blurred card image of Hull, Street Urchin [https://i.imgur.com/PVQZiJI.png]

Chapter 1

An Empty Heart

The old man was dying, and I wasn’t going to budge until he kicked it. Seeing folks crawl off to hack out their last was common enough here in the Lows, but I’d never spied one that had a pint-sized Earth troll to carry them like this fellow did. It was positioned squarely under one of his armpits, levering him up off the dirty cobbles by main strength and pulling him along far more effectively than the dying fellow’s twitchy hands and feet could. If not for the little troll, the vagrant would be flat on his face in the middle of the street. The sorry old blighter wasn’t long for this world.

I’d caught sight of him just as the troll had dragged him into the dead-end alley behind Capano’s tavern, and I couldn’t believe my luck. The troll had that extra-present, extra-real look that couldn’t be faked, and the three tiny rock spheres of Earth source circling the old man’s head proved it: this wasn’t a live troll – it was a card. A summoned Soul.

blurred card image of Dwarf Cave Troll [https://i.imgur.com/9MCYfSp.png]

It was dropping lumps of clay from its legs as it went, but the bloke had to weigh ten stone, maybe twelve, and the little creature was grunting along just fine, even though it couldn’t be more than two feet tall. That much strength at that size, with only three source called forth? It had to be an Uncommon, maybe even a Rare. It was unthinkably lucky I’d been the only one to see the old man. There were plenty of folk in this neighborhood who would have caved in his head in front of Fate, Fortune, and everybody just to get their hands on a card like that. I thanked the Everlasting Twins that most folks from the Lows were over in the Palace District today making a few clips off the festivities leading up to the rich kids’ dueling tournament.

For now, though, I squatted in the throat of the alley in just the right spot so I could keep an eye on both the street and on my good friend Almost Dead where he’d curled up ‘round the bend. He was right under the window Capano always used to throw out his scraps. I pulled out the broken table knife I’d stolen from a sleeping beggar on Hook Street along with a small round stone and set to scraping the smooth rock along its edge as if sharpening it. I had no idea if it worked – for all I knew, I was making it duller – but it looked fierce, and I didn’t want anyone strolling past and deciding to take a peek in the alley. I’d stab someone if I had to, but the easiest thing was to scare them off in the first place. I was big enough to be a threat, and the knife was just a little extra encouragement. I didn’t miss the days back when I’d been a little runt. Running away all the time made me angry. Angrier.

“Come for my card, eh?” the old man said, looking at me from where he lay in the mud of the dead end. He’d landed in the gorsefruit Capano had thrown out a few days before, and when he’d rolled over some of the rotten red fruit had smeared on his cheek. It made a vivid blotch against the grayish grime ground into the cracks and creases of the dying fellow’s face. He was an old one, all right. His eyes were still a sharp bright blue, though.

“Somebody’s bound to,” I said. “Might as well be me.”

“Might as well,” he said, giving a weak laugh that turned into a barking cough. Bubbled spit frothed on his slack lips, and it was speckled with a red even deeper than the gorsefruit.

“Is it a Rare?” I asked, keeping my eyes on the street. An old woman carrying two full pails of water hanging from either end of a rod across her shoulders was teetering her way towards me, but she looked about ready to keel over herself. She wouldn’t be any trouble.

“You’d like that, wouldn’t you?” the old man wheezed.

I didn’t bother saying anything. I don’t answer stupid questions.

“Leveled him myself,” he continued, pride audible in his voice despite the rattling I could hear in his lungs. “Took me years to get the shards and the money for a shaman smith. Went all the way to Gurbin Caves for it. The cathedral soulsmiths are idiots. You want a good leveling, you have to go to the Dwarf shamans.”

I felt a thrill of victory and clutched my knife tighter. It was a Rare. Leveling a card from Common to Uncommon would only take a fraction of the time and expense he was describing. Hells, even I had enough Basic shards in my hidden stash that I could trade up for an Uncommon shard or two, and I was a street kid.

