice of the Warlock did not answer, and the card only remained a small warmth against his hands. It wasn’t going to work.

Tay could only stand there, while the Mourncrest Hound rushed down Qallaz. Rantho’s two guards, having heard his shout, drew their steel and regarded him with startled postures. Even Purvon seemed a little shocked underneath his dark hood.

Everything went white.

And when Tay’s vision recovered, Skywing Lord had landed in the street, and had both of its wings shielding Qallaz as it held the Mouncrest Hound at bay. That bright light must’ve come from its Barrier, which would’ve shattered at the Hound’s overwhelming attack.

But even at its strongest, Skywing Lord wasn’t going to be able to obliterate the high-powered Mourncrest Hound, and without its Barrier, it would fall at the next attack. Tay needed to be able to summon his revenant.

“Well, well, well,” one of the guards said, striding over to him with their steel drawn.

They were effectively two statues made out of steel, for all the armor that they wore. No doubt, they’d expected to go up against a runekeeper tonight, which was why they’d come so protected. Tay noticed that neither one had blood staining their blades though.

“If it isn’t the scum that got away before,” the other guard said. “We’ve been looking everywhere for you.”

Tay backed away, but knew he wasn’t going to run. He wasn’t about to leave Qallaz alone in the street, and he wasn’t about to abandon Skywing Lord either.

“Which one of you took his cards?” Tay asked.

The guards looked to each other, and even though they wore helmets that concealed their faces, he swore that he could make out their smirks. Then one held up a stack of white-glowing Runicka cards—Mond’s deck.

“You mean this? He didn’t want to part ways with it. But, in the end, it wasn’t like he could stop us. We deal with liars all the time topside.”

Tay put away the Apprentice of the Warlock, and reached into his pocket, pulling out the only card that he owned which burned with the heat of hot coals. It didn’t matter to Tay how painful it felt to hold, nor did he care how badly his ears throbbed from Garudigas’s whispers.

Unleash me! Let me feed!

All his ears could focus on were what the guards had called Mond—a liar. A liar? They still thought him the liar that Rantho had named him.

The Mourncrest Hound lunged at the Skywing Lord, managing to duck under a swipe of those heavy claws to sink its teeth into its neck. Skywing Lord’s body shimmered, and then it burst into a cloud of white light and evaporating feathers.

And with the Skywing Lord defeated, that only left him.

Purvon now stared at him, no joviality left in that blank stare. The Hound looked like it was about to evaporate too—no doubt a symptom of its own Volatile aura. Normally, they only got one attack in before their bodies destabilized, but this one looked like it had enough willpower left in it to sink its teeth into Qallaz’s trembling neck before it vanished.

“Mond was a champion,” Tay said.

One of the guards chuckled. “So, what? Are you going to follow in his footsteps?”

Tay stood up straight, and then started to laugh. He couldn’t help himself. It was just so funny to think of himself as following Mond—not only because he wasn’t about to stick around in Stormwall long enough to do that, but also because that was the last thing that Mond would’ve wanted for him.

“No,” Tay said. “No, tonight, I’m going to become a monster.”

And the coldness in his ears surged throughout his enter body. At the same time, the warmth from the card that was Garudigas twisted into the tips of his fingers and shot down his arm. Both sensations combined within his chest only to push back outward.

Tay saw a sheet of blackness grow up from the ground to envelop him. The world itself seemed to shimmer. There were cracks over everything—the ground, the lichen-forest, and even the buildings of Peace and Quiet—like he could see how they would all eventually crumble and become nothing.

Garudigas shined radiantly, unleashing a whole torrent of colors as if the card had become a bright burning torch of reds, greens, and blues. And to Tay, he also seemed a empty well. It was like, in Tay’s mind, Garudigas had become a cup.

And Tay felt himself now to be a faucet. So, he turned on the tap.

Tay’s own life energy flooded out from his fingertips. He could see it—sea green in color—curling out from his fingers and feeding into the very artwork on the Runicka card. Garudigas glowed brighter and brighter and then brighter still, feeding on Tay’s own Life. First his fingers went cold, then they went completely numb, and then the rest of his arm fell asleep too.

But he had just enough strength to pivot, and then flick Garudigas out into the open air.

“And tonight, you meet the Eternal Devourer!”

The card erupted into a explosion filled with more colors than Tay could’ve possibly imagined. Between all the oranges, yellows, and violets, were colors that existed on a spectrum between the rest. And as quickly as the rainbow inferno had come, it vanished to give way to a shadow lurking within. It was as tall as the buildings of Peace and Quiet.

“What is that?” one of the guards shouted.

And he raised his steel to defend himself from the looming threat, but it didn’t do him much good. Emerging from the cloud came a tentacle, not unlike that of an octopus, except that it also had claws—like a crab’s—on the end of it. Those claws cared little for steel, and pinned the guard the ground.

The guard struggled within the claw’s grip, but then his movement’s slowed. All color seemed to bleed from him. The grey in his armor dulled into black, and the green in his cloak became a rotten brown. When he stopped kick and thrashing, it was apparent that whatever the tentacle had done, it had killed him in the process.

The other guard shouted, and turned to flee, but emerging from the rainbow light came the massive reptilian head of Garudigas, which reached down with hundreds upon hundreds of dagger-like teeth. With a massive chop, Garudigas’s bite encompassed the other guard entirely, and he was gone.

The ensuing roar from the Eternal Devourer nearly shook Tay off of his feet.

“Purvon,” Tay said. “You have to get Purvon.”

But when he looked beyond the shroud of dark energies swirling around him, Purvon wasn’t there any more. The silent man was gone, and there was only Qallaz lying prone next to her ruined cart.

Garudigas rose up on two massive legs, and tried to take a stride away from Tay, but their whole body then shimmered, like a pool of stagnant water being disturbed by a strong breeze. Simultaneously, the swirling energies around Tay waned.

His head felt entirely too light. The energy seemed to be coming closer to his body—and closer—and closer. It was like it was alive, and trying to completely envelop him.

Tay tried pushing the black tornado he had created back and away, but it reacted to his hand by leaping onto it. Tay watched in horror as it began to stain the skin of his right hand, and spread into his very flesh. He tried screaming, but he wasn’t sure if he was making any sounds.

Beyond the black energies, Garudigas lowered their head down, and then exhaled onto Tay. The breath dispersed the parasitic black energy just before Garudigas dispersed themselves, becoming nothing more than a shower of rainbow sparks.

Out of them, a card floated back down until it rested on the ground in front of Tay, depicting Garudigas, just as it had before they’d gone on their rampage.

Satiated. For now.