Written in the Cards part 2

"Shit," Derrick cursed when he walked around the bend in the trail they'd been following and spotted the tipped over gypsy wagon and the remains of several horses that had been torn apart by wild animals and were covered in carrion birds.

"They should have hired more guards," the hunter mused as he took in the scene, not particularly surprised that the gypsy had gotten himself killed.

"Wolves?" Molly asked as she glanced around, wishing she had some type of weapon or magic since her technopathy and cyber skills were basically useless for dealing with monsters.

"Or something worse," the hunter replied as he glanced around, wanting to make sure the monsters had actually left.

"Can I get some help?!" a girl called out from inside the wagon. "The door is stuck!"

"Just a minute!" Ted called out as he headed over to see if he could get the door to the wagon open.

Mist used the distraction as everyone rushed over to the wagon to quickly check the dead guy's cards that he hadn't had a chance to check as he hadn't wanted to admit he had them until after he'd had the chance to check them. 'Summoning: Using the card allows you to summon unseen servants that can repair things and clean as well as complete simple tasks. Conjuration: Healing Food, quality and type limited by experience. One uncommon card and a rare, the food card is almost worth using but I can probably find better and I only have four slots left,' he mused as he put the cards on the inside pocket of his jacket.

Ted managed to yank the door open.

"Thank you," a red haired teenage girl wearing a garishly colored patchwork dress offered as she stepped out of the back of the wagon, "it was stuck."

"Nothing a bit of elbow grease couldn't fix," Ted replied with a smile, not surprised the girl hadn't managed to budge the door as it had taken a bit of effort to open.

Mist studied the pair of cards floating over the girl's head as he walked over. 'Horse conjuration: Summons a draft horse, can only have one summon active at a time. Gypsy: Minor increase to allure and agility. That's not particularly impressive, is that because she's unlucky or because she didn't have enough training?'

"Are you hurt?" Victoria asked as she used her healing wind ability on the girl.

"Just a bit…" the gypsy relaxed as her arm stopped hurting from when she'd smacked it against the table when the wagon tipped over. "Much better, thank you!"

"You're welcome, is everyone?" Victoria asked, realizing that there wasn't a nice way of asking if everyone else was dead.

"Dead?" she asked as she looked over at her uncle's corpse that had been partially eaten by scavengers, feeling worse about the horses than her annoying uncle. "Probably, everything was fine and then my uncle screamed and the wagon tipped over. I'm just lucky that I didn't hit my head on anything. I heard my cousin scream ‘shit’ then nothing. He probably ran into the woods."

"I'll take a look, just follow the trail to town or wait until I get back," the hunter said then headed into the forest, easily following the boy's tracks thanks to the damp ground.

"What were you doing out here by yourselves?" Derrick asked, surprised that they'd risk traveling considering the number of monsters the hunter had told them about.

"Trying to find an Awakener for myself and my cousin, we missed him by a couple of days because of bad weather and he was early," the girl complained, annoyed that she'd missed her chance to get her cards. "The wagon has wards to keep monsters from noticing us but they don't work on powerful monsters."

"Were you close?" Tiffany asked, surprised the girl was taking things as well as she was.

"Not particularly, my cousin flirts with anything and everything wearing a skirt and my uncle liked gambling too much," the girl complained. "Which is why we couldn't hire a couple of guards."

"No money?" she asked, feeling bad for the girl.

"No, he took everyone's money in cards," the girl complained. "He's really good at it, probably because of his gambling card. All of the guards were more than a bit pissed."

"Makes sense," Mist mused as he focused on the well of magic that he could sense now that he'd used his cards and pushed magic into the Gypsy Card, causing the card to flicker and causing five ethereal cards to appear over the Gypsy card. 'That barely took a drop of mana, fuck, maybe I am the demon king. As long as you don't start talking to yourself, you'll be fine. Right, pretty sure that ship sailed years ago,' he mused as he checked the descriptions of the ethereal cards. 'Better allure, better agility, better stamina and agility, increased illusion magic and allure or Weak talent: All magic, weak allure and agility.' He selected the last card, causing the other four potential cards to vanish and the last card to take the place of the Gypsy card.

'Okay, that's a bit better,' he mused as he pushed magic into the girl's other card, curious if he could give her something more interesting than a single horse. 'Oh, two horses, improved movement speed for the horse, a runner card that would give her the speed of a horse, a magic horse and a horse with better strength.' He frowned slightly, not sure which card to pick. "If you had a card that summoned a horse, would you rather have a card that summons two horses or a really fast horse or would you rather have a magic horse?" he asked the girl.

"Magic using summons are pretty rare, that would be cool, why?" she asked as she looked at the older man with strange clothes.

"That depends, can you keep a secret?" Mist asked.

"I'm a gypsy, we're all about secrets," she replied with a grin.