“What’s it do?” I asked him. I glanced back and saw the little troll summons scaling the red brick wall up to Capano’s window. Its muddy hand flattened and disappeared into the crack between the wood and the brick, and then the latch popped loose, letting the window swing open just a crack. Up and in, and then the troll was out of sight. I was speechless with jealousy. I could steal anything with that. Anything.

“Not bad, hey?” cackled the dying man, pink froth dancing on his lips. More coughing followed, and I inched back toward him. Any time now.

I waited for his hacking to subside. He was wheezing hard, like he couldn’t get enough air. Someone else might have thought it sad. “Got any others?” I asked him.

The old man shook his head, sorrow filling his eyes. “I fell sick and started losing duels. To the victors go the spoils, hey? I had a house on Bourbon Plaza ten years ago, if you can believe it. Two maids. One of ‘em was pretty.”

I’d heard it could happen sometimes, crowd favorites losing their ante cards in surprise upsets and eventually ending in the gutters. It made a small part of me happy to see the results in front of me. Everybody should have to scrape to survive, especially the rich ones. “Never been in a duel,” I told him.

“Never lived then,” he gasped, wiping a filthy hand across his slack, bloody lips.

I was tempted to palm his wispy-haired head and bounce it off the bricks. I knew I hadn’t lived, and the dotty old bastard had no right to say it. He had no idea what I’d been through. I breathed deep and let my eyes unfocus. Too much more of that kind of thinking and I’d find a source ball circling my head. There was a time and a place to dance that jig, but this wasn’t it. He’d be dead in minutes and I’d have what I came for. No point in fouling my only shirt more than it already was.

The troll summons reappeared at the sill, pushed open the window, and dragged its prize through: a dark brown bottle of Capano’s house beer. It was nearly half as tall as the little guy, but he gamely wrapped his muddy arms around the bottle and jumped from the sill to the ground carrying his prize. His knees bent impossibly deep when he landed, and the butt of the bottle thumped gently against the grimy cobbles. With a little squawk of success, the troll lugged the beer over to his master. The old man took it in eager, shaking hands.

“Do me a favor, boy,” he whispered, holding the capped bottle toward me. “Least you can do if you’re taking the card.”

I considered letting him die with his favorite drink in hand, untasted. “I could have killed you before you even saw me.”

“Please,” he begged.

I shrugged and nodded. Capano’s beer was good, and dying probably wasn’t easy. I crossed to him, took the bottle, and used the window sill to pop the crimped cap off. I took a deep pull first – it had been a long time since the last time I’d found a half-full bottle of the stuff – and handed it over. He took it gleefully and gulped it down like a baby on the tit. Then he coughed some more. It looked like there was more blood than saliva now.

“You could win big with my little guy,” he croaked. “You have Earth source?”

The top of my head felt as if it were going to pop off, and my hands clenched into fists. It would have been so easy to snatch the bottle out of his hand and beat him with it.

“I don’t know,” I managed to say. “Never got my hands on an Earth card before. But I don’t have an affinity for Order or any of the other three elements, so it’s got to be Earth, right?”

This content has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

The old fellow gaped and struggled like a fish, his free hand flopping loosely. “You don’t know? I’m not giving up my last card on a maybe!”

I knelt beside him and pushed him back into the muck. It was easier than bending a river reed. “It’s not like you have a choice. You’ll be swimming with the Sources in a minute.”

He looked around desperately. No one was coming to save him. “Have you created your own Soul card yet? Even a street kid could level up to Common. Have you? That could be Earth!”

“I had a Soul card, and I don’t know what it was,” I said flatly. “My mother stole it from me when too young to remember.”

