Fury pulsed through Dennier like a second heartbeat. She ran around the corner and saw not the boy, but his Summon, the shade monster disappearing around the other end. Looping her around like a fool.

A sudden, violent urge to destroy the whole airship raged through her. She calmed it down with effort, then dismissed her deck. She needed to refresh her casts.

That rat was more troublesome than he appeared, she thought, summoning her [Binder]. Her heart still beat quickly from that admittedly stunning combo he’d pulled off on the balcony. He’d somehow timed it perfectly so that she’d step into his Trap—a stupid, Novice mistake on her part due to underestimating him—at the exact moment Zephyr broke the shield he casted onto his Summon.

She sank into his Trap. Zephyr got stunned by some Perk. Three cards pre-emptively cast right at her, two of them an Attack combo cast at her head. That part really impressed her, as the rat had aimed down where her head would be after she activated his Trap before she’d even stepped in it.

She could’ve died there if it wasn’t for her jacket’s [Equipment Perk]. Not likely, as a two-card Adept Attack combo could only shatter her helmet, and the stun would’ve worn off by then, but still. It was a precarious position. Her {Stormchaser} Summon Perk had allowed Zephyr to break free of her stun early, which had also helped.

Then that crazy bastard had somehow managed to survive being blasted off the edge of the damn ship. And he escaped and tricked her.

Dennier realized she was just standing there in the hall, her fist clenched tight around the [Item Card]. Shaking herself out of it, she converted it into an employee shortcomm and set it to the sixth floor.

“Report,” she snapped into the machine. “Are the hostages dead?”

The only response was silence.

Her anger surged again. Incompetent fools, she snarled in her head and spun down the hall. She entered the corridor that led to the [Teleport Stone].

A flash of light made her pause. Then another. Then another.

Until the whole damn zone was filled with freed hostages.

—🃁—

The moment the disorienting sensation of teleporting faded, Aduan leapt down a side corridor. He joined a few others here, namely another young man similar age to him and a petite, cute girl.

He nodded to them. He could tell by their faces they were also scared shitless.

“Shields!” roared the man from the dining room, the one in the snazzy suit and thick mustache. Rivingtol?

The sounds of cards activated filled the intersection, followed by a terrifying roaring wind barreling down the hall. An explosion occurred, and several of his fellow passengers were sent flying backwards. One of them slammed into the [Teleport Stone], and Aduan winced.

“Away from the Stone!” someone else shouted. The voice sounded familiar. Was it Dering? Aduan had met the man… gods, only the previous afternoon at the casino.

“We need heals!”

“Everyone, split apart!”

“Keep the pirate engaged! Don’t let her flee!”

“Who’s fleeing?” roared back the furious voice of the pirate captain.

It felt like an eternity since that wonderful afternoon playing poker and roulette. An eternity of fear, carnage, and death. He was glad he came aboard the Serenity alone, unlike most of the others. Granted, he would’ve been much happier had he never boarded the cursed ship.

“We… we should go help,” stammered the girl. The man across from her—beside Aduan—stared back before giving a single, stiff nod. Their decks formed.

“Yes, we should,” Aduan said. “I’ll be right behind.”

The two entered the fray. Aduan stayed right where he was. There was no world where he participated in this madness. He just didn’t want to be left behind in that stinking, gore-strewn dining room a moment longer.

He sighed, thumping his head against the wall behind him as more shouts came, followed by running. If only he didn’t cheap out and book his flight on the Serenity. What was he thinking? This is what came of flying on a Class-C zeppelin. He should’ve waited the extra two days and boarded the Windrunner; now that was a fine ship. A Class-E zeppelin like that would have no murderous pirates boarding, no it wouldn’t.

A bloody hand thumped down on his shoulder, making him shriek.

—🃁—

The foppish, young man with the ridiculous dyed yellow hair gave a girlish shriek as Reyla gripped him tight.

“I need heals,” she snarled, pushing him away and slumping down where he stood. She placed a hand tight against the gushing wound in her gut as the young man scrambled off, crying for someone with heal cards to come.

Reyla groaned as pain coursed through her. Damn pirate bitch had caught her with a dead-on [Command: Rupture]. Her Apprentice top had shattered like a plate dropped from the tip of Mt. Fury, and the Attack carried through, blowing a hole in her.

They had her on the run, though. Expert-rank or not, there were too many cardbearers for her to handle. They didn’t even need that Tristan kid, whoever he was.