"What do you think?" Mist asked Tiffany, knowing that she had the ability to read people.

"She's probably trustworthy," Tiffany replied, having a good feeling about the girl.

"I have an Awakening talent, I can spend mana to improve the cards you'll eventually awaken," Mist told her,

"How much?" the girl asked, knowing that the Awakeners with special talents generally charged more.

"I don't know," Mist admitted. "I'm not part of the guild and I don't have a clue how much I'm supposed to charge or what we're supposed to avoid, mostly because we got summoned from another world and we've only had our cards for a couple of hours."

"That explains the clothes," the girl mused. "So, you're basically looking for a local guide for a couple of days or a couple of weeks?"

"Basically," Mist agreed. "And I really want to see how far I can push my new power."

"What's my other card?" she asked, fairly sure the other card would be some version of a gypsy card as that was pretty standard for her clan.

"It's a gypsy card, it was going to give you basic allure and improved agility but I pushed it to give you magic, allure and agility," Mist offered.

Molly shook her head. "You're not supposed to use magic on people without permission."

"Sorry," Mist offered. "I saw the cards floating over her head and I got curious."

"Don't worry about it, I'd rather have magic," the girl assured them. "Look, I'm not sure I buy your story about being from another world or having an awakening card but your clothes are certainly strange and I'm pretty much screwed if you can't help me because everyone in town would charge an arm and a leg to help with the wagon on account of my being a gypsy and because he 'cheated' them out of a lot of money. So yeah, if you can help me replace the busted wheel with the spare and help me drag it back to town, I'm willing to follow you around for a couple of days and answer questions. If you can actually awaken my cards, I'd be willing to stick around a while, especially if I get fantastic cards."

"Piece of cake," Ted said thoughtfully as he studied the wagon. "We're going to need a couple of branches and something to use as the fulcrum."

"What?" Eric asked, not sure what he was talking about as he'd only been sort of paying attention.

"We're going to need a large rock or something for the lever," Ted explained as he headed toward the woods.

"Gotcha," Eric replied. "Does anyone have a hatchet?"

"Yeah," Derrick replied as he pulled a hatchet out of the pocket of his trench coat and followed Ted.

"Do you seriously just walk around with everything in your coat?" Victoria asked as she followed Derrick to help grab the branches that would let them flip the wagon back on the wheels.

Derrick laughed. "No, just when I'm hiking in the forest."

"Can you make the summon intelligent?" she asked hopefully. "Because having a horse that just tosses around magic sounds dangerous."

"No clue, I'll see what I can do," Mist replied as he selected the card that would let her summon a magic horse. He spent more mana, causing another five cards to appear over the magic horse card. "Flying horse, two horses that can walk on water, a crippled, pipe smoking horse that can learn tricks and keeps their memory between summons, a donkey that farts fire and a horse that lets you meld with them to create a centaur."

"Can you fix the crippled part?" she asked hopefully, having no interest in the last two.

"Probably," Mist replied, figuring he'd just keep boosting the card until he had something useful.

"Let's go with that," she said, hoping she wasn't making a mistake.

Mist selected the crippled horse card, causing the card to replace the magic horse card. He spent more and checked the five cards that appeared. "Looks like they all kept the learning trick and the part about keeping their memory, that means we're looking at a slow fire breathing horse, a sadistic horse that likes kicking people, a horse that has the ability to teleport short distances, a horse that can duplicate himself or a horse that can use magic."

"Go with magic," she suggested.

"Sure," Mist replied as he selected the magic quality. He spent the mana to improve the card again, putting a slight dent in his available mana. "Arcane Rider: Boosts your Speed, Magic and Stamina while the horse is summoned. The scholar card increases the horse's intelligence, the warlord greatly boosts the horse's strength and speed and the shadow horse card gives the horse the ability to vanish and the last one drastically increases the horse's ability to haul loads but changes them into a donkey."

She considered the intelligence boost for a couple of seconds before deciding that she'd rather have the boosts herself if he wasn't joking about her ability. "Let's go with the Arcane Rider."

"Sure," Mist replied as he selected the rider card. He focused on the card and pushed mana into it, dropping his available mana down to half his total and creating another five ethereal cards. "Huh, that's a hell of a jump."

"What happened?" she asked.

"The options got interesting," Mist replied as he read over the five possible cards. "Archmage's Familiar seems like the best deal but the Unicorn Lord comes with a boost to purification magic."

"What about the other three?" she asked.

"They just boost the horse's speed and give it wild magic," Mist explained.

"What does the Archmage's Familiar do?" she asked.

"It lets you summon a horse like creature that bestows Enhanced Speed, Magic, Stamina and Durability while it's summoned, this creature's intelligence depends on the user's intelligence and gets a boost to their fighting ability based on the summoner's magic."

