Source & Soul: A Deckbuilding LitRPG

The centaurs moved aside with an elegant sideways trot, their hooves clip-clopping on the stone-like substance we stood on. They were making a clear path for Edaine to exit the room through, so she could participate in the first of the matches, but instead of leaving, our commander turned to us.

"This Primarch is an enemy I am not familiar with. What can you tell me of him besides his Legendary Soul?" Her attention landed on Hull, no doubt because of what she knew of his demonic parentage, and others reacted with interest: the leonid's round ears perked up and Gerard's attention snapped our way instead of remaining on the view of the spectators below. Gale, of course, continued chatting up the comely centaur.

"He's a strong bastard, that's what he is," Hull said, rubbing at his throat. I didn't think my friend had actually been wounded during the end of that fight, but I'm sure the memory of being held aloft by one's neck was not soon forgotten. "Tall as a half-giant and twice as mean."

"Incredibly strong," I added, "terrifyingly so." Edaine raised an eyebrow at me and I elaborated. "We faced him in the palace. Warrick had only just started removing cards from his Mind Home in preparation to trigger the Queen's bomb, but the Primarch managed to kill him in a single blow without aid from Spells or Relics, as far as I saw."

Edaine weathered the news impressively, features flat and unruffled. "An unfortunate loss, but my Shield can withstand such an attack," she said. "Did the Primarch have Flurry or some other way of striking in quick succession?"

"I was tied up with his daughter most of the time," Hull said with a shrug, earning a look from Afi that was sure to warrant further conversation.

"I'm afraid I don't know either," Esmi said. "Keeping the remaining demon forces out of the throne room took all of my attention."

As they spoke, I tried to remember exactly how the Primarch had been fighting against the swarm of low level Undead and Yvedas we had sent at him. "I don't believe so…" I answered after Esmi, "but, despite his raw power, he doesn't have Fated damage. It stands to reason he may be able to strike outside the bounds of turns, if he is relying on his body and not the Twins."

"Curious, but a valid point if true," Edaine replied. The way her eyes bored into us made me want to provide all the information I could, and I did possess another nugget that I thought would be of value.

"He used some sort of power when we fought that allowed him to travel quickly. I'm not entirely sure how it worked. Again, I didn't see a Spell card. If forced to guess, and I believe these circumstances require no less, I would say he gains a type of energy when he destroys Souls, as some Souls do. You'll see it on him, like his flesh is bleeding smoke when it gathers. He can then expend it in a similar manner as Source. I'm not sure if these expenditures only grant him the power to hop from location to location as he did against me, or if it can be employed in other ways, too, so be on your guard."

"Noted," Ediane said. "Anything else, you three?"

"He took a hit from my Hammer like it was nothing."

"Venom had absolutely no effect on him."

"He likes the sound of his own voice," Esmi offered, to which I concurred: the Primarch struck me as someone who expected all to obey him, even his enemies.

Someone cleared their throat, and we turned to see that it was the grey-haired centaur Rakkoden. "Competitor Edaine, please. All are waiting. If it is a comfort," he added, "all will also be able to hear your words as you duel."

"I will be along momentarily," she replied, her tone just as level as her gaze. She surveyed us all, including Gerard and Gale. "You are the hope of Treledyne, and every stitch of humanity collected below us. As Basil correctly pointed out, our enemies are fractured, making our unity our strength. Support one another and believe in your combined capabilities. It only takes one of us preserving to the end, upon the shoulders of the rest, to make all victorious." Her speech concluded, she spun on her heel with a form so perfect you'd think she was a summoned Soul. She marched the path indicated by the centaurs in practically no time at all and was gone from the room without a backward glance.

"So, a few of you humans do have backbones. Perhaps one in a hundred." The leonid Titus was lounging against the viewing wall, speaking between licks of his oversized paw. "She walks to her death without hesitation. It is almost a waste."

