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Book 4 Epilogue

They did not dally on the stairwell back to the pavilion. The shaking from outside—the incalculably distant sound of roars and whistles all the more terrifying because they could hear them—hurried them on.

The shaking and noise stopped the moment they reentered the door that led to the pavilion, but the waiting dragons were still visibly worried.

Joy let out a happy cry when they appeared, and practically seized Cressida to pull her in close and nuzzle her. “You’re okay! I didn’t get a quest or intuition or anything to tell me what was going on. It was so scary!”

“Where have you guys been?” Soledad said. “I thought that time didn’t really pass when you were in challenges.”

Arthur guessed that more had worried them than the wait. “What happened?”

Sam gestured with his snout. “We received that message a few minutes ago.”

The three challenge doors were gone. In their place was a message:

The team that has claimed this territory has finished all applicable levels. Time remaining to exit the Dark Heart: 49 minutes, 17 seconds . . . 16 seconds . . . 15 seconds.

Failure to leave Dark Heart and relinquish your territory will result in escalating penalties.

“They only gave us an hour?” Arthur asked, then shot a look at Horatio. “Don’t tell me that doesn’t seem fair.”

“It’s not fair, but now we know why,” Horatio muttered, shuddering dramatically.

“Why?” Soledad asked.

“I’ll tell you later,” Arthur said. “Let’s move.”

If they were forced to travel on foot and without any speed enhancements, the hour limit might be a problem. But flying on dragons, it wouldn’t be an issue.

Still, after learning what he had about the Dark Heart, Arthur wanted to get out of there. Especially since there was a not-insignificant chance that whatever battle they’d caught a glimpse of might spill in.

As he ascended the stairs, he heard Joy say behind him, “Wait, so we can’t do any more challenges? Boo. I was hoping for some more good cards.”

“I got us a good card,” Cressida told her.

Then a moment later, Joy exclaimed, “Those are the cutest kittens I’ve ever seen!”

* * *

Arthur fully expected to have to travel back to the spot between the hills where they had first arrived. Maybe an exit had opened there. Or maybe it would be another trap and they’d have to search for the real way out with a limited amount of time and risk those escalating penalties.

However, upon reaching the top of the staircase, he spotted a new entranceway that stood in the middle of the pavilion. It was simply a frame floating in midair with a dark space behind it. Seeing it reminded Arthur of the place with the Scourge Gods and shuddered. But he felt no terrible pressure from beyond it. That was clearly the exit.

I guess we won’t have to fly out of here, he thought. After all, they were still mounted on their dragons, with the hatchlings and their new riders seating themselves on Sams and Joy.

As they approached, the frame obediently expanded to include a dragon the size of Sams.

They went through it one by one and found themselves standing at the pit of the Dark Heart. Above them, streams of people were still descending into the pit.

Arthur touched Brixaby’s neck. “Should we try to warn them?”

“It may not do any good,” Horatio muttered. “I don’t think they’ll listen.”

But Brixaby was already inhaling. Arthur knew he was more than willing to shout and be heard.

* * *

Several days later

* * *

Arthur stared hard at the card placed on the table in front of him. It was one that had been recovered from the bandits, which meant it was likely stolen from someone else.

People often put down Common-ranked cards, and the description for this one wasn’t particularly impressive. But now he had a sense of how much energy was stored in the card.

Beautiful Bouquet

Common

Nature

Using mana, the wielder of this card will be able to generate pink flowers in the breed and variety that the wielder imagines.

It was a very simple card, and its simplicity was the reason why Arthur had chosen to work on it. Concentrating on the word pink, he focused hard and imagined the letters changing one by one. It was more than simply reworking what was on the surface. A matrix lay just underneath. A complex play of energy that existed within every card. He was only starting to learn how to decipher it.

Arthur concentrated so hard that beads of sweat popped out of his forehead, but he did not dare even to raise an arm to wipe it away.

Finally, with a sudden drop of mana, followed by a wave of exhaustion, the change clicked into place. The description now no longer read pink flowers. It read purple flowers.

That small change had cost him three quarters of his mana.

But this was an improvement. When he had started experimenting a few days ago, a little change like this would have nearly knocked him flat.

New skill level:

Card Intuition (Card Smith Class)

Level 8

New skill level:

Card Manipulation (Card Smith Class)

Level 7

This was good. This was progress.

Arthur leaned back in his chair and looked around. It certainly wasn’t silent in the barn. Brixaby was working on something by his forge. Meanwhile, safely out of range of any sparks, Equinox and Marion’s dragon, Asha, were wrestling together. They were already growing fast—faster than Arthur normally expected from other dragons, including Rares.

Their riders were currently out of the barn, and Arthur and Brixaby had chosen to keep an eye on them. Marion was back at the hospital. It was, unfortunately, doing very brisk business. When the survivors of the Dark Heart returned, they often were not unscathed.

Meanwhile, Soledad was out shopping for the group. They were running low on bison meat again. Of course, Arthur had his emergency stores . . . and some additional emergency stores in his Personal Space. But he didn’t want to dip into that. Young dragons ate a lot, and Soledad had wanted some fresher, bloodier meat for them.

