Wolfe pulled his Edge. The thug that had shot the pup barely had time to widen his eyes as Wolfe stepped forward out of the smoke and blasted the thug in the chest with three clustered shots.
The thug somehow managed to stay upright long enough to take two steps backward. That despite massive amounts of blood pouring from the holes in his chest and what had to have been outrageous static shock. He collapsed off the end of the pier in the tiny space between the boat and the docks with a splash.
Furious hacking and coughing came from the edge of the boat as multiple thugs lined up and shot into the semi-darkness around Wolfe. One grazed his arm, doing two damage, and he cussed, firing wildly at his assailants to keep their heads down as he ran up the ramp.
One thug died as a spectral mastiff flew up from the pier and bit the thug, and he got a notification that Malviere had killed him. Wolfe kept shooting as he ran full tilt up the boat and managed to catch one thug in the face, blowing his head off.
However, Wolfe’s lunatic charge, despite the fog and the smoke demon, put him in the open for crucial seconds. A red-hot pain ripped through him as a bullet tore through the flesh of his side, and Wolfe nearly fell off the ramp, slamming into the railing at the side of boat entrance and falling back down the ramp.
Wolfe let go of his gun and grabbed the ramp to keep from going into the lake, which would have brought his rampage to an end—and probably ended him as well. He managed to stabilize and not get shot again long enough to flip his deck and touch a second Demon Portal card. He almost summoned his ‘usual’ but went for two more of his odd cards again, still hoping to get through this without any stragglers reporting who had really attacked the Weeds.
He summoned a Chain Demon and an Annoying Imp, each of which was in the deck because of an unusual feature it provided.
Chain Demon
Uncommon Tier-1 Infernal Creature
3 Infernal Power
Health: 25
Attack: 6 x3
Magical Attack: 0
Defense: 8
Magical Defense: 5
Special: Forced Confession: If total damage dealt to any target exceeds half that targets Health, the target is rendered immobile. If held immobile, the target must truthfully answer all questions put to him.
“The inquisitors of the Infernal Realms have far more tools at their disposal than their mortal counterparts.”
The brief puff of red energy that heralded the Chain Demon cleared to reveal a creature that was nearly ten feet tall, wreathed in chains, with a few moving away from the mass of the body like tentacles. It stood over Wolfe protectively as Wolfe clutched the damp and dirty ramp up into the boat while his side bled.
The Annoying Imp was a mere two feet tall, red with slight horns and wings that appeared to small to support its weight in the air. It appeared at the top of the ramp, and its card revealed its two tricks, tricks that Wolfe hoped would save him—Taunting and Dodge [3]. The creature forced every other creature to attack it, and it had a seventy-five percent chance to avoid any physical attack.
But instead of a creature appearing, the air around Wolfe grew cold. A snowflake fell onto his arm, and as he stared at the field around him more fell, obscuring things even further.
Wolfe’s opponent, who he hadn’t even seen yet, had played an unexpected card—Demeter’s Finale.
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Demeter’s Finale
Legendary Tier-3 Nature Persistent
2 Nature Power
This card gives advantage to all cards with the words ‘Unseelie,’ ‘Winter,’ ‘Ice,’ ‘Snow,’ ‘Blizzard,’ or ‘Cold’ in its title or keywords, and everything else is treated as if it had disadvantage against all targets. All other advantages, disadvantages, and resistances are ignored by all cards. (Immunity is unaffected.)
Any card that inflicts damage with the Cold type gains 3 Magical Attack.
The creatures are almost certainly going to be coming, Wolfe thought. But the real problem was that with type disadvantage, every one of Wolfe’s creatures would inflict half damage against everything they attacked, making it harder to clear the thugs and get to his real targets—Chester and Pierre Ambroise.
The dulling but still agonizing pain in his side reminded Wolfe that he was already down to eleven of his thirty-two health—a normal mortal would have died already from the damage sustained.
