Earth- Giants, Golems, & Gargoyles, page 9
“—it was your punishment.”
I stopped and turned to him. “To be left to die?” I shook my head. “Besides, we both saw that thing in action, Poole. We both saw how quickly it killed . . .” My throat made a clicking sound, and I swallowed hurriedly.
“I said you’d be like this. That you would need motivation. That you’d need payment.” For the briefest moment, a flash of disgust rippled over his face, but it was gone before I really knew it was there. “The Confederacy met to discuss the legal ramifications of what happened that night.”
I raised an eyebrow. This was a man who’d never had any kind of formal education, had rarely used words longer than three syllables. “Ramifications? Do you even know what that word means?”
He met my eyes square on. “Do you? Things have changed, Samus. Our way of life, it’s gone. The Confederacy rules everything, and they’re holding you responsible for everything that happened that night. Every death is on you. And not just those in the card house either. Oh no. On your slate is the tally of every death from every planet.”
“What . . .” I gasped.
“They’ve declared you a murderer ten billion times over. There has never been a person in the history of the Confederacy who has committed more war crimes than you. The punishment for one death is execution.”
“They can’t execute me ten billion times,” I said, trying to joke, but the words felt strained even to my ears.
“They can and you know it.” He kicked at a stone, sending up a whirl of dust. “If you fix your mess, they’ll leave you be. You can stay here on this planet. Live out your days unbothered. But if you don’t . . .”
He let the words trail out, watching me. I let out a deep sigh. “If I don’t, they’ll kill me,” I finished.
“Yes. Over and over again,” he confirmed. Then a flash of the old Poole returned. “It’s an all or nothing, my friend. That’s how you like it, right? If this isn’t a wager, then I don’t know what is.”
I fixed my eyes onto the charred skeleton of the card house, the memories of that night making me sweat. “The ultimate wager,” I whispered, the old excitement flaring to life in my stomach. Then: “Deal.”
THE DULL DAYLIGHT was slowly bleeding into darkness. It was a strange change, one that I still wasn’t fully accustomed to. There was no such thing as day and night on this world anymore, just a slow sludgy movement from dark and angry to darker and angrier. Each night more and more tiny insects seemed to come out to zip about in the early evening, though I hadn’t seen anything larger than a cockroach since the Night of the Dragon Cards.
I was sitting on a pile of charred debris, trying not to think of the ashy bodies that must surely be buried beneath me. They were everywhere on this dead world and I stumbled across them all the time. The only sound apart from the gentle breeze stirring ash into the air was the quiet footsteps of Poole as he approached. Without a word, he came and sat beside me, clasping his hands together and resting them on his knees.
We sat in silence for a long moment before he said, “This world, man, I can’t get over the destruction.” He swallowed. “I don’t know what’s worse; seeing something unrecognisable burned completely to a crisp and wondering what it was, or seeing something I definitely recognise only partially crisped. It’s just so fucking . . .” He stopped, unable to continue.
I nodded. I knew exactly what he meant.
“Okay, so, what’s the plan, chief?” Poole asked after another few minutes of silence. “How do we salvage this mess? How do we defeat the dragon?”
The answer was on my lips immediately. “Cards.”
Poole turned to stare at me, his face twitching. “Excuse me?”
“Cards,” I repeated. “It’s the only way. The game created that beast, it can stop it too.”
“You still have cards? How? The Confederacy banned the game after that night. They’ve confiscated all of the . . .” He stopped and stared at me. “You didn’t hand yours in, did you?”
My shoulders slumped. “No, I couldn’t . . .”
His face twisted with something I couldn’t recognise. “Are you fucking kidding me? You’re the reason the game was banned. You’re the reason I nearly fucking died, man! And now you’re telling me that you want to play with cards again?”
“Yeah,” I said, my voice faint and full of shame. “I just couldn’t seem to get rid of them . . .”
“And now you think to clear the mess you made is to play cards again? Seriously, is this some kind of joke?”
“Look, I’m not even sure it can work. I lost most of my cards that night and I only have fire or earth cards left. There’s certainly no way I can play fire—not against a double-fire dragon. That would be suicide. So, that leaves earth. It might work, Poole. There’d be no elemental benefit, but . . . it might work.”
Poole shot to his feet, running his fingers through his limp, overgrown hair. “I can’t even listen to this. My hands are actually shaking. Look!” He held out his trembling hands. “Cards got us into this mess. Billions of people have died. Six planets have been completely destroyed. All because of that fucking beast you created.”
“Cards can get us out of the mess. I’m sure of it,” I insisted. “But there’ll be some . . . difficulties.”
“You think?” he asked scathingly.
“First, there are no table-top arenas left,” I continued, as if I couldn’t hear his complaints. “And if I can’t activate the card, then the whole plan is a non-starter anyway. We have to find a table on this planet.” I looked up to the broken skies, the charred atmosphere that looked so much like a forcefield. “The battle has to be here.”
He snorted. “Because there’s nothing left here to burn?”
“Partly.” I answered, startled to find my throat closing up. I forced myself on. “But also, because there’s no one here left to kill.”
“Except you and I.”
