image [https://i.imgur.com/DuSDcUZ.png]

I sat in the Library of Istraago, the largest in Treledyne aside from the King’s own. The cooing and chirps of birds could be heard up and down the aisles due to the countless kestrel who called the building home; they lived here and worked here, serving as its caretakers. In fact, patrons could only reach the library by way of larger bird-folk, who, for a fee, carried people in great baskets from a second story platform below to where Istraago floated high above. Enormous chains connected to Treledyne’s Palace kept the flying island from drifting away, but there was much speculation about what precisely kept the kestrel home aloft. Some said it was an unending Mythic or Legendary Spell, while others speculated it to be a summoned Relic or entrenched set of Artifacts, or maybe even an ability of their Queen.

I had been brimming with such questions when my parents first brought me here over a decade ago, but neither the kestrel at the entrance nor any I found shelving books or cleaning the floors would answer. They just cocked their heads, acting like they couldn’t understand, but I saw other staff helping visitors who asked more mundane questions. At the tender age of eight, I had concluded that humans weren’t the only ones who liked to keep their secrets.

For this particular visit I had requested that they unearth a tome for me that was much too large for its own good – immense and gilded, it looked more like a piece of art than a reliquary of information. Through no small measure of strength, I managed to pry the book open to a series of pages detailing the various archetypes associated with each Source, along with common card characteristics and Source pairings. I had read many such summaries when I first began collecting but hadn’t bothered to reference one in years, not after drifting off in my own direction.

And yet here I was, reviewing what many would consider to be the basics.

image [https://i.imgur.com/Q0QaSTq.png]

War Camp was slated to begin on the morrow, and frustratingly, I still found myself no closer to deciding what direction to take with my deck. I had begun using Seersight, discovering with great disappointment that it would only work on a single card a day, and if I stretched it to a second, the ability was useless the following two sun cycles – hardly a worthwhile trade. Even with the limitation, I had made some fascinating discoveries about my cards and a few of Esmi’s, too. However, learning that Atrea, my Winged Knight, could gain Hunt, an Aura that ignored Armor, or Flurry in place of Fast Attack, or that my Master Assassin could have Dodge, a "Devote to destroy damaged targets" ability, or an Arrival that granted Stealth to another of my Souls, while all exciting, hadn’t solidified my choices in the way I had hoped.

I had told Esmi my concerns, of course, and she had kindly offered to send a messenger pigeon to her trainer in Charbond on my behalf. I had agreed, thinking there was no harm in the query but also that it was unlikely to amount to much. The issue felt personal to me, one that only I or someone who knew me well could solve. When I let those thoughts slip, Esmi wasn’t shy about providing her own insights. She was polite, as always, saying that my last match with Hull had been quite entertaining but also that some sub-optimal plays had been present. She started with his use of the Vampiric Blade, stating with great certainty that he could have bested me if he had simply waited for my attacks instead of wasting his chances to regain cards on targets of my choosing.

For me, the “notes” she had mentioned previously turned out to be more involved than I was expecting. She questioned the efficacy of my Source heavy opening and early Source Explosion, as well as the use of one of my Rusts against Hull’s Hammer instead of waiting for the Blade, which was the true threat. She also informed me that if I had calculated my Source closer, I could have used my Microburst a turn sooner and not risked the loss.

I might have been stung by such criticism and was certainly heading in that direction, until Esmi launched into an even longer list of the misplays she had made against the Prince and during other matches. When I suggested that she was being rather hard on herself considering she had won the whole Tournament, she explained that this was an essential part of training in Charbond: recognizing errors allowed one to purge them. She then shocked me by admitting that the level of dueling among the Rising Stars had been less than what she had expected. While I swallowed that humbling revelation, Esmi laid the blame at Gerad’s feet, and even the King’s, saying that in Charbond the Duel Masters made sure that anyone with promise was ensured not only a full twenty card deck but one optimized for success. They viewed training against less to be a waste.

I didn’t quite have the heart – or perhaps more accurately, courage – to tell Esmi that many of the opponents I had faced before the Tournament had indeed possessed fewer than twenty cards.

In the end, she suggested that I try using the archetypes as a starting point, just as she had done when beginning her own schooling in Charbond. I’d avoided the recommendation for a time, bizarrely, since the advice had been needed. But when I failed to make headway elsewhere, and with the start of War Camp looming, I finally decided to commit to such research. And, perhaps to make up for my previous dragging of feet, I decided to use the biggest library and the biggest book to do that research – utter foolishness, I knew.

image [https://i.imgur.com/aUPe8wl.png]

Reviewing the oversized penmanship, I could see why Esmi had questioned the first deck she had seen me employ. It was in no way Swarm, the only type Order and Air shared, and most certainly not Air Rush or Order Growth. It could also hardly be considered Enhancement when I had started with only a single Soulforged Helmet to aid me. Chimera would be a stretch, just as I had admitted to Esmi when we first spoke about it. Yes, I had some cards that interacted well together, such as my Assassin’s ability to feed my Carrion Condors or Air’s Source Power being able to bring those same Assassins back to ready, reestablishing their Stealth. I had thought these powerful and clever combinations, and they, along with others, had served me to a degree. However, the Tournament, and even more so my battle with Ticosi – a name I had only heard after the man’s death, whispered by some of the help – had shown me with stark clarity the ceiling of my previous build.

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Unfortunately, staring at the categories laid out by the book didn’t immediately point me in one direction over another. After a good bit of time looking, I suppose it was only natural that my mind began to group the decks I had encountered in the Tournament. At first I resisted the urge, thinking it a distraction, but then I considered that recontextualizing my experiences might, if the Twins were merciful, end up revealing my own path forward.

I hunkered closer to the book, feeling a hint of hope.

