Source & Soul: A Deckbuilding LitRPG

“It’s nice to finally spend some time together again.”

“I couldn’t agree more,” I said, using the arm I had looped through Esmi’s to pull her closer as we walked. Dinner had turned into a stroll around the camp, and while the sun had set an hour or so back, neither of us had suggested retiring yet. For my part, I didn’t want to share the time with my bunkmate E’lal, who I assumed was caring for the small tree he had found somewhere and placed in the middle of our shared space. He had already informed me about its watering schedule as part of my new Life cultivation – every day since it was newly potted. However, much more important than that he claimed was speaking to the plant and massaging the branches and leaves as I did. I had thought the directions odd and wondered if the elf was perhaps making sport of me, but he had modeled the behavior himself, telling the four-foot tall maple about the golden elms of his home city, all grown from the Legendary elf who had taken root beneath their land. In truth, I found what he had to say much more interesting than the tree, but I also wanted to attract Life source. So, when he motioned for me to join him, I had, though I’d felt a fool while doing it, mumbling about what I had eaten that day for breakfast. E’lal claimed the more I opened myself to plant and other Life around me, the faster my cultivation would grow, and I found myself wondering if telling the maple about my fiancee would be a good place to begin our next conversation.

As for Esmi, I assumed she had similar reasons for not inviting me back to her own room.

“How are you liking living with Anya?” I asked. We had already spoken of most of the obvious topics, from our performance in the pre-summoned practical that Edaine had led, to our thoughts on the classes afterward. We had also discussed Hull’s revelations at great length. It was hard to stay frustrated with his previous absences considering he was now the de facto leader of the less than prosperous portion of Treledyne. Just thinking of the gruff, mop-headed boy doing such a thing stretched the imagination, but it was also quite impressive. He shouldn’t have to do it alone though, so, beyond an inevitable visit from the two of us, we had come up with a few philanthropic nobles to petition, who could hopefully aid the area as well and ease some of the burden Hull was obviously carrying. “Did you tell her you’re a Rapturist yet?”

The walkways of the fortification were well lit by regular spaced lamps, so I caught the slight furrow of Esmi’s brow. “I did. I hadn’t been planning to, not right away, but last night before bed she asked me if I had devoted myself to the Twins or not.”

“Ah,” I said, “the paladins have started proselytizing. I wondered when that would begin.”

“She was very earnest about it,” Esmi said, somewhat defensively, and I smiled at her – perhaps it was because of her Fire source nature, but Fate take me if she didn’t always look at people using their brighter side. “And what are you grinning about?” she asked, poking me with an extra warm finger.

“Ha,” I said, air escaping me in a half chuckle. “Just how thoughtful you are. Many people would find a question like that intrusive, but I’d wager that instead of being offended, you did everything you could to make her feel comfortable when you couldn’t give her the answer she wanted.”

“I…” she hesitated, looking down briefly and then back at me. “Might have done something similar to what you describe.”

“It’s not a bad trait, far from it,” I said, stopping to meet her gaze so she could know I was serious. “In fact, I’m continually grateful that it’s a viewpoint you possess. I doubt we would have ended up together if you didn’t see me differently than most others do.”

“Basil,” she said, leaning forward and giving me a brief kiss. “You shouldn’t think of yourself that way. You’re a wonderful man, and I’m blessed by Fortune to be with you.”

Standing so close to her, in a camp for the top duelists from three territories, with multiple teachers and smiths supporting us, and an absolutely brilliant medley of cards to explore, I could hear what Esmi was saying to me in a way I don’t think I could have previously, even a few months back.

“I actually don’t look poorly on myself anymore,” I admitted, finding the change within a surprise, yet also a pleasant relief. “It was…” I said, trying to place what I had been feeling as I spoke, “more a memory about how I used to think of things. Now though,” I used my free arm to gesture around us. “The location speaks for itself. We’re obviously destined to achieve great things.” I knew I sounded a bit like an ass, stating such a claim, and it was meant half in jest. But I also believed it. Maybe that made me naive, or maybe that was exactly how I needed to think to reach the heights I was stretching toward.

