Noah sat down hard. He hurt. He had burns across most of his stomach and arms, and a jagged but cauterized wound across his right side and right forearm where the tooth had caught him and broken through the armor that now covered him.

He stared at the armor, and the card appeared over it.

Post-Apocalyptic Cyborg

Uncommon Tier-1 Golem/Lightning Persistent [Mantle]

1 Golem Power, 1 Lightning Power

+3 Attack, +3 Defense, +3 Magical Defense

The wearer gains the Golem type.

Special: Repurposed: When spending power on this card, a scrap token may be substituted for either power type, not just Golem.

Special: Lightning Strike [5]: grants a 5-strength Lightning magical attack with a range of 60’.

“Those that survive and thrive on Arena are those that can meld the old and the new best.”

Noah focused on the card type. Persistent [Mantle]. Three notifications appeared.

The Great Game Rule #19: Every new deck shall contain a persistent (mantle) card.

The Great Game Rule #20: No deckbearer may be equipped with more than one mantle.

The Persistent [Mantle] card type may only alter a deckbearer, changing their Great Game stats. No deckbearer may benefit from more than one mantle. In all other ways, it plays like any other persistent.

Noah thought about the last part. I’m a part of the game, then. One of the cards, almost. Somehow, I’m not surprised. I know almost nothing of what’s going on beside that announcement.

But I do know that the ‘gods’ already seem like colossal dicks.

“The notification said the snake dropped a card,” he muttered to himself. He knelt and quickly searched the ground, finding the card and holding it up to look at. The card had a picture of a white-haired girl in old-fashioned leather armor with glowing green eyes standing in a forest. Beside her was a wolf that also had glowing green eyes.

Elven Wolf Ranger

Uncommon Tier-1 Mortal/Nature [Elf, Canine] Creature

1 Mortal or Beast Power, 1 Any Power

Health: 20

Attack: 5x2(ranged)

Magical Attack: 0

Defense: 4

Magical Defense: 4

Special: Sniper Ambush: This creature makes a single physical attack at +3 when it enters.

“The wolf companions of the Elven Wolf Rangers are as much nature spirit as they are beast.”

It didn’t seem like a card that matched the few cards from his deck he had already seen. It had different power costs, as well as different types. Noah also noted that the overland monster stats hadn’t included rarity, tier, or power costs, while the cards had them.

The man and woman were still headed his way, and Noah put the card away. He stood, straightened, and faced the newcomers as the man in the suit ran up. The woman followed, stepping carefully on the road, her feet bare.

The man stood almost six feet tall, a mere two inches shorter than Noah, but the resemblance stopped there. While Noah had black hair, a thick beard, and a lot of lean muscle, the other man had blond hair, was perfectly clean shaven despite it being eleven at night, and was thick around the middle—but he did have a decent number of muscles under his fat. Not bad for a man who must have been twice as old as Noah.

The two newcomers were also bruised and cut in multiple places. In that, at least, they matched Noah. All three of them had seen better days, in fact.

They’d been headed to or from a formal event of some sort, that was clear. It made Noah feel underdressed in his workout shorts and an athletic-wear t-shirt.

Although I’m also wearing a suit of scraped-together battle armor thanks to my card, so maybe everyone is underdressed for the apocalypse but me.

“Are you okay?” the man asked, his eyes widening as he took in Noah, then narrowing as he saw the cards still floating in front of him.

“Yeah, I’m peachy,” Noah said, surreptitiously rubbing at the burning slash across his arm where the snake’s tooth had dragged through his flesh. “You guys?”

“The air bag got us pretty badly when we hit the snake—as did the roof when it struck us the second time. I’m bruised and cut, but basically okay. I think Vicky’s wrist is busted up. Derek didn’t make it through the accident, unfortunately,” the man finished dispassionately.

“You shouldn’t have been speeding,” Noah commented.

The man’s eyes narrowed. “Really? That’s the first thing you’re going to say at a time like this?”

The girl—Vicky, Noah guessed—finally managed to reach them. She was also bruised and cut up, and her wrist was clearly sprained or broken, already swelling. Noah abandoned the comments he was going to make to Suit. And about him.

Noah took a deep and calming breath. “It’s not even ten minutes into the apocalypse, and we’re all half-dead.” Then he held his hand out to the man across from him. “I’m Noah.”

The man clasped it with a firm-if-clammy shake. “Liam, Liam Layton.”

This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it.