Hull’s deck had clear elements of Rush, with his Gremlins, Imp, and Marauders, and now a good amount of Enhancement: the Vampiric Blade, of course, but also his Plate, Hammer, and tried and true Sucking Void. He even had some Burn with his new Unstable Rift Spell and his Talisman when activated. And yet, by dipping into all three archetypes, was he spreading himself thin? Might he be able to defeat opponents more consistently if he fully committed to one, or perhaps two, approaches? Part of his trouble was that he didn’t have a full twenty cards yet, and if he ever showed up to visit, as he should have weeks ago, I’d quite enjoy getting to talk to him about how he planned to fill those remaining slots.

At the opposite end of the spectrum was someone like Losum, who had used an Order Burn deck, near as I could tell, what with all his Archers. That deck type wasn’t even listed in the book, and due to the lack of direct damage Spells found in Order, I could see why it had been omitted. Perhaps if Losum’s Mythic Archer Soul, Orelus, had been able to target the opposing Summoner with his high damage Devote ability, it would have been a different story. But multiple tales concerning Orelus said that the man had trained so hard with a bow to ensure that he never missed his intended target and that he never shot to kill, so it made sense that his card couldn’t either. Perhaps if Losum had augmented his forces with a Source type that had Burn Spells or one with more ranged attack Souls, like the Elf Archers I had seen the elf ambassador use, he would have had greater success.

Starting to feel like I was gaining some traction with this, I went onto Plutar, my previous rival for Esmi’s hand – strange that I could wish he still held that title instead of my eldest brother taking up that role. Plutar had been Fire Burn through and through, and it had nearly worked for him. Watching him lose twice though, pure Burn seemed like a tricky deck to pilot, especially for Fire, since their cards had such poor defense when used to block from hand. I was convinced that a few Souls to slow down the enemy or more protective Relics would have done him well.

The all-Relic deck Throice had employed against me also wasn’t here, undoubtedly for a similar reason: not being able to block incoming damage from hand was practically a death sentence.

A theme was starting to come through to me, which had likely been Esmi’s plan all along: straying too far from the archetypes, like Throice and Losum, or committing too narrowly to a risky build, like Plutar, or too expansively, like Hull, the more likely it was to have a weakness that your opponent could exploit or an element missing that was necessary to win. Not to say that I was taking this tome as gospel, which I wasn’t, or that I believed creating something unique was impossible, which I didn’t, but after watching others try and lose, with rarer cards than I possessed, I could see now that it was much harder than I had once believed.

Of course, the type of deck one was facing off against also played a role, like me attempting to use a partial Water Growth deck against Esmi’s Fire Rush without enough defense, which had failed miserably. I hadn’t thought about it in those terms at the time, but if I had, I might have been more aware of the importance of defending the Growth, like trading for Order Guards or Shieldbearers, and maybe even some Knights. Basically, anything to slow the kobolds down until I could have played the Sea Titan to sweep them away.

The viability of this two-prong approach was further evidenced by Gerad’s deck, which had obviously done well, placing second. He had committed to an Order Growth style of play with his Paladins and cards that could search them out, but he had also dovetailed those things with Enhancement, his big cards in both categories, like the Legendary Relic All for One or the Mythic Soul Agata, benefitting from having a large hand, which was Order’s specialty.

And Esmi… she had used Rush, a staple of Fire, but unlike Plutar, she had offset Rush’s weakness of losing steam with Order’s card draw. Even more interesting to me, she had managed to inject Swarm into her gameplay. It was true that Fire already had a few cards that leaned in that direction, but she herself had become the linchpin with her Soul ability; she had made it Swarm, which begged two questions: one, was making a deck something that it was close to being but wasn’t quite a key to unlocking its power? And, two, had she purposely upgraded her Soul in such a way to exploit that combination?

I couldn’t wait to ask her, and if so, I would be even more impressed by her skills as a duelist.

Coming down off that analysis high, I felt armed with a few theories, certainly more than I had when first entering the library. And yet I was still well past ready to start building toward my own future, whether that meant purchasing new cards or upgrading my current ones. I no longer had access to my mother’s Water collection, but I had enough winnings from the Tournament to finally start making some big purchases. What held me back was fear, even if I hated to admit it; I worried that I would pick wrong and forever regret it. Not knowing what sort of Artifact I would get from the King’s Treasury for placing 3rd in the Tournament compounded the issue, but only because I let it. The braver me, the one I had started to become at the end of the Tournament and the one I apparently had to keep choosing to be each day, should assume that I would get to pick an Artifact that strengthened the deck type I already had, not the other way around. After all, that’s what everyone else would be doing.

The one miniscule defense for my lack of choice was the information I would soon have access to. I had it on the best authority that we’d be joined in War Camp by not only a group of paladins, but also elves and deepkin. Who knew? Perhaps after spending time with them, I’d want to use Life or Depths. And with the empty fabricator Hull had given me, such a thing might be possible with minimal cultivation on my part.

In addition, I was going to be learning from some of Trelendyne’s greatest living Souls: Jorin, the Grand Marshal of the Military, a specialist in Order and Air who was famous for riding into battle astride a Mythic griffon named Halfax; Edaine, a High Paladin who came from a mere fishing village and was now considered to be one of the strongest single combat duelists besides the King, possessing a matching set of Mythic armament; and even Azure, the King’s Spy Master, might just teach a lesson or two. Not to mention that the elves and dwarves would undoubtedly bring some instructors of their own.

Surely one of them could help me with my predicament.

Leaving Istraago in a basket like so much luggage and looking out through an open slot in the weave at the great city that sprawled before me, I realized there was yet one more person with whom I wished to consult, one who, despite everything, I felt might just help me find the insight I needed, if only the infuriating twit would show his face.

Hull, where the hell are you?