“Yes, we are,” she agreed with a laugh, squeezing my arm and then resting her head on my shoulder. “Together.”

The last word caught me, and suddenly, I didn’t feel as grandiose as the moment before. For all our time spent talking, I had yet to tell her about my challenge to Gale regarding our engagement. Esmi hadn’t mentioned it, and I was sure she would have if my brother had told while he was advising her about cards. I had been waiting for the right time to tell her, but with the moon creeping up the night sky and another full day of classes looming, I could finally admit to myself that there would never be a good time for something like this.

“May we sit?” I asked. “There’s something we should discuss.”

She lifted her head and looked at me with soft intensity. There was curiosity there but also an understanding that my next words would have weight to them. Could she read me so easily? And did I mind if she could?

“I don’t mind stopping here,” she said, indicating some crates between two buildings that were metal like everything else attached to the fortification.

“Um,” I said. The boxes were serviceable but would leave our legs swinging and would be awkward to clamber up onto.

Esmi gave me a smile. “I think I remember a bench up farther from the last time we went through this part if you prefer.”

“That would work well if you don’t mind,” I said. “As long as its somewhat private.”

She raised an eyebrow at that but didn’t ask immediately. The public bench was on one of the wider streets but was against the wall, with nothing on either side of it. So, though it put us out in the open, I could see anyone coming and change the subject if necessary. General Edaine had shown us her armor’s fascinating ability to listen in from a distance – something tied to its deck seeing ability, I was sure – but out of everyone here, I thought she’d probably care the least about what I planned to say.

“So, what did you want to tell me?” Esmi asked.

“I… may have been hotheaded.”

For the second time in one night Esmi raised her eyebrow at me.

“It’s not something I usually engage in, I admit, but… I was speaking with Gale…”

Esmi nodded. She, like everyone else at the welcome ceremony had seen me go off with my brother, even if they hadn’t known who the two of us were to each other.

“He claims that he didn’t realize the change in suitors would upset me, making him a tad less loathsome on that count, I suppose.”

“He said as much to me,” Esmi said.

So they had talked about the engagement. I was tempted to ask if there had been anything else said on the matter, but I worried that if I let myself get derailed, I would never circle back around to the unpleasantness that she deserved to know. “He,” – the next part was harder for me to say than expected; I knew the truth of it already, yet speaking it aloud felt like it made it more alive – “won’t help us. Won’t go against my parents. He even has the gall to act as if he’s doing it for the good of the family.”

Esmi took the news with minimal reaction, eyes on me, as if waiting to see how I felt. “Why would he think such an arrangement would be more beneficial than the previous one?”

“That…” I ran a hand through my hair with a sigh, “is another thing I need to talk with you about.”

She looked at me, a vision of patience, all the more impressive because I knew she cultivated Fire and Order equally.

Unsure how else to frame the next part, I simply repeated what I had been told. “My mother thinks you are on the edge of becoming Epic.”

At this news Esmi rocked back on the bench, eyes stretched wide. “She does? But why? I haven’t felt anything to tell me that I’m on the cusp.”

“Apparently sensing someone’s personal elevation is one of my mother’s soul abilities.” Before Esmi could ask, I added, “I just found out yesterday when Gale informed me. He claims Randel doesn’t even know.”

“I can see the value in her hiding it,” Esmi said. Her voice was quiet, and she stared out into the empty street, though I didn’t think she was really looking at the metal cobbles. “I’ve heard that such things govern much court positioning here in Treledyne, similar to how one's history of duels does in Charbond.”

