《The Draw Of The Unknown》


 Chapter 001

    Sliding to a perfect stop behind the cop car, I felt the effects of one of my two [Graced Maneuver]s come to a swift end. My legs felt like they''d turned to jelly in an instant, but that wasn''t important. What mattered was that I was here, and hadn''t been shot.


    Not getting shot was a high priority for me.


    It had probably been a high priority for officer Daniels here, too. But bad luck, and a pissed off teenage edgelord with an assault rifle, had ruined his day pretty badly. The squad car was sideways across the road in front of the Muletown High School, and Daniels was currently slumped against the front tire, bleeding out. About three hundred feet back, the paramedics waited, held back by police who hadn''t secured the area against the gang of shitheads who thought that today would be just the perfect fucking time to do a school shooting.


    I''m sure that someone had, by now, noticed me sprinting across open ground, vaulting a small stone wall, and sliding into place behind the car. But what mattered was that no one who had noticed me was currently shooting at me. I unfolded my hands in front of me, the gesture opening up the ghostly interface of my Hand.


    Four cards left. I''d not really stockpiled properly today; four was far away from my max hand size of twelve, and twelve would have been so much more fucking useful right now. But there wasn''t time to dwell on that. Because one of those four *was* useful. If not for myself, than for Daniels here.


    Reaching out with one hand, I seized the spectral card between my pointer and middle finger. Then I flicked it out into reality.


    Daniels was staring at me with pained eyes. Maybe he wanted to ask what the fuck I was doing, maybe he thought I was here to taunt or execute him; I wasn''t *that* old, maybe I looked like a high schooler to someone who had bullets in them. Somehow, I expect that the absolute last thing he expected was to be hit by literal magic. [Triage And Stabilize] hit him like a fucking truck, if that truck were made of healing instead of... truck. He gasped in a wet, shuddering breath of air as a few warped bullets clattered to the ground in front of him, suddenly no longer inside his lungs.


    It wouldn''t replenish his blood, or do more than the basics really, but he was guaranteed to live for minimum half an hour; unless those worthless curs in the school took another shot at him before then. That¡¯s what the card did - not heal, specifically, but guarantee thirty minutes of continued life.


    I grimaced as the card''s cost drained from one of my pools. Twelve Compassion down, only two left. And *that* was a resource I wasn''t going to be refreshing anytime soon. Not in this situation, anyway. Too angry.


    "Hey, I''m just gonna borrow this. Stay here, I''ll be right back." I patted Daniels on the shoulder as I unclipped the taser from his belt. I could have taken the gun, but... well, I''m not that kinda person, honestly. Guns are for people without magical card games backing them up.


    Daniels reached out weakly for me, and I couldn''t tell if it was to thank me or try to stop me, but whichever it was, he didn''t get the chance before I was gone again.


    There were shouts from the police line behind me as I casually strolled around the side parking lot of the high school, but I ignored them. Instead, I scanned the windows of the building ahead of me as I looped around the side, toward the doors that opened out to the football field. No movement; but that made sense. The group of monsters in the building were probably staying away from the windows. Still, not bad news; that let me walk right up to the doors, pop one of them four big glass barriers open, and walk right into the school.


    I was instantly confronted by the dumbass they''d left to guard this entrance.


    It''s amazing how, just over a decade out of high school, I look back on what seemed like the pinnacle of my life and realize that it wasn''t that big of a deal. It''s also amazing how all high schoolers - people who looked so intimidating to me then - all look like dumb kids now. This dumb kid was just over five feet, sandy hair, kind of a round face, and holding an AR-15 leveled at me in shaky hands.


    Fucker didn''t even tell me to freeze or anything before he pulled the trigger.


    And that was when [Under Cover Of Fortune] kicked in. I''d had it active for a while, it being one of the cards I preferred to fire off before leaving the house every day, if I could. It had a six hour active time, which was still running, and it was fantastic for a lot of things. But in this scenario; one specific thing.


    Making guns jam.


    I caught sight of the marker for the card on my minimized display going up in a puff of blue flame as the kid in front of me gave a weird look at his gun. Almost like he was confused at its betrayal. That look didn''t last long, as I tazed him a second later, causing him to howl in pain and collapse to the floor in a series of convulsions.


    Fun fact about tasers! They don''t actually incapacitate by disabling muscles or stunning the brain or anything, like movies and bad cop shows tell you. They incapacitate people through *pain*. I''d been tased once before as part of a police training program, since I''d been the idiot to volunteer for it, and let me tell you, nothing quite compares to feeling like half your muscles are trying to forcibly detach themselves off of your skeleton.


    I wasn''t feeling that bad about nailing this kid with it though. In my mind, there was a certain line that humans could cross in our lives that flipped the designation from ''person'' to ''monster'', and bringing a bunch of guns to school to hunt your classmates for sport was way past that moral event horizon. It may have been a bit vindictive, but I grinned as I clicked the taser a second longer than it really needed to go. It also had the side effect of adding two points to my spite pool, which I always had a hard time increasing, and never actually needed that much.


    Crouching next to the still twitching idiot, I pulled the gun away, and also took the pistol sticking out of his pants, sans-holster. Fucking moron. Even I was getting tired of how stupid these guys were, and that was saying something when their stupidity was my survival. Then I half-stood, grabbed him under his arms, and started dragging.


    Now, I wasn''t the strongest hitter around or anything, but this kid was half my size, no longer laden down with firearms, and had completely lost the energy to resist. So it wasn''t hard to back out the doors before anyone came to investigate, haul him across the side parking lot, and dump him in front of the school in plain view of the police there. I also tossed the guns onto the grass some distance away. I was taking full advantage of the last few minutes on the active timer of [Aura of Unconcern], which itself took full advantage of my Ennui pool to the tune of four points. I wouldn''t miss those points, for once. But regardless, it kept anyone from freaking out, and kept the police from going so far as to shoot or stop me as I turned and walked back toward the door.


    One down, three to go.


    On the way back to the back door, I noted that my draw timer had hit zero, and made the motion to open up my Hand again. Hands in fists, thumbs pressed together, pull them apart to unfurl my remaining cards. Now, second gesture, as I walked. Two fingers out to the side, thumb slightly down, like you''re grabbing something off a stack. Pull the hand back toward myself, loop the fingers around to see what I drew.


    [The Eight Glamours of the Forbidden Library]


    Well fuck. That was probably the least useful card I owned.


    No, really. Overlong name aside, its actual effect was negligible. It was a modal card, that gave a fairly decent list of illusions as options, but only in regards to books currently in libraries. Granted, there was a library in this place, but the odds that this was going to come in handy were almost nothing.If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. Please report it.


    So, plan A. Clip the second cartridge into the taser, and go prowling around to see if I could find another asshole.


    As I stalked through the cafeteria toward the back stairs, I took the opportunity to snag a handful of fries off a table. Still warm, too, which was a blessing. I was hungry enough to steal abandoned lunchroom food, but high school cafeteria french fries had a shelf life measured in seconds. And I wasn''t that desperate. Honestly, I was mostly just trying to calm my nerves as I did something monumentally stupid.


    It''s about now that I should tell you that I''m not a hero. I didn''t make a habit of intervening in crisis situations. It just sort of... played out this way. Honestly, since I''d picked up that Card a couple weeks back, things like this had been happening more and more. Situations, like, capital-S Situations, kept popping up in my life. Sometimes, I just let them go. But sometimes.


    Well, sometimes, a bunch of kids shot a police officer, rounded up a bunch of their classmates that hadn''t gotten out of the school already, and started making demands. In the building next to my house. On my day off.


    But really, I didn''t have the tools to be a hero. Not yet, anyway. I had a couple points of Ennui left to burn on [Aura of Unconcern] in its last minutes, which would probably get me close enough to shock another one of the thugs. I had one of my three copies of [Fact Finder], which let me glean random information on ''target subject'', according to the card. And which only worked on legal, social, or business subjects. And I had a classic [Blast]. I paused in looking over my hand with that one.


    I had never used [Blast] in a situation like this. I''d tried it once at the old rock quarry, and made a pretty nice sized crater in the rock ground. That was absolutely something I didn''t want to use on a person.


    That said, as I approached the set of classrooms where I was pretty sure the other goons were keeping their hostages, I did get an idea.


    Unfold my hand, grab the card. Flick it into the world. Select a target with a combination of my eyes, pointing fingers, and a little mental nudge. And then, feel the cost drain from my resource pools - two points of Determination in this case.


    Then watch the printer in the computer lab down the hall turn into a piece of modern art.


    The noise of the detonation was impressive, at best, and ear-damaging at worst. A screech of metal and the crunch of plastic, combined with a thin concussive *whoom* that shook my heart in my chest. And a second later, shouts from inside one of the enclosed rooms. Boy, they sounded angry. I could hear one guy, probably their alpha, screaming in a cracking voice to go check it out, and I grinned as my play tumbled into action.


    The door swung open with a thump against the brick wall, and a couple of kids who probably though they looked tactical as fuck moving with their rifles up came out. I caught a glimpse of them from behind the corner I was leaning against, as they looked around, saw that the ruin I''d left in the computer lab, and went over to check it out as cautiously as two adrenaline-hyped teenagers could.


    I ignored them, casually strolled over to the door they''d come out of, and walked into the room.


    The desks in the classroom had been shoved to the side, making room for the huddle of about forty other students and a few teachers to be packed into sitting positions on the floor. Most of them looking abjectly terrified, and a few of them stealing glances at the open door. I wished fewer of them had, since that started draining Ennui through the lens of [Aura of Unconcern] as the card deflected their attention. And then, with one larger burst of drain, I ran out entirely. But that last bit was because their fearless leader had laid eyes on me, and had decided for just a little too long that I wasn''t important enough to shoot.


    And then I hit him with the taser.


    Man it was satisfying watching this guy twitch on the ground. The strangled yell of pain, though, was going to bring the other two back running, so I was strapped for time. Putting on my best game face and giving the hostages a winning smile, I jogged over and grabbed the shotgun, then moved to right beside the open door.


    It took maybe thirty seconds for the other two shooters to come bumbling back through the door, running in still with their guns up and displaying absolutely no trigger discipline. They started yelling over each other, swearing and threatening the hostages who were still trying to come to grips with the fact that I''d just strolled in here and wrecked one of their captors. Neither of them noticed me yet.


    So, as I watched the timer count down the last few seconds on [Aura of Unconcern], and saw that icon go up in a puff of blue flame, I cleared my throat. Loudly. "Gentlemen." I loudly spoke. "Weapons down please."


    Both of them spun to look at me. One of them screamed as he did so, dropping his gun and throwing his hands in the air. This actually made it a lot easier to casually level the shotgun at the other one, and remind him, "Drop iiit. Drop it. Good." I nodded at him as he set his weapon down.


    This had been easier than expected! For my first time dealing with people who actually had weapons and may have tried to shoot me, I feel like it had gone pretty well!


    After I''d gotten a couple of the teachers to secure the firearms, I instructed the two shooters to pick up their still stunned friend, and had them do the heavy lifting this time. Considering that they weren''t that well muscled, and we had to go down stairs, I was willing to bet the guy was gonna wake up with a hell of a headache. In jail, hopefully.


    After getting them downstairs, I handed off my shotgun to the teacher who had followed me. She had told me that her name was Mrs. Haggstrom, and she taught history, but from the way the gun looked more comfortable in her hands than it ever would in mine, I got the impression that this sixty-something woman was mostly here because she was in witness protection after turning on her old mob buddies. While it would have been fun to see how this played out, I didn''t really want to deal with the police asking pointed questions about what the fuck I was doing.


    So, the back door for me. And then across a field, and over a fence, and down a side road to the park that bordered my apartment complex. I didn''t need a Card to keep attention off me this time; pretty much everyone was focused on the students getting out of there before anything horrible had happened. I honestly hadn''t checked for bodies inside; not that I''d be able to do anything about them, but maybe I should have looked at least.


    I had mostly been wanting to resolve the situation as fast as possible, and then take my leave. Maybe it was selfish, but I just... didn''t want to bother with the rest of it. Talking to people, explaining what happened, especially explaining *how* it happened. I''d just sorta gotten caught up in trying to help, and now, bailing out seemed like the fastest way to end my involvement.


    Getting back into my apartment, throwing my keys and wallet onto the counter, I slumped down onto my couch. Smooth leather conforming to my sweaty skin as I let out a breath I hadn''t realized I''d been holding.


    I''d done it. There''d been a problem, a big one, and I''d solved it. Mostly because of the Cards I''d been granted by fate and chance, but also with my own actions. Power was useless if you didn''t use it.


    Speaking of power.


    I opened my hands up, bringing up the full display. And then, a sort of weird pulling motion to open up the Tasks menu, now with a few of the handful of random daily optional mini-quests shining in a gold color. So, a couple of quick hand-clicks later, palm outward and fingers up, and I had my reward.


    (Protector) - End a violent confrontation that threatens someone else.


    (Last Chance) - Save a life when you are the only option left.


    (Improvisationist) - Use a destructive-type Card for a strength 3+ effect, without harming anyone.


    (Show Off) - Affect more than 10 people with one Card.


    Four rewards poured into my ghostly apparatus while I laughed at the irony of (Show Off) probably being triggered off of [Aura of Unconcern]. Most of the tasks could be done repeatedly, though on longer and longer cooldown timers. And there were always more of them rotating in and out, too many to keep up with. Always ten options, ten ¡®sidequests¡¯, every time I checked, though. I could, if I wanted to, tag up to two of them that wouldn¡¯t rotate out until I¡¯d completed them, but that was risky, if I didn¡¯t know when or if I¡¯d be able to finish them.


    For now, though... (Show Off) had gotten me two copies of a card called [Archive Moment]. That was gonna be one of the weeeeeird ones, I could already tell. (Improvisationist) appeared to have given me a card called [Adjust]. That was hopeful; it had so far seemed like the simplest names had the most flexible effects. Or, well, one very strong effect that could be applied in a lot of ways. The Task of (Last Chance) had been bordered in purple when it had shown up a couple days ago, and I figured that meant it was rare in some way, but the reward didn¡¯t instantly reflect that. The card it handed me was simply called [Growth Spurt], and probably did something nuts. I¡¯d check out its actual text in a minute. Because then, finally, (Protector) earned me a new deck.


    <Cast Of The Warrior>, it was called. Ah, there''s the new option. Swap decks, huh? So, I can change out what my draw pool is, eh? Hm. Kind of offended that my current, main, and only deck is labeled as <Low Quality Beginner Deck>. Looks like it only accepts cards that use Determination, and Spite. Maybe more, if I unlocked new cards in the future, but for now, that was maybe twenty percent of the Cards I owned. Also, only a max size of ten Cards, compared to my base of twenty five. *But*, for that limitation, it drew once every five minutes, instead of every half hour. Lower max hand size, though. And the resource pool growth rate was pitiful. So, this was really meant to be what I swapped to when I wanted to get into a strife situation, eh? Not that I really planned on getting into more fights, though maybe destiny had different plans for me.


    I''d find a way to make use of it. I''d adapt. I always did. I was a smart girl, after all.


    No matter what was in the cards.


    ¡­


    Shut up, I¡¯m hilarious.

 Chapter 002

    I was on a hike, and I was quickly remembering why I tended to not go on hikes, and why using certain maneuvering cards left my legs feeling like they were made of jam. Mostly because just basic *walking* left my legs feeling like jam.


    Okay, to be fair, I was walking up a mountain, and had been for the better part of two hours. But neither the conditions of my suffering, nor the eventual reward at the end, made me feel any better about how much my knees were screaming at me.


    It was a couple of days after I¡¯d foiled the mass murder of an entire high school, no one appeared to be on my tail about it, and I was starting to let my paranoia drop. Letting myself relax a bit. Personally, I didn¡¯t much care for the idea of letting the news crews in on the secret of my randomly bestowed and strangely arbitrary magical powers; I found the news to be distasteful at best, and kind of awful at worst. It had been good to see that officer Daniels had survived, though, thanks to the efforts of ¡®an unidentified good samaritan¡¯, which left me feeling all warm and glowy inside, both because of the anonymity and also because if fulfilled my desire to build a utilitarian utopia.


    I was up here, climbing a hiking trail up one of the Three Sisters mountains and groaning to myself about it every step of the way, for two reasons. Two reasons that were actually kinda just the same reason twice.


    See, the arcane-and-semi-inscrutable card game wizard system that I¡¯d been bestowed worked in a slightly weird way. The resource pools that I had access to grew naturally over time, letting me slowly work my way up to casting larger and larger spells. Or, alternately, the multiple copies of [Potential] that I had would let me grow a pool that way. Sometimes. It didn¡¯t always work, which led to a complaint that I¡¯ll come back to. Anyway. The problem was that the growth wasn¡¯t indefinite and ever upward. Every week, every exactly seven days, everything reset.


    *Everything*. Pools went back to starting values, persistent card effects ended, cards in hand went back into the deck, everything. It also was then that changes were applied to the deck, if I¡¯d made them. So, swapping in or out cards, or even switching to a different deck. The current timer for this was in about six hours.


    As a perk, though, I could trigger this reset at any time. Maybe I just really wanted to make a change to the deck, or wanted to control when the *next* reset would happen. 2 AM on a Sunday was when I planned to do the next one, just because I felt like nothing could possibly go wrong then.


    That was probably wishful thinking, but it just seemed like the least likely time to absolutely need to shamanically blow something up.


    So with all that in mind, I was out here in the wilderness on a little day trip, because in six hours, I was going to have to be bumped back to square one. And given how recently I seemed to be some kind of lightning rod for bullshit, I wanted to do this while I still had a handful of options.


    Which of course comes around to part two of the reason; I had a quest to go to a specific random place, and it was here, and I was gonna do it and claim the reward and maybe stick it into my deck before the reset happened if it looked cool.


    Many of the rewards looked cool. That was sort of the point.


    Anyway. I call it a quest, but so far, I hadn¡¯t actually gotten any real ¡°quests¡±. I might at some point, but I¡¯m going to bookmark this thought under that same future complaint. What I had was labeled as a Task, and it was the only one of the current six that I thought I could complete. (Wilds Explorer), go to a random location outside of an urban or suburban area. Easy!


    I feel like the system may have limited it to somewhere actually accessible, too, since it was in my state, and only a few hours away by car. Of course, the hike itself didn¡¯t get the car fast travel bonus, but I could handle it.


    After I sat down on this rock for ten minutes. Jesus, I¡¯m out of shape.


    While I rested, waiting for my legs to regain some function and sipping at my water bottle, I also took the opportunity to take my draw for this tick. The gesture of two fingers out, pulling up toward my face, was becoming almost rote at this point to me; a weird thing to think about, given what I was actually doing and how fantastical it was, but also kinda helpful. I might at some point need to do this instinctively, and getting into good habits early was important.


    [Under Cover Of Fortune] was the card I pulled, and instantly cast with a grin. Trading four Spite for one negation of an aggressive act was a *fantastic* deal. This was one of those cards that I always looked forward to redrawing, and cast right away whenever I drew it. It never ran out of time, didn¡¯t suck up extra resources, and if someone tried to do anything hostile at me, they just¡­ got unlucky. Simple as that; made one hostile act *not work*.


    Of course, it didn¡¯t work on unintended things. Like, I bet I could still be hit by a car. And sometimes, it burned itself on a person trying to insult me, making them stumble over their words instead of delivering a sick burn. So it had limits, which I¡¯d had to suss out myself.


    I stood, taking a deep breath of the clean pine air around me before carrying on. The trail would get me to within about a thousand feet of my goal, and I had a couple more miles left yet, so carrying on before it got dark was important. I felt a little better with my extra layer of protection, however tenuous it might be.


    And here we get to that bookmarked complaint. The game was fucking ambiguous as shit.


    If I got a new card, it told me almost nothing about what it did. Sometimes, I even had to just go off the name, and guess at the function. Targeting was a nightmare; requiring a lot of specificity, without knowing what details were important all the time. And spells could fizzle out if I screwed up the conditions, the targets, hell, even the costs weren¡¯t always visible to me ahead of time.


    Once I *did* learn something, I could reference that information at will, and cards would very helpfully provide ¡°|---|¡± markers on their various text lines if there was something left to discover. That might *sound* great, but you know what still has one of those markers on it? [Potential]. That card I mentioned earlier that just raises my max resource pools? Yeah, it does that. And also something else. Maybe. How would I know?This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it.


    It¡¯s awful, and I hate it. The thrill of discovery is sweet and rewarding, yes, but often times it felt like I was headbutting a wall with new cards. A wall made of spectral cardboard, instead of brick, but still, unpleasant to ram one¡¯s head into. And this was after only having this for a few weeks! I don¡¯t even know if I¡¯ve unlocked all the actual complexity yet; hell, it was literally only yesterday that I got a second deck.


    I would have sighed if I thought I could spare the breath. I should have brought a friend to carry the backpack; woe that I was shortsighted and didn¡¯t actually have any friends in this half of the country.


    Still, despite not being an outdoorsy person at all, I seriously appreciate the natural beauty around me. It was the middle of summer, but it had already started to cool down here, and the shade of the trees made beautiful patterns on the ground as light danced between branches. I would have thought somewhere this far away from a road would be quiet, but the forested path sounded like a damn mixtape of nature. Bugs, birds, running water off in the distance, the crackle of leaves and twigs underfoot. All of it was kinda awe inspiring for a normally urban-dwelling couch potato like myself.


