Written in the Cards:

"Congratulations, you've been summoned to be the heroes of the land and defeat the demon king," the king's herald announced in a stuffy and practiced tone as soon as the summoning spell finished pulling the most recent group of 'heroes' across time and space.

"Yes!" one of the guys that had been summoned shouted. "Fucking Isekai!"

"Fuck," one of the other people muttered under his breath when he noticed that several of the nobles at court were looking at them like they were country bumpkins and not heroes destined to save them. 'This isn't going to end well.'

Mist glanced at the guy that looked to be in his late twenties that was muttering under his breath, fairly sure the guy in the trench coat had the right idea judging by the official's tone and the way some of the nobles were looking at them or more specifically at the strange and unfamiliar ornate cards everyone in the group was holding. He glanced at the other six people that had been summoned with him then glanced down at the cards he was holding, mentally noting the fact that he could feel them and that everything seemed too crisp for him to be dreaming, despite the fact that he was apparently the 'victim'/beneficiary of a summoning ritual. He glanced at the card that he was holding in his right hand. 'Ritual of Demonic Awakening? Slotting this card in the back of your hand allows you to spend mana to improve the cards someone generates when awakened as part of the awakening process. Mana cost depends on the extent you're trying to augment their cards. Rank: Demon King? Yeah, that can't be a good thing.'

"In a minute the voice of the world is going to ask that you bind your cards, you should refuse as most of your cards won't be useful enough for heroes," the herald said in a snooty tone.

"Great, one of those," the guy in the trench coat complained as he glanced around the throne room, looking for somewhere to run and noticing a disturbing lack of options. "Let me guess, you want to inspect our cards and you'll exchange them for something 'better' if they don't match what you think we should have, right?'

"Of course, it wouldn't do to have our heroes unprepared," the man replied with a smile that most used car salesmen would have found creepy.

"Lovely," he replied as he checked his cards, fairly sure they were planning on screwing him over. 'Vampire Hunter: Increased Regeneration, Stamina and Accuracy? Rank: Rare. Fuck yeah!' He grinned when he looked at his other card and realized that he knew exactly how to use it. 'Bullet Time: Unlimited ammo, bullets ignore magical defenses. Increased damage and agility, damage and agility increase scales with mana consumed. Mana cost: half total, lasts two minutes.'

"Don't do that!" the herald snapped when one of the summoned sacrifices slotted his cards despite the fact that he shouldn't have had a clue how to use them. "Grab him! If anyone else tries to bind their cards, kill them!"

"Bullet time!" the guy in the trench coat shouted as he pulled his sawed off shotgun that he kept in case he ran into a bear or a moose while running out of his trench coat and proceeded to shoot the herald in the head, causing most of the people that had just gotten summoned to freak out as blood, brains and skull fragments splattered everywhere.

"Fuck!" Mist cursed as he covered his ears as the guy in the trench coat went to town on the guards and nobles like they were extras in a John Wick movie. He glanced at the top card of the two he was holding in his left hand, wondering if he was supposed to be the Demon King or if he'd just had weird luck with the card's rank. 'Demonic Treasury: using this card gives you the ability to create magical mirrors that lead to monster filled pocket dimensions that drop loot when someone kills the monsters. Requires seed object to set the pocket dimension.'

Angelic Territory: Allows the user to open a mirror portal to a world straight out of literature, requires a seed to set. Rank: Demon King. Screw it,' he thought as he used the cards like he'd seen the guy with the trench coat doing, figuring there was no way in hell the nobles would give him something better than his current cards.

"This is my boomstick!" the guy shouted as he easily dodged the ball of fire one of the king's mages tossed at him and started shooting them as fast as he could, looking like a demented action hero or an edgelord with delusions of grandeur and giving everyone a headache with the continual roar of thunder coming from his shotgun.

Mist twitched when one of the guys he'd been summoned with took a fireball to the face and collapsed with half his head missing. 'Fuck it!' he thought as he quickly snatched up the fallen man’s cards as the guy with a trench coat killed the mage that tossed the fireball.

"Shit!" the teenager that had been enthusiastic about getting summoned shouted, horrified that things weren't going according to plan.

Mist stuffed the cards in his pocket then grabbed the teenage girls that were staring at the advancing knights with horror and ran for one of the pillars, trying to get some cover from the mages. "Let's get out of here!"

"Angelic Teleport!" one of the girls shouted as the king's head exploded from a shotgun shell, causing her card to teleport the entire group of summoned heroes minus the dead guy to a forest clearing a second before a blade of light slashed through the area where the 'heroes' had been.

"What the fuck was that for?!" the teen demanded, glaring at the twenty something guy in the trench coat.