"She is a High Paladin," Afi said to the man-cat, "and the newly appointed Grand Marshall of our armies. She will not die."

Speaking of death made me think of Warrick. Did his torn body remain in the throne room? If I somehow managed to survive this, would I be able to see it, and by extension him, again? Did I wish to?

The leonid yawned, revealing a truly massive array of teeth. "She is nothing, as all living Epics are when faced with a Legendary."

"So you agree you are no better off then?" Afi countered with heat. I didn't recall Afi being so fond of Edaine, but they had also been warring together while I was trapped in the palace. As Warrick had told me, there was much I had missed.

"Not in the slightest," the leonid replied with a toothy smile. "I don't have to fight him, now do I?"

I decided there was little point in getting involved with those two and turned to Rakkoden. The aged centaur looked like an individual who was wealthy in the ways of knowledge.

"Honored Speaker," I called him, since he was the clear leader among our hosts. "Are you familiar with how to create a dual Mind Home?"

Esmi placed a hand on my arm, letting me know she was with me but waited for a reply just as I did. The centaur's half-horse body put the beginnings of his waist at our shoulders, giving him a great deal of height on us. He looked down with a kind curiosity.

"An interesting query, Competitor Basil, but one outside my realm of expertise. You see, it is not an ability the Twins grant. From what I have heard, the learning of it is quite rare, and usually employed only by those with mental states who are equally fractured, I'm afraid."

It was not the answer I had hoped for, and I questioned its accuracy; though Felstrife was certainly obsessed, she didn't strike me as unbalanced. However, the centaur had confirmed that the technique was not limited to her alone, which was something at least – better a fingerlength forward than nothing at all.

"You haven't called for any other competitors," Esmi pointed out. "Does this mean only one match will happen at a time, and will that be the format for the entirety of the tournament?"

"You are quite correct, Competitor Esmi, and it will indeed," Rakkoden said. He seemed pleased to be able to provide a definite answer this time.

"How will Edaine get from where we are to the dueling field below?" I asked. It wasn't the most pressing of questions, but distance traveled also meant time, time one could use to plan, swap cards, and ready oneself for battle. And yet, having experienced how easily the Twins could bend the world to their wishes during an apotheosis, I put little outside the realm of possibility, especially since it seemed that we were in their realm now.

"The City of the Twins does not work as most would expect, Competitor Basil," the centaur replied, confirming my suspicions. He spoke in a rote way that suggested he had answered this particular question hundreds of times before. "Here, we exist outside the bounds of time and have no need to eat or sleep except for enjoyment." Gale said something that made the pretty centaur giggle, but Rakkoden paid them no mind, though I did see his flank twitch. "In addition, distance is not as you remember, because the Twins have little need for those uninteresting places in-between. So you can see."

He gestured to the viewing wall, and there, far down below, Edaine was standing, even though she had departed us only moments ago. The dueling floor was like an oversized game board, made of huge stone slabs bordered by the same glittering diamonds that surrounded Legendary cards. As she waited on the platform's edge, a card appeared high above for all to see. I expected it to be the usual pre-match ante, but instead it was none other than Edaine herself.

"That is good, quite good," I said to Esmi, and she murmured in agreement. The power of the Korikana Relics were their combined strength, just like Edaine had been telling us about each other. In war, when one could presummon their armament, having all four together was little trouble, but I had been worried how she would achieve something similar in a duel. However, with her Soul Link, she could have them summoned at practically the beginning of the match, and most importantly the Shield.

From the opposite of the stage came the same hulking demon I had faced earlier – if days could even be used as a point of reference in a place such as this. Everyone was by the viewing window now, even Gale, all of us waiting to see the Primarch's Soul card.

Utter silence reigned in our box in the wake of its arrival and then everyone was speaking at once, shouting, cursing.

"Fate's Tits!" I heard Hull say, and a number of centaurs gasped in shock.

