Everyone else was dead. He saw it happen.
He pushed a swell of grief down once more. 'Can't feel anything now. Need to walk'. If he starts to feel he'll slow down. He can't slow down.
But regardless, he remembered.
It began with cracking stone.
The four of them had been walking in a small ravine, wide enough for them to walk alongside each other. That was how he liked it best, when they could chatter the day away and every load seemed lighter. They were all too loud while in town, half-deaf from years of the sound of striking rock with metal picks, they were no longer fit for those civilized places where measured tones reigned. But here they could talk in a half-shout and bother no one. Here they were fit for each other.
Jakub had just said something about all their mothers. They feigned outrage, but in truth their mothers all loved Jakub. What mother didn't love a man who saved her child's life?
When the cacophony of stone striking stone seemed to come from all around them, they thought a rockslide had come upon them. He had looked up to see the source, to know where to go, who to pull or push out of the way.
When his gaze came down, Jakub was already a smear of blood and ruin. Where he'd stood an arching pillar of rock extended from the wall.
Uncomprehending eyes stared at the remnants of their friend, even as a second pillar—a limb he realized too late—broke free. The rock was smooth and slightly pitted, continuously flowing on itself, like sand floating on the surface of a stream.
"Flowstone Elemental!" he'd shouted, recognizing the signs too late to save Jakub.
Immediately they slung packs to the ground, and grabbed their tools. They all knew there would be no outrunning it, despite their bulk the things were legendarily quick. Simon could have, with his abundance of movement cards, but that would mean leaving the rest of them—an impossibility.
It pulled its main body from the rock languorously, and by the time it fully emerged they stood ready, picks and hammers in hand.
It stood at least twice the height of a person. Four trunk-like legs supported its quaking weight even as new limbs formed atop its body. At the top of a central column, the stone shifted to a pale quartz-like vein that shone with an internal, flickering light. If they were to survive, that is what they needed to destroy: the Animus vein.
Lillin lifted the behemoth she called her sledgehammer and began to wind herself up. The shuffle step-step of her feet was unerringly familiar as she slowly began to spin on the spot, growing faster and faster in preparation for a devastating strike. She had a card that contained and amplified the centrifugal force pulling on her grip, but it needed time.
She didn't need to say a word for them to know their roles. He and Simon split up to harry the elemental at its flanks, pulling every ounce of attention to themselves that they could.
His pick, made of card-forged steel, swung easily in his grip. All he wanted was to jam his weapon into its leg with all his strength, but he risked wedging it. Instead he avoided over-committing to any blow, letting glancing strikes grab the things attention. He knew his efforts were successful when the flickering lights of its Animus crystal focused more intensely to his side. He was taking more than his share of the risk, but it suited him, anything to preserve a chance for the others.
One of the free limbs, now fully grown, rushed towards him with the threat of unbearable, crushing strength.
He side-stepped away from the blow, and ducked under the swinging follow up. He could feel the wind of its passing pull on his hair. All around him was deafening cracking, as every move it made echoed through the space.
His hand cycled right then, and in an instant he assessed the newly held cards. Two were passive effects he'd already played that morning, now just filling his deck: increased endurance; and a sustenance card to keep his food requirement low through the day. The fourth was an active use for sensing the mineral content of stone, not practical here.
But the fourth and fifth cards... they might be enough. Buffer was a protective effect, for a short time after activating it he would resist forces applied to him; Demolish would let him tap into the small spring-battery he kept strapped to his leg, and empower a strike with his pick. Here it might be enough to shatter the Animus, if he could only land the blow.
From the corner of his eye he saw Lillin, a blur of spinning motion at this point, take her striking step forward. With a resounding crash she slammed her sledge into the nearest leg of the elemental. The force of the blow wracked through the creature as a puff of dust erupted from its entire surface. Lillin's strike had crippled the leg, the stone spasmodically grinding even while the animating force failed to reach into its damaged limb.
Lillin gasped for breath after the strike, backpedaling to gain distance. He could see the wild grin he loved, even while tears streamed down her face.
