image [https://i.imgur.com/PVQZiJI.png]
Penkmun leaned back on his stool, his dumbfounded look magnified by the ocular Artifact he had strapped over one eye. “Twins take me and make me anew, you weren’t lying!”
I sat up on the bench he’d had me lie back on while he looked into my eyes with his whatever-it-was. “If I was going to make up a lie, I’d pick one that had a chance of being believed.”
“Yes, but…” the old Tender floundered. “You can’t remove a soul card from the living. You can’t!”
I shrugged. “So I’ve been told.”
He removed the device and rubbed his forehead, seeming overwhelmed. “I thought it certain that you’d taken a hit to the head or had some charlatan fill your ear with silly ideas. Not so, not so. The eye looks a certain way when the soul hasn’t manifested its card yet, you see, and apertures to the depths within open in the iris once it has. That’s where the color of your rarity shines through. Those that are well-trained in this device,” he said, gesturing to the Artifact, “can not only see your card if you have one, but even fine gradations of advancement within each rarity. I was sure I’d see nothing but an undeveloped eye of brown when I delved you.”
I wished I could take the thing from him, pluck an eye from my own head, and see what he was describing for myself. He’d had to send off for the Artifact to the high official of the Church of the Twins, some fellow he called The Unity, and it had only just arrived this afternoon. “What did you see instead?” I asked.
He spread his hands with a baffled look. “The apertures are there in your eyes, but when I look in, I see nothing but torn edges and darkness beyond. It’s unheard of.”
I smiled grimly. “Believe me now?”
Penkmun let out his breath in a whoosh. “I have no choice. What kind of ability your mother must have had to be able to steal a card… that’s Epic level. No – Mythic, more like. Why would the Twins allow such a thing to exist?”
I hoisted myself to my feet, pacing the length of his small, homey chapel. “Been asking that for a long time, but they haven’t bothered answering.”
Penkmun wrapped his arms around himself and rubbed as if he’d taken a chill. “I have honestly never heard of something so frightening. It’s evil. It’s worse than breaking the card of a thinking being.”
I stopped in front of the small stained window that showed a spiked, fluid ball of Nether. It was beautiful. All twelve of the little windows were. “I don’t remember it happening, at least. I hardly remember anything before I was ten or eleven.”
“It might be better if you could,” he murmured, going to the writing desk where he liked to spend his days, deftly jotting a quick note on a scrap of foolscap with a old, worn quill. “It might give us something to go on.”
“It doesn’t matter,” I insisted, turning to him. “The bitch took my card and bolted. Fine. Now that you actually believe me, will you please tell me what I asked?”
He tossed down the quill and threw up his hands. “I haven’t the first clue. Until two minutes ago I’d never considered that a person might lose their first card, and now you want me to tell you how to create a second? It’s uncharted territory, my boy! Pure speculation! There’s no guidemap for a situation like this.”
I wanted to shake him, but I crouched beside him pleadingly instead. “You’re a Tender. You help people elevate themselves, right? That’s all this is. A simple thing.”
“Simple,” he scoffed, but he lost some of the wildness around his eyes and started looking thoughtful instead. “You’ve no idea what rarity you possessed?”
“Not a clue.” I wanted to elaborate, but I didn’t dare disrupt his line of thought.
“The apertures are opened,” he mused. “The pathways of advancement are there, just, hmm, empty.” He lapsed into silence and chewed his lip, staring up at the twelve-point iron candelabra suspended overhead.
I waited impatiently until I could do so no longer. “And?”
He blinked, seeming to remember that I was still in the room. “Ah. Well. I see two possibilities. One: the pathways of your soul were torn and ruined when your card was stolen, and no matter what you attempt, you will never develop another.”
I grunted. “Don’t much care for that one.”
“I should think not, but you must consider that it might be true. It would be unkind of me to pretend otherwise.”
I waved a hand. “Yes, you’re very holy, very kind. What’s the other option?”