For me, my ability to continue to view cards was perhaps a detriment, for I kept the Primarch's card locked in my mind long after it had vanished to the rest, staring at the Health number uncomprehending. It was ludicrous, ridiculous, especially without a single point of Attack to balance it out. He also had no Abilities, not a one, which meant his resistance to Venom was simply part of his flesh and blood. Was that even possible?

"Two-hundred and fifty," Esmi said at my side, face grim. "That is how many Spirits of Korikana she needs to defeat him."

At first that number struck me as wrong, but then I realized that Esmi was appropriately adding Edaine's buff to the calculation, something that was probably second nature for my fiancee considering her own ability. Edaine was a strategist through and through, I knew that from our time at War Camp, but could she survive so many turns?

"Is that the ante then? Our Souls?" The questions came from Gerard, and out of all of us, he seemed the least affected by the revelation, his face cool. Though, he had more lines across his brow and beside his eyes than when last I had seen him. What sort of war had he been fighting, I wondered. Had it been a winning one?

Rakkoden was in the process of batting his hands, trying to calm us along with some of his helpers. "Ante? No, no, it will be as you are used to, a summon card chosen at the Twins' discretion." On the heels of that answer, a new card lit up the sky, but strangely only one.

It was a Legendary most of us knew well, since Edaine had used it to destroy our decks in training multiple times. It faded like a shooting star in the night, and at no point did another card join it. I did, however, notice some of the centaur attendants whispering among themselves with a similar intensity to how we had just reacted to the Primarch's unusual Soul card.

You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.

"Is it normal for only one side to offer ante?" I asked Rakkoden.

"....No," he answered me slowly, "it is not." He too looked like he wished to know more, glancing up to where I supposed the Twins watched us all. It was not a comfort to see a servant at a loss in the house they served, but it was also not the first time I had witnessed a capricious master make life difficult for those who tended them. Or perhaps that wasn't it at all…

"The Primarch may have no cards," I whispered to Esmi, to which she nodded.

"It would explain some things. Not all, but some."

A gong sounded from everywhere and nowhere, like a peel of thunder across the sky but in our bodies and bones, making everyone who wasn't a centaur jump a second time. There was only one thing such a noise could mean in a place like this, and sure enough, both competitors had started moving: the Primarch was loping across the open stage, his muscled legs eating up the distance. Edaine was also moving, but only her hands, pulling Source and cards and summoning her Shield just as I had known she would.

"Brilliant," I said, already impressed by her decision making.

"Not dying is good," said Hull. He and Afi stood a few feet away, his face pressed just as closely as the rest of us to the viewing wall. "But how is she going to kill the ugly bastard?"

"That's what she's working up to," I explained. "Without Fated damage, the Primarch can't possibly reach her in the span of a turn. She's choosing the battleground, just as she taught us, and denying him turns in the process."

Sure enough, when the Primarch did finish crossing the distance, Edaine had donned the rest of her armor and had her sword in hand.

She had no Souls summoned though, so had to face the brunt of the Primarch head-on. But he was not at full power either, with none of that smokey demonic energy trailing him. I think Edaine noticed the same, because she lifted in her Shield, trusting in it.

His trunk-like arm swung around, crashing into the Relic – a blow that looked like it should send her much smaller body flying, but she held firm, not losing a single inch of ground. Her sword lashed out, scoring a hit on his purple flesh, the first cut of many she would need to fell him.

But then his other arm swiped at her, his body not slowed in the slightest by having already attacked once, just as I had feared. Afi gasped, and I too thought that the fight might be over before it had truly begun, but Edaine backstepped quickly and his claws missed her by a hair's breadth.

Now that the competitors were closer together, the viewing window had somehow brought us closer too: I could see Edaine's wide eyes and determination as she used her newest Source to summon the first of her Spirits.

