Vadim stepped past the line where the wall of light had broken, and plants slid across the ground like snakes as they entered the new half of the room, stretching out from a venerable forest that was growing on their side of the room.

Daniel spotted several drifters still and unmoving, trapped beneath roots and branches. Though he suspected there was something more to their capture. These things had access to multiple cards, and the occasional twitches and moans coming from them indicated that they weren’t dead.

Vadim stepped into the room, eyes cold.

“What a mess,” he frowned, vines snaking past him.

The two leading drifters turned to one another before seeming to come to some kind of understanding as the one dressed in blue sprinted towards Vadim, skin turning metallic before disappearing entirely as their battle began.

Daniel couldn’t spare the time to watch as he began moving. Vadim hadn’t been here when the battle had started. Which meant that the portal was probably still working. Or Daniel hoped it was at least.

Daniel ran, and not needing any prodding Jonathan followed.

Some of the drifters had joined the blue leader, but not all, and the remaining ones joined the other leader in running after Daniel and Jonathan.

They sounded like laughing hyenas as they followed on the duo's heels, and that prodded Daniel to run faster than they ever had before.

All along the walls drifters stirred, pinned along the way by roots and vines. They’d dug under the creature's skin, tangled and disorderly keeping them held, and somehow despite it all alive.

‘At least he’d known how to deal with these things,’ Daniel thought as he ran. He didn’t know if he’d be able to handle any drifters if they’d started controlling plants like that priest did.

As the two ran a drifter shot forward with a speed that told of a movement card. It sprinted with arcs of purple lightning that lagged behind it before leaping forward, knife raised.

Daniel forced himself to sidestep to the left side of the passageway, pushing off the right wall and only narrowly avoiding the lunging drifter as it skidded and tripped.

Immediately another one seemed to activate the same card, lightning trailing behind it as it ran forward.

‘What are they doing,’ Daniel wondered between gasping breaths. ‘

The laughter echoing behind him was all the answer he needed.

‘They’re still playing. They’re holding back,’ Daniel realized, gritting his teeth.

The lightning wreathed drifter shot towards Daniel, lunging at him with its knife before being blasted away by a stream of fog. Melting its skin, but not hurting it nearly enough to kill it.

It writhed there on the ground for a moment before being roughly picked by the drifter leader as it barreled down the hall.

One of its hands gripped the smaller drifter’s throat, and then the other grabbed its leg as the leader's hands began to glow a bright red and it proceeded to pull the drifter in two different directions, ripping it in half with a splattering of blood.

Tendrils of viscera and blood fell against the leader’s chest as it ran, throwing either half of the drifter’s body to the side of the hall. It took Daniel several steps to realize what the monster was doing.

‘No, that can’t be how that works,’ Daniel thought through heavy breaths. ‘You’re the one that killed it. Not me, not Jonathan. You did that.’

Whatever rules the monsters followed seemed to disagree as Jonathan stumbled, blood dripping from his nose.

The adventurer cursed before slamming his foot on the ground and filling the hall with fog. He’d been holding that back to keep from killing them, but now there was no reason to he was able to plug up the hall.

“Get to the portal and leave,” Jonathan said, hands held out and focused on maintaining the wall of fog. “I’ll hold them back as long as I can.”

Daniel hesitated, “I can’t just leave you.”

“No, I suppose you can’t,” Jonathan sighed, lifting his shortsword from his side and digging the point into his forearm, still keeping it raised to maintain the fog filling the hall.

It glowed the same iridescent sheen as it had before and moments later Daniel could see a silvery card being pried from his arm. It didn’t look easy to remove, like it had melted itself to his skin and removing it was something unnatural to do.

But all the same moments later Jonathan had the blood covered card in his fist and shoved it towards Daniel.

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“Take this and go. If I'm going to die here, then that is the one card in my deck that they cannot get their hands on.”

Daniel moved to object, but stopped and glanced down at the card.

Change of Pace

Rare

Wildcard

The wielder of this card can change the details of another card in their deck. Temporarily warping them to have the attributes of an opposite aligned card. General themes will remain consistent.

Cooldown is dependent on card rarity.

“Now get out of here, I might survive this, but I can’t do it unless you leave. I have a card that’ll only activate when I’m alone, so just go and get to the portal already,” Jonathan said through gritted teeth, stuggling to maintain the fog.

The fog filling the hall was dissipating in spots, and it likely wasn’t made easier by whatever metamorphosis he was going through.