He hit a second card in his deck, pulling Brimstone, one of his paired set of magical guns, and fired along the boat, keeping the thug’s heads down as he lurched back to his feet and onto the ship deck proper, off the ramp.
The Annoying Imp was shot in the first couple seconds as Wolfe made it to the top, but the Chain Demon followed him, and most of the thugs foolishly fired at the Chain Demon.
But two shot at him, and he hit the deck and rolled around the edge of a metal shipping crate to avoid being hit.
On the deck, at the edge of the swirling fog near the front of the boat, two creatures appeared. One was titled Winter Witch and the other was titled Carnage Demon—and it’s card showed a four power cost.
I need to change this dynamic fast, I’m already losing.
Mentally, Wolfe summoned Cereboo and Malviere both—his plays weren’t working well enough.
Then he ‘detonated’ his Smoke Demon, triggering the ‘five-foot visibility’ and ‘creatures can’t attack’ functions.
Immediately, the smoke everywhere thickened. Wolfe managed to stop from coughing. This smoke may not be damaging, per se, but it can’t be good for me. Ninety seconds to change things up.
He dismissed the remaining creature card—the Chain Demon—to recover the mana as he kept behind the crate. The rate of fire dropped off, and people calling names, like this was a demented game of Marco Polo, started.
I guess it’s almost a game of Marco, Polo. Where the losers die.
Wolfe swiped his deck, almost cheering when he saw the card he wanted—his Mantle. If anyone sees this they’ll likely put one and two together. I need to end this fast.
He touched his Master of the Hunt mantle card, which settled over him, giving him renewed vitality and increased ability both. As well as speed from Malviere, if her ability would work without line of sight.
Energized, Wolfe ran around the opposite side of the crate. Twenty-one health again—less than my starting amount, but more than a normal chump, anyway. And my stats are far higher.
He almost immediately ran into a thug who stared at him wide-eyed. The thug had long, dirty-blonde hair and a pock-marked face. Wolfe punched the druggie-looking obstacle in the sternum before the thug could pull bring his gun up. Wolfe felt bones snap beneath his empowered strike, and the man collapsed, eyes bugging, to briefly claw at his chest, mouth open, before dying.
Wolfe ignored the corpse and kept going. He knew the thug hadn’t signed off on killing him, but he worked for the Weeds—a criminal organization that had signed off on killing him. The thug had voluntarily joined this life, and had reaped what he’d sown.
Fuck around and find out.
He did hit his next card—Hellfire. A second infernal gun appeared in his other hand, and his attack went to eighteen, which was an absurd level, doing something like five times the damage a normal chump with a gun would do.
Wolfe rounded the corner of the crate. He couldn’t see anything, being effectively blinded from the thick smoke, fog, and snowflakes. He raised Brimstone and Hellfire and dual-fired off a couple rounds into the smoke back in the direction of the docks. He didn’t wait, running past and behind the next crate in the line. Wolfe’s random aggression was rewarded with a yell and a death notification both.
Wolfe continued to run past, headed for the end of the ship. Since he hadn’t seen either Chester or Pierre at the loading area, his next best guess was that they were near where the creatures had appeared—the front of the boat.
He dashed through the thick smoke, heading past all the crates and along the side as the boat narrowed.
Wolfe slammed into someone running the other way, no time to slow or change direction as his enemy appeared. The middle-aged man with a salt-and-pepper rock star hairstyle was bowled to the ground as Wolfe hit him, slamming backward hard into the deck on his back, gun out.
Wolfe only needed a third of a second to assess the situation—just a fraction less than the man he hit, who was obviously Pierre Ambroise.
He fired downward with both his Infernal pistols before Pierre managed to fire upward, and blew his targets chest open in a massive splash of blood and bone.
A deck of cards appeared in the cavity of his opponents torso, but before Wolfe could react at all, another man came lunging from the smoke, shirt pulled up across his mouth.
The older man with the gray ponytail reached out and touched Wolfe with one hand while another touched a card.
A blast of ice exploded across Wolfe from the point that Chester Ambroise’s hand lay on his arm.