Written in the Cards Part 6

Zaldar sighed in relief when his shuffle ability finally managed to give the old man another halfway decent card. "I fixed another one of his cards. Take a look at his Medusa ability."

"Medusa?" Vincent asked, wondering if the card would turn him female if he used it since the only medusas he knew about were female.

"Nearsighted Medusa card? Huh, how common are cards that give Immunity to Petrification?" Mist asked Beth as she seemed to know a lot about cards.

"They're generally at least uncommon, though most of them have some sort of side effect or limitation until you get to rare," Beth offered.

"It comes with the drawback of giving him a bunch of snakes on your head and turning anyone to stone that looks into his eyes if they're within six inches," Mist said as he spent the mana to boost the card. "It would also decrease his vision to six inches but we can probably fix that."

"I'd rather not have serpents coming out of my head but I wasn't planning on using the card, so go ahead," Vincent said, figuring they could always keep trying to swap it for something useful.

"Better gaze attack, longer snakes, hypnotic snakes and ding, we have a winner," he mused as he selected the card that lost the petrification attack and the nearsighted quality in exchange for a boost to the snake's poison. 'That's a straight upgrade as far as I'm concerned,' he muttered as he spent the mana to improve the card again. "I managed to get rid of the petrification curse and the nearsighted quality in exchange for an increase to the poison ability."

"Does it still have snakes?" Mia asked.

"That depends, do you want a boost to magic and the ability to cast spells with your snakes or do you want the snakes gone? Getting rid of the snakes would give you Poison Resistance. The rest of the options lose abilities or make things worse."

"Magic snakes," Mia suggested, causing her grandfather to shake his head.

"No snakes, we don't need people thinking you're a monster," Vincent told her.

"There's a chance that we can get rid of the snakes and it gives me magic, that's the right direction," Mia argued, wanting at least one magic card to go with the other card.

"Poison Resistance is useful," Vincent argued, fairly sure she was planning on being an adventurer once she had her cards.

Mia rolled her eyes. "There are magic items for that."

"Fine," Vincent agreed. "You can wear a hood."

Mist selected the Magical Medusa card then spent the mana to boost it. He looked through the options then selected the card that lost the poison attack completely and gained more Magic, Poison Resistance and gave each of the snakes a random magical talent that she could use while casting. He went through the boosting process a couple more times, increasing his magic and physical abilities and giving him Curse and Charm Resistance in exchange for a hideous appearance and doubling the number of snakes he'd have if he used it. "I might need you to shuffle this, I can't get rid of the negatives."

"Sure," Zeldar replied as he shuffled the card, causing it to change.

"Huh," Mist muttered when he read the new card, surprised that the only negative was an increase in warts and a taste for the flesh of children considering the stack of negatives the previous card had possessed. "Hag's Card: Excellent increase to magic, poor talent in all types of magic and excellent talent with curses, Sex Change: Automatically changes user to female if they aren't already. Hag's Durability: Petrification Immunity, Poison Immunity, High Curse and Charm Resistance and Good Resistance to Magic."

Vincent shook his head. "Probably just as well that I wasn't planning on using it."

"Yep," Mist agreed as he grabbed the second to last potion out of the basket and used his Treasury ability on it, creating a floating mirror where they could farm mana potions. "I have a feeling this is going to take a while, can you grab more potions while I finish boosting his cards?"

"I'll see what I can do," Derrick replied with an eager smile as he stepped through the portal, looking forward to picking up some mana potions himself. He grinned as he found himself in the entrance of a large alchemy shop filled with herbs and old fashioned glass bottles that contained strange components. His smile slid off his face when he heard the sound of breaking glass and noticed a goblin gleefully tossing things off of a shelf. "Hey!" he shouted as he activated his Bullet Time ability and put a couple of holes in the goblin, splattering everything with crimson blood. He sprinted down the aisle when he heard another bottle break. "Fucking goblins!"

