“Nobody make any sudden moves,” came the voice under the cowl. It sounded gritty, and Pan couldn’t place the accent. “Give me your money or the dude gets it.” He readjusted the knife he held.

Five purple cards fluttered out of Pan’s bracer. Unable to stop himself, he looked from the spectacle to the cards.

“And you definitely won’t want to play thing funny,” the centaur added.

How did he know I was looking at my cards? He shouldn’t be able to see them, but on top of that, the hood is covering his face.

“He’s not hurting you, is he?” Athena asked her brother.

Apollo tried to shake his head, but the knife made it difficult. “No. Not yet anyway,” he said through gritted teeth.

“You’re wearing my patience out, dude. If you give me the money, you can talk all you want.”

He sounds like a Dark Knight wannabe, Pan thought. He stole a glance at Athena. If stares were daggers, this centaur would already be dead.

“Just let him go. We don’t have any money.”

“Haw haw dude,” the horse man said sarcastically, his raspy accent slipping. Where have I heard that accent before?

“I’ve had my eye on you. You’ve cleared this grove out at least once, so don’t tell me-“

“Where,” Pan interrupted hesitantly, “….where did you come from?”

The centaur regarded him, as though seeing him for the first time.

“What is that thing?”

“A friend,” Apollo said.

“A charity case,” Athena said at the same time. They shared a glance.

“Inconsequential,” Athena added. “What’s your price, blackguard?”

The centaur paused at the remark, then whispered to Apollo, who spoke back.

“What?” Athena asked.

“He asked me what a blackguard is.”

“Shut up!” the centaur said, shaking Apollo.

“The only reason I ask,” Pan said as though what was said since his question hadn’t been said, “is because these trees aren’t thick enough to hide a horse.”

“Aha,” the centaur remarked, “but you weren’t looking in the branches.”

The three of them processed this, Athena and Pan looking at the back of the centaur, scanning down his four legs to his four hooves.

“…it…uhh…it was even harder than it looks, yeah. But no one checks the trees for centaurs, so-“

“That’s stupid,” Athena said more bluntly than five tons of granite. Pan nodded.

“Who has who by the throat here?” the centaur asked, waving the dagger point at them indistinctly. And then he realized his mistake.

A Firebolt card flashed, preceding an explosion which bloomed between him and Apollo. He recoiled to protect his face as Apollo catapulted forward. A spear materialized in Athena’s hands in response to the activation of a Thrust card as she rushed the would-be thief.

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Several rapid steps, bypassing the ballistic Apollo, and bringing the spear point first towards the centaur, a one-woman stampede ending in a four foot point.

A clash of bronze rang out. Pan hadn’t moved, caught flat-footed by the sudden action, and the scene laid out before him such that a prone and slightly singed Apollo lay between him and Athena, frozen in a pose of out-thrust spear at the centaur. The spear, however, did not find purchase. It was caught by crossing dagger blades and diverted over his shoulder.

This lasted only a moment as a card flashed, titled Counter, a picture of figures fencing, one diverting the other’s sword and driving his own into the first’s body.

In one movement, the daggers came apart, pulling the spear from Athena’s hands, and on the follow-through were thrust into the unresisting Athena. All three weapons fizzled and vanished.

“Ha!” the Whispering Horse cried. He sounded incredulous. “No Shield?”

Athena staggered backward, tripping on her own feet and landing next to her brother, him face down and her face up. Both lay at the coven hooves of Pan, who still hadn’t moved.

The centaur was celebrating by doing a little dance. If a horse could do the Walking Man, Pan was witness to it.

He’s celebrating a bit early, he thought. Maybe he doesn’t see me as a threat? His mind replayed for him his recent highlights. Maybe I’m not a threat.

The cards hovering to the side of his vision drew his attention. He hadn’t had a chance to read them yet. He checked on the centaur, who was doing the Sprinkler. There might be just enough time to make a decision.

The cards lined up for him. There was Slow, Deflate, Dirt Nap, Mirror, and-

“Wheel of Fate?” He remembered cards had hidden details, and inquired further. The box of text enlarged, revealing a rather complex description.

While not able to make a full study of it, after flipping between them, Wheel of Fate was the only card that wasn’t guaranteed to set him back. There was at least a chance it would hurt his opponent.

It’d take a few turns, though. And the centaur was dancing this way.

He picked the Wheel of Fate card, with two others, and played it.

The Whispering Horse was having a good day. The couple of chumps he’d been tailing went down even easier than he had expected. Once he had taken out the Scholar, and the Hoplite had been dumb enough not to retain any Shield to soak his very obviously prepared Counter, that was that. The rewards of one whole farming of the grove were about to be his.

But when he had finished showboating and tried to loot the bodies, a little demon the size of his fist appeared. It was curse-purple, which didn’t bode well in his experience, and had little bat wings, claws at the end of each limb, and wore a poorly tailored suit jacket.

“Oh no bro,” the Whispering Horse said dismally.

The creature flew over to two chance wheels suspended in mid air which hadn’t been there before. On one wheel there were symbols he recognized as increases and decreases to health, stats, money…there were dozens of different wedges.

On the other wheel, separated into quadrants, had faces. The first he recognized was his own. Two of the others were the dudes he just beat. The fourth was some dude with antlers.

Wait, he remembered seeing that particular dude. And he remembered the weird little half-deer dude.

Pan caught the Whispering Horse’s eye as the demon set the wheels to spinning with a gleeful cackle.

“Dude. Curses?”

“I mean, I really didn’t have a choice.”

“You know this takes two turns to resolve?” The centaur wasn’t looking at him, but selecting his cards.

Pan shrugged. This chat was destroying his morale. His legs felt weak as he stood before a thug who had to be measured in hands.

“You got anything good to follow it up, dude?”

“Oh yeah, definitely,” Pan bluffed.

They both had their cards selected. Between the two of them, Pan didn’t know who was the good, who was the bad, and who was the ugly, but they stared each other down as fiercely as any two gun slingers in a town too small for the both of them.

Only Pan didn’t have any incentive to draw.

The Whispering Horse noticed the bracers on the faun’s arms. Curse purple with red action gems. He couldn’t tell if he was about to take on a genius or an idiot. Some people, like the Whispering Horse himself, took terrible options as a challenge. This dude he was taking on could be one of those, or he could just be a lucky jackass to have survived this far as a Cursed class. He wondered what alterations the faun could have done to its deck so far. The Cursed could buy cards just like anyone else, after all.

He thought about the downed Hoplite and decided more Shield couldn’t hurt. It would absorb any direct damage if the Cursed faun was baiting him into a trap.

A Block 10 card flashed as he played it, never breaking eye contact with his opponent.

But the short dude didn’t even flinch. He just stood there. That card he’d played could have been anything, like the Trample he’d been considering. High priority, high mobility, high damage…

He was sure this faun was baiting him now.

“You’ve got a lot riding on this Wheel of Fate,” he said. The faun hadn’t moved, so the Whispering Horse started walking around him, burning off the nervous energy that was building.

“More than you realize,” he responded in a quiet voice.

“You got this turn and next turn dude. Hit me with your best shot.”