    Didn¡¯t make the hike any easier, but at least I was enjoying it. And honestly, maybe not having anyone along was for the best; I got to plod along at my own pace and take constant breaks, without having to worry about someone else wanting to keep up a steady pace.


    Also there was no one around to laugh when I accidentally almost stepped on a skunk.


    Aaaaaand there went [Under Cover Of Fortune]. And also the skunk, darting away into the patches of greenery nearby. ¡°Holy shit¡± I muttered, leaning on a tree to try to get my heart to stop racing. The skunk may have been too startled or too magicked to nail me with it¡¯s spray, but that was still a bit of a jump scare.


    I took the opportunity to take another break, although this time pretending that I was doing it for a reason. Checking the map, I saw I was maybe another ten minutes of walking to get to where I was going to have to leave the trail. Looking after the skunk to make sure it wasn¡¯t following me, I saw nothing but a layer of pine needles, and a thick patch of some kind of fruit bush.


    That actually made me pause. This was a good opportunity to test out another card limitation, as long as I was flush with Curiosity, and had a draw coming up anyway.


    Open my Hand up, fanning out an invisible sheaf of cards in front of me. Snag [Fact Finder] out of it, and toss it out into the world. Nudge it mentally at the berry bush. Yes, I know it¡¯s not a legal subject, but I think it¡¯s a legal target. It¡¯s science, basic ecological knowledge. Probably in a thousand books. Just tell me what that plant is.


    Reality rippled and then snapped back to normal. And just like that, I had a Wikipedia entry for the Oregon Grape in my head. The weird thing about [Fact Finder], when it worked, was that it gave me a detailed report, and it gave it to me in a form that wasn¡¯t actually a memory. It felt super passive-aggressive, but I actually had to mentally scan through the information about how I could eat those, but probably wouldn¡¯t like taste, and that they make good jam. Because if I didn¡¯t, then in about a minute, the information would just¡­ fade out. And I¡¯d be left not actually knowing what I¡¯d known a second ago, unless I¡¯d studied it.


    It was a weird effect, but it was reasonably flexible, and often just kind of satisfied my own personal curiosity. Especially here, where cell phone service was a whispered myth, and actual Wikipedia wasn¡¯t accessible. And now, I¡¯d added one more legal target to the list. Though, in typical fashion, the system told me only that it was able to glean information about ¡®ecological¡¯ topics, which was¡­ broad. And also maybe not entirely accurate. Yet.


    Twenty minutes of steady footfalls, and one pointless draw of [Incense], later, I found myself hesitantly stepping off the worn dirt trail, and onto a bed of pine needles and rocks. I had no GPS coordinates, just a Task that helpfully informed me of my absolute distance from the location. And that location involved picking my way through wads of spiny-leaved bushes, and up over rocky ledges that I couldn¡¯t always find sloped paths around.


    By the time I reached my destination, my water bottle had been empty for a while, I¡¯d gotten roughly half the mountain¡¯s worth of dirt in my shoe, and I was really quite ready to get back to my car and go home. And I¡¯d nearly pissed myself, while literally already pissing myself, when a deer the size of a small truck stepped casually out from behind a tree and made unassuming and arrogant eye contact with me. That had been both terrifying, *and* awkward; especially for the kind of person who locks the bathroom door when I¡¯m alone at home.


    And then, I stepped around one last rock outcropping, studiously avoiding being near it in case it was full of snakes or some bullshit, and saw my destination.


    It¡¯s actually quite weird to see a literal quest marker in real life, as a heads up. It wasn¡¯t a physical image, so much as it was that I understood, explicitly, that this was a point I had to be at in order to accomplish the (Wilds Explorer) Task. It was kind of like a ring, kind of like a ball, totally without color or shape, and giving me a headache entirely without the aid of the [Headache] Card I kept in my Deck to keep it at the minimum size.


    So, I did what comes naturally to a belligerent wizard, walked over, and poked it.


    And that was it. It vanished. I opened up my menu, which I planned on calling a spellbook in my head whenever I could remember to be a bit cooler, and pulled up the Tasks tab. One (Wilds Explorer) complete, thank you very much.


    One last note on this task, and the reason I¡¯d gone for this one over any of the others. While I could have probably used a single Card to make $100 and finish (Entrepreneur), or swallowed my introversion long enough to make two new acquaintances and done (Shake Hands), those two were both colored white, which I kind of associated with low-risk-low-reward stuff. Easy enough to do, if I got creative sometimes, or cheated and met people off the internet, but often giving kinda crap rewards. I¡¯d actually completed a few of those early on before learning that they mostly gave one to five points that could be used in the system¡¯s shop, which I actually hadn¡¯t unlocked yet. Which was stupid. I was presently sitting on thirty seven cardbucks (my name, not the game¡¯s), that I didn¡¯t have a valid use for. Alternately, some of them gave boosts to resource pools or draw times, but with a reset coming up in¡­ four-ish hours¡­ that didn¡¯t seem like how I wanted to spend my day.


    (Wilds Explorer), in contrast, was bordered with a nice, pleasant, sky blue color. Which meant that A) it was probably giving me a card, and B), it still wasn¡¯t going to be impossible to do. It was tasks like this that I¡¯d blundered my way through at the school yesterday, raking in rewards that I frankly hadn¡¯t actually considered at the time.


    I¡¯d attempted an orange tinted task before, and I think that getting near the place actually made people start to turn hostile on me. I wasn¡¯t touching a red one. Probably ever.


    For now, though, I gave a poke to the exploration sidequest, and claimed my reward. And into my inventory popped two copies of [Wanderer¡¯s Sidestep]. And oh, joy of joys, it had *text* on it.


    ¡°Move sideways |---| around an obstacle |---|¡± Well, that¡¯s already a passive aggressive number of blank spaces. Cost unknown, of course, but it¡¯s nice enough to tell me that it uses Grace. Which is, yet again, frustrating. Because this would mark the very first Card I own that consumes that particular resource, meaning I have one more stat to balance and manage and oh whatever, I¡¯ll figure it out.


    I complain a whole hell of a lot, and I¡¯m going to keep grumbling to myself as I plod back down this mountain. But really, this is just one more thing that¡¯s kind of awesome. Every day, now, I¡¯m being pushed to check out something new. To experiment, to learn, and to grow. And I get really, really cool toys. I complained earlier about drawing [Incense], but shit, when I get home, I¡¯m casting that to make my whole apartment smell like some delightful cinnamon blend while I take the longest shower of my life, and it¡¯s just making my life a little better.


    It¡¯s magic. Actual magic. And I¡¯m more or less getting the hang of it.


    And it¡¯s great.


    But I¡¯m still angry at how tall this fucking volcano is.

 Chapter 003

    Hi, my name is Mia, and I¡¯m a fucking wizard.


    This was not how I¡¯d been born, or something I¡¯d earned through anything as petty as hard work and study. It also wasn¡¯t, I hoped, some kind of divine destiny. And I sure as hell wasn¡¯t some prophesied hero, because if I was, we were all in a hell of a lot of trouble.


    No, this was something arbitrarily bestowed upon me. No explanation, no tutorial level either. I just woke up one day with the pale spectres of cards floating around me. Those cards, each of them stood for a single unreal and arcane effect. And I found I could read some of them, and with a little effort, pull them into reality.


    The game (and I did think of this as a game. As a long time nerd, it was hard not to associate a deck of cards with a different kind of Magic.) took the spillover of my emotions to fill its mana bars, and it didn¡¯t take long for me to learn how to raise the caps on those, and start playing with the spells available to me.


    Naturally, I promptly found the only real combat spell I¡¯d been gifted, and blew a hole in the wall of my bathroom. Fortunately, the apartment management was more than willing to believe that the literal explosion came from a burst water pipe or something, so I didn¡¯t have to pay for that. And after a few more test casts in the safer location of ¡®a big open field¡¯, I started to feel like the world was opening up before me.


    The game offered me Tasks to earn more Cards, more power, more options. I was gifted a seemingly random batch of additional spells, and puzzled out how to customize my deck. And suddenly, my life was a lot less... confined. I had the potential for so much, just at my fingertips. Would I battle monsters and gods? Destroy and build companies, organizations, *nations*? Grow beyond the limits of humanity? I had magic. I had *magic*! Who knew how far I could take this?


    I instantly went back inside and hid in my bed for the next three days.


    Here¡¯s the thing. Magic is amazing, and cool, and I derived great joy from some of the simple quality of life improvement spells, like just being able to make my room smell nice. Which became really important when I spent three days cowering under my covers. But me, well, I¡¯m not a hero. I¡¯m not a villain either, don¡¯t get the wrong idea about me. I¡¯m just a wiseass.


    If I was pressed to describe my feelings here, it would probably be as ¡®perhaps a bit suspicious¡¯.


    Magic, out of nowhere? A growing list of powers? A game system that pushed me out of my shell repeatedly over the course of the last few weeks? It reeks of the kind of thing that wants me to spend more time saving the world than relaxing and enjoying life. And you know, my life actually wasn¡¯t so bad! I had enough of a job to pay the bills, a studio apartment that cost too much but had a minimal number of problems, and¡­


    Okay, maybe I wasn¡¯t really enjoying life. Maybe moving across the country for a relationship that was doomed to fail was stupid, maybe leaving all my friends behind left me a bit paranoid about people. Maybe I did just want to crawl into bed and stay there all week. Maybe my introverted nature was less nature, and more just me giving up. And yeah, maybe exploring the limits of my new power *was* good for me. It was nice to be talking to people again, even if half the humans I¡¯d actually spoken to over the last week, I¡¯d been pointing a gun at and threatening.


    But that didn¡¯t mean I wasn¡¯t going to be suspicious.


    Now, that said, it also didn¡¯t mean I wasn¡¯t going to lunge for the Tasks that I thought I could accomplish. Which was why I was driving my old shoebox of a Volvo down to the twenty four hour coffee shop in the middle of the night, and trying to justify my erratic opinions to myself in my head.


    With the reset yesterday, I¡¯d also gotten a new round of Tasks. Since I hadn¡¯t had anything locked in, that meant that it just randomly assigned me a new batch of ten. Sometimes, for reasons I didn¡¯t actually know, Tasks would be replaced before a reset. Usually ones I¡¯d completed, but other times not. So far, it had never sniped one that I was about to finish away from me, so I figured the game knew what it was doing, and I wasn¡¯t that bothered by it, but it was something I was aware of. If I planned on completing one, I usually locked it in just to make sure it would still be there.


    Which was what I¡¯d done here, with (Challenger), and (Exemplar). (Exemplar) I¡¯d actually had before, and this time around, it had upped its requirement; if I wanted whatever reward it would dispense, I would have to ¡®impress ten people¡¯. Now, that might sound like a big deal, but the threshold for impressing someone was actually pretty low. I¡¯d already gotten a couple earlier from, I think, tipping a waitress. Which meant the bar was pretty low. (Challenger) on the other hand, required me to emerge victorious from single conflict.


    By sheer coincidence, I¡¯d just been looking at the Meetup group for a bunch of people who got together late at night to play actual card games. The irony was not lost on me. But I was curious enough to see if hammering someone in a tabletop game was enough to fulfill the requirements, and also curious enough to bump my Curiosity up to 3. I was *also* wondering if I could use either [Adjust] to stack my deck, or [Under Cover Of Fortune] to somehow keep my opponent from fireballing me.


    As if in response to that, as I pulled into the parking lot and double checked my Tasks tab, I saw that something had been replaced by the Task of (Trickster). ¡°Use Deceit to cheat your way to a strength 3+ effect? Nice try, game, but I plan on cheating in much more creative ways.¡± I muttered to the ghostly words. Probably not a challenge I¡¯d be able to complete, since I hadn¡¯t loaded any Deceit cards into my new deck. Certainly, the challenge under it, (Killer), wasn¡¯t going to happen either. Honestly, none of the other Tasks looked appealing either. Even (Wrecking Ball), which held a certain satisfying appeal.


    Breaking out of my shell wasn¡¯t *that* appealing either, but I could deal with it. I already felt a little energized from the prospect of trying out some new magic, and so I¡¯d walked out of the dark sidewalk and into the pool of calm orange light around the coffee shop, pretty sure I was going to be able to at least have a little fun with the handful of cards I¡¯d stockpiled before coming here.


    Buzzing with mana or my versions thereof, trying to keep my atrophied social instincts from driving me into a panic, I stepped inside and looked around. I¡¯d been to this place before, it was a favorite of mine, honestly. Being open all the time was a big plus for a night owl. Selling that night owl coffee was also a point in its favor. But beyond that, it just had a pleasant atmosphere. Yellowish orange lighting, polished wood tables that caught the light on dark surfaces, a pair of winding shelf-walls that divided up the floor nicely and gave individual tables some privacy, while still having a pair of large booths for groups. It was no wonder that every college student within a ten mile radius came here to study. It also smelled like coffee and fresh cookies. You can never go wrong with the smell of chocolate chips.


    Now there¡¯s a thought. Maybe I should slot [Incense] back into my decklist, and see if I can control the flavor. Then I¡¯d want cookies, though. Then I¡¯d probably buy, and eat, a lot of cookies. And if we¡¯re being open about personal problems, I think the last thing I need in my life these days is even more chances to make myself fat. The thought made me smirk to myself as I got in line to order a drink.


    The shop had a bit of a crowd, despite the late hour, but it wasn¡¯t hard to spot the group I¡¯d messaged online. Everyone else was either students, hunched over books and laptops, or loner night owls like me, sitting at the small side tables and purposefully alone. My target was the only three people who looked like they were having fun, and had something on the table that wasn¡¯t work.


    I swallowed the gnawing anxiety that had been my casual friend ever since I¡¯d moved out here, and swallowed a gulp of mocha to go with it. I wasn¡¯t used to *having* anxiety, honestly, and I¡¯d much rather get back to my old, brazen self. So, armed with the knowledge that I could detonate the front of the shop and run if things got too socially awkward, I swaggared up to their table.


    The three guys looked up at me, and before I could label them with snarky names in my head, the sandy-blonde kid smiled gave me a nod. ¡°Hi!¡± He said, way too cheerfully. ¡°Were you the one I talked to who wanted to join our little game night?¡±


    ¡°Hey there. Yeah, that¡¯s me.¡± I pulled up a chair and sat, looking over their current game state.


    Before I could get invested, he offered me a hand in greeting, which I took with probably more force than he was expecting. I¡¯ve got a firm handshake, based on some faded memory of my mom telling me that it was the best way to intimidate new boys that I met. So far, she hadn¡¯t steered me wrong. He recovered nicely, though, saying, ¡°I¡¯m Carlos. The guy in the goth jacket is Scott, and our tall friend is Jer. Normally there¡¯s more of us, but tonight we¡¯re just kind of casually hanging out.¡±


    I nodded at the other two, giving them what I hoped was a winning smile. ¡°Hey. I¡¯m Mia, I¡¯m a fucking wizard.¡± Wait. Fuck. God dammit, brain, why were you holding that sentence this whole time? I pinched the bridge of my nose and clamped my eyes shut. ¡°No, hang on, that¡¯s not what I actually meant¡­¡±


    Scott (or Jer, I¡¯d already forgotten which was which), burst out laughing. A deep, rich laugh that held no malice in it. ¡°Alright, little wizard.¡± He said with a wide smile on his face, dropping the stack of cards he¡¯d been idley shuffling onto the table. ¡°Fight me. I¡¯ve been sitting here watching them fail to actually accomplish anything in their game for an hour. Do you have a deck?¡±


    I had a few. I wasn¡¯t even sure if this would work for the Task in the first place, but I had a feeling that even if it would register a casual game, it would be way less likely if it was both casual, and also not even my own cards. Fortunately, the life of a nerd who never threw things away had some perks, and I had more than enough on hand to assemble some kind of control/murder machine out of my old collection.


    Our game passed by in about three turns, and I lost. Badly. Like, embarrassingly badly. Jer was a surprisingly polite winner, though, and we got through three more of my horrifying defeats while the table warmed up to my presence. It¡¯s always a bit awkward when a new person joins a group, so I tried to joke when I could, and be friendly, and slowly I started to get to know these three in a way that left us all more comfortable.


    ¡°One more?¡± Jer asked me with raised eyebrows, as the two of us glanced over at Scott and Carlos still on the same game they¡¯d been in when I arrived.


    ¡°Yeah, I think we¡¯ve got some time.¡±


    On game two of our third set was when I started cheating. Or, trying to, anyway. I still hadn¡¯t been able to actually eliminate the need to use hand gestures on the pale blue and white images of Cards when I wanted to cast a spell. But I had found out that I could get away with very minimal, or casual gestures, if the intent was there. So, I mixed in the casting of [Fact Finder] with the gesture I¡¯d been using to tell Jer that I was passing my turn to him.


    I was excited enough to see if this worked that I instantly made back the point of curiosity spent, and constantly disappointed. Turns out, ¡°what¡¯s in my opponent¡¯s hand¡± *isn¡¯t* a valid target for a social topic. So, no insider information. Time for a different test.


    Two turns of the non-magical card game later, I was kinda screwed. Jer¡¯s deck vomited enemies onto the field faster than I did *anything*, much less actually progressed the game state. I had one out, though, because of course I¡¯m the kind of person to put hyper-specific cards into a deck. The problem was that I needed to draw it.


    So, while he was busy finishing his turn, I burned all five points of Pride that I had on [Adjust]. And that was Pride I wasn¡¯t going to get back anytime soon if this shameful display of gameplay continued.


    That mental nudge in the back of my head prompted me to pick a target, pick a mode, chart a course through turning an arcane abstraction into real change. My deck, obviously, for the first one; the deck on the table, not the Deck in my head. Reorder, for the second. Find that one card that saved my ass in this game, stick it on top. Easy, right?


    The mana drained, the spell did something. Not even a twitch from my deck. But when Jer passed his turn back to me, I found myself drawing exactly the right answer to keep myself from losing outright.


    From next to me, one of the other boys barked out laughter as they watched Jer¡¯s careful plan fall to pieces. ¡°Ha!¡± Carlos threw a mocking gesture over toward Jer. ¡°Finally, your stupid horde mode deck falls apart at the seams! She is a wizard.¡±


    ¡°I told you.¡± I leaned into my earlier comment.


    ¡°Well, Ms. Mia¡­¡± Jer started to say


    I cut him off. ¡°Ms. Wizard.¡± I corrected, with a sip of my rapidly cooling coffee. I frowned down at the cup, and wondered if I could get away with using [Cauldron¡¯s Toil] here without anyone noticing that my coffee was boiling, and that the cup kept refilling itself. I decided against it, though I was totally leaving at least a finger of mocha in my cup so I could do that when I got back to my car. Of all my spells, that one had probably saved me the most actual money over the last couple weeks, and it was the incentive that kept me going out and doing tasks. More rewards like that, please, Game.


    Jer smiled warmly, leaning back in his chair and trying to stretch his legs under the table without kicking anyone with the ten foot poles he called limbs. ¡°I¡¯ll call you Ms. Wizard for the rest of the night if you win this set, how about that?¡±If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, it''s taken without the author''s consent. Report it.


    Oh, poor Jer. Little did the tall kid sitting across from me realize that I was absolutely going to hold him to that.


    Well, okay, a slight correction. [Oathkeeper] was going to hold him to that.


    [Oathkeeper] was a hell of a weird card. And also one I hadn¡¯t had a ton of opportunities to really experiment with and try to break. From what I understood of it so far, though, mostly through using it on myself, it made someone keep a promise. It wouldn¡¯t magically enforce the oath or anything; this wasn¡¯t an Ella Enchanted scenario where I could solemnly swear that I was going to leap thirty feet up or something and then be able to do it because of the magic. Instead, it just seemed to entirely remove the capacity to think about not doing what had been promised.


    When I¡¯d been low on cash two weeks ago, I¡¯d used it to swear off coffee for a week. It was kind of a low level geas; I didn¡¯t forget that Starbucks existed, I didn¡¯t not want a latte. I just didn¡¯t go in and buy one, and the thought that I could never crossed my mind.


    That had been *with* forewarning and my own intention. ¡°You¡¯re on.¡± I said, my social anxiety banished in the face of caffeine and an hour of casual conversation with people who were generally being pretty cool. The look on his face said that maybe he was rethinking that plan, but the Card I flicked into reality at the cost of three Determination said that he was going to keep that promise fairly well.


    Unfortunately, my first test on another human subject did nothing to clear up the |---| on [Oathkeeper]. I knew it could do more, I could *feel* that it could do more. I just had no idea what, and I didn¡¯t want to try to press it over something as lighthearted as a friendly game with a friendly guy.


    I hadn¡¯t played this game in a while, honestly, which was probably why I kept losing. It¡¯s hard, when you don¡¯t have friends and have convinced yourself that leaving the house is a sucker¡¯s bet, to find people to play card games with. But now, I was brimming with enthusiasm; I was full of coffee, about to complete a nice looking Task, and for bonus points, Jer was gonna call me Ms. Wizard for the rest of the night.


    The feeling was enough to tick my Determination steadily back up, and as the game progressed through the turns, I felt like I should have a Smugness stat to go along with it while I prepared to deploy my secret weapon.


    Turn eight. I was not doing well.


    Turn nine. I was screwed.


    Turn ten. Let¡¯s find out if [Under Cover Of Fortune] worked on hostile game actions.


    All four Spite I had poured out as I passed the turn over and cast with the same hand gesture. I never bothered to flex Spite any higher than four, anymore. The only other thing I had that used it was a Card called [Headache], and I knew everything it did. Which was, literally, to give someone a headache. No secret use, no double meaning, just¡­ pretty straightforward, really. It was one of my starter Cards, and it was probably never going back in my deck. So all the Spite I ever needed was enough to cast my favorite spell ever, and see exactly how it messed up Jer¡¯s game plan here.


