Source & Soul: A Deckbuilding LitRPG

I’d meant to go straight to my little metal hut, pretend to bunk down for the night, and then climb my way out as soon as possible, but I realized once I got there there was still far too much light for good sneaking. There was some soldiery-looking fellow up in the corner tower who could have spit on my head had he turned around and felt the urge; the slightest sound of me climbing would have him breathing down my neck before I ever got up to the walkway that overlooked the wall. I supposed the wall was meant to keep folks out more than keeping folks in, but somehow I knew that Her Shininess the High Paladin wouldn’t like the idea of me leaving, to say nothing of that hardass, the Grand Marshal. I’d have to wait until full dark, maybe beyond.

I chafed at the delay – now was not the right time to be unreliable in front of Harker and the others – but there was nothing for it. I thought about joining back up with Basil, but he’d headed off with those elves and likely had business of his own to attend to. I itched to tell him everything about what I’d been doing and wished again he hadn’t been off somewhere else doing who knew what while we were picking rooms. Maybe the dwarf will complain that I’m too messy and we can swap quarters. If leaving a few things strewn about would do the trick, it’d be a neat solution. I had plenty of experience being disagreeable.

I wandered the encampment, marveling all over again at the sight of everything being built from log and brick and then somehow transformed into solid metal. It was uncomfortably warm as the reflective surroundings shed the day’s heat, but no doubt I’d be glad of the metal if we were ever attacked in the field.

I walked past a laundry hut full of chatting workers, a healer’s post, and several other places I couldn’t identify that were nevertheless bustling with uniformed functionaries and runners. They never said anything about joining the army when we won the Tournament. Bastards. For all the promised rewards and possible advancements Edaine kept dangling in front of us, the basic bait-and-switch at the heart of the whole thing still rankled. But of course they wanted the best duelists for the field, and of course they’d strong-arm us into compliance however they could. The more I saw of the world outside the Lows the more I realized that noble life was more of the same, just with a little more glamor and glad-handing.

I found myself in front of a smithing house, its front doors thrown wide and a handful of workers milling about the semi-darkness within. My feet drew me inside before I even thought about it. I’d been thinking about my visit to the Relicsmith in the Lows more or less nonstop since the day before, and I had questions to ask.

A fat man in the corner was yelling at the other, younger men as they went about their tasks, so I angled toward him. He raised his eyebrows and jerked all three chins at me in a wordless what do you want gesture.

“Do you do Relics?” I asked.

He snorted heavily and hawked a wad of phlegm onto the metal floor in the corner. “Never touch that shit. Lowlifes and heretics, every one of them.”

I blinked. “Heretics?”

He peered at me distrustfully from under his heavy brow, lank black hair sticking to his sweaty forehead. “Twins yank my stones, you never been to a Tender’s service?”

I shrugged, feeling unaccountably embarrassed. “No chapels in my neighborhood.”

He took another, more careful look at me. “Oh, right, you’re the slum kid from the Tournament. You run a bunch of demons.”

I gave a stiff nod.

“That’s what you want to focus on, then,” he said, heaving himself to his feet and clapping my shoulder in a way that made me want to clap him in the face. “Ditch those damn Relics and do what’s right.”

“What are you talking about, what’s right?” I asked, annoyed. “What’s wrong with Relics?”

He rubbed his hands together, looking pleased. “Now, I’m no Tender, so don’t blame me if’n I say it wrong, but it’s the Twins what put a card in your soul when you become your best, am I right?”

“I guess,” I said.

“No need to guess,” he snapped, piggish brows beetling. “A man dies, the card comes out of his soul what wasn’t there when he was borned. The Twins made it.”

“Sure, fine,” I said. I couldn’t understand why he was getting so worked up about it.

“But who makes a Relic card?” he asked, as if proving a point.

“The… Twins?” I said.

“Do they teach you to shit your brains out your ears down in the Lows?” he scoffed. “The Twins never touch ‘em. They hate ‘em. These ass-head Relicsmiths – degrading the good and holy work of real smiths, if you ask me – they take some Artifact, a sword or shield or cooling box or whatever that a poor Artisan has slaved over to jam some magic into, and then they counterfeit a card to hold it. It’s like they think they’re gods themselves.”

“That’s horseshit,” I said bluntly. “I’ve seen a Relicsmith at work, and when he elevated the card, it wasn’t him that put the new image on or changed the text on its face.”

“Sleight of hand,” he roared, red-faced. “Trickery. Bunch of charlatans.”

