“Are you ready for this?” Maldive asks, his voice echoing through the chamber.

Okay. So we're going to be mic'd up for this.

“Oh yeah.” I raise a single eyebrow. “Are you?”

He smiles across the table at me.

“Huh,” he says and rubs his chin. “To think I took care of your reputation, your store, and now I’m going to take care of you. Poetic, no?”

He lets out a deep laugh from his belly and I try to lunge across the table to tear out his throat. A band of steel shoots across the arms of my chair pinning my hips in so that I barely even make it an inch. My arms flail uselessly, impotently, at his throat.

I'm like a toddler strapped into a highchair reaching for food.

“We settle this the old way,” Maldive says, leaning back in his chair and crossing his arms. The steel bar across my hips slowly retracts as though the chair isn't sure whether or not I'll play nicely. “Do you know how this game came to be?”

I didn’t know. I also didn’t care so I try to redirect him and take back control of his emotions.

I lean back, mimicking his slouch and sending him a lazy grin. “You do like listening to yourself speak, don’t you?”

Several titters of laughter go up in the gallery at this.

Color floods into Maldive’s cheeks, but he doesn't bite. “This game was created when those who came before us, those who practiced in the ancient ways, ultimately decided that dueling was a foul, baser thing. Dueling was left to the poor, the peasants, the downtrodden. Scheme was for the rich, the wealthy, the powerful. What other way was there that not only required you to use your intelligence but also your cunning?”

Again, I don't bother answering, but this time I don't try to redirect him. Instead, I spin my fingers before my face: get on with it already.

“Yes,” Maldive responds. “Spin your fingers at me. Continue living in your bubble of ignorance.”

I stare across the table at him blandly. When it dawns on him that he isn't going to get any further response from me, he turns to the wizards assembled and addresses them.

“I’d like for you all to meet Hexana Covington,” he says like a carnival barker. He lowers his voice and adopts a tone of overwhelming pity and embarrassment for me. “She believes herself to be fit for a higher station than she actually is. May none of you die like this embarrassing stick.”

There are several gasps at the revelation that I must stick. I suppose most of the wizards hadn't realized.

Always underestimated.

I clear my own throat and speak. “I’d like for you all to meet Maldive… his last name is as unimportant as he is. Soon you will see him dismantled at this table and you will all know that it was a simple stick who sent him to the void.”

“You wish,” Maldive snarls at me.

“Of course,” I say. “That’s the whole point of this.”

Before Maldive has a chance to continue bloviating, a rectangular box presses up from the center of the table. The box folds out into three smaller boxes. The walls of these boxes melt back down into the surface, but the bottom panels remained on the table.

One panel is labeled Play, one panel is labeled Discard, and the third is labeled Draw. Four more boxes appear on the table, one in front of each player. The walls of these boxes melt down into the surface and leave each of us with a rectangular panel that reads Horde.

Five slits appear around the edge of the table and cards float up from each. The cards stand straight up in a carousel and spin before both each player's face, showing each of us that all eighty-four cards are present and accounted for.

The cards float to the center of the table and shuffle themselves over and over, cutting the deck multiple times before shuffling again. When the thorough shuffling finishes, the deck floats down to the square that reads Draw.

A packet of ten cards floats up from the deck and folded itself in half so no one could see what any of the cards are. This packet promptly bursts into flame.

With ten of the cards missing, it makes trying to count cards next to impossible.

Once the cards burn down to ashes and disintegrate, each player is dealt seven cards from the top of the deck.

We all look at our cards as four dice press up from the center of the table and spin out to each player. Maldive flicks his back towards the middle and the rest of us do the same. Maldive rolls a five, the woman on my right rolls of four, the man on my left rolls a four, and I roll a two.

Smiling across the table at me, Maldive says, “Scheme is already favoring me it seems.”

I don't respond. I simply wait for him to decide whether he's going first or if he's choosing another player to go first.

“I’m feeling magnanimous,” he finally says. “Why don’t you to go first, Hexana?”

To be clear, there is nothing magnanimous about this. By forcing me to go first, he and the other players have the advantage.

Typically the winner of a scheme match is decided on one or two of the hands played.

I lay down a white ten to open play. It's a safe, middle-of-the-road play. The man to my left place a white eleven, Maldive plays a white fourteen, the woman plays a white fifteen, and I pass, discarding a black eleven.

Play continues on like this for a while until Maldive matches the card the man before him played with a red card.

Maldive smiles across the table at me and I prepare myself for what's to come. He can target anyone at the table, but I know he's coming for me. As he matched with a red card, he would have a blood magick spell to use on me.

I swallow. The spell he's about to cast is going to be strong, not the strongest, but strong enough that I'm about to be in a world of pain.

I feel his magick snake across the table and into my body. I feel him try several different actions, all of them failing until one doesn't.

My body immediately seizes and I watch as I lift my hands in front of my eyes. My left hand reaches over and grabs the pointer finger of my right, wrenching it to the side at a 90° angle. The finger pops out of the socket and stands at a perpendicular angle to the rest of my hand. I scream out in agony as Maldive leaves my body and leaves me to the pain in my hand. I stare down at my now mangled finger.

“Are we having fun now?” he asks. “Lots and lots of fun?”

I don't respond.

Play continues like this, but Maldive turns all of his attention on the other two players. He combos multiple cards in order to attack them both.

Is he attacking them so he can have me all to himself? Or does he just think they're bigger threats than I am?

It's not too long after he broke my finger that he destroys both of the other players in a combo.

The combo leaves the angry-eyed woman bleeding from her eyes and nose, so weak she's unable to continue. As I watch the blood drip down the woman's face, the man to my left suffocates on his own lungs.