He checked an exasperated sigh. “I’m serious, Hull. Far be it from me to discourage anyone from elevation, but you must consider that failure is a very real chance here. Your soul is torn. It makes my heart quake just thinking of it.”
I hid my clenched fists in my pockets and curbed my anger. “All right. I’m considering it. What’s the other thing you were going to say?”
Still he hesitated. “I don’t want to raise your hopes too high.”
I snorted. “If I told you all my hopes, you’d tell me to stick to making a new card for myself. Spit it out, old man. Yes, I might fail. Fine. Let me have it.”
He clasped his hands as if in prayer. “Well. I don’t actually know how torn pathways work, you see. No one does; they’re not supposed to exist. But if new growth is possible, then not only could you create a new soul card for yourself, you could conceivably do so much faster than the first time. Like I said, the paths are already in place.”
I started to speak, excited, but he held up a cautioning hand.
“How far you could progress quickly depends on how highly your original card was elevated. If you were younger than ten when it was taken, I think it’s safe to assume you were a Common. Anything beyond that is breathtakingly rare.”
I gave him a crooked grin. “Who’s going to bother ripping a card out of a living soul for a Common?”
He conceded the point with a shrug. “It’s possible you could have been an Uncommon or better, especially given the strength of your mother’s ability. High-rarity parents have a chance of producing children with souls already elevated at birth.”
I pursed my lips and said nothing. My Father was Legendary and my mother might have been Mythic. I was willing to bet a good chunk of my newfound coin I’d been a Rare. It was an intoxicating thought, but at the same time, it increased the bitterness of the old wound. What kind of mother stole her son’s soul card and abandoned him?
“This may all be moonbeams and wasted hope, Hull,” Penkmun said gently. “There’s no knowing until we try.”
“Then we try,” I said brightly, shaking off the useless mother-pain my thoughts sometimes brought me. “What do I do?”
“You’re in a unique position,” he said. “With folks newly developing their cards, I tell them to focus on who they are and what they do best – to really dig deep and become the exceptional version of themselves. But given your situation…”
“Not many gutter boys coming to you for elevation, eh?” I said, chuckling.
“That’s precisely the point I wish to make: you’re not a gutter boy anymore, Hull.” He took me by the shoulders and looked deep into my eyes with a painful earnestness. “You bested noblemen and merchants alike to reach the Top 5, and in just a few days you’ll enter the King’s War Camp. You stand on the cusp of any of a dozen different identities, and if you’re thoughtful, careful, and wise, you can choose what kind of new soul you create. There is almost no limit to what you might become.” He shrugged self-consciously. “If in fact you can create a new card, which…”
“Yes, I get it.” It was almost troubling, the way he laid it out. Exciting, yes, but heavy. It felt like responsibility, and I wasn’t sure what I thought of that.
“Even without a soul card you stand a good chance of becoming an important man, Hull.” He shook his head, laughing ruefully. “I had no idea what I was getting myself into when I offered to help you. I’ve tried to stay out of any palace intrigue, thank you very much.”
“Sorry to disappoint,” I said. “But I’m still me, no matter how you pretty it up. I can’t walk past the table without feeling like I need to pocket the breakfast scraps.”
“We carry our past with us,” he said sagely. “Habits take time to change, and our view of ourselves even longer. I promise you, though, when you meet new people, they do not see a child of the streets. They see a fierce young duelist with a bright future. So do I. And, if Fate is kind and Fortune with you, a new card may just prove it to you. Think hard about who you want to be, my boy. Few of us get to recreate ourselves from whole cloth, but you just might pull it off.”
I sighed, a bit overwhelmed by it all. “So to make a new card I have to decide who I’m going to be.”
“And excel at it,” he said, lifting a finger. “Give it your all.”
That was a more complicated thing than he knew. I was the King’s bastard, and I also hoped to murder him. I was an undiscovered criminal who’d killed a man and taken his stack of illegal Chaos cards. I’d betrayed my only friend and been forgiven. I was a boy who hadn’t dared return to his home turf since the Tournament had ended. I was angry. I was lonely. I was also, for the first time in my life, hopeful. Sum it all up, and who was I? A confused mess. That didn’t sound like the basis for any card I wanted to be.
