The next time there was a lengthy lull throughout both the candy shop and Peace and Quiet, Sally—somehow—managed to convince Mond to teach her how to summon revenants.

Tay suspected it was the angle she had played it from. She’d approached Mond with eyes as wide as they could go, hair styled into pigtails to make her look exceedingly childish, and small steps that would’ve made any parent’s heart bleed.

Cari had tried dismissing her outright, as she was helping Mond with the cane syrup at the moment, and the two of them were brewing sugar concoctions like witches in the back of the shop. But Sally had accounted for this and followed it up with a well-placed, “Nobody ever has the time to teach me.”

Tay didn’t miss the jolt from Mond, nor the look he sent Tay’s way. It was obvious that this was his first real test. He could push Sally and her endeavors to learn Runicka aside for yet another time, but that wasn’t be believing in her now, was it?

So, Mond grinned to Sally, and said, “Perhaps it is time for you to finally learn.”

Tay was behind the counter, but since there wasn’t a single neighborhood kid in the whole shop, he learned closer and made sure not to miss a single word of this.

“You mean it, Mond?” Sally asked. Tay could hear the wavering excitement in her voice, as if she expected this to be some sort of joke.

“I do. But we’re nearly done with this current batch of lollipops, and they’re going to be the best we’ve made yet. Way sweeter than the last batch. Could you give me until tomorrow?”

And all Tay heard in response was a terse, “Oh…” All that excitement gone.

“Sally, wait,” Mond said. “Maybe your sister could take you out today, and show you a thing or two about summoning revenants? What do you say, Cari?”

Tay nearly fell over the counter. Cari could summon revenants? Since when? Why? He poked his head up and over some aisles of candy to observe the outcome of this struggle.

“Mond, no,” Cari said. “We have to finish this. We’ve been working on it all day.”

Mond swirled the mixtured with his sole good hand, his other still bound in the sling he kept insisting would be off the next day. “It will get finished. You’ve already seen to that. What’s left is enough for a man with a single hand to do, wouldn’t you agree? Please, Cari. Do this for me?”

And more unbelievable than Mond agreeing to teach Sally how to summon revenants, was Cari agreeing to the same thing. Still, she sighed, and then said, abruptly, “Fine.”

What world had Tay woken up in that day? Two weeks ago, Mond never would’ve even given ear to Sally learning anything about Runicka that could help her enter into tournaments. Now he was asking Cari to help, and she was agreeing?

Cari rose up from the back table while Sally raced up the stairs to go and grab her cards. When she turned around, Tay tried to duck back behind the aisle so as to not be noticed. But when she came over, small smile across her face, he knew he had failed.

“Do you want to come too?” Cari asked.

Tay’s voice caught in his throat, and he blinked a couple of times, as if that was enough of a response. It was all he could manage—learning how to summon revenants would put him that much closer to being able to challenge Rantho.

“You’ve been doing such a great job around here,” Cari said. “And I’m sorry we haven’t been playing Runicka as much together. If you want to start learning too, you’re more than welcome to come along. It’s a dead day today anyway. There’s some summer festivals going on topside. I’m sure most of the kids have sneaked off there.”

Tay worked on finding his voice, and when he managed to unearth it again, he said, “Let me go and grab my cards.”

But as he got them and then came back down, Mond waved him over to the table. The concoction they’d been working on was azure blue in color, and had been preheated already upstairs not even an hour ago. Mond was setting the mixture down into molds with sticks in them, so that they could fully cool into the lollipops they’d become.

“Is there something you need, Mond?” Tay asked.

Mond smirked. “I don’t think so. Not anymore. I just wanted to say thank you.”

Tay furrowed his brow. “For what?”

Mond looked over Tay’s shoulder, and Tay followed his gaze, seeing how both sisters were already waiting by the door, fussing amongst themselves.

“I don’t think Cari would’ve agreed to teach her sister today without you tagging along,” Mond said.

Tay could feel all his blood rushing to light up his cheeks. He tried looking away though, in a hopeless effort to hide it. He said, “I’m sure that’s not true.”

“True enough for me,” Mond said. “You were right about, Sally. I’ve made my peace when it comes to Runicka, but I shouldn’t be doing that for her. She has to make that peace on her own. Just like you do too. I’ve grown so close to these girls—they’re practically my daughters. But even a father needs the clout of being able to give his daughter space enough to choose for herself.”

“She’s going to choose Runicka,” Tay said. “At least, for now.”