I nodded. “Appraisers make whole livings on the industry.” The majority of the noble population was Rare, like my parents and Esmi’s, Randel, and even myself now. However, finding means to one up each other seemed a tradition as old as humanity, and a way had been discovered to determine how far along one was within a rarity. The lower levels didn’t have much in the way of gradations, with Common having none and Uncommon only two, which few people cared about, except to perhaps gloat that their child was well ahead of the curve. Rare was known to have three such distinctions, sometimes tied to additional or improved abilities, other times to just how far along someone had traveled on their soul path.

“So, I’d be what then?” Esmi asked. “Something Gold, yes?” I could see her trying to remember back to her time in the noble courts of Treledyne as a little girl. Even living here my whole life, I rarely heard the terms used because I wasn’t often invited to such parties or part of such highbrow conversations. In fact, I had heard from my mother that saying your personal gradation aloud was deemed poor form – much better to have others speak of it after the appraisers let it slip, which was apparently part of what you were paying for.

“Rose Gold, I believe. From what I understand, the names are tied to the card borders, and since you’re the closest gold can be to the garnet of Epic, ‘Rose’ is used.” I watched her for a time after explaining, but eventually, when she continued to sit there quietly, I had to ask, “Are you alright?”

“Sorry,” she said, glancing back my way. “When you said you wanted to talk, that hadn’t been what I expected the conversation to be about. Epic? I…” Esmi shrugged, looking rather helpless, and it seemed to me that she knew exactly what the achievement would mean if she managed to cover the remaining distance: she would become one of the most famous living personages in Treledyne. “I never planned to go that far,” she admitted. “I just wanted to win my duels…” She sighed and gave me a rueful look. “If your goal was to distract me from whatever hotheaded thing you did, I’d say you’ve thoroughly succeeded.”

I gave a relieved chuckle to see her good humor peeking back through. “That was not my intention. The news was an outgrowth from my discussion with Gale that I thought you should know. The thing that I regret, in some ways, is something else entirely.”

“Which is?” she teased.

“Fair enough,” I said, sitting as straight as I could in the curved-back bench. “I’ve certainly kept you waiting long enough. When Gale refused to assist us, I was quite angry. I expect very little from him, yet still, he managed to let me down. So, I…” I breathed out, doing my best to match her steady gaze, though my heart was starting to hammer like I was already in a match. “I challenged him to a duel, over your hand in marriage. It’s set to take place at my mother’s gala, before the announcement our parents are planning.” She opened her mouth but I plowed ahead. “I’m sorry for doing this without consulting you first. I should have, as it involves both of us. I was foolish to let my emotions guide my tongue, and I will curb such errant behavior henceforth, I promise However, I can win this. I will win this. For our future together.”

I felt the air heat between us and I knew that Fortune had decided not to deliver me from a well deserved scolding, but then Esmi deflated, the air cooling with her. Her hands were in her lap, and her attention went to them.

“Basil, of course I believe in you. How could you think otherwise?”

“You do?” I asked, still waiting for her to snap or yell. This wasn’t the reaction I had expected from her at all.

“Yes,” she said, looking back at me. “I said I wanted us to support each other, remember?”

“I’ll never forget it,” I assured her. Knowing how she viewed our relationship was one of the reasons I loved her.

“I wish you had told me before. You should have told me before. If you had, we could have talked about how best to handle it.”

“I know you are the better duelist,” I told her. “But it felt like something I had to do. And since you had no part in the arrangement, if he wins, you can still refuse to marry him.”

Esmi gave me a doubtful look. “You expect your brother to live up to the arrangement if he loses, but you don’t plan to do the same? That doesn’t sound like you, Basil.”

“Ah, well,” I said, somewhat nervously, my hand venturing to the back of my neck. “You wouldn’t have to marry him, but you are correct that I’d feel honor bound to uphold my half of the agreement.”

“So you’ve wagered all that we have on a single duel that I have no say in?”

My hand drifted down from my neck. “When you say it like that, it sounds terrible.”

Esmi looked at me forlornly. “That’s how it feels.”

