Written in the Cards Part 7

"Everything looks intact," Beth said cheerfully as she walked over to the forge with Azara and Molly following her.

Sarah looked up from the journal that she was using for keeping track of her future projects and smiled at the three girls. "Why wouldn't it be intact?"

"I figured you'd get annoyed enough at the lack of progress to try jury rigging the forge to melt the mithril, without realizing that it could explode," Molly admitted.

"Yeah, no, there's a decent chance that overclocking the forge could cause it to explode rather than just fry the crystals," Sarah explained.

"Why didn't you say that before?" Molly asked.

Sarah sighed. "Because adults have a habit of over reacting. It's perfectly safe as long as you don't intentionally push it past the point where the crystals start humming."

"Or you have a bad enchanter," Azara added, thinking about some of the stories she'd heard over the years.

"Which shouldn't be a problem as Grandma enchanted the original," Beth said smugly.

"Speaking of enchanting, what exactly do you need for a better forge?" Molly asked.

Sarah shrugged. "Better stone, better crystals and a way to forge the mithril sockets that hold the crystals."

"If you're looking for a better forge, I know where you can find one," Azara offered.

"Where?" Sarah asked.

"One of the Mayor's cronies owns a smithy, mostly because the mayor had the old smith killed when he refused to give him a discount," Azara complained. "The current smith isn't fantastic but I recall seeing a couple of mithril weapons on the walls when the old smith was around which means the forge can probably handle mithril."

"It's worth a shot," Sarah said as she headed for the exit to the pocket dimension, figuring Mist could use something from the smithy to make a copy of the forge.

"We're going to need a plan," Molly pointed out as she followed the girls toward the exit.

"I have a plan, it involves sending one of your invisible minions into the smithy to grab something that Mist can use to make a mirror copy of the forge," Sarah replied with a grin, fairly sure the smith wouldn't even notice the invisible summons.

"Let's ignore the moral issues of stealing for a minute, what happens if we run into the mayor's cronies?" Molly asked.

"We'll bring Derrick and they started it by stealing it originally," Sarah replied, fairly sure killing some of his cronies wouldn't start the same sort of war as killing the idiot would.

"I doubt the smith is even awake considering he's rarely up before noon," Azara offered. "Which means we can probably bribe his apprentice so we might not even have to steal anything. I know for a fact that Ralph and Phil don't have their cards awakened which means we might be able to get a nice card for Sarah if we promise them two good cards."

"What happens when the apprentices check the cards and realize how good they are?" Molly asked, worried about them second guessing any deal they made.

Azara shook her head. "They'll have two good cards, they're not going to complain. Besides, I don't know what it's like in your world but most people in town can't read or can't read more than a couple of words."

"Does that mean we'll have to teach Vivian to read?" Sarah asked, trying to wrap her head around the idea of not being able to read.

"No, her mother taught her and some of the other children, she's from a merchant family. Elena knows how because her parents are alchemists and Beth because most of her family are magic users."

"It's an important skill," Beth agreed as they reached the exit to the pocket dimension.

0o0o0

"And we're done," Mist muttered as he selected the Glorious Legion of Eldritch Nightmares card, not in the least bit surprised when he didn't have enough mana to boost it as he'd poured fifteen of the large mana potions into getting enough mana to boost it one last time. "The Glorious Legion of Eldritch Nightmares has one ability, General of Nightmares: It increases your Strength, Durability and Mana by one percent of the total Strength of your summoned army. It also increases their Durability and Magic by a tenth of your Magic attribute and gives them a boost to intelligence."

"Can you imagine stacking that?" Elena mused, wondering how far someone with five summoning cards could push things with that card to tie everything together.

"That sounds like a good card for Vivian, same with the professor card," Vincent suggested, not seeing a problem with giving her the cards since Vivian's card would let them give the abilities to other people and get better cards.

"It would certainly let us make some interesting cards," Vivian agreed. "The legion card would boost my Strength and Durability and my mana and boost my summons, so I don't see any real downsides."

