“I’m going to set up shop over here, heroes,” the trader said, and moved to the side of the clearing. A tent magically appeared, and the trader began setting up a stone table near it.

Wolfe resummoned Cereboo and Malviere, then sat cross-legged at the stone tablet, reaching over and tentatively grabbing a hunk of cooked meat. He gave it a sniff, then bit into it. It tasted a bit gamey to him, but not that different than beef.

But as he ate it, he got a notification that he had received healing.

Shel had kneeled down on Wolfe’s right and glanced at the card before grabbing some of the meat herself. She munched on it with one hand while she looked at the card.

Then she glanced over at Wolfe, her eyes shining. “Glad you pulled us through that—this card is insane.”

Miriam lowered herself to the ground in an almost perfect match for Shel, but on his left side.

“This could be some kind of male erotica novel,” she said, smiling at Wolfe and licking her lips. “Two beautiful girls, each kneeling to one side of you…”

Wolfe snorted but ignored her—usually the best way to deal with Miriam.

Derek rolled his eyes and tore at the meat he had grabbed.

Malviere, Cereboo, Sorenia, and Liurenia all took seats along the opposite side of the slab, and Cereboo started wolfing down the meat with all three heads. Wolfe noted that somehow, the level of meat never really went down.

He held his hand out. “Mind if I take a gander at the card?”

“Gander?” Miriam asked, giggling.

Wolfe flushed. “My dad used to say it.”

“I think it’s a great word,” Shel said, smiling at Wolfe and staring in his eyes before passing the card over.

The card showed a large fire with leaf-green energy around the outside, near a confluence of rivers and pathways. It was tended to by numerous youthful Amerind women, led by an older woman that resembled Loowit, although it was hard to see the detail on the small picture to be sure.

Stone Arch Fire

Unique Mythic equivalent Tier-1 equivalent Life [Civic] Building

0 power

This creates the Stone Arch Fire. It adds +1 Fire power to the deckbearer, and doubles the effect of any other Civic Building in the deckbearer’s deck.

This building card is not a null card. In addition to being placed as a building, it may be played as a persistent for 1 Life, 1 Fire, and 1 any power

Special: All Healer [5]: All allied deckbearers and cards heal 5 every single round

Special: Civic Leader [1]: All of the deckbearers [civic] subtype creature cards gain +1 to all non-health stats

Special: Death Ward: The deckbearers creatures may not be killed by automatic removal effects while this card is in play

Special: Fungible [Life, Fire]: Life and Fire power may be spent as if they were the other

“Heat is life, cold is death. Never let anyone tell you fire is only for burning.”

Miriam let out a long, low whistle. “Wow… aren’t you a fire deckbearer as well, Wolfe?”

“What?” Wolfe asked, briefly confused. “Yeah, I am… technically. But I’ve not really worked that angle of my deckbearer abilities at all. This card is bascailly just one bonus power.”

Miriam smiled at him. “Well, you don’t have to ignore your Fire energy anymore. You could take one Life power and then put the Stone Arch Fire in your deck. You could heal yourself every round, and protect your creatures from death effects.”

“That’s silly,” Wolfe said. “I mean, Shel is the one focused on police and other civic things.”

“But the Hellsmouth Institute benefits from other building cards,” Shel said. “If you had this, it would probably give a huge bonus to any future orphans you get.”

Warmth spread through Wolfe at Shel’s words, a sort of spiritual match to the fire they were sitting next to. She always tries to support me. This card could obviously benefit her deck, but her first move was to try and make me stronger. I really don’t deserve a girl like her.

A tiny piece of Wolfe was tempted to take the Stone Arch Fire, because it would benefit him. It would benefit him far less than it would benefit Shel, but it was still their first Mythic card. His old loner instincts wrestled his new instincts, but were thrown to the ground.

That’s old me talking. The guy who only trusted himself and Big Man Grimm. If I really do want to marry Shel, then her strength is my strength, and it benefits me more in her deck.

Wolfe shook his head. “This is wrong for me, or at least a lot better for you, Shel. I can’t easily move into a deck that benefits from or focuses on Civic cards, and this plays heavily into that paradigm.”

“It’ll make you stronger,” Shel said.

“It would make you far stronger than me. Sure, I could use it, and it might make me a bit better. But I need to either give up the Occult Library building or spend ten leveling pips, then get enough Fire type cards to benefit. Like I said earlier—I gave that path up when I picked my level twenty-five perk. This should go to you, Shel, assuming no one else objects.”

