Thump-thump. Fred’s heart beat harshly in his chest.

The line scuttled forward. He was pulled alongside, his sandals scraping against dirt, barely registering his own movement. Nine other lines fed into the very same tent, a monster of leather and metal littered with scratches and bloodstains.

Militia stood about the organised chaos of civilians. It was for their own good, but undercurrents of unrest frizzled at his nerves.

Beyond the tent, far into the distance, a conflagration of purple reality-twisting energy rent the sky in twain. Echoes of screams, bestial howls, and errant waves of heat and frost sundered disorderly spring winds.

For a long, drawn-out moment, Fred forgot that he volunteered to be here. His nerves went askew, and he could’ve sworn he blacked out for a moment, followed by a wave of heat and distant colours, like fireworks, so startling that he felt a trembling fracture spread across the tightly bottled fear in his mind’s eye.

Breathe in, breathe out. Step forward.

Thump. Thump.

The battle beyond stole his eyes. Thoughts of participating clouded his mind. In the short minutes it took to process the hundred in front of him, Fred’s mind felt it had run a marathon.

He unknowingly followed through the folds of the tent. The ringing and sensation of the battle outside dispersed, his skin tickled with a pleasantly cool breeze, and the world felt calm.

But Fred didn’t relax.

Lines of weapon racks dotted the walls to either side and senior militiamen stood at the end of each line. Behind them, at the back of the great tent, a long glass case stretched floor-to-ceiling across the entire wall.

More cards than most people would ever see filled the shelves of the display from top to bottom, left to right. The sight stunned Fred, stilled him, and held him captive until a finger roughly poked him in the chest.

“Hey! Watch… Sir!”

The militiaman scoffed. Fred found his gaze drawn passed the scars on the mans face and across to an empty sleeve.

Missing limbs and stuck gearing new recruits in a battlefield, was this his future? It was an image that contrasted with the wealth on display.

Fred gulped.

“Innate rank and type, recruit!”

He winced at the sheer volume of the man’s shout, but found his response lost in the general noise of the tent. Fred grit his teeth and raised his own voice.

“Grade F Body card, sir!”

“Perfect!”

He didn’t even see where it came from, but a spear suddenly filled one of Fred’s hands. He tested moving it, and it came easily enough, if a bit unwieldy. Light but long.

That might usually be it, but recruiting into an active, new warzone gave one benefit that made the horrific danger worth it for some.

The militiaman’s face tensed, and a moment later, he twisted his wrist and grabbed at the air. A small, unassuming metallic card appeared clasped between his fingers.

The card was lightly flicked, a cuff appeared in his hand, and the card was slipped in with practiced ease. The militiamen slapped the leather cuff to a close over Fred’s forearm. Like magic, the leather melded to fit him perfectly.

A jolt flickered through his body. Fred’s breath left his lungs and his mind whirled with information, an image of a copper-rimmed card coalescing in his mindscape.

Spearmaster [E] Acquired!

Spearmaster [E]

Tier: 2 | Weapon

Grasp the essence of the spear, its balance and promise.

Synergy: 30% | Tier Penalty: 20%

“Report to the QM at the exit.”

“Yes, sir!”

Fred hurried away, spear slung over his shoulder like he was born to it, skipping past the card display to the exit flaps.

There, he joined another line. This one, at least, moved much faster. Everyone here also wielded a weapon of some sort. He spotted maces and swords, some with a shield, but predominantly there were spears.

Spears were cheap and especially easy to use with a common card. Those with other weapons probably had innate weapon cards. Maybe they had other reasons. He didn’t know.

Fred’s mind wandered again, and his grip on the spear tightened. Spearmaster felt like a good support for his innate card, so why was the synergy so low? He squinted at the description of his white-rimmed innate card.

Advance [F]

Tier: 0 | Body

Improve through the glory of battle.

(Attributes)

Level 0

PHY: 0

MENTAL: 0

SPIRIT: 0

What was a spear for if not battle?

Fred shook his head and stepped forward.

The quartermaster seemed normal at first, a middle-aged man standing with a slight limp. That was when Fred noticed the scar, and the glossy eye. A glass eye. He winced internally. Why was everyone here so clearly injured?

