[https://i.imgur.com/cjnvTMQ.png]

The evening had turned into a nightmare much worse than any vision of a dagger stabbed into my chest. The vampire had returned to the stage, this time summoning shadowy Source balls of Death, which I had only ever seen pictured in foreign textbooks. The more of them she summoned, the more anticipatory the audience became: people making predictions in heated whispers and drifting ever closer to the raised platform. The vampire was up to nine Source – a ridiculous count for a Flinch Test – when I felt the undeniable urge to check on Esmi again.

My fiancée was still nearby, but that seemed more due to the press of the crowd than her desire to be close to me. We hadn’t shared any words since the moment I had finally come to my senses long enough to help her up off of the ground, and every moment that passed without us discussing the prince’s shocking attack, I felt the distance between us mount. It was a ludicrous situation to be in, considering that only moments before I had believed us the closest we had ever been, holding hands in the aftermath of experiencing our own deaths. Yet now it was like there was an invisible barrier between us, as powerful as a Dueling Dome, and it was there because of me; I had erected it due to my previous and continued inaction.

The trouble was that I didn’t know how to begin to apologize for how deeply I had failed her. To not defend her honor when she was assaulted right in front of me, even if the culprit had been the prince, shamed me to my core. No mere words I could say would make up for such a fault in my character, only action could, and yet I had been denied that opportunity when Hull stepped forward. Part of me was grateful for what he had done, but another, hateful side of me blamed him for robbing me of my chance to act. If I was up there instead of him, win or lose, I could have at least shown Esmi that I had tried. But to be standing here beside her instead, watching an urchin fight on her behalf, I felt useless and more unworthy of her, or anyone, than I ever had in my life.

I sent another pained, pleading look at Esmi – who refused to give me anything other than her profile – and so yet again I took the coward’s way out, turning to the stage. The vampire focused all of her source – awfully showy of her to summon so many when devoting half the number would have accomplished the same effect, a distant, analytic part of me complained – and mist shrouded whatever huge summons she had been building up to. A chilling gasp rippled through the crowd like a wave. Next to her stood a huge Soul, at least eight feet tall, with a sword crafted for its stature. In addition to its size, the way it stood, almost casually, exuded power, and I swear the air grew stiller – dying some – just from being in the Revenant Lord’s presence.

[https://i.imgur.com/2thHuA0.png]

“Are you trying to murder the crown prince?” the announcer sputtered, examining the newly arrived Soul with his gamemaster glasses.

The vampire wasn’t put out by the accusation. She merely shrugged her gown-wrapped shoulders, sounding bored if anything, “I thought they wanted a challenge.”

“Shut up, man,” the prince said, pushing the smaller man aside just as uncaringly as he had Esmi. My fist tightened at the familiar sight, and I had a deep urge to drive it into the prince’s face, even though such an act was well beyond my station. Gerad turned to the vampire, contemptuously. “You’ll not best me again, corpse. Do your worst.”

“Finally,” she said with a wry grin, “someone with some backbone.”

“Healers!” the announcer cried. “We cannot continue until there are healers present!”

One of the functionaries stepped forward, as did a Soiree guard, clanking up the steps of the stage in the armor she was wearing. Then a call of “I can be of service!” turned my head, along with plenty of others. The speaker was Fferun, the elf that Hull had dueled. He was stumbling through the crowd, weaving this way and that on drunken feet and yet when he reached the bottom of the stage, he seemed to sober, his lithe body standing tall as he looked up at the participants. “Allow a member of the Eastern Blue Wilds to be of assistance.”

The prince waved uncaringly, but I noticed that the announcer didn’t seem any less concerned, even with three healers at the ready. How much could that Dread Knight attack for? And how many cards did the prince and Hull have left? Under normal circumstances I would have been keeping close count, but with my thoughts on Esmi, I had only been paying attention with a half a mind.

An arm fell over my shoulder, and I turned to tell whoever it was to please place themselves elsewhere, only to find that it was Warrick dangling on me.

“Whass thepoorkid doingupthere?” he asked, gazing toward the stage, bleary-eyed. From the amount of weight he was putting on me and the slur of his words, he had clearly used our time apart to get profoundly drunk, even worse than Fferun.

“He’s doing what’s right.” Esmi said quietly but forcibly, and my gut clenched. If this was the opening to explain to her how sorry I was, I was still at an utter loss how to proceed.

Someone snapped their fingers, and a glance to the side showed me it was the vampire, her Dread Knight creaking into motion. It was so large and its sword was so long, it only needed to take a single step to reach the prince, its blade crashing down between Gerad’s neck and shoulder. There was a burst of card shards, but only enough to be two or three of them. The repulsive force they created wasn’t big enough to stop something as strong as the Dread Knight, its blade connecting with the prince’s body and cutting into his flesh.