He and Simon shared a hopeful glance, perhaps they could avenge Jakub and save themselves.
The Flowstone beast showed a curious intelligence as it eventually just slammed the injured joint of its disobeying leg, and broke it off at the weak-point.
He could only watch as it wielded its dismembered limb like a club and swung it faster than he could track into Lillin. She took the blow straight to her chest and flew back to strike the wall with a sickening thud that cut through all other sound.
He didn't need to look to know the impact had broken her.
Fury overcame him, burning away any remaining caution.
Buffer. He triggered the card preemptively, where it immediately showed its value when a blow that would have crippled him only glanced off his thigh. The elemental wasn't prepared for him to withstand the hit and in a moment he was dancing beneath the legs, striking out in a desperate flurry of blows. Stone shards and dust enveloped him like rain and fog. The grinding of the elemental intensified as it tried to maneuver away from the biting pest beneath it, but he kept close, harrying it where its limbs couldn't easily reach.
Finally the moment he had been waiting for came. Frustrated by its inability to reach him, the elemental dropped itself down, trying to crush him with its weight. He felt the wind get knocked out of him even as Buffer kept the life from being crushed from him instantly. Even while pinned he kept one arm free, scraping at the stone with the head of his pick-axe.
"I'm still alive you fucker! You haven't killed me yet! Keep trying you stupid bastard!" he shouted over the grinding of the stone.
He needed to keep its focus on him, to bait it into remaining low and try crushing him against the earth.
Bringing its Animus in range of Simon.
Simon leapt through the flurry of limbs onto the central stone column. They were a mere two-meters from each other; Simon's legs wrapped around the column near the Animus vein, him beneath its grinding weight.
In Simon's hand was his heavy prospecting hammer, and for a breathless moment he raised it above his head before bringing it down upon the flickering stone.
It rebounded.
Simon didn't have any empowering cards for the strike; another blow, more desperate, merely glanced off the hardened stone.
He could feel the Buffer beginning to wear thin. He had a handful of seconds before it would fail.
"Go! Leave me!" he shouted up at Simon. There was still a chance one of them could make it out.
Simon looked down at him, and for a moment their eyes met. Simon's face was beatific, the expression one carries while surrounded by dear friends. He smiled sadly, and winked.
Then Simon used a card—one he would never forgive him for.
Swap.
He felt the effect grab him even as he tried to fight it, but the conditions were met and nothing could prevent it.
He found himself atop the elemental, pick in hand and legs wrapped around its column. He felt it drop suddenly, not much, not enough to disrupt his grip, but a wave of dizzying despair threatened to overwhelm him nevertheless.
All he had left was the one chance he had been given. He raised his pick and Demolished. He felt the card pull on the kinetic force stored in his spring-battery even as his strike rushed down with all the rage and pain he felt, and he wasn't sure which lent it greater power.
The pick struck deeply into the Animus vein, piercing through hardened stone and ore, cracking the column down its entire length in a single blow.
For a moment the light of the Animus flickered, before slowly darkening to inert rock, and the grinding cacophony ceased. From the moment it had appeared the sound had been deafening, and he realized in the new silence, since he'd lost everyone dear to him, that he hadn't heard a single word from any of his lost friends.
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The descent from the mountains had passed in a daze, and now he was well into the forested Meäl foothills. The strain on his body finally caught up with him.
He had been walking for hours, well into the night. The blow he'd received to his leg through Buffer was beginning to bother him, and if the pain every breath brought was any indication, he had cracked ribs to contend with as well.
If he was going to recognize their sacrifice he would need to survive, to keep going, at least until he could tell their families. What came after could wait.
Rallied by this new goal, he took stock of his surroundings. The woods were unfamiliar; he had clearly wandered off course. He nearly asked Simon for their heading before stopping himself. No compass, no compass carrier.
The only thing to do was use the stars. With a clear night sky, only the trees above kept him from navigating. Waiting to find a clearing would just delay him even longer, and with that in mind he stripped off his shoes and set his pack down. All around him were ancient flux trees, which made for easy climbing. They had strong straight limbs, evenly spaced all the way to their canopy.
