Walt didn’t want to alarm his family so he summoned Elrich Ehrmantraut in the boat shed on the edge of the water behind the cabin. He had to protect his family, but he knew he couldn’t do it alone. A card-summoned bodyguard on duty who could not only keep an eye on his family, but also watch his back, would be a great help. At the same time, he didn’t want his mother or brother-in-law Rick to get scared by a strange, otherworldly warrior summoned from his gauntlet. His mother’s brain was already fragile and Walt had no idea how Rick might respond just yet. Having a brother-in-law turned Psycho Slinger in the house was one thing, but having magic minions casually occupying the same space was another. So, Walt decided it was best to use a little discretion and conduct this business where their psyches wouldn’t be damaged. Out of sight, out of mind.

The purple card ejected from his gauntlet and he caught it. He gently flung it in front of him. A gray storm cloud materialized in the air. Lightning flashed and a broadsword appeared within the cloud. Ancient runes were etched into the steel. They emitted a green glow. A pair of black gloves grasped the hilt. As the storm cloud disappeared, a tall and sickly swordsman emerged out of the rift. The black gloves and sword belonged to him.

“Who summons the one who wields the Breaker of Storms?” the man said. His skin was the color of bleached skulls, his long hair milky-white. Slanted violet eyes, moody and brooding, studied Walt. His all black garb was a mixture of rune armor and elegantly crafted garments fit for a king. Though gaunt, Elrich Ehrmantraut had chiseled muscles.

“My name is Walt. It’s an honor to meet you, Elrich.” He nodded at the intimidating presence. “I’ve heard tales of your prowess.”

The swordsman’s eyes narrowed. He looked around this new environ. “You are not engaged in a duel.”

“No,” Walt said. “No, I’m not.”

“What is it you require of me?”

“Protection.”

Elrich held up his broadsword. A relic of a red stone was embedded at the center of the cross hilt. Light shimmered within, reminding Walt of an observing and hungry eye. “This I can offer. In return, Stormbreaker would like to feed.”

He’s referring to his sword.

Walt hesitated. He gestured at the sword. “Feed on what?”

“Souls.”

Walt didn’t have a problem with Elrich killing threats to his family. Especially if they were active threats caught trying to hurt them. But he also knew it was against the tournament rules to kill another duelist outside of a duel. “I’m happy to oblige Stormbreaker, but I don’t think he can feed on Psycho Slingers.”

Elrich nodded. “It is against my nature to deliver a final blow against a duelist outside of a battleboard barrier. But minions, monsters and the gauntletless are fair game.”

Gauntletless. He meant non-duelists.

“That’s fine by me,” Walt said. “See that cabin? You’re to protect me and everyone else in there from harm.”

“Do you expect nefarious plots against you and your family?”

“I think I’d be a fool not to.”

Elrich smirked. “A wise man cheerily seeks to redress his harms.”

That struck a chord with Walt. Why had that phrase sounded so familiar? It sounded like a quote from something.

Up at the cabin, he saw his mother bustling about in the kitchen through the window. “One thing though. While you guard us, I need you to not be seen.”

Elrich’s midnight black cloak billowed around him. He seemed to step into shadow. The swordsman bowed his head. “Consider me an unseen vessel of harm against harm.”

#

Now that Elrich was close by on bodyguard duty, Walt deployed the alarm system to cover the surrounding property and wilderness. He used another card to summon a swarm of Dryder Hounds. The card left his hand and drilled into the earth, creating a hole. A chittering came from this burrow.

At first, Walt thought he was looking at spiders emerge out of the hole in the ground. Gray spiders the size of kittens. The hairs on the back of his neck rose, and his forearms tingled with gooseflesh. He had a distaste for arachnids. But the spider part was just the lower half of the creature. Gnome-sized humanoid torsos sat on the spider legs. The top half was occupied by grayish gnomes with black, beady eyes. Their voices were high-pitched and squeaky. But Walt had no idea what they were saying. They wielded little short spears and skittered on the ground around Walt, climbing up the trunks of trees.

“Uh,” Walt said, tapping his chest with his hand. “I’m Walt. It’s nice to meet you. I summoned you because I need you to watch over this cabin. I need you to alert me whenever someone appears on or nearby this property. Got it?”

One of the Dryder Hounds yipped in acknowledgement and raised his spear in the air. Then he leapt off a branch, trailing silk in his wake. The creatures began spinning their webs high up in the tree branches, constructing their network.

“Well,” Walt said. “They seem enthusiastic enough.”

#

Walt felt like he could relax a little, feeling relief that he had minions guarding the cabin. Only time would tell if they were effective, but it was sure better than nothing.