He spun as he reached the end of the aisle and shot the two goblins that were climbing the shelves. 'I need a taunt ability,' he thought as the third goblin darted into one of the aisles to get away from him. 'It's less heroic combat and more clean up,' he thought as he ran down the row, taking a couple of seconds to shoot every goblin he saw when he reached the intersections for the aisles. He did his best to ignore the sound of breaking glass from his slugs when they went through the goblins without stopping. 'Fuck it, they'll break more if I stop,' he told himself as continued running down the row, trying to kill all of the goblins before they started tossing explosives around or lit the place on fire.

0o0o00

Mist sighed when he checked Elena's card and realized that it would take more mana than he had to upgrade it. "And we're done."

"What did I get?" Elena asked excitedly.

"Mad Alchemist," Mist replied with a smirk, rather impressed by her card.

"That tracks," Vivian teased her friend.

Elena stuck her tongue out at Vivian. "What does it do?"

"In addition to boosting your magic a remarkable amount, it gives you Acid Immunity, Excellent Fire Resistance, Good Agility and an Amazing Alchemy Talent. The yield and quality of alchemy products are increased by 200% and the negatives from using substandard ingredients are reduced by 20%."

"That doesn't sound crazy, what's the catch?" Vivian asked, figuring there had to be one.

"No catch, it's just awesome. It comes with the ability to summon a recipe book that she can summon and dismiss. Every potion she creates gets recorded along with the recipe if it's different allowing her to recreate her creations. She can also set a sample of an alchemy product on the book and it can divine a recipe. The card also gives her the ability to purify any potion or elixir by spending mana during the brewing process, removing or reducing negatives depending on the amount of mana spent. The Concentration ability gives her the ability to concentrate certain alchemy products by sacrificing another sample of the same product, increasing the potency by 50%."

"Damn!" Elena exclaimed. "Just the book makes it worth the slot, the rest is like chocolate cake on top."

"Pretty much," Mist agreed. "I have a horrible idea."

"What's that?" Elena asked, hoping that his idea didn't involve stealing her card.

Mist glanced between Vincent and Elena. "The Crone's Durability from Vincent's card would be fantastic to be able to add to the cursed cards, same with the Remarkable Alchemy ability from Ben's card since it boosts magic and alchemy, if you're willing to part with it and Vivian is willing to use them."

"Thirty points of magic and a boost to Alchemy? Absolutely and the Eldritch Crone card would be amazing and my other card should cover the age flaw," Vivian mused. "If not, we can probably fix it with alchemy."

"What about the curse?" Mia asked.

"It's a risk but we can probably mitigate it and the Crone card has an age drawback, so it's a risk anyway," Mist pointed out, fairly sure the bonuses were worth the curse.

Elena laughed as she handed Ben's card to Vivian. "I'm fine with giving her the card so I can get a better one, even if I have to figure out how to break a curse."

"I'm fine with that," Vincent said, not seeing a problem with taking a chance if it meant that Mia wouldn't have to risk her youth on the Crone card.

"Excellent," Vivian used the alchemist card, giving herself the Remarkable Alchemy ability which boosted her magic and alchemy talent. She focused on Vincent and used her ability to give him an extra card. "I think your cards are trying to kill you, the new one teleports your right hand without giving you some method of getting it back or regenerating or even surviving the blood loss."

"Story of my life," Vincent replied with a shrug, not particularly bothered about it since he'd been living with the disappointment of not having cards for over forty years and Mist had managed to fix the rest of them.

"We can probably fix it," Mist said as he went to work upgrading Vincent's new card.

Vivian focused on her cursed card ability, causing a window to appear with a list of her abilities on it. 'That's useful.' She selected the Remarkable Alchemy ability and the Magically Talented ability as that gave a general talent boost for all types of magic and an extra boost for the user's Enchanting, Rituals and Arcane Magic then hit the button, causing a card to appear over Vincent's head next to his fourth card. "The card is cursed to randomly turn you invisible for a couple of minutes a day."