"How much of a boost does the Unicorn give me?" she asked thoughtfully.

"Purification and a large boost to White Magic," Mist told her.

"Go with the archmage's familiar," she suggested, trying to contain her enthusiasm at the idea of having the card he was talking about.

Mist selected the Archmage's Familiar card and spent half of his remaining mana to boost it, curious what they'd get. "Huh, okay, I should have expected that."

"Let me guess, it broke?" she asked warily.

"No, it picked up the ability to shape change, do you want a tiger that can change into a girl with magic, a dog that changes into a teenage boy that can summon a lute and play music, a teleporting rabbit that turns into a bunny girl, a giant frog that turns into an magician, or a raccoon that turns into a halfling thief?" Mist asked.

"Tiger," the girl replied without hesitation. "I don't need someone stealing everything that isn't nailed down when I walk into town and I don't really like frogs. I don't think the rabbit or the dog would be able to pull the wagon."

"Makes sense," Mist replied as he selected the tiger option. He frowned slightly as he focused on the summoning card and realized that he'd need most of his entire mana pool if he wanted to meaningfully improve the card. "That's probably as much as I'm going to be able to improve your summoning card today."

"Out of mana?" she asked, knowing that some cards used mana.

"Not yet, but it's getting expensive to upgrade," Mist admitted. "Do you want me to work on your Gypsy card?"

"That would be great," the girl replied excitedly.

0o0o0

Mist pulled his attention away from the broken wheel that looked like it had been sawed partially through when he noticed the hunter returning with a red haired teenager that was also dressed in garishly bright clothes. "Looks like they found your cousin."

Zora turned and glared at her cousin, not sure if she should be happy that he looked reasonably intact or annoyed since it meant that there probably wasn't a monster. "Why did you run?"

"Don't be like that Zora," Zaldar replied as they walked over to where the group was resting after putting the wagon to rights and replacing the wheel with the spare, his eyes jumping between each of the girls in the group. "There was a monster, I had to lead it away."

'Bullshit, you ran screaming,' Zora thought, glad that she'd already looted her uncle's coin purse and moved most of it to her own since her cousin would probably just waste it on ale, gambling and some of the questionable girls in town. "What type of monster?"

"Some type of beastman or werewolf," Zaldar replied, not exactly sure what he'd seen as he hadn't stuck around for a good look.

"So you just left me to die?" Zora demanded, not particularly impressed by her cousin.

"The wagon is warded against monsters, I knew you'd be fine," he assured her, glad that the wards hadn't failed and that everything had worked out.

"Fine, I'm glad that you didn't get ripped apart," Zora replied.

"See, I knew you loved me," Zaldar replied smugly.

Mist focused on the cards over the young man's head. 'Gypsy: Enhanced Agility and Allure, twenty percent better odds of winning games of chance. Active ability, Favorable Deal, using the ability reshuffles the deck in a favorable way. Cool down, one minute. Thief: steal one easily stolen item your target is wearing or has in their pockets or bag. Cool Down, thirty seconds. Not the best cards but he could probably make a living until someone cuts his hands off for cheating or stealing.'

"As if," Zora grumbled. "We're going to have to drag the wagon back to town so we can buy some horses."

"Why? We can just come back with horses," Zaldar argued.

Zora shook her head. "Someone cut the wheel a quarter of the way through on the inside so it wasn't visible, it was just a matter of time before it broke, they're probably waiting until we come back or until tomorrow to steal the wagon."

"Someone cut the wheel?" the hunter asked, wishing he was surprised considering some of the people in the town had the morals of a snake, including the mayor.

"They cut part of the way through a couple spokes, the fact that they made it this far is a miracle," Derrick explained.

"Do you know if your father played against the Mayor or any of his men?" the hunter asked, hoping the answer was no.

"Yeah, he laughed it off at the time but I could see the way he looked at my dad, like he wanted to put him in a grave after beating him to death," Zaldar replied with a sigh.

"Shit," the hunter complained. "That complicates things."

"Are there any farms in the area that have horses to sell that aren't in the town?" Derrick asked, trying to find a solution that wouldn't result in a couple of teenagers getting murdered or ripped apart by monsters because the mayor didn't know when to cut his losses.

"Your best bet is to try Mr. Henderson's farm, he doesn't care for the mayor so he might be willing to sell you a horse," the hunter suggested. "Just take the next path to the right as you're heading to town. You can't miss it, it's the only farmhouse built out of stone in the area."

"Are you leaving?" Molly asked warily.

"Yeah, I'm glad that you're alive but I don't want any part of this," the hunter explained as he pulled a couple of silver coins out of his pocket and tossed them to her. "I promised everyone a drink for saving me, have a drink, I have family in town so if you show up with the gypsy, you're just a stranger."

