Wolfe pointed around his barren living room. He had moved the electronics to the kitchen, pushed the couch against the wall and piled his weight set in one corner. That was it—he didn’t really live to keep up with the fucking Joneses.

“We need to train,” he said. “How much do you know about using a deck?”

Shel frowned. “I didn’t really have a chance to learn anything.”

So nothing, which is barely less than I do. Still, I researched how to take deckbearers out once upon a time. And I just spent ten minutes on the internet… so, a touch more than nothing.

“All right, not gonna lie, first lesson’s gonna hurt. But it’s the only way to truly, in your gut, understand what a mantle does for you. Come stand here,” Wolfe said, motioned to the center of the room.

She approached slowly, and when she got close, Wolfe abruptly kicked out with a simple push kick to her stomach. It wasn’t even full power—he knew that against this waif of a chick, he would do damage if he used his full power. But he needed her to lose her fear, and fast, and this was the simplest way.

Shel went stumbling back and then fell against the couch, half on the floor. She yelled in agony as she hit—without training, Shel fell hard. Something else he would need to fix, but not yet. First thing first.

But despite her ignominious drop, the girl leapt to her feet, her eyes watery, her lip trembling. She stood firm in front of him, not letting a single tear fall.

“Why?” She asked.

“Training—you need to understand your capabilities.”

Shel’s weaker than a geriatric purse puppy. Still, girl’s got spunk and a deck. She can be made dangerous with that much.

“All right,” Wolfe muttered. “Summon your deck now.”

Wolfe watched as Shel summoned her deck with the ubiquitous pattern almost every deckbearer used. She touched her hand to her heart for two seconds and then held her hand out palm forward.

Three cards manifested in front of her, glowing with a soft golden light and floating in the air. They were a bit larger than standard playing cards. Off to the side a fourth card also manifested, but Wolfe ignored that. It was her special-to-the-season companion card, like Cereboo—he would talk about it later.

Wolfe received a notification.

A deckbearer has pulled their deck near you.

Well, fuck, that didn’t happen when I saw Victoran, that imp. Odd. Perhaps having a companion card out doesn’t count for notification?

Wolfe ignored it, addressing Shel. “All right, play a mantle card. Don’t play any other types.”

“Persistent card, mantle sub-type?” she asked.

“There isn’t any other type of card with mantle in the term.”

“I… don’t have one,” she said.

“Every single gifted starter deck has a mantle. No known exception in all of fucking recorded history.”

“I meant in my hand,” she said, frowning at Wolfe with a cute scrunch of her nose.

“Oh. Sorry. Then just wait a minute. You’ll get the option to swipe and draw the next three cards. That’s how it works—play a card every thirty seconds, and swipe to switch to a new hand every sixty seconds.”

They both sat there for a bit longer, then Shel swiped the air near the cards sideways, and another three cards rolled from nothing into view and pushed the other three back into nothing.

She reached out and touched one, and it flared to life. Blood began to bead around the corner of her eyes and on her forehead, but all of her other wounds healed. Most importantly to Wolfe’s demonstration, a faint, golden haze appeared around her.

He focused on Shel’s aura, and the card for the mantle she was using appeared, semi-translucent and overlaid around her.

Resilient Martyr

Common Tier-1

1 Divine Power

The gifted of the archangel Raphael exist to ease the suffering of others, even if that means suffering themselves.

Divine

Persistent, Mantle

You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.

This mantle grants +5 Defense, a pool of 5 Health, and restores 1 health per minute active. All mortal cards played heal 1 life every minute as well while this mantle is active.

Wolfe briefly stared at it. He wanted to ask her why she hadn’t used it to heal before, but he’d get to that in a minute.

Instead, he walked up and pulled his foot back again. She flinched, but Wolfe kicked out with about the same force as before. It hit, and she stepped back once, but nothing else happened. Wolfe dismissed the combat log—he would discuss it with her in a moment.

Shel’s eyes were fussed out, staring at nothing. “It says—”

“We’ll get to the log in a moment,” Wolfe said. “Also, don’t get distracted trying to read log information in battle. Good way to get killed.”

Shel nodded.

Wolfe continued. “The important thing to know is that you have a mantle now. Without it, you’re a tiny waif of a girl, barely more dangerous than a ham sandwich. With it, however, you can fight. Survive, really. Almost every single deckbearer uses a mantle in their deck. Or even multiple ones. The rule is simple—an enemy deckbearer’s creature can’t attack you until all your creatures are defeated, but an enemy deckbearer, or just some random schmoe with a nine-mil, can. So, if there’s any fighting, get your mantle on as fast as possible. It’ll help make sure you survive in a way that just stacking up creatures won’t guarantee.”

Shel focused on him, her lips silently repeating parts of what he was saying.

Wolfe brought up the other thing he had been thinking about. “Why didn’t you pull your mantle out before?” he asked, quirking an eyebrow at her. “You’ve been running around getting blood all over my shit—and it couldn’t have been pleasant for you either.”