“It’s an all or nothing kind of bet,” I reminded him. “You said it yourself. Does your husband know you’re here?”
Poole sighed, then gave me a rueful smile. “Yeah. He says you can’t cause any trouble now you don’t have any cards. Little does he know, huh?”
“Tuttle was always too clever for his own good.” I opened my canteen and took a deep swallow. “So, the question is: how do we get a working card table so we can activate the card?”
Poole took the canteen from my hand but didn’t drink. “No, there’s two questions: how do we get a working card table so we can activate the card and how do we get the dragon here?”
“Once we activate the card, the dragon will come to us.”
Poole turned to me, surprised. “How do you know that?”
I shrugged. “Because that’s what those beasts do. That’s what they’re created for; to destroy other mythical cards. It’s one of the reasons the Confederacy banned the game. Did you not wonder why the dragon targeted those six planets? It skipped over at least ten on its journey.”
“No.”
“They were the planets with gaming quarters,” I explained. “The beast might be out of the arena but it’s still playing the game.”
“I didn’t realise. Makes things easier, I suppose.” He paused. “What about the table?”
I stood up and dusted the seat of my pants. “Let’s hunt around. The sooner we find a table, the sooner you can get back to your husband.”
In my mind, I wanted to stay silent. I wanted to think nothing at all. But that mental voice that I just couldn’t control added in a gleeful tone; and the sooner we find a table, the sooner we get our wager on.
“SON-OF-A-fucking-bitch,” Poole cried, dropping the crumbling beam of wood he was lifting. He jammed his thumb in his mouth and sucked noisily. “Goddamn splinter the size of a needle. Look!”
He held out a grimy thumb, but I couldn’t see anything apart from one small bead of blood. I wiped at my forehead, probably smearing the ash of a body across my skin. “Seriously? You’re showing me a splinter?”
“It hurts.”
I eyed the wooden beam. “Anything under there?”
“Nah, I don’t think so.”
We were in one of the lesser known card houses at the edge of town, one that had been burnt but not utterly destroyed like the one I’d played in. The room had collapsed inwards and only three walls were left standing. “There’s got to be something in here,” I said, staring around, despair starting to creep in. If there was no card table then the plan would fail, and then what could I do? The Confederacy would kill me. Over and over again, according to Poole. I could feel the hot ball of helpless panic building in my stomach. “There has to be something!” I said again, kicking a pile of debris with my boot.
As the thick dust swirled into the air, I saw a faint glimmer of blue. My entire body clenched and my mouth went dry at the sight of that familiar pulsing. Every night of gambling came back to me then and I was flooded with emotions. Shock? Hope? Despair?
Eagerness?
Yes, I could honestly say I felt all of those. Shock, that I’d found what I was looking for. Hope, that the plan might actually work. Despair that I would have to face that dragon again, after everything I’d seen it do.
And eagerness. To play the game once more.
To win.
I dropped to my knees and started to dig around in the soot, my fingers sinking into god knows what was in the pile. Seeing my excitement, Poole forgot about his splinter and came running over to help. Within a few minutes, we’d cleared the table of debris. Three of its legs had burned away, leaving only blackened stumps, and the edges of the table crumbled beneath my fingers . . . but that flash of blue surrounding the arena edges gave me hope.
“How has this even . . .” Poole whispered.
I was barely listening. I snapped off the remaining legs with a few swift kicks from my boots, and then I set the table flat on the floor. I glanced quickly at Poole before reaching forward and pressing a button inset to the wooden top. The button didn’t depress smoothly and needed a little prodding, but we both cheered when the table locked in with that familiar high-pitched seeeeeuuuuutttt noise I still heard in my nightmares.
A silvery shield snapped closed, encapsulating the table-top arena. Almost reverently, I touched it with my finger, hissing when it gave me an expected zap of electricity. “It works,” I breathed.
“Then the plan might actually work,” Poole said, still staring at the table with a barely hidden hunger. He might not need the game like I did, but there was definitely a love for it there.
I pulled my cards from my back pocket and started to rifle through them. I considered each card at least ten times, the heat in my blood growing by the second. I had six cards; three unplayable fire cards and three earth cards. A golem, a giant, and an earth dragon. Out of the three, the earth dragon was the strongest card but all the stats were around defence. It wasn’t an attacking card. Strongest, yes, but unplayable against the beast I had created. It could hold out from a lot of attacking but eventually the dragon would tear it down.
So, that left either the golem or the giant; neither card particularly strong. I only ever played them when I needed the element aspect. They weren’t strong enough to build up or play on their own merit. The plan was starting to feel more and more hopeless by the second. These cards could never win against the fire dragon.
“That’s all we have?” Poole asked, looking over my shoulder. His breath had that familiar but revolting sourness to it that brought back years of boozing and carding together. For years it had driven me crazy. Right now, it was strangely comforting. It steadied my nerves.
I glanced back and saw the tell-tale red stains at the corners of his mouth. “You brought salamander berries with you?”
“I needed a little courage. Don’t judge me. And don’t tell Tuttle. He disapproves.”
“So he should.” I turned back to the cards. “What do you think?”
