Card Mage: Slumdog Deckbuilder by Benedict Patrick

Author:Benedict Patrick [Patrick, Benedict]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2023-07-31T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter Seventeen

A number of patrols have reported rumours of unrest, stemming from tales of undocumented cards at large in the city. Obviously, such heresies are untrue, but we are concerned about their source, and the intent behind spreading such falsehoods. Begin to gather intelligence on any such tales. The investigation is being led by Magefinder Albrecht.

Intercepted communications between the Slums Ecclesiarchal Monasteries and its outposts.

The cheering died, and the audience started to leave. We’d want to be going soon, before word got out on the street about the match. Normally, you didn’t hear too much about underground card games, but with the goblet making its debut, and the weird stuff that happened with those murder of crows cards - still don’t have a great handle on exactly what was going on there - it was a fair bet that the Ecclesiarchy would be hunting us down soon enough.

First things first, however - time to pick our winnings.

Bucha, as you might imagine, was pretty damned livid.

“You cheated,” she said, standing in the centre of the arena, hands on her hips. “You cheated me. The cards should never have been able to do that.”

I raised my hands. “You knew we had a new card in the deck. You can’t act surprised when you were in the game in the first place to win something unique.”

“But your spells, they weren’t normal. You cheated.”

“I buffed them. Buffing isn’t cheating, is it? Was hardly a fair game anyway, with you guaranteed to take the goblet from me if you won. Maybe you’re just bitter that the odds were stacked in your favour, but you lost anyway?”

She didn’t respond to that, but gritted her teeth at me instead.

“Now that all the pleasantries are over with,” Batdorf said, “let’s get this out of the way before the authorities come. Spread your deck,” the arena master said, pointing to the arena floor.

Bucha laid her cards out for us to pick our winnings from. Bucha would have won my goblet from us straightaway, as per our contract, but we got to choose our winnings the old-fashioned way - we’d nominate three of their cards, and Bucha would have to choose one of those three to hand over to us.

The rest of our team stood close behind, but Gunne and I took point, and we already had a pretty good idea of what we were going to pick, and what they’d probably end up giving us.

“Never fun to play against a deck with two rare cards in it,” Gunne said, lifting out the Leviathan and the Lantern Man cards, “but it’s bloody good to win against one, isn’t it?”

“Damned straight,” I said, glancing at the other cards, trying to figure out which would give us the biggest bang for our buck. “Unless there’s something weird going on behind the scenes, there’s no way they’ll choose to get rid of their two headlining cards. What’s going to get us the most chits - probably their tidal wave, right?”

She sniffed. “That’d be my pick.

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