Miriam patted Wolfe on his forearm. “I’m not taking cards from this dungeon, Wolfe. I mean, unless you give them to me, obviously. But I owe you, remember? Even without taking cards you’re just power leveling me and Derek here anyway. Also, even outside the moral considerations, it’s unlikely that these cards would benefit us much, given our typings.”

“I don’t know…” Shel said.

Wolfe was surprised it was this hard to get her to just take the card, but she had always played second to him. Which in some cases made sense, but not in this case.

He thought about his intentions to Shel for a moment, then continued. “Look… we look like we might be together a long time, right? If you’re stronger, I’m stronger.”

“For the Pack,” Malviere said, her occult voice echoing with mystic portent.

“Love, honor, and community are the strengths that Raphael bequeathed to mortals, I think you meant to say,” Liurenia replied tartly, fluttering here dove wings.

The dark energy around Malviere pulsed. Wolfe’s companion narrowed her eyes and glared at Liurenia, then opened her mouth to retort.

But Wolfe beat her to it. “Let’s just see what we have for other cards, we’ll come back to this.”

Miriam clapped her hands once. “Yeah, I want to see the other ones. What was the card that Loo lady dropped?”

Wolfe held it out and the four humans gathered around. It showed a beautiful lady, young, with Amerind features—the person they had just seen.

Loowitlatkla, Whose Face Launched A Thousand Braves

Unique Rare Equivalent, Tier-1 equivalent Mortal/Fire [Civic] Creature

2 Mortal or 2 Fire Power, 2 Any power

Health: 23

Attack: 3

Defense: 6

Magical Attack: N/A

Magical Defense: 6

Special: Maddening Beauty: When this card enters the field, half (randomly chosen) of one enemy deckbearer’s creatures on field will switch sides, except for Golem, Elemental, and Undead ones. They remain on the side of the Deckbearer till this card leaves the field. The power of the cards that switched sides is returned to their deckbearer.

Special: Healer [5]: When this creature enters the field it may fully heal one other creature card or restore 5 Health to a deckbearer

Special: Dungeon Exchange: This card may be exchanged at the end of Loowitlatkla’s Fall

“Loowit was once an old woman of such heart and kindness that the god’s granted her eternal life. But she requested beauty to go along with it, and that was a different story.”

If you find this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the infringement.

“I aspire to be this spirit,” Miriam said, then stood. She struck a pose in the middle of the clearing they were in, her arms akimbo, black-dress-hugged body on display. “Think I could make two of you fight over me?”

Wolfe rolled his eyes, and Derek snorted. Shel just ignored her.

“Anyway, it’s pretty interesting,” Miriam said with a drawl as she sat back down and grabbed some of the berries from the stone slab filled with food. “The card is potentially very powerful, but it costs a lot of power and it can be undone moderately easily. Not as good as the Arch, certainly.”

“Well, that’s because it’s a rare and you’re comparing it to a mythic,” Wolfe said.

Miriam shrugged and aped his voice for her first word. “Well, I’m still a tad underwhelmed. But who cares. let’s just skip to the fun part and see what drops from the packs.”

Wolfe pulled out the card packs they had gotten.

Each of the card packs had stylized picture of a fish and a bird of prey, each composed of black-and-white lines and shapes rather than being a composite whole. It was vaguely Aztec, but Wolfe wouldn’t have bet anything he cared to lose on the image’s cultural origins.

Written across each pack in English were the words “Cycle of the Fifth Sun, Twilight.” Two were labeled common, one uncommon, and one rare.

“Wow,” Shel said, pulling her phone out and typing at it.

“Pretty sure this is a zero-bars location,” Wolfe said. “The gods don’t provide wi-fi passwords.”

“I downloaded a lot of information into my phone, including set releases and known cards,” Shel said absently as she scrolled, through a document and not the internet, apparently.

“Here it is—The Cycle of the Fifth Sun, Twilight. Released in 1510. The second to last time a new world set was released exclusively in Central and North America. It was known as a set with a much higher rate of enhancers as specialty cards, and had a large number of unique creatures granted in dungeons and from roaming monsters.”

“Well, let’s see what we get,” Wolfe said. He passed the card packs over to Shel.

“Why me?” Shel asked, taking them.

“Your perk for opening better packs,” Wolfe replied.

“It only works for Mortal and Divine packs, basically,” Shel said, then held them back. “You open them. You have the Caretaker of the Lost card, remember? You might get an orphan out of it.”

“Does that mean the gods would make new cards?” Miriam asked suddenly, leaning forward. “I mean… there weren’t even orphan cards that far back.”