So with a deep breath Daniel steeled himself and turned to leave. Running down the hallway as the sounds of battle quickly picked up behind him.

‘Looks like he didn’t manage to block the hall for long,’ Daniel thought as he entered the room with the portal in it. It was still on, the surface of its sheen a brilliant color of blue.

With one last look back down the hall, still hearing the sounds of battle Daniel moved to step through the portal, only to stop himself when he felt something was off.

At first he couldn’t identify what it was, but then he realized that his tatoo for “A Sane Man’s Burden” had begun to grow warm.

‘That can’t be a coincidence,’ Daniel thought, standing still at the precipice of the portal.

He stared into the swirling blue of the portal, trying to piece together what was wrong with it as something inside the shimmering blue became a little more clear.

‘Why didn’t the drifter collapse this hallway too?’ Daniel thought, still looking into the portal. ‘It had the opportunity, and it’s not like it really needs the portal to escape the room when it has so many cards in its deck.’

As Daniel had that thought , the blue of the portal immediately changed to black and Daniel could see through to the other side as easily as he would’ve seen through a window.

Dozens of creatures crowded there, waiting with gaping maws that floated in an empty black abyss. Their teeth were as large as his leg and when Daniel’s eyes met one of theirs a chill ran down his spine. Their forms shifted and warped, changing alongside his heartbeat, forcing him to avert his eyes.

‘This was a trap,’ he realized. ‘Someone had actually gone and trapped the portal out.’

The sound of shoes on stone drew Daniel from his thoughts as the drifter leader entered the small room housing the portal. None of the others were with it, which meant that Jonathan had either killed them or was still fighting.

Either way it didn’t matter. He was just as screwed with or without the added help for the drifter.

All of his combat associated cards were out of order and the portal was a no go. Which left very few options. Only one of which Daniel found he could live with.

Reaching into his pant pocket Daniel pulled out the shimmering silver card that Jonathan had just given him. On its surface was an intricate drawing showing a man standing atop a mountain. A carved line divided the man in two. One half smiling and dressed in finery, and the other frowning, dressed in rags.

“Sorry Jonathan,” Daniel muttered, watching the drifter to see if it'd start moving. “Looks like I’ll need to borrow this for a bit.”

Daniel placed it on his right hand and willed it to join his deck, and all the while the drifter jumped and laughed in the doorway.

It clearly wanted him to add the card to his deck. Monsters couldn’t naturally add them to their own. That was a natural law in this world as far as he could tell. So the drifter likely needed him to have the card equipped before it infected him for it to gain the card itself.

The fact it was intelligent enough to know this spoke volumes to how dangerous it really was. Though Daniel wasn’t so sure that the creatures were working on their own. This whole event felt more like a planned ambush than a random encounter. That, and the fact that the things were so adamantly hunting creatures not cursed by the moon meant that this was probably a monster untouched by the moon itself.

Which meant this whole thing was a coincidence.

‘And coincidences don’t exist,’ Daniel thought as he directed the card to activate. It refused to change any of the cards frozen by the drifters, even if "Flicker Between World’s" was close to becoming available again.

Which left him with two options. A Sane Man’s Burden and Dreamer’s Durability. The inverse of either one was questionable and unpredictable, and the effects that Dreamer’s Durability would have leaned towards being the worse of the two. He’d already activated the card, targeting his fortress in Limbo before everything had gone to hell, and now there was no telling if he’d get any value out of it while not inside its range. Reguardless of it the card chaged or not. Which left Daniel with only one option, one card that he was guarenteed to get something out of. So with that he quickly willed A Sane Man’s Burden to change.

The process was fast, and in seconds Daniel had a new card’s details floating around inside his head.

A Madman’s Freedom

Legendary

Soul

The wielder of this card inflicts the madness debuff on all hostile creatures in a 100 meter radius focused on the user. This effect partially affects the wielder, making addendums in cards easier to find.

This card also makes the user immune to all poisons, debuffs and curses excluding the madness debuff.

The icy feeling covering Daniel’s cards all but burned away, and when he looked around the room again he couldn’t help but laugh.

“Excellent job,” Daniel said between bouts of laughter. “Really, you went above and beyond. Thank you all.”

The drifter didn’t seem to understand what Daniel was saying, and it tilted its head in confusion before shrugging in an exaggerated manner as it moved to lunge towards Daniel, who for whatever reason hovered a foot above the ground.