“Sleep on it,” Penkmun urged, seeing my hesitance. “We can talk about it more as the days pass, and as you make your decisions, I can help guide you to the kind of actions the Twins seem to prefer.”
“Thank you,” I told him, and I really meant it.
“Not that I haven’t enjoyed having you as a guest these last weeks,” he said gently, “but I think your time claiming sanctuary here in my chapel cannot last much longer.”
“I needed to let things settle in the Lows,” I said. “I told you all about that.” He’d been grimly glad to hear of Ticosi’s demise, though I hadn’t let on that I’d done the deed. I’d just said that his enforcers were still after me, and I had no doubt they were.
“You’re welcome to stay as long as you like,” he assured me. “It’s been some time since the acolyte beds have been filled. But War Camp begins soon, and you cannot hide forever. And you’ve yet to visit the Hintal boy no matter how many times I suggest it. He’s a powerful ally.”
I tried not to squirm. “I know. I’m going to. I just had to think for a bit first.” We’d left things on a good note, Basil and I, but I still carried the guilt for how I’d harmed him, and I was having a hard time putting it down. I wanted to meet him on even footing when we saw each other again, and these last few weeks since the Tournament ended, all I’d wanted to do was sit in the bare cell Penkmun had offered me, rest, stare at the walls, think hard, and gradually come to terms with everything that had changed. It had taken longer than I’d expected, but I was starting to feel right in the head, maybe for the first time.
Then, moving to a different tack, I asked, “How do you break cards?”
He didn’t seem surprised. I’d peppered him with enough questions since I’d come back to life a few days ago that he knew I was trying to soak up as much knowledge as I could. “You’d be better served asking old Brask. He does it all the time, and the cardsmithing guilds have their secrets. I can only give you the most general kind of information.”
“Well, you’re here and the fat man’s not,” I said. “How’s it done?”
He scratched at his bristly beard and puffed out his cheeks, sighing. “It’s not any old card that the cardsmiths will break, you know. Relics and Spells are fair game, but most won’t touch Souls. Certainly none will break the card of a sentient being, and the greater number won’t even shatter a Troglodyte or other lowly creature. Brask is one of the latter, and I must say I agree with him. It’s no light matter to remove a Soul from the Twins’ eternal scheme.”
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“Sure,” I said, moving between the pews that faced the front altar and straightening one that was askew. “But I won a good number of Spells and whatnot that I don’t have the source for. Trading for Nether cards is no easy task around here, and I want to elevate what I’ve got. How’s it done?”
“It takes time,” he said, picking up a broom from the corner and following my lead in cleaning the homey little space. “The cards have to soak in special alchemical solutions that leach out the source identity but leave the rarity intact. Some of the best smiths even say they have processes that can improve the rarity of the resulting shards above that of the card itself. But it’s slow, you know: an Epic can take a whole month to process properly. Rush it and you’ll end up with fewer shards and lower quality.” He gave a little shrug as he swept. “That’s what they say, anyhow. For all I know it takes five minutes and the smiths just want to justify their high fees.”
“So it has to be a cardsmith?” I asked casually. “Nobody else can do it?”
“If you had the knowledge and the materials, I suppose anyone could, but like I said, the guilds guard their secrets.” He leaned on the top of his broom. “There are other methods, but no one uses them. I once saw a man in the market square break a card in a fit of rage. Full of piss and beer, thought he’d been cheated or something. He had a mess of Fire source and splashed it all over the card he was mad about. The thing cracked right in two with the loudest sound I ever heard.”
“Really?” I picked up a dry rag from Penkmun’s cleaning bucket and went to work dusting his rough wooden pulpit, trying very hard to look like I didn’t much care what he was saying.
“If you push enough direct source damage onto a card, it will destroy it. Fire works best, of course, and Depths, or Nether. Nobody in their right minds would do such a thing – you end up with only a fraction of the shards you’d earn otherwise, they’re severely degraded, and they retain their source identity, so you can only use them to upgrade cards of the same type.”