"That could be a lot worse," Beth pointed out.

"It certainly could," Vivian agreed. "It also gives someone the ability to cause their eyes to glow and see auras that might not be there in addition to the Magical Talent Boost and the Remarkable Alchemy ability."

"I'll add it to the list of things to fix," Mist offered as he grabbed the last mana potion in the basket. He drained the potion then got back to work trying to boost Vincent's cards, wanting to finish Vincent's cards before he took a break and ate breakfast.

"How many Alchemy cards are you going to try to get?" Beth asked Elena.

"At least four," Elena replied with a grin, hoping her extra cards ended up as good or better than her first two Alchemy cards. My third card should be related to alchemy given my profession and my bloodline and the cursed card should have a couple of Alchemy boosting qualities. I happen to know one of the apprentices at the other alchemy shop would love to have his cards awakened so he can get out of a bad contract. That would give me the ability to grab a different cursed card with alchemy boosts, assuming Mist is sticking around for a couple of days so I can sneak Franklin out of the city."

Mist glanced over at Elena then went back to trying to fix Vincent's third card. "I don't have a problem with sticking around for a couple of days so we can help the rest of the townsfolk as long as Mr. Henderson is willing to make sure the Mayor doesn't cause trouble."

"Grandpa said it was fine," Beth said as she glanced around to make sure her grandmother wasn't within hearing distance. "I think he's hoping the asshole gives him a reason to kick the shit out of him."

"In that case, I'd like to see how far I can push things by grabbing six cards with alchemy related bonuses," Elena said as she glanced at her friend, "especially if I can get Vivian to stick the general magic talent boost on at least one of the alchemy cards I end up with. I'd have plenty of magic and talent to be a really good magic user in addition to my alchemy."

"I'm happy to help," Vivian replied with a smile, wanting the best for her friend.

"There's nothing wrong with reaching for the stars, especially if you have a decent chance of grabbing one," Mist offered, more than happy to help the cute alchemist become a legend since she seemed to be genuinely nice. He pulled his attention back to Vincent's annoying card, fairly sure he was going to need Zaldar to shuffle it at least one more time.

0o0o0

"Five percent celestial bronze, ninety five percent shit," Sarah muttered as she tossed the ingot of 'bronze' in the crucible.

"Ninety five percent shit?" Molly asked as she walked over to the forge to see what Sarah was working on, glad that Victoria had already scoured the mirror farm as Sarah seemed a bit distracted.

Sarah glanced over at Molly, making a mental note to pay more attention to her surroundings as she hadn't heard her new friend. "Five point three percent of the ingot is celestial bronze, the rest is just bronze, I'm trying to extract the celestial bronze so I can mix it with the mithril and make a couple of really nice sets of Bracers of Armor."

"Different melting points?" Molly asked.

"It shouldn't be hard, celestial bronze takes almost three times the heat as normal bronze to melt which means I should be able to pour the bronze off then filter it. The real annoyance is getting the celestial bronze and the mithril to mix. I might need a better arcane forge," Sarah explained, fairly sure they were going to need to go into the town or find a city with a better forge.

"How much of this did you know before you picked up your skill?" Molly asked.

"Everything other than the melting point of the 'fictional' material and how to create the magic bracers," Sarah replied with a grin as she gestured toward the set of steel Bracers of Armor that she'd already finished as a test product.

"Really?" Molly asked.

"More or less," Sarah replied, thinking about the pair of bracers she'd made in her metal shop class for the con that she'd gone to with her friend. "I wouldn't have been able to make a pair of bracers in twenty minutes but I wasn't bad for a teenager. How are they doing with the wagon?"

"Better than I was expecting, the springs and the metal plates worked like a charm," Molly told her, relieved that they wouldn't have to deal with feeling every tiny bump in the road.

"Good, I wasn't looking forward to riding in a bumpy wagon," Sarah said, thinking about the one time she'd ridden on the back of an old fashioned wagon at a ren faire. "How are they doing with everyone's cards?"