I reached out to touch her but couldn’t quite close the distance, like when we had first been promised. “Esmi, I…” I closed my eyes, centering myself. Acting without thought had gotten me into this mess in the first place. When I reopened them, she was still there, beautiful yet sad in a way I had hoped to never make her. “I know you want your parents at our wedding. You want their approval. But I also know that there is no way I can raise my soul to match Gale’s in a few weeks. This… it felt like the only way to reconcile things.”

“I don’t want to gain them, only to lose you,” Esmi said. She sounded so heartbroken, I grabbed her hands in mine without thinking.

“You won’t,” I promised, kissing the tips of her fingers. “I’ll win. I swear it.”

Now it was her turn to take a long breath, which I felt, hotly on my wrists. She drew herself up and faced me squarely. “How will you do it?”

Without hesitation, I launched into the myriad thoughts that had been percolating in me the past few weeks and especially yesterday and today. When I was done she actually seemed a touch more hopeful than when I had begun, or at least that’s what I took her focused expression to mean.

“I think that could work,” she said, which made me practically giddy to hear. “However,” – and, as quickly as it had come, the pleasant sensation dissipated, replaced with an uncomfortable tightness – “I don’t understand why using Life is so important to you. The effect you’re wanting to achieve could be created other ways, or they may be an even easier route to victory. Just upgrading your current cards might be enough, or if you do want to add in another Source type, you still have the Water fabricator I gave you and there are some excellent Water cards available here for trade. The dwarves are also selling Depths, or I could even teach you Fire. I’ve already set up a charcoal tent beside my room. We could do our cultivation there together.”

While the idea of getting to spend more time with Esmi was persuasive, I already knew the cause of my recent obsession. But how to explain it? “Esmi,” I asked, “when was the last time your Mind Home was empty, outside a Dueling Dome?”

“This is about Ticosi?” I should have known she would catch the connection right away, and I nodded. “Two years ago,” she answered. “I was between duels, my cards still refreshing, and I cut myself while eating a steak for lunch. It wasn’t a deep cut, but to see my skin punctured was… odd. It made me feel like a child again, and not in a good way.”

“Exactly. And when you aren’t even the one holding the knife…” – I tried to think of what word would encapsulate the utter despair I had felt when the slumlord had stabbed me and left me to die on my own apartment floor. “For me, it was almost like I was already dead. All of my good thoughts fled, and what remained was pure ugliness; I was so sure I would never see you again and that my dreams would perish with me. And the pain...” I shook my head. “I still have trouble believing that our bodies can create so much hurt in us. And then you were there, the potion you poured down my throat like a balm from the Gods, taking it all away. But in my dreams, sometimes the pain is still as fresh as the day it happened. He’s not there, thankfully,” I said, gesturing to the air, “but it doesn’t matter because my thoughts are even worse. All I can think, even after waking, is what if you hadn’t arrived in time? What if I had bled out? What if I had died in complete agony?”

I didn’t realize I was shaking while saying the words until Esmi put her arms around me, and I felt myself shuddering in her grasp.

“I thought I had gotten rid of this weakness,” I laughed, but she must have heard the frustration hiding within because she held me tighter.

“I’m so sorry, Basil, that’s awful,” she murmured to me. “But you’re safe now.”

“But only for now,” I countered, and she released me enough that we could look into each other's faces. “We’re training for war, and I want to be able to protect myself no matter where I am, and if I’m injured, heal myself. With Life Source I can do that, and it can never be taken from me.” Saying that made me think of the Order Source I had just lost, which still stung. As I had told Esmi when we had spoken about it earlier, the silver lining that I was holding onto was that having one less Order meant I could have one more Life. Even more to heal myself with.

“But Basil,” Esmi said, speaking with great care, “even if you use a control deck, that doesn’t mean you’ll be able to control everything that happens around you.”

“I know,” I said, though I wasn’t entirely sure I did. “But I want to try. I need to try.”