That shocked him into stillness. He might be at the tail end of his life, but I knew he’d never heard of a person’s Soul card being stolen. Nobody had. It wasn’t supposed to be possible. It could be harvested when you died, yes, but before then? Impossible. A person’s Soul was them – their essence, their self. It took most folks work and pain and prayer to refine their own Soul enough to form a card that would endure when they died. Many never bothered. Somehow I’d done all that as a tiny kid – not that I remembered any of it – and then dearest Mommy, a vague shadow in my mind at best, had torn it out of me and danced right out of my life. Someday I was going to find that damned woman and we were going to have a long, unpleasant conversation.

“Do you not have any source at all?” he asked, aghast.

“Oh, I do,” I told him. Holding out my left hand, I pulled source out of the aether, feeling it stream into me like liquid life. It formed into a solid card in my hand and I cast it into the air, where it morphed into a small ball that orbited my head like a tiny moon. It was deep purple, and it pulsed with jagged spikes.

He struggled uselessly against my hand. “You draw on Nether? What are you, part demon? I can’t let my sweet boy go to a monster!”

“You already have,” I said. “And who knows? I might be able to use him. Damned if I know how I ended up with Nether source, but I’m human through and through. I know it’s strange I don’t have Order, but I’ve got to be able to draw on one of the basic elemental sources, don’t I? Earth’s the only one I haven’t tried to unlock yet. We’ll find out soon enough. Or I will, at least.”

He slumped back, defeated. “I was a tri-city finalist. I nearly made the Champion’s Circle. Behar Toulon, the Underdog of Harp’s Bend!”

“Never heard of you,” I said. “But I won’t let the card go to waste.”

He gripped my wrist. “Win,” he said, his breath thick and rotten. “Win big. Show those bastards what it feels like.” He took another drink, slopping half of it down his own front.

“Oh, I’ll win,” I told him, “but you can sod off with your fancy duels and high class rules. I’m going to build up a deck so powerful that I can walk right up to King and make him think I’m one of his fine nobles. Then I’m gonna put a knife in his eye and watch this whole city eat itself alive.”

The old man expressed neither shock nor approval of my grand plan. He had died in the middle of his beer. The troll summons, which had been rocking back and forth on top of a loose cobblestone, shimmered into nothing. The circling Earth sources splintered to bits and spun out of sight. Beer and blood leaked from the corner of his mouth and he stared blindly into the realms of Fate and Fortune.

I rescued his beer bottle before it fell out of his slackening hand, wiped the rim, and drank the rest. No point in wasting it, and this was a moment to savor. Then, muttering a quick prayer to the Eternal Twins, I took a deep breath and reached behind his right ear. I’d seen it done a dozen times before, but I’d never had a chance to take a dead man’s cards myself – someone else always got there first. My guts shook within me. This is it.

Behind the flap of his ear I could feel the edge of something smooth and hard. Sure enough, just as it should be, the gaffer’s single collected card pushed out from inside him now that his mind couldn’t make a Home for it. Grasping the corner with my thumb and forefinger, I drew the card out gently, oh so gently, and it lifted free.

My breath caught, and I cradled the treasure in both hands. It was a thing of beauty. It was the size of a regular numbers card like anyone saw in the taverns, but its outer edge was shining metal, or at least something that looked like it. I’d been told they wouldn’t chip or bend if dropped – not that I was going to risk it. The edges shimmered in purest gold. Rare. I tried to slow my breath. This card would cost a skilled tradesman six months’ wages. I could pick pockets from now until I was fifty and not earn enough to buy it.

card image of Dwarf Cave Troll [https://i.imgur.com/wllfyG4.png]

The rest of the card was beautifully colored, with a static picture of the tiny troll I’d seen resting in its home cave, long forearms resting on its knees, its toothy maw quirked in devious humor. He was a thing of beauty. A border of rich brown bracketed the troll above and below, showing it to be an Earth card. Inside that top border was the title of the card and its source cost, and below the portrait was the description of the card itself.

I ran my hand over its smooth surface. It even felt expensive. It was a great card. I might not be a duelist myself – not yet – but I’d heard enough drunken fools holding forth about tournaments over their cups to know that so long as a person had Earth source, there was hardly a deck out there this card wouldn’t fit into nicely.