“I’m Vicky,” the woman said, then passed her hand through the cards hovering in front of Noah. “What’re those?”

“Nothing important,” Noah replied, wondering if she hadn’t gotten the same notification as everyone else, or was just slow on the uptake.

“We need to get to someplace safe,” Liam said. “If those words were right, and I suspect that they were, given”—he pointed up to the glowing ring of pinpoint lights in the sky—“then we’ll need to consolidate and rebuild. Other people are going to be coming, and—”

“Whoa, whoa!” Noah said, holding his hands up. “I can’t do any of that. I need to get to back home to my girlfriend, Hope.”

“Who’s where?” Liam asked, his voice soft and his gaze burrowing into Noah.

“Kansas City,” Noah replied.

The man scoffed. “That’s two hundred miles away.”

“Not quite,” Noah replied. “Besides, I’m in great shape. I work out and train near daily. I can run most of the day if needed.”

“Again, it’s a long way on foot to Kansas City. And what time did you get up, genius?”

Noah frowned at Liam, who was giving him serious asshole-in-a-suit vibes. “What was your job?”

“I’m the City Manager of Wichita.”

“Of course you were.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Liam asked, his voice hard.

“Nothing. Look, I can jog at about a mile every nine-to-ten minutes without getting tired, and the highway will likely be a safe­ route—well, safe absent monsters—as well as a nearly straight run. So maybe six-to-seven miles an hour. Or a hundred miles in a sixteen-hour day in which I didn’t rest, give or take. Or maybe I can figure something else out.”

Noah knew that some world-famous runner had done almost two hundred miles in a single day, but he was pretty sure he wouldn’t manage that. Still, he had to try something. Fear for Hope ate at his mind.

“If nothing goes wrong, I can make it to Hope in two days.”

Noah stared up at the ring in the sky. The horizon was also subtly wrong, although Noah couldn’t place it. But the light available from the new planetary ring made the previous dark night seem like late evening, although the light was whiter than the red of a sunset.

Liam gave a humorless laugh. “Great. Except, again, you’ve probably been up for more than sixteen hours already. So how about you stay with us for a bit, Mr…?”

“Smith.” Noah didn’t see any point in lying.

“So, you should stay with us, Mr. Smith. I think we’d do better together.”

Noah almost rolled his eyes. “Look, I’m going to Kansas City, to be with Hope. Who’s pregnant with my child, I might add. I’m going to save her if she needs it, which I think she might. You guys do you. And you’re welcome, for saving you from the giant snake.”

“Fine. But you got magical cards, right?” Liam asked, his hand going inside his suit, and his eyes going to the two cards still hovering in front of Noah.

Something about Liam’s voice made Noah tense—he would bet that Liam was about to do something stupid. He was tempted to hit him before he could bring whatever it was out of his suit, but he hesitated—he wasn’t sure he should just attack a man first without a just reason. This man was a fellow American, not an enemy soldier. Not yet at least.

“We’re a few minutes into the apocalypse and we’re all already wounded, don’t make our situation worse,” Noah said, his voice as low and growly as he could make it.

Liam sneered at Noah’s words and pulled a pistol—an old, modifier Sig Sauer P365—from his suit and pointed it at Noah. Noah absurdly noted that Liam had a wedding ring mark on his finger, but no actual band.

He also almost laughed out loud, as it was immediately very apparent that Liam had no idea how to use a pistol, or probably any gun.

Vicky gasped and put her cut-up hand to her mouth.

Liam ignored her. “I’m the city manager of the largest city in Kansas, and you’re some punk kid. Give me your cards or I’ll shoot you.”

“Mighty violent behavior for a man whose title might as well be ‘king nerd, municipal division.’”

Liam’s sneer deepened. “Funny. But put your cards on the ground now. I’m the man with the gun.”

“I legitimately have no idea how I would do that,” Noah said. “Also… you’re threatening a man with a magical suit of power armor, carrying a pistol I bet you don’t know how to use.”

Liam’s eyes narrowed further. Without any additional comments, he shifted his aim from Noah’s armored chest to his face and then pulled the trigger.

Nothing happened.

Noah reached out and snatched the gun from Liam’s hand. “This had a manual safety installed, dickbag. Let me guess, this was Derek’s pistol?”

Liam rubbed his hand, his eyes still narrowed, no sign of fear. “Yeah.”

“And you couldn’t even try and shoot the snake? If you hadn’t been so selfish, you’d have at least known your new pistol wasn’t working and maybe figured it out. For fuck’s sake, man.”