Sorrow suddenly coursed through Reyla. Her sweet Doric. Her sweet, kind Doric. She didn’t even have his cards; they’d been absorbed by that bastard pirate who killed him, and then all the cards got shuffled around in the following battles.

They had spent their honeymoon on Sol. It was wonderful. A dream. Laying down in the calm fields outside the town gates, staring up at the stars, their fingers laced in each other.

She coughed, blood splattering out. She leaned her head back against the wall, feeling faint. Doric had always told her to carry at least one Support card in her deck. She’d refused. She came from a long line of Fire cardbearers, and it was their tradition and honor to only use Attack cards. People from the Province of Embers were simply stubborn like that, and Doric, being from the Province of Balance, couldn’t understand.

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She missed him. She missed him so much the pain in her gut felt like a tickle compared to the one in her heart.

Footsteps. She turned her head, vision blurring, and saw a man kneel down beside her.

“Doric? Is that you?”

—🃁—

“Doric?” whispered the dying woman, raising her arm weakly. “Is that you?”

“Sorry, lass,” grunted Pello, casting [Healing Ray]. “You got the wrong man.” Bright, yellow Light energy infused the wound, and the woman’s arm dropped as she fell unconscious.

“Is… is she dead?” asked the young man who’d found him, the one with the silly yellow hair.

“No.” He nodded down the corridor, where the sounds of battle intensified. “But others will be. Go help.”

“I… I can’t,” the young man said, trembling. His deck appeared before him. Five cards. “I’m only Novice.”

Pello grunted. He didn’t fault the lad for his fear. He himself was at the ripe age of 61, and he was terrified. He’d seen more concentrated death in the past eight hours than in two tours on the border of the Province of Madness. An obscene, abhorrent amount of death, the kind of thing you hear about on the newscomm, not see right in front of your damn eyes.

The young man slid down behind Pello. The last pulse of [Healing Ray] faded, revealing a still red, barely scabbed over wound. A faint yellow glow infused the scabs, however—a result of his {Glimmering Motes}.

The wound would continue to heal for a bit after.

Pello opened his [Binder] and pulled out some [Item Cards], gesturing for the young man to come forward. Thankfully, he’d managed to recover his cards from the pirate who stole it from him.

“Here,” Pello said, converting a roll of gauze and a basic disinfectant. He thrust it at the young man, who remained seated. “Pour this on the wound, then bind it tight.”

The young man blinked. “Can’t you just… heal the rest of it?”

“More wounds than casts, boy,” Pello grunted, the long-buried healer’s adage rising up within him. “I need to get back out there. That pirate fights like a [Manic Banshee], and these tight hallways ain’t doing us any favors.” His ears, which had been suffering under the inexorable grind of time, could suddenly pick out the cries of the injured as sharp as ever.

The young man swallowed, but he got up and took the items from Pello.

Pello clasped his hand on the young man’s shoulder, making him jump. He nodded down to the injured woman, and the words his old sergeant said to him suddenly flared bright in his mind, as bright as the sun.

“This is your charge now, son. Guard her with your life and guard her from her death. In the end, the gods smile upon the just and the sinner alike. How you meet them is up to you. But it all starts here.”

Pello squeezed the young man’s shoulder tight then ran off, his body feeling younger than it had in decades.

—🃁—

“...alike. How you meet them is up to you. But it all starts here.”

The graying, scarred man nodded to the younger man with the cool Light-colored hair and ran off; Kellin watched him go from the cabin beside the [Teleport Stone]. The young man stood there, looking stunned, before tending to the injured woman laying unconscious against the wall.

Kellin peeled back and stood against the wall, trembling. He should’ve stayed with his little sister in the dining room. Why had he joined the adults down here? He was only fourteen and a Novice. What could he do against an Expert pirate captain?

His hands clenched so tight his knuckles turned white. The sound of his father’s voice crying out in pain still rang in his ears. Tears fell down his cheeks, turning the dried blood there wet again.

They had gone to Sol to visit his grandmother. Him, Poma, and Father. Now, it was just him and Poma. He still remembered how excited he’d been when Father surprised them with three tickets to the Serenity, a Class-C zeppelin!

There’s a pool, Father had said, ticking off his fingers as Poma jumped up-and-down in excitement. There’s a Magic Myr’s Wonderful Emporium. There’s a Duel Arena where you can watch cardbearers fight.

