“How long was I asleep for?” Walt said.

Janice watched him guzzle more water and wolf down the scrambled eggs. “You slept for a whole day. And honestly, I didn’t know if you were going to wake up or not.”

Walt was ravenous. All the non-stop duels and fights for survival had depleted his body. He grunted and started on the biscuits and gravy. It was like mana from heaven. His sister watched him eat. She pulled out a pack of Camel Lights and tapped out a cigarette.

“I thought you quit,” Walt said, in-between bites.

“Yeah. Well. That was before the end of the world happened.” She lit the cigarette with a Bic lighter and took a drag, exhaling the smoke out of the side of her mouth. “Rick hates it. But it helps calm my nerves.”

Walt wasn’t going to try and stop her. Everyone had their copes to the invasion.

She flicked her eyes at his card gauntlet. “You gonna tell me about that?”

Walt finished sopping up the last of the gravy with a biscuit. He plopped it into his mouth and swallowed. “You saw the footage and announcement from the invaders?”

Janice half-laughed, half-nodded. She put two fingers to her temple like it was the barrel of a gun. “I saw it all. They put something in our brains, in our bodies, didn’t they?”

“The Slaynami System.”

“Yeah, that.”

“So you know all about the Starter Decks.”

Janice nodded, exhaling smoke.

“I found one of them. It put this gauntlet on my arm. It made me choose a class, which is why my appearance has changed.”

“Not by much. I still know it’s you. But the highlights are rather…bold.”

Walt looked away from his sister, then. “I had to kill four of the invaders just to get here.”

Janice took another drag of her cigarette. “I know.”

He looked back at her, surprised. “You know? How?”

“The Slaycast.”

Of course, she had the system installed in her. Which not only meant she had witnessed the eclipse with her own two eyes, but she had access to all the media files that came with the system. She had seen the footage from his duels.

“Who would have thought that all that time playing Mythic would save your life?” Janice said.

Walt shook his head. It was still unbelievable to him. “I thought that I was going to wake up and discover it was all just a nightmare.”

“I think we all hoped that. Those of us who could sleep.”

“It was a smart move, getting out of the city. The same thing was happening in Atlanta. I’d really like to know what’s happening everywhere else.”

Janice exhaled and then looked her brother in the eye. “Did anyone follow you here?”

Walt straightened, thinking about it. His mind was a little hazy about getting to the cabin. He remembered he had kept flitting in and out of consciousness. “I don’t think so.”

“How are you are you?”

“I’m fairly certain. If I had been followed, we might not be here alive talking right now.”

Janice flicked the ash off her cigarette, nodding.

“Why?” Walt said.

“Do you know anything about the girl you defeated in your last duel?”

“Her name was Shae Jordan.” He remembered the names of all the duelists he had killed.

“But do you know who she was?”

“Not really. Other than that she was a Thaumaturgist.” He tried to remember the details of the duel. It was a blur, mashed in with the other duels of the same day. He remembered her obnoxious Scrollkeep the Immortal and how she played a minion that could feed on spells with the potential to snowball into an over-powered minion. “She did keep babbling about her boyfriend.”

Janice crushed the cigarette into an ashtray. “Do you know anything about him?”

Walt shook his head.

His sister swallowed. When she spoke, it was in a measured tone. “I think you’ve made a dangerous enemy.”

#

Walt took residence in the hammock next to the lake as he loaded up the latest episode of The Slaycast. He watched the recap of his duel with Shae. At the end of the clip they showed footage of her boyfriend, Calix Nephus.

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The Silver Tongue.

And oddly, the footage wasn’t of him dueling. It was him performing music at some type of noble or celebrity gala. He was on a gold stage rapping. He was a Songslinger, the Slaystone equivalent of a bard class. But in The Silver Tongue’s case, he was the tripped-out on Xannies, Soundcloud rapper version of a bard.

He was slight, almost effeminate. But his neck and the backs of his hands were covered in those neon tattoos that seemed to be a creation of his world. They seemed more like holographs or high-tech cosmetic skin like in a videogame, but brought to life. As he rapped, his silver teeth flashed. Six on top, eight on the bottom. It was a grill, or a grip as hypebeasts liked to call it.

The crowd seemed to love his music. Although Walt wanted to punch the douchebag in the face, he had to admit, his style of delivery kind of reminded him of Juice WRLD, a deceased rapper he actually liked.

Then the footage cut back to the feed of the co-host, Mister Zero. “After Walt Harmon, there have been a few other NPC’s who followed his path, passing their trials. In the city of Tokyo, Japan, an NPC alliance has formed under the leadership of one such NPC Psycho Slinger, Justin Aoki.”

Footage of Justin played. He was using strange Silentblade minions to provide protection for civilians who were under attack in the Tokyo subway. A ghoul riding a tentacle was on its way to running down a Japanese toddler when a mist-shrouded ninja uncloaked from stealth, cutting the ghoul down with a sword and then impaling the tentacle with a second strike.