The young man with the trench coat looked around then pointed his sawed off shotgun at the ground. "They were going to fucking shank us or steal our cards and leave us trapped in a shit world."

"You don't know that! How the fuck are we supposed to get quests if you kill the king?!" the teen demanded.

"By going elsewhere, we're obviously supposed to overthrow the bastard and his cronies," the guy with the shotgun argued. "You've read Rise of the Shield Hero, right?"

"Shit," the teen muttered as he realized the other guy might have a point.

"Do you think they can follow us?" Sarah asked nervously, wishing she'd been wearing her jacket when she'd been summoned.

Mist glanced at the teenage girl for a couple of seconds that was probably the youngest of the group then glanced at the rest of the 'heroes', not particularly surprised to find that the rest of the group looked to be in their mid teens to early twenties. "Okay, let's take a minute to calm down and figure out what we're working with."

"You mean our cards, right?" one of the girls asked.

"Or lighters or anything particularly useful for being stuck in the woods," Mist replied as he glanced around the small clearing, trying to figure out if it was better to use the large fallen tree for shelter or if it would be better to start moving on the off chance that they could track their teleport.

"I've got a lighter," one of the girls in her late teens offered.

Mist sighed in relief. "Hallelujah, I wasn't looking forward to trying to start a fire with a stick and some tender."

"Agreed," Ted agreed, remembering his own failed attempts to get it to work when he was in the Scouts. "Have you ever gotten it to work?"

"Technically," Mist complained as he glanced at the guy that looked like he played football and was a couple of inches taller than him. "I remember getting it to work once as a kid but we had string and dried cedar bark and it was still a pain in the ass."

Victoria snickered. "I remember doing that in Girl Scouts, we cheated and used Maddy's glasses."

Mist glanced at the busty blonde teen that was wearing shorts and a t-shirt. "It's certainly easier."

"I'll start," the man with the trench coat offered. "My name's Derrick and my cards give me Regeneration and increased accuracy and stamina as passives and my active ability gives me unlimited ammo for two minutes and increases my agility and the damage the shells do."

"Eric, my cards gave me artistic skill and improved my ability as a writer, which means I'm going to be able to make awesome mangas!" the teenage boy offered cheerfully.

"That's it?" Victoria asked. "No boosted stats?"

"I need half as much sleep," Eric replied with a shrug. "What did you get?"

"I'm Victoria. My first card gave me Angelic Teleportation and boosted White Magic."

"Damn, wait, that's just your first card?" Eric asked, slightly annoyed that his cards hadn't come with the ability to at least summon notebooks or something to write/draw on.

"Yep, my second card gives me a Magic Girl transformation ability that gives me a significant boost to my physical abilities as well as healing and purification attacks," Victoria replied smugly. “Haven’t used it yet, because I’m not sure if it included a transformation sequence I wouldn’t want to do in public.”

"Cool, we have the party healer, now we just need a tank," Derrick said cheerfully.

"Not it," Ted said quickly. "I'm Theodore and despite looking like a jock, I'm a science nerd. My cards let me deal extra damage to structures, as well as build and assess them, and it dumped a lot of knowledge about chemical engineering in my head, which fits considering my major."

"How does chemical engineering fit with assessing structures?" the busty red haired young lady in her twenties asked.

"Explosives," Ted replied smugly.

"Fair enough," she agreed as she looked at the rest of the group. "I'm Molly and my cards give me Technopathy and all the talents that I'd need to be a Cyber Doc, which means I'm just about useless considering we're probably stuck in the middle ages judging by the castle and my cards don't actually let me make cybernetics without the basic components handy."

"What about you?" Ted asked Sarah.

"I'm Sarah, Sarah Smith and my cards are Blacksmithing cards," Sarah replied with a smirk that said she’d gotten something good.

Eric raised his eyebrows. "Smith? Really?"

Sarah snickered. "Yep, Sarah Olivia Smith, and yes, I'm aware that my initials are S.O.S. My father's name is Alex Simon Smith, Grandpa thinks he's funny and Grandma was on pain meds. It's something of a family tradition at this point. My sister's name is Samatha Alexandria Smith or S.A.S. and yes, she's sassy."

"So, just blacksmithing?" Eric asked.

"The card gave me Master blacksmithing skills and supernatural strength and endurance. I'm also fireproof and I can conjure a random ingot of metal and identify metals with a game-like interface," Sarah said smugly.

"O.P. please, nerf," Eric muttered, only half serious. "What did you get?" he asked the woman in her mid to late twenties that was looking at her phone.

Tiffany glanced up from her phone when she realized she was the last person. "My name is Tiffany Thornbe and I got two city management cards, probably because I work for the mayor's office. Or it might have something to do with the fact that I'm sort of obsessed with civilization style games. The cards let me read and understand people at a glance and the ability to keep track of any area that I'm in charge of, including resources and publicly known abilities."