“That’s a shame,” I said, moving on to the altar. “It’d be nice if I could get some good shards myself without having to pay for it.” I hadn’t told him about my enormous stash of Chaos cards, and I’d hoped to be able to dispose of them discreetly by myself to fund all the upgrades I wanted. It would have been the perfect plan. Such is life.
“You will go to War Camp, won’t you?” Penkmun asked, doubling back to his earlier topic. “It will be a marvelous opportunity for learning and advancement. Lots of duels, skirmishing in the borderlands, learning to fight under the generals. The Paladins from the militant arm of the faith will be on hand to instruct, and I hear that this year we’ll have a contingent from both the dwarves and the elves. It will be an education like none other. Not to mention that the King would be mightily offended if one of his champions reneges his position. He is not one you want to get on the wrong side of.”
I couldn’t help but laugh at that. “I’m going, yes. You’ll be rid of me soon enough.” Honestly, now that my head was starting to clear, I was itching to learn everything I could and earn some new cards. War Camp would be treacherous and difficult, what with Gerad now aware that I was his unwanted bastard brother, but even that just animated me further.
“Not rid of, I hope,” Penkmun said. “I’ve quite enjoyed your company, and there is much work the Twins wish us to do together yet.”
“I’ll come visit,” I promised. “You can help me elevate my cards even if it turns out I can’t elevate myself.”
“I’ll hold you to it.” He clapped me on the shoulder. “Come, let’s make dinner. Whatever needs doing will look easier after a solid meal and a good night’s sleep.”
“Go ahead and fire up your pot,” I told him. “But I think I have an errand to run first.”
“An errand?” Penkmun asked, surprised. “You’ve spoken to no one for weeks, and not a soul under the sun even knows you’re here. What’s the suddenly pressing business?”
I headed for the rough double doors of his little chapel, anxious to feel the rays of the sun on my face before sundown. “If I’m supposed to decide who I am and what I want, I might as well get started. There’s something I’ve been putting off, and one way or the other it’s a thing I need to do. Throw whatever you want in the pot. If I’m not back by the time it’s ready, I’m probably dead.”
Penkmun squawked at that, but I pushed through the doors without stopping, emerging into the sleepy back streets of Dockside. Two streets up to Broad and then a sharp left would take me where I needed to go. I pulled a Nether and started gathering cards. I’d want them before too long. A few people gave me strange looks as I moved out onto Broad Street, but while Dockside was a good five shades safer than the Lows, folks were still streetwise enough to keep their noses out of the sleeve of somebody circling their source and walking fast.
Last night had been the full moon, which meant that a very special meeting was happening in the Lows at sundown today just as it did every month. I’d spent enough time watching Ticosi’s thugs like a buzzard to know the times when they had their secret sit-downs. Those had been the only times I could have free run of the streets without having to watch for an enforcer sneaking up behind me. The knowledge would serve me well today. I’d stayed out of the Lows long enough; it was time for a little visit.
I reveled in the feel of being outside, of moving freely and seeing the sky. Penkmun’s chapel had been a wonderful refuge, and I’d needed it badly, but it had gotten steadily smaller as the days passed. Plus, the confines had kept me from summoning a card I desperately wanted to. Not that the Tender would have appreciated having any of my demons at the dinner table, but this one least of all.
I reached the invisible border of the Lows where Hook Street crossed Sinner’s Row and hesitated in the middle of the street. The tall, rickety tenements hemmed in the daylight overhead to a pale blue strip. People gave me a wide berth as they passed, leaving me an island in the center of the cobbles. The last time I’d stepped on these stones, I’d been running from Harker, wearing rags on my back and feet, certain that my life was measured in minutes. Now I could have been any of the merchant traders or flatboat owners taking an unwise shortcut through the bad part of town. If I weren’t flaunting a hand full of cards and every last one of my Nether overhead, I’d have needed to watch my back very carefully to make sure it didn’t start sprouting knife hilts.