She kept it close, waiting to use it on defense when the Primarch inevitably attacked again. When he did, he crushed it with a single hand and then greedily swallowed the remnants whole, but in that time, Edaine was able to summon two more Spirits. The Primarch didn't try to run around them, probably knowing he couldn't stop the will of the Twins, who would always place the Souls in between him and their summoner if that was how Edaine wished to use them. Instead, he stalked directly forward, cutting the Spirits down and consuming them one by one. But one by one, Edaine summoned more, her Source and the way she was staggering her defenders outpacing the speed of the Primarch's swings, particularly when her summoned Paladins let her start playing Source faster.

By now, the Primarch had built up some of that strange power of his – there was no mistaking how it roiled across his flesh, like fog on a lake – and with it, one of his swipes carved through five Spirits at once, including a Paladin. It didn't matter, though; the Paladin had done his job, the Source advantage compounding in Edaine's favor.

And then she summoned a Soul generator of Epic quality.

The Primarch recognized it for what it was, roaring, as he tried to wade through the Spirits to get to it. But by the time he did, there was already a small contingent of Knights there to defend it.

And as he battled with those, Edaine set up a second Guildhall, more Knights starting to pour from it.

"You only delay the inevitable!" the Primarch shouted. To me he seemed increasingly annoyed by the Souls who were laying into him: stabbing, slicing, cutting from all directions. He backhanded one of them, but instead of it becoming a spray of shards like so many before it, it reeled back, along with some thirty other Souls, like a wave spreading out from the Primarch.

My breath caught in my chest. Edaine had done it: she had reached a critical mass with her Unit Souls, enough that she could disperse the massive damage he was doing without losing a single troop.

"You have him, Edaine," Afi said. "You have him."

The Primarch bellowed all the louder, and while he did manage to swallow some Souls with his repeated, non-Fated attacks, more often than not now, he merely created ripples in the swelling tide of armored bodies who were surrounding him.

With her numbers so massive, Edaine cast her Legendary card, her many Souls flaring brightly, but beyond that, I didn't see the Primarch affected.

And then, finally, she attacked, and not just with her Spirits and Knights, but with two more Epics in tow.

The amount of damage Edaine was bringing to bear was staggering, easily in the hundreds and enough to kill a duelist whose deck has been stripped many times over. The Souls swarmed over the Primarch, trying to pull him down, and for a wonder, they were succeeding. I had worried that Edaine wouldn't last so many turns, but after having survived his initial assault, the truth was the longer this duel wore on, the more it favored her.

"All of these flies!" the Primarch screamed, his shout reverberating in our box, like he was right there with us. And then, the purple bled from his skin, a shockwave of energy exploded from him, destroying Soul after Soul as it expanded outward.

Edaine had stayed at the edges of the conflict, but whatever power the Primarch had unleashed reached her too, knocking her from her feet. In the wake of the shimmering mist of card shards, the now pale Primarch raced toward her prone position.

"What in the hells was that?" Hull breathed.

I was wondering precisely the same. "Perhaps he can store energy in his flesh, or it was his version of a Source Explosion," I ventured, knowing I was rationalizing because I couldn't do anything. If I was at her side, I could summon a Bodyguard. Dallon. Should I have given her Dallon?

The Primarch reached her in short order, stomping down with a foot, which she deflected with her Shield. The Primarch wasn't as albino as Esmi's kobolds, but his skin held none of the deep richness it had before. Did that also mean he was out of power? Edaine scrambled away from his second kick and blocked a punch with a card, but his fist traveled through the shards, catching her in the side. Despite her Armor, she spun away from him with a forceful grunt that we all heard.

"You are stiff!" the Primarch yelled. "You rely on the Deceivers and their baubles to do your killing for you." He was actually bleeding now, having taken so many blows at this point, but he looked in no way close to death.

Edaine scrambled up, saying something too, "Do you see how it was just a glancing blow? His damage is not guaranteed in the way we are used to."

Those words weren't to the Primarch, I realized, but to us. And the only reason she would bother to say such things was… she knew she was going to lose.