    He moved through his turn quickly, frowned at his cards, thought for a moment, and then passed back to me. I quirked an eyebrow in suspicion, but then noticed my fresh new protective effect expiring, the little floating ghost card icon in my vision poofing away in a spiral of blue flame. So, it had clearly done *something*. I shrugged, started my turn, drew the one card that killed everything he cared about, and promptly used it.


    By this point, the other two had finished their game and were watching ours play out. And as Jer watched his board state go up in flames, and the game end in a loss for him, Carlos leaned over and poked one of the cards in his hand. ¡°Why didn¡¯t you just use this?¡± He asked.


    ¡°I¡­ hm. I forgot.¡± Jer said. ¡°Must be getting tired. Well, Ms. Wizard! Fine games, fine games. Thank you for playing with me.¡± He gave me a smile that painted his face with cheer, and I suddenly felt pretty bad about using him as an unknowing test subject.


    ¡°You too. Um, you don¡¯t actually need to call me that.¡± I told him.


    But Jer was having none of that, and now I couldn¡¯t tell if it was [Oathbreaker] in action, or just his boisterous personality. ¡°No no! I made a promise. But, I seem to be a bit exhausted, so the night for me is going to end here.¡±


    ¡°Same here.¡± Scott said, toying with the silver studs on the jacket that I¡¯d bet the young man had owned since high school.


    ¡°Well, you¡¯re my ride, so that¡¯s it for me, too.¡± Carlos said, starting to pack up, and just like that, my little night out was done.


    We said our goodbyes, I promised to come out again sometime, and I tried to keep my guilt at my own blatant ethics violations to a minimum. Carlos and Scott took off, and Jer offered to walk me out to my car. Charming, if a bit awkward. I got the feeling he was developing a crush on me, though maybe I was being egotistical. It¡¯s not like I¡¯m the best judge of personality. Still, I said okay, and while I waited for him to use the bathroom before we left, I took the chance to draw a Card. That gesture was really dramatic, so I¡¯d missed a few draw chances. But I wasn¡¯t that put out. Half an hour actually went by fairly quickly, and I spent a lot of time with a full hand if I wasn¡¯t actively experimenting. [Archive Moment] popped into my hand, and I started wondering if there was any way I could earn back enough Pride to test this before the night was over. Probably not, but it was something to keep in mind.


    ¡°It was good to meet you.¡± Jer said as we walked out into the cool 2 AM air and started heading the two blocks away to the public parking lot we¡¯d both stashed our cars in. ¡°Carlos has a very spotty track record of inviting new people to join us, so I¡¯m glad¡­¡±


    He trailed off as we both heard a screech of tires, and curiously peered down the street to see what the hell was going on.


    On the other side of the paved lot was a public park; a bunch of trees on one half with a little play structure in it, and a fountain and lawn on the other side. All of it up against the small road that led through this part of town. And right now, down that road, some neon yellow muscle car with a spoiler the size of some aircraft wings was swerving itself back and forth across both lanes.


    Jer frowned. ¡°Must be drunk. The bars did just close. Ms. Wizard, do you have a phone? Someone should call the police¡­¡±


    I wasn¡¯t really paying attention. My mind instantly snapped to two different things. One; did Jer not have a cell phone? That was weird. And two; this wasn¡¯t normal. This was a Thing. A Situation, an Event, whatever you wanted to call it.


    Ever since getting my Cards, reality seemed pissed off at me. Stuff kept happening around me. Usually it was little things; an argument, someone being rude in line at the grocery store, someone dropping their wallet, that sorta thing. Other times, it escalated, and I saw people starting fights, car accidents, and petty crimes. And sometimes, a couple times now, it¡¯d gotten dangerous.


    For a while, I ignored it. Kept my head down, didn¡¯t make trouble. But it keeps happening around me, it¡¯s not backing off. And I¡¯ve started to develop this paranoia-slash-theory that my power is causing some kind of ripple in reality that¡¯s attracting every problem in the area.


    Like drunk drivers.


    So when the car hits the curb and jumps onto the sidewalk, I¡¯m not super surprised. When it comes barreling across two hundred feet of lawn like it¡¯s making a beeline for the two of us standing there in the parking lot, I¡¯m already reacting.


    When Jer reacts too, and rushes forward to throw me out of the way, that sort of impacts my concentration a bit. I land on my ass on the pavement, and barely have time to be glad I wore jeans and not a skirt.


    The car¡¯s tires scream as it hits the parking lot, engine roaring as the drive doesn¡¯t see us in the dark, or just doesn¡¯t care, or maybe they¡¯re already asleep at the wheel. Doesn¡¯t matter, because Jer isn¡¯t moving fast enough, and this stupid green nightmare of a vehicle is closing the gap fast.


    Two Determination gets spent by reflex, and I fling my arm out by way of target selection. And as the car is passing in front of me, bearing down on where Jer is still trying to turn to run out of the way, my [Blast] catches it under the front tire.


    There¡¯s a sound effect that I¡¯ve only ever read, and not heard. It¡¯s the word ¡°krakoom¡±, and it shows up several times in Calvin and Hobbes. I always associated it with some kind of golden age sci-fi ray gun, but now, I think I know exactly what it sounds like out loud. The detonation isn¡¯t spiked forward into the car, it¡¯s a ball of force that slams a hole into the asphalt as effectively as it shreds the front wheel and flings the vehicle at a forty five degree angle, metal and stone being eviscerated with a cacophony of chest-shaking noise that I can only describe in one way.


    Krakoom.


    The car, now tilted, away from Jer, slams into the ground where it¡¯s now missing a tire, shedding speed rapidly as it skids off to the side. Still weaving out of control, it jerks to the left, skidding around my new friend, before the driver tries to regain some measure of steering, and whips it back around again.


    He promptly crashes into a parked vehicle, though hopefully at a low enough speed that no one¡¯s dead.


    I stand up, wincing at the pain in my ass as I brush off my pants. Walking over, I pat Jer on the shoulder. He¡¯s standing there breathing heavy, eyes wide. ¡°Damn, that was close. You okay?¡±


    ¡°I.. you¡­ what just..?¡± He trails off, alternating between looking at the hole in the parking lot, and the wrecked vehicle behind him. ¡°My car¡­¡± He moans. ¡°And that explosion¡­ what was that?¡± He¡¯s actually kinda cute when he¡¯s confused, like a puppy. A puppy with enough upper body strength to fling someone like me when he wants to.


    I shrug. I¡¯ve already got my phone out, dialing emergency services. My hands are shaking now as the adrenaline wears off, and my voice is unsteady as I relay the address and incident. I was going to go check on the guy in the car, but I find my legs unsteady, and I sit instead, half-collapsing onto a curb and spitting a glob of coffee-infused saliva onto the dirt behind me. Jer joins me a second later, and I see him also trying to keep his hands steady.


    That was where the EMTs found us when they showed up to get the guy out of the wrecked car. It wasn¡¯t that hard, and he wasn¡¯t bleeding to death, which was nice. I wasn¡¯t planning to ever finish off the (Killer) task, after all.


    Sadly, Jer¡¯s car wasn¡¯t as lucky. Maybe that was my fault. I didn¡¯t know, but it seemed like a fair trade for his life. He informed me that it was okay, and he had insurance, but he still looked like a puppy someone had kicked as he pulled his coat out of the back of the crushed vehicle. I offered him a ride home, figuring it was the least I could do. The other casualty of the night had been the remainder of my mocha, the proud drink having sacrificed itself when Jer tossed me. That didn¡¯t make me feel guilty, but it did suck.


    Jer was the kind of person like me, who processed events like this in silence until he had something to say. No rambling from him, as I very, *very* carefully drove us down dark and mostly empty streets. Just quiet contemplation. It wasn¡¯t until we got to the apartment building that he lived in that he spoke up.


    ¡°I don¡¯t know if I know what happened there.¡± He said. ¡°I feel like I should thank you, though?¡±


    ¡°Don¡¯t thank me.¡± I said, phrasing it as an order rather than humility. ¡°We just got lucky. Car¡¯s tire must have popped or something.¡± I lied through my teeth, wishing him out of my car before he pressed the matter.


    He didn¡¯t leave, though. ¡°No it didn¡¯t.¡± Jer said, confidently. ¡°And you know that.¡± He shook his head at me, like I was a naughty child for trying to deliver such an obvious lie. ¡°What actually happened?¡±


    I was going to consider my options, then kick him out of my car, but my tired brain was already operating on a sort of autopilot, and had decided that I¡¯d screwed with this poor guy enough that he deserved some kind of answer. ¡°Hi.¡± I said with a tired voice. ¡°My name is Mia. I¡¯m a fucking wizard.¡±


    He didn¡¯t smile or laugh, and I saw something in his eyes that made me feel like he didn¡¯t believe me. But then he nodded, and popped the door open to get out, and said one last thing before leaving me to drive home alone. ¡°Well, it was good to meet you. Thank you, Ms. Wizard.¡±


    I didn¡¯t know what to make of that.


    When I did finally make it home, and threw myself with aplomb into my bed, I had one last thing to do before I passed out. Well, two things, but one of those was taking a shower, and that could wait for the first thing. Unfolding my hands to open up my menu, I flipped my imaginary spellbook over to the Tasks page. I¡¯d held off on doing this in public, since I¡¯d realized how weird it looked when I read things that weren¡¯t there for other people, but now I finally got to see if my plan had worked. And there, to my delight, were multiple Tasks glittering with completed status.


    (Challenger) was done. I wasn¡¯t actually sure if it was my eventually victory at cards, or if it was nuking the drunk driver out of his kill-trajectory that did it, but either way, it was done. (Exemplar) was also finished, which confused me, and led to me trying to count off people I could have impressed. The three guys, plus two I already had. Maybe the EMTs? They hadn¡¯t really talked to us. The police officers that showed up had talked to Jer, but I¡¯d stayed back and not given a statement, worried that one of them might recognize me, *especially* if it was the guy whose life I¡¯d saved last week. The math didn¡¯t add up, so it must have been people in the coffee shop, which meant the bar for impressing someone was super low. Finally, to my surprise, I actually *had* gotten (Wrecking Ball). I¡¯d done at least $5k worth of property damage. Five thousand dollars? How bloody much did that asshole spend on his rims?! All I did was blow up one tire! I didn¡¯t even do structural damage! Or at least, I didn¡¯t think so. Maybe [Blast] was *yet another* Card I didn¡¯t fully understand the impact of. Finally, I¡¯d gotten (Quick Thinking) for solving a problem within ten seconds. That one had shown up sometime when I wasn¡¯t looking, and it was a low-risk color, which made me snort derisively.


    Regardless, I accepted them all and checked out the rewards. (Quick Thinking) gave me two points of resource pool increases, which was actually great this early in the week, and I welcomed it. (Wrecking Ball) handed out a card called [Forge In Flames], which shockingly, told me outright what it did. Mostly. Trade away some Determination in exchange for being able to create a physical object that would last for one hour, with the timer ticking slower and the object size and complexity going up, depending on how much danger I was in.


    Danger was such a fluid term. Did the Game consider the looming economic crisis to be danger? Did I get to use this to summon two months of Ferrari because of my student loans?


    (Exemplar) offered me an instant choice when I selected it, which was new, but also kind of cool. Two images appeared before me; a book wrapped in silver wire, and a crown that was rusting around the edges. I reached out and poked the book, and nodded in acceptance as three copies of [Journey And Destination] added themselves to my inventory. I would have nodded more energetically if they¡¯d told me anything beyond that they increased Curiosity, but I suppose one card without a |---| was enough for today.


    The last one was (Challenger). I may have cheesed my way to victory, but the Cards didn¡¯t seem to care. And for this one, my prize was twofold. First off, I felt, more than saw, thirty cardbucks - still needed a better name for those - add themselves to my inventory. At some point, hopefully, I¡¯d get access to something to spend those on. The other thing was two copies of [Smiling Lunge], and it caught my eye because it was the first time I¡¯d ever seen something that did what it did.


    [Smiling Lunge] was my second Card that used Grace, and it was the first Card that drew other Cards. Or, more specifically, drew three, and then I picked one to use right that instant. And I already saw how that could get me out of a dangerous situation where it looked like I had no options; just as easily as I could see how there was, without *any* doubt, going to be a point in my life where I drew three copies of [Blast] off this, and blew up someone¡¯s porch or something.


    Bah. I shouldn¡¯t complain. It¡¯s something new, it¡¯s something cool, and it¡¯s more toys and tools to play around with. Everything that I was rewarded with just made me feel even more like I¡¯d made the right call to go out tonight and try to make some new friends. I sighed and smiled as I lay back and started to doze off, confident that the challenges of tomorrow were something I could handle, as I casually looked over my card pool while my eyes grew heavy. I was sure now that it wasn¡¯t an accident. Things were getting weird for me, and that danger wasn¡¯t going to slow down. I¡¯d need every dumb trick I could get if I wanted to rise to the occasion. Which meant I''d probably need to touch up my deck, and force a Reset.


    But that was fine. I¡¯d been hiding inside long enough. I¡¯d been worshiping my bed like it was the only safe place on Earth, and avoiding other people like the plague. But that wasn¡¯t what I wanted to be, or what I wanted to do. And it especially wasn¡¯t fitting with the grand image of what I wanted to grow into.


    After all, I was a fucking wizard.

 Chapter 004

    Terrible Fucking Timing should be my middle name. I¡¯m not sure if you¡¯re allowed to have a middle name with spaces in it, but I used to know a guy with two middle names, so I¡¯m sure that I could make it work, from a legal perspective. Or maybe I could hyphenate, the coward¡¯s way out of shortening complex ideas.


    All of this was a roundabout way of saying that I¡¯d forced a reset last night so that I could test out some new Cards. [Journey And Destination] went in, so did [Forge In Flames], along with a couple of others that I just hadn¡¯t tried yet. I¡¯d opted not to risk [Smiling Lunge] for now, since I was really still trying to figure out what my capabilities even were, and relying on luck to get me out of tricky situations seemed¡­ well, actually, like exactly my thing. Still, I¡¯d made my choices for experimentation, which actually left me pretty spread out in terms of different mana pools I¡¯d need to keep filled. But it got me closer to the Task of using a bunch of different cards, so I wasn¡¯t complaining.


    Immediately after that was when I¡¯d decided to check what Tasks I had available, and found that (Investiture) was prepared to reward me for using Cards that cost ten or more of something, which was going to be a problem now that I¡¯d cleared away all my resource pools. Also that (Infiltrator) would have given me something if I¡¯d snuck into somewhere I wasn¡¯t supposed to be, a job that would have been a lot easier if I¡¯d bothered to notice it last night, and put [Aura Of Unconcern] back into rotation. Still, no use whining now, I wasn¡¯t going to undo what little progress my mana had made.


    See, the way my main Deck worked, my shitty <Low Quality Beginner Deck>, that is, was that every four hours, I got to choose one of those resources to raise the maximum value of. And those banked, too, so I didn¡¯t lose any while sleeping; unlike my draws. So, when I woke up this morning, I¡¯d had a few bits of magic to pour into expanding my options, and I¡¯d promptly upped my Curiosity to two, so that I could test out [Journey And Destination] before I¡¯d even had breakfast.


    Personally, I¡¯d hoped it was a teleport of some kind. I was wrong, as you probably guessed by the past tense of ¡°hoped¡±, there, but what it actually was turned out to be kind of interesting anyway. A small flickering flame sprite in the shape of a card popped into my vision, marking a new status effect as the spell finished taking my Curiosity and doing something with it. I¡¯d seen these before for other effects, and normally I could sort of guess how much time or energy was left in one of them by how bright and erratic the fire was. But in this case, it was just a solid, steady blue. So I focused on it for a second to let the details pour into my mind, and see exactly what kind of weird blessing I¡¯d hit myself with.


    ¡°On foot, two and a half kilometers.¡± I read aloud to myself as I raided my fridge for leftover curry. A pretty confusing statement, but that was generally par for the course these days in my life. While I sat at my kitchen counter and tried to pretend my tongue was tough enough for the spice level I¡¯d ordered last night, I pulled out my phone and started looking at local area maps.


    Turns out it¡¯s really hard to get the standard map app to just show you an exact circle around your location. But after five minutes of trying and failing to make my job easier, I just gave up and started guessing at what I was being pointed to.


    ¡°Park. Neighborhood. Taco Bell. Gas Station. Oh hell, that¡¯s a main road, there¡¯s a dozen things there.¡± I grumbled as I finished my food. If it was trying to send me to a specific place, then I¡¯d basically have to go and walk a fifteen kilometer circle to figure out which one it was. Or, rely on accurate and constantly updating information from my little HUD here, to help me triangulate where I was supposed to be. I¡¯d have to use *math*. It was already making me think in math, and that was just rude.


    The other problem was that, for some reason, it specifically said ¡°on foot¡±. My current theory was that this was some kind of karmic response to my leaving the house yesterday. I¡¯d done it once, and was being punished for it by being asked to do it again. That was actually just silly, of course, but the more I thought about it, the more I realized that I didn¡¯t actually know anything about this spectral interface overlaid on my eyes and the literal arcane acts it permitted. I didn¡¯t know if it actually *did* want me out of the house, or if it was encouraging me to exercise more, or if it secretly hoped I was hit by a bus. I didn¡¯t even know if it could ¡®want¡¯ things, though if it did, that was pretty worrying for its own reasons.


    Of course, it didn¡¯t stop me from putting on my shoes and going out into the bright, chilly afternoon. It didn¡¯t motivate me to do it quickly, either, and I ended up lounging around in sweatpants for an hour, using the excuse of drawing up to a max hand size again to browse Youtube before actually leaving.


    The last thing I did on the way out the door as I psyched myself up for this short walk was to fire off [Potential]. My Curiosity always refreshed quickly these days, as there was always at least one thought boiling in my brain, wondering about what I can try out the next time I draw something specific. So I never felt bad about using the one-Curiosity-cost spell. The feeling of it was always interesting, too. [Potential], targeting myself because I¡¯d never figured out if it *could* do anything to another person or thing, felt like a cup of hot chocolate on a rainy day. A thick blanket on a cold night. A good book, a quiet room, and a low yellowed light burning in the dark. It was comfort, and peace, and satisfaction.


    It also gave me a point to improve a resource pool, which I immediately put into Spite.


    I wasn¡¯t sure if ¡®dramatic irony¡¯ was a stat, but if it was, I looked forward to never having to worry about resource management for *that* one.


    Seriously, though. Growing my max Spite up to four was usually a priority for me after a reset, these days. Because it got me to my favorite and most instantly useful Card, [Under Cover Of Fortune]. It turns out, people deal with hostile actions on a constant basis. And ever since I¡¯d been able to shut down some of them seemingly at random, it was like the feeling of having a tooth fixed that had been bothering you for months. A sudden absence of pain, that I sure as hell wasn¡¯t giving up if I could help it.


    I hummed to myself as I walked, half-vocalizing lyrics to a song I didn¡¯t really remember the words to as I strolled through the end of summer. The seasons changed fast around here, and this was probably going to be the last day of sunlight, if not warmth, before the rain started for a while. I kept my interface closed, just generally thinking to myself as I walked, in no particular hurry to get where I was going.


    Not that I knew where I was going anyway.


    I actually usually kept the interface closed in public. Ever since the Great Google Glass Extinction Event back in the ancient days of 2015, it looked pretty out of place for someone to be frantically gesturing to themselves while walking alone down a sidewalk. And I was, if nothing else, extremely self-conscious of how random strangers passing by in their cars saw me. So the only thing I really had visible was the draw timer. I took advantage of that at a crosswalk to pull another Card into my hand, and got myself a [Wanderer¡¯s Step] for my trouble. I should, at some point, up Grace so that I can actually try that one out, though since I¡¯m not out for a hike in the middle of the wilderness, I kind of question how useful it could be.


    I mean, I¡¯m not stupid. It¡¯s literal magic, so I know it¡¯s going to do *something*. But it feels like it might be better suited to exploring the great outdoors, rather than sneaking around the suburbs.


    Lost in my thoughts, I kind of drifted through the walk to the main road I was aiming for to start with, to try to find my destination. My plan, initially, was to start here, and check the status periodically to try to triangulate where I was meant to go. Maybe take a turn down the street, and just look over every business and fast food place for, I dunno, some kind of crisis that I was being guided to.


    So I was a bit surprised when I opened up my interface to see that I¡¯d closed almost all of the distance to whatever target it had set me on.


    Instinctively panicking that I was missing something, I jerked my head around to try to spot whatever I was supposed to be looking for, only calming down once it became clear nothing was on fire. So, taking a breath and going against my better judgement, I kept the interface open so I could keep an eye on the status effect, flipped a mental coin, and went left.


    Turned out that was the right direction. The distance kept ticking down as I went, and it was only a few blocks before it neared zero. ¡°So, where the hell am I supposed to be here?¡± I asked out loud, following it up with a, ¡°Sorry, not you.¡± To a passing man in a coat and tie.


    There was nothing here. A car dealership, my favorite thai restaurant, a side street that just looped back around to closer to my apartment again. A few trees, leaves starting to turn colors, but fundamentally unthreatening. Nothing. Nothing of note, anyway. Unless the self serve car wash was somehow my destination.


