Card mage slumdog deckbu.., p.1
Card Mage: Slumdog Deckbuilder, page 1
Contents
Title
Copyright
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Pep's Card Guide
A Word from the Author
Acknowledgements
Card Mage
Slumdog Deckbuilder
By
Benedict Patrick
Card Mage: Slumdog Deckbuilder
Copyright 2023 Benedict Patrick
All rights reserved.
www.benedictpatrick.com
Cover art by Antti Hakosaari
https://www.artstation.com/haco
Cover design by Damonza
https://damonza.com/
Published by One More Page Publishing
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Chapter One
The Book of the Forest, Chapter 8, verses 12-16
And knowing the evil was waiting for him to pass, our Lord sat down by the bank of the river; he was patient, and would wait a lifetime to save one innocent child from the thing’s evil clutches.
Our Lord was patient, but evil is not; hours turned to days, days turned to weeks, and then the black water began to churn.
Eyes the size of saucepans opened beneath the surface, but when the creature set its gaze upon our Lord the Lusiomancer, it experienced something it had never before known in its long existence; it knew fear.
We were a card family.
I had grown up steeped in the game; it was my parents’ obsession. As the oldest, I was swept up in their passion - some would say mania - and it infected me: watching them plan their games, staying awake in our single-room shack well after I was supposed to be asleep, hearing my folks go over their gang’s plays, enthusing over the strategies, the synergies between cards, trying to turn their losses into wins, figuring out where their victories could have gone horribly wrong.
That was why I’d insisted to Da that the kids finally attend their first card game. That, and the fact that it had been far too long since I’d gone to a proper match myself.
Anfang’s was the oldest card battle arena in the Slums, and had one of the better reputations; you were guaranteed a top-quality match-up under this roof. The wooden grandstand rose right to the arena ceiling, and I was sat with Avice and little Emil right at the very top.
Our da’s deck gang was playing tonight. It was rare for him to latch on to a gang good enough to play at Anfang’s - that’s what finally convinced Da the kids should come and watch. He knew as well as I did that opportunities to see a game of this quality would be few and far between; what better introduction to the family trade? I had a selfish, not-so-secret motive behind convincing Da to let me take them to the game. It would be wrong to say I resented having to stay at home to watch out for my younger sister and baby brother when Da was playing - I loved them both dearly, and wouldn’t think of leaving them alone or with a stranger on Games Night - but the fact remains that they were the sole reason I hadn’t attended a proper card game since before Ma left us.
I know how pathetic this is going to sound, but it could very well be that this night was the highlight of my seventeen miserable years of life.
The raised grandstand seats were packed tight, the air was musty with the working day’s sweat, and I could feel the wooden frames swaying every time a new monster was summoned to the field, when the audience leaned forward to get a look at whichever beast had been brought forth to fight.
Emil was on my knee; my dirty blond, four-year-old slobbery brother. I held him tight as we watched the action unfolding before us. On the dusty arena floor encircled by the grandstand, a lone dwarf - recognisable by his long beard, stout stature, and his readied battle axe - stood side by side with a will-o’-the-wisp, a glowing ball of blue light that hovered about head height above the playing field. The dwarf was staring across the dirt at the enemy’s side of the arena, which was currently empty, but would not be for long - it was their turn to make a play.
The grandstand started to shake as a wall of water began to form out of nowhere on the opposite side of the playing field. The dwarf only gaped in horror as the tidal wave swept across the arena floor, crashing against the wooden border only after obliterating the dwarf and the will-o’-the-wisp, removing those monsters from play.
I was worried that Emil might be scared of the spell - I know I nearly shat myself the first time I saw something like that during a card game. Instead, he stood from his seat, trying to get a better view, cheering like a mad donkey like the rest of them.
Tough kid.
As the tidal wave waters receded, the arena floor looked almost empty. With the summoned monsters washed away, it was just a flat expanse of dirt, about the size of one of Domstadt’s marketplaces. At each end of the arena floor stood three people - the players from Da’s deck gang at one side, with the opposing trio standing on the far end. There was plenty of empty arena between the two teams, but I knew that space would be filled up with monsters soon enough.
“Da. Where’s Da?” Emil asked from my knee.
We couldn’t see Da, of course; not from this high up. It might be his gang playing today, but I couldn’t remember the last time Da had actually taken to the field himself. He’d be on the edge of the arena somewhere, a knotted mess, praying to the Lusiomancer that he’d still have his card by the end of the game.
Da’s team summoned a hermit onto the field; there was a shimmer of purple flame as an older, wild-haired man walked into the centre of the arena floor, a stout club resting on his shoulder. In the aftermath of the tidal wave and folkloric monsters we had seen so far in the match, this frail human was a less than inspiring sight; crowds rarely reacted well to the human cards being summoned. It was fun to watch them being battered around however - just give this old man a few minutes and he’d be broken over the dirt like the rest of the monsters.