Those hidden cutthroats were in for a sight tonight. I focused my source and summoned the one card I’d had to sift through my deck to find. The mist of the Soul’s arrival went up and up and up.
image [https://i.imgur.com/z5kJhFl.png]
“Holy shit, you’re big,” I laughed.
“And you are not,” it rumbled, its basso voice shaking the cheap windows all around. “Hardly a mouthful. Barely a squish.” It turned from side to side, the horns sprouting from its shoulders nearly brushing the upper floors of the tenements on either side of the street. “Did you want me to tear this place down? It would only take a moment.”
“Don’t,” I said. “It’s my home.”
The massive demon’s sigh ripped several articles of laundry from their wires and sent them flying. “If I were enjoying being back in a Mind Home just a little less, I’d kill you myself and take my chances with my card getting found on the street.”
I gestured around at the suddenly-empty street. “I don’t think that would work out the way you want.” I paused as a thought occurred to me. “You can’t actually kill your own Summoner, can you?”
“If you don’t know I’m not about to tell you,” it said. It sounded surprisingly intelligent and cultured for a beast whose head topped the tallest tenements. Part of the reason I’d waited to summon the thing was that Penkmun had mentioned in passing that summons taller than twenty feet were outlawed within the city except inside the Coliseum during matches. Bringing the City Watch down on the old Tender’s head hadn’t seemed like a good idea, but here in the Lows the rickety buildings were tall enough to hide its presence, and none of the residents were likely to go running to the law about it one way or the other.
“Lift me up there,” I said. “I don’t want to shout at you the whole damn time.”
It crouched down and thumped its taloned hand on the street face down, thumb to one side of me and fingers to the other no more than a foot away. The whole street jumped at the impact, and I stumbled. The slightest twitch of its fingers and it could crush me like a grape.
“Tiny human, I am not some Common thing you can command and expect immediate, slavish obedience,” it growled. Bent down as it was I could feel its breath like a hot wind. It smelled of smoke and sulfur.
I’d lived in the Lows far too long to think that playing nice would work on a being like this. It was called a Night Terror, for Twins’ sake. “No, you’re an Epic thing. But I will command you, and you will obey…unless passing the next fifty years sitting on a shelf gathering dust suits you better.”
It huffed at me, making an eye-watering gale. “A weak bluff, and idle besides. I am too powerful to waste, and you have no other Souls in your Mind Home to match me.”
“I’ve gotten by so far,” I countered. “Did my other Souls tell you of the Rising Stars Tournament while you were enjoying that Mind Home of mine? Did they talk about how I killed an Epic opponent? I don’t remember needing you then.”
The Night Terror said nothing.
“I have an appointment nearby, and you’re going to help me make my point when I get there,” I told him in my firmest voice, hoping he couldn’t hear my heart hammering in my chest. “You will obey me or I will take you out and bury you in the ground so you’re never summoned again, I promise. I do not need you.”
A corner of its massive mouth quirked up in a smile and it turned its hand over palm up. “Perhaps you’re not so tiny after all.”
I stepped onto the platform of the palm, and with a dizzying lurch it stood upright, holding me in front of its face. I crouched in the center of its hand, trying not to scream or think about how high off the ground I suddenly was. I focused on the features in front of me instead. The pits of its eyes glowed like sullen coals, and horns like a goat’s jutted back from it forehead amid bony ridges. Its ears were long and protruding, and its nose was flat and blunt like a cat’s. I kind of liked how hideous it was.
“Tell me about my mother,” I demanded. It wasn’t the only reason I had summoned it, but that was at the top of the list.
“Some toothless whore, I assume, if this is the territory you call home.” The massive head cocked. “Were you looking for something more specific?”
Its offhanded audacity made me laugh. “She was your last Summoner.”
“Hmm,” it rumbled. “I thought something about you smelled familiar.”
My heart sped up. “Tell me everything.”
Its burning gaze considered me silently for a long moment. “I am your first Epic Soul.”
Was that a question? “Yeah. So what?”