Poma shouted, I wanna Duel! I wanna Duel!

Settle down, Kellin snapped at her, irritated for some reason. Poma had turned to him with a glare and jumped on him, pummeling him with her tiny fists.

He knew now why he’d been irritated. He was jealous. Jealous that Poma could freely express her joy and enthusiasm, and he felt he couldn’t because he was fourteen, fifteen the next month, almost a man grown.

He didn’t feel like a man at all now. Men didn’t hide in rooms. Men went out and fought. Fought for their loved ones, fought for the innocent. Like that guy Tristan.

Kellin was there. He watched as the short young man had flung open the doors of the dining room. Watched as he somehow freed his girlfriend from the pirate captain. Watched as he broke the window and took the captain outside without hesitation. Kellin still had a cut on his cheek from when the shattered glass had cut him.

He didn’t want it healed fully. He wanted the scar, a reminder of what bravery felt like etched permanently into his skin.

Protect… your sister… Father had said to Kellin. His last words as Kellin futilely pressed against the claw marks the [Sky Harpy] had raked in his neck.

“She’s headed for the Stone!” shouted a panicked voice before it abruptly turned into a scream of pain.

Kellin breathed out. His cut burned. Bravery. Protect Poma.

Summoning his deck, Kellin stepped out of the room. Stepped in front of the Stone.

The pirate captain stood at the other end.

—🃁—

“She’s headed for the [Stone]!”

Dennier snarled and used her second-to-last cast of [Command: Burst] at the shouting fool; the Attack broke his [Armored] top and sent him flying backwards with a scream. She used her last cast of [Bladestorm] down the hall the other way to hold off the chasing hostages before she turned the corner into the corridor.

And saw a brat standing in front of the Stone with his Novice deck out.

She was at her wits’ end.

First, that rat disrupted her plans. Now the damn hostages had the gall to challenge her? Not only that, they were succeeding. They cleverly wove in and out of the cabins to dodge her Attacks; otherwise, one single [Wind Cannon] would’ve been enough to end this foolish suicide mission. She couldn’t even summon Zephyr properly in these close quarters.

Her cards were low on casts. She needed to refresh, now. She tried to fulfill [Domain: Sequence’s] condition, but it wasn't possible with the onslaught of Attacks they were sending at her. They were even calling out to prevent her from doing so, which meant that Tristan boy was feeding them information.

Dennier, in all her years of piracy, had never been pushed to the brink like this. That dream of retiring on a beach was steadily ripping apart with every additional cast of her cards. She’d left behind a trail of injured in the hallway behind her, and she ached to just finish them off, but she needed to teleport to the flight room and barricade herself. They’d blocked her from entering the cabins with windows, figuring she would try to escape outside that way.

The four pirates she left behind on the Scapegoat to watch the damned Magic Myr employees and the engineer could hold the ship down until her deck refreshed. She had no doubt they were planning on commandeering her ship; it’s what she would do in this situation.

And now, this stupid brat stood in her way of the [Teleport Stone]? He was young, only a few years older than Albas. He shouted something and cast the card in his hand, but his hand was shaking so hard the card—a simple [Fire Bolt]--flew astray and hit the wall.

She ran down towards the brat, laying down a [Leashed Maelstrom] behind her as she went. He stumbled backwards and tripped over his own feet, falling to the floor.

She pulled [Command: Spike]. It would be a waste of a cast, but she didn’t care. She’d lost control, she could admit. Might as well enjoy it. In the corner of her eye, she saw a young man covering the body of an unconscious woman. She dismissed him; he didn’t even have his deck out. At least this boy, the fool that he was, did.

The boy summoned his [Binder]. Flipped through desperately. She reared back her arm as voices shouted in concern behind her, then in pain as they triggered her Trap. Wind burst down the hall, sending her hair fluttering.

She met his eyes. He was crying.

Dennier cast.

A card flew down the side corridor and hit her [Command: Spike]mid-air, deflecting it. Her Attack spiked a hole in the wall beside the boy, who turned his head and gasped.

Dennier threw her head back and laughed. She didn’t have to look.

“Ready for round two?” she shouted.

In a burst of shadow, Tristan appeared before her. He grabbed her by the arm and slammed his other arm holding an [Access Key] onto the Stone.

The last thing she saw before the world turned to light was his grin.