Sams and Horatio had made the excuse of going out to hunt any remaining scourglings beyond the walls with the guards. Arthur suspected that they were still integrating the new Rare card that Horatio had added. His friend was being cagey on the details, but Arthur hadn’t pressed. He sensed that Horatio wanted to show it off to Soledad when he was ready.

Meanwhile, Cressida and Joy were at the library. After listening to the Mythics’ conversation, Cressida had a renewed interest in history, and Joy wanted to sun herself on top of the library roof.

It was a nice afternoon, which was why Arthur wasn’t too surprised when it was rudely interrupted.

A knock came at the barn door. Before he could rise, Asha broke off from playing with Equinox to yell, “I got it!”

She floundered over, mostly running, but aided by awkward beats of her wings. Unless they were purples or the rare blues with four wings, it took time for young dragons to learn how to fly.

Leaping, Asha pulled at the rope that connected to a pulley system Arthur had set up. The heavy barn door swung wide to reveal Oversheriff Walker standing on the other side.

Landing again, Asha looked up at her and said, “Hello, who are you?”

The sheriff looked mildly surprised, but only a little. She’d probably grown used to weirdness around Arthur.

“I’m Sheriff Walker.” She touched her hat.

Standing, Arthur slid the Common card back into his Personal Space. It twinged a little, but nothing he could not handle.

“Sheriff,” he said, “why don’t you come in?”

She did, and he gestured for her to have a seat across his desk.

“I’m glad to see you,” he said, “but I half expected you to be delving the heart by now.”

“I could say the same for you,” she said.

The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

With a polite smile, Arthur concentrated on his Charming Gentle-Person card. “How can I help you?”

She gave him a look as if he should already know, and the truth was, he had some guesses. But what she did next surprised him. From her belt, she pulled out a small leather bag and tossed it to the table between them.

“I intercepted this on the way here—saw it was for you and thought that I would save the deliverer a trip.”

Arthur picked it up and looked inside. It was a bag of twenty card shards: the blank ones, straight from the Dark Heart. He had put out a bounty for those and paid in advance. Someone had taken him up on it.

“The question is,” she said, “why didn’t your team, which is one of the strongest left in the city, come back with any shards?”

That answer was easy, and for once, Arthur did not mind telling the truth. “All of our extra shards went to them.” He gestured to Equinox and Asha, who had resumed their tumbling together. They looked like puppies.

She did a double take. “You need shards to breed dragons?”

“We only have one dragon of breeding age,” Arthur said with a laugh. “No, we got these two from the Dark Heart.”

“I see.” She clearly didn’t, but she leaned forward. “And your team is one of the few who have returned.”

“Yes,” Arthur said, his mood lowering. “At least, in one piece. I know people weren’t happy about us broadcasting that the heart eats people.”

She snorted. “To put it lightly.”

What they were both not saying was that hardly anyone had been in the mood to listen while descending the pit, and once they reached the top, Arthur was officially told to knock it off. Of course, that didn’t stop Brixaby from bellowing warnings in ears and in minds on the long, slow, extended journey back. People heard. He didn’t think that many had listened, but they’d heard.

“Too many people have failed to return, and word is starting to spread that this heart is more than most can bite off and chew.” Walker sighed. “I had hopes of going in myself, once the fervor died down a little.”

“Don’t,” Arthur said. “It’s not worth it.”

“Why not?”

Ah, so now the city officials were starting to ask questions.

It made sense. The line waiting for the heart had finally dwindled to nothing, and yet not a lot of people had come back out. It could be that many were still doing challenges, but Arthur wasn’t optimistic. He had even considered returning to the heart to grab people who were in trouble, or to just hunt bandits.

But when Arthur and Brixaby tried to go back in, they found that when they descended into the pit, the entrance did not open for them. Once they had defeated the final challenge of the Dark Heart, there would be no readmittance.

There was no reason to keep the truth away from Walker now. Especially now that her bosses were in the mood to listen. “We found out some truths,” he said bluntly. “You think it’s a gift, but we learned that the Dark Heart is a trap baited by high-ranking scourglings.”

“You’re talking about it erupting?” Walker asked, visibly alarmed. “Even after we opened it?”

“Sheriff, what do you think happens when somebody dies in there with a heart full of cards?”

“I don’t know.”

“It gets returned to the heart, and a lot more people are going in than coming out.”

She sat on that for a moment, though she didn’t look shocked. It wasn’t too hard to figure that much out, if someone were already suspicious of the heart and thinking the right way.

“Do you think it will erupt?” she asked bluntly.

When. Not if.

That was the big question that kept him up at night.

Arthur hesitated. “That’s why we’re still here,” he said. “My team ended up removing a few powerful cards on our way out, as well as those baby dragons you see. They represent a lot of power. And I suspect there might be other influences that have . . . put a cap on this cycle’s eruption—for the time being.” Though he worried how much it had cost the Mythic dragons to interfere.