“Smelly man,” Emil said, leaning forward to get a better look.
“He’s not real,” Avice said, running her nose on her arm, looking bored out of her skull. “He’s not a real man - just one of the cards. The monsters are better. I like it when they eat the men, though.”
Avice was nine, going on sixteen; my little sister had inherited our ma’s feisty attitude, which very often was aimed at me. She wore my old clothes - woollen vest, with matching leggings - and had convinced Da to allow her to wear her hair shoulder-length, instead of cutting it short like he did with Emil.
She was the one who really got me worried when I thought about how long my siblings had lived without watching a proper card match. Emil was only four, so his education was just getting started, but for Avice to have lived nine years as a member of the Durchdenwald family and to never have watched or played a card game… well, let’s just say that I was a bit concerned she was in danger of developing into the black sheep of the family.
After spending every Games Night for the last four years - pretty much all of Emil’s life - at home with the kids, returning to a proper arena was like breathing for the first time, like taking a deep lungful of air after not realising I’d been holding my breath for too long. I’d forgotten how much I had missed the vitality of the thing - the roar of the crowd, the smell of damp, borderline-frantic excitement, the people of the Domstadt Slums allowing themselves to forget about their crappy lives for an hour or so as imprisoned nightmarish beasts pummelled the snot out of each other.
The opposition team - the three who were on the field for this game - looked pleased with themselves. Even though they’d just lost their field control to the tidal wave, it seemed they’d something else up their sleeves.
The lead player - I didn’t recognise him, a tall black man with a shaven head - drew a new card. From high above the arena, the mana fountain bloomed.
Avice leaned in to me, her eyes drawn to the fountain’s purple flames high above the stadium floor. “Just a little flicker of fire? I thought it’d be more impressive.”
I gave a laugh. “It’s only early in the game. The fire’ll keep growing as the fountain opens up access to more and more magic. Soon it’ll be roaring away, don’t worry.”
The fountain’s dull purple flames rose higher, the magic available to the players on the field increasing. In response, the deck box on the lead player’s belt glowed purple, and two cards appeared hovering in the air in front of the man.
He only considered the cards for a breath, then grabbed one from the air; the other card flitted away upwards, diving into the fountain of fire that hung above the stadium, adding it
The leader stepped forward and played the new card. He laid it out flat onto the air in front of him, as if an invisible table lay at chest height. The card was briefly bathed in purple flame, then disappeared. A few steps ahead of the player, the ground started to breach; something was burrowing its way up through the dirt.
There was a muttering of appreciation as a ratman crawled its way into the stadium, the waist-height humanoid creature bearing a rusty handaxe, its ill-kept leather armour covered in whatever filth the creature tended to wallow in when it wasn’t being called on to fight.
The monster didn’t pay any attention to the arena crowd, of course - they never did. Its eyes were firmly fixed on the old hermit Da’s team had standing alone on their side of the playing field. I couldn’t be sure this far away, but I’m almost certain the ratman licked its lips at the sight of its prey.
“That’s not good,” I told Emil, pointing at the ratman, trying as best I could to get him to focus on the game. “The ratman’s stronger than the hermit, so he’s going to beat him. Worse, the ratman can attack straightaway - normally when you summon a new monster you’ve got to wait to let your opponent have a shot first.”
“Rat eats the old man?” Emil said, focussing more on fitting his fist into his mouth than on the actual game.
I shrugged. “Pretty much, yeah.”
“Boring,” Avice said, tilting her head up, bashing her legs against the back of the seat in front of her. “Hick, can’t we go home yet? I’d rather be home. Let’s go home,” she said, punctuating each shout of ‘home’ with a whack on the chair in front.
The lady sitting there turned and glared at me - I couldn’t blame her. Nobody wants to pay their way into a game only to be sat in front of a lanky young man - at seventeen, I no longer thought of myself as a teenager; childhood doesn’t last long down here - and his baby brother and sister. I was painfully aware both of how annoying Avice was being, and how attractive the woman was. I immediately lowered my gaze, allowing my dark, slightly wild hair to fall down over my eyes, and mumbled an apology.
“C’mon,” I said, grabbing Avice’s legs and yanking them down. “Don’t be a pain. Watch the game.”
The ratman team wasn’t done yet - one of the other players pulled out a card, and a tall shard of moss-covered rock the size of a grown man appeared just behind the ratman.
“Oh, that’s clever,” I said, leaning forward, just like everyone else. The arena groaned as the weight shifted within it.
“What?” Avice said, suddenly interested again.
“The standing stone spell. It isn’t a monster, but it heals any monsters you’ve got left at the end of your turn. Watch.”
