The cellar was much as Damien remembered it: cool, dark, and musty.
The bodies of the rats he’d killed on his previous adventure beneath the Goose & Child were gone. Had Otto removed them? Or had they mysteriously disappeared in the way that monster corpses always seemed to just vanish once they had been looted?
As before, the dank root cellar was illuminated by a lantern suspended from a sturdy length of rope. Otto held it steady this time, a sizable cast-iron skillet in his other hand, just in case one of the rats got passed Damien.
“You be careful, lad,” Otto grunted. “Just coz yer our only customer don’t mean we want to spend our days waitin’ hand and foot on ye.”
“Roger.” Damien replied dryly, sketching a mocking salute.
“Who?”
“Nevermind.” And then, “Quiet.”
His eyes scanned the pools of darkness that gathered at the feet of barrels and crates, lapping at their sides like inky water. Where would the bastard be hiding?
Is he even here? Maybe he despawned.
Damien didn’t want to leave his life to the off chance that this world operated exactly like his childhood Hand of Fate sessions. For one, he didn’t recall Fred the Fighter ever convalescing in bed for a week after a combat, nor did Fred exist in a world that was confined to the inn by an oppressive darkness.
“Here mousey, mousey! Here, mousey!”
He had his shield strapped to his left arm and held Dukayne with a white knuckle grip. He moved slowly, cautiously, his head on a swivel and every muscle as tight as a coiled spring. The slightest creak or groan from overhead set his heart pounding and his blade whirling to attack phantom figures.
“Where are you, you little bastard?” He growled under his breath. “Let’s finish this.”
No response came.
Frustrated, he lashed out at the nearest barrel with his foot. It responded with a dull thunk and the sloshing of wine or ale within.
“Oy!” snapped Otto. “Easy on the merchandise! Do ye think I keep gems in them? Leave off!”
“Sorry, I -”
Screeching, the dire rat launched itself from between jars of preserves on a sagging shelf, its fangs bared and its black fur pricked up. As if it needed to be more intimidating than it already was.
The dog-sized missile collided with Damien’s shield and, coupled with his distraction, sent him staggering sideways, where he crashed into an unruly pile of flour sacks. The collision sent a cloud of white powder into the air, irritating the eyes of rat and human alike. While Damien rubbed at his eyes with the back of his sword hand, the rat sneezed in a way that might have been adorable had it come from the family pet.
Instead, the sneeze only seemed to anger it further, and it darted towards Damien’s unguarded legs with impossible speed.
Why didn’t you cover your legs, you idiot?
No time for second-guessing now. Instead, he threw himself to the side, grabbing a handful of flour from the ground as he struck the hard-packed earth. The rat reoriented and prepared to leap at him anew, only to be met mid-air by a snoutful of flour.
Ha! I don’t need a card for that, you little shit.
His jubilation was short-lived, as the flour did nothing to halt the rat’s movement. Oh, it had blinded it, but it came on all the same, crashing atop Damien’s chest and scrambling to get its feet under it. Its fat, pink tail switched like something out of nightmare and its claws scratched painfully through his doublet.
Roaring in anger and panic, he brought the hilt of Dukayne down on the thing’s back, causing it to screech in pain and tumble away.
They came to their feet at the same time, but it was Damien who moved quickest this time. While the rat blinked flour out of its beedy eyes, he envisioned one of the cards from upstairs: Powerful Strike.
He stopped short of shouting it out like someone out of anime, but felt his body shift seamlessly into a manouevre that would have been second nature for his childhood character. His blade swung with the considerable force his body could muster, yet his nimble foe somehow managed to dart out of its path at the last second. Where his blade struck the earth, it tore it open like a backhoe.
“Oi!”
Damien ignored Otto, keeping his focus on the rat as it ran, pushed off the wall, and spun back towards him.
Parry!
Dukayne came up smoothly, the flat of its blade halting the rat’s momentum and sending it crashing back to the ground.
Whirling assault!
He felt his body begin the movements that led into the spinning attack, only to halt abruptly. This resulted in him spinning drunkenly on the spot, very nearly losing his footing in the process.
“The fu-?” The rat darted between his legs before he could regain his balance. The sudden shift in focus only worsened his disorientation, and he stumbled back several steps before the wall stopped him.
Whirling assault is a finisher, he reminded himself. You can only use it against a wounded enemy.
Said enemy was not waiting for him to regain his composure, charging across the room towards him and darting up his leg. Its filthy claws tore easily through his clothing, leaving angry, red gouges on the skin underneath. Yet this was not its target, as its eyes were once again focused on Damien’s unprotected throat.
A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.
Nononononono…
All reason fled his mind. How could anybody think about games or cards when faced with the reality of a murderous rat of such unusual size? It was all he could do to bat frantically at it with the hilt of his sword and the inside of his shield arm.
This time, his life did flash before his eyes. Memories of childhood fishing trips to Wynard Dam with his dad and blackberry picking with his mum. Dirt-biking around Carl’s farm or nights spent up working on projects with Tanya while simultaneously trying to work up the courage to ask her out.
I never did.
Suddenly, something large, black, and solid struck man and rat alike, sending them both crashing sideways into the shelf full of preserves. They tumbled down upon them, glass and sticky syrup splashing across the combatants as they rolled around, both of them screaming in their own way.
The rat was quicker, but Damien had the benefit of size. Using his shield to protect his chest and throat, he threw his weight atop the rat, pressing it down into the sticky earth with all his force. The rat’s shrieks built to a crescendo as all 103 kilograms of a professional athlete pressed down on it. The shrieks gave way to the cracking of bones and, finally, to silence.
For a moment, he simply lay there, catching his breath.