“Card types?”

“Body and weapon.”

“Attach yourself to the left flank. Report to Captain Reinstedt.”

The quartermaster gestured in a direction and that was that. Yes, Fred had already registered at a local magistrate’s hall, but this was sped up to the nines.

A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

He had only half expected to be shoved into battle as soon as he arrived, a mere hour into the field.

It was only now that he truly left the tent’s bounds, and all the sensation returned with the subtlety of a sledgehammer. It felt far closer than before.

He could make out words amongst the chaos. The shouts and the screeching roars of beasts.

A portal that opened to a world of feral, unintelligent beasts that couldn’t be reasoned with. These kinds of portals accounted for some of, if not the harshest battlegrounds around for F-grade cardmasters.

But, as Fred had heard; most didn’t stay F-graded for long, and the rest died. It felt like a lump had gotten stuck in his throat. These damned nerves.

Militiamen formed a loose personnel barrier around the battlefield, stretching from the monstrous tent and into the far distance. Fred followed their directions through the dead woods that once formed Pine Hills. A lush area full of life that made for good hunting and idyllic livelihoods.

Now, it was difficult to understand what might have once been. Fred certainly couldn’t picture it.

Ash fell adrift through the air, lending bite to oft-stirred winds. Dead foliage snapped beneath his sandals. Shifts in temperature led to the odd sensation of being all too warm in one moment and freezing cold the next.

Thunder echoed from far in the distanced, and the roars of beasts and men alike bounced between the shattered woods.

Stomping toward the noise from within the defensive line made for a different atmosphere than without. Fred’s nerves strained, but his blood boiled. His grip on his spear tightened, and his stilted walk became a brisk jog.

He’d chosen to come here. Frederick Graveth was not a coward.

A different kind of snap echoed through his little pocket in the woods, and his eyes snapped to the source.

Beneath his foot lay the top half of a human skull, now snapped into three pieces.

His eyes snapped forward as soon as they’d snapped down, but the image of lingering rotted flesh persisted in his mind, and doubt resurfaced.

He hadn’t even made it to the damned battle yet.

“Hey, what are you doing?!”

Fred twisted about, almost tripping over in the process, and glared at another young man.

The two locked eyes. The young man’s relatively muscular and somewhat taller than typical build and was very similar to Fred’s own. One merely wielded a mace, and the other a spear.

“I was just thinking,” Fred finally said. “Are you going to the left flank?”

“Of course I am!” The young man replied, rolling his eyes and his mace with casual ease. “I’m Leon.”

“Fred.”

They shook hands and, both filled with nerves, resumed the walk in silence. The meeting felt strangely uneventful, and the minutes crossed their path and drifted by.

Fred was beginning to think they might’ve gone the wrong way, when Leon gestured forward.

“That looks it.”

It sure did, Fred thought with no small measure of bemusement, fear, and trepidation.

For all intents and purposes, it seemed a small camp fit for a warband. A dozen small tents, some with personnel rushing to and from, a larger tent holding medics that were actively performing field-surgery, and another with half a body bag peeking through the flaps.

Fred found his gaze inexplicably drawn to a middle-aged woman in thick metal plate, the blades of a glaive stretching well above her shoulders. Something about her intruded into the greater world, enhancing the colour and liberating him of much of his nerves.

She, he realized, was a D-grade innate cardmaster. The aura the woman projected was similar to one he felt in his ceremony mere days before, but that was from a cardmaster of the Church of Awakening, a veritable priest. The priest’s aura was soothing, enlightening, calming and enriching all in one.

But her aura made him confident. This was a warrior, not a priest. Immediately, Fred felt a thousand times more assured of his choices leading up to this moment.

She glanced back at them, and the pressure behind her gaze froze the pair in place.

“Two more?”

Her voice travelled through the camp and across the short distance without the intensity or tone of a raised voice.

She eyed their weapons and their sleeves with appraising eyes. Fred even felt the barest sensation that she might have seen through his innate card too, even from this distance and without the compatibility of a priest to do so.

“Corporal Frostmoor, relieve Blackwood. Take the maceman.”