Mond nodded, and finished up pouring the lollipop mixture into one of the molds. Perfectly flat. Smelled so sweet already. “And I trust that she’ll be able to protect herself when the time comes. That’s why I want her sister to train her. That’s why I’m happy that they still both have you when I can’t keep up with them.”

Tay chuckled and pointed at the sling. “What? Are you finally saying that your arm might not be healed up tomorrow?”

Mond grinned. “Don’t count on it. It would’ve already been off if I didn’t know how much it’d upset Cari. I know my limits. As you should learn yours.”

Tay put his hands on his hips. “What do you mean?”

“What are you, Taygion Ardwella?” Mond asked, gesturing with the bowl of liquid lollipop. “A thief still? Or something else now? I know I can’t rightly say. And if you can’t either, then I suspect you’re going to struggling in summoning a revenant.”

“I’m—” But Tay found he really couldn’t complete the sentence. A storekeeper? A family member of this strange lot? Something more? Something less? He really couldn’t say in a firm sentence.

A touch of cold dripped into his ears. If it helps, I think you’re a fool.

Tay brushed at his ears to show his disapproval of Garudigas’s thoughts.

Mond laughed though, and roared, “But that’s another reason why I’m happy you’re going out with them today. Nothing will teach you who you really are faster than Runicka. Let’s just hope it’s a good thing. I know it will be. If you give yourself time to grow, Tay, I know you can do this.”