“And the Tenders say this?” I asked him, dubious. I’d never heard a peep of such a thing during the weeks I stayed with Penkmun. Hell, he’d been the one to suggest elevating my Hateful Hammer in the first place.

“The right ones do,” he said, sticking his thumbs behind his straining belt. “Those that have the stones to tell the truth. There’s a reason those Relic bastards are on the outs with the Church.”

“Right,” I said, not willing to argue the point. “So where do those Relic bastards set up shop?”

“Don’t you have any truck with ‘em,” he pled, balling his fists. “The Twins see all, and they judge! You’ve got some powerful Souls, I seen ‘em. Lemme help you elevate them.”

The last thing I wanted to do was let this sweaty weirdo paw at my cards, but I did have a question about one of my Souls that I needed answered, and I wasn’t in the business of turning down help. I flipped cards from behind my ear one by one until I got the one I needed.

“I’ve been thinking about this one,” I said. “Take a look.” I held it out for him to see without letting him touch it.

“Twelve around us, that’s a beaut,” he whispered, sounding almost respectful for the first time. “You didn’t field that one during the Tournament.”

“Never had the chance,” I said.

“I’d give my left foot to see that one raised to Mythic,” he said, hands clenching. “It’d cost you, but Twins take me, the things that’un could do. The things it could be.”

“Yeah,” I said dubiously, pulling it back. “Thing is, I’m having a hard enough time controlling this Soul as it stands at Epic. Make it a Mythic and it might start telling me what to do instead of the other way ‘round.”

He laughed, a braying noise. “I’ll bet.”

“It’s a big bastard, too,” I told him. “Four stories high. I worry I’ll get it a spot where I need it and it won’t summon because it’s too big. Is there some way to, I don’t know, alter it without elevating it?”

He scratched his stubbly jowls. “Ayuh, it can be done. Lots of prep work to make sure it goes more or less the way you’re wanting and doesn’t ruin the beast, but I can recast the card. Let the Twins take another whack at it in a way that suits your deck better. Side-grade instead of upgrade, you get me?”

“I’m fine with its abilities,” I said. “I just need him smaller.”

“Always an element of risk when you meddle with the work of the Makers, but I’ve done it before.” He licked his lips, and his hands twitched as if he wanted to take the card. “Pay the price and say the word, and I’ll make that card sing a new song.”

I thought of the merits that Edaine had told us were the primary economy here in camp. “What kind of price are we talking about?”

He hitched up his pants by the belt and sucked in through his teeth. “For a re-roll like you’re asking…? Let’s say fifty merits.”

I barked a laugh and tucked the card back into my Mind Home. “That’s nuts. Good night.”

“Won’t be no cheaper elsewhere,” he warned me. “You’re dealing with an Epic, and even a recast takes resources. They only let us take merits here, but then we have to go to the bursar for coin or shards, and it’s a pain in the ass. Same story across the board.”

I paused in the doorway. “What if I brought in my own shards?”

“Well sure, if’n you’ve got shards, then it’d just be a handful of merits for the work. Five, maybe?” He smiled hopefully.

I tried to sound casual. “And if I brought in cards to break down? Any restrictions on that?”

He shrugged. “Won’t break down no Souls, of course. And nothing illegal. But if you’ve got some of them cursed Relics you want to be rid of, I’ll turn ‘em into shards for you, no problem. Just a small fee.”

Damn. Of course they wouldn’t take Chaos cards right under the Grand Marshal’s nose. If only I knew how to do the smithing myself. “All right, maybe I’ll come back another day.”

The fat smith nodded, satisfied. “I’m your man, young master. Jubal Clamphand, at your service. Find me here anytime.”

The apprentices were cleaning up their projects and stowing their tools, and I noticed a subtle vibrancy to one of them that told me he was a summoned Soul instead of a living person.

It made sense, of course – any craftsman would rather summon a Soul that would work for free than pay daily wages to an apprentice that likely didn’t know half as much of the trade. Not for the first time I wondered what my life in the Lows might have looked like had I been an apprentice instead of a useless street boy. It was strange to think that if not for the cards that we all depended on so much, there likely would be enough work in the city for everyone in the Lows who wanted a job to have one. The thought nagged at me, but I dismissed it. It was too big of an idea to chew on when I had other business at hand.