A gentle sigh wafted hellish smells at me. “We’ve only just met, and you’re obviously young, so let me inform you of a few things. Any Soul living in a card that is finally raised to Epic, as I was some decades back, treasures their memories more than anything else. They are all I truly possess, and having been without many of them for a very long time first as an Uncommon and then as a Rare, they are all the more precious. I do not part with them easily.”
I clenched my fists. “Are you saying you won’t tell me?”
Another flicker of a smile. “I am.”
This wasn’t how I’d imagined this conversation going all these weeks. “I’m your Summoner. You have to obey me. Don’t you?”
“Tell me to knock down this building, then yes. Demand that I attack your enemies, absolutely. I’ll eat a squalling babe if that’s what you ask. But one of the advantages of the higher elevations is a certain level of autonomy. Task me with cleaning up a large mess or acting the diplomat, and I will find ways to delay. To obfuscate. To misunderstand.”
“You piece of shit,” I muttered. “What’s the point of you, then?”
“Breaking things,” it promptly replied. “Murder. Burning. Fear.”
“So you can’t disobey me, you can just put me off.”
“For a time. Be grateful I’m not Mythic. I have it on the best authority that my kind become truly ungovernable at the highest levels.”
“So when I say you have to tell me about your last Summoner, you’ll have to answer eventually.”
“That is true.”
I chewed my lip. “How long?”
Its grin was toothy. “Longer than your lifespan, bug.”
“I want to learn about my mother, and you’re the only one I’ve found who knew her,” I said. “What will the information cost me?”
Its smile broadened and it nodded. “Now you’re speaking demon tongue. First: you keep me in your Mind Home. You use me as often as you can. You let me hear the screams of the doomed and taste the tears of your defeated enemies.”
“I’m not going to waste a powerful Soul,” I said. “Matter of fact, I may be taking you to war soon enough.”
“Good,” it purred, the sound vibrating through my body. “And I want to be consulted if you decide to trade me. I refuse to end up in a grimoire or in the hands of some weakling or pacifist.”
I didn’t like that one much, but I doubted I’d be trading him any time soon, especially since it would keep me from learning anything it knew. “Fine.”
“Seal it with blood,” the monster said. “Yours and mine both.”
Taking the duplicating knife I’d gotten from Ticosi, I nicked my thumb and knelt, wiping it on the horned skin of its palm. Right where I’d left my own blood, I pushed the blade through its hide until a bead of black oozed up. “It’s a deal.”
It inclined its head to me gravely. “Done. Each time you sate my need for destruction, I will share one memory.”
My teeth ached from clenching. “I agree to your bullshit bargain and you still won’t tell me anything?”
“I’ve lived for three hundred years, little human. Your impatience will not move me.”
I shook my head. Having Epic Souls might be more trouble than it’s worth. My powerful Relics are looking better all the time.
“This much I will give you on credit,” it rumbled. “Your mother’s name is known from the heights to the depths of my realm.”
I chewed on that. “So she is a demon.”
Again, that sly smile. “Did I say that?”
It was the only thing that made sense. I’d thought it a thousand times before. Why else would Nether come to me so easily? Still, I wasn’t sure how I felt about being only half human.
No point in worrying about it now. “Put me on your shoulder,” I told the giant demon.
I’d never felt anything quite so terrifying as being plucked up gently by fingers that wrapped all the way around me as if I were no more than a sausage, moving me with dizzying speed. My feet touched down on a shoulder as wide as I was tall, and I clutched onto a small horn protruding from the pebbly skin, trying to catch my breath. This was totally different than being in the center of its palm. Standing up here was like looking off the balcony from the upper floors of the Coliseum, but without a stone wall to keep me from falling. The fear had an exhilarating edge, and I laughed out loud.
“You and I are going to get along just fine, you great purple bastard.” I pointed toward the heart of the Lows. “Our bargain is for me to let you break shit, right? Let’s go earn a memory. Take me that way; make as much noise as you please. We’re going to drop in on an old friend and say hello.”