"Do you want me to try to straighten your powers out before we try to break the curse or after?" Mist asked Mia.

Mia shook her head. "Just awaken his cards, I want to see if the stories about the curse are true or if we're going to be stuck with horrible cards and I won't have an accurate idea if you change them first."

"Okay," Mist replied as he awakened Vincent's cards, causing five cards to appear in his hands and causing Mia to start glowing with faerie fire.

"Dealer!" Mia swore when she saw the purple, blue and green spectral flames covering her and swirling around her arms.

"Are you okay?" Vivian asked when the flames vanished after a couple of seconds.

"I think so," Mia admitted after a couple of seconds when she realized that the flames hadn't hurt and hadn't burned her clothes. "Did it change my cards?"

"Damn," Mist muttered when he checked Mia's cards and realized they were better than some of the cards he'd boosted. "Witch of the Arctic Winds, gives a remarkable boost to Magic, Durability and Agility and allows you to fly at twice your running speed with an additional boost equal to your magic stat. Fifty percent reduction of the cost of ice and wind related magic. Summon Snow Golems: Max 20. Strength equals half of your Magic stat, Agility equals a third of your Magic stat and Durability and Magic equals a tenth of your Magic stat."

Mia laughed. "That's off to a good start."

"Void Witch of the Seven Lords of Night," Mist replied, shocked by how good the cards were. "It gives an excellent boost to Strength, Magic, Durability and Agility and an excellent boost per Lord of the Night that is summoned. Shadow spells cost 15% less per Lord of Night that is summoned. See in Darkness. Amazing boost to learning shadow magic. Summon Lord of Night: Max 7. Their Strength equals your Magic stat, their Agility equals half of your Magic stat and their Durability and Magic equals a tenth of your Magic stat."

"We're going to have to give you a card to boost training time on general magic," Vivian mused as she looked at Mia's third card. "Eldritch Queen of the Eternal Army: Boosts allure and Magic by a remarkable amount and gives you agelessness. It also increases the physical abilities of your summoned minions by half of your Allure and Magic stat and gives them Regeneration equal to your Magic. Summon Goblins: Max 100: The goblins have poor magic and mental abilities and good physical abilities."

Derrick glanced between Vincent and Mia. "I'm starting to think that they might be related to the last demon king and that someone tried really hard to seal their bloodline or something because that's insane."

"Not that I know of but we haven't had a demon king in a long time," Vincent said thoughtfully.

Vivian laughed. "Just wait until she gets the boosts from a couple of cursed cards!"

"Getting a couple of decent cursed cards could take a while," Derrick pointed out.

"I'm fine with waiting," Mia replied with a smile, rather happy with her cards.

Vincent handed Vivian the Eldritch Crone, Glorious Legion of the Eldritch Nightmares and Eldritch Professor of Legendary Conjuration cards. "Are you sure you want to waste one of your card slots on the general card?"

"There are items to boost summons and it should give me a lot of Durability, I'll be fine," Vivian replied as she used the three insanely powerful cards after checking to make sure they were the right cards. "Card four and five…" she trailed off as she used her ability to give Mia another card and she realized that she'd picked up another powerful card. "Goblin Lord: Doubles the number of goblins you can summon and gives all goblin summons you control a good boost to their Strength, Durability and combat talents."

"Yes!" Mia exclaimed. "That would give me a max of two hundred goblins and make them more capable!"

"You might as well give her the cursed card," Mist said as he spent the mana to upgrade her goblin card, giving him five cards to choose from and emptying his mana pool. "I managed to boost your card, do you want to give them immunity to cold and increase the boost to their physical abilities or do you want goblins alchemists that like setting things on fire?"

Mia glanced at Elena. "No offense to our alchemist but we should probably avoid turning the goblins into alchemists, I don't need them blowing everything up considering their lack of intelligence. What happened to the other three?"

"One is just cold immunity without the boost and the other two had less of a physical boost without the Cold Immunity," Mist explained as he picked the Goblin Lord of the Void card. He frowned slightly as he realized he could probably drink enough mana potions to upgrade the ability at least once more. "I can probably boost the goblin card more but I'm going to need a break before I explode."