“Maybe they’ll just give us one from the current set?” Wolfe asked.

“I hope this means new cards,” Miriam said. “That would be so cool. Even if it’s just a common, it’s also kinda a unique.”

“Yeah,” Shel responded.

Wolfe took the card packs and opened them. The common packs produced eleven commons and an uncommon, the uncommon two uncommon cards and four commons, and the rare pack gave two commons, two uncommon cards, and two rare cards.

But no orphans. He snorted after going through them all, and Miriam giggled, probably guessing what he was snorting at.

He then sorted them into piles—Mortal, Beast, Undead, Infernal, Divine, Light, and then one big pile for everything else, to match their types.

“No Psychic cards at all, huh?” Miriam asked.

Wolfe shook his head no. “No Meta either, although no one here uses those.”

Then he held out the Mortal cards. There were a couple common mortal Creatures, one of which was a ‘tribal pathfinder’ that was incredibly weak but allowed pulling any other civic card from the deck and immediately playing it for its normal cost.

Shel briefly gave thought to it but passed.

Then there was an uncommon mortal and Nature enhancer that showed a man on an alter, his chest open, blood pouring down into plants around the alter. It gave Nature cards a boost but required a mortal card to be turned into a null card.

“So, no mortal cards that are useful to me at all, really,” Shel said.

“Sorry,” Wolfe said.

He glanced at the Beast cards as well, of which there were four. Two were ‘cautious deer’ which were very weak but ignored the first attack against them and could be sacrificed for health. The third was a ‘Fish filled River’ persistent that cost only one Beast power and made all Mortal cards cost one less power if their cost started between two and four. Wolfe didn’t care about any of those. But the last one was quite interesting to him.

It showed a hairless dog that vaguely reminded Wolfe of a whippet, staring with glowing eyes.

Xolo Spirit-Warder

Uncommon Tier-1 Beast [Canine] Creature

2 Beast Power

Health: 7

Attack: 2

Defense: 3

Magical Attack: N/A

Magical Defense: 3

Special: Delicacy: Sacrifice this card to heal a deckbearer for ten health. This power may only be triggered once per day.

Special: Protection from Undead: All other allied creatures gain +100% Defense and Magical Defense against undead.

Special: Death, Undead Immunity: This creature is immune to all undead and death damage.

“The Xolo Spirit-Warder is a dog that protects mortals from the many undead terrors. It’s also a delicacy served at funerals.”

“That’s pretty weak, and a lot of the time you won’t be able to sacrifice it, because of Cerberus’ Home for Wayward Hellhounds,” Shel said.

Wolfe nodded. “For sure. But as a side-deck creature card, there are situations where it could be really useful, and a solid portion of my deck empowers it. I mean, it’s a specific deck counter dog. I couldn’t ask for a better uncommon.”

“Your pack grows,” Malviere muttered, giving Liurenia the side-eye.

“Well, I, for one, think this dogs anti-undead bias is reprehensible,” Miriam said with a pompous air and swirl of an imaginary wineglass. Then she giggled.

Wolfe rolled his own eyes, but he was smiling. He was happy to see Miriam happy, and excited that a card was finally for him.

But he was more excited to see what else there was on offer.

There were two undead cards—a common card called a ‘Camazotz Bat’ that was a one power Undead and Beast creature that was a vampire as well.

The second was the rare card. It was called Last Messenger of Camazotz, and was a medium-weak four power vampire creature card that, when it entered, allowed an immediate play, at zero power, of a second vampire card of three power or less.

Wolfe sighed, and handed it over to Miriam, who clapped her hands and took it. “Can I also get the cute bat please?”

Wolfe handed that over as well, wondering if the books between him and Miriam would ever balance. Although helping the last living child of the man who had saved him, and whom Wolfe had failed to save, was a worthwhile goal in itself. He let it go.

There was only one Infernal card, although it was also an uncommon and a Beast card. For a brief moment, Wolfe was excited.

Tezcatlipocan Smoke Jaquar

Uncommon Tier-1 Infernal/Beast [Feline] Creature

1 Infernal, 1 Beast, 3 Any Power

Health: 25

Attack: 6 x3

Defense: 5

Magical Attack: 4[Death]

Magical Defense: 4

Special: Incorporeal: This creature does not take damage from non-energy sources.

Special: Dual Attack: When this creature makes a physical attack, it also makes a Magical Attack on the same target.

Special: Tribal [Feline]: +1 Attack for every [Feline] card on the battlefield

“Offspring of the a normal Jaquar and the mighty beasts that Tezcatlipoca sent to slay the beings that once lived under the first sun.”