Mond’s words, as Tay left the shop with Sally and Cari, stuck in his mind a while yet.

~~~~~~~~~~

Cari brought them to a small grove in Peace and Quiet. It seemed most of the neighborhood kids really were at the summer festivals topside, as there were only a handful out and about, and none in the grove.

The grove itself wasn’t anything like that one would’ve found in a place like Pyrewood. Trees couldn’t grow in the absence of sunlight, so instead the people here had taken to cultivating giant towers of lichen. These could keep themselves healthy even in complete darkness, and with a little careful planning, using struts and stakes made of wood, they’d crafted trees and pagodas covered in the mossy-colored flora.

Just underneath a bough of one of the lichen-trees, a squat figure had a cart set up and was trying to lure the only group of the neighborhood kids left on the block. Tay recognized her though, and he called out to Qallaz.

His Brux friend from back when he’d lost to Rantho had a deep violet tunic on, perfectly fitted to her form, and stood just barely taller than Sally. Her brown and braided locks were woven together and tumbled down from the back of her head. And as she turned to regard them, Tay noticed that she had stumble forming across her jaw, like that of a man lost and unable to shave himself in the wilderness.

Qallaz threw up a hand, forgetting all about the kids she’d been heckling, and called out, “Qzza!” And when Tay came over, Qallaz looked up at him and said, “It seems you found your way even lower than you were before.”

Tay minded Qallaz’s cart, and noted all the different clockwork figurines of revenants she had on display. He discerned that she had some Warlock ones—like the Rival Warlock—but none were the Warlock of Midnight Darkness. A shame, because he might’ve been tempted to risk his budget toward his next tournament on a figurine of his favorite card.

That hardest thing about having a steady stream of money was not spending all of one’s steady stream of money.

But to answer Qallaz, Tay said, “Lower in depth, but not in spirit.”

Qallaz smiled, and then rubbed at her dark stubble. “That’s good to hear. Good to hear. And who might these two be?”

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Sally and Cari came over—Cari cautiously approaching while Sally all but raced over to pick up each and every Runicka figurine she could get her hands on.

“These are the best!” Sally said. “And she has the Lord of the Forest figurine too. Oh, I need this. But wait…!” And Sally raced around the cart like she was a dog chasing a cat around the block.

“She’s going to be at that for hours, if you let her,” Cari said, nodding to Qallaz. “You two know each other?”

Tay grinned. “Qallaz helped me realized that I could come back to you when I lost against Rantho. She made me realize that maybe the darkness isn’t so bad, after all.”

Cari gave Qallaz a long look and then said, “I wouldn’t be so sure about that. You only tend toward the dark when you’re too far away from the light.”

Qallaz bowed a bit and said, “I think the light only seems well when one hasn’t spent enough time in the dark. My people know the value of the deep places of the earth and the darkness it can bring.” And to Tay, Qallaz said, “More often than not, I’ve found that people really know who they can become when they’re lost in the dark. The light shows you who you are, but the dark lets you know who you can become.”

Cari gave that a good humph but didn’t say anything further, except to tell Sally that she had to stop bouncing up and down the cart. Qallaz tried playing into that angle, but Cari wasn’t about to let her little sister spend any more of their money. It was hard, but Tay pulled himself away from Qallaz’s cart too, and wandered into the grove.

He called out to Qallaz, “Next time, Qallaz! I’m going to buy something next time!”

“You better, Qzza. Or you’re going to break this Brux’s heart.”

Cari brought the three of them to the center of the lichen grove, where the candlelight from Peace and Quiet almost glimmered off of the fuzzy surfaces, like the lichen itself was shedding its own illumination. The effect was that they seemed to be standing in a grove made out of leaf and light. There were even small fireflies that took to the air as they came to a stop at the grove’s heart.

Cari turned back toward them and said, “Alright, now each of you should take out your favorite attunement 1 card—Order 1 for Sally, and Chaos 1 for Tay. It should be the card you’ve either played with the most, or have spent the most time with.”

Tay knew without doubt that for him it was the Apprentice of the Warlock. He fished into his deckbox and pulled out one of the best draws he could have for his first turn.

(5) Apprentice of the Warlock Stable Shout: reduce target foe revenant’s Power by half until the end of the turn (rounded down). Uproar: add Warlock of Midnight Darkness from your deck or Oblivion to your hand. < 2

The card glowed inky black against the yellow and orange light of Peace and Quiet, as if they were at odds with each other. Sally pulled out her card too, which highlighted the white streaks in her hair and her so-very-white eyes. It also made it so Tay could quite clearly see her widening grin.

“Oh, I can’t believe we’re finally doing this!” Sally exclaimed. “I’ve wanted to learn how for so long.”

Cari rolled her eyes. “You should know that it’s not easy to learn how to summon revenants. Usually, it takes people a couple of weeks, if not months, to be able to summon attunement 1 revenants. Don’t be upset with yourselves if you don’t get it right away.”

“How long did it take you?” Tay asked.

Cari kicked at the lichen-covered ground beneath them and bit her upper lip before saying, “I can’t really remember exactly. But it was about two weeks or so to get attunement 1 revenants down.”

“You can’t remember? How long ago did you learn?”

“Cari learned back when she was my age,” Sally said. “Mond didn’t have a problem with teaching her.” There was obvious annoyance laced through Sally’s voice, as if she felt wronged that Mond only cared to keep her from Runicka instead of pushing her toward it.

“I wasn’t your age, actually,” Cari said. “I was twelve, so you’re still going to be beating me by a whole year. That is, Sally, unless you’re a rather poor learner, and I wouldn’t count you out yet!”

“Hey!”

Tay looked down at the Apprentice of the Warlock, and how it plumed inky splotches of black light out into the air, as if it were a boiling pot of water letting off some steam. Within this card was a creature that somewhere someone—a rune hunter—had captured. Tay wondered what the Apprentice might’ve said if he could speak with it like Sally had done with Scamper.

“Okay,” Cari said. “Are we ready? So, the first step of learning how to summon a revenant is completely forgetting about the revenant.”