"I'm not in a hurry," Mia assured them, not seeing a reason to rush things if he could make her cards even better.

"One cursed card coming right up," Vivian said as she selected the Crone's Durability ability and the General's ability and used her power, giving Mia a fifth card. "Derrick might have a point or maybe she just had a couple of hundred years worth of luck saved up."

"Did I get something good?" Mia asked hopefully.

"I think the Dealer likes you," Vivian replied with a grin. "Emerald Queen of Nightmares: In addition to all of the abilities of the General card and the Crone's Durability ability, it unlocks all types of magic, gives you an incredible boost to Magic and Durability, halves the time it takes to learn spells, doubles the number of goblins you can summon with other cards and gives you the ability to summon five goblin commanders that have physical abilities equal to half of your magic stat. It also comes with the Dark Witch ability, which lets you pay mana to turn a summoned goblin into a witch, boosting their intelligence and magic."

Mia smiled as she pictured herself sending waves of goblins to deal with the mayor and his cronies. "At least this should make it easier to get rid of the monsters in the region."

"Fuck me," Derrick muttered, not looking forward to having four hundred goblins running around causing trouble.

Vivian snickered. "I think you're going to give some of the adventurers nightmares."

"Yep," Mia agreed. "What about the curse?"

"Green hair," Vivian replied with a grin.

"That's it?" Mia asked, surprised that the curse hadn't scaled with the quality of the card.

"Yep, I was expecting something worse," Vivian admitted as Molly, Beth and Azara walked out of the mirror to the farm.

"Same," Mist agreed, thinking about the Wicked Witch from Oz and her issues with water. "That gives you five completely over the top summoning cards. We should be able to find another over the top card if you're coming with us."

"I'm not staying in the village, I'd get in trouble," Mia admitted, looking forward to traveling and getting away from the village for a while.

"Probably for the best," Vincent said, thinking about the Mayor's reaction if he learned that she had a bunch of rare or legendary cards.

"In that case, I'm going to check on the wagon and take a walk," Mist told them as he started walking over to check on the wagon that Ted and Tiffany were trying to assemble with the carpenter's help.

"Speaking of cards, do you want the alchemist card since Mia is stacking summoning cards?" Vincent asked Elena, figuring it would help her sort through the mess that Derrick had pulled out of one of the mirrors.

"Absolutely," Elena replied without any hesitation. "Getting that much of a boost to magic and alchemy would be amazing, not to mention the identification ability."

"If I ever need anything from your shop, I expect a decent discount," Vincent teased as he handed her the Angelic Eyes of Merlin's Apprentice card.

"Not a problem," Elena replied with a grin as she put the card in her pocket, looking forward to using it once Mist finished boosting her cards.

"Did she blow up the forge?" Derrick asked Molly.

"Nope, I'm not that stupid," Sarah replied with a grin. "Speaking of forges, do you want to head to the city and misappropriate part of an asshole's forge so that Mist can make a mirror and we can get some better gear?"

Derrick glanced between Sarah and Molly. "I'm going to need more details."

"The forge is owned by one of the Mayor's cronies, the old smith used to have a couple of mithril items on his walls which means it's probably good enough to start forging mithril gear," Sarah explained.

"How strong is the blacksmith?" Derrick asked, figuring he had some decent cards if he was one of the Mayor's cronies.

"He's strong enough to bend steel bars with his hands and shrug off people stabbing him but he's also lazy and doesn't like waking up before noon," Azara told him. "Which means if you hurry, you can probably bribe his apprentices for a piece of the smithy and we'll never have to deal with the smith or any of the mayor's flunkies."

"Where is the smithy?" Derrick asked, wanting to make sure he could actually find the place.

"I'll show you," Vincent offered. "I should be heading back anyway. Torin's apprentices come into the shop a lot to buy supplies so they know me and we're on good terms."

"You should probably head to Potions and Explosions and see if you can grab Franklin while you're in town," Elena suggested.

