Rapid-fire bangs rang through the thick forest.

Noah whirled in time to see a tiger with six tails, each with the ubiquitous spines of the rattletail monsters as a large stinger, falter in its charge and slam to the ground, comically sliding across the detritus-filled forest floor to come to a stop right in front of Larry Orson, one of the men that Emily and her brothers had recruited.

His eyes were wide, and the barrel of his AR-15 quavered, but a smile was dawning across his face.

The monster dissipated into light, and Larry reached down and grabbed something off the floor of the forest trail they were following, holding it aloft. “I got one! I got a card!!”

Noah smiled, although his heart wasn’t completely in it. The main draw for people to join Noah’s expedition had been acquiring cards—as evidenced by Emily’s new deck, and backed heavily by her and her brothers.

But he needed as many cards as possible before he got to the Zorin Bog goblins, if he was going to complete his plan.

“How come you frown when he gets a card?” Lika asked as she hobbled up beside him, partially supported by the male goblin that wasn’t constantly giving her grief. She was grimacing with each footfall of her club foot despite the support.

The goblin had a new rifle—a .22 Winchester Rimfire. The thing was a third as long as the goblin, and they had only given him a single full magazine of ten shots. But the goblin obviously loved the thing.

They’d been walking for hours, and the foot was clearly paining her again, despite having been healed completely when they were on the beach. Noah wondered where she got the willpower to not heal herself again, but since they’d likely be walking for days as they made a circuitous route around the heart of the Ashtae elves, he supposed saving it for later was better.

“I wanted the cards for myself,” Noah responded to her question after a few moments.

“I’m not stupid, you know,” Lika said.

The goblin helping her started to open his mouth, but Lika just pointed her finger at him and shook her head no. He subsided.

“What’s his name, by the way? I know Mok, but not him. You’ve never introduced us.”

The goblin blinked in surprise, and Lika was briefly floored. “You don’t introduce the members of your harem. That’s… weird. But since you want to know, whatever. He’s Kak.”

“Huh,” Noah replied. That’s a lot of cultural differences in one sentence is what that is.

Lika tried again. “As I said, I’m not stupid. I can see that you gave away ten cards to Emily just to get allies to help me get a super cool card for myself. And sold another five to cover guns, food, etc. You only kept the two Origin Rattletails and that Scrap Bot, plus your own deck. All you get is to go after your girlfriend sooner, and even that is only gonna work if whomever is in her zone got their realm super quick. You could do everything for me and then just be stuck here anyway.”

“What’s the question? Or, what are you trying to get at?” Noah asked.

“So I know you don’t want the cards for yourself. So why do you really want them?”

Noah sighed. “Can the twenty of us beat the elves?”

Lika glanced back at the people ranging behind Noah. “These guns of yours are fantastic, I can’t say enough good about them… but your soldiers are poor.”

“They’re not soldiers, just civilians.”

“That makes total sense,” Lika responded. “Like I was saying, they’re bad at being soldiers. Plus, the elves have really good bows and can field a couple hundred warriors, and probably five to ten deckbearers. I don’t know if you guys can win by yourselves… but I seriously doubt it.”

“So, we need more soldiers. At least people to hold the line while my guys shoot everyone. But how to get them?”

“I’ll bite,” Lika said, staring at Noah with frank curiosity. “How?”

“Well, money doesn’t matter anymore. Everything we have to trade is just food—of which we have almost nothing—or tools or weapons… or cards. So, I’m going to be trading cards to the goblins. Since I already know that the goblins aren’t going to be falling over themselves to support you.”

Lika glanced over at the goblin supporting her, glaring daggers. He shook his head violently and pointed to his mouth, speaking gibberish.

Lika nodded to him grudgingly and then glanced back at Noah. “How do you know?”

Stolen story; please report.

Noah chuckled. “You’re a very bad liar. You never look me in the eye when you assure us that we’ll get help, and you are very light on details about said help. If you had something concrete, you’d have tried to use it to sway me to do what you want already.”

Lika nodded her head, her eyes searching his face for a moment, but she didn’t say anything more.

They walked in semi-silence, the rustle and quiet chatter from behind them a constant companion, as was the clomp of RED’s metal feet on Noah’s other side.

Lika finally broke the quiet. “So… if you know I’m lying, why help?”

“I do need to have someone win this contest, and it obviously won’t be me, since the gods didn’t even give me one of the victory cards,” Noah responded. “I know you said I might just have to wait longer to get to the next zone, but I might not as well—the sooner I finish this, the sooner I can move on.”

“That’s all?” Lika asked. “That’s a lot of effort and sacrifice for very little. Not even a queen’s harem mates will usually do that for her.”

“Well… I also witnessed a wonderful, spunky little goblin nearly murdered by a bunch of racist prick elves.”

Lika blushed hard.

Noah continued. “Maybe I think she should be the queen of this new realm, whatever that is. And maybe I think she’ll ally with my people, make the good choice, and everything can work out here while I go rescue Hope. Then I’ll have someplace to come back to, a good place run by a friend.”