    Hell, maybe it was. I shrugged, and started walking toward it, and in just a few steps, the distance counter ticked down to zero. The status icon burned up, sudden and bright in my vision, and I flinched back from it. Hope nobody saw that.


    What also caught me off guard was the immediate feeling afterward. It was a rush of energy, similar in texture to [Potential], but a lot more vibrant, and awake. I focused on it while it ran down my arms and into my fingers, and found that I was being offered a similar choice on what resource cap to increase. The feeling faded quickly, but the points still sat there in my interface, waiting to be used. All three of them.Unauthorized use of content: if you find this story on Amazon, report the violation.


    So that¡¯s what [Journey And Destination] did. Basically a self-assigned Task that rewarded stat increases in exchange for taking a short trip. A good deal, if one that was frustrating to someone like me who preferred not to walk everywhere like some kind of healthy human being.


    I suddenly felt exhausted. Standing there on the sidewalk, leaning on the fence outside a car lot, watching traffic go by. It wasn¡¯t the walk, that wasn¡¯t enough to tire me out no matter how out of shape I¡¯d let myself get. No, it was more just being existentially tired, down to my bones. Everything from the last week catching up to me. I briefly considered testing to see if [Forge In Flames] could manifest a cigarette and a lighter. The habit I¡¯d kicked out of apathy and lack of cash a year ago suddenly feeling like a comfort that I could really use.


    Ah, hell with it. I dumped another point into Grace so I could play with [Wanderer¡¯s Step] later, one into Spite, and the last one into Determination, which brought me up to three.


    Unfurling my Hand, I snagged [Forge In Flames] out of the row of Cards, and tried to feel what the Card wanted from me, rather that relying on the text it showed. I pushed the shape of the tool I wanted at it, showed it what it needed to be, tried to hold the image of a decent smoke in my head. And then, the Determination drained from my mana pool, and a blob of orange light folded itself into existence over my open palm. A second later, it resolved into a sleek metal box, and the lighter dropped into my hand.


    I waited for a second, but no similar effect materialized a cigarette between the fingers of my left hand. ¡°...Okay, fine. Only one thing at a time.¡± I fidgeted with the lighter for a while, smiling tiredly at the small flame. It certainly felt real, solid and cold steel even though it had only existed for a few seconds. I lowered myself down to take a seat on the curb, and watched the traffic go by while I tried to get a feel for how long this was going to last.


    It was a nice afternoon. Just sitting, watching the cars and occasional pedestrian go by, enjoying the last breath of summer air. Even without restarting my tobacco addiction, it felt... not good, but peaceful, to just sit for a while. Not worry about moving around too much.


    Of course, then I had the worrying thought that the longer I was outside, the more likely it was that a building caught on fire or a car crashed, and I¡¯d be morally called upon to try to save someone or fix a thing. Sighing, I got up, shaking some feeling back into my legs. Time to head home, before anything went horribly wrong.


    I got about one block toward home before I passed by a problem. On the other side of the street, a couple of dumbass teenagers yelling at each other, looking like the dumbest street fight ever brewing. I didn¡¯t want to listen, I really didn¡¯t. I didn¡¯t care. Not today. I wasn¡¯t feeling it, I just wanted to go home.


    Then one of the boys shouted something about being owed twenty bucks, and slugged the other one.


    Ugh. Okay. This was going to be happening.


    I started flicking my hands around like a nutjob as I crossed the street casually toward them. Once for [Potential] again, pouring it into Spite. Then using all four of that Spite, which refilled nearly at once, for the [Under Cover Of Fortune] that had been sitting in my hand all day waiting to be deployed. Then to draw, picking up an [Archive Moment] that I didn¡¯t have the time or inclination to use right now. And finally, to fling my still-existent lighter at the aggressor''s head.


    ¡°Stop that.¡± I said, in the most bored and commanding tone I could, when I was halfway across the road and standing in the little island of dirt and trees.


    It didn¡¯t work, and the guy who wasn¡¯t currently sprawled on the sidewalk yelled something offensive and probably sexist (I wasn¡¯t really paying attention), lunged out into the street like he was going to try to punch me too, and promptly got hit by a car.


    Even *I* didn¡¯t see that one coming. But as [Under Cover Of Fortune] burned itself out, I grimly realized that ¡®failed due to luck¡¯ could, and *did* apparently mean a whole lot of possible failure conditions. Up to and including not noticing speeding vehicles.


    Okay, so, the car was only going about twenty; this was a school zone after all. But still, fucking hell, that scared the shit out of me. And I kinda felt bad for the guy - I¡¯d just wanted to stop a small fight, not hit someone with a Subaru.


    Also, shit, I needed to get out of here. Maybe it was selfish of me, but I refused to be that one person that was always around when the police showed up to deal with a situation. I¡¯d seen enough episodes of Supernatural to know how much of a bad idea it was to be noticed like that, especially if I wanted to keep my powers a secret until I was good enough with them to not need to anymore.


    So I turned and ran. Just fucking booked it down the middle of the street. There actually weren¡¯t a lot of cars, so after a half block, I cut over to the sidewalk and took a side street. And made the mistake of looking back, to see jackass¡¯s buddy chasing me. He shouted after me to wait up, and I just straight up ignored that request. Heart pounding, I tried to put some distance between us, but as mentioned, I maybe wasn¡¯t the best at running.


    Taking the second best option, I ducked into one of the seemingly omnipresent car lots around this area, and started weaving between parked vehicles out on their asphalt desert. Still not responding to the angry ¡°get the fuck back here¡± from my heels, I tried to keep steady enough to fan out my Hand while sprinting.


    Hoping, *begging*, that this worked the way I needed it to, I burned off my pool of Grace, and swept my arm out in a wide swing in front of me. [Wanderer¡¯s Step] blurred out into reality, a thin bubble of a color that wasn¡¯t quite grey forming in the air between me and the structure of the dealership that I was rapidly approaching.


    The the bubble rippled, and the air and warmth and sunlight around me seemed to stand still for a second, until the center of the strange distortion *popped*, and I hit the ground, legs pumping, with the building behind me.


    I came out, slightly shaken but not totally unprepared, in the middle of their little maintenance bay at the back of the building. I caught an employee out of the corner of my eye as I ran back to a different connecting street to try to casually make my way home before my legs gave out, but he¡¯d only seen me run past, not warp in. Hell, I wondered what that even looked like, from the outside.


    When I arrived home, it was out of breath, covered in grimy sweat, and with my legs burning and strained like I¡¯d just run a marathon. So, what I was getting out of this was that I needed either more exercise, or less time outside. I basically collapsed into my shower, letting the hot water do its job while I sprawled myself out in the tub, and reopened my interface.


    One more draw to make, which got me [Blast]. A day late on that one, though I guess I¡¯d never be using that on a human anyway. One more point, which went into Compassion. I was sure the guy was fine, but I needed to push myself up to twelve to just have access to [Triage And Stabilize] if-and-or-when it was needed. And then, out of habit, check Tasks.


    And holy shit, if that wasn¡¯t a surprise. I¡¯d been hoping that jumping into the back of the dealership¡¯s building would have given me (Infiltrator), and it did, though I was informed *now* that the security and degree of exclusion actually mattered to the reward, and all I got was a copy of a Card called [Eight Step], which consumed Determination over time to negate the energy cost of every eight step taken. That was actually really cool, and more persistent effects were welcome, but as far as Cards went, this was actually one of my lower powered options now.


    But the other thing that caught my eye was that at some point (Escape Artist) had shown up again. I¡¯d never gotten it the first time around, or bothered with it, since it was a low level. But much like (Infiltrator), that proved to be a clever ruse, and it scaled up with danger and cunning used.


    Apparently, I¡¯d used basically no cunning at all. It gave me no Cards as a reward, instead paying out with one additional Grace regenerated per hour. That was actually sweet, since, and let me tell you something secret, I am a *total fucking klutz* most of the time. Pretty much every dramatic victory I¡¯ve had has come at either using a movement Card, or else falling on my ass while doing something cool. Grace was never going to be regenerating on its own. It was only until the next reset, though, but maybe I could find a way to make use of it until then.


    And finally, (New Horizons). It wanted me to use fifteen different unique Cards. I was actually worried it was going to rotate out before I could get to it, because the Tasks that I¡¯d locked in were both what I assumed were ¡®easy¡¯ repeats that I hadn¡¯t been able to clear yet. But my little burst of testing today had pushed it over the edge, and I¡¯d gotten the payout before it went away.


    The payout came in the form of one {Beginner Locale Pack}. I¡¯d never seen something like this show up before, but the meaning was instantly clear, and reinforced by the minor definition given. A booster pack, a bunch of extra cards. New *toys*. Hell, I¡¯d hit someone with a car on purpose for this.


    ¡°No, not really. Don¡¯t get any ideas.¡± I spoke aloud, just in case my maybe-sentient magical card game was listening.


    The one caveat of this prize was that it came with the note ¡°Contents dependent on local area.¡± Well hell, that could mean a lot of things. Should I go on another hike up a volcano and hope to get lava Cards? If I cracked it at my job, was I going to get spells that made data entry easier? That was so vague as to be unbelievably anti-helpful.


    I knew there must be a way to maximize benefit from it, obviously. There was probably somewhere out there that was brimming with conceptual power, that would net me mighty spells beyond the ken of mankind. And all I¡¯d have to do was seek it out and use this there to gain access to them.


    That ain¡¯t me. In case that¡¯s not clear. So here¡¯s what I got from the pack when I metaphorically ripped the wrapper off, sitting there under the cascade of my shower, and pulled five new prizes out.


    [Bite Of The Water Wolf]. Costs Spite, lots of redacted words, something about hard water. Creepy, but useful if I need to take over a nuclear power plant. [Soothing Cloud]. Costs a fuck ton of Compassion, and again, has most things redacted, but ¡®manipulates local weather¡¯ seems awesome, even if it¡¯s only manipulating it toward rain, instead of away from it. Next up was [Once Unnoticed], which let me spend Deceit to *blank one short term memory of my existence*?! *That* wasn¡¯t even close to okay!


    And yet, without really meaning to, I was already considering how I could Jedi-mind-trick my way to probably never having to work again. Inversely, it would be almost impossible to fire me if my boss could never remember me being late. This might actually be worth exploring for ethical reasons, too; seeing if I could expand it to maybe target other people and offer my services as a trauma therapist.


    Fourth in the line was [Tears Of The Maiden], which didn¡¯t say what it did, or even what it cost, but made me feel personally slighted somehow. And finally¡­ another copy of [Potential].


    It was weird how something could feel new, when it was the one Card you had the most of. But it was the first repeat I¡¯d seen, ever, so it stood out.


    Ever. Sheesh. It¡¯d been a month, tops. And between work, constant crises, and my own moping attitude half the time, the days had just flown by. I couldn¡¯t even tell you how many days I¡¯d wasted, downplaying how useful the Cards were, or just wanting things to go back to being grey and boring so I could lose myself in it. One week of solid rewards had broken me out of that, quite nicely.


    At this point, I was almost looking forward to the Tasks refreshing, just to see what my next adventure could be. Lounged there in the shower, I felt like queen of the world as I drew my next card to start refilling my hand with options and solutions.


    [Journey And Destination].


    I scowled at it and closed my Hand. I¡¯d have an adventure tomorrow.

 Chapter 005

    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.Unauthorized tale usage: if you spot this story on Amazon, report the violation.


    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.

 Chapter 006

    As it turned out, 167 cardbucks wasn¡¯t a whole hell of a lot, as far as the Shop was concerned.


    Okay, sorry, this is jumping ahead a bit.


    I had a shower, I got the nameless girl dressed in sweatpants and an old hoodie, made her the best fucking toast I¡¯d ever made in my life, and tucked her into my bed for what was probably her first night of sleep in a long time.  Throughout it all, the only thing she said was ¡°thank you¡± again, a few times, in that soft half-whisper that didn¡¯t carry beyond precisely where she meant it to go.


    Sleep wasn¡¯t really my goal, though.  It was, unbelievably, only late afternoon by now.  And as I thought over this girl¡¯s condition, I felt like I would be a little too terrified to close my eyes tonight anyway.


    How fucking *long* was she in there?  How long does it take for someone to learn how to vanish in plain sight, how to whisper without casting your voice?  How much time has to pass before a teenager gets the ability to use more than two words at a time ground out of them?  Before their clothes are less usable than the rotted rags they can find in a broken world?


    How long had she been alone?


    I¡¯d taken more than a little while to compose myself after that realization, opening up all the windows to let real light in and turning the heat on to try to banish the pervasive chill that still lingered from that place, even after using up the last of my hot water in the shower.


    After that, though.  Once I¡¯d settled back into reality, and made myself some actual lunch and not just bland food I was sure my guest could keep down.  Then was when I¡¯d checked out the shop.


    And holy shit, this card game really had an inflated opinion of what a pack of cards was worth.  Another {Low Grade Staple Booster} like what I¡¯d gotten last night would run me *three hundred* of the damn things.  There were only a handful of options for card packs, though, with a small note that there were still more locked choices that I still didn¡¯t have access to.  There was also a tab for purchasing new decks, though at present, the only options were¡­ insulting.


    I didn¡¯t really want to pay five hundred points for a <Failure¡¯s Limit Of Compassion>.  Though it sounded¡­ not good, but kind of interesting? Almost heavy, in the way that the words flowed.  The effect was undercut by the fact there were identical decks for every other emotion that I had cards for, though.


    Sighing, I closed down the window for the shop.  There were a lot of other tabs in there, but all of them were empty or locked off.  Sometimes, it felt like this game was intentionally obtuse with its information, just to annoy me.  But it constantly felt weird when I¡¯d get frustrated, and then realize that I was griping about the peculiarities of my actual literal magic.


    Flopping down on the couch against the foot of the bed, I draped myself onto the leather cushions like I had nowhere to be today.  Which, I mean, I didn¡¯t. I just didn¡¯t know what to do with the day. I didn¡¯t want to reset just yet; I had a day or two left of this fully stocked deck that I¡¯d put together for the Blood Masks, but it wasn¡¯t exactly suited to casually sitting around the apartment.  Nor was it suited in any way to the handful of new Tasks that I¡¯d gotten to replace the completed ones. The whole list hadn¡¯t rotated yet, but I¡¯d been given a few new options.


    (Urban Explorer) looked pretty promising, as long as it put me in the nearest city and didn¡¯t make me drive to, I dunno, fuckin Seattle or something.  (Gloom Heart) had replaced (Challenger II), and instructed me to *cause someone fucking trauma*, which was¡­


    Okay, I won¡¯t lie, that one might happen by accident.  Life had been weird lately.


    Something had vanished, that I didn¡¯t remember, and I had (Predator) now.  I wasn¡¯t really up for tracking and killing my own food, though. Hell, I got queasy thinking about where my chicken nuggets came from.


    Did none of these seem like things I could do, or was I just being a colossal wuss?  I mean, I had just gotten back from fighting my way through a dungeon a couple hours ago, but there was still a lot of day left, and not much for me to do.  I could always take on (Grand Guardian) before it vanished at the end of the cycle, but that was probably both stupid, and also put me back into the problem of ¡°what qualifies as a threat¡±.


    I wasn¡¯t, after all, able to arbitrarily detonate the abstract concept of global warming.  *Yet*. I¡¯d get there.


    I let out a groan, before rolling off the couch and stretching on the floor before hauling myself to my feet.  It wasn¡¯t like I actually wanted to leave the apartment, I decided as I locked (Urban Explorer) into my active Tasks selection and got the indication for where I needed to go.  It was more that I just¡­ needed more options. More Cards. More powers and choices and flexibility.


    Also less sitting around.  I could have handled sitting around if I didn¡¯t have a sleeping guest that I didn¡¯t want to wake up, and had anything in my Netflix queue that I was excited for.  But short of rewatching season two of Gilmore Girls (again (stop judging me)) I didn¡¯t really have anything to do aside from, you know... reach out and try to attain unlimited cosmic power.


    Maybe I was overthinking it.  My life, as mentioned, had been getting a little weird lately.  I¡¯d missed more than a few days at work; if I *had* friends, they¡¯d probably be concerned.  The neigh-endless stream of crisies that kept showing up had really cut down on what had been my favorite part of this whole randomly assigned magic ability; experimenting with what different Cards could do, and also just making my life incidentally better.


    I wonder if I could find a way to turn this into something profitable?  Ethically, that is. I mean, obviously, I could use [Forge In Flames] to make something, then sell it off on Craigslist before it despawned.  Awkward if it vanished away mid-sale, though I suppose ¡°having my cover blown¡± counted as ¡°danger¡± in a way that would keep it around for a few extra seconds.  Awkward, and also what scientists referred to as ¡°just a giant dick move¡±.


    What were my other options, though?  I¡¯d realized it before, but the powers bestowed upon me put me somewhere between James Bond, and Gandalf.  The problem was, Gandalf wasn¡¯t exactly living the high life, and Bond had his alcohol-fueled car chases sponsored by a government.  And I wasn¡¯t comfortable going up to the FBI and asking if they needed a wizard, even if my resume had a pretty nice bachelors degree and work history on it.  I wasn¡¯t comfortable letting anyone know, honestly. It¡¯s not like I was paranoid, but I was all too aware that magic ostensibly *wasn¡¯t* real, and yet, here I was.  With magic.


    So where were all the other wizards?


    Pulling up a chair at my table, I engaged my favorite feature of this whole system, and started flipping cards from my collection out onto the wooden surface while I brainstormed for my next deck, and how I could possibly use it to cheat my way to riches and glory.


    [Adjust] was promising.  I¡¯d technically already used it to cheat, actually, and there was no reason I couldn¡¯t do the same at a gambling establishment.  Though actually getting away with that might be a problem. Not because anyone would notice me cheating, I don¡¯t think that¡¯s actually possible unless there¡¯s some kind of underground wizard casino.


    Note to self¡­


    But no, what worried me was actually getting good enough at poker in some respect to reliably turn my limited use spell into money advantage.  I¡¯m not much of a math person. Or a gambling person. Or a risk person, despite all evidence to the contrary. Still, it went on the back burner.  What else did I have?If you come across this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.


    [Growth Spurt] and sell off giant strawberries?  [Incense] on demand for offices or gym locker rooms that want to smell nice?  Hell, I dunno, maybe just rent out uses of [Blast] to whatever companies did strip mining?  Or maybe special effects for rock concerts. Green Day still toured, yeah? I¡¯d trade a bit of magic for some backstage passes.


    Actually, shit, between [Blast], [Friend Of The Firefly], and depending on how it worked, [Shimmering Fate], I might actually just be a one-woman special effects department.  Maybe there was a career for me in Hollywood, where no one would ask questions as long as it cut down on the budget reports.


    I had a fantasy idea of how Hollywood worked.  I wasn¡¯t giving it up.


    Those all went into the maybe pile, along with a note on my phone to look up companies that did practical effects later, and maybe see if I could convince one of them to hire me.  Oddly enough, I¡¯d have to go for that over *actually being a stage magician*, since not a single one of my Cards enabled me to do smooth looking tricks. The problem with real magic, it seems, is that it doesn¡¯t look like real magic.


    Into the ¡°no¡± pile went things that were pretty much just weapons and tools for outright crime.  [Headache], [Once Unnoticed], and [Aura Of Unconcern] mostly. It was kinda nice to realize halfway through that *most* of my Cards weren¡¯t weapons of some sort.


    Of course, then I started the third pile for ¡°things that are neat but a little awkward to use¡±.  [Oathkeeper] went in there; though I was seriously considering it in place of an alarm clock. I *think* I can promise to get out of bed a certain hour and make it stick, though I¡¯m hesitant to test that on myself in case it either goes wrong, or goes right.


    I like sleep.


    Also into that pile went [Monk¡¯s Bounty], but I still slotted that into my decklist for the next reset anyway.  It spawned a snack? What kind of snack? What *size* of snack? I was really hoping this one was abusable. Or just plain old edible.


    It was about ten minutes later when I was racking my brain for Card combos, in the same style as the exploitable interaction between [Eight Step] and [Wanderer¡¯s Step], that something thumped into my window.


    I looked up.  It was still light outside, but there was a row of shrubbery blocking my view, and the window wasn¡¯t broken or anything.  Now, I¡¯m not the most attentive or investigative person, but I had just almost been killed by silent mannequins a few hours ago, so I stood up and crept to the window, noting that somehow, the girl was still sleeping in my bed.


    As I peeked outside, the shouting started.  Fortunately, it wasn¡¯t aimed me this time; a small collection of people stood out in the parking lot, and heated words were being exchanged.  I over dramatically checked the watch I didn¡¯t wear, and let out a sigh. ¡°Yup. It¡¯s problem o¡¯clock.¡± I muttered to myself, heading for the door with long steps and pausing only briefly to throw shoes on.  Outside, the yelling intensified.


    It took a minute to loop around the exterior hallway to the parking lot that my window faced.  My little studio apartment was crammed into a larger building, crammed into a larger complex. Somehow, despite having green patches of grass and trees between some of the buildings, and a hundred patches of parking lots, it still managed to feel a bit claustrophobic.  By the time I got out to the lot, there were already two people wrestling with each other, while a woman screamed at them about calling the cops, and at least two of my neighbors stood around filming it with their phones.


    Someone had parked their beat up red pickup across the choke point of this little asphalt peninsula, someone else had thrown a bike into the road.  There was also the debris of a cell phone scattered on the sidewalk.


    I think I¡¯ve mentioned before that I¡¯m not a really confrontational person.  Most of how I deal with people is faking confidence and assuming I¡¯ll never see them again.  The special powers helps with that little ego boost I need to deal with things when they get really dangerous, too.