Even with his tender ribs and bruised leg, the climb went quickly. He was midway up when he noticed something odd. The branches he was touching were sticky. He couldn't identify it in the dim light, but the liquid on his hand still caught enough moonlight to glisten. He brought it to his nose to sniff—flux sap. The aroma was faint, it had clearly been exposed to air long enough to shift from its fresh, readily flowing state to the viscous form he handled now.
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There wasn't any obvious damage to the branch, and so with a shrug he continued. As he climbed, the sap grew thicker on the branches; whenever he released a branch viscous strands of sap clinged to his hands. He neared the top and it became clear what had happened. The tree had been tapped high, but instead of collecting the sap it had flowed freely, coating the upper branches and trunk like some wasteful lacquer.
Fresh flux sap had the curious property of extinguishing any flame it encountered with rapid potency. This was, in part, what allowed the forest to reach its distinguished age, as any flame trying to grab hold of the trees would quickly sputter out. But when sap was exposed to air for an extended period of time, that property reversed, and the sap became extremely flammable. Both forms of the sap were valuable, but its extraction had to be careful, monitered.
Usually the quantity of air-exposed sap was low enough that it couldn't overcome the extinguishing effect of the fresh sap within the trees. This tree, soaked in its own sap, would explode into a pillar of flame from any spark
Leaving the tap to flow was immensely irresponsible, placing it so high was also bizarre. A low tap was just as functional, and wouldn't have been forgotten as this one clearly had. He could think of no reason why a tap was placed so high, unless it was meant to go undiscovered. A sudden feeling of dread came over him. Careful navigation forgotten in his haste, he descended as quickly as he dared, only to start up another nearby tree. Midway up the sap began to appear once more. Continuing on, he found another tap, just like the first.
His hands were tough, strong. He was a miner, used to wielding a pick for hours, the callouses of his palms were thick. But just as the bark of the tree cracked and drew blood in his powerful hands, so did he shudder in the grip of a possessing rage. The flowstone elemental shouldn't have appeared. Lone elementals were rare, but not unheard of. They woke occasionally from the proximity of human activity, and more certainly from the presence of significant flame. He had thought they were simply unlucky, a twist of fate without meaning, tragic but purposeless. But what he'd seen... it would be so easy for a fire to take a chunk of obscure forest, to burn itself out before being noticed by humans—no one would be the wiser, but the elementals would not sleep so soundly. They would be restless, ready to awaken from even a casual passerby.
No accident had taken them from him.
The grief he carefully packaged away, somewhere deep inside himself. It would remain pure, unsullied by what he now prepared himself for. Satisfaction in blood. The only feeling remaining as he quaked atop the gently swaying tree. There would be a reckoning, and if at the end of it any part of him remained, he would allow it to look within and uncover his loss.
The listlessness had left him, replaced with hateful purpose. He had dwelt too long here. All around him was the evidence of an illegal harvesting operation—one without concern for the consequences of its actions and wasteful in its arrogance. The tenders of this patch could appear without warning and, for now, he needed to remain unknown.
Cautious now, his next steps were taken very deliberately. He took the time to examine the stars and orient himself; only then did he descend to the ground and gather his things, making sure to sweep away his footprints.
The shadowy path before him beckoned; and in only a few strides he was gone.
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A harried figure limped in the darkness. He was beset by a purpose; one that ignores the protest of an aching leg—that suppresses the weariness of a forced march. He could walk until he died mid-step, heart broken between the rise and fall of a stride; that was the feeling he had. But the focus he felt was not single-minded. When a light flickered through the trees, and his reaction was immediate.
He climbed the nearest trunk on the far side to the light. In all likelihood whoever held the light was part of the flux sap activity, but it was too soon to be discovered. Besides, he wouldn't be satisfied with a single death that alerted all involved to their discovery and gave them the opportunity to go to ground.
Not far up the tree he found a spot where two thick branches grew close together, and he laid down atop them, obscuring himself from the ground.