Vincent nodded. "That's easy enough, I need to drop off a crate of mushrooms to the shop so we can swing by after we deal with the smith."

"Why did they name the shop Potions and Explosions?" Derrick asked.

"The owner specializes in potions and explosives because he has a card that makes potions and explosives cheaper to create. I'd come with you but I'm not allowed in the shop because he thinks I'm trying to steal his apprentices," Elena explained.

"He's not exactly wrong," Vivian teased.

"Franklin has talent and a bad contract, I was just trying to help a friend," Elena replied with a grin, well aware that she was also sort of trying to poach talent for her folks.

"How do you want to do this?" Molly asked.

Vincent grinned. "Caddeus always checks the mushrooms while he bitches about the quality or the price, that usually takes about five minutes, if you walk in a little bit after me, you should have plenty of time to grab Franklin and leave."

"Works for me," Derrick said as he started walking toward the path that led back to town, figuring it would give him a chance to grab a beer since Molly didn't drink alcohol which meant she couldn't conjure a proper drink.

"Stay safe and send a letter now and then," Vincent told Mia as he handed her his last card, figuring she could give it to one of her friends.

"I promise," Mia replied as she hugged her grandfather, looking forward to having a bunch of stories when she came back from her adventure.

"Don't do anything crazy," Molly told Sarah then turned and followed Derrick.

Sarah shook her head. "I'm pretty sure that should be my line, you're the one going into the crazy town."

"Probably," Vincent agreed with Sarah then followed Derrick, hoping they could finish their business in the town and leave before the Mayor's cronies noticed Molly, since she was attractive enough that the Mayor would certainly be interested in possessing her.

Vivian glanced at Elena. "Which abilities did you want me to add to your cursed card?"

Elena smiled as she thought about the card she'd end up with. "The alchemy boost and the Crone's Durability, you can add the legion ability to Franklin's card along with the summoning boost, his mother has a summon card and his father was an alchemist so we might get something interesting."

"Sounds good," Vivian agreed as she selected the abilities and gave her friend a cursed card. "Huh, Battle Alchemist. It gives a boost to magic and agility and increases the range of thrown objects by 50% and increases the yield of potions along with the crone immunities." She snickered when she noticed the curse.

"How annoying is the curse?" Elena asked warily, having noticed her friend's snicker.

Vivian snickered. "Your clothes will occasionally turn invisible for a couple of minutes."

"My clothes?" Elena asked in annoyance.

"It's technically anything you're touching but that's usually just your clothes," Vivian explained as she used her ability and gave her friend another card. "Ooh, your other card has a small boost to magic, a 15% discount on transmuting material and a production loot ability, 5% of the time when you bottle something, you'll get another copy of the product."

"It's a decent start," Elena agreed, figuring it would go pretty well with her other card that boosted her alchemy talent and had a small chance to upgrade the bottles. "By the time he finishes upgrading my cards, I'll have four amazing cards, five if I can get a card from Franklin."

Mia pulled her attention away from her grandfather and the people walking with him and focused on Elena. "Welcome to the club."

"Can you give me a cursed card and my third card?" Beth asked, curious what she'd get.

"Sure," Vivian replied with a grin. "What do you want in addition to the Crone's Durability?"

"The legion boost," Beth replied with a grin. "It would let me double my golems since both of my cards can summon golems."

"Trying to compete with Mia?" Azara asked.

"I've got twenty mud golems that can reshape the landscape and twenty water golems that can conjure water, I don't think I'm coming anywhere close to the goblin queen," Beth admitted.

"That's because my cards are fantastic," Mia agreed smugly, ecstatic that the family curse was broken.

Vivian selected the two abilities and used her ability to give Beth a cursed card. "Huh, your card gives you an excellent boost to magic and you can spend mana to boost the growth of plants. You can also summon five nymphs that have the ability to bless the land to increase the fertility of the soil and to help with farming tasks, in addition to the general summoning boost from the legion ability and the crone's defenses. You also picked up the ability to conjure cursed rust red cloaks that look like they're bloody until closely examined, they contain five spatial containers that the wearer can use to store things."