    But a solid month of bullshit, a lot of it involving other people, had really forced me to adapt.  And the one thing I¡¯d learned so far was that a good entrance was critical.


    ¡°Hey!¡±  I projected my voice over them, and made it just loud and startling enough to get them to look up from where one of the combatants - some skinny blonde kid in torn jeans - was currently being held in a headlock by a burly looking older man.  ¡°What the fuck are you doing?¡±


    Perhaps it was the sudden confrontation by a stranger, or perhaps it was that the stranger in question was a five-and-change foot tall girl wearing sweatpants.  But either way, there was a sudden pause in the fight. Even the loud woman, who I assumed was the wife of the older guy, shut up for a second.


    Then they started yelling at me.


    I caught something about someone getting hit by a car, something about someone hitting a car, and something about calling the police.  All of them yelled over each other, with one of my neighbors unhelpfully trying to explain as well, until they ran out of breath, and the kid horsley shouted out at the end, ¡°...and then he broke my fucking phone!¡±


    ...Okay.


    ¡°I¡¯ve decided to call the police.  All of you need to calm down, my¡­ friend?  Charge?¡± I trailed off. What exactly was that girl to me?  I noticed them staring, and dropped it. ¡°Whatever, doesn¡¯t matter.  She¡¯s trying to sleep, and you¡¯re all being¡­¡± I got drowned out by a series of tantrums.


    The old guy dropped the punk, and started stalking over to me, shoving one finger in my direction like he thought it was a loaded weapon.  Screaming about how he¡¯d smash my phone if I touched it. Classy. His wife (and since she¡¯d referenced her husband a few times, I knew she was *someone¡¯s* wife here) was screaming at me to mind my own business.  The kid was¡­ actually, probably in the right here? It seemed like he¡¯d actually been hit by a car. But he was also loud and annoying.


    In my peripheral vision, my Spite ticked up to a worryingly high number.


    I¡¯m not an intimidating looking person.  Like I said, I¡¯m kinda short, kinda soft around the edges.  I don¡¯t strike the figure of a person who could win in a fight with some dude who looked like a construction worker crossbred with a concrete slab.  Which is good, because it seriously makes people underestimate me, and since it looked like my life was going to be an anime-style escalating series of conflicts from now on, that was gonna come in handy.


    Like right now, when I nailed the guy walking toward me with [Headache].  And then, when he staggered and grabbed at his eyes from the migraine I¡¯d inserted into his skull, I kicked him in the dick.


    There was, honestly, a hard upper limit to the amount of yelling I was willing to put up with.


    When his wife didn¡¯t even take a breath between escalating the volume of screaming, I threw the other [Headache] her way too.  Which may have been kinda mean, but I wanted to disable everyone and get out of here before the cops showed up.


    Oh, I totally cheated. I called the police from outside my door.  Honestly, I didn¡¯t even need to be here that much, but I wanted to make sure no one got seriously hurt.


    Which is why I shook off the kid, who was *still* trying to explain to me that he¡¯d been hit so hard his helmet came off, and headed back to my apartment before the actual police got here, or either of these people stood up and tried to take a swing at me again.  I mean, I didn¡¯t just walk back there, I ran off through one of the side yards, and took a couple loops around. And I¡¯d be lying through my teeth if I told you I wasn¡¯t having some serious anxiety that there¡¯d be police waiting at my door when I got home.


    But there weren¡¯t, and after ducking inside while looking around like some kind of low-rent burglar, I kicked my shoes back off at the door and crept over to the window to peek through the blinds.


    The police were already there, and I had another moment of terror as one of them walked right up to the window.  I realized a second later that he wasn¡¯t actually there looking in through my blinds at me, but rifling through the bush for the biker¡¯s helmet.  It took an effort of will to not watch officer Daniels like a hawk as he found the cracked foam shell of a helmet that had bounced off my window, and stalked back to where the other cops has assembled in my parking lot.


    While I stood there and watched someone try to assault a police officer to very little effect, I amused myself by checking off the (Shake Hands) task.  Apparently, this wasn¡¯t a huge hurdle to overcome, because all it did was get me five points closer to a new Pack of Cards.


    There was still muffled yelling going on, but at least it wasn¡¯t going to take much longer.  I let out a sigh as I tried to relax the tension from my body. It didn¡¯t work. Shutting the window and stepping away from the mess outside that I probably hadn¡¯t helped in any actual way, I turned to check on the girl who¡­


    The bed was empty.


    I swept my vision around the room, and didn¡¯t see her.  Had she left while I was out? Was she actually a ghost the whole time?  Was¡­


    ¡°What¡¯s this?¡±  The voice came from my table, and I toppled backward over the arm of my couch as I jerked backward in fright from her sudden question.  I hadn¡¯t even fucking noticed her, and I¡¯d walked right past the chair she was sitting in on the way through my small studio. Did I mention this is a studio apartment?  She just *vanished* when she stopped moving! It was honestly kind of creepy that the human brain couldn¡¯t keep up with it.


    It was also creepy that she was holding one of the Cards that was sitting on the table.


    ¡°I... ¡°  I paused.  ¡°I honestly don¡¯t know how to explain this one, hang on.¡±  I said with a shrug, pulling out a chair and sitting down. My brain ran through some quick mental logic as I watched her trying to read the copy of [Stand In Glory] she was somehow *holding in her hand*.  Putting aside that this meant that my Cards weren¡¯t tied to me, and actually were physical objects in some way when they were out, this was¡­ not the worst thing.


    Most of my fear of exposure came from fear of authority.  The police would probably just arrest me for half my escapades, magic or no, and then commit me to long term mental health care that I¡¯d be trapped in if I tried to explain the wizard thing.  An organization like the FBI or something would, worst case, actually believe me. And then kill me. Or just keep me as a test subject, or something else. And of course, there was always the threat of an actual magic organization out there that I didn¡¯t even know about.


    People?  People could know I was a wizard.  I¡¯d blatantly shown it off in front of some people.  I¡¯d saved a few lives, and I was pretty damn smug about that overall.  I wasn¡¯t going to stick around to do a Q&A afterward, but I¡¯d still do it.


    And this girl?  She was¡­ nobody.  From what I¡¯d gotten from her, she didn¡¯t have, or didn¡¯t remember, a family.  She was afraid of being around more than three people at once, or anything that made noise.  And I¡¯d saved her life. At least once. She¡¯d also saved mine, too, which was a perk. Mutual life saving was a good team building exercise.


    She was honestly the perfect person to trust.


    ¡°Okay.¡±  I said, as I made a decision.  She looked at me by tilting her head at a sudden angle with a movement I didn¡¯t catch.  ¡°First of all, do this.¡± I mimed fanning out a hand of cards. ¡°No, actually make the whole motion¡­ okay, nevermind, you got it.¡±  I watched her face light up with surprise. And then, as she realized that this was what had enabled me to liberate her from her personal hell, some deeper emotion I couldn¡¯t name.


    She made eye contact, and for a second, her still camouflage fell away as her eyes asked a question, and I gave her a small nod.  ¡°Yeah. Okay. So now we know that works. Let¡¯s see what we can get going for you. Oh, and before I start infecting you with superpowers, um¡­ do you have a name?¡±  I realized in that moment that I actually hadn¡¯t ever told her my own, so I capped it with an awkward, ¡°I¡¯m Mia.¡±


    And I spent the next two hours inducting Becca as my official apprentice wizard.

 Chapter 007 - N 001

    As the thing of glistening tentacles and teeth bared down on him, he could only think he was a little underprepared.


    He fanned his hand out, staring grimly at the five cards at his disposal. As the heaving mass began to crawl out of the black abyss that replaced the pool, and he burned the one card that could do anything for now.


    Invisible bonds slammed down onto the creature, imprints like chain links barely visible on its slick, mucusy skin. It gibbered madly, pus-yellow pupils roiling madly against misplaced red eyes. He never found a more apt situation to use the word ¡®gibber¡¯ before, and he hoped he never would again.


    God it was hideous.


    That bought him some time, but he winced as his Pride burnt from 13 down to 3 in one go. The first time he¡¯d used [Chains Of The Worthy] and it had almost burnt out his entire pool. It was one of the harder pools to build up, too. At least, if he didn¡¯t want to look and feel like a total douche.


    He turned and sprinted back into the resort proper, away from the water¡¯s edge, and out from under the pea-green sky. He closed the grimy glass door behind him and allowed himself to breathe a sigh of relief. He looked up at the vaguely A4-sized panel formed by [Cartographer¡¯s Eye]. A floor plan of the decrepit resort was visible within the space, centered around him. It appeared that the only things that appeared on the floor-plan were inorganic, deceased or¡­ excretive... matter; stuff that could be vaguely interpreted as ¡®building material¡¯. The only thing that showed up of the creature outside was the thrashing water around it, its teeth, and a strange, metallic object, which couldn¡¯t be properly seen from a bird¡¯s eye view. He assumed it was the ¡®forgotten heirloom¡¯ he was supposed to retrieve. Not likely.


    He looked back at his area, trying to think of the best way back to the exit, when he noticed that the image of his area wasn¡¯t static. There, approaching him, were countless yellow and white objects.


    Teeth.


    He heard a slight squelch and threw himself to the side, narrowly avoiding the ring of teeth that squealed for his head. He looked at it, then looked around.


    Leeches. Toothed leeches. Great.  Or were all leeches toothed? Teethed?  He didn¡¯t want to be redundant while being bled dry.


    The next one went for his leg, and he smacked it with a baseball bat, before sprinting away.


    He mentally recounted the four cards he had left.


    One copy of [Mocking Cry], two copies of [Biker¡¯s Lunge], one copy of [Draconic Heritage] which he couldn¡¯t use, and - he checked his watch - one minute and forty seven seconds until the next draw.


    Yeah, just run.


    Things came squealing down the corridor after him, surprisingly agile for having no limbs.


    Run faster.


    He kept running. He dodged the slimy mucus that attempted to constrict his path, sticking to the mental map. He still had twenty minutes worth of map left, so he reckoned however this went he¡¯d probably only need that much.


    A thing that look vaguely humanoid stepped into the corridor ahead. It turned, and the similarities ceased to be. A lopsided mouth filled with teeth sat on a head that looked more like a stubby tentacle, the whole body looking like a congealed mass of rotting earthworm and fish offal. Its singular eye stared unblinkingly at him, and it began to screech.Did you know this story is from Royal Road? Read the official version for free and support the author.


    He¡¯d already seen one, so he didn¡¯t slow down.  He did scream a bit, though. But in a manly way!  Like a warcry. Sure, yes.


    He burnt [Biker¡¯s Lunge], the air around his bat beginning to blaze.


    The only specification of the card¡¯s use was that ¡°the caster must mounted on a wheeled form of transport¡±, which would normally be a pretty big limitation. *If*, that is, he¡¯d not been able to find a pair of adult-sized Heelys.


    The thing¡¯s screech was cut off, as the bat slammed into the thing, and kept going. The thing collapsed into a shapeless mass of offal, seeming to sigh as it deflated.


    He finished his slide, breaking off towards the center of the food court, the dirt encrusted signs of fast food joints gazing sullenly down at him. There, barely visible, was a spherical distortion of space. He raced towards it, his gaze only temporarily flickering up to watch his Determination rise by a point. He had about fifty paces between him and his way out. Home stretch.


    Then the tentacle thing slammed through the Chick-fil-A sign, standing directly on top of the orb.


    He stopped as the thing roared in a thousand tongues. That was bad.


    Then his alarm decided to beep.


    Moving quickly, he drew his deck, pulling out his next card, praying to whatever asshole made this system in the first place.


    He looked at the card, then back at the thing, then back at the card. That could work.


    He activated his final copy of [Biker¡¯s Lunge]. Again, his bat shimmered with energy.


    He took a quick look at the map. The metal thing was still there.


    Finally, he looked back at the army of leeches which were crawling out of the tunnel behind, then up at the thing as it began to drag itself towards him, mucus and water flying off in equal measure. At the peak of its mass, a silvery glint.


    Last chance.


    He broke into a sprint, popping [Mocking Cry] as he went. It was a shame he didn¡¯t have something other than [Draconic Heritage] in this situation, but it wouldn¡¯t really help regardless of whether he had the pride for it. [Mocking Cry] activated, and as soon as he got within 20 metres of the thing, he activated the sound of an airhorn right in its center.


    A really loud airhorn.


    The thing shook visibly, losing focus on him for just a moment as it was dazed by the rippling sound. The moment was all he needed. He activated the last usable card in his hand, the fresh draw, while simultaneously jumping and laying himself flat in the air.


    [Wanderer¡¯s Step].


    This counted as ¡®sideways¡¯, right?


    A thin bubble of a color that wasn¡¯t quite grey formed in the air between him and the thing, and he passed through the bubble. He popped out, diagonally up in the air ¡®behind¡¯ the thing, and began to fall towards the bubble.


    But he wasn¡¯t done here. Not yet. He spun in the air, swinging the bat at the metal object, pinned to the side of the creature by a tentacle. His feet touched the side of a tentacle just in time for it to activate, and it sliced through the tentacle. The thing roared in pain.


    Time seemed to slow, and he grabbed for the metal object as he fell towards the exit. He extended his bat towards it, barely out of reach, as a tentacle swung at his side. He touched the exit.


    There was a flash of light, a jarring pain in his back and the dull sound of wood and metal clattering to the floor. Then there was the sound of commotion around him, and one or two cries of alarm.


    He looked down at the floor, where his bat and a small metal gauntlet had fallen to the ground.


    He got up, wincing at the dull but strong pain in his back. That was gonna bruise. There were a few people looking at him, but it didn¡¯t look like anyone had noticed the whole teleporting thing, just the falling over.


    ¡°You alright?¡±


    Somebody called from a table. He smiled back.


    ¡°Yeah, I¡¯m good.¡±


    He walked over, bending to pick up his bat and helmet, making sure not to move his back too much. He looked outside through the glass doors, and saw the pool, filled with people once more, and no longer a black abyss.


    He would wait a while before he did one of these again.


    *    *    *


    By the time he made it back home, he had drawn another card. [Person Of Interest], this time. As he stood in his bathroom, ice pack strapped to his back.


    He¡¯d gotten one out of three objectives for the fittingly named Black Lagoon area, and from the looks of things he couldn¡¯t revisit, even though he¡¯d absentmindedly locked the quest.  It¡¯d probably show up again later, though, like every task did; he couldn¡¯t imagine the thing just vanishing. But he was going to wait out the rewards until the reset, which he¡¯d do tomorrow, in case of any temporary gains.


    He had cast [Person Of Interest] on the gauntlet, hoping that he could get at least something, but it unsurprisingly hadn¡¯t registered, being an object and not a person. Looking at himself in the mirror, he shrugged and mentally readjusted his target.


    It came up with a list of his known prominent social friends, his legal records, his bank balance, and other kinds of pointless data, but he just focused on his name.


    ¡°Nathan Smith.¡±


    He spoke quietly to himself. He smiled, then whispered, the words writing themselves into place under the header of ¡®title¡¯.


    ¡°A fucking wizard.¡±

 Chapter 008

    ¡°...And then she told me that *I* was the crazy one!  Can you believe that? I wasn¡¯t the one who keyed her car, but after what she said to me, I wish I had been!¡±


    I nodded when I heard the pause in the rambling, pretending to pay attention.¡°Uh huh.¡±  I said, maximum effort on my deflection.


    ¡°And now Ralph is threatening to fire Marcy, and on her birthday too!¡±


    ¡°Wow.¡±  I said, putting an ocean of emotional weight into my voice as I kept checking drawers at the desk I''d occupied, still not really listening.


    ¡°But anyway!  You''re Marshall¡¯s secretary, do you think you could pass on a message to him?  Make sure he knows that I need Marcy to keep working here so that Karen won''t be mad at me and that way my daughter gets to stay in her after school program?¡±


    I looked up for the first time at the person talking to me. Leaning on the elevated part of the receptionist desk outside this floor¡¯s pool of offices, she was uncomfortably middle age, too many pearls around her neck, and a red power suit that looked strangely familiar. She has a desperate smile on her cold face, coated in glaciers of makeup.


    ¡°Sure,¡± I said, not meeting her eyes, ¡°I''ll make a note.¡±


    She was gone before I could even pretend to pull out a piece of paper.  Off down the hall to where the interns answered phones all day, presumably to regale some poor bastard who couldn¡¯t escape with her tales of woe.


    I didn¡¯t have the heart, or the level of idiocy required, to tell her that I didn¡¯t work here.


    I¡¯d like to tell you that the trick to getting away with sitting at someone else¡¯s desk and randomly searching through drawers for keys is to just keep doing it when they start talking to you.  Pretend you¡¯re supposed to be there, play it cool, etc. That whole stealth package. In truth, though, I hadn¡¯t really planned that. I¡¯d panicked so hard when¡­ I didn¡¯t know her name but I was gonna call her Karen¡­ started talking to me.  Mostly, I¡¯d kept moving out of anxious energy, not some kind of plan. And against all common sense, it had worked. She¡¯d been so caught up telling me about something I wasn¡¯t listening to that she hadn¡¯t bothered to check if I was actually employed here.


    So, what I¡¯m trying to say here is, sorry Karen!  The boss isn¡¯t getting that message.


    That said, maybe this is just rightful punishment for a corporate culture that doesn¡¯t encourage you to know who the receptionists and personal assistants are.  Maybe next time, don¡¯t be a monolithic insurance company that acts like it¡¯s already the cyberpunk dystopia, I guess?


    I wish I could tell you that was why we¡¯d chosen this particular office building for today¡¯s Task.  Speaking of which, it turns out the keys were in the candy bowl on the corner of the desk, and with that, my job here was done and I needed to reconnect with Becca before whoever actually worked here came back from lunch.


    As I stood up, pocketing the jingling pile of metal passwords, I flicked a Card out of my Hand and into my hand with a gesture that was becoming more and more practiced.  Paying out the three points of Curiosity required, I concealed the small halo of light in my palm, and let the effects of [Shared Discovery] take over.


    ¡°The keys were just sitting on the desk¡±  I submitted the information to the newly formed link between my mind and Becca¡¯s, and waited for her to come up with something I didn¡¯t know to return.  The way this Card worked was actually fascinating, and super limiting, but Becca didn¡¯t have a phone, and I couldn¡¯t afford to get her one right now, so we worked with what we had.  When I cast it, it opened up what felt like a metaphysical waiting room between myself, and anyone I knew. Then I put in something I¡¯d recently learned, that was new information to the other person, and they did the same for me.  Then the spell shared that information.


    Take too long, and it vanished.  Not have anything learned recently, or that was new to the other party, and you got the same.  So it was super tricky, and practically useless, but also kinda cool, and it gave a full sense of the knowledge shared.  Maybe I could use this someday for more altruistic academic purposes or something.


    For now, though, I was using it to tell Bec to meet me by the elevator, and getting back the thought from her of ¡°there¡¯s cake in the break room.¡±


    Good to know.


    I passed by a few other employees as I made my way to the lobby and the elevators.  This was, admittedly, the shakiest part of our collective plan, because it required kind of a lot of people to not pay proper attention.  For me, this meant that it was about time to duck behind a potted plant, and cover the action of pulling and casting [Aura Of Unconcern]. For the next hour now, my Ennui pool would act as a kind of attention shield, and that should be enough to get us upstairs.


    As I stepped into the lobby, and leaned against the smooth marble wall that the elevators faced to wait for Becca, I parsed over the plan in my head one more time.  It wasn¡¯t a great plan, I won¡¯t lie to you, but it wasn¡¯t *that* bad. First off, our objective in breaking into an office. (Urban Explorer), which I¡¯d been stupid enough to lock in a few days ago, had decided the best place I should have to get to was a rooftop.  I¡¯d thought it would be an easy score when I¡¯d checked the area on Google maps, but as soon as I¡¯d driven by, the pull had shifted to *upward*, and I¡¯d spent the whole ten minute drive home scowling at traffic.


    Of course, I¡¯d already locked in the Task, which was a problem, because it meant it wasn¡¯t rotating out.  Which was just¡­ I mean, I don¡¯t know about you, but for me personally? Seeing a thing sitting in my mental to-do list that was never going away just created a large and larger ball of anxiety over time.


    So!  Given that the stakes were kind of low, and probably the worst thing that could happen here was getting kicked out of a building, I¡¯d asked Becca if she wanted to help me sneak onto a roof.  Which led to a quiet question about why, and my much more boisterous explanation of the Tasks menu. Apparently, while she¡¯d inherited the shell of the Game from me, and I could pass off some things like Cards or Decks, she didn¡¯t get the Tasks like I did, or the Shop either.


    After that, she had questions of a more tactical nature.  Asking what Tasks I had available, and trying to help me work out a plan.  One of the side effects of her lack of actual human contact was an almost complete inability to hide the emotions she did have, and it was telling to see the raw hunger written in her face and words when she asked about the kind of rewards we could get for these.  A little unsettling, really.


    Honestly, I got it, though.  I felt like I had the same look on my face sometimes when I looked through my screen.  Mostly I was just super happy that she was getting more comfortable with talking again.  It was probably going to be a long road to recovery for her, and I needed to see about finding a therapist that wouldn¡¯t ask questions.


    Anyway, we¡¯d waited a day for a couple Task rotations, and then snapped up (Infiltrator II) for my locked tasks, and hoped that the weirdly similar (Breach) just stuck around for a bit.  Just the few hours it¡¯d take us to throw our coats on against the cold weather, and make it downtown, and also the time to make sure that the Deck that we¡¯d built for Becca was working, and that she could in fact do the same thing I could.