“Honestly? I don’t think you stand a chance with those cards. You created the strongest mythical beast ever known during the Night of the Dragons. Your double-dragon is slowly wiping out planets, Samus, it’s that strong . . . and you want to play a mid-level giant or golem against it?”
I felt a surge of despair. “I know, Poole, but I can’t play fire cards, I have no ice or water, so these two are the only cards I can play.”
With a deep sigh, Poole walked away from me, stopping when he came to the crumbled wall of the building. He was still for a long moment, clearly thinking, then he unslung his canteen from over his shoulder and drank. When he held it out to me, I accepted. Inside was a cool and spicy liquid that burned as it went down. “What do we do?” I asked, handing him back the canteen.
Poole scrubbed at his face, still thinking. He lowered his hands. I could read fear in his eyes. “Why do I let you get me into these messes?”
“What . . .”
He waved me silent. “Look, I need a promise from you, Samus.”
“A promise? A promise for what?”
“That you will never ever reveal what I’m about to show you. If you ever tell anyone, I’ll flat out lie and say you made the whole thing up.”
“What . . .” I sucked in a breath. “You still have cards!”
“No, I have one card,” he clarified. “I couldn’t give it up. I gave up all the rest but this one . . .”
I went to take a step forward but it would have meant leaving the table, and something inside me didn’t want to do that, so I stayed where I was. My entire body was rigid with excitement. “What have you got? What card is it?”
“One that cost a couple of pounds . . .”
“When have you ever had pounds?”
“I didn’t say it cost me pounds. I nicked it, didn’t I?”
“Who from?”
“How do you think Tuttle and I met? We were on a job together.”
“You . . .” I closed my mouth. I was scarcely breathing. I wouldn’t—couldn’t—be distracted from that card. “What is it?”
“It’s a card that triples the elemental attack on a card.”
“A strengthening card?” I let out a low whistle.
“Yeah. With the cards you have, and this one,” he shook it, “this plan might actually work.”
“It has to work,” I said back, reaching out behind me for the comforting sturdiness of the table.
WE HAULED THE card table outside and rested it on a boulder. It rocked a little but we steadied it with a few bricks that we found scattered around. Poole was panting from the effort. He stood off to one side, one hand on his hip and the other wrapped tightly around his canteen. He was eyeing the table warily, like a man who’d been savaged by a dog and was now unwilling to trust any animal.
After what I’d done, I should have felt the same. But where Poole kept his distance from the table, only touching it when absolutely necessary, I kept my hand on it. I caressed it like a possessive lover.
“When do you want to start?” asked Poole, screwing on the cap to his canteen. He wiped at his mouth with the back of his hand.
“No time like the present,” I replied, trying to hide my eagerness.
Poole heard some of it because he shot me a hard look, but he didn’t acknowledge it. “What card are you going to play—the golem or the giant?”
I studied both cards for a long time. “The giant,” I decided.
“Because it’s stronger?”
“No, it’s just a feeling.” I answered honestly. The cards were split pretty evenly but I just knew the giant was the card to play.
Poole stared at me. “You’re betting our lives on a feeling?”
I didn’t answer. Instead, I threw the card down onto the table-top then I held my hand out to Poole. He was quiet for the longest moment yet, then he sighed and plucked his only card out of his pocket and held it out to me. “We’re gonna die, aren’t we?”
For the second time, I didn’t answer. I tossed his card down on top of mine and then pressed the button to activate the table. The high pitched seeeeeuuuuutttt noise echoed out across this silent world. The last time I’d played two cards, they’d snapped together in the air like magnets before hitting the table. This time, the cards kind of oozed towards each other, melting like two pats of butter in a hot pan.
Besides me, Poole moaned. “It’s happening again . . .”
The hairs at the back of my neck stood on end, and my breath behind the mask was coming quick and uneven. I watched as the cards start to crumble and smoke. The worst thing was the smell. The shield held most of it in, but I could still smell the acrid earthy stink, one that was redolent of decay and deterioration, so different to the sulphuric stench of this world. The table-top started to vibrate and roll as if the midst of an earthquake. There was a loud explosion and then a deep crack appeared, splitting the table-top arena almost in two.
Poole’s eyes widened and he turned to me. “What the fuck is going on, Samus?”
I couldn’t tear my own eyes from where the table was shaking so violently that I genuinely thought it might explode into a thousand pieces. Two huge hands reached out of the crack and plunged into the wood of the table, gauging great scars into it. Then the hands heaved and forearms appeared, then elbows, then huge monstrous biceps, then . . .
A giant.
It climbed from the crack easily, slowly, and stood upright, one muscled leg either side of the crack. Its smooth skin was the colour of dust and moss, and it had long twisted hair hanging down its mountainous back. What looked like a small forest of young saplings were growing from its shoulders. The giant grew upwards like a tree, slow and steady, and within a few minutes the top of his boulder-like head was touching the shield. He had to kneel to avoid being zapped.
“Will the shield hold it in?” Poole asked, his face pale and damp with sweat. He rubbed anxiously at his lips.
“Probably.” I took a deep breath and forced myself to say the next words. “But we need it to break free. It can’t fight the dragon from inside the arena. It needs to be out here.”