He joined Janice in the den, where they had the Mythic cards spread out before them on the coffee table. They were munching on tortilla chips and their mother’s famous hot chicken dip. It was basically chunks of fried chicken thighs coated in her top secret spiced batter, swimming in a bowl of copycat Cane’s sauce. It had been their favorite snack growing up, and Walt was glad his mother still remembered how to cook.

“She’s the most herself when she’s cooking,” Janice said. “She’ll forget the darndest things, but all her recipes seem to be intact.”

She was even in the kitchen at the moment, busy preparing what was going to be dinner. She was singing along to Tammy Wynette on the stereo while cutting potatoes for her killer potato salad. Like all true deep fried Southerners, Iris made her potato salad with tangy mustard. The only suitable mayo was Duke’s and God forbid she use some abomination like Miracle Whip mixed with sticky red potatoes. Starch and tang was the key.

Walt taught Janice about deck building and card game theory in much the same way he had taught Joy. But since he had more time and several Mythic card sets, he was able to explain the basic concepts slower and more in depth. At first, after explaining some beginner rules, he had her go through the cards to build what she thought would be a good deck.

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“Go ahead,” he said. “Pick at least sixty cards. Any cards. Doesn’t matter. Build a deck you think will be capable of winning.”

“Can I pick more than sixty?” Janice asked.

“If you want. Only rule about that is you can’t have more than four duplicates per card and you have to be able to shuffle the deck unassisted.”

He found that having her study the cards and look for patterns and synergies before even explaining what aggro, combo and control decks were help facilitated intuitive learning. Sometimes the best way to learn the game was to be exploratory, not worrying about rigid rulesets and principles. Everything was so situational, having a rock, paper, scissors framework as training wheels could lead to stagnation and self-defeat.

Janice sifted through the cards. She began forming two stacks. One had elf cards, the other dwarves. “Looks like if I go with either elf or dwarf, the respective racial cards build off each other. This Elven Lothario increases the damage and health of Elven Rangers. Kind of the same deal with the dwarf set.”

Walt nodded. “Do you think one is better than the other?”

“You mean, do I think if elves are better than dwarves? Not necessarily. They seem pretty even. You place a bunch of characters on the board and play other cards that buff them so they grow in power.”

Good. She was grasping a basic concept and style of play.

“Alright,” Walt said, “so choose one and let’s play a match.”

She ended up choosing dwarves because, “They’re so cute” and Walt went with the elves. For the first few matches, Walt went slow and easy on her. He didn’t purposefully make mistakes, because that wouldn’t be useful for her. It could actually harm her development as a player, however, he did apply kid’s gloves. He let her figure out how minions traded with each other. She could look at the stats and see how minions that increased in power gained advantage.

By trial and error, she got the grasp of playing weak minions and buffing them. Walt applied pressure, making her fight for board control. She made the mistake of letting his Elven Gloom Ranger live while it was still weak. But after a few turns, it had been buffed so many times by other minions and cards it began taking out a whole row of her minions before she finally chipped it to zero health. Even though she finally defeated it, the cost to her deck was too much and she found she had hardly any minions left to play.

That was how Walt won the first match. It took another three matches before she learned how to balance properly trading and buffing.

They were having fun, and for a while, it felt like they were kids again on vacation with their parents. Them playing a game and their mother singing and cooking in the kitchen. It was an all was well moment. Something Walt had realized had been missing from his life for a long time now.

On the fifth match, he threw her for a loop. She was still using her dwarven deck. Walt played a Dreaming Druid. He also had a Brawny Quillboar on board. He tapped the Dreaming Druid for mana, and then untapped it for a -1/-1 counter. Then he used the mana to remove the counter.

It just so happened that Brawny Quillboar was buffed for +3/+3 whenever a counter was removed from a creature. Walt repeated the steps, activating a loop, buffing the Brawny Quillboar to more than Janice’s life.

Janice watched the loop, perplexed. This was a different style of play than what she had grown accustomed to.

Then he played the coup de grace, Rite of Destruction. It allowed him to sacrifice Brawny Quillboar and deal its total life as damage to Janice. It one-shotted her, taking her out of the game.

“What?!” Janice said. “You one-shot me! How is that fair?!”

And that’s how Walt introduced her to combo decks. After that, the next lesson would be control.

#

Walt excused himself from the den for a bathroom break. As he walked down the hall, he saw Rick out on the back deck. He was fiddling with one of the cabin’s security cams. He had set up the cabin’s alarms and cameras a few years ago and had been in charge of the upkeep of the cabin for a while now.

Walt had never been close to Rick. When him and his sister dated, he was too deep into Mythic and Librium to be much of a social family member. And by the time they got married, he was in rehab. But his brother-in-law had always been friendly with him and had tried to make gestures to get to know Walt better, but Walt had been too much up his own ass to reciprocate. For several of his birthdays, Rick would always gift him Mythic card boxes and a book.