"Mind reading?" Eric asked warily, trying not to think about the fact that she was hot.

"No, it's more like a talent for cold reading," Tiffany replied, easily reading why he was suddenly nervous and not being surprised as he was a teenage male. "I could probably tell you how badly a merchant is going to cheat us or if we should trust an innkeeper but most of my talents won't come into play unless we run a town or a city."

"Or build something," Mist mused.

"What did you get?" Derrick asked Mist.

"My first card gave me the ability to improve the cards someone gets when they awaken or get cards, it only works on people that haven't unlocked their cards. My second ability lets me conjure a mirror that connects to a pocket dimension filled with monsters that we can loot."

"Like Disgaea?!" Eric asked excitedly.

"I don't think it upgrades anything," Mist admitted, fairly sure his version wasn't that nice though he had the feeling it scaled based on the item he used as a seed. "I don't think we'll suddenly get videogame powers if we walk inside but we might be able to get basic gear. And my third skill allows me to open a portal to a single world chosen by using a work of fiction."

"Oh! Final Fantasy or Warcraft!" Sarah suggested.

"Zombie world, we could loot everything," Eric said thoughtfully.

Tiffany glared at Eric. "No zombies! It sounds cool but the smell and possibility of infection make it the worst option!"

"Night of the Comet would be better," Ted suggested. "No zombies, well after just a week or two, and lots of stuff lying around for the taking."

"What part of ‘work of fiction’ did you miss?" Mist teased. “I need a copy of the book, movie, or game to set the portal.”

"Sorry," Sarah offered. "I just got excited thinking about crafting techniques and not how much being stuck in a video game world would suck."

"Completely understandable, they usually have nasty monsters and repeated apocalypses," Mist complained, hoping to hell he didn't get stuck with a zombie infested world or at least not one that had zombies that could spread the condition with a simple bite.

"So which way do we start walking…" Sarah trailed off as she heard someone screaming in the forest.

"Shit," Derrick cursed when he turned and noticed a man that looked like he'd stepped right out of a fantasy movie running between trees, moving faster than a track star could sprint.

"Run!" the hunter screamed.

Derrick brought his sawed off shotgun up and put a slug into the horse sized wolf that was chasing the man, causing it to yelp and snarl at him from the forest then turn and vanish into the woods, looking more annoyed than actually injured. "Fuck."

"Yep," Sarah agreed. "I'm going to need a forge."

"It would certainly help," Mist agreed as the man ran over and collapsed in front of them as his strength gave out.

"Healing Wind!" Victoria chanted, causing a gust of wind to flow over the group as the man's wounds closed before their eyes.

"Nice!" Eric exclaimed, feeling a bit better about their chances of survival.

"Thank you!" the hunter blurted out. "I thought I was dead."

"What happened?" Mist asked as he glanced around at the clearing, wondering if there were more giant wolves prowling around.

"I was hunting, the damned wolf stole my rabbit then chased me," the man complained as he got to his feet. "What are a bunch of children doing out here in the woods?" he asked, looking at Mist and Tiffany since they were the only people that weren't basically children as far as he was concerned.

"I messed up a teleport spell, where are we?" Victoria asked.

"You're in the Forest of Dor'well, the country of Oxbreak," he offered.

"What's the name of the world?" Molly asked.

The hunter stared at Molly for a couple of seconds then looked at the rest of the group. "Vincel. Are you heroes? Are we going to have a demon king?" he asked warily.

'Vincel?' Mist mused, trying to figure out if he'd ever heard of the world, on the off chance that he'd gotten dropped somewhere recognizable.

"That's what the king was worried about and yeah, we were summoned to deal with the Demon King," Molly replied, not seeing a point in telling him that the king was probably dead, along with half his court.

"Shit," the hunter swore. "I knew the mana was increasing and the monsters were getting more numerous, but I was hoping we had a couple of years."

"What can you tell us about magic cards and the world?" Molly asked. "We didn't really get much of an explanation before we got dropped in the forest by my friend's teleportation card."

The man winced. "You're lucky you didn't end up somewhere worse, like the Forest of Shadows or the Wailing Pits. I've heard some rather horrible stories about Teleportation cards."

"How common are they?" Victoria asked.

"Cards that let you teleport yourself dozens of feet are uncommon, cards that let you teleport yourself or other people across the region are rare, and you're basically set for life if you get a card that will let you teleport more than a couple of people or across a country," he explained.

Victoria frowned slightly as she tried to remember if her card had listed a range limitation.

"What determines what type of cards you get?" Eric asked.