"Mist finished with most of the townsfolk, now he's just trying to fix a couple of cursed cards so we can get a better alchemist," Molly explained.

"Nice, there's a bit of crossover between alchemy and blacksmithing or at least the magical stuff that I can do, I wouldn't mind grabbing an alchemy talent if I can find one," Sarah said.

"That shouldn't be an issue, one of the girls that we're recruiting can give people that haven't had their cards awakened two extra cards and add two qualities from her list to one of the cards so we should be able to make you a nice alchemist and blacksmithing card if we find a blacksmith apprentice that needs their cards awakened."

"Sweet!" Sarah exclaimed. "This is going to be awesome, I want to learn how to enchant everything so I can double dip."

"That's the plan," Molly assured her, looking forward to seeing what type of cards they could get if Mist pushed himself to the limit. "Speaking of cards and mana, can you make anything that boosts magic?"

"Not with the forge I've got," Sarah glanced at the low grade steel anvil, "or the anvil."

"Seriously? Nothing?" Molly asked.

"Sure, I could make a silver bracelet that would help your mana regeneration but it would be a drop in a bucket compared to the amount of mana that Mist was tossing around to upgrade the cards. "I'd probably burn out the crystals and runes on the forge if I tried to get it hot enough to melt mithril, let alone something more impressive. I doubt the anvil would survive either, it's not particularly good steel."

"Is that because we're in a mirror?" Molly asked.

Sarah shook her head. "No, I checked, the original isn't any better. It's fine for fixing farm equipment or even making steel swords, there's a difference between basic equipment and the tools you'd need if you wanted to forge high end magical metal."

"So you're saying we should rob a dwarven smithy?" Molly asked, mostly joking.

Sarah giggled as she pictured Victoria trying to sneak into a dwarven forge to grab one of the extra hammers so they could use it to make a pocket dimension. "It would certainly make it easier but I'm not sure they actually have dwarves."

"I'll put it on the list of things to ask, do you want breakfast now or do you want to wait until you're done?" Molly asked.

Sarah glanced at the crucible. "I'd take a burger while I'm waiting for the bronze to melt. Full works, with extra onions and pickles."

Molly focused and conjured a burger with extra onions and pickles that was wrapped in a paper napkin. "There you go."

"Thank you," Sarah replied with a smile as she accepted the burger. "I'm glad that we don't have to worry about food."

"Same," Molly agreed as she conjured a glass of lemonade. "I'm going to check to see if Mist has finished fixing the old man's cards."

Sarah gestured toward the steel Bracers of Armor that she'd already finished. "Can you take those to Derrick?"

"Sure," Molly replied as she set Sarah's lemonade on the bench and grabbed the bracers. "He'll probably appreciate having armor without having to put up with the weight or the bulk."

"Every little bit helps," Sarah replied then started working on her burger, glad that she had a napkin so she didn't have to touch her burger as her hands weren't particularly clean.

"Yep," Molly agreed as she headed for the exit.

0o0o0

Zaldar smiled as his power turned the card that created a bad odor into a card that created insane rats that would attack the user. "And we have a summon card."

"Nice, those are always useful," Beth said.

Zaldar laughed. "It summons a hoard of rats that will try to eat him."

"It's a start, Mist can probably fix it," Beth argued.

"It's worth a shot," Mist agreed as he spent the mana to boost Vincent's sight card. "Start working on the broken teleporting card while I finish his sight card, it keeps switching the body parts that it wants to teleport at people without getting less dangerous."

"Sure," Zaldar replied as he grabbed his lemonade off the wooden table that Lisa had hauled over when it became clear that it was going to take a bit to finish everything.

"Invisible legs, invisible arms, head, no eyes, ooh…" Mist trailed off as saw the fifth card, surprised by the jump in quality of most of the abilities and the change to the invisibility curse since it went from randomly activating to a useful ability under the user's control as far as he could tell. "At least we know that we can get rid of the cursed qualities if I upgrade them enough."

