In the wake of Mond’s death, the three of them were practically inseparable. Tay didn’t want to leave Cari or Sally out of his sight, and Cari kept two eyes on him at all times. Or, rather, she kept her eyes on his right hand.

Because it wasn’t getting any better. They’d managed to find a thin, black cloth glove that Tay was able to fit over his hand, but that was hardly a solution to his problem. His skin hadn’t returned at all. Each night, he no longer felt compelled to stare at Garudigas, and instead found himself looking at—or, rather, through—his own shadowy hand. As terrifying as it was, there was something calmly memorizing about being able to see through his own would-be flesh and watch the black mist that filled in his fingers swirl about, as if it were dark ocean waters underneath a new moon.

Tay’s only blessing so far was that Quincy hadn’t asked about his hand at all. He was too busy scrounging up planks from forgotten projects strewn about his one-room home to make into beds for them. Sally asked about his hand more than once, but each time Tay thought of something new to tell her about it. At the moment, he’d convinced her that he’d wounded himself in pursuit of Mond’s killers.

Only Cari knew that he’d actually caught up to them. But even she didn’t know that one still yet lived.

Tay couldn’t quite remember Mond’s face, but whenever he looked in his shadowy hand, all he could see was Purvon’s smile. It was that same smile the man had given to him when he’d choked up in their duel together. Back then it had just been a game between them.

Except, it hadn’t been.

Tay could only suspect what had brought Purvon to that tournament to begin with, but regardless of Purvon’s reasons, he’d been the one to not only relate his whereabouts to Rantho but end Mond’s life too. And he’d gotten away. While Garudigas had been disposing of Rantho’s guards, Purvon had slipped away unseen.

So long as he was at large, Tay had to assume Rantho knew he was still in Duskborough too.

Tay sat on the windowsill of Quincy’s single-room home as the only one still awake in the middle of the night. This was where they’d put him. It wasn’t comfy, but he wasn’t about to start complaining. He was the reason they had to sleep here after all.

Cari had her arms around Sally as the two shared what Quincy called a bed. Tay would’ve called it a pile of sticks with some blankets, but they were dreaming all the same.

Tay held up his hand and looked at the sisters through it. If he wasn’t the reason Mond was dead and they were homeless, he would’ve already left. It was almost better for them if he did leave. Then, whenever Rantho came for him, they wouldn’t get hurt in the crossfire.

What Garudigas had done to those guards would make Rantho reconsider pursuing him. Not forever though. Tay had dealt with people as determined as Rantho before. Finding his guards half-chewed and dead as doornails in the street would make him pause, and in that time Tay would need to find Sally and Cari a more permanent home.

After that, he would leave.

~~~~~~~~~~

The next morning, while Sally was busy helping Quincy construct another bed, Tay cornered Cari near to the window.

“I’m going to compete in a tournament,” he announced to her, swelling his chest and putting his hands on his hips. She’d fight him on this point. He knew she would. But there was no other way to get a large sum of money quickly.

Cari’s eyes widened and then found their way down to his right hand. She’d been staring at it more than usual for the past day or so. They’d managed to find a black cloth glove in Quincy’s place that more or less fit over Tay’s hand. It ended just above his wrist, which meant it only barely concealed the fact that he didn’t have a hand anymore.

“I know what you’re going to say,” Tay replied. “It’s too dangerous. But, Cari, I don’t see any other way of earning enough coin to get us out of here, do you? If I could win in a tournament—a big one—then maybe I could start saving up to buy our house back from Gharhell.”

Cari crossed her arms, and her amber eyes flicked over Tay’s shoulder, no doubt observing her sister. When they rested back on him, Tay sucked in a breath and held it, as if exhaling was admitting defeat somehow.

“Why not get all the coin in one go?” Cari then asked.

“What?”

“You’re right, Tay,” Cari said. “No point in keeping our heads down now. As much as I hate the monsters, Gharhell’s as big as they come. A Runicka tournament could get us enough coin to buy her out of our home. But not the local tournaments around here. No, those don’t pay nearly enough. Maybe for new clothes, but not for building deeds.

“Battle tournaments though. Now those are a whole different story.”

Sally clapped from across the room as Quincy unearthed half of a frame to a baby’s cradle. Not the ideal bed, but it was better than what they’d been working with.

“What are battle tournaments,” Tay asked.

“What got you and us into all this mess in the first place, Tay. They’re tournaments where runekeepers compete with their revenants fully summoned. They’re wildly more dangerous than anything you’d find in a card shop, but the coin reflects that too.”

But that left the obvious question. “How am I supposed to compete in those when I can’t even summon a revenant.”

This time, they both looked down at his hand. For a second, Tay could actually feel its numbness. He couldn’t feel his hand again—the sensation of the tight glove around his fingers or even blood rushing to his nails. He just felt the emptiness from where sensation in his hand used to be, and he missed it. He would’ve rather had any other wound to his hand, if he’d been offered the choice. He’d rather have lost a finger, or have had a dagger cut through it, or have had it cut clean off. As it was, his hand was a stranger to him. It was an entirely different hand, even if it still connected to his wrist.

“I think we can approach that the same way you approached learning Runicka,” Cari said. “Lots of practice.”