"So, they're basically cursed to be disturbing?" Azara asked.

"They also attract werewolves for some reason but Mist can probably fix that once he gets enough mana," Vivian replied cheerfully as she used her ability to give Beth a third card. "Huh, you might be the second scariest farmer that I've ever seen."

"Why?" Beth asked, not seeing a point in contesting her grandfather for the title of scariest farmer.

"Because you have four farming cards that are terrifying and they all give you a boost to your physical abilities and magic and three of them let you create terrifying golems that let you reshape the landscape."

"I got more golems?!" Beth asked excitedly.

"Yeah, the Magical Rock Farmer card gives you a poor boost to your physical abilities and a good boost to your magic and lets you spend mana to create rocks, increase the size of rocks or manipulate their shape as if they were clay," Vivian replied, happy for her friend. "It also lets you summon five rock golems. They have physical abilities equal to half your magic and intelligence equal to one tenth of your magic, so basically the same as your mud and water golems, if you ignore the fact that you can only have five at a time rather than twenty."

"Ooh, I bet that would let me make a better forge or at least the stone part," Beth mused, extremely happy with her cards and excited to see what they'd turn into when Mist boosted them as much as he could. "Do you think Mist likes cake? We need to figure out something nice to reward him for his help."

Sarah shook her head. "I'm pretty sure everyone likes cake, it's just a matter of what type of cake. Of course, cake loses some of the value when you can just ask Molly to conjure a slice of your favorite cake."

Beth sighed as she realized that cookies probably had the same problem. "I forgot about that."

"Elixirs?" Elena suggested. "Or maybe some crafted item?"

"We should probably start with a heartfelt thank you and go from there," Vivian suggested, figuring that would let Mist know that they appreciated the help and give them enough time to get to know him a bit more and come up with something that he'd appreciate.

"Probably a good start," Sarah agreed as she glanced over at where Mist was talking to the carpenter about the wagon, glad that she'd ended up summoned with decent people since she knew she wouldn't have enjoyed trying to deal with the world by herself.

0o0o0

Derrick wasn't sure if he should be relieved or annoyed that the guards barely looked at the group walking through the open gate through the large stone walls around the 'town' considering there were supposed to be monsters in the area and it seemed unprofessional to just let strangers into your town without even talking to them. His gaze jumped to the stone walls surrounding the large mansion on the hill overlooking the town and the fields that surrounded the town. "Let me guess, that's the mayor's house?"

"Unfortunately, it used to be a lookout point and a nice place to take a date before the mayor decided that he wanted it for his personal mansion," Vincent explained as they headed down the stone path toward the town.

"Lovely," Derrick muttered.

"Just stick to the plan and we'll be gone in an hour," Molly told him, wanting to avoid trouble.

"You should probably avoid saying anything negative about the mayor while we're in town, he's got a fair number of cronies," Vincent warned him.

"Understood," Derrick assured him as he turned his attention to the walled town he could see in the distance. "Is there anything else that we should know about the town before we get there?"

"You'll get used to the stench and don't pick fights with the guards if you can help it, they're generally nasty pieces of work and any crimes are judged by the mayor's cronies," Vincent warned them.

"If it's that bad, why are you still here?" Molly asked.

"We're on a trade route and the outer walls are solid stone and enchanted to keep the monsters out which is a lot better than most towns have," Vincent argued. "As much as I hate the guy, he's better than some of the nobles I've heard about and my family has owned the shop for over a hundred years."

"The more I learn about the world, the less I like it," Molly admitted.

"I can't say I blame you," Vincent admitted, falling silent as they continued walking down the path through the wheat fields. "The guards should be playing cards, that means they won't be interested in checking things, don't give them a reason and we should be fine."

"What about when we leave with the apprentices?" Derrick asked.

"It's not illegal to leave town and the alchemist apprentices often gather reagents in the forest, the fact that they grabbed the apprentices shouldn't be a big deal and the guards can't keep track of everyone, there are almost eight thousand people in the town. Besides, they're not paid to stop people from leaving, they're paid to make sure none of the merchants cause problems when they're coming into town."