Tay’d already tried to summon a revenant twice before, and both attempts, he’d flung the card out in front of him—that’s what he’d seen Mond and Rantho do after all. So, he’d naturally taken a crouch and held his card up in front of him, to prepare for flinging it outward. But now, he simply lowered his card and looked at Cari dumbfoundedly.

“Hey!” Sally said. “Mond said you have to teach us—he told you to do that.”

Cari rolled her eyes and put her hands on her hips. “He asked me if I could do that. And for some reason, I thought it was fine. So, trust me when I say that the first step in summoning a revenant doesn’t actually involve the card at all.”

“This isn’t some strange teaching, is it?” Tay asked. “Are you going to ask us to let ourselves be one with the cards, or something?”

Cari pursed her lips, and spun about, then with a grin, she said, “No, I’m going to ask you to be one with yourselves. In order to bring a revenant out, you’re going to have to convince it that it’s not a card, but a creature again. It’s like an argument. These revenants like to stay in whatever form they’re currently in.”

All but one. Tay could almost feel the weight of Garudigas in his pocket.

“So, like any good argument, you have to have a good idea of what you’re arguing about if you’re going to win it. You need to know what you are, so you can convince it that it’s going to have to become something else.”

Tay asked the obvious question. “What if we lose the argument?”

Cari shrugged. “That’s why we attune ourselves. It’s like a suit of armor, and a bridge. It helps shield us from their influence, while making it easier—or even possible—to control them.”

“So, what you really want is for us to attune ourselves first?” Tay asked.

“Yes. You have to attune yourself to Chaos 1, and Sally has to bring herself to Order 1. You need to look within yourselves and feel the pull of the cards. You have to allow yourself to move in their direction while still maintaining the idea of yourself.”

“Like having our hearts beat as one?” Sally asked.

“Kind of like that,” Cari replied.

So, they both set about to doing that. Though Tay would’ve been the first to admit—and he was admitting it, on multiple occasions—that he had no idea on where he should start. Cari kept telling him to look within himself, but he didn’t know quite how to do that. All he saw when he looked within himself was darkness. And pain. The pain of being alone for so very long. He couldn’t tell Cari that though, so he just kept trying.

Sally on the other hand had herself glowing white within the hour. The black locks of her hair brightened a bit, turning into a light grey, and her eyes were definitely glowing snowy white now. The lichen around her drank in her light too, reflecting back her ivory glow until Sally’s half of the lichen grove was like a radiant star.

“Good,” Cari said. “That’s good, Sally. I can’t believe how fast you caught on to that.”

“Next part, please,” Sally said.

Tay frowned. Sally had already mastered Order 1, and he had no idea where to even begin shifting himself into Chaos 1. Was there some sort of invisible door within him that he needed to unlock, or was it an energy he had yet to tap into? How was he supposed to move in the direction of the revenant?

“Right,” Cari said, giving a glance back at him. “Tay, you don’t mind if I—”

“Go right ahead,” Tay said. “I’ll catch up in a minute.”

“Okay, Sally, so to call out your revenant, you’re going to have to engage in that argument I mentioned. Doing that requires a bond. Now, your first couple bonds might take you a while to form. You have to concentrate and let the whole world just fall away, to the point where you can just feel yourself and the card. And when that happens, you’re going to want to use all your will—your desires—to bring out the card.

“You’ll feel it pull on you too, and that’s fine. Each card is going to cost you Life, and you’ll feel it being pulled straight from your fingers. It’ll be warm at first, and then cold, like a part of you is being dragged away. Once that happens, you can throw your card, and if your desire is serviceable, the revenant will transform from a card into its true form.”

Even though Tay wasn’t quite ready to do any of that yet, he still paid all of his attention to Cari, before looking back down to his Apprentice of the Warlock. Summoning required a bond? That wasn’t going to be a problem with his Apprentice because this card had helped him out with several wins now.

Sally might’ve taking to attunement far quicker than he did, but he’d catch back up and get the first summon in no time.

The whole lichen grove flashed white. And Tay turned around to find a small badger just behind him, white and black fur shifting along its form as if it were also alive. Its eyes were snowy white, and it had long claws that were almost comparable to ivory-made knives.

“I did it!” Sally exclaimed.

“I—I don’t believe it,” Cari murmured.

Tay just stared down at the badger, even as it trotted on over to Sally, who picked it up in her arms and swung it about a couple times before toppling over from its weight. The revenant sat of her chest and started sniffing her as she laughed.

(10) Hardclaw Digger Stable When this revenant loses Barrier, it gains +2 Power. Barrier 2 >

It seemed Sally was going to have to be his teacher real soon, because she’d managed a perfect summon—on her first attempt? Tay groaned and tried looking in himself once more, feeling his heart beat in his chest. Then, he focused on the card in his hand and how it too had some noticeable warmth, coming in short bursts not unlike the beating of a heart.

There was something there—something between them. Tay held the card in front of his chest, and he wasn’t sure if he’d ascended to Chaos 1 yet, but he couldn’t pass up this chance. He imagined the Apprentice of the Warlock emerging from its card in a great and violent cloud of darkness.

And then Tay threw his card.

A cloud rose up in the middle of the lichen forest, blocking out the light from Peace and Quiet beyond. A shadow rolled within it. But when the cloud fell, the shadow morphed into a gigantic four-legged bird creature, with feathers whiter than the peak of an icy mountain.

“You did it, Tay!” Sally said.

“No,” Tay replied. “No, that’s not my revenant.” Tay moved forward, and picked the Apprentice of the Warlock off the ground, where it still remained only a card. All the while, he kept his eyes on the revenant that had arrived.

This wasn’t the first time it had descended out of nowhere in front of him.

“It’s Skywing Lord,” Tay said.

“But that’s Mond’s card,” Sally said. “How could it be all the way out here if he’s back at the shop. That’s too far.”

Cari and Tay both looked at each other, and even in the white light emanating from the badger and eagle, her face paled.

They both had the same idea, at the same time, vocalizing their fears in one single word: “Mond.”