"It's a combination of training, bloodlines, and luck," the hunter replied with a shrug. "Or maybe the gods just like screwing with people. Everyone gets cards, generally when they're fifteen but you can get them as early as thirteen. Most reputable Card Awakeners like waiting until people are a bit more mature because there's less chance of weird results. You can technically get up to three cards per hand but most people only have the two cards because the only way to get more is to steal or buy them from people before they're used."

"You can't take them out?" Eric asked.

"Sorry, once you use them, you're stuck," he explained.

"You can't get cards from monsters?" Sarah asked.

The hunter laughed. "You can't awaken monsters, that would actually make them useful."

"They're not useful?" Derrick asked, his dreams of being a hideously wealthy monster slayer burning before they really started.

"It technically depends on the monsters, but not really," the hunter complained. "Most of them are basically useless or not worth the effort of killing them, like the giant wolf, you need blessed silver to really hurt Grim and he can smell the stuff from a mile away. Some of the monsters have nice hides that are worth selling but you have to be careful not to put holes in the hide."

"Sounds annoying," Tiffany offered.

"It helps if you have a loot card but most of us aren't that lucky," the man complained.

"Can you tell us where the nearest town is and what type of currency they use or where we can find work?" Mist asked, wondering how much the Card Awakeners charged or if they had a union.

The man pointed off to his left. "Five and a half miles that way. They use copper, silver, and gold in Oxbreak but gold coins are rare unless you're a merchant or a noble or you have a fantastic card."

"Is it rude to ask about people's cards?" Mist asked.

"In general no, in specific? It's sort of rude unless you're family or you're training someone but that doesn't really stop employers which means that a lot of people have to settle for any job they can find and questionable pay because they don't have the right cards," the hunter admitted. "One of my cards gives me the distance and direction to any location I know the location of, the other is a general physical boost."

"Does it stop working if you get lost?" Sarah asked.

"No, I just have to know the general location of the city, it doesn't matter if I'm lost. It just doesn't help for finding buried treasure or lost cities if I don't know where they are," he explained.

"Do the Card Awakeners have a guild?" Mist asked.

"Of course, they snatch up everyone that gets a card that can awaken people's potential and buy any cards related to awakening cards for a very respectable amount," the hunter explained. "It's in the general contract when they awaken people, if you end up with a card on the list of cards they want, they have the right to buy your card or recruit you."

"So they just steal their cards?" Sarah complained, glad that they already had their cards.

"Most of the Awakeners have a skill that can enforce a contract or they have someone with them that has that ability when they travel. If you want your cards, you have to agree to sell them if they're on the guilds list. Of course, the guild has to pay a substantial bounty for the cards they take beyond any card that actually awakens people so it generally works out."

"That's not even remotely fair," Molly complained.

He shrugged. "It's a lot better than the old system. Before the guild there was nothing stopping someone with the talent from awakening a bunch of children and just stealing their cards outright and leaving them dead in a ditch."

"That's fucked up," Molly complained.

"Welcome to Vincel," he replied with a sigh. "It's a monster filled world and they breed quick so you can't even wipe them out."

"Lovely. I can't blame the guild for trying to limit the ability considering the dangers," Mist replied, fairly sure the guild would flip their shit if they realized he could awaken people and wishing the guy had shown up before he'd told the group. "What type of card awakening abilities are there?"

"I don't know, the guild doesn't like to talk about it, they don't want people trying to delay their awakening in the hopes of getting a particularly fantastic Awakener, it cuts into their profit and it's not a particularly common card. My grandfather told me a story about his grandfather meeting a guy that could give people four cards instead of two or three, but most of the extra cards aren't particularly impressive."

"That would have been nice," Eric mused, curious what else he could have gotten and how he was going to fill up the rest of his slots without screwing someone over.

"Franz Bordello, he was known for requiring everyone he helped to give him a card and for waiving the standard fee. He was also known for having over a hundred children because the Awakeners wanted children with his bloodline."

"Did it work?" Mist asked.

The hunter laughed. "Not that I know of but the guild doesn't really answer to anyone, so good luck getting more details. Do you want me to take you back to town?"

"Are we near the capital?" Sarah asked, trying to sound interested, but hoping they were a long ways away from the bloody throne room with its headless king.

"The capital is about two weeks travel that way," the hunter replied as he gestured away from the town.

"Showing us the way to town would be fantastic," Sarah told him.

"The least I can do is buy you a drink for saving me from the wolf, he's been known to gnaw people's legs off and leave them to bleed out," the hunter complained.

"Weird," Ted muttered.

"No really, monsters don't have to eat, they just enjoy it," the hunter explained as he started walking toward town.

"Fun," Mist muttered as they started walking, already thinking up ways to make enough gold to make sure the group didn't starve to death before they figured out what they were going to do with themselves.

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