I wanted the blow to flatten Gerad to the ground, to slice him in half even – all of the condescension he had meted out to me over our lives, and now even worse to Esmi with his actions and awful words, rolled into one fated redemption. However, even though he had no cards left to protect him from the brunt of the blow, the prince somehow remained standing. Even with an inch-thick blade sunk half a foot into his body, cutting through his right collar bone and who knew what else, Gerad refused to bend the knee.

The Dread Knight removed its sword with an awful sucking sound, and the prince stumbled but still did not fall. Blood poured like a river from the wound, staining the rich garments he wore at a frightening pace and dripping onto the stage. It was a mortal blow. The only way he could possibly be staying upright was if his personal Soul card gave him extra Health, and a significant amount of it.

The announcer fluttered his hands worriedly, and the self-selected healers moved to act, including Fferun, who lifted an arm surrounded by floating green vine balls of Life Source toward the prince.

“No healing!” Gerad snapped. He pointed at each of them in turn with his left hand, not seeming to notice that his other arm hanging uselessly. His face, growing white from blood loss, made him look like he should be part of a Death deck himself. “Not until it is done.”

If it wasn’t ending now, that meant Hull was next. Even from a distance, I could tell he was shaken, his eyes darting between the bleeding prince and the monstrous Soul from which he would soon be taking a hit. I could understand his fear, and yet, somehow, I wanted him to win.

“Your turn,” the vampire said, smiling at Hull.

The street urchin paled, looking the most out of place I’d ever seen him since we’d first met. He balled his fists, stared down at the stage, and then said something I couldn’t hear.

The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

The prince did though, and he laughed heartily, an odd sight with how injured he was. “Say that again,” he demanded. “Loudly, so everyone here can know the truth of you.”

“I said, I can’t do it. You… you win.”

The breath I had been holding – much like the hope that the prince would actually face some sort of recompense for his behavior – blew out of me.

The vampire shrugged, looking disappointed, and her giant creature of Death shattered into smoky motes before vanishing entirely. Hull stalked off of the stage, taking the steps quickly and pushing through the crowd as jeers started up after him.

If Warrick hadn’t been dangling on me or I didn’t have a rift to repair between myself and my fiancée, I might have tried to catch up to him. Logically, Hull had done the right thing, the sensible thing, by conceding. But, with everything that had been at stake, I couldn’t applaud him for it.

“I’m going to retire for the evening,” Esmi announced. Her voice lacked its usual buoyancy, and she didn’t even look my way as she spoke, as if she was merely declaring to the world her intentions.

This was it, my last chance to attempt to make right what had transpired between us. She turned to go, and Twins be praised, I finally found my voice.

“Esmi, I’m – ”

The sound a body makes when expelling a sickness it has held within happened directly in my ear, and I felt something wet land on my shoulder and then spill all the way down my arm.

Warrick had thrown up on me, and Esmi had never slowed in her departure.

“Oh my,” he said and then burped, an even worse smell passing right in front of my face. Warrick waved a hand side-to-side in an attempt to dispel the noxious fumes, to little effect, commenting. “What a stench.”

I closed my eyes and sighed, so long it felt like the air came up all the way from my toes.

***

Having no wish to experience additional humiliation and not wanting to spend any more time than was necessary in soiled garments, I returned to my room in the Colosseum with all possible haste. Being a three day tournament, I had thankfully packed a few sets of clothes, including sleeping attire. However, before I would permit myself to change into them, I used the bathing facilities in my room, which I was quite grateful to have, to scrub myself clean. Warrick had somehow managed to escape the offal he had spewed on me, emerging completely unscathed, and was currently snoring loudly, stretched out on my bed. He had apparently not purchased a room before spending all his coin on food and drink; I didn’t have the spare funds to spot him, nor was I about to pay for a carriage driver to return him to his family in such a state, so we would simply have to share for the night. Tomorrow we could come up with alternate arrangements.

Another feature of my room I hadn’t fully appreciated until now was its small balcony, and it was there I went to rest, cleaned, changed, and alone on a small stool. By myself, I only had my thoughts to keep me company, and they turned out to be a poor companion, forcing me to relive the moment I had stood still, doing nothing, when Esmi needed me most. Or after, when I couldn’t even muster words to speak to my fiancée.

So, I summoned one of my Rares.

[https://i.imgur.com/7CeDsDN.png]

She took solid form on the balcony beside me, looking just as comfortable to find herself staring out over the city as she did when appearing on the dueling field. I often wondered if card Souls had a way to see where the bearer of their Mind Home was, so they would know what to expect when called forth. But Atrea had told me on more than one occasion that she couldn’t speak of such things with me.