It was well past dusk when I stepped back out into the street, and I saw students and workers alike heading for their huts and sleeping berths. Another twenty minutes and it’d be dark enough for sneaking out. I saw that the metal stairs leading up to the walkway at the top of the outer wall were lined with elemental glow-globes and was glad I’d picked a room where I could shimmy up to the top unseen. I figured once I was up on the wall-walk I could summon the Sucking Void and throw myself down to the ground outside without getting hurt. If any guards were too close and might see the starlight glow of the Spell I could always forego that step and just shed cards from my Mind Home to absorb the fall damage, but that would be an option of last resort. As for getting back in… the gates would re-open at dawn and I’d just stroll in while folks were busy. No problem. Hopefully.

I hurried to my hut to suss out the best climbing spots along the angle of the interior wall where the rampart met the corner tower before the last of the light faded. I saw a candle flickering inside and knew my roommate Harganut was in there. He was probably polishing those crystals he’d been laying out in a precise pattern earlier today as he lectured me on keeping things in their place. Between his weird obsessiveness and my run-in with the slick half-dwarf Findek during the Tournament, I was very close to deciding I didn’t like Deepkin at all. I didn’t go in; no point in letting him know I was there. I crept around the far side of the hut to make sure that the back wall was close enough to the rampart to give me a boost as I climbed.

I expected a shoulder-width alleyway of metal still cooling from the afternoon sun, but instead I was greeted with a crazy gauntlet of jutting spikes of stone and crystal growing out of the backside of the metal hut. Those had not been there when I first looked. Some were only as long and big around as a finger, while others were half my height and as big around as my leg. The growths stuck out at all angles, and they all looked sharp. If I tried to climb those, I’d be cut to ribbons. Even if I used the Sucking Void I didn’t think I could find a pathway over and around them, and they grew thickest in the corner where I hoped to climb.

I stormed inside. The space was totally transformed. I’d left a simple one-room hut that was remarkable only in that it was entirely formed of metal, even the bedposts, but I came back to a spiky, faintly-glowing cocoon of quartz and rock. There were no straight lines left. Harganut lounged on a bed of growths that looked about as comfortable as a pile of nails, but his craggy, grayish face showed nothing but relaxation and contentment.

“What the hell is all this?” I yelled. “What happened to the room?”

“Ah, Hull, welcome back, you stinking, smooth-skinned sack of bones,” he said goodnaturedly, cracking open an eye. “There was no way I could live in this box without a little taste of home. Much nicer, no?”

I goggled at him. “No!” I pointed to my half of the space, which was every bit as overgrown as his own. “What about all that you said about keeping our shit on our own side of the room? I can’t even see the bed!”

“I didn’t want to be selfish,” he said, closing an eye again. “I made sure your laying hearth was a little softer than mine. I hear you human types are fragile.”

Sure enough, the profusion of crystals covering my bed were all grown sideways so they formed a more or less smooth surface rather than the deathtrap he was reclining on. Nevermind that jutting spars of rock hung no more than two feet overhead, making the sleeping spot feel like more of a cramped cave than a bed.

“Come take a load off your feet and rest,” Harganut said with closed eyes and a blissful smile. “We’ve got the best spot in the whole encampment now.”

I felt the pressure of anger growing in my head but tried to hold it together. “What about outside? You don’t think the Grand Marshal will be angry that you’ve got rocks growing everywhere?”

He opened his eyes, giving me a look of total confusion. “Why would he care about that?”

I walked out rather than say what I was thinking and offend a potential ally the first day we met. My climbing spot was ruined. I’d have to find another way out. It was full dark now, and most of the glow-globes were extinguished, the streets of the encampment empty. All I saw were the soldiers at their posts in the corner towers, a couple lazily patrolling the wall-walk, and the ones at the gates. The stairs were still brightly lit, and the base was in full sight of the guards at the gate. I darted from one shadow to the next, feeling strangely at ease for the first time in ages. This was how I’d lived for years: keeping out of sight, avoiding the people in charge, and finding a way to get what I wanted. My life might have changed a lot recently, but I was still a gutter rat at heart.

It took the better part of an hour’s sneaking to check, but none of the other corners where the outer wall met the guard towers had a steep enough meeting angle to make climbing easy like it had where my hut was. Damn you and your rocks, Deepkin. Why didn’t I wait and room with Basil instead? He’d have had a disapproving thing or two to say about sneaking out, but I didn’t think he’d have actually tried to stop me. I wasn’t sure which hut was his, and it wasn’t as if he could help me now anyway. This was my problem.