Now, the real test. Holding my breath, I held the card to my skull behind my right ear. Again, I’d seen it done before. It should phase into me, and then I’d be able to call the card forth whenever I wanted from my right hand. Someone could beat me and make me give it up – it wasn’t my own Soul card, which supposedly could only be drawn out when a person died – but other than that, it would be safe.

All right, so you’re a freak that can’t access Order source; fine. But there’s not a human out there that can’t develop an affinity for one of the four elements. I have to be compatible with Earth. Air didn’t work, neither did Water or Fire, so it has to be this one. This is where it turns around for me. This is the beginning of my deck, and from here…I rise.

Nothing happened. The card sat firmly against my coarse waves of black hair and did not move. Rage building, I swapped it to the left side and tried again. Summons cards were supposed to live in the mind and sources in the soul, but maybe I was a freak in this way, too.

Nope. The card sat there, inert. My soul had no Earth affinity, and it would not accept the card. The only source I was somehow attuned to was Nether, from the Demon Realm. Nobody had Nether cards, not around here. They weren’t illegal, exactly, but they were about as common as unicorns, and no upstanding kingsman would be caught holding one even if he chanced across it.

I’d thought I was going to rise? Forget it. I was finished. I’d scrape out a few coins until I got caught stealing and then I’d die kicking on the end of a spear.

“You son of a bitch,” I told the corpse. “You’re useless.”

I pried open his lips anyway to get at his Soul card. That one came out through the mouth. His jaws were already stiffening, and I got his bloody death foam all over my hands. Who cared? I was as good as dead already.

Four Basic shards sat on his tongue. He didn’t even have a complete Soul card, the bastard. He’d spent all his time leveling his stupid little troll and never bothered to advance himself. No wonder he’d ended up losing his tournaments. Now he was nothing. Had he bothered to work on himself to at least advance himself to Common, he might have had his portrait live on as a 1/1 Soldier or Duelist. Instead, the shards of his being could only be used to improve someone else’s card. I pocketed the shards. I’d add them to my little stash when I got back to my sleeping hole.

Not that it matters. You can’t use the card. You can’t do anything. When you die, will you even leave shards behind? You’re useless.

I closed my eyes and shook my head. Whenever I held Nether source too long, the rage that came with it eventually turned to hopeless thinking. I knew I should dismiss the source circling over my head. I’d feel better. I could find that thieves’ fence Tomarken always bragged about knowing and sell the troll card. I’d only get half of what it was worth, but even that was enough to… what? Buy a neutral Relic or two? That wasn’t the start of the great deck I needed to build. I had to find good, high-quality cards that my soul would accept. I’d never even seen a Nether card. There had to be another source I could use. What was it? Depths? Celestial? Death? Twins knew I’d seen enough of that. Maybe I could trade my troll for a good Death card. People looked suspiciously at Death users, or so I heard, but Tomarken’s shady seller might be able to lay his hands on one. It was either that or purchase an apprenticeship and be a barrel-maker for the rest of my life. I’d rather die.

I held onto my source. I didn’t want to feel better. I wanted to hit something, and my old, diseased, beer-swilling friend couldn’t yelp the way I needed him to. I needed to sink my knuckles into flesh and let the world know I was still here and still not happy about it.

“Hey!” someone at the mouth of the alley barked. “What’re you doing?”

Shit. I’d forgotten to keep an eye out for passers-by. Did some City Watchman wander into the Lows by accident? Still crouched by the dead man, my back to the person who’d caught me, I furtively stashed the card under the loose cobble the troll had been balancing on. Anger surged again. This was my card. When I stood and turned, two bulky men loomed in the gap. One held a truncheon.

I held out my left hand for more Nether source, and my with my right I shattered the dead man’s bottle, holding the broken neck out like a knife. They’ll do.

“I killed this man and took his shards,” I said. “You gonna do something about it?”