Maybe it was the fact that Tay was playing off of pure hate. Or maybe it was his hard desire to impress Amellia in during under her for the first time.

But something clicked in Tay’s mind that made the whole battle tournament of a bit of a blur to him. There were points he could recall, but all the minute details seemed to fly by as his mind became more and more preoccupied on whether or not Rantho had his mother’s Runicka Talisman on his person.

It surprised him to learn that battle tournaments were not all conducted with summoned revenants.

“Why does that surprise you?” Amellia asked. “Runicka requires Life and if battle tournaments were back-to-back duels, then you’d be dead by the time you got to the end of the tournament. Those who’d taken more damage in their previous duels would be at a heavy disadvantage. Plus, it would discourage certain deck types, no?”

Tay waited on a bench in one of the many hallways of the stadium, waiting for his first opponent to both arrive and be matched to him. “That’s a good point, I suppose,” Tay said. “So potentially, I’m not going to need to summon revenants today?”

“Absolutely not,” Amellia said, stomping her feet just before him. “You need to do whatever it takes to summon your revenants today. You don’t even want to know how much coin I’ve forked over to buy your admission into a tournament like this one—you either win, or I’m not going to be sponsoring your next one.”

Tay choked. “But that’s—”

“Completely fair,” Amellia finished. “I need to know that I’ve made a good investment in you. And you’re not going to be raking up the credibility you’d normally be if you were playing down bottomside. We’ll make sure word of you travels, but it only will if you get first place. So, Tay, first place or nothing. You hear that?”

Tay nodded and sulked on the bench for a while longer. He was nervous because Tay had to assume that playing in a battle tournament topside would prove a whole lot harder than a Bronze tournament bottomside.

It was, and it was not.

Tay’s first opponent focused mostly on the control side of Order. Which was good news for Tay, since his control-centric Chaos deck pretty much strictly countered anything slow about Order.

Tay simply made sure to stay one or two steps ahead of the opponent at all times by playing slightly behind on their Life curve. Basically, he allowed his opponent to try and exhaust all of his Life before playing his cards that cleared the arena and got him board control.

There was no audience to view his duel. They played in small alcoves that were tucked away on balconies with windows looking out over the city. It was, in a small way, a little distracting. If Tay looked out and beheld the Storm Wall, he’d run the risk of wasting minutes while his opponent waited for him to make a move.

Which probably made it all the more bitter when Tay was the one to return to the hallways of the arena as the victor and his opponent didn’t move on to the next round. That’s how each and every single one of his matches went for a little while.

He never felt the need to summon Garudigas. He always managed to either pull out the Warlock of Midnight Darkness or his Abomination cards to finish out the duels. All of his games felt like that one he’d played for his victory in his locals—the one that had to have been against Mond.

Which made sense. These were Irons, and Mond had been the highest ranked opponent he’d ever faced—a former champion.

Some of them kept him on the edge of his seat for a turn or two, but usually their decks ran out of steam pretty quickly and he was able to come in a sweep the rug out from under them. Some accused his deck of being anti-meta, and Tay didn’t quite understand what that meant until Amellia explained it to him.

“She was trying to say that your deck isn’t something these people usually come across,” Amellia said. “The meta topside is very midrange-heavy. They like to establish a firm board presence and then build toward their assured victory. Some of them go control. But I guarantee you some of these players haven’t seen a control Chaos deck in their whole time playing this game. You’re an anomaly to them.

“And as such, you’re very anti-meta. You’re not what they came here prepared to face. And that’s going to be their undoing.”

“My deck doesn’t do well against fast, aggro decks,” Tay said. “Anything that can put cards out quickly and in large numbers.”

“Hopefully you don’t come across any of those then,” Amellia said.

And, surprisingly, Tay did not. His final opponent was another Order midrange deck, though his opponent started cursing in three different languages as Tay declared the final attack to bring his Life to 0.

The Shorlagan man called a judge into their alcove and demanded that Tay be removed from the tournament, on the grounds that he had cheated somehow. When the judge asked under what suspicion the man thought Tay was cheating, the man simply grumbled, gathered his cards, and left quicker than the sun sets.

Which brought Tay to the end of the battle tournament. Or—in another way of looking at it—Tay was now at the beginning.

He and Amellia waited in a nearly empty, nearly dark room with nothing to illuminate the blackness around them back the Runicka cards in Tay’s deckbox. Even though they glowed with inky blackness, they still fought against the natural dark. That showed that Chaos and the world itself were not one and the same.

“This one is for all the marbles,” Amellia said. “You’re going to keep your head on straight, right?”

“Why would I not?” Tay asked. “I’ve gotten this far, haven’t I?”

“True,” Amellia said. “But I know who your opponent is.”

Before Tay could ask her anything more, one of the walls of the room bisected and opened up into the light of the stadium. Like the arena bottomside, it was wide and open, and surrounded on all sides by rows and rows of cheering topsiders who’d all come and had been waiting for this moment.

But the arena’s openness allowed him to see something else too. Because walking into the arena on the other side was a man with spiky brunette hair and an emerald coat. And even though Ranthomandir was in the middle of a glorious arena, he still couldn’t keep a scowl off of his face.