    I¡¯d given her the <Cast Of The Warrior>, and stocked it with pretty much everything that fit.  That first time I guided her out to the old quarry and showed her how to [Blast] a rock apart, her face lit up like the Fourth of July, and I got this feeling in my chest like I suddenly understood how my parents felt when I graduated high school.  It was great. It even made me feel less bad about giving up my grip on [Under Cover Of Fortune] when I passed it to her for her own deck. Becca was quickly turning into my precious little cinnamon roll, and it took the sting of the loss away to know she¡¯d have a little extra protection.  Then she had to make it awkward by essentially swearing herself to my service as a bodyguard. I *think* she was kidding, but she was my big gun now, and I¡¯d just given her a hug and tried to not notice how much she tensed up when touched.


    Spending that last day and a half experimenting had been that same sense of fun that I¡¯d enjoyed since this system had descended on my life.  And sharing it with someone, even someone who preferred to speak in single word sentences if possible, was amazingly cathartic. Like it validated my choices in a big way.  In a way, it made almost breaking the ceiling of my apartment with a misunderstood casting of [Growth Spurt] worth it. It did not make me any happier to try to find a way to dispose of a new tree, though.


    Which had led to us here.  Realizing the door to the roof was locked, wandering through this building we¡¯d casually slipped into behind an actual employee, and trying to figure out where the fuck they kept the keys.


    Would you believe all I had to do was tell someone I needed roof access, and they told me who normally had the keys?  I was almost insulted. I felt like my (Infiltrator II) rewards weren¡¯t gonna be super high if casual disregard for security protocols were all they had to offer.  Granted, that set of keys had already been borrowed, and I needed to do a little more of my expert ¡®wandering around asking stupid questions¡¯ game to figure it out, but I got there without having to teleport through a wall to escape or punch someone off a balcony.


    Oh, that was something else I¡¯d learned today.  [Wanderer¡¯s Step] didn¡¯t go *up*. I would like to file a complaint.


    So, when I said ¡°plan¡± earlier, that was kind of just a hot lie to both you and myself, as I wanted to collect my thoughts while I watched my Ennui tick down every time someone walked by and failed to fail to notice me.  It was getting awkward waiting for Becca to show up so we could try to slip in behind another employee without swiping our non-existent badges on the elevator keypad. This place had such a fucking weird idea of security; like everyone trusted the electronic locks and chipped badges so much that they stopped asking questions.


    Speaking of, where the hell was Becca?  I looked up, and almost screamed as I noticed her standing literally right next to me, reading something off a clipboard.  You¡¯d think I¡¯d be getting used to this by now, but no. A few days of her presence had yet to innur me to how she seemed to just pop out of nowhere when she did her stealth thing.  Which was always, because she was eternally paranoid. Frankly, I was shocked I¡¯d gotten her out to a place with people, but I felt it was important to get her used to humanity again.


    Trying not to let it show how much she¡¯d startled me, I took a shallow breath and lightly elbowed her.  ¡°Ready to go? Also, what¡¯s with the clipboard?¡±


    ¡°No one talks to people with clipboards.¡±  She told me, in one of her longest sentences yet.


    I mean, I couldn¡¯t really disagree with her.  Probably would have helped if there was any paper on the clipboard that she could have been reading.  As we slipped into the elevator behind a couple other employees after one of them scanned their badge, though, neither of them even glanced at either of us.  Perks of living in a world where people could distract themselves with their phones, and never made eye contact on elevators.


    Also where I had wizard powered cloaking fields.  But let¡¯s not focus on that, I thought to myself with a grin.


    Speaking of those powers, when the two other employees got off on the third floor, I leaned over and punched the button for the fifth, watching one of them eye the now-lit panel for a second before a point of Ennui drained away from me and he shrugged, and stepped out.  Then it was just a matter of leaning back and waiting for those last two floors to tick by.


    ¡°Hey.¡±  Becca¡¯s sudden word drew me out of my relaxed state.  She didn¡¯t talk much, so when she did, it really caught my attention.  I also vastly preferred this to when she tapped me on the shoulder out of nowhere, so we were making progress.


    ¡°What¡¯s up?¡±  I asked her, wincing as another point of Ennui dropped away, leaving me at a paltry three left.  Turns out, [Aura Of Unconcern] doesn¡¯t care if you intend for someone to notice you.


    She didn¡¯t look over at me, instead still mock focusing on her empty clipboard.  ¡°Why¡¯s nothing going wrong?¡±


    Oh my god, you can¡¯t just *say* that.  That¡¯s exactly the sort of genre blind behavior that gets well meaning wizards and their apprentices killed.  In fact¡­ ¡°You can¡¯t just *say* that.¡± I informed her with a tone of high indignation.


    ¡°You said bad stuff happens.¡±  Bec said, almost accusingly. Ah, that was what she meant.  Took me a second to wrap my head around it.


    ¡°Yeah, I mean, things go wrong when I¡¯m just hanging out, but it¡¯s not like everything I do has some kind of mandated level of problem.¡±  I told her. ¡°Besides, I think it turns off when I¡¯m pursuing a Task. Like, nothing went wrong when¡­ um¡­ when I got you.¡± I dodged saying exactly what had happened, it was a touchy subject.  ¡°And anyway¡­!¡±


    The elevator doors opened to show a pair of men in security uniforms, leaning on the desk right across from the elevator, and facing each other as they talked.  Of course, as the doors opened, they were both already looking up and directly at us both.


    See, this is why we don¡¯t say stupid things.


    Keeping myself pressed to the right side of the elevator so my hand was covered by the panel, I fired of my secret weapon.  [Monk¡¯s Bounty] was a Card that I¡¯d gotten the chance to play a couple times since resetting the other day, and I felt like it was going to be one of my absolute favorites.  I¡¯d been saving it, actually, to make some kind of cake thing to split with Becca after the success of our not-heist, but this seemed like a great time to make it happen. The follow up to that, which I only barely got off, was [Steady On], and for the next minute, I could be sure that if I did screw up, it would be because of my own panic.  It did eat up one of my precious Ennui though.This story is posted elsewhere by the author. Help them out by reading the authentic version.


    ¡°Excuse me, miss.  May I see your employee badge?¡±  The older guy asked. He was probably about fifty years old, greying hair that was still hanging on.  His partner was a younger kid, too skinny looking in his nylon jacket. Both of them were staring at me now, in a way that made me immensely uncomfortable.  Probably a bad time to notice that I¡¯d run the well dry on Ennui; should have told Becca not to try to think about me too hard. That was a tactical error.


    Of course, I didn¡¯t have an employee badge.  But what I did have was maybe one level better.  I stepped out of the elevator, holding up the bag newly formed in my right hand.  ¡°Oh, I don¡¯t work here!¡± I said cheerfully, showing them what I was carrying. ¡°I¡¯m just here delivering lunch.  Well, doughnuts. But I don¡¯t judge. Did either of you order anything?¡± I asked in the most casual polite tone I could muster.


    I could visibly see them untense.  ¡°Ah, well.¡± The older guy rubbed the back of his head sheepishly.  ¡°You shouldn¡¯t have actually been able to get on the elevator. It¡¯s employees only on the upper floors.¡±  He told me. ¡°Wait, was there anyone else with you?¡± He peered over my shoulder.


    I just shrugged.  ¡°Don¡¯t think so?¡± I looked behind me; Becca had just fucking vanished.  Her Batman routine was starting to get predictable, and yet somehow, even more impressive.  ¡°Why?¡± I asked, actually kind of curious.


    ¡°Oh, system flagged two people coming up.¡±  He said, in a way that legitimately worried me.  I mean, their reliance on security tech over actual practical common sense was on full display right now, but it was a bit concerning to know that their elevators tracked how many people were on them.  ¡°Who are you delivering to?¡± He asked.


    Now *this* one, I¡¯d actually had a plan for.  ¡°Michael Indrik.¡± I said, with just that right amount of confusion in my voice that delivery drivers always had.  Phrasing it as just not a question. It was a name I¡¯d swiped off the directory downstairs. ¡°It has a note that says it¡¯s for a meeting room?¡±


    The security guys exchanged a look.  Then the kid shrugged. ¡°I mean, the conference room is down that hall, take a right, then it¡¯ll be on your right.¡±  He turned back to me. ¡°If you promise not to steal anything, you can just drop it off and head back down.¡±


    ¡°Aren¡¯t we supposed to escort people who come in?¡±  The gentleman asked, in a way that made me suspect that he was actually the new guy here.


    The kid just shrugged again, scratching at the back of his hands.  ¡°I mean, yeah, but no one cares. And we have to finish our round anyway, or it cuts into lunch.  So¡­¡± Another shrug. This guy was less decisive than I was, and that was saying something.


    ¡°Alright, alright.  You know where you¡¯re going?¡±  Oldy asked me.


    ¡°Down the hall, take a right.  Got it.¡± I gave him a thumbs up and started walking.  ¡°You guys have a good one!¡± I called back, cheerful and not suspicious.


    Technically, I shouldn¡¯t even code myself as suspicious.  I mean, I was breaking into their building, but I remember reading something a while back about how it wasn¡¯t actually a crime to be somewhere you weren¡¯t supposed to be if you didn¡¯t damage anything to get in and didn¡¯t steal anything.  None of that really mattered as I started trembling a bit as soon as [Steady On] wore off. Turns out, my fear response is irrational and inconvenient. At least it didn¡¯t feel like all the anxiety that would have come from that conversation had been deferred or anything.  I felt this weird lightness at being somewhere I wasn¡¯t supposed to, at breaking the rules and being on the edge of getting caught, but it wasn¡¯t compounded with what [Steady On] had helped me dodge.


    As soon as I was out of sight of the two guys, I started looking around for the stairwell door, or roof access.  I¡¯d worked in buildings before where it was a separate door, and I¡¯d also worked in places where it just flat wasn¡¯t labeled.  So I scanned all the doors as I passed, sorting them into offices or bathrooms or conference rooms or whatever, trying to find any that didn¡¯t fit.


    It was when I turned the corner at the next intersection in this weird maze of a building that Becca popped up at my shoulder.  ¡°It¡¯s this way.¡± She deadpanned.


    I yelped, and my grip slipped as I jumped backward, flinging the small bag of doughnuts backward into a wall.  ¡°Oh, come on!¡± I panted as I tried to still my heart. ¡°Stop *doing* that!¡± I tried not to snap at her, but she still looked kinda hurt.  ¡°But yes, let¡¯s get this over with and get out of here.¡± I tried to control my tone, but now that I knew there were actual security here, I was kind of on edge.  Even if their security was, well...


    Okay, you know what?  This wasn¡¯t exactly a secret corporate facility guarded by thugs with assault rifles.  So far, every experience that movies had taught me to prepare for in terms of infiltration tactics had woefully over prepared my imagination for the actual act of just walking in and asking nicely to be let into places.  I needed to stop stressing about this.


    ¡°Okay.¡±  I said, more calm this time.  ¡°Sorry about that. So, where¡¯s the roof?¡±


    Two minutes later, she¡¯d brought me to the well camouflaged door that lead to the roof, and was labeled ¡°boiler room¡±.  Two minutes after that, I¡¯d managed to find the correct key to unlock it, and opened up the door to the dimly lit staircase leading up a half flight to the roof.  It was musty, and the steps looked like they¡¯d been scuffed a million times and cleaned exactly zero over the years. But nothing collapsed under us as we went up to the exterior door.


    ¡°What do you wanna bet that their state of the art security system doesn¡¯t know about this door?¡±  I asked as I tried to figure out which side of the door bar I needed to push on. Somehow, like a rogue USB stick, it didn¡¯t work on either side until I switched back again and found I was right the first time.


    Bec just glided out in front of me, throwing her one word answer back at me.  ¡°Nothing.¡±


    Stepping outside, I took a nice breath of fresh air.  Well, city air; but while it may have been kinda sorta full of car fumes, it was chill and outdoors and a pleasant change.  As I stepped onto the gravel floor of the top of this office tower and stretched out my arms in the October sun, I bumped into Becca who had stopped in front of me and was staring straight ahead.


    ¡°Okay, why?¡±  I asked as I righted myself and brushed my hair out of my eyes.  She just stepped slightly to the side, and pointed.


    Specifically, she pointed over to the ledge of the roof, where a tall, raven haired woman in a sleek grey business suit was holding a short, bespectacled man by the collar of his shirt, half pushed over the edge.  Both of them were frozen, as if they were statues, staring at us.


    ¡°You see?¡±  I said cheerfully to Bec, gesturing to the scene in front of us.  ¡°This is what happens! This is every fucking day now!¡±


    For some reason, I felt almost relieved.  Happy, even. Later, I¡¯d look back and realize that it was because this was turning into my comfort zone; me against the world, their bullshit versus *my* bullshit, winner take all.  I was starting to relish the feeling of just having problems dumped in front of me, almost as much as I was in having the tools at my fingertips to solve them. This was probably super unhealthy, but in the moment, I didn¡¯t care.  I just grinned.


    ¡°Hey there!¡±  I called to the two of them.  This time, I didn¡¯t need any Card to keep my voice steady and cheerful, if maybe a little faster than I normally talked.  ¡°Any way I could convince you to put him down and leave peacefully?¡±


    The woman straightened herself out, rising up to a rather intimidating form, not letting go of the man she was holding.  Her voice projected across the roof with ease, and for the first time in a while, *I* felt like the kid in the situation.  ¡°Just a misunderstanding, girls. Why don¡¯t you head back inside?¡±


    ¡°No.¡±  The word came from Bec beside me, who shifted easily into a stance that wouldn¡¯t make sense to anyone who didn¡¯t know what she was getting ready to do.


    ¡°Yeah, sorry.  This looks like the kind of thing we get a lot.  Is this a murder, or an assassination? Asking mostly out of curiosity.¡±  I started circling to the side, getting clear of Becca¡¯s line of fire.


    As the man in her grip took the chance to break free, stumbling backward against the ledge, the woman sighed visibly, the sound swept away by the wind, but the motion of her shoulders exaggerated and dramatic.  ¡°Kids.¡± I heard her mutter. She shook her head, like this was just a casual misunderstanding.


    Then she slipped her free hand into her coat, pulled out a handgun, and shot the dude in the chest.


    Before I could react, she raised it up and started shooting at Bec.  This turned out to be the wrong call, as my partner was [Under Cover Of Fortune].  It had stung to give that up, and now, I felt like the champion of everything as every single bullet went wide while Becca overhand threw the water bottle she¡¯d been carrying in one of her pockets at the woman - assassin, I¡¯d decided - and with her other hand, made the strange looking gesture that I now knew was what my spellcasting looked liked.  A fist out in the air, then a snap of the arm, broadcast fingers, and suddenly, [Bite Of The Water Wolf] turned the calcium treated water bottle into a potentially lethal projectile.


    Say what you will about the effect of years of traumatic daily battles for survival on Bec¡¯s psyche, but it had done *wonders* for her combat reflexes.  By the time I¡¯d even started to react to the horror of watching someone get shot in front of me, she and the assassin had traded two salvos, and I¡¯d been all but dismissed from the fight.  There was a pause as the two of them sized each other up, the other woman seemed legit perplexed by the fact that this girl had snap-summoned a riot shield and Becca scowling at the fact that the high density water spike was apparently high density enough to be slapped away with a knife.


    ¡°So, assassin then?¡±  I yelled over, burning Spite as I flung one of the last two cards in my hand at her, a [Headache], before ducking behind an air conditioning unit.


    This had gone horribly wrong in a big hurry.


    I had one card left, it was [Triage And Stabilize], because that was one that I never discarded and held onto at all times.  I checked and saw a Draw available, and quickly grabbed a disappointing copy of [Potential], I knew Bec was down to two Cards in hand, and I had no idea how to get to the guy in time before he died from lead poisoning.  Hell, I didn¡¯t even know if he was still alive. This was exhilarating, but honestly way beyond any plan I actually¡­


    There was a crunching explosion punctuating the gunfire, and shards of gravel pelted against the machinery I was crouched behind with metallic pings.


    One card in hand.


    ¡°Did you get her?¡±  I shouted over to Bec.


    No answer.  Then, a second later, the sound of a door slamming.


    ¡°Bec?  You alive?¡±  I peeked out, then ran over to where she was a second ago.  The other woman was gone, and so was Becca. As the sound of gunfire faded and my ears stopped ringing, the sound of the injured man weakly groaning came through.  My priorities almost shifted, but first, I bolted over to where I¡¯d last seen Bec.


    If I hadn¡¯t spent the last few days becoming more and more on alert for her disappearing act, I may not have noticed her, crouched down with her back against the brick of one of the skylights.  But I had, and I did. As I got closer, she shifted to look at me, one blink staring forward and the next her head tilted up to track my approach. ¡°Gone?¡± She asked me curtly, and I noticed her hand clasped over a dripping wound on her forearm.


    I sighed to see she was okay.  ¡°Yeah, she¡¯s gone. Or did you mean the guy?  Wait, shit! I have to go!¡± I turned and bolted back to where the woman¡¯s target was lying on the ground, trying to drag himself toward the stairwell.  Now that I knew Becca was okay, or at least not about to die, I had one last thing to do.


    [Triage And Stabilize] took twelve points of Compassion.  I currently had ten, and my Draw was another half an hour away.  As I slid to a stop next to the guy, now was about the time that I realized that maybe cutting back on the amount of [Potential]s in my Deck wasn¡¯t the best plan.  It¡¯d seemed like such a good idea at the time, trading short term ramp for long term utility. Now I sat here a couple points short of saving this guy¡¯s life, and felt like the biggest idiot in the world.


    But I had to try.


    [Potential] dropped into my hand, and the spell triggered as I closed my fingers into a tight fist.  A small halo of light and a warm feeling propagating through my arm and into the rest of my body. *Just this once*, I thought at it.  *Just one time, give me one extra. I play by the rules, even the ones I don¡¯t know. I do your Tasks, I use the Cards like they¡¯re written.  But right now, the rules aren¡¯t enough. So just this once, one more point.*


    And before he breathed his last, my Compassion ticked up by two points.


    The spike of life from [Triage And Stabilize] hit him hard enough to physically eject the bullet from his lung, leaving him gasping in breaths of air and clutching at the no-longer-bleeding hole in his chest.  And I let out another relieved sigh.


    ¡°Tha¡­ thank you.¡±  He started to say. ¡°Who are¡­?¡±


    And that was my cue to bail.  ¡°Good luck!¡± I told him. ¡°Don¡¯t get shot again!¡±  And I was up and moving, my legs suddenly a lot less tired from all the walking I¡¯d been doing today.  ¡°Bec! Time to move!¡± I called at her.


    Both of us made for the stairwell, hoping the woman was long gone by the time we got back to the top floor.  We still moved like we were paranoid of our own shadows, checking corners and sneaking through the hallways. Both of us were almost totally tapped out on resources, both Cards and otherwise, and I didn¡¯t like our chances in another fight.


    As we got to the elevators, and dismissed the idea of taking the stairs outright, I noticed that the two guards from earlier were still there, but one of them was sitting behind the desk holding their right eye while his friend tried to open up a bottle of aspirin.


    ¡°Um¡­¡±  How did I ask this¡­ ¡°Did a woman who looked like a highly paid assassin come by here?  Maybe punch you?¡±


    I got a ¡°How did you¡­¡±  And a ¡°Who¡¯s the other¡­¡± from the two of them as Becca grabbed one of their badges off the desk and used it to summon the elevator.


    ¡°No time.  Check the roof, please, and call 911.  Also there¡¯s doughnuts around here¡­ somewhere.  I have no idea where I left them, actually.¡± I admitted a bit sheepishly.  ¡°Sorry about the trouble. Didn¡¯t honestly expect that.¡±


    ¡°You can¡¯t just¡­!¡±


    Could.  Did. Elevator doors closed, and the two of us on our way home.


    Actually leaving was a bit of a pain, as Becca insisted on a side entrance and circling around to my car through a back alley, in case we were being tailed.  I mean, I didn¡¯t exactly blame her, but I also didn¡¯t complain. And by the time we got home, the fact that we¡¯d been shot at was starting to catch up to me.


    You know, I¡¯d diffused multiple situations with guns in them, before this one?  And this was literally the only time someone had leveled a weapon in my direction and pulled the trigger.  And had it work, I guess; there was that one guy who had some bad luck at the school. But still, it was unsettling at best, horrifying at worst.  And the silence on the ride home was like a thick blanket of paranoid thoughts about being hunted down for interfering in some government sanctioned assassination, having my apartment blown up or wiretapped or something worse.


    I don¡¯t know what¡¯s worse, shut up.  It¡¯s my worst case scenario, I¡¯ll think of it later.


    I think the worst part of all of it was that I kept trying to help Becca once we got back to my apartment with her wound.  She¡¯d gotten grazed by a round, and it had left a gash on her forearm that she¡¯d mostly kept closed and had clotted over, but still needed attention.  And all I could do was fuss and try to offer to help, while she glared at me and showed full well that she could do first aid on herself one handed better than I could with two.


    ¡°If you want to help.¡±  She finally said, pushing me out of the bathroom.  ¡°Check your Tasks.¡±


    That wasn¡¯t, I insisted, helping.  But she didn¡¯t say anything else, and I didn¡¯t have anything else to do and needed something to keep my mind and hands busy, so I guess it was better than nothing.  I sat myself down on my couch, shoving aside the branches of the curved tree that had grown down onto the leather like a green blanket, and opened up my interface.