"Yeah, we should probably avoid the town completely," Tiffany suggested, having realized that the hunter was terrified of the Mayor.

"This sucks," Sarah complained as she walked over and grabbed the harness for the horses and started pulling, causing the wagon to start moving. "Let's go."

"How the hell?!" Zaldar blurted, surprised that she could actually move the wagon.

"I'm a blacksmith," Sarah replied smugly.

"Card," Zaldar muttered when he realized that was the only way the girl would be able to move the wagon.

"Do you need to take a minute to say your respects to your father?" Tiffany asked Zaldar as she pointed at the shallow grave they'd dug off the side of the road for his father's remains.

"Yeah," Zaldar replied as he started walking over to the grave, not sure how to feel about his father ending up in a shallow grave because of gambling. 'Yeah, your cards ended up being a bad hand.'

"Do you need help?" Mist asked Sarah.

"Nah, I'm good," Sarah replied cheerfully as she headed down the trail, rather amused that she could pull the wagon without too much trouble thanks to her magical powers.

"Let us know if you need a break," Mist told her, not seeing a reason to argue since Victoria had healing magic and Sarah had a card that made her stronger.

"Are you seriously going to let her move it by herself?" Eric asked.

"She could probably pick the wagon up by herself and carry it," Mist pointed out, not sure how much he was exaggerating as there was a big difference between dragging something with wheels and lifting something off the ground.

"Not the point," Eric replied as he followed Sarah.

Zaldar spent a minute looking at the stick that marked his father's grave then followed the rest of the group, not wanting to be left alone in the monster infested woods.

"Where do you normally live?" Victoria asked the gypsy girl after a couple of minutes of walking in silence.

"In our wagons, we generally travel around and play music and do a bit of trading to support ourselves," Zora explained.

"Aren't you worried about the monsters?" Victoria asked.

Zora shook her head. "Not really, we have wards on the wagons and some of the elders are pretty scary."

"Do you ever go to the cities?" Eric asked, wondering what the cities were like.

"No, they stink and most of the guards don't like Gypsies, they think we're thieves," Zaldar complained.

Zora sighed dramatically. "It's not our fault that some of the children don't like staying with abusive parents or orphanages and skip town at the same time we just happen to leave the area."

"Right, completely unrelated," Mist agreed as he spent the mana to improve Zaldar's gypsy card, figuring he might as well boost it until the mana cost increased to the point where he couldn't since he didn't have any combat skills or reasons to save mana as it was regenerating at what felt like a decent rate or possibly even an exceptional rate considering he had a feeling his mana pool would be full in a couple of hours.

"Exactly," Zora agreed, trying to stay positive so she didn't have to worry about the town sending someone to kill them.

"Do you know how long it normally takes for someone's mana pool to refill?" Mist asked.

"It generally depends on the size of your pool and what cards you have, most of the magic related cards increase your magic and your magic regeneration even if they don't list it. Most of the magic users I know take a day or two to recharge if they use all of their magic, grandma can get most of hers back after a couple of hours of sleep but she's got five cards that relate to magic."

"The mana I spent healing everyone is already back," Victoria mused.

"You had rare cards, right?" Mist asked, wishing he had a manual or a chart that explained everything.

Victoria shrugged. "Angelic technically, but they probably count as rare."

"They're actually a step past rare, and two steps below legendary. It's common, uncommon, unusual, rare, angelic and legendary. Technically, divine cards and demon king cards would be after legendary in rarity and power but you generally only see one every couple of generations."

'So much for random chance,' Mist admitted, not sure how to feel about the fact that he was supposed to be the demon king. "Good to know."

0o0o0

Mist glanced between the suspiciously life-like garden gnomes scattered along the dirt road that led to the stone mansion and the white haired farmer that was standing on the dirt path that led to his house, wondering if they should just head to the town and let Derrick deal with the mayor rather than deal with the old man. "Sorry to bother you, some jackass in town tried to kill our new friends by cutting halfway through a couple of the wagon spokes and we're looking for a new horse and a place to sleep for the night."

"We can sleep under the wagon," Derrick assured him. "We just need a place to park it."

Mr. Henderson glanced between Mist and the group of children. "I can't sell you a horse for anything reasonable, but you can park the wagon in the field next to the house for a couple of days. It should be safe enough, just don't step on the gnomes."

"We'll be careful," Tiffany assured him.

"Much appreciated, they bite and I don't want to listen to another lecture from my wife about the damned things eating people," he warned them as he started walking back toward the house. "Come along, the boar should be just about done and my wife will want to talk your ear off."

"Thank you," Derrick told them, glad that the old man seemed pretty reasonable.

Mist glanced at Tiffany and sighed in relief when she nodded, letting everyone know that they could probably trust the old farmer. 'Hopefully the wards on the wagon include gnomes.'