Walking up next to him was another man, this one slightly taller, wearing a long black coat with lines of white fur running along the collar and sleeves. He had long black hair that he currently had tied back into a ponytail and pale skin that complemented his white and black color scheme.

And Tay recognized him too.

It was Scarole—the runekeeper he’d gone toe-to-toe with at the end of the melee duel. Scarole was going to be his opponent. And Ranthomandir was his sponsor.

~~~~~~~~~~

Tay had felt adrift all throughout this tournament, but now his mind focused and everything became plain as day to him. He could hear the roar of the cheering crowd—every single one of their voices either condemning him or supporting him.

He could feel the breeze that found its way down into the stadium coiling around his ears. It reminded him of Garudigas and how the Rune Wyrm hadn’t spoken to him in a long while. The revenant had been unusually quiet as of late, which was all the better for him. It made him think he was losing his mind less.

Even though he could tell all of that, it was hard not to focus on Ranthomandir. The Polamund stared right at him as well, as he and Amellia walked to meet them in the center of the arena.

“And here I thought you were above the gutter-trash that you always associate with, Amellia,” Rantho said.

Amellia, as if on cue, stood up even straighter—dominating the three of them—and raised one of her eyebrows. “I’m not quite sure what you mean, Ranthomandir.”

Rantho shoved a finger over to Tay, and Tay enjoyed how his face flushed red for a brief second. “That’s a filthy bottomsider right there, Amellia. You’re sponsoring a vagrant.”

“That’s a pretty lofty claim,” Amellia retorted. “I don’t know where you’ve gotten this information. What do you think, Scarole? The kid faced you in the melee last week. Did you get the impression that he was a bottomsider then?”

Scarole looked away and then shrugged. “I honestly don’t care. He could be your great uncle for all that I care. I’ll beat him all the same.”

Rantho gave that a nod and stared at Tay. “Hope you don’t miss Mond too much. If you do, don’t worry. It won’t be long before you join him.”

“Keep telling yourself that, Rantho,” Tay said, and really enjoyed the way Rantho’s eye twitched upon hearing his nickname again. “Or better yet, tell it to the lackies that used to follow you around. They’re not hear at the moment, are they? How very strange.”

A shadow passed over Rantho’s face as he took in a deep breath. Then he said, “Scarole, have no mercy on this boy. By the time you’re through with him, I want him to be nothing more than ash and bone.”

Amellia laughed into the back of her hand. “My, my, we are civil today, aren’t we?”

Both Tay and Amellia retreated to one side of the arena while Rantho and Scarole did the same. Both champions readied themselves for the duel to come. And Tay couldn’t keep his body from jumping about.

What if he failed in summoning a revenant this time? What if Scarole just pummeled him to death? He was Iron after all.

But when Tay aired these concerns to Amellia, she just grabbed him by both of his shoulders and rattled him back and forth until his neck became sore from all the whipping.

“Listen to me,” she said. “You’re Iron too, don’t you forget. You earned it the same way Scarole over there earned his Ranking Card—from a sponsorship. Bottomside, you might have to earn your way into Iron, but topside, you earn your way into my opinion. And my opinion is that your real challenge would be taking on someone in Steel 5, not Iron 1.

“Worried about summoning revenants. Please, Tay, let’s have real worries, okay? You did it in the melee, and you’ll do it again. Because this time it’s for all the marbles. Our coin—my coin is on the line here. I can’t swing you into fame if you only get second place this time. And you can’t live with yourself if you get anything less than first place.”

Tay furrowed his brow. “I can’t live with myself?”

“Could you? Could you sleep tonight knowing that you had a shot of upsetting House Polamund and you let it slip between your fingers? I saw the way you smiled when you made that Polamund brat squirm. You need this. It’s not a matter of winning this tournament. It’s a matter of getting what you want. Are you up to the challenge, Tay?”

Tay rolled his shoulders back, held his chin up high, placed his hand over his deck box, and proceeded to the center of the arena, where Scarole was waiting for him. He was up to the challenge. More than that. He wanted his mother’s Talisman back, and he was prepared to do a whole lot more than win a measly duel to get it.

~~~~~~~~~~

A coin toss had never meant more to Tay.

It was almost funny, seeing as how they were topside and he was surrounded by people who could each singularly account for more wealth than the sum of everyone Tay had ever spoken to, that the coin they’d tossed was a measly copper Blem. It was like they were afraid of losing any form of insubstantial wealth. That was all the better for Tay though, because his eyes were trained to fixate on Blems more than they were able to even recognize Aems.

The Blem landed. Heads. His choice.

“I choose to go second,” Tay said.

And a hush fell over the crowd, as if everyone expected him to want to go first. Funnily enough, not every deck wanted to be the first to play cards and Warlocks were a whole lot stronger when they hit the arena second.

“Only a fool would pass up priority like that,” Scarole said, his whole body lightening into a white aura from his attunement to Order 1.

“Only a fool would mistake strategy for naivety,” Tay shot back. “Play your cards and let’s settle this. You’re not even my real opponent here.”

“Why you little… I’ll start by summoning Fireheart Explorer using 10 of my Life.”