~~~~~~~~~~

Sally went with Tay and Cari to the lichen grove that morning. Tay was thankful that she never asked why they were going back to summon revenants. Because, evident by the fourth member of their little party, Sally most certainly didn’t need any more training.

A small badger, with stripes of glowing white fur running down the middle of its back, followed her as she ran on ahead and through the tall pagodas of flourishing lichen. She had dubbed it Diggsie, and as Tay pulled out his cards, she played with it like any young girl would with a puppy.

Now if only he could have such luck.

After staring at the black mist that filled up his right hand for so long, Tay had taken to calling the darkness that glowed off of Chaos cards shadowlight. It seemed appropriate, because it was a form of light on its own, instead of being any sort of absence of it.

At Cari’s instruction, Tay flicked through all his cards and pulled out the one he felt most familiar with, that was also Chaos 1. The card basically dripped shadowlight as he held it between his index and middle finger.

(5) Apprentice of the Warlock Stable

Shout: reduce target foe revenant’s Power by half until the end of the turn (rounded down).

Uproar: add Warlock of Midnight Darkness from your deck or Oblivion to your hand.

< 2

Tay noticed how the shadowlight rolled off of the surface of the card and coiled against his fingers, as if it was trying to play with him the same way Diggsie ran around with Sally. The card itself was as hot as a pan left out in the sun all day. Tay could feel it growing hotter and hotter the longer he held it too.

Cari stood in front of him, hands on her hips and gaze serious. She’d brought her cards too, but she kept them stowed away in the deckbox on her belt.

“Are you sure about this?” Tay asked.

“Just make sure you attune yourself to Chaos 1 before you trying summoning it and you should be fine,” Cari replied. “It’s only a Chaos 1 card, so it doesn’t require any investment. You just need to attune yourself to be able to exert your will over it and coerce it out of its card form.”

Tay nodded and tried his best to still his mind. The last time they’d practiced together, he hadn’t been able to bring himself to Chaos 1. But whenever he’d summoned Garudigas, he must’ve been in Chaos 3. He could hardly remember the frame of mind that had put him there though—not to mention the fact that it had cost him a hand.

And he thought of the numbness that had replaced his right hand and the lichen grove around him suddenly darkened. Except it hadn’t. Tay’s whole body was now wreathed in shadowlight circling around his arms and back. He was glowing as black as the cards.

“You’re doing it,” Cari said. “Now you’re going to have to start that argument I was talking about before with your card. You’re going to need to convince it to become a revenant from its card form. And you’ll feel it pull on you as you do that, but I know you can do this, Tay.”

Tay did feel a small pressure at the tip of his index and middle finger, like someone had fishing line buried into his skin and was slowly yanking it out. When he looked, there was two thin lines of white light curling out from underneath his fingernails. The light fed into the card itself and its shadowlight grew until the card seemed like it was blazing with darkness.

Tay felt like he was out of breath. Running up a flight of stairs would have been less exerting than this, and he couldn’t help but notice a sharp pain in his stomach like he had skipped a meal somehow.

“You’ve paid your Life,” Cari said. “Now imagine what you want your revenant to look like and bring it forth, Tay.”

“I know you can do it, Tay,” Sally cried out, emerging from behind a lichen-tree. Diggsie was at her heels, frolicking and wanting to play with her some more.

Tay took a deep breath, and he swore he heard someone whisper, right into his ears, What are you, Taygion Ardwella?

This time, Garudigas’s voice didn’t come in answer. Who was he? Someone who needed to protect Cari and Sally, to make up for all the mistakes he’d made along the way. He was atonement. Walking atonement.

Shadowlight emanating from the Apprentice of the Warlock evened out and then grew to encompass the grove around them, shining black against all the lichen-trees. The card itself felt like it was burning hot, and its heat came in pulse—bum bum, bum bum, bum bum—like a heartbeat.

Tay threw the card. As it zipped through the air, leaving a trail of shadowlight, Tay felt like he had never let go of the card. There was something tangible in his palm. It was some sort of ghastly presence that he clamped his fingers down upon. And when he did, the Apprentice of the Warlock glowed brighter. And when he released the presence, the Apprentice of the Warlock erupted into shadowlight, casting everything Tay could see into blackness.

When it receded, there, between two wooden struts that made up the trees of lichen, stood a woman clad in dark robes, with a curved dagger in her right hand and what looked to be a skull in her left. Her hair was long, and nearly as black as her clothes. She had eyes to match, and regarded Tay as if he was the only person standing there with her.

She looked human enough, save for the completely blank expression that was statued onto her face. She was like a person caught in the middle of sleepwalking. Not quite there and not entirely absent either.

“You did it!” Sally yelled. “Way to go, Tay.”

Tay smiled. He had done it, hadn’t he? That was the Apprentice of the Warlock—his revenant. It was standing there.