Lika’s blush deepened. “You sure you wouldn’t want to be in my harem? Even if you are huge and grossly pale, and your ears stupid, you’ve got a certain charm about you. I could go for it.”

“I’m in love with Hope, shortstack,” Noah replied. “She’s having my child.”

“That’s okay. The queen’s harem can have their own harem. That’s how it works.”

Again, Noah was utterly flabbergasted by the cultural differences implied, but he simply ignored it for the moment. “I’ll pass, but thank you. Genuinely.”

Noah personally felt that when a women offered you sex, it was a huge compliment. Even if you wanted no part of it—and he didn’t—it made sense to thank her for it.

“Gods you’re such a sap,” RED muttered from Noah’s other side.

Well, at least I thought it made sense.

They walked again in silence. After a while, however, Lika rummaged in one of her numerous pouches and brought out two cards. While she hadn’t gotten any from Noah’s kills, or the group’s joint kills, she had gotten two on their march through only her own—or her card’s—efforts.

“Here,” she said, holding it toward Noah, her eyes down.

When he didn’t immediately take them, she pushed them further. “Just take them.”

Noah took them and added them to the growing stack of Rattletail Beast type cards in his backpack. One more and I’ll technically have a deck of ten.

“Why?” Noah asked.

She shrugged, blushing slightly and still not meeting his eyes. “You’re just using all your cards to help me anyway. It’s not like I’m really giving them to you. I’m just letting you handle the moves to make this work, right?”

Noah smiled. “True.”

She crossed her arms over her chest, accidentally dislodging Mok, who was still helping her walk. “Well then.”

Noah wasn’t a hundred percent sure what all that meant—or even fifty percent sure—but felt it was something positive. He smiled, and tried to think of other things he could talk to her about.

A brief, hoarse scream, choked off and followed by shots, rang out behind Noah.

He whirled again, his gun in his hands, and watched as one of his followers was borne into the air by a vine wrapped around his neck as he shot wildly around him. Half the people with Noah fired shots upward into the sky. Most of the shots were aimed where the vine ended, in a massive collection of plant matter held in the crux of three branches.

Noah wasn’t sure if the bullets hit something, but when the man was about twenty feet off the ground the vines suddenly went slack and dropped. Noah saw the man’s eyes widen as he dropped, only to be wrenched to a stop with a crack that reverberated through the forest a few feet above the ground.

Someone yelled out “Bobby, no!” as the man went limp and his gun fell to the ground.

Noah glanced, and saw that the creature wasn’t dead. But it was plant type, and resistant to physical damage.

“Finish it, Red!” Noah called.

“With pleasure.” RED rushed over and slashed the vine multiple times with his fiery knife.

The creature died, dropping a card as it did.

“I hate this forest,” Lika muttered.

Noah nodded, walking over. He saw that another man—Javier—was down, shot through the leg. Smart money said Javier had been shot by Bobby when Bobby was grabbed, but Noah didn’t know it for sure. He ignored that for a moment and took the card that had dropped. It was an uncommon Golem equipment card called a “Scrap Bomb.”

It relied on Scrap Tokens to make an area-of-effect Golem-typed physical attack. Noah was briefly tempted to use it for his own deck. On the other hand, Lika could use it since she did crazy things with material token cards—like Scrap Tokens. He pocketed it to decide later.

Lika clomped up beside him as everyone gathered around Bobby’s corpse.

Noah let them grieve for a moment before calling out to them. “Everyone! Pay attention.”

They all turned toward him.

“What are we gonna—” one of them—Jason, Noah thought—began.

“Quiet,” Noah said. And everyone quieted.

Noah stared at them for a few seconds, then talked, quietly and intensely. “We all knew this was going to happen. I’m sorry, truly. But we’re all here because we want to save the goblins, end a threat, and hopefully create a realm we can use, together, to save our people and ride out the apocalypse. As well as to become powerful deckbearers ourselves, able to defend our homes and the ones we love. War isn’t safe—and these days, even travelling isn’t safe.”

A few people muttered, but Emily called out, “True words.”

Noah ignored both as he continued. “Some may die. But we do it for the same reason our grandfathers fought in World War Two, and their fathers in World War One. We do it to build a better future for our people and our children, even the ones not born yet. Honor Bobby, who paid the ultimate price to make a better world. But do so quickly, then gather his guns and ammo. Lika, please heal Javier. Then let’s all go. We have important things to do.”

“Can we bury him?” Emily asked.

“Did your brother bring his shovel?” Noah asked in turn.

Trevor shook his head no.

“I’m sorry, but unless you want to dig a grave with your hands, we can’t,” Noah said, trying to remain firm. “Give his body to the animals of the forest.”

Everyone nodded, although Noah saw some unhappy faces.

But Noah knew they’d stay firm. There wasn’t any going back, anymore. The lack of a route across the river assured it.

The only way out was forward.