The white light encompassing Scarole’s body flickered as he threw out a snowy-colored card. It burst into a cloud of brilliant illumination, and emerging from it was a thin human covered in brown and white leathers. They wore a fur cap and had snowy eyes that fixated upon Tay.

(10) Fireheart Explorer Stable Other Order revenants gain +1 Power on your turn and -1 Power on your opponent’s turn. 2 >

And Tay felt this revenant’s imposing presence. Its entire existence revolved around its ability to hurt him. This wasn’t a mere battle of cards anymore. It was a true duel—and if Tay didn’t protect himself, and he would be feeling it. He could leave here just as injured as Mond had been in his battle duel. If not worse.

“That’ll be it for my turn,” Scarole said.

Tay’s Life: 100 Scarole’s Life: 90

Tay drew for his turn, and looked over the six cards that formed his starting hand. He could see two paths to take for this turn—one just handling what Scarole had played and nothing more, and the other committing more to the board in hopes that he closed out the game quickly.

Dark shadowlight curled over his arms, licking up along the bandages set upon his right hand. Tay felt a chill cover his entire body as he finished attuning to Chaos 1. Ultimately, in his first official battle duel, this wasn’t the sort of game to be pulling his punches. Every play mattered, and so he would take it.

“I’ll summon my Skull of Dark Insights first,” Tay said.

Tay chucked out a card darker than a like without light, and from it emerged a floating skull that seemed to be grinning. Horns topped its dome and as it hovered, black and blue flames plumed from within its cranium.

(10) Skull of Dark Insights Stable

Dormant: gain Life equal to the cost of the revenant fusing with this revenant.

Shout: if this revenant was summoned from Echo, add Warlock of Midnight Darkness from your deck or Oblivion to your hand.

Echo < 1

With this, he could commit more to the board without having to worry too much about losing any Life. So long as he kept the Skull in fusions, it would be like he was only risking a single card.

With another card in his hand, Tay felt as it drained the life right out of his fingertips. It was almost exhilarating—the same sort of rush that came after running until one’s legs found their second wind again.

Tay took aim and threw his second card right into the back of the Skull of Dark Insights. The Skull became encompassed in shadowlight. From that shadowlight, a beam of blue shot upward into the air, spiraled around, and then snaked its way over to Tay only to pierce him directly in the chest.

The bolt of energy felt entirely warm, like he’d just put on three coats and sat next to a roaring campfire. Tay knew it was the Skull of Dark Insight’s Dormant effect, triggering because he’d used it as part of a fusion. What was stranger was the realization that he actually felt bettered because of it.

He’d known that revenants could hurt people because of what had happened to Mond. But they could do more than hurt. They could heal. And they could probably do so much more too.

When the consuming blackness from his revenants faded, there stood a man in dark robes. He had on bone armor, with a horned skull adorned onto his hooded head.

(15) Dark Siphoner Stable

Shout: target foe revenant loses its auras and -1 Power.

This revenant is considered a Warlock.

< 2

Though the artwork hadn’t displayed any sort of bone armor on the Siphoner, no doubt his came from the fact that he was a fusion with the Skull of Dark Insights. The Siphoner exuded a dark presence that bled shadowlight almost in an equal amount to Tay’s body.

Tay’s Dark Siphoner gave him a sidelong glance, as if awaiting for him to take an action. Tay knew what his revenant wanted from him. So, he took a step forward and thrust his good hand forward. Scarole didn’t look too worried but the crowd lost their minds as he declared his intent.

“My Dark Siphoner’s Shout effect now triggers,” Tay said. “With it, he can burn away some of your revenant’s Power.”

The Dark Siphoner clapped his hands together. Black lightning crackled outward from his palms. The Siphoner raised his hands up over his head and then whipped his arms down. From his fingers came a wave of ebony flames. When they washed over Scarole’s Fireheart Explorer, they clung to his body for a long moment, eating away at the revenant’s semi-corporeal form.

The Fireheart Explorer’s body flickered like a candle blowing in the wind, before it resisted the black flames and emerged from the other wide of the rushing wave. It seemed smaller to Tay though. And sure enough, when he studied it, he saw that it only had 1 Power remaining.

Which meant, “I attack your Fireheart Explorer with my Dark Siphoner.”

Black fire erupted from the Dark Siphoner’s fingertips, and he wove them together like a ropemaker would in his craft, until a long lasso of dark energy spun in the air. The Dark Siphoner lashed out at the Fireheart Explorer. As soon as the whip cracked against the Fireheart’s chest, it collapsed to the ground and dissolved into a million sparkles of snowy white light.

The crowd lost their mind. Scarole cursed from the other side of the arena, but Tay could hardly hear him. Fourteen, Tay wasn’t even looking at Scarole. No, he was looking behind him.

At the spiky brown-haired demon of a man in an emerald robe. Rantho gave no hint of a reaction to Tay’s play, instead just choosing to continue leaning against the inner wall of the arena, like he didn’t have a care in the world.

All Tay cared about was that man. He cared about how much he would enjoy hearing Rantho squeal when he lost the fortunes of House Polamund to a gutter rat.