“There won’t be any more bullets,” Liam said. “I didn’t want to waste them if you could handle it.”

“And if I couldn’t have handled it?”

Liam shrugged, the complete lack of concern on his face answer enough.

Noah racked the slide, just to seem more threatening, and pointed the pistol back at Liam. “You prepared to die, now that I have the gun?”

Liam just waited, no fear in his gaze at all. Vicky’s eyes, however, widened, and she trembled.

I hate when jackasses have courage. The usual cowardly bullies are so much easier to deal with.

Noah sighed and lowered the pistol.

Liam’s sneer returned to his face, so deep it was trying to become an honorary hare lip.

“Hey, don’t get cocky just because I didn’t kill you,” Noah said. “I’ve still got your pistol. Bet you miss that, sometime soon, making your way back to whatever rock you crawled out from under through what is now monster-infested wilderness. That’s your penalty for being a giant taint.”

Noah sarcastically saluted with his new Sig. Before he could do anything else, however, the armor he was wearing dissolved into gray light and flowed back into his body.

A notification popped up. Mantle timed out.

Liam twitched but didn’t do anything else.

“Huh,” Noah said, wishing he had gotten more of the rules. “Well, I’m gonna stay here and get some stuff from my truck. Given what happened between us, I think you should get going.”

He motioned with the Sig.

Liam hesitated, and Noah would bet Liam was deciding if Noah would shoot him if he disobeyed. But after another motion from Noah, he seemed to decide to comply. He turned and started to walk back toward Wichita. Vicky glanced at Noah, hesitating herself, but then turned and gingerly followed after Liam.

Noah watched for a full ten minutes, long after the pair had disappeared into the dim

but still brighter than it had been before the ring appeared—light of night, his two cards still in front of him.

Once they were gone, Noah relaxed. He checked the gun, noting it was using a twelve plus one magazine, made sure the safety was on again, and put it in the back of his shorts.

For a moment, as the adrenaline faded, the sheer strangeness of everything overwhelmed Noah. It briefly blotted out the horror of the monster attack, his massive fear for Hope, his lesser fear for his father and brothers, the evil of his fellow men, and his worries for his entire civilization. He glanced first at the two magical cards floating in front of his chest, then stared at the heavens, with its new arc of light—thousands of tiny lights, really. Some primordial monkey reflex rebelled at the sheer wrongness of everything.

After giving himself a couple minutes to quietly freak out, Noah pulled himself together. Getting overwhelmed for any length of time was a good way to join the ninety percent dead the gods were aiming for.

He still had two more cards floating in front of him—the Human Scavenger, and the Scavenged Battle Bot.

Noah reached out and touched the Human Scavenger.

A new notification appeared. It was more semi-translucent words overlaid on the scene in front of him. You may not pull more than two cards from any hand. Switch your hand to draw more cards.

“And how do I do that, random notification?” Noah asked, frustrated.

He stared at his surroundings—Highway 35, cutting through the softly rolling Flint Hills, not so much as a gas station or another car in sight. He took out his Samsung Galaxy 30, hoping beyond hope, but it was dead. He was on his own.

Noah looked in the back of his truck, but it was empty.

A quick look around showed him what he was looking for on the side of the road—his clothing in a garbage bag and a large, brand-new sleeping bag, in case Hope had felt like making love beneath the stars instead of in her dorm room, after she hopefully accepted his proposal.

He took the Sig out from his shorts and carefully tied it into the band holding the sleeping bag together, trying to balance ease of grabbing it and ease of carrying it. He tied the garbage bag of clothes to the other side.

“I’ve got a large sleeping bag, a gun, some clothes, and two hundred miles to go,” Noah muttered to himself. “Oh, and magic cards I barely know how to use.”

He sighed and started to jog northeast along the road, thankful that the weather still seemed to be ‘Kansas Summer,’ a warm night in the high sixties or low seventies.

As he jogged, he calmed. It had always been that way—exercise or working on cars would both calm him almost immediately, both things that had served him well as a wheeled vehicle mechanic in the 82nd Airborne. As he relaxed into his run further, some of the fear left him and a new emotion entered. Excitement.

He stared at his cards. I have magic now. I wonder what that will mean. I wonder what other cards I have. It was like when he first opened the hood of a new junker car to see what he had found, or when he worked to assemble an awesome computer from spare parts.

“Let’s see what we can learn about you…”