"You can beat him, Edaine!" Afi cried, slamming a fist against the wall. Esmi slipped around me to reach her side, putting a comforting hand on her back. "You can!"

If those Guildhalls were still in play, it might have been true, but they had been destroyed in the Primarch's blast. Even so, devoting most of her Source, six more Korikana Spirits split off from Edaine before solidifying, forming a wall.

"Still you believe," the Primarch scoffed, and then he inhaled, long and deep, his stomach swelling, and the billowing card shards that still shimmered all around flowed into him, swirling, spinning, like a vortex being sucked down. His flesh regained its color and wisps of gray danced around him like a fire being fed fat logs. "Ahhh," he said when he was finished, a contented smile on his face. "Considerably better."

In that time, Edaine had managed to summon a few more Spirits, but with a lazy wave of his hand and a bit of his power, they shattered, blowing away like so much smoke and leaving Edaine undefended.

"It was a mistake to bring so many Souls against him," Edaine said, her voice not even shaking as she stared him down. "A swarm is not the way."

"There is no way but mine," the Primarch said, advancing. "You were a fool to believe otherwise, tricked like all the rest by those thieves" – he gestured vaguely upward – "but I am the Unmaker, and I will free this world."

"Don't hold still as you might in a duel," Edaine said as she followed her own words, circling him. Her Source was still refreshing, but she brought her blade up, the sharpened point directed at the Primarch. "Think of it like a boxing match, before you ever had cards."

"How dare you speak around me," the Primarch growled, and in a flash, he was beside her. Edaine caught the first of his blows on her Shield, but the second snapped her leg at an ugly angle, with an equally ugly crack, and she toppled to the ground.

"Do you see now?" the Primarch said, leaning down over her. "How futile it all was? How meaningless?" Stretching back up to his full height, he scanned the skies above him. "Do you all see?"

Impossibly, Edaine continued to ignore the Primarch, levering herself up on one arm. "Do you see how he wishes to break my spirit and not just my body? Such opponents are inefficient in their work. Use such openings to your –"

"Silence!" the Primarch cried, stomping down with one massive foot that utterly crushed her head. Edaine's body flopped once, like a landed fish, and then was still.

Afi cried out, and Esmi wrapped her in her arms, while Hull cursed, deeply and darkly. I felt something in my chest, a flicker of the soft emotions that had once ruled me before Felstrife squeezed them dry. With unblinking eyes, I watched the Primarch lift her headless body, mouth going much wider than even the leonid's had.

"Twins protect her," I heard Esmi say.

Perhaps in a place like this such prayers were answered, because Edaine's body was whisked out of the demon's grasp and sent skyward.

"You deny me?!" the Primarch shouted, leaping impossibly high, his claw snagging on the edge of Edaine's clothing but not enough to bring her back with him. Instead, a glittering card floated down, the Legendary ante that had been useless against him.

He swallowed in a single bite, the energy around him flaring. He then tilted his head, as if hearing something we could not.

"Level a card?" the Primarch spat with distaste. "Never. I want to consume hers." He went to leap again, wings stretching wide, but some invisible force kept him grounded — the Twins, I assumed. He railed and shouted, but for all his strength, he was not mightier than Them, and Ediane's body continued floating upward, past the spectators and then us, until it was so high it was out of view.

"Where is she going?" Afi asked, her voice frayed.

"Worry not," Rakkoden told her, though he himself sounded somewhat rattled. "The Twins will redistribute her cards to the world at their discretion."

"And what of the woman herself?" Gale asked, somber for the first time since we had arrived.

Rakkoden trotted over to the back of our box. "This," he told us, holding up a hand to a currently blank section, "is the Wall of the Fallen. Look to it for inspiration or to see those who have come before."

As we watched, Edaine's card, no longer living, appeared.

My jaw flexed along with my hands, while some others sobbed. I won't forget, I promised. And not because of your Soul Ability, but because of who you were. She hadn't just lectured but lived her words, and Twins as my witness, I would do the same.