"What did he get?" Mia asked excitedly.

Mist carefully selected the fifth card, not wanting to accidently hit the wrong card. "Angelic Eyes of Merlin's Apprentice: It gives you an Amazing Boost to Magic and Alchemy talent and a Remarkable boost to all types of magic, an additional Incredible boost to Enchanting, Rituals and Arcane Magic and triple the yield and effect of the positive qualities on any alchemy or cooking products you make. True Sight allows the user to see through illusions and identify magical items and alchemy products or ingredients. Hidden Cards: Gives you the ability to hide cards from other people."

"Dealer!" Mia blurted out, shocked by the quality of the True Sight ability, since identifying alchemy reagents usually involved looking through a bunch of books and hoping the descriptions were accurate.

"That worked better than I was expecting," Vivian admitted, relieved that the curse had turned into a positive trait.

"I'll say," Vincent agreed as Derrick walked out of the mirror with a wooden box.

"For the record, I hate goblins," Derrick complained as he set the box filled with potions on the wooden folding chair next to Mist. "We need bags of holding."

"It would certainly make looting easier," Mist agreed as he glanced at the potions. "Elena, do you have any way to tell if a potion is safe to drink?"

"Not without taking them back to the shop," Elena admitted. "Mom has a magic item that can give her a rough idea of what they do."

"How rough?" Derrick asked.

"General grade, effect and level of purity," Elena replied with a shrug. "Getting a magical item that can identify common potions costs about twenty gold, it's expensive but not out of the question for an alchemist. Getting something that can accurately identify the exact effects of an alchemy product can run you a couple of thousand gold if you get lucky."

"Best guess?" Mist asked as he picked up a couple of the blue potions.

Elena took one of the potions, popped the cock and sniffed it from a couple of inches away then closer when it smelled like one of the potions from the family shop. "They're the right color and they smell like the potions Mom makes, it's probably safe if I understand your ability correctly. If you're going to drink it, you should drink it in the next couple of minutes, they go weird if they're open too long."

"Makes sense." Mist took the potion and downed it, relieved that it tasted exactly the same and refilled a decent chunk of his mana pool. "Two more cards and then we can see if awakening your cards breaks Mia's curse."

"We can hope," Vincent replied, hopeful that his family would finally be able to put the curse behind them. "I'm looking forward to seeing if you can swap the summon to something other than rats."

"Same," Mist agreed as he turned his attention to the summon card. He spent the mana to improve it and glanced over the options. "Increased Strength and Agility for the rats. Increased Agility and Magic and you get twice as many rats at the cost of the rats having less Strength. Mutated rats, more Strength and Endurance but they're hideous and less intelligent. More intelligent rats that have fire claws. Winged Rats that can scream?"

"What do you think?" Vincent asked Mia.

"Grab the one that doubles the rats and gives them magic," Mia suggested.

'Probably better than making intelligent pyrokinetics,' Mist mused as he selected the second card and spent the mana to boost it again.

Zaldar used his power and carefully selected the broken Teleportation card that Mist had finally given up on fixing and used his power to shuffle it, causing it to change into a card that boosted Vincent's summon card. "Huh, the flaw might actually increase their strength."

Mia turned to look at Zaldar. "What?"

"I shuffled his teleportation card, it changed into a card that improves his summons. It drops the Strength of anything you summon by your magic attribute but sets a minimum strength that is probably higher than the rats start with. It also increases their Durability and Magic by a tenth of your magic."

"Huh, that's surprisingly useful," Mist admitted as he skimmed over the details for the Apprentice Summoner card. "Let's see if I can turn the rats into something useful," he mused as he got to work 'fixing' the cards.

Molly stepped out of the mirror to the farm and turned to look at Derrick. "Just the person I wanted to see."

Derrick turned to look at Molly. "What do you need?"