Several seconds later, the woman's calm look flutters away as I watch the skin do the same from her hand. It floats off in strange shapes on an invisible breeze, revealing the muscle and bone beneath. As Maldive and I both watch, me horrified and him bored, the muscle melts into liquid and drips onto the table. It soaks in as soon as it hits.

The rustiness.

It's not just blood.

The too-white bones in her hand disintegrate as well, starting at the tips and looking as though someone is lightly blowing down their length, turning them into an ashy cloud as her hand blows away.

She seems to realize what's happening to her and lifts her other hand. The problem is this hand has already disintegrated down to the wrist and continues up her arm. I watch as her hair floats away in an ashy wind. The translucent skin of her face and the muscles of her head are next.

I don't look away as she tells me her last words. “The Shunned see clearest.”

What does that mean?

The top of her skull drifts away and her brain peaks out the top. I look down, not wanting to see the rest of it.

After several moments, I look over to the spindly man on my left. All I see is ash on the table, blowing away.

“It's just you and I now,” Maldive says.

“Me,” I correct.

“Me? What do you mean?”

“You and me. It's you and me. You misspoke.” I pause for a moment and then channel Silvy. “What's that like for you? Misspeaking I mean.”

Maldive growls as we wait for the hordes of the two dead players to be shuffled into the draw deck.

I take a deep breath, trying to ignore the throbbing pain in my finger. I need to focus. I need to focus on defeating Maldive. He's right in front of me. Pixie's depending on this.

Play continues.

Maldive attacks me, I attack him, back and forth we destroy each other’s bodies as the draw deck steadily gets closer and closer to the mat. Once there are no more cards to draw, the endgame begins. This is the land of last-ditch efforts and the hopes of combination abilities.

We've both sent a multitude of spells at each other. For the first time, I've been able to feel what it's like to cast a spell, or at least what I assume it's like.

Over the course of the game, I hit Maldive with several death spells of various intensities as well as several blood spells.

He's not expecting it when I hit him with a level twenty bone spell.

Maybe it's because he's watched so many matches of Scheme that he expects me to use the bone spell to target what he thinks are the appropriate targets: the spine, the legs, the arms, the skull.

I choose none of those, though.

I need him to be in so much pain that he can't focus on me or his play. I need him to be consumed with agony.

I smile across the table at him and fire the spell.

He looks confused at first, but when his pelvis cracks into three pieces and his tailbone shatters, his eyes grow wide with fear.

He'll have to finish the entire game sitting on the shattered tailbone and a broken pelvis.

It's the first time he realizes that he's underestimated me.

From this point on, everything in the match changes. Maldive starts making mistakes and I start capitalizing on those mistakes.

He also starts shifting in his seat as the weight of his torso bears down on his broken pelvis and tailbone.

The best part of this, and I hadn't even planned for it, is that every time he shifts, that steel bar that protected him from my earlier attempted lunge across the table shoots across his chair.

This forces his hips down as his broken bones grind.

As we draw gradually closer to the end, Maldive dripping sweat and in pain, I remember something. Ten cards were burned from the deck, I discarded a ton of lower value cards, and Maldive hadn’t.

I stare across the table at him, only able to see a hazy version of him through the cataracts he'd given me with the death card. The majority of my vision is a hazy mess.

Our hordes count is close to even but he has a ten point lead on me.

I squint at the draw deck, trying to figure out how many cards are left, praying for a wildcard, praying for something.

I draw a red one card. Useless for the most part unless I can match Maldive.

Sighing, I look up from my hand and see that the play deck is gone.

I drew the last card and the endgame is here. Maldive and I both have seven cards.

The last seven cards in the game.

One of us is about to die, him or me, and it depends on the play of these last seven cards.

I focus, or at least try to, as my shattered left knee screams back at me. Maldive shattered the knee three plays ago and the pain has been steadily getting worse.

We play through the cards in our hands and he wins the current play pile by activating an ability that forces me to discard on my turn, thus losing any chance of responding to his play.

The spell he sends numbs my fingers. This would be fine, because it takes care of the pain in my broken finger, but it also makes it hard for me to hold onto my cards. I'm terrified of dropping one and allowing him any sort of advantage.

His lead over me is twenty-seven.

Him winning the previous play pile means that it's my turn.

I have to make up my mind. I have to decide what cards I think Maldive has in his hand based on what's been played. All of this while gambling against the ten cards that were burned.

Shit.

The cards I have left are a red one, a green three, a red four, and a black seven. The only way I see that I can win is if Maldive is sitting on a one and plays it so I can match to use my ability.

Chewing on my lip, I play the black seven. Maldive discards a red five. I collect the play pile.

He has to play first now.

He plays a black two. I discard my red four. He smiles across the table at me and tears of desperation fill my eyes.

It's here. My death is upon me.

I play my green three and he discards a green two.

I collect the play pile and add it to my horde. It's not enough though. I'm still behind by too much.

We're both down to one card.

A single card to determine life and death.

His turn. His last card. My last card.

It's Maldive's turn.

Maldive places a black one onto the table and smiles across the table at me as though he's just won the match.

It's in that moment that I realize that a spell I'd hit him with earlier, off the black sixteen, has finally come home to roost.

The spell I cast with the black sixteen was dementia and Alzheimer’s. Those were the things I thought as I cast the spell, but basically I wanted to encourage confusion.

It had worked.

When I keep staring at my card, he looks down at the card he just played, his brows creasing as he tries to understand why he played it, why he hadn’t discarded it earlier. He looks up at me and I see fear in his eyes, but it's more than fear.

Terror blazes there.

I smile across the table at him as the wizards in the gallery hold their collective breath.