The light grew closer, and with it, voices.
The night hid them at first, but they continued closer and closer until they settled, three figures directly underneath his tree.
"I'm telling you it was in this direction—and they felt close. Not more than a few hundred meters, which we've already come at least," said 'Tracker'—a designation he immediately assigned to the speaker.
"Yes, your card is very impressive. And yet somehow we've managed to go through every dense bramble and found the worst possible crossing for that brook. I'm beginning to believe we're not following anyone, or if we are, they're a bigger fool than you," replied 'Complainer'.
"I'm not following their trail. I perceive a direction and a distance. We must have followed them at an angle, which has still brought us up to them before the night is done, I'll remind you," said Tracker.
"Hush up. Both of you. This is not a training exercise, act like it," and there was 'Boss', "How long before your tracking card is up again?"
"It was in the top of my deck last play, I'm still three hands away from a shuffle. After that, four cycles until it's guaranteed. More likely two," Tracker answered.
Listening in he felt a quiver in his heart. They were following him, and the deck size 'Tracker' had implied meant they had an average of four minutes to wait between plays of the tracking card, very shortly it would arrive again and they would find him. They had already come within a stones throw, and with his injury there was no way he would be able to outrun or evade them for long.
"Could they still be nearby?" Boss asked.
"I should think so, or at least not too far from here. If you shout they might hear us," Tracker replied.
They fell silent then, and he considered his options. If he was going to have any chance, Tracker had to die. An ambush, followed by a dash into the darkness. Their woodcraft seemed dismal if the difficulty they'd had navigating was any indication, given even thirty seconds lead time he would be gone in these conditions.
He just needed the cards to pull it off. His current hand was useless, but in a short while his cards would cycle. He had no cards left in his deck, so a shuffle and a new draw off a fresh deck would follow. He just needed to draw cards that could both deal a lethal blow and allow him an opportunity to escape before their tracking card came up again. A slim chance, but all he had to hope for.
A shout from below caused him to tense, but it wasn't directed upwards.
"I know you're frightened. Injured. Probably confused. We found the remnants of the attack from the elemental. I can't express how sorry I am. We were heading into the mountains to prospect as well, and when we came across your party I couldn't help but imagine it was my own... if we had come before you," 'Boss', yelling out into the darkness. He had a full and warm baritone, but it cracked with emotion when he mentioned the fate he'd apparently only narrowly avoided, "when Peyter said there was a survivor I knew we had to help, after what you'd been through."
Doubt crept into him; they knew about the attack in the ravine. If they truly were the culprits behind the flux tree tapping they would have no reason to venture into the mountains, if anything they'd desperately avoid the threat they'd exacerbated. Their story might be true.
With the utmost care he shifted his head until he could just barely see between the gap in the branches. Below him the three pursuers stood. They each held a strong twist-light that illuminated them and some of the clearing. They didn't look like the rough characters he would have suspected of illegal flux-tree tapping—a desperate and callous move to be sure.
Each of them was remarkably well built, possessing an obvious vitality. They were warmly dressed, and carried mining equipment of clear quality. He was less and less convinced by his earlier suspicion, but something made him hold back.
"I know you're probably wondering what quickened the Animus of that elemental. We'd like to figure out the same thing. Someone must have done something in the woods, something that broke the balance and killed your friends. We want to stop it, whatever it is."
A single misstep, and he knew they had to die.
They carried twist-lights, just as anyone who delved underground would. They were the perfect tool for the work, small metal rods that slowly released their tension in a controlled manner to produce a faint white light, with no risk of lighting underground gas or consuming valuable oxygen.
But they were valuable, and only had so many uses before they began to fail. In the wilds there was no way to replace them. Any miner travelling at night would use a torch—with flux trees all around, any fallen branch would burn brighter for hours with no risk to the naturally fire-resistant trees.
But if you knew that the trees in the area had been tapped dry; if you knew that any open flame here would invite an inferno beyond reckoning—That would be a good reason indeed to use such a valuable resource on a nighttime pursuit. So why were they pretending not to know about the tapped trees? He knew the answer.