The ratman charged forward, and all the hermit could do was hold his small club up in defence, taking a half-hearted swing at the monster. It was never going to be enough, however - the human cards are always crap. The ratman took the hermit’s club straight to its face, but a second later its teeth were at the old man’s throat, and he disappeared in a flash of purple flame - returned to the card he came from.
The ratman breathed heavily, its right eye bloodied by the attack, and it stepped back to its team’s side of the field. Then, the standing stone hummed, and the moss on it bloomed into small, pink flowers. The same pink moss grew over the ratman’s face, and when the monster ripped the plant off, its eye was reopened - its wound was healed.
“Ratty got better,” Emil said.
I nodded. “That’s right - the stone healed him. A ratman isn’t strong, but any advantage this early in the game might help them keep control of the field. Or might make Da’s team waste a powerful spell that they wanted to save for a tougher monster.”
“More monsters?” Emil said.
I cracked a grin. “Loads of them. Loads.”
If the enthusiasm with which my brother returned to shoving his fist into his gob was any indication, Emil was happy enough with that idea.
“Hick,” Avice said, drawing closer to me. “What’s going on?”
I was so focussed on Emil, I hadn’t noticed the arena had gotten darker. Noticing the change in the mood, Emil turned and buried his face into my chest, which made it a bit trickier for me to see the arena floor. Still, I had a pretty good idea which card had just been played.
“They’re playing Jenny Greenteeth. I’ve never seen her on the field before,” I said, and I know Avice must have been able to pick up on the awe in my voice.
Emil started to sniff, and I brought my hand up to hold the back of his head. “I’ve got you, Bro. Just hang on in there - it’ll be over soon.”
The arena floor was still covered in pools of water from the earlier tidal wave, but one of those dark pools was now moving, leeching its way across the dirt. Even though they would be well protected from any - well, okay, from most - harm by their shields, the opposition players stepped back from the foreboding black water. Deal me blind, I think I saw one of Da’s team shuffle away from it. I know most of the spectators were doing the same.
Not me, though. I couldn’t wait to see her in action.
The sight of the black water was all too much for the ratman. He gave a squeal and evaporated, returning to his player’s hand.
“Where’d ratty go?” Emil asked me. Guess the little tyke’s curiosity got the better of him - he still clung tight to me, but was peeking at the arena floor with one screwed up eye.
“He smelt anyway,” Avice said, a thrilling contribution to the conversation.
“That’s Jenny’s main ability,” I told Emil, my eyes never leaving the arena floor. “When you summon her, you get to choose one of the enemy monsters to return to their player’s hand; they run off in fear. They’ll play the ratman card again soon enough, though.”
“That’s all Da’s team’s going to do?” Avice said. “They only played one card.” So, she was starting to show an interest. We’d make her earn that Durchdenwald family name yet.
I nodded at the mana fountain above the arena - its fire had almost entirely died.
“They used the magic all up in one go, Avice. Jenny Greenteeth’s a powerful card to play.”
Sure enough, it was the opposition’s turn again, and they just resummoned their ratman. The creature looked miserable now, its victory against the hermit long forgotten. It hunkered down where it had appeared, facing the black pool of water in the centre of the arena that contained Jenny Greenteeth.
“You said the rat can attack, right?” Avice said. She might try to act like the coolest nine year old in the Slums, but even she couldn’t deny the thrill of a real card game, played for real stakes, played with real magic. “Won’t it just attack the water like it killed the hermit, and Da’s team will lose again?”
I shook my head. “Jenny’s way more powerful, Avice. The rat’d hurt her, for sure, but he’d die trying to attack her, and then they’d just be leaving themselves wide open. No chance they’d be stupid enough to pull a move like that. Not if they’re any good, anyway.”
“Are they any good?”
I shrugged. “Can’t tell yet.”
I hoped they weren’t, though. It’d been too long since Da had a win. He never talked to me about it, but I know he’d been stressing big time about everything. About how to feed us, about how to afford protection for the family card. I stress about it, too, of course, but I’m pretty sure he doesn’t realise that. Sometimes I reckon he doesn’t realise I’m seventeen, not thirteen any longer. Maybe he’s too busy providing for us all to think about how much I’ve grown up - how much I’ve had to grow up - over the last few years. How I get it all now, what he has to put on the line every night he plays these games, what it might cost us - all of us - if things go really badly.
Sometimes, however, I think Da just wants to freeze time, just wants to keep the world the way it was on the day that Ma left.
“Ratty’s havin’ a snack,” Emil said, and sure enough, the ratman was tucking into a plate of cold meat that had materialised in front of him.
“Feeding time,” I told him. “Another spell. You can use it to make any Beast card stronger, tougher. Still not tough enough to take out Jenny, though.”