"Got it," Derrick replied.

"Once we're through the gates, we'll take a left to the crafting district," Vincent said. "It's marginally cleaner than the other sections of town, if only because they want the merchants to continue trading in the town."

"Good to know," Vincent replied. Five minutes and a cheerful wave from one of the two guards at Vincent when they walked through the open gates later and Derrick was fairly sure that the entire town needed to be burned to the ground because of the stench of shit and chemicals that seemed to cover everything.

"I need to find a spell for fresh air," Molly muttered.

"Like I said, you get used to it, it's worse in the poor section of town," Vincent told them as he headed toward the smithy, wanting to get that taken care of first.

Molly glanced between the various people as they walked down the cobblestone street, a touch surprised by how dirty and worn their clothes looked, considering most of the people that had shown up at the farm hadn't looked quite as bad. 'Is that because they were wearing their Sunday best to visit the awakener?'

Derrick grimaced when they passed an alley and saw a drunk guy pissing on the wall or at least he hoped the bastard was drunk. 'Note to self, avoid the alleys.' He was a bit relieved when they managed to get to the smithy without any problems. He glanced between the teenagers that had short dark hair and arms that were almost as thick as his legs.

"Mister Blackstone, how can we help you?" Phil asked when the shopkeeper and two strangers walked over.

"We made a deal with an awakener at the Henderson farm, are you interested in having your cards awakened?" Vincent asked.

"Yes!" Ralph replied instantly.

"We don't have the money," Ralph admitted.

"He's not charging money, he has a talent that gives you an extra card and a cursed card, he'd be willing to let you keep three cards, if he gets to keep the cursed card," Vincent told them.

"So, we'd get one more card than normal and we wouldn't have to pay?" Phil asked, wanting to be clear since the last time he'd signed a contract he'd gotten fucked over.

"That's the deal," Vincent told them.

"Fantastic, when do we leave?" Phil asked, looking forward to getting his cards.

"As soon as you lock up," Vincent told them.

Molly glanced at the worn out bellows sitting on the bench. "How much for the worn out bellows?"

"You can have it," Ralph told her as he scooped it up and handed it to her, happy that he didn't have to make the trip across town to the trash pit to dispose of it since it was made out of fireproof leather which meant they couldn't just burn it in the forge like the rest of the trash.

"Thank you," Molly replied with a smile as she examined the old billows that looked to be in decent condition if you ignored the rip in the leather that looked like something had cut it rather than it just wearing out. "What happened to the bellows?"

Ralph scowled as he thought about the smith trying to kill him. "I messed up forging a sword and it cracked so Torin tossed the blade at me so I wouldn't mess up again. Thankfully he was still drunk so he missed and hit the bellows. Sadly, he took it out of what he should be paying me, so I'm not going to be eating well for the next couple of months because he said it was my fault."

"Look on the bright side, the contract is invalid once we have cards," Phil pointed out.

"He's going to be pissed," Ralph replied with a smirk, planning on leaving town as soon as he could grab his stuff once he had his cards.

"Let's go before Torin shows up," Vincent said as he started walking toward his shop so he could pick up the mushrooms for the alchemist.

Molly briefly considered stealing the dark metal hammer that was sitting by the anvil before deciding that the smith would probably murder the apprentices if something turned up missing or even go after their families if he was crazy enough to toss swords at his apprentices.

Phil quickly locked the shop up and followed the group, looking forward to getting out of town now that he was going to have his own cards.

"I'm just curious, can the forge handle mithril?" Molly asked as they left.

Ralph glanced around and dropped his voice to barely a whisper. "Just because the forge can handle it doesn't mean Torin can forge it without ruining its ability to channel magic. You'd be better off taking your business to the city if you're looking for decent gear."

"Good to know," Molly replied, taking that as confirmation that the forge could handle it even if the smith couldn't. 'That was easier than I was expecting,' she thought, wondering when the other shoe was going to drop.