“That’s like one of your angry hellhounds on steroids,” Shel said. “I mean, for five power, its stats are grossly weak, but it makes six attacks on a single target every time it attacks. A few buffs and that thing would be insane.”

“Yeah, but unless I’m gonna switch over to a cat deck—” Cereboo whined “—which I’m not, it’s barely better than one of the Angry Hellhounds and takes five power. Not really helpful to me.”

Shel nodded. “True.”

There was a single Divine card—which was also a Light card.

Couatl of the Second Sun

Uncommon Tier-1 Divine / Light [Couatl, Civic, Sun, Ascendent] Creature

1 Divine, 1 Light, 2 Any Power

Health: 20

Attack: 3

Defense: 8

Magical Attack: 10[Light]

Magical Defense: 10

Special: Guardian of Propriety: Control of any other Mortal or Divine card may not be taken from the deckbearer while they control this card on the field

Special: Ascendent Metropolis [1]: For every [Civic], Divine, or Light Building keyword in the deck, and every [Civic], Divine, or Light persistent card keyword on the field, this card gains +1 to its Defense and Magical Defense.

“The Second Sun was an age of prosperity, guided by Quetzalcoatl, until mortals drifted from religious propriety.”

“Wow,” Shel said. “That synergizes really well with my deck. Like really well. I didn’t even know this card was a thing, from my prior research.”

“Well, it was a card from a geographically exclusive set from over five hundred years ago,” Wolfe said as he handed it over to her.

They moved on to the next cards.

Light had done well in general—it had two more commons and the other rare as well.

Hint of the Sixth Sun

Rare Tier-1 Light [Sun, Ruin] Persistent

2 Light Power

Sixty seconds after this card enters, every non-undead creature on the field that belongs to a deckbearer is reduced to zero health.

Thereafter, the Deckbearer controlling this card can play creatures at 1 less of any type of power cost. If a card would go to zero power, it instead costs 1 (available) any power.

“What will come in the age of the Sixth Sun is anyone’s guess.”

“Wow, if there was anyone with a powerful mixed Light and Undead deck, this card would be insanely amazing,” Miriam muttered. “I’m almost tempted.”

“You play vampires,” Shel said with a laugh. “Really doubt you’ll find more than five cards in all of existence that have a useful synergy with both types.”

Miriam rolled her eyes.

“It was just a thought.”

There was only one other divine card—a Baby Couatl, which was a one power creature that could be sacrificed to bring out any other card, up to four power, with Couatl in the keywords.

Shel hemmed and hawed, but decided that she didn’t have enough Couatls to justify it.

There were three Fire cards. One was a common low-damage immediate that Wolfe ignored, but the last two were also interesting.

Burned Sacrifice

Uncommon Tier-1 Fire Immediate

1 Fire Power

Sacrifice any Mortal or Beast card. Immediately play from deck or sidedecks any one Infernal or Divine creature or persistent of four power or less.

“Many gods answer to the fire that burns in the chest cavity.”—anonymous Aztec Deckbearer

“Wow,” Wolfe said. “That card is… dark. But it could be hugely useful for me.”

“If I do put the Stone Arch Fire in my deck, it could also be extremely useful for me,” Shel said.

“As would this one,” Wolfe said, holding it out.

Friendly Campfire

Common Tier-1 Fire/Life [Civic] Persistent

1 Fire or 1 Life power

While this card is in play, Fire type immediate or Persistent cards that do damage may be used to heal [as true healing] any target instead. This cannot affect any deckbearer more than once per twenty-four hours. All Food or Delicacy special effects are doubled.

They all stared at the cards. Wolfe had his Xolo Spirit-Warder in front of him, Miriam had her Camazotz Bat and Last Messenger of Camazotz cards, and Shel had the Mythic Stone Arch Fire, the Couatl of the Second Sun, the Burned Sacrifice, and the Friendly Campfire.

“What do we get if we trade in the Loowit cards?” Miriam asked.

“Didn’t it say we had to wait to the end of the dungeon?” Derek asked.

Shel nodded to the trader, who had finished setting up. “Pretty sure that this guy can trade now, because we won the special contest.”

“Then I can pick my perks?” Shel asked.

Wolfe nodded. “Yeah, we’ll get you sorted out for sure, sorry. This is like when I picked mine—let’s see our cards, then check your perks, then get your final form, so to speak, worked out.”

Shel stood from the stone slab, wiping meat grease on her pants. “Alright, let’s go see what he has to offer.”