    Maybe she should be a therapist herself, because the first look at the Tasks menu gave me a pulse of excitement and victory that blew away my worry about being murdered in the night.


    Six.  *Six* things done.  (Urban Explorer), which I¡¯d snagged off the roof between checking on Becca and helping the victim.  (Infiltrator II), of course, though the value of that one I wouldn¡¯t wager on just yet. (Breach) hadn¡¯t actually triggered, but that made sense; we hadn¡¯t actually kicked in the door or invaded, just snuck in.  I got the feeling it was the polar opposite of (Infiltrator) and maybe mutually exclusive with it.


    Aside from that, I¡¯d scored (Shake Hands II), which I hadn¡¯t even bothered looking at before since I never really *planned* to meet people, and it was still classed as white.  (Savoir), which was an obvious one. (Quick Thinking) again, probably for the elevator bit. And then a new one called (Shieldbearer), which was to use a creation-type Card for a Risk 3+ effect, without being critically injured.


    That last one was what caught my attention.


    Because I absolutely hadn¡¯t done that.


    In fact, I knew exactly what it was for.  It came from Becca using [Forge In Flames] to weather the bullets that [Under Cover Of Fortune] didn¡¯t catch, and it meant something kind of important.  Whatever it was that let me share my collection with her, actually really did care that I¡¯d categorized her as an apprentice. Her actions reflected on me, and that made it a lot more possible for us to tackle Tasks together.


    But that got to take a back seat now, to the rewards.  Because there was one last thing to check, and that was the notification that had popped up on the roof.


    It was about [Potential].  And it told me, in surprisingly clear terms, that I had improved [Potential] to [Potential II].  A check of the text of the new card, and it *was* kind of a new card, showed that it did what I thought it did; cost one extra Curiosity, and gave two points instead of one.  Notably, it also made it clear that it would degrade back into a regular [Potential] with Reset. And what else had changed was that [Potential] itself now had the conditions for improving listed on it.


    So, great.  Another layer.


    Wait, actually great.  Another layer! Another piece of the pattern, another slice of the power pie, at my disposal!  I wondered now, if I could possibly find ways to improve other cards, especially the more basic ones that were easier to understand.  Maybe get Becca to try it out with hers as she could practice far more rapidly than me.


    But those were thoughts for future Mia.  Present Mia had rewards to harvest.


    (Shake Hands II) gave me 10% off my draw timer and fifty cardbucks.  Solid, especially this early.


    (Urban Explorer) handed me two copies of [Edge Of Summer], which I was almost positive was actually a card from a much more mundane game, but wasn¡¯t going to complain about since it looked cool.


    (Quick Thinking) gave me another fifteen cardbucks, which I didn¡¯t care about.  Yet.


    (Infiltrator II) was a niiiice award, apparently having taken the rogue assassin into consideration on the difficulty, and it had two copies each of two different cards for me.  [As It Was] didn¡¯t have a description, but it did boast an Impatience cost of twelve. Making it unlikely to see use, and also probably impressive. On the other hand, [Red Scrapper] did come complete with¡­ some¡­ description, and offered me escalating levels of combat power the longer I was in a fight and the more damaged I was.  Which was just¡­ uncomfortable, at the least. But I was starting to realize that combat was a thing that I might just have to get used to in my life.


    (Shieldbearer) gave three copies of [Shield].  That¡¯s it. That¡¯s enough. I¡¯ll take it. It does what you¡¯re probably thinking.


    (Savior), finally, the blue task that I always felt lucky to see and luckier to complete, just gave a single card.  But boy did [Marquis Of The Greedy Sands] look like it was a hell of a card. I mean, it didn¡¯t say what it did, but what a *mouthful*.


    After all that, all that information and recontextualizing and inflation of my cardbucks account to a whopping 232 points, I just felt¡­ kind of tired.


    By the time Becca came out of my studio apartment bathroom, I was napping, curled up in the leaves of the oversized potted tree like it was an overprotective blanket.


    We¡¯d deal with splitting the loot tomorrow.

 Chapter 009

    I remembered a day, which I knew was only a few weeks ago but *felt* like a lifetime, when I had gleefully clipped [The Eight Glamours Of The Forbidden Library] out of my decklist.  It was stupidly specific, and almost universally useless, because seriously, when was I ever going to be in a library and need to also create illusionary images? I¡¯d been close, once, but avoided the need by simply *not going into a library*.  Maybe I could have actually gotten some use out of it if I¡¯d intentionally pushed, but it was just easier to cut it in favor of [Adjust], because [Adjust] seemed cooler in function, if not name.


    To be clear about why I bring this up, I was currently in a library.  Sneaking around.


    I¡¯d slotted the Card back in before doing so, though.  I wasn¡¯t stupid. Well, not in a way that¡­ you know what?  Let¡¯s skip the self-depreciation this time. I had a plan, and it was great, and I was a Fucking Wizard.


    Anyway.


    I¡¯d survived one month with the Cards.  That felt like a hell of an accomplishment.  And I knew it was one month, because I actually got a notification about it!  That also felt like a boon from some divine entity, because information was a premium commodity in my life these days.


    Then I got a scrolling list of statistics for my time over the last month, and I felt a little bit put out.


    Highest Strength effect produced : 3


    Highest Risk taken : 2


    Highest Stealth undertaken : 1


    Highest Challenge completed : 1


    Opportunities Engaged : 16


    Opportunities Missed : 121


    Tasks Completed : 23


    Zones Engaged : 1


    Zone Tasks Completed : 2


    Zone Tasks Failed : 1


    Title Awarded : |Fledgling Benevolent I|


    Total Score : 116


    Okay.


    So.


    I have no frame of reference for this, but I distinctly remember a few things about my last month of activity.  In between calling in sick to work at least once a week, actually *going* to work the rest of the time, fielding a barrage of phone calls from my mother, and trying to learn how to make food that had actual vegetables in it, I had been *up to* some things, as the kids say.


    And I seem to recall a few highlights.


    Specifically, I remember that time I dropped into a hell-dimension shopping mall where the trees ate blood in reverse gravity and the mannequins tried to murder me.  I remember stopping a school shooting, and an assassination attempt, and a skunk attack. There was also some other stuff in there. I don¡¯t remember everything, it was a *busy fucking month*.


    So, keeping all that in mind.  One hundred and sixteen points? *That¡¯s* my score? Highest risk was a tooth-grindingly low *two*?!  Who designed this grading scale?


    I demanded to know.  We were going to have *words*.  Words like ¡°fuck¡±, and ¡°you¡±, and¡­ that¡¯s all, actually.  Just those words. Repeated.


    I needed to up my swear game.


    Actually, hang on one second.  Who *did* design this game? These things were, mostly, human concepts.  As far as I knew, anyway. And this, this was a score screen. This distinctly looked like something produced, not just my brain filtering magic into a readable form.  It wasn¡¯t anything I could do something about now, but it was certainly a note to file away for later.


    Anyway, this all was a big pile of worrying information.  If getting shot at was a risk two, then what was a risk three? I¡¯d seen Tasks that called for higher numbers on a lot of abstract qualities; what, exactly, was a five on the sliding scale of ¡°strength of effect¡±?  I¡¯d gotten three by blowing up a copier, distracting a number of hostile teenagers with guns, and using that distraction to disarm and disable a group of active shooters. What exactly would a five call for? Sinking an aircraft carrier, one handed?


    Also, over a hundred missed opportunities? That was¡­ distressing.  It didn¡¯t take a rocket scientist to make the connection that the ever-present dangerous stuff happening around me was what it meant by ¡®opportunities¡¯ (or would it be Opportunities, now?) but I¡¯d kind of assumed I¡¯d been on top of doing my best to tackle the ones I saw.  A hundred missed? Was I just clueless, or was that kind of a high number?


    This would merit investigation, if I could ever figure out exactly how to investigate things that I hadn¡¯t noticed.


    My incandescent rage simmered down a bit when I realized that I had been gifted that score as Cardbucks, which actually put me pretty close to the threshold for purchasing some of the more interesting stuff in the Shop.  Also on that note, there were more Shop items available now. A couple new packs, {Low Grade Support Booster}, and {Low Grade Utility Booster} Both seemed weirdly similar. Added to that, there was also {Beginner Locale Pack}, and {Beginner Activity Pack}, one of which I recognized!  If it held to what I thought it did, then those two would give Cards related to where I was, and what I was doing, respectively. Which was actually super cool.


    Maybe time to hike up a volcano again.


    Before I get sidetracked talking about summoning magma with my wizard powers, there were a few other things available now.  I could now purchase individual Cards of anything I had at least three copies of. Which seemed weird, but hey, maybe I could make a Deck of nothing but [Blast].  Ooooor maybe I could deal with my frustrations in more healthy, constructive ways than blowing up anything that annoyed me? Only time will tell.


    I also now had access to Boosts, which were¡­ weird and lame.  -Risk Up- was the most expensive, at twenty points, and it just raised the Risk of the next situation of at least Risk one that I found myself in, by one.  Now, on the one hand¡­ that¡¯s cool. That would let me up the stakes when I felt in control, maybe push to complete better Tasks, earn more rewards, and basically turn those points into an investment into my own ability.  On the *other* hand, that was incredibly stupid, when I didn¡¯t know what Risk actually *measured*. Would that just increment a number? Or would it actually make a situation deadlier? What did it *change*? Assuming it added danger, what kind of danger did it add? Would it magically give my enemies bigger guns and more bullets? Would it MAKE MORE ENEMIES?  These were questions I did not care to find out.


    I almost bought -Pay Up- the instant I saw it, though.  Ten points, ten percent increase in physical rewards. My brain instantly went to the thought of ¡°what if your paycheck had an extra eighty bucks in it¡±, but then skipped to ¡°your paycheck isn¡¯t a reward¡±.  Once again, this would need testing, but testing would put me farther away from buying what I wanted, which was actually one of the packs.


    No new Deck options, which was sad.  I was starting to think I was going to have to actually spend points before those unlocked.


    And finally, there was a title.  Or, Title, rather. God, mentally capitalizing these words helped in the long run, but it took getting used to.


    I had a Titles tab now!  Neat! I don¡¯t know what it does!  Par for the course!


    The Title appears on the list, much like my list of Cards, and I can sort of toggle it on or off.  I don¡¯t know what effect it has, if any, though it *does* have one of those |---| fields that indicates that when I do learn what it does, or use it enough, it¡¯ll fill in.  I don¡¯t know if I can have more Titles, or if anyone else will notice. I¡¯m also kind of offended at being called a fledgling anything. But, then again, a lot of these cards had weird and stupid names, and maybe, just maybe, this one would do something awesome.


    I wasn¡¯t holding my breath though.


    Actually, that¡¯s sort of not true.  At the moment, I was literally holding my breath.


    Remember how I was sneaking around a library? Yeah, that was happening.


    It was for a good cause, though!  From my perspective, anyway. Okay, so, it was for a sort of selfish cause.  But it was a mostly harmless selfish cause, and shut up, you¡¯re not my real dad.


    (Baffle).  It was a simple task, and it just required me to ¡°fool ten people¡±. I¡¯d actually completed that one a few days ago, by standing outside my job after calling in sick while [Aura Of Unconcern] was up.  It had rewarded me with a handful of points, which, hey, those were starting to look pretty nice. (Baffle II), though, asked me to fool *one hundred* people.


    The problem was stakes.  It wasn¡¯t, I¡¯d learned, actually enough to just not be noticed.  ¡°Fooling someone¡± seemed to mean more than just diverting attention, it had to have actively mattered in some way.  A lot of the Tasks were like that, I was now noticing. Like how a couple weeks ago, I¡¯d had to actually put a wager on a game in order for it to count for (Challenger).This tale has been unlawfully lifted without the author''s consent. Report any appearances on Amazon.


    See, the thing I¡¯d learned was that actions without consequences didn¡¯t mean anything.  So a lie with nothing to lie for wasn¡¯t going to ¡°fool¡± anyone. There was probably some as-of-yet unsaid stat that the whole system would use for this, like it needing to be a ¡°Deception 1+ action¡± or something.  But basically, I had to be tricking people for a reason other than tricking them. Presumably tricking them just to be a smartass would also not count, though I felt like that was a rank-one-half at least. Anyway.  Since I had (Infiltrator) back on my Task list, now seemed like a great time to break into someone¡¯s office.


    So, after a once-over of my list of options, and a few days to rebuild my resource pools to something useful, and curate my hand, I¡¯d walked into the city library, and fired off [Eight Glamours Of The Forbidden Library], a name I was getting sick of saying and wished I could abbreviate.


    Then I¡¯d set up an illusionary wall over the gardening section.


    Personally, I felt like I¡¯d created a masterpiece here.  I¡¯d carefully sculpted a row of perfectly real-looking shelves, placed them just a little in from the ends of the rows of books.  I had seven different, distinct, illusions set up, designed to look like some kind of modern-art nautilus design to anyone who walked by.  Any casual observer would just see weirdly laid out shelves.


    Anyone actually *looking* for the gardening section would find nothing.  Except for some shelves that were positioned in a confusing way, with small gaps in the books that showed through to an internal area with a little table and chairs and reading lamp.  None of which, of course, was *real*. But it would encourage people to go around, only to find the *actual* building walls prevented getting to that alcove.


    I had thought I was so fucking smart.


    And to be fair, the tracker on the Task had climbed up to eighty before anyone had actually brought one of the building librarians over to ask how to get into this little fictional space that I had made, and was hiding in.


    It kinda felt shitty that I¡¯d taken so much time to practice this Card, waiting to draw it over and over again, just to test out its limits, learning that I could sculpt furniture and shelving and so many other things, only to have one grey haired woman take a look at my deceit and say ¡°Well that¡¯s just not supposed to be here.¡±


    My tracker did not increment.  This person was absolutely not fooled.  This person, this old woman who looked like she was made of the abstract concept of ¡°stern¡±, showed nothing more than the tiniest upward quirk of the corner of her mouth as amusement.


    I stood as still as I could while plucking two cards out of my Hand and into my hands.  I had, after all, come prepared.


    The librarian reached out to touch the shelf.  The shelf that wasn¡¯t real. I reached out and snapped off an [Echoing Click], right behind her.  It drained away a point of Deceit, but I wasn¡¯t too concerned. I¡¯d been intentionally screwing with library patrons for my own amusement and personal gain all day long; my Deceit was riding high, even after spending the eight points to set up my shelf alcove.


    Which was good!  Because as she jerked and spun around, hand on her chest at the shock of the sudden noise, I calmly stepped through the illusionary shelf.  Well, okay, no, I¡¯m lying to you. I stepped through, and felt like my feet were about to shake my shoes in half with the vibrations of how nervous I was.  Which would be a shame, because I¡¯d just wasted a quarter of a paycheck on these shoes, and I was quite happy with how they blended comfort and exquisite beauty.  Okay, stop thinking about the shoes. Start thinking about the other Card in my hand, and flick it as casually as possible toward the blonde kid who¡¯d brought the librarian over.


    [Once Unnoticed] was, perhaps, one of the less savory cards I¡¯d ever slotted into my Deck.  But right now, it was a solid trade for only three Deceit, and felt¡­ not like I was doing the right thing, but at least a relatively benign version of being an asshole.


    The kid forgot he¡¯d seen me.  No memory of me, of the ghost shelves, just¡­ poof.


    And then I turned on my heel and walked off as the librarian turned her head back to the shelves; just another library patron moving along the second floor concourse.


    My counter ticked up to eighty two.


    Now I just had to pretend to be an actual library patron, and hope that I drew [Eight Glamours Of The Forbidden Library] within the next hour and a half before they closed.  I was still planning to stay after hours and poke around the building until I found a door to use my lockpicks on, and score myself a Task of at least moderate reward. I really wanted those few extra points to put me over the line to one of those Packs.  And apparently, that want, and that goal, was enough that I was ¡®fooling¡¯ people well enough to count.


    Four hours later, I¡¯d successfully managed to stay past the doors being locked, and was more or less alone in an empty building.  I say more or less, because I wasn¡¯t sure that there wasn¡¯t a security guard somewhere, but I¡¯d watched most of the library staff filter out from the third floor window that overlooked the parking lot.  My strategy at the end had actually been a lot more mundane than I had planned; I¡¯d hid in the bathrooms.


    It had been a bit more complicated than that, but still.  I¡¯d used another [Echoing Click] to draw attention away when someone came through at the end of the night to check for patrons, and I¡¯d burned out [Under Cover Of Fortune] at some point, which sort of implied to me that ¡°being caught sneaking around¡± counted as a hostile action.  Which was weird. The word ¡°hostile¡± was so open-ended that I was starting to get concerned that this Card could honestly stop a nuke strike if needed. Maybe that¡¯s how North Carolina survived that one time the military almost set off a bomb there; some random asshole like me with badly worded superpowers.


    But ultimately, it didn¡¯t feel super satisfying, even if it apparently did count as fooling the whole staff and scoring me (Baffle II).


    Since I was alone, in a dark building, and had literally nothing else to do for the whole night, I didn¡¯t feel bad poking the mental button and seeing what I got right now.  And much to my pleasure, it was a double. Thirty five points, and a copy of [Devil¡¯s Due]. That card did *not* fill me with a sense of calm. According to the surprisingly helpful text, it would allow me to exchange blood *or organs* that I had access to, for their value in currency.  So¡­ on the one hand, this was a step closer to no longer having a job. And I *did* dislike my current job. But I also *didn¡¯t* want to sell my precious bodily fluids. Or my lungs? I liked my lungs.


    Also the points put me up at 497, which was exactly three short of one of the packs I wanted.  Which was its own special frustration.


    As I kicked my feet up on one of the chairs that I¡¯d arranged into my own personal library fort, munching some kind of pie I¡¯d called up with [Monk¡¯s Bounty], I noted that (Infiltrator) was available to complete.  But that was a *trap*, and a dirty one, too. Tasks were, much like everything else with this stupid system, *full of lies*.


    Some of them, you did the thing, and they gave you a reward.  Simple, elegant, as it should be. *Some* of them, you did the thing, and it counted the thing, and opened up the reward, but the secret was that you could get a better reward by doing a better thing.  Some of them also didn¡¯t explain what the thing was, like (Guardian), which was flagged as orange and back on my list, asking me to ¡°remove one major threat to the area¡±, without explaining what a threat even was.


    Like, at this point, I could *probably* just start offing corrupt politicians if I wanted to.  Would that count? Would that be ethical? I¡¯d been reading a lot of Kant lately, he¡¯d probably be mad at me for that.  But I kant really see myself getting into the world of professional assassination anyway, so it was a bit of a moot point.


    (Infiltrator) was one of those second types.  I knew more or less clearly what I had to do, but the more secure the place I broke into, the better the reward.  Mild trespassing was enough to get me slightly faster regeneration on a stat for a week, last time. And I was hoping that mildly more serious trespassing would get me a handful of points, or even a new card.  But just being in the building, I felt, wasn¡¯t exactly the same as being in a part of the building that was really supposed to be off limits.


    To that end, I¡¯d brought lockpicks!  I didn¡¯t¡­ really¡­ know how to use them.  But there were offices around here with locked doors, and with my snack finished, and no one within a half mile to interrupt me, what better time than now to practice all those things I¡¯d seen in the Youtube videos I¡¯d watched?


    Any other time, it turns out.


    What felt like an hour later, and actually *was* an hour later, my fingers were sore, covered in a layer of sweat, and generally weren¡¯t doing what I told them.  I was silently snarling at the door in front of me, as I sat with two pins of the lock properly wedged back, and the last two stubbornly resisting me. I¡¯d long since turned off the phone light I was using, since I didn¡¯t need to see the resisting lock to fiddle around inside it; so here I sat in the dark, hunched on sore knees on a hard floor.


    The worst part was, I *knew* I could do this.  I¡¯d already done it once, to get into this office area already.  This door, specifically, was the personal office of the head librarian, judging by the sign on the door that said ¡°head librarian¡±, and I wanted to¡­ be in it.  Not even for any particular reason, again. I wasn¡¯t a thief, especially not from a fucking public library. I just needed something more or less harmless to hone my skills on, and use as task fodder.


    Honestly, part of me felt kinda dumb for not just standing outside, ready to rumble, and waiting for more of whatever the system defined as opportunities to come knocking.  The rest of me felt pretty okay about having a quiet night in a weird place, kicking back and relaxing, thumbing through my Card list looking for weird combos, occasionally casting [Monk¡¯s Bounty] for a light snack, or [Growth Spurt] to see if any of the plants around here were real or just plastic.


    Sometimes, even when your job title was rapidly turning into ¡°Grand Sorcerer¡±, it was nice to have a day that didn¡¯t feel like high stakes pressure.  I was, fundamentally, just fucking around here, but that was okay.


    And as the lock clicked open with a *snap* that sounded thunderous in the otherwise silent building, I sighed deeply.  Okay, *now* it felt okay.


    Holy shit, this guy had a nice desk chair.  This thing was padded brown leather, cool and comfortable.  And I knew exactly how comfy it was, because I took a nap in it.  Just a short one. Dozing off, and waking up seven-ish hours later, golden sunlight streaming through the blinds, just in time for the morning janitor to rumble through the office outside.


    Whoops!


    Fortunately, this too had a back up plan.  Though, in this case, not one that I¡¯d actually¡­ planned.  Just one that was available. A backup option. I had two available stat points, which I dumped into my Grace pool. Then, pushing up panickedly throwing myself out of the chair and around the desk, I slapped my hands together and fanned them out, grabbing for the right card based on the well studied image it displayed, and whisking it out into reality with an almost violent overarm motion.