Tay looked down at his wrapped right hand. It still felt numb at his wrists, but that numbness hadn’t grown when he’d summoned the Apprentice. As long as he properly summoned revenants, he wouldn’t be in any danger then, it seemed.

The Apprentice of the Warlock took a lurching step toward him, and all three of them—and Diggsie too—jumped. It made no other moves though, just continuing to stare at Tay like nothing else existed.

“What’s wrong with her?” Sally asked. “It’s like she’s possessed.”

“She’s a revenant, Sally,” Cari said. “We mustn’t forget that. Not a person, but a monster.”

Diggsie gave a small whine to Cari’s labeling, and curled itself around the back of Sally’s ankles. Sally looked slightly offended but then said nothing. Instead, she picked Diggsie up and marched back off into the lichen grove.

If Cari was bothered by her sister’s sudden departure, she didn’t show it. She simply crossed her arms and regarded Tay, saying, “Now that you’ve managed to summon a revenant, it might be good for you to learn how to control it too.”

“I can’t just ask it to do what I want?” Tay said.

“For the most part, that works.”

A coldness gripped Tay’s right ear. For the most part…

Whether that was his own worries manifesting or Garudigas whispering into his ear, Tay didn’t care enough to figure it out. Instead he cleared his throat and said to the Apprentice of the Warlock, “Stow away your blade.”

The Apprentice of the Warlock didn’t move at all. She still held her curved dagger out in front of her, the skull in her other hand, and held a firm stare upon Tay.

Cari raised an eyebrow at his revenant and said, “You can also control them nonverbally, through the bond that you share. I’ve found that they more readily respond to your thoughts, especially if it’s a card that you’ve used plenty of times.”

“My thoughts?” Tay asked.

The Apprentice of the Warlock turned its head and then took another step toward him. And then another. Until it was taking great lunges. It raised its dagger up higher and higher, until its point was turned right for Tay. As she closed in upon him, Tay saw that her eyes were completely filled with shadowlight.

There was a flash of white and Tay saw Cari glowing like a radiant snowflake. She had a Runicka card that she tossed out at the charging Apprentice of the Warlock. It ignited and erupted into a shower of bright white light, and Tay squinted against it. From the light emerged a thin rapier which punctured straight through the Apprentice’s back. Tay’s revenant burst into a cloud of shadowlight not even a second later. A thin, short man with dragonfly wings along his back hovered there instead.

(15) Pixie Swordsmaster Bursting This revenant gains Barrier whenever a Chaos revenant is played by its controller. Flying 3 >>

The Swordsmaster had black shadowlight dripping from his blade, like it was blood. Then all the floating sparks and remaining shadowlight condensed and flew straight for Tay. He flinched before realizing that the shadowlight was congregating just before his face. Not even a second later, his Apprentice of the Warlock card reformed before him.

Tay reached out—making sure he was doing so with his left hand—and clutched at the card. It was cold again, like before he had summoned the Apprentice. When he looked at the art, he couldn’t help but to make special note of the dagger. So, it wasn’t just for show then. He stowed his card back into his deck box.

White light filled the grove around him. Tay looked up to find a heavenly-glowing Cari standing just before him, white light pluming off of the dark strands of her hair. For a moment, she was all that he saw. Her attunement highlighted her high cheekbones and full lips, and if Tay could’ve spent a hundred years staring at her wreathed in beautiful white light, he would have.

Behind her, Cari’s Pixie Swordsmaster fluttered up to the boughs of the lichen-trees and then began to dissolve into a shower of opalescent sparks that then reformed into a card before Cari. The moment she plucked it from the air, the glow about her body dissipated. She gazed down at his hand.

“Tay,” she said. “Your wrist.”

Still dumbfounded from how beautiful she had just seemed, he followed her gaze only to be frozen in horror. Tay dared not move his body, as if moving would only cause it to worsen.

When he’d woken up this morning, his shadowy hand only barely came up to his wrist. He’d known that because he’d stared at it all through the night. His glove had been able to hid it all on the way over.

Now, even with his black cloth glove on, his flesh had lost ground and his incorporeal hand now extended up and was nearly halfway to his elbow—a whole inch or two past the glove.

As a reflex he clamped his left hand over his wrist and asked, “Why did it attack me?”

“They listen to their runekeeper,” Cari said.

“I—it’s not like I asked it to attack me,” Tay said. He glanced down at his wrist.

“Maybe not with your words,” Cari said. “But our thoughts are always going to be truer than what we say. Your Apprentice of the Warlock was only listening to your unspoken wishes.”

“Cari, I—”

“I don’t want to hear it,” Cari said. “We’ll try again.”

Tay looked at her bewildered, still tightly clutching his wrist from where his transformation into a revenant had gotten worse. “What do you mean?”

“We’ll try again, Tay. There’s only one way you’re going to get this done—one way you’re going to be able to participate in battle tournaments—one way to get our home back.”

“What if I turn into a revenant before any of that happens?” Tay asked.

Cari had her hand on her deckbox, and a fire burning in her amber eyes. “You won’t,” she said. “I won’t let you.”