“I did it,” he muttered. “I -.”
He was interrupted by the sudden disappearance of the rat’s corpse from beneath his shield. In its absence, shield and man alike fell the last few inches to the preserve-soaked ground. The impact knocked the wind out of him, causing Otto to give a shout of alarm from the trapdoor.
“Are ye alright, lad?” and then, when no answer came, “Martha! I think I might’ve killed the boy!”
The cry of genuine sadness from Layla was gratifying, but Damien was already picking himself up off the ground. “I’m fine,” he assured them. “Just had the wind knocked out of me is all.”
He had meant to say more, but something had caught his eye. He instantly recognised the foil of a playing card, pinned to the sodden ground where he and the rat had fallen. In the shield’s absence, syrup slowly oozed towards the card.
It was a collector’s instinct that drove Damien into action, and he snatched up the card before the sticky syrup could ruin the card’s value. Bad enough that it had been squashed into the mud and bent.
You’re not collecting cards for your binder, you fucking nerd.
He ignored the criticism, carefully brushing the mud off the card and gently massaging it flat.
A desperate knight battles a giant rat in a dank cellar [https://i.imgur.com/1oqrTHd.png]
He didn’t recognise the card. Not that it meant a great deal when he hadn’t bought a deck in a decade, yet he somehow knew that this card had been created in response to his action.
Somebody’s got a big opinion of themselves…
It seemed conceited, but he was quite sure of it. He had operated outside the cards in his deck and, in doing so, had created something knew.
It was outside the rules of Hand of Fate as he knew them but, then again, so was being pulled into the world and forced to fight giant rats without a modicum of combat training.
In the wake of this realisation came a strange, tingling sensation that started at the soles of his feet and danced deliciously up from there. It was like a million tiny bubbles boiling up from the floor, tickling and massaging him, inside and out. It was a feeling quite unlike anything he’d experienced before, and built to a dizzying crescendo that left him swooning.
For a moment, the world was reduced to that feeling - a warmth that suffused him and soothed the singing sting of the cuts across his legs and chest.
“He’s okay!” He heard Layla as if from a great distance, although he could see her head alongside her father’s at the trapdoor.
She looked at him the way the girls at the club after a big game had - with a hunger that he found both frightening and irresistible. Yet he was held in place by the strange sensation that coursed through his veins, his vision slowly being reduced pinprick by pinprick until all was darkness.
YOU HAVE REACHED LEVEL 2. HAND SIZE INCREASED BY 1. ADD 3 CARDS TO YOUR DECK.
—-------------------
The car was a total write off, its twisted frame pinned between the bull bar of a largely unscathed land cruiser and a very much scathed telephone pole.
The front seats had been condensed to the point that Damien would have been squeezed out the sun roof like fleshy toothpaste had he been in the car. Through some trick of chance, magic, and madness, he returned to his world not in his car, but a hundred metres down the road, unscathed and gripping a foiled playing card in his hand. The dizzying warmth had finally left his body, making the bitter cold all the more palpable.
The other driver was a farmer in his middle years. He paced around the twisted remains of Damien’s car, clearly confused by the lack of a driver.
Surely, the farmer thought in growing panic, there’d be something left of the poor guy.
The guy in question gave serious thought to quietly ducking away and leaving well enough alone, but registration records would lead the police straight to him, and he didn’t much fancy adding leaving the scene of a crime to a criminal record that had swelled considerably in the past year.
“Over here, mate,” he shouted, giving a sheepish wave. “I’m all good.”
The farmer’s double take was comical to the point of farce, but it was soon replaced with beet red cheeks and a scowl.
“What the fuck were you doing, you bloody clown? You could have been killed!”
“I -”
“You’d better bloody well have insurance, mate, or I’ll string you up. I’ll…”
Damien knew the look on the guy’s face. He had seen it a thousand times before. He recognised him.
“Aren’t you.. uh.. that fella who played footy and, uh…” he trailed off, knowing what he wanted to say, but suddenly realising it would likely hit a nerve. It was funny the way Damien’s minor celebrity had so quickly diffused a volatile situation.
“I’m so sorry, mate. I got distracted by the smoke downtown. I’ve got a mate who owns a shop on Turner Street and I wanted to check on him.”
They both turned to look at the rising column of black smoke that now so thoroughly dominated Loch Lomond’s admittedly stunted skyline. It towered over even The Brother, the town’s highest point, atop which the town’s famous standing stones stood.
Winter made for short days and, although the sun had all but disappeared beyond the horizon, the town was lit by a combination of flickering red and blue lights and a vicious, ruddy red light that illuminated the underbellies of low-hanging clouds pregnant with rain. They held back their lifegiving water for now, as if waiting to see whether the men with hoses could extinguish the flames without their help.
“Bloody hell…” the old man muttered under his breath. “That’s bad.”
Understatement of the day, right there, Damien thought. The fire looked like it had swallowed more than just one business. He felt a growing sense of certainty that even if Sam’s shop hadn’t been the first to burn, it would almost certainly be consumed by the same fire.
The hardware store stood atop a low hill, affording an unhindered view of downtown Loch Lomond and the lonely stretch of highway that passed through town. Light and movement to the east of town pulled his gaze away from the fire to where a column of firetrucks from the neighbouring towns and villages rushed to assist in fighting the fire.
It was, as the old man said, “bad”.
Damien’s car and his miraculous escape from it were forgotten, as was the foiled card that he still gripped in one hand - proof positive that his time in the Goose & Child had not been some kind of brain injury.
Ignoring the old man’s protests, and fully aware that he’d get in trouble for leaving the scene of the accident, Damien set off running.