"Catch," Molly said as she tossed the Bracers of Armor to him. "They should protect you from most of the guards and weak monsters in the area."

"Cool, does she have enough for everyone?" Derrick asked as he quickly slipped them on.

Molly shook her head. "Not yet, I think she's planning on jury rigging the forge so she can forge mithril before she worries about making more, if she can figure out how to do it without breaking it."

"That sounds like a good way to destroy the forge and cause it to explode," Beth warned her.

"We should probably check on that," Molly admitted and headed back into the mirror for the farm, not sure that Sarah realized how dangerous it was.

"Let's go," Azara said as she followed Molly.

"Sure," Beth said as she followed her friend, curious about the copy of her home.

"Any luck?" Mia asked Mist, curious how the cards were coming.

"More than I was expecting," Mist admitted. "Should I stick with the rats and hope I can fix the fact that they still want to attack you or take an upgrade and swap to a horde of magical slimes or go with a swarm of vampiric bats? Both of them lose the hostile quality."

"Magical slimes, I don't want to get a talent for blood magic," Mia told him, wanting to stay away from any card that had a connection with vampires.

"Probably a good idea," Mist agreed as he grabbed the card and spent the mana to boost it again. He glanced over the cards then selected the card that gave the summoner a boost to their mana regeneration based on how many summons they had summoned. He was a touch surprised when the mana cost was still pretty reasonable to boost the card. 'Weird, it's racking up bonuses and it's pretty cheap,' he mused as he selected the card that halved the Strength scores of the slimes, doubled the number she could summon and gave the user the ability to summon a t-shirt with "I was slimed!" printed on it. 'No point worrying about their strength when they're casters and there's a minimum,' he mused as he spent the mana for more options.

Mia shook her head. "It's going to be weird making slimes combat viable, most kids can kill them with a stick."

"It depends on the type of slimes, some of the nastier ones in other areas are acidic and quite dangerous," Vincent pointed out.

"And if these were acid, you'd have a point," Mia replied with a grin.

'Crap, crap, more crap, more slimes or Eldritch Summoner?' Mist double checked the description of the Eldritch Summoner card. "Eldritch Summoner: Incredible magic, excellent Agility and Durability: Summon twenty magic using slimes with one point of strength, fifty agility, two toughness and twenty magic. Their intelligence scales with the summoner's intelligence. Each summoned creature increases mana regeneration by one percent. Summon Equipment: Curiously warm slime covered t-shirt that boosts magic by a good amount while worn."

"Is that twenty percent more mana or twenty percent of the amount you're already regenerating?" Mia asked.

"It doesn't say," Mist replied as he spent the mana to boost the card. "Boost to agility, boost to summoner's strength and you get tentacles…" he trailed off as he read the rest of the description. 'Nope, not happening.' He checked the next card. 'Slime Specialist? Slimes gain ninja combat skills but the boost to summoned creatures only applies to slimes, that makes it less useful, especially if we give the card to Vivian so she can make a bunch of summon cards.'

"Tentacles?" Mia asked.

"Mutation, it's not worth it," Mist replied as he checked the fourth card. "Eldritch Professor of Conjuration: It has everything the basic summoner had and it comes with the ability to instantly teach summoned minions spells you know by spending mana. Nice…" he trailed off as he checked the fifth card and realized that it was even better, if only because everything seemed to be packaged in one ability and it included another item conjuration ability. 'Eldritch Professor of Legendary Conjuration: Includes the ability to conjure panties that always stay clean, increase your mana regeneration and increase the Durability and Intelligence of your summoned creatures. Yeah, that works.' He selected the fifth card, not seeing a reason to pass up on the extra ability, especially since it was packaged as one ability.

"That sounds like it would take a bit of set up," Mia mused.

"Probably," Mist agreed as he checked how much mana it would take to boost the card. 'Yeah, I'm not spending a couple of weeks pouring mana into the card, especially when the abilities might get split up or change.' He turned his attention to the summoning boosting card and spent the mana to improve it.