The people who had managed to come back out after Arthur’s retinue hadn’t reported comparable rewards. There was a reason why less “bait” was being seeded around.

Too bad the Mythics wouldn’t—or couldn’t—do that for all Dark Hearts.

“But I’m almost certain that your Dark Heart will ripen faster than ever next time. And yes, it will likely erupt. We’ll stay for another few weeks to be safe, but then we’re going to be on our way.”

She blinked. “But . . . with the cards you surely got out of it . . . you’re not going for leadership?”

“I don’t want to be a leader here,” Arthur said. “This is not my city, or my kingdom.”

“Poor Dannill,” she said sarcastically.

He shrugged. “He’s gotten his money. Have you seen the toys they’re selling at the market? Stuffed dragons are all the rage.”

“I suppose.” She was quiet for a moment before she let out a sigh. “Well, if you’re telling the truth about not seeking leadership, that will relieve a few people around here.”

Arthur suspected that was the true reason she had come, which meant that she wasn’t taking him as seriously as she ought. “Unless you can find a way to vent the Dark Heart before it ripens again, there’s not going to be a city to lead.”

She gave him a hard look. “I heard you, but I can’t stop people from going in and taking a chance. They have a right.”

“A right to die?”

“Not everybody dies, and that’s the way we do things here. The best of the best pull out the strongest cards from the Dark Heart. That’s why they’re elected as leaders. It’s how we reshuffle our government and keep it strong. Furthermore, we sell that opportunity for advancement to people. If we take that opportunity away, there will be riots.”

“If you don’t, there will be an eruption,” Arthur said.

Though, to a degree, he understood her point. This place’s whole social structure and economy, as well as everybody’s hopes, were all pinned on the Dark Heart. People put their lives on the line, enduring the deadlands, just for the hope of retrieving powerful cards.

Arthur and Brixaby couldn’t sit on the mouth of the Dark Heart and refuse to let more in. They were powerful, but the might of the entire city would be against them.

It left him with a sour taste in his mouth, but he had seen people turn back when Brixaby broadcasted his warning.

“If you have any sway here at all, spread the message to those going in not to go past the first couple of levels,” Arthur said. “It gets progressively harder. If they listen, they can at least come out with some kind of reward. But if they get greedy and make one false move . . .”

She nodded. “That might be an acceptable middle ground. It’s something we can do.” She rose as if to go.

Arthur asked, “Has there been any word on Claude? I issued a missing person’s report . . .”

She did not pretend like she didn’t know what he was talking about. He knew she was keeping an eye out for him.

“No,” she said. “But some reported missing persons are still being found. You never know. He might be in for a long challenge. I’m told that some of them last for years . . . objectively.”

He nodded. “Thank you.”

Arthur couldn’t quite let himself grieve yet. Those two cards he’d found in the bandit’s deck had been the only two Mechanical-type cards in there. And an adventurer like Claude would surely have more.

Maybe he had shed them or offered them as a bribe just for a chance to get away. Then he’d stayed in the heart to try to replace them.

Or maybe he was gone, and Arthur was fooling himself. Either way, he chose to have hope.

He walked the oversheriff out. When he closed the door, Brixaby came over. The tips of his claws were smoking from the heat of the forge, though it didn’t seem to bother him. “What did she want?”

“Snooping around to see if we want to stay as leaders here.”

“Here?” Brixaby asked. “In this little dragonless city?”

“We could find a way to safely vent the Dark Heart after it closes again,” Arthur said, just for the sake of taking a different position. “That would really help these people.”

“Or we could complete our sets like we originally set out to do, become Mythics, come back, and vent it then,” Brixaby said. He had taken up the challenge of leaping to the next rank with gusto, especially since he already wanted to complete his set. Arthur couldn’t say he minded it too much.

He turned to his desk. “She did bring a gift.”

He walked back to his workstation, and Brixaby followed curiously. Upending the little leather bag, Arthur shook out the blank shards. Then, with a light touch on his Master of Cards, he sat down and started to look them over.

Some people had experimented with the blank shards once they were outside the heart, but they were just as useless as they were outside of challenges. But now Arthur had his Card Intuition and a plan. He spent a few minutes arranging the shards.

Each was a different shape, and there were no corner pieces. They still fit together if he put them together just so. Finally, when he was finished, he had a small solid square.

To his Master of Cards, they hummed with power.

“Brixaby, please hand me Repair Cards.”

The moment it was out of Brixaby’s Personal Space, it started shedding mana in the form of throwing sparkles. Arthur could feel the matrix underneath it unraveling like threads from a shirt that had been washed too many times. But when he gripped an edge, it stopped.

Carefully, he placed it on the table and held it. With his other hand, he slowly nudged the square of shards over the card.

Once it was centered, he relaxed his hold just a little. The square of shards melted over the card like wet candle wax and sank into the broken areas of the magical matrix underneath.

The matrix already knew what shape it should be. It had been that way for centuries. Using the extra power of the shards, it became whole again, brand new and perfect.

Repair Cards

Rare