    [Wanderer¡¯s Step] fired just as the door to the office was opened, and I blitzed through the outside wall of the room with a light *pop*.


    And then had to act like I hadn¡¯t just replaced my blood with liquid adrenaline, as I calmly descended two sets of stairs, and made my way out the front doors.  Heart beating in my ears almost in time with my shoes echoing on the stone steps. I know I get to use a lot of cheats, like literally teleporting through walls to make my daring escapes from singular individuals who aren¡¯t actually looking for me, but I was still honestly kinda surprised that no one stopped me on the way out.


    That said, I guess it would have been a problem if I hadn¡¯t actually gone with a new strategy of diversifying my deck a whole hell of a lot.


    I¡¯d done the math on it.  Well, not the math, but I had some intuition on it.  [Potential], and [Journey And Destination], were fine Cards.  They made sure that I could keep my resource pools growing, which meant I could cast more spells, and also the bigger stuff like [Triage And Stabilize] that I just wouldn¡¯t ever get if I relied on the timed increases.  But I drew a *lot* of cards. Thirtiy-ish a day, more if I had a draw timer bonus from a Task, which I often did. [Potential], even if I only had one copy in my twenty-five card deck, tended to show up at least once a day, since the discard pile reshuffled after it ran out.  With two copies, I was basically doubling my stat production, and that added up fast. All told, it felt pointless to have more than that, and have so many of my draws taken up by Cards that I just didn¡¯t need any more of after day two of a reset.


    So I diversified.  I spread out to more emotions, kept the costs low, and generally just tried to keep my options open while still enjoying those little quality of life improvements that I liked so much.  Like free food.


    And so far, if last night¡¯s activity was any indication, it was paying off.  I got more weird options, and I could curate a hand for any situation I planned for, without having to force a reset and start over entirely.  It felt good, if perhaps not exactly streamlined.


    And now, it had scored me (Infiltrator).  And this time, it paid out. For the difficulty, I was rewarded with fifteen points, which put me just over the edge of what I needed.  And for the layers of security I had to go through, I think I got super lucky on the random table of loot, and got rewarded with a whole new Deck, labeled


    .  And boy was that sweet. I only had two Decks at the moment, and one of them was currently in the hands of Becca as she went off to harvest a (Wilds Explorer) task. And *this* Deck offered me something radically different than normal.


    It had no draw timer.


    Instead, I could ¡°focus¡± on drawing, whatever that meant, and speed up the next draw I got.  Probably based on how good of a job I did, but going as low as ten minutes. Ten minutes was *huge*, that was three times as many cards as I got now, assuming I could¡­


    Hm.


    Okay, you know, maybe my short attention span wasn¡¯t so funny anymore.


    Whatever.  I had another plan now, and I was damned well going to act on it.


    Five hundred points, earned over weeks of constant strife and bloodshed - though often not my blood - down the drain in an instant.  One {Beginner Locale Pack} into my inventory.


    As I summoned a ride share off my phone, I noted two things.  One: I should have brought a charger and stolen the library¡¯s sweet, sweet electricity.  And two, spending all those points actually had unlocked a few more shop options. -Reward Choice Up- stood out to me as something worth checking out.  And now, for the first time, I also got to see a handful of single Cards available for purchase too, beyond the original ¡°whatever you¡¯ve got, you can have more of¡± thing.  [Lightning Conduit] sounded metal as fuck, so did [Bone And Ash], although I probably wasn¡¯t going to buy that one if I couldn¡¯t verify that it wouldn¡¯t disintegrate anyone I pointed it at.


    Still, it was cool.  This whole adventure had been cool.  It was the cusp of a new month, I was ready for the stuff ahead.  I had a handful of new Cards, a new Deck to absolutely give to someone else and that person was Becca, a good night¡¯s rest, and best of all, a silly idea that I was hoping would pay off.


    I was feeling pretty damn good when my driver showed up to take me to the hospital.


    +2 copies, [Mend].  +1 copy, [Copy Condition].  +1 copy, [Fruit Of The True Vine]


    That locale pack was the smartest thing I¡¯d bought in my life.  And that counted these shoes.

 Chapter 010

    ¡°Why are we doing this?¡±  Becca asked me. She was sitting next to me in the passenger     seat of my car, legs folded up in a way that was almost certainly not airbag safe.


    ¡°Because.¡±  I told her, trying and failing to swat her legs down into a reasonable position.  ¡°It¡¯s a goddamn Disney movie of a day outside, and I have the day off, and I wanna do something fun for a change.¡±


    Becca didn¡¯t exactly pout.  Pouting was a fairly complex motion, when you thought about it (which I had), and Bec didn¡¯t¡­ do¡­ motion.  It had been three weeks, give or take, and my new roommate was still mostly statuesque. She was talking more, but even that, she did with barely any motion.  It was kind of surreal, but then, I had found her in a shopping mall full of blood.


    Speaking of.  ¡°Oh, and also, I have the extra money from testing out [Devil¡¯s Due], so the tickets are within my budget.¡±


    ¡°You need to be more careful.¡±  She flatly stated. It was the closest thing to concern I¡¯d gotten from her, and it really did warm my heart.  I was really upping my game on understanding stoic facial expressions and dull toned voices, at least when it came to her, and it was just kinda nice to be able to intuit real care when she worried about me.


    __


    The reason she was telling me to be more careful is that yesterday, Becca had come back from an evening jog to find me sitting at the table, trying to fill a small cup with my own blood, so I could test out my new Cards.


    This, I admit, was a bit stupid.


    See, I¡¯d had this whole thing in my head where I could be one of those stone-cold badasses, who faced pain without flinching, right?  Except that¡¯s totally just not a human thing to do, it turns out. I¡¯d learned this lesson sitting at the island counter of my little kitchen space, trying to figure out why it was so hard to stab myself when I knew damn well I could fix it.  Probably. Mostly. Maybe.


    When Becca had done that thing she did where she just kind of apperated at my side, I¡¯d promptly let out a small scream, and slit my arm open by total accident.  And hot damn, let me tell you! The kitchen knives I own are *not* sharp enough to make that not hurt.


    I¡¯d recovered quickly, though, and crushed the Card I¡¯d quickly pulled out after dropping the knife with a clatter.  Feeling it, trying to focus on what it actually *meant* to cast this particular spell, rolling the energy around my fingers.  But not for too long, cause I was bleeding, and [Mend] was first up on my test list.


    The feeling of skin pinching itself back together, fusing into unblemished skin without leaving a scar (but yes to leaving behind all my fucking blood), was weird.  Weird¡­ now there was a word I needed to stop using. It was rapidly becoming in danger of overuse in my life. It didn¡¯t feel weird, it felt like my skin was temporarily jello.  Fleshy pudding, pulled into an invisible point of suction, welded back together by a room-temperature blowtorch.


    And then I was healed.


    Holy shit, that was a rush.


    I collected what I could of the blood still running down my arm in a little cup, noticing Becca pull back with more animation than I¡¯d see from her most of the time.  Blood, for obvious reasons, was a bit of a sore spot with her. Not wanting to subject her to it longer than was needed, I scraped my now-intact arm against the cup to get most of the blood into it.


    And then it was time to actually try out [Devil¡¯s Due].


    This was a card that I had tried a few times, and filled in more text with each failure.  It turned out, it had a lot of qualifiers that made it less useful than I wanted, but it was still a cool function, in theory.  Qualifier one was that I couldn¡¯t use my own blood while it was in me. Being as I was O+, it woulda been great to have that extra infusion (heh) of cash without needing to be needled or anything.  So the blood or whatever had to be in a discrete container. It also had to be on just one thing. No selling off a series of organs from a dissected frog which had been super gross and smelled as formaldehyde.


    So when it finally fired off properly, purified the cup of all the blood in it, and dropped a stack of gold dollar coins on the table, I was pretty happy.  It took actual mental work, and too much waiting and paying attention to draw timers, to drag the information about how things functioned out. Actually getting results, and money, really was a spike of good cheer for me.


    Which was good balance, because I hadn¡¯t figured out how to get [Fruit Of The First Vine] to work at *all*.  But with a name like that, it would either be super specific and super powerful, or super specific and super useless.  In that coin flip, I wasn¡¯t going to bet my personal hopes and dreams, but I knew which one I wanted, certainly.


    __


    ¡°There¡¯s going to be a problem.¡±  Becca said. I glanced over, and she was still sitting there, but I¡¯d heard a click and I was almost certain she had been fiddling with the air conditioner settings in my car when I wasn¡¯t watching.  ¡°There¡¯s always a problem.¡±


    I grinned.  ¡°That¡¯s the beauty of it!  Even if there is a problem, at least it¡¯ll happen on an awesome-sauce day, and then we¡¯ll level up, and everything will be great.¡±


    ¡°I don¡¯t think you should say that.¡±  She said, voice inscrutable.


    ¡°That everything will be great?¡±  I admit, I was kinda tempting fate on purpose now.  But what would be the point of living comfortably with my magic as it was, never growing, never getting anything extra?


    I¡¯d done some Google-fu on how fast a human made more blood.  Based on the chunk of change I¡¯d gotten for one inept use of [Devil¡¯s Due], I was actually pretty sure that I could make a living off it, if not a great one.  I still hadn¡¯t actually figured out how to *cast* [Fruit Of The True Vine], but if I could, that would give me another angle of money-making, as well as just a way to improve the world.  And I was still on that original plan of just being a fucking awesome pyrotechnics manager for some grunge band somewhere. Basically what I¡¯m saying is, I wasn¡¯t ¡®set for life¡¯, but I was capable of getting by without ever progressing.


    But nuts to that.


    Becca¡¯s tone was less neutral than normal.  It had been an uphill battle getting her to use whole sentences, but she¡¯d adapted.  But so long of not using her voice left her with pretty much no context for infliction.  Still, it was neat when she actually put feeling into her words. ¡°When you say everything will be great, it means something is going to go wrong.  TV taught me this. And also you said it yesterday when we went to dinner, and someone nearly died.¡±


    ____


    That was an exaggeration.  Mostly.


    No one had *actually* almost died.  Except for the one guy.


    Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.


    We were out at a vegetarian grill, which sounds awful, I know, but trust me on this.  If your town has a veggie grill? Go check it out. They probably do this thing where you can get a bean burger that¡¯s, like, eighty percent grilled onions, and it¡¯s basically the perfect food.


    You don¡¯t like grilled onions?  That¡¯s fine, I didn¡¯t need more friends anyway.


    The point, which I have once again diverged from, is that we were sitting at this little patio, enjoying the blazing orange sunset, trying to entice a stray cat over, and also the onions (no I won¡¯t shut up about this, it¡¯s important), when I let slip the comment.


    ¡°This is great.  Everything¡¯s been really great lately.  It¡¯s nice that stuff has stopped going horribly wrong for a¡­¡±


    I never got to finish that sentence before everything went to hell.


    The thing was, I still wasn¡¯t a hundred percent sure what had happened.  But between what I¡¯d seen, and what Becca had witnessed from her perspective, we¡¯d reconstructed the Rube Goldberg series of events as best we could, and it seemed frankly implausible.


    First, someone had started yelling at one of the cashiers.  This had distracted a guy walking by who was either lighting a smoke or just fiddling with a lighter or maybe some pyromaniac, and his shirt had ended up briefly on fire.  Being literally on fire was apparently distracting enough that he let slip the leash of the pomeranian he was walking, which I don¡¯t really *blame* him for, honestly. The tiny dog, suddenly free for the first time in its life, did the only thing that entered its pea-sized brain, and lunged its poofy body up onto the patio where we were eating to almost immediately sink its needle-fangs into the leg of our waiter.


    He then screamed, flailed backward, and perfectly dumped a bowl of mushroom pesto onto my head, before kicking the dog off in an arc that, I am told, was ¡°majestic¡±.


    By the time my hair met its pasta fate, I had juuuust about turned around in my chair to try to figure out why this lady was screaming at the cashier.  So when I say that I was mildly surprised by this, please understand that I was surprised enough that if I¡¯d had that stat pool, it would have spiked to well over thirty points.


    What I *did* notice was that the dog-shaped hellion landed on its feet just off the patio, and didn¡¯t lose time in bolting for its next prey, the cat that I¡¯d been trying to make friends with.


    That cat booked it right into the parking lot, and in front of a moving car.


    Now, my reaction time may not have been up to keeping myself from getting new headwear, but Becca and I had been spending basically all our free time and spare draws together practicing.  And maybe it was that, or maybe it was just my love of cats, but it didn¡¯t take a lot more than what felt like instinct to snap out my casting gesture, and flick a [Shield] out at a ramped angle, and send the car¡¯s tire slightly over the head of the cowering cat.


    The thump and/or crunch of the car¡¯s bumper hitting the ground got everyone¡¯s attention, even the woman who was screaming about¡­ I think it was being given ones instead of a five?  I¡¯d kind of tuned it out as soon as I¡¯d registered it, even if she was making a scene. It also absolutely got the first real look of surprise I¡¯d seen on Becca¡¯s face. Eyes wide, frozen in mid bite around a piece of flatbread she was holding in both hands like a squirrel, she stared at me for several long seconds before tearing off the chunk of bread, swallowing heavily, and laughed.


    It was short, barked out, quiet, and *real*, and it made my heart glow under all the sauce dripping down my shirt.


    _____


    ¡°No one ¡®almost died¡¯.  You¡¯re overreacting. It was just a coincidence.¡±


    She glared at me.  ¡°Your magic is mad at you for being cocky.¡±  Becca said. ¡°It doesn¡¯t like it. Don¡¯t say things like that.¡±


    I rolled my eyes.  ¡°What¡¯s the worst that could¡­¡±


    ¡°Eyes on the road.¡±  I hadn¡¯t seen Becca move, but her hand was on the wheel, keeping the car steady as we hit a pothole that I was sure major highways totally had normally.


    I briefly glanced at the fuel tanker driving two lanes to our left.  Then I cleared my throat, and said, ¡°I¡¯ve considered your point and am willing to stop taunting the universe.¡±


    ¡°Good.¡±  She replied, sinking back into the seat.


    I clicked my tongue in mild frustration.  It wasn¡¯t that she was *wrong*, exactly. I had a pretty solid idea now that whatever had gifted me with this bizarrely specific magic power had also put a giant cosmic bullseye on my back.  It was just a bit hard to hear other people say it, you know? As long as your problems were just vague thoughts in your own head, they didn¡¯t feel as concrete as when someone told you that something was wrong.


    Glancing over at Bec, I saw her curled up, arms around her knees, watching the trees on the side of the highway go by.  She was being deliberately silent, and I found it¡­ comfortable. There weren¡¯t many people I was okay just hanging out with without saying anything.  Only one, really. And it was her, to be clear on that.


    Now was a good time to just sit back, enjoy the feel of the road, and be alone with my thoughts for a bit.


    My deckbuilding wasn¡¯t great.


    It was time I acknowledge this to myself.  If the universe was turned against me (an it was) then I was going to have to seriously up my game.  The *problem* was¡­ well, life, I guess? Like, [Monk¡¯s Bounty], [Incense], [Cauldron¡¯s Toil], and [Graced Maneuver] were all just fucking invaluable for getting through my daily life.  At this point, I¡¯d saved well over a hundred bucks from the vending machine alone, and that sentence just made me sad as soon as I thought it. Fuck. I need to start bringing sandwiches to work or something.


    Anyway.  Roughly half my deck was stuff that didn¡¯t really have ¡°dangerous situation¡± potential, unless I had a plan that involved it. Another quarter of it was ramp; those Cards like [Potential] or [Journey And Destination] that spiked my pools up, and let me actually use things that I¡¯d never get access to if I just relied on my deck¡¯s natural growth.  And then the rest were a few proven winners for crisis moments, like [Blast] and *especially* [Under Cover Of Fortune]. I needed to figure out how to get more of those, so I could buy them, and get¡­ more¡­ of those. Fuck. Again, fuck. Oh, and always, a couple cards that were under experimentation.


    So, the deal is, I needed to refine what I was doing.  I needed to better balance how many [Potential]¡¯s I needed, or, better yet, rank up the ones I had.  The rank two version was actually fucking *huge*, basically being two Cards in one, and it showed no sign of decaying back to its lower form.  The only problem was, the condition to upgrade it was preeeetty specific.


    It did make me wonder if.. Well, no, *how* I could rank up other Cards.  Every new facet of this thing I discovered was just more *work*. I¡¯m not complaining; it¡¯s cool as hell, but it¡¯s also a lot to keep track of, and this is not the kind of game I¡¯m good at.


    Okay.  So. Priorities.


    I needed to be prepared to fight if it came up, because I couldn¡¯t rely on Becs, and I death is a pretty harsh failure state.  I needed to be prepared to save someone if needed, because that was my moral duty as a human. And I *wanted* to get some kind of personal benefit from my Cards.  So, how do we accomplish this?


    Well, I kinda had a rough outline already.  A few [Potential]s got me to casting capacity for most things pretty fast.  Reset¡¯s weren¡¯t a huge problem, but I was vulnerable in that early period. I had a new deck to try, but I honestly didn¡¯t have the ability to pay attention to drawing for that long at a time, even if it would get me there faster.  It also didn¡¯t let me use cards that cost more than six points of anything, which meant no [Triage And Stabilize]. And that one was *critical*. Two people were alive today because of it. That was¡­ I took a second to breathe, hands tightening on the wheel.  That was huge. Aside from that, a couple [Shield]s and [Blast]s, [Red Scrapper] which I¡¯d not tried out but seemed like a shoe-in for this, and [Forge In Flames] all felt like exactly what I needed for survival. There was, then, the problem that I didn¡¯t draw cards fast enough.  That was my main gate right now, because no matter what I put in my Deck, cultivating a useable Hand was a trick. [Marquis Of The Greedy Sands] and [Smiling Lunge] were my only two draw options, and both sucked. Well, no, not ¡®sucked¡¯, but they were both kind of last resort things.  The first one drew four cards, which was great, and then added an hour to when my next draw was, which was not. But still, not the worst trade. The second drew me three cards, sort of, and then I had to pick and use one of them within about ten seconds before they were all discarded anyway, which was less drawing and more just slightly random selection.  I growled a bit at the thought of how easily that could get wasted, but I put it in my mental notepad for my new decklist anyway. If I was going to survive the future, I needed to try a few new tricks.


    I cut out [Aura of Unconcern] and my other Ennui Cards.  It turns out, when you¡¯re living pretty happy and going on adventures every other day, it¡¯s tough to feel the crushing weight of the world on your shoulders.  Then I felt guilty about that, since I¡¯d only escaped that fate by random chance and literal magic. Then my Ennui ticked up, and I stopped feeling bad pretty quick.


    Okay.  Time for some quick math.


    It¡¯s five hundred points for one of the packs of Cards.  I made a little under that last month, total. What I needed was more Cards, or more points to buy the cooler Cards.  The regional booster pack had actually been super cool with the hospital trick, and if I could find other ways to manipulate stuff like that, I¡¯d be in business.  Like, literal business, maybe. So, I needed to be able to get either Cards or points from my Task rewards, which meant¡­ well, it meant ya gotta spend points to make points.  Because I could not stick to one pack and a few random pickups every month. My selection right now was *nonsense*. I could do a hundred different things ¡°kind of okay¡±, and that just wasn¡¯t good enough.


    -Reward Choice Up-.  Thirty of my hard earned points, spent while stuck sitting in traffic a few exits before my off ramp, and I had that feeling of regret like I¡¯d bought something dumb.  But hopefully, that would pay off later. Hopefully.


    Maybe if I spent enough points, new Decks would unlock on the shop.  I¡¯d only ever earned two extras of those, which made me feel like they were rare finds, and the ones the shop had on offer were just craaaap.  A series of them, each one <Failure¡¯s Limit Of Spite> or <Failure¡¯s Limit Of Love>, on and on through all the emotion-stats I had access to. I didn¡¯t know what they did, and I wasn¡¯t ready to pay five hundred cardbucks to find out, especially when that could get me access to actual cooler cards.  But it did mean that I wasn¡¯t upgrading in that direction, which meant I was still limited by my draw timer, which sometimes got agonizingly slow to watch tick.


    Maybe I should give in.  Who knows? Maybe it¡¯ll turn out to be...nah, can¡¯t think of anything to finish that with.  It has the word ¡°failure¡± in the damn title. Though knowing how this system works, that might not even mean anything at all.  Or it might! The joke is that I do not, at all, know how this system works. Not really. I feel like an ant trying to understand a car; I¡¯ve figured out that the tire has at least one groove in it, and I¡¯m digging this groove, but I¡¯m almost certain there¡¯s something more to it.


    I snapped my menu shut when the cars started moving again, edging our wheels closer to where Becca and I were headed for our day out.  If nothing else, I felt like this was gonna be fun. It was midway into the week, I was loaded on pools and Cards, and I just kind of had this gut instinct that my little day trip idea was a good one.


    ¡°Hey.¡±  I nudged Bec in the knee.  ¡°Wake up. We¡¯re almost there!¡±


    ¡°Still a bad idea.¡±  She said as I pulled off the highway.


    I snorted at her.  ¡°Oh, come on. Have a sense of adventure!  Besides,¡± I asked, as I drove us under the arched sign that covered the forested side road, ¡°when¡¯s the last time you got to see *penguins*?¡±


    Oregon State Zoo, read the sign.