Walt was fairly sure he still had the books in his old bedroom at his parent’s house. It was a curious selection and Walt had never been able to figure out the pattern or theme. Hell, he wasn’t even sure if there was supposed to be one. Maybe he was trying to nudge Walt in a certain direction. A grab hold of his talents type motivation. Or maybe they were just books Rick liked.

Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. Richard McCammon’s Boy’s Life. Childhood’s End by Arthur C. Clarke. The Art of War. Biographies on Oppenheimer and Tesla. The People’s History of the United States. The Imagineers of War, a book about DARPA.

Rick had even shown up to a few of Walt’s tournaments in the Southeast to show his support. And Walt was pretty sure he wasn’t just doing it because his sister wanted him to. He knew Rick was genuinely interested.

His brother-in-law worked as a consultant. Whatever that meant. Walt just knew he traveled a lot and could be gone on business trips for long periods of time. Whatever he did, he seemed to have connections because he was the one who offered to reach out to different Think Tanks for Walt, at the behest of his sister.

When Walt thought about it, he realized he knew virtually nothing about his brother-in-law. He just seemed like a milquetoast conservative who parted his hair and kept in shape by hiking. He was a lanyward wearing employee for some faceless conglomerate. He wasn’t sure what Janice saw in him other than that he might remind her of their father. For Walt, it was hard to get to know people unless they shared something in common.

#

Walt was making himself a cup of coffee when he heard a high-pitched mewling. It sounded odd, like it was on a frequency only he could hear. His system dinged and he checked the HUD. The minion log scrolled.

Dryder Hounds have detected a threat…

Dryder Hounds requesting your presence….

Walt looked out the window and noticed a boat pulling up next to their boat shed. There were two rednecks in it, armed with rifles. Out on the deck, he saw Rick had noticed to. His brother-in-law rose, his own rifle in his hands. He stepped off the deck and slipped into the trees, approaching the lake.

Walt left his coffee and stepped outside, locking the door behind him. He hurried after Rick, hoping his brother-in-law didn’t do anything stupid. He wanted to call out his name, but he didn’t want to reveal his presence. He had never known Rick to have guns around, and he was surprised that he even knew how to use firearms.

He stepped into the tree line and used the trunks for cover. Above him, he saw the Dryder Hound webs vibrating. He heard the high-pitched chord, the alarm notification. He crept up to the boat shed and pressed his back against the wall.

“Stop right there!” Rick said. “If you know what’s good for you, you’ll turn that boat around and leave!”

Walt peeked around the corner to see his brother-in-law holding the rifle up, aiming down sights at the two rednecks.

“Hold on now,” the redneck in the John Deere cap said. He wore a wife-beater and fishing shorts. “You’ve got us all wrong. We’re just checking in on our neighbors!”

Walt saw that the back of their boat was stacked with red cannisters of gasoline.

“That’s fine and well,” Rick said. “But we can take care of ourselves here. Now kindly undock yourselves and turn around.”

“Oh, we don’t doubt that,” the bald and bearded redneck said, “but like I said, we’re just trying to be neighborly.”

And the John Deere redneck chimed in, “In the spirit of being neighborly, maybe you all have some extra gasoline we can borrow. Would be mighty kind of you and would save us a trip to the station.”

“It looks like you have plenty of gasoline,” Rick said.

The bearded redneck glanced at all the gasoline cannisters behind him and chuckled. “We just like to be prepared.” Then he raised his rifle and pointed it at Rick. “There’s two of us and one of you. You really want to risk your life over some fuel?”

Rick stood his ground. “Do you?”

John Deere cap raised his own rifle then. It was a Mexican stand-off, except Rick had two guns pointed at him.

At that tense moment, Walt got another system notification.

Elrich Ehrmantraut engaging threat…

Right as they pulled their triggers, a black shadow fell out of the trees, landing in the boat between the two rednecks. Stormbreaker arced from side to side, slicing through the barrels of the rifles. Without barrels, the shots blew the rifles out of the redneck’s hands. The broadsword sliced through the neck of John Deere cap, his head plopped into the water.

Elrich pivoted and plunged the blade into the chest of the bearded redneck. The man grabbed the blade protruding out of his torso with both hands, looking at the monstrous swordsman in shock. Veins of crimson light pulsed in the steel and the jewel in the cross hilt darkened. Stormbreaker was drinking. The light dimmed from the redneck’s eyes and the man’s skin withered, turning gray, as the sword devoured his soul.

Elrich yanked the blade out and looked over at Rick, who now had his rifle pointed at the swordsman.

Walt emerged from the side of the boat house. “Don’t shoot!”

Rick glanced over at Walt, surprised.

“He’s on our side.”