She stared to the side, her hair falling across her face. “I thought that you might think I was attacking you. I’ve heard you can kill deckbearers even though you aren’t one.”

“Hmm… Well, if you’d gone deckbearer on me out of nowhere I might have started shooting. Especially tonight. But you could have just asked.”

Shel flushed. “I’ll, um, I’ll keep that in mind. New subject, can you please talk to me about the combat log?”

He rooted around his kitchen until he found a rolling pin and tossed it to her. She fumbled and dropped it, blushed even darker, and then picked it back up.

Wolf put his hands on his hips. “Okay, try to beat me to death.”

“What?” she said, her expression horrified.

Wolfe laughed, perhaps just a touch cruelly, at the shock on her face. But the idea of her taking a skilled brawler like him out with a rolling pin was just too much. He had just won a fight outnumbered four to one after being ambushed, and no one else had walked away.

“Trust me, girl, you won’t succeed in hurting me. But try. It’ll be a good lead in for the discussion.”

She attacked with a haymaker pin swing, the golden haze still around her. Wolfe swept the pin to the side with an open palm strike, then swept her leg in turn. She went crashing to the ground but leapt up, no worse for the wear thanks to her mantle. She came at him again with a wildly telegraphed overhand strike and he caught the pin arm above his head with a crossed-arm block. She kneed at Wolfe—surprisingly creative—and he twisted and caught it on his inner thigh, then swayed back from the punch she threw with her unblocked left hand.

The pin hitting him the head hard enough to sting was a surprise—she had dropped it from her hand. Hardly a debilitating blow, but Wolfe was impressed she had gotten that much.

The combat notification appeared. “Back and hold,” he said.

She dropped back, already breathing hard, but her eyes were uncrossed—likely looking at her notification again.

Wolfe stared at his own in turn.

Deckbearer Ethan Wolfe and Deckbearer Rachel Lyon engage in physical combat.

Ethan fights derisively—takes a negative maximum (10) to his attack. Makes a Physical Attack at 0 against Deckbearer Lyon’s Physical Defense of 8. Damage dealt is 0 (0 * (0/8)).

Deckbearer Rachel Lyon makes a physical attack at 3 against Deckbearer’s Physical Defense of 10. 0 damage taken to Deckbearer Wolfe’s 30 Health. (3 * (3/10), rounded down)

Hmm, I did underestimate her a bit. Shouldn’t do that. She could have gotten a higher random add score.

“It says you’re a deckbearer as well,” Shel whispered.

Ah, shit.

Wolfe raked his hand through his hair. “Ignore that for a moment, and then don’t ever talk about it again unless we’re alone, got it? Too many people already know that shit, and I prefer to operate where people don’t know or suspect my full capabilities.”

Shel nodded. “What does this all mean?”

Wolfe pulled a cigarette from his pants and lit it up. “When you’re attacked, by either a summoned creature, a deckbearer, or some random thug, they make an attack against your defense. Creature cards always get whatever their base attack score is. But the jackasses that can think can also get lucky—or unlucky. They get a random chance to go up or down. Then that is compared to your defense, and the result is basically your enemies attack squared divided by your defense—that’s how much damage you take.”

Wolfe had gotten through algebra, but he hadn’t used math in ages. His pithy answer came from the internet research he had done right before coming here, and his analysis of his own combat log.

Shel coughed a bit and waved the plume of smoke away. “Does defense go up and down?”

“Attack gains a random modifier from negative one hundred percent to positive one hundred percent,” Wolf said, confidently sprouting more information gained less than an hour ago.

“So complete whiff to double?”

“Brilliant restate,” Wolfe said with a raised eyebrow while taking a deep drag on his cigarette.

Shel flushed but said nothing else.

Wolfe walked into the half kitchen as he talked, fishing an ashtray from his cupboard. “Defense goes from negative fifty percent, rounded up, to positive a hundred percent. So, half defense to double defense, to use your restate terms. Got it?”

“I got straight A’s in school and graduated valedictorian. Well, one of four valedictorians,” Shel said.

Wolfe was tempted to make another sarcastic comment, but held back, just taking his ashtray back to the living room and continuing his explanation instead. “A basic human, no skills, has a five in both attack and defense. Training can modify it quite a bit higher, and weapons can as well. Like a gun. Don’t think that just because you have your martyr ability you can stand in front of a gun. You’ll end up deader than a doornail. People make a big deal about the fact that I’ve killed deckbearers. But in both the cases that I did it the idiots had gotten cocky, thinking that their status made them invincible. But unloading a Glock into the chest of a monologuing asshat isn’t that hard, and they go down almost as fast as a normal schmoe who’s been shot repetitively in the chest—which is to say, faster than a pre-paid whore.”

“Such colorful colloquialisms,” Shel muttered.

Wolfe took another drag on his cigarette. “Cute, girl. But enough of your supposed witticisms. Bring up your status chart.”

“How?”

“Seriously? Just think ‘Status Chart’ really hard. That’s it.”

Wolfe followed his own advice and stared at his chart, for basically the first time. He still needed to level as well.