That was enough to confirm that she was, indeed, Captain Reinstedt.

Fred didn’t hear a reply to that, but it wasn’t for him anyway. Leon jogged ahead and seemed to figure it out. He’d probably be fine.

Fred looked around camp as he entered. He only now saw the low wooden table by the captain’s feet, who offhandedly waved him to sit atop a stump nearby. The scrawling map laid across the table momentarily stole his attention.

The map was relatively detailed, with a wooden circle laid in the middle – probably the portal – and a bunch of man and dog shaped figurines surrounding the middle in a very jagged rendition of a circle, split by hills and a lake.

He could even see a little wooden house representing the recruitment tent, and a little wooden tent roughly where he thought he was now. There were only three others dotted across the map, which almost seemed like too little.

The captain ignored Fred for a short while as militiamen came and went, discussing in low voices and occasionally using plotting rods to push and pull aside the figurines on the map.

An idle thought hit him then; the map was awfully stable for the chaotic environment. The wind, the rapid shifts of temperature, the noise of battle was all blunted here.

Fred eventually noticed one older man sitting quietly beside the map, his eyes locked on it, but otherwise seemingly meditating. Occasionally, he would move his own plotting rod and adjust the positions of men and beasts on the far side of the portal from them. Fred could only imagine that there were mind cards at play, but he knew too little about them.

It was almost disconcerting looking away from the captain’s small area in the center of the camp and eyeing the chaos surrounding them. Men ran by carrying the wounded, others cradling missing limbs. There was one man that shuffled by with wide eyes and blood soaked clothes.

Fred even watched a young woman saunter into camp, dragging the corpse of a beast unlike any he’d ever seen. Three heads attached to long necks, two tongues lolling from each jaw, one large eye atop each forehead, long horns shooting from the tops of its skulls, a spindly looking tail and sharp, glinting hair sprouting from its hide…

…and she tossed it into one of the tents and immediately left. The flap fluttered as the tri-goat-looking thing pushed it aside, leaving Fred a glimpse of dozens of other horrific corpses lining the tent interior.

They were fighting that?

A growing discomfort filled his arms. The spear seemed heavier than ever.

“Do you not have a body card?”

It took a second for Fred to understand that the words were directed at him. He turned to find the captain had already walked to his side, and his flinch was immediate.

Luckily, he had his wits about him and spoke very quickly. “Ma’am! I have an F-grade body card.”

“And it does..?”

“I haven’t used it yet,” Fred admitted frankly. “It’s a growth card. My body will improve through battle.”

That much, at least, he could guess with confidence.

“You didn’t think to try sparring someone back home?”

The tone was lightly dismissive, but Fred only smiled at the assumed idiocy.

“It didn’t do anything.”

She blinked owlishly. A spark of approval flickered through her eyes, but a small part of Fred felt that he merely saw what he desired to.

“Rare card. Very well. Corporal Hargrave, replace Kendrick and take along this spearman.”

Fred summoned his will and stood, tightening his grip on his spear. A handsome young man clad in a mix of chainmail and tanned leathers clapped him on the shoulder, startling Fred briefly, and introduced himself.

“Hargrave. Is this your first time?”

“Yes, sir.”

“You have water, snacks and bandages?” Fred nodded. “Follow me closely and don’t mess up. Quinlan, Iverton!”

It had all moved so quickly that Fred was certain he’d still been standing in line not thirty minutes ago. And yet, it wasn’t his nerves he was fighting as he left camp.

It was a struggle, but it was sheer eagerness that he fought to keep down. An eagerness to use his card that he had kept suppressed for days on end. Energy filled his limbs at the thought, and his mind cleared as he readied himself to put his life in the hands of his cards.

They promptly left the camp, joined by two others that were a similar age to Fred but wore the fresh scars of new privates.

The noise, the winds, the fireworks, the intermixing heatwaves and the chilling breezes coalesced around the group. Ash flit across his skin, the chill seeped into his bones, and the warmth scalded his face.

Card powers, just like he’d always yearned for, even now swept through the dead woods and already put the fear of god into him. But…

Fred clenched his fists.

“Bring it on!”