Just then his deck shuffled, and a pair of old friends were in his hand just as they had been before. Buffer and Demolish were ready for him.
Without a sound, he pulled his pick from the strap that held it. He rose into a crouch with aching slowness, letting the man below prattle on with the deception he'd nearly been swept up in.
One strike for three men. But flesh was much softer than stone.
Buffer.
He jumped from the branch silently. The fall felt like it would never end.
The landing still nearly buckled his bad leg, but the card minimized enough of the impact that he was nearly instantly ready.
His pursuers eyes were widening in surprise and shock, even as they flinched back from his arrival. But they were capable, and their hands were already reaching for weapons.
He'd raised his pickaxe before even jumping.
Demolish.
He swung wide, a sweeping chest high blow. There was no need to use the weight and momentum of an overhead swing, not when his card swung the blow forward with staggering power.
The pick head tore through the first man in a torrent of blood. But he misjudged the distance and the haft caught the body, pushing the fresh corpse to knock the next man down instead of piercing through. The weight of the body drained the energy of the swing, rendering his card-given momentum gone before it could carry through each man.
The last man standing had drawn a blade but made no immediate move beyond watching him curiously.
"Well I can see why you managed to destroy the elemental with a blow like that in your arsenal," he paused, "Not without attrition I suppose. But then, you're not really meant for this kind of thing," 'Boss' said, taking an easy conversational tone, as if his companion hadn't just been torn apart in a single blow right in front of him. "If you don't mind me asking, what gave us away? You see, I worked quite a lot on these outfits, the equipment, even the voice."
He gave no response to the provocation, instead taking the opportunity to pull his pickaxe free of the body with a gristly squelch.
"Not going to indulge my curiosity? No use keeping you alive any longer then."
Before his eyes, his opponent blurred into motion; impossible to track, let alone respond to. Agony bloomed from his chest and legs. Unable to bear his own weight, he collapsed to his knees.
His vision was darkening. Every limb felt impossibly heavy. He'd never had a chance once they were given an opportunity to respond. A cough brought blood pouring from his mouth.
From the darkness that rose up to consume him, a pair of voices were still discernible.
"He killed Peyter! No miner should have been able to manage that, even with surprise! He had protective cards up, a pick just can't pierce through like that, even with card support," 'Complainer', of course.
"And it only highlights the necessity of our course," Boss said, but his voice had become cold and imperious, utterly devoid of the false warmth he'd presented only moments ago. None of the sympathy or false ease remained. "They blaspheme against the natural order. We knew this, but we arrogantly ignored the implication. Here it has been confirmed for us in the death of a comrade. There can be no more caravans or parties making it this far. The risk is far too high when a single man can do this. If we failed to contain even one of them all would be lost."
The voices faded into the distance.
A part of him knew death was coming swiftly. But what remained of his mind was focused elsewhere. Something far larger than he'd understood was at work. Jakub, Lillin, Simon, and now him. They had all been taken incidentally to some other purpose, some malice that prowled the world even now.
Entering the Meäl region had sealed their fate.
Outrage surged through him even as he felt his heart slow. Everything had been taken from him, and now even his revenge was slipping through his fingers? No. No. No. No. NO.
He felt it in his chest then. A familiar feeling that had always inspired excitement: a card was forming. It pulsed with power, he could feel it swelling with potential even as his life ebbed. He struggled to hold on—it needed time to form, time to reach the fullness of what was being offered to him.
He could see nothing now. He could hear nothing now. He could feel nothing now.
There was only the card. It coalesced into its final form and, despite holding it in his mind, he couldn't even begin to understand the feeling of what it would do, except that it had been created out of the feeling of struggle against inevitability. Against fate. He knew the name for it.
Shuffle Fate.
He died.
From a still chest, an inky blackness darker than shadow pooled. Congealing and rippling out of the body until there, atop a nameless corpse, sat a common nightbird.
It flew. There was somewhere it had to be.