I skulked for another thirty minutes fruitlessly. The guards on both gates were chatty and wide awake. There was a sleepy guard in the southeastern turret, but without a way to get up onto the wall near him, it did me no good. I was hunkered against the base of the wall on the eastern side of the encampment searching hopelessly for a decent set of holds up the flat side of the inner wall. I could see a good jut where my hand could go maybe six feet up, and another halfway decent foothold a little lower, but it was a deadend path. Nothing higher up. I’d just be stuck holding onto the wall and going nowhere. Shit in Fortune’s beard. I may have to crawl into my rock cave and try again tomorrow. No, I need to keep on Harker’s back or she’ll start getting ideas. What do I do?

In the silence of my frustration I heard a faint scrape of metal on metal and roused out of my thoughts. Was someone opening a door? I crouched into the deep shadow between a hut and the wall, held my breath, and watched.

A long moment passed with me scanning the darkness hard in all directions and seeing nothing, but then I caught the faintest flicker of motion along the inner wall some thirty feet away from me toward the south just above ground level. I couldn’t tell what I was seeing at first – it looked like a head sticking out of the wall. Then the wall grew shoulders and arms, and a body pulled itself into being as I watched. Was it some creature that could pass through metal? I’d never heard of such a thing, but there was no reason that card couldn’t exist.

The form was short, lithe, and graceful, with straight hair hanging to its shoulders. I couldn’t tell if it was a woman or a slender man, but it detached itself from the wall, reached back to where it had exited with another faint scrape of metal, and slipped soundlessly out of sight.

I waited a good five minutes before moving. Someone else was sneaking around just like me. When I scurried to the spot where the form had been, I reached down and felt as much as saw a drainage gate set into the wall. It was hinged at the top and just big enough for a medium-sized person like myself to squeeze through.

Not magic, then – just plain old skulking. Who was that? Could it have been an enemy? I mulled that over for a minute. The shape had looked human, so far as I could tell, but Ticosi was proof enough that some people weren’t necessarily on humanity’s side. I could go knock on the front door of the central tower and raise an alarm… but that meant I wouldn’t get out tonight. Probably not any night after that, either, since Edaine and the other teachers would almost certainly increase security patrols.

Or I could slip out through this grate, which would be a hell of a lot easier than getting up on the wall at this point, and just keep my eye out. If there’s a problem I can tell someone in charge tomorrow. Most likely it’s just another student sneaking back in after meeting with a lover or something. I wasn’t sure if I believed that, but my way out was staring me in the face, and I wasn’t going to ignore Fortune’s little gift.

I opened the grate as quietly and slowly as I could. It made a faint noise just like I’d heard earlier, and I made a mental note to get a packet of grease or butter from somewhere in the Lows tonight to silence the hinge. It took some maneuvering to get my hips and shoulders through the opening, but I’d wiggled through tighter spots than this before. My feet dangled into unknown space as I pulled the grate shut and let myself hang from my fingertips. I was in a vertical chute; it was wide enough that I could bend my knees almost to a right angle before my heels hit the far side. It couldn’t be a long drop if the other person had been able to climb out, so with a swift prayer to Fortune, I let myself drop. There was the barest moment of freefall, and then my heels thudded down with a splash, jarring me from toes to crown, clicking my jaw shut involuntarily. I let my knees bend, and my hands slapped down into fouled water. It’s the sewer, I realized. The teachers’ rooms likely had private latrines, and maybe some of the shops too, and all that muck had to go somewhere, along with whatever waste water the cooking and laundry produced.

Well, it was hardly the worst smell I’d ever scented, and my boots were thick and sturdy now, so who cared? I felt along the dark walls in all directions. To my left and right were tunnels only a foot and a half tall, and that’s where the shit water was flowing. In front of me, though, there was a space that was tall enough to stand in that extended forward in the direction of the outer wall. It was an easy decision. I’d come back to the little tunnels and crawl on my belly through filth if I had to, but I’d take the easy route first.

The corridor ended perhaps ten feet in front of me in a dead end, but when I quested upward with my hands I felt rungs under my fingers. Hauling myself up, I was able to scrabble out of the muck to where my feet were on a rail and my hands were pushing on another grate. Once again using all my slowness and skill, I lifted the grate. This one didn’t squeak. In another handful of heartbeats I was outside, my hands in the dirt and the stars overhead. I was outside the encampment directly between the two corner towers. If I was careful, I could make it to the treeline without raising an alarm overhead, and then an hour’s walk would get me back to the main gates of the city. Those never closed. Even a poor kid from the Lows heard enough in the taverns to know that. I kept my head down and moved as quick as I dared. I had business in the Lows, and it wouldn’t wait forever.