“They’re already putting up a real fight against The Red Baroness and her Fullmetal Steelclad Squadron. The fight for Tokyo is turning out to easily be a Top Three Hit during Phase One.”

A Psycho Slinger, presumably the Red Baroness, a Hellpriest in red robes, her long white hair crowned with an ostentatious headpiece, looking like a malevolent spirit from a supernatural wuxia film, summoned more monstrous reinforcements from her gauntlet into the subway tunnel.

“Over on a group of isles in the North Atlantic Ocean, in Ireland, an NPC named Magdalene Yeats has shown fierce resistance in her victories over an alliance of three Psycho Slingers calling themselves The Black Vanguard.”

It cut to drone cam footage of the Samuel Beckett bridge in Dublin. A girl with fiery red hair was standing in the middle of the bridge, a wind whipping her white dress. She was barefoot and her alabaster skin was flecked with blood. She held a green staff in her gauntleted hand. The device emitted the verdant glow of a Greenmage.

Her opponent was on the opposite end of the bridge, extended between two tree creature minions that had the slinger’s feet and hands coiled in vines. His screams were barely audible in the heavy wind. The creatures pulled, tearing the Psycho Slinger in half. Magdalene lowered her head and fell to one knee, extending her gauntlet. The tree creatures dissolved and their particles flew back into her gauntlet in a stream of motes, signifying the end of the duel.

“Analysts say this proliferation of NPC duelists defeating our competitors is a result of Earth X Two Point Nine having card games. If you’ve tuned into the previous tournaments, you would know that most worlds don’t have card games, or if they do, they bear no resemblance to Slaystone. But every few years we stumble upon a world that has similar paper or digital based games. But one thing’s for certain. There’s never been an uptick in capable NPC duelists like Earth X Two Point Nine, which should make for perhaps our most exciting year yet here at The Slaycast! In future episodes, we hope to score some interviews with these rebellious upstart NPC duelists!”

Then the commentary shifted over to LimeKiwi. “In a surprising turn of events, Top Ten Dueller from last year’s tournament, Martin Starr, has extended his hand to America’s President of the United States to provide protection.”

It cut to coverage of Washington D.C. The nation’s capitol had suffered severe, apocalyptic damage in the first three days of the tournament. The Washington Monument was in pieces. The head of the Lincoln Memorial was posted on a pile of scorched human skulls. The granite Veteran’s Memorial walls were vandalized with graffiti, a message scrawled in blood, ‘Death to NPCs!’

The White House had been reduced to rubble. A gigantic card minion was sprawled out across the yard. It was some kind of cosmic, glowing entity. A Jack Kirby titan from outerspace brought to life. Its slug-like appendages were pulsating with molten primordial light.

Then a horizontal pillar of white light flashed across the screen. The minion glowed within, but then disappeared in the brightness. When the pillar disappeared, the minion was gone. It had been disintegrated.

The camera whip-zoomed into the source of the devastating energy blast. A tall and imposing Psycho Slinger in a three-piece suit lowered his gauntlet. It was a handsome man in his fifties, salt and pepper hair. He looked more like a Wall Street shark than a card duelist.

“While not against the tournament rules or mandates put out by Slaynami, his decision raises questions for his business partners and shareholders as a primary investor in Colossal Dynamics. The Starr family has a long history as tournament winners, and as one of The Twelve, they’ve never been known to side with NPC factions. What exactly is the Starr family up to here?”

Then a quick cut showcased the duelist, Martin Starr, approaching the lodge at the President’s retreat in Camp David. There was no sign of the president, but he was approaching a contingent of military personnel and Secret Service agents. They all had guns pointed at him.

Martin Starr removed his card gauntlet, a gesture of peace. And he smiled.

#

Walt shut down the stream and swung out of the hammock. He tried to sort through his many thoughts. Would Calix, The Silver Tongue, be looking for him? And had Aoki responded to his email? And what about Joy, the goth girl he had helped out in Atlanta? He looked around at the other cabins, visible in the trees, scattered around the lake shore.

He heard footsteps approaching. Janice joined him on the edge of the lake.

“Are there many people here?” Walt asked.

“A few from what I can tell,” Janice said. “Seems like others had the same idea. Get out of a heavily populated area. Maybe even more had the same idea, but just didn’t make it. Nashville is a war zone.”

Walt thought about Richard and wondered if he had found his daughter. Hell, he wondered if he was still alive. He’d have to go back inside and check his phone, which Janice had set on a night stand.

“No cell phone reception here?” Walt asked.

Janice shook her head. “On the drive here, we had brief reception where I was able to read your texts. But before I could respond, we must have moved out of range. And we haven’t had it since we got here.”

Walt heard the hum of the generator on the side of the cabin. The destruction of the sub-station had probably forced them to generator power.

“Cable’s been out, too. So no Internet here.”

Shit.

Walt had wanted to check his email, see what was happening in the rest of the world. He wondered if Shae and the others in league with The Silver Tongue had also destroyed the cable substations.

That’s when Janice revealed something she had been holding behind her back with one of her hands. It was one of the card gauntlets.

“I want you to teach me how to duel.”