We shared a look for a time and then she nodded. “I see now,” she said. “Thank you for explaining it to me. And I hope you understand that I expect to be part of all such future planning, every part of it.”

She didn’t say anything else, and then I realized what I was supposed to say. “Yes, of course, my love. Anything else that could stop us from living the rest of our lives together I will be sure to include you on.”

“That’s not funny,” she said, but I caught her lip twitch up.

“If you are thanking me, it’s only right that I thank you, too.”

“And what would that be for?”

“For taking my news the way you did,” I said. “For talking with me about it. For understanding. For being… you. I keep thinking that I’ve come so far from the person I used to be but it’s like they keep showing up to visit at the most inopportune times.”

“Oh Basil,” she said, laughing in truth now. “I’m not who I want to be yet either.”

“What do you mean,” I said in disbelief I didn’t bother to try and hide, “you’re amazing.”

The compliment only made her pull back. “If I was so amazing, I would be able to marry who I wanted without worrying what my parents thought of the match. I… envy you sometimes for your Air cultivation. If not for my hesitation, you would have had us married already, in some small church or another, wouldn’t you?”

To hear the very idea that Hull had had from her lips was a surprise, but I didn’t deny it. Instead I said, “But you’re so kind.”

She harrumphed of all things. “Because of what I endured after moving to Charbond. At first I was nice because I wanted people to like me, and then I kept being nice because I thought that if I showed them what it was like, one of them might start acting the same way toward me. When it wasn’t working, I decided to focus on dueling, thinking that might change how people treated me. And it did, eventually, but not in the way I was hoping. I was more… admired or sought after than liked.”

“And the Rapturists?” I tried, each sentence of hers even more shocking to me than the last. “They are all about doing well by one another.”

“I liked that about them, I did. But I also thought I might find friends among similarly minded folk,” she confided, “and I did, in a way, but most were much older than me. People come to that faith more frequently later in life I learned, and while many of them are dear to me, it still wasn’t what I was searching for. So is being nice really me or just armor I’ve worn so long I don’t know how to take it off?”

I felt like Esmi had just laid her heart bare to me, and I said the first comforting thing that came to mind. “I don’t know the answer to that yet, but even if everything you’ve said is true, you will always be incredible in my eyes. I couldn’t imagine going through what you did, living abroad alone from such a young age, and you saved my life, Esmi. I would have died if not for you.”

“Only after endangering it,” she said with a sob that caught me off guard. “When Hull first came to you at the restaurant, I was so worried about helping people, anyone, even a complete stranger, I offered your assistance without so much as asking. If I hadn’t said anything, you might have sent him on his way. Then you would never have needed saving and you wouldn’t have such horrid memories or dreams now.”

She tugged at my shirt as she said the last part, tears flowing freely down her face.

I had never connected the series of events in that way, but now that she had said it, I could see how she could arrive at such a conclusion. However, she was treating herself quite unfairly, giving herself too much agency.

“Esmi,” I said, pulling a handkerchief from my pocket and dabbing at her face, “you couldn’t have known how it would all turn out, only Fate can see that far ahead. I also made a host of other decisions along the way that led to that ‘horrid’ outcome, many more than your one moment. If not for you, I would have missed the opportunity to befriend Hull, who is very dear to me. I might wish he was around more, but as for your part in it, I only feel gratitude.” I paused to make sure she was believing me and then tacked on for good measure, “Besides, it’s not half so bad as the blunder I just made with Gale.”

She took my handkerchief and gave it a blow. When she removed it, her eyes were red but she was smiling.

“Are we competing now for who is the worse partner?”

“It’s no competition, I assure you.”

She laughed at that and snuggled into my chest, her heat having returned. We listened to the cicadas trill for a time and then she said. “Will you help me find who I’m meant to be, Basil?”

“Only if you do the same for me.”

“I’d love to,” she said, tilting her head up so her eyes met mine.

“Then it’s a pledge. And we’ve already established that for better or worse, I keep those.”