That was the name we had decided on for her: Atrea. It wasn’t until her Soul rose to Mythic that her true name would return to her, along with all her memories, instead of just a spotty few. So, until that happened, Atrea would do.

“I heard you won today,” she said to me, “but you do not look it.”

She refused direct questions on the subject of her time spent unsummoned, but knowingly or not, she gave me clues like this. Heard? Could she hear what I experienced, or as strange as it seemed, had another of my Souls told her?

“I did,” I said, putting my back against the side of the railing. “Twice. Those parts of the day were quite nice.”

She remained standing, leaning on the opposite side of the railing, so we were facing each other. “And the rest of it?”

That was all the prompting I needed to tell my tale, from first meeting Hull, to my match with Throice, to Plutar’s threats, and beyond. The part I really wished to discuss with her was what had happened with Esmi, but I found that I stretched the telling, as if I was afraid for Atrea to learn how weak I had been. But eventually, I had to recount that part or stop talking, and for whatever reason, not finishing felt worse than revealing my cowardice.

When I was done, Atrea shook her head, looking disgusted, and I was gripped by the sudden, sure feeling that she would name me the basest of cravens for my lack of action.

“That man has no honor, and he will be the ruler of this place?”

“Gerad?” She nodded, and I nearly slumped in relief that I was not the target of her ire. “Unfortunately, yes. He stands to inherit the throne. Assuming the Sun King ever dies.” The Rarer a Soul, the longer it lived, and the king being Legendary meant he could last for hundreds of years – but old age was not the only way to perish.

“And there’s nothing you can do to change that?” she asked, hand resting on the pommel of the sword at her hip, as if she wished to change it.

I went to say both “no” and to point out that my trouble at this point was with how I had handled Esmi, but ordering the two thoughts delayed me, and the intense look Atrea was giving me made me pause further. Was that the trouble? Did I need to apologize to Esmi, or did the prince? But Gerad would never do such a thing, not unless… I outranked him.

“You look like you’ve found it,” Atrea said. “What you need to do.”

“I don’t think so,” I answered quickly this time. “It’s…impossible.”

Atrea turned some so she could unfurl her wings, the pair stretching an impressive ten to twelve feet from tip to tip. “I wasn’t born with these, you know.”

Despite the circumstances, I gave a small chuckle. “I know.” The story of how she had managed to attain that particular ability had been the first thing I had asked her when she joined my deck.

She tucked the wings back beside her body and leaned toward me. “Strong dreams happen, Basil. Fate and Fortune treasure them and help them come to fruition.”

I had thought I already had a strong dream: reaching top five in the Rising Stars Tournament, advancing my Soul to Rare, escaping a life of monotonous guard duty, marrying Esmi, being a son my family would be proud of. Was that not enough? Was more really possible?

“You’re thinking on it,” Atrea said, sounding pleased. “That’s how it starts.”

I was not so optimistic, and yet… the Sun King had become king by virtue of the Rarity of his Soul, and Throice hoped to succeed in making his family of artisans nobility. Was it so different to work toward raising my family from nobility to royalty with the advancement of my Soul?

And even before that, I could make the prince begin to pay for his slight against Esmi and me. I could defeat him in the Tournament, publicly humiliating him. In fact, if I truly wished to surpass his Epic Soul, I would need to achieve great feats, and winning the Rising Stars Tournament would certainly count as one of those.

“Would you procure some things for me?” I asked Atrea. “From my family’s estate?”

“Of course,” she said. “I know the way, and it would be a pleasure to stretch my wings.” After I described them, Atrea hopped up onto the railing and balanced on the narrow edge, something I could never imagine doing unless I had wings like she did. Before departing, she turned to me.

“You haven’t forgotten about your promise, have you?”

My cheeks heated, and for some reason I felt like I was failing Esmi yet again. “Of course not. Never. With what I’m planning, it might even happen sooner.”

“I like the sound of that,” Atrea said, grinning wide as she tripped herself over the railing, falling like a stone. My heart clenched for her as I watched her plummet, but then her wings snapped out, and she rose up, gliding over the buildings below.

After she left, I stayed on the balcony, looking out at the night. At this hour, many homes were dark, but as high as my vantage was, I could see a large swath of Treledyne and those few lights scattered across the city that did still burn. People up, doing things they believed important enough to defy the call of nature to rest.

If I was truly going to go against everyone’s expectations and defeat the prince – and maybe even one day be the steward of this land – I had a great deal to think on. And this was the perfect spot to do so, with my fellow dreamers.