Honour Rae
patreon
24. Tess Caught Boy
🕑 Added 2022-07-19 21:30:08 +0000 UTCThe bright light faded. Arthur found himself lying face down in the middle of a forested clearing.
He jerked up and back — a delayed reaction from the spear coming at his throat.
Jerking to his feet, he stared around with wide eyes. He was in a different area than he’d been a moment before. Second was nowhere to be seen. Neither was the body of the dead dragon rider.
The clearing looked familiar, and it took him a few seconds to figure out why. This was the campsite the caravan had used last night. The one they had taken off from in the morning. Now that it was clear of carts, burden-animals, and people, it looked completely different.
Too bad it wasn’t far enough from the eruption. Scourgling whistles lifted through the forest in all directions.
Cautiously, he touched the base of his stinging throat. His fingers came back red with blood. It was only a deep scratch and could have been so much worse. What had the card done?
He turned his attention inward to the shining card that had been nudging at his mind for attention.
It was a deep metallic blue, shining like the finest polished steel. The color was cool and deep at the same time as if he were standing before a waterhole and looking and down. Clear water without an end.
As with the Master of Skills card, as he read the card, the description imprinted itself on his mind.
Return To Start
Rare
Trap
When the wielder of this card is attacked with another card’s power, they will be instantly transported to a previously keyed-in location regardless of distance. If no location has been designated, the wilder will be transported to the point they last started that day — either one second after the stroke of midnight or at the moment they last woke, whichever is later.
This trap card has a once-per-sunset usage restriction.
After that was another message. The one that had attempted to get Arthur’s attention.
Would you like to key in your location start point now?
Slowly shaking his head, Arthur dismissed the message.
A Rare-ranked card. He suspected once the shock wore off, he would feel smug about that.
The answer as to why this card had not saved the rider was plain to see: The card activated when its wielder was attacked with another card’s power. The brassy orange and sky blue dragon had attacked the pink with teeth and claws only.
It had been a brutal attack and showed they knew enough about the card and how to kill without their prey getting away. Since dragons linked their cards with their rider, the pink dragon likely had something similar in its deck.
They had meant to kill the pair of them. Planned it out.
A scourgling whistle cut through the forest. Arthur turned toward it, tense. His dagger was gone, and his new Trap card wouldn’t work until after the next sunset.
He was also more than a half day’s journey from the caravan. And there was an entire valley of scourglings between that point and this one.
He vaguely remembered the small valley on Red’s map. It had been surrounded on three sides by mountainous ridges with a lower lip on the southeastern side that led to a wider plate. This camp was somewhere on that lip. That meant scourglings would be spilling from the eruption on the other end of the valley and slowly filtering in this direction.
Quickly, Arthur searched the cold fire pits. He came out with a hearty branch with wood too dense to burn easily. It had a bulbous end. Better than nothing, though he wished he had something sharper.
The memories of how that other group of men was bowled over so easily, swords and all, were fresh in his mind. It was easy to imagine his cards being plucked out of his heart and swallowed down the gullet of a scourgling.
He didn’t think he was imagining it: The whistles had become closer and had a sharper tone at the end. It sounded like an excited hunting cry.
Did they smell him? Did they… Wait a minute.
Arthur’s hand drifted to his heart. He’d seen the scourglings go straight for the cards, first. Like it had smelled it on the downed man.
Doshi the silver dragon had smelled his legendary rank card. Now Arthur had a rare card to add to it. What if the scourglings could sense them?
He had to get out of here.
The heavy branch in one hand, he started down the road, opposite the way the caravan had gone.
Arthur felt a stab of regret for that. He wished he could go back right now and tell Red everything that had happened — that he was right and shouldn’t have gone with Second. That Arthur was sorry for… well, everything.
But even if he could find his way back to the caravan, if Second lived, he would kill him. Red was not a carded man. He didn’t have the strength to stop Second. He’d pretty much said so himself.
Arthur’s only hope was to put enough distance between himself and the valley. Hopefully, the town the caravan had last left would take him in.
He had to get there first.
The hunting whistles continued. To his anxious, racing heart, they seemed to draw closer. Worse, Arthur couldn’t pick out the exact direction they came from. The trees were all a tall pine variety with thick underbrush that seemed to distort and bend the sound, somehow. Or maybe there were so many around that all were whistling.
Arthur broke into a faster walk. Then a jog. A prickling on the back of his neck made him shift into a run.
A sharp whistle made him twist to look back. Behind him, a scourge-wolf leaped onto the road. The path it had broken through the brush was already shriveled and dying.
The scourge-wolf’s mouth was a mass of teeth stuck out in all directions. Seeing Arthur, it let out a shrieking sound the equivalent of a howl, and broke into a run.
Arthur screamed and dropped the branch, sprinting with every ounce of speed he could pull on. He’d been fooling himself. A little piece of wood wasn’t going to do any good against something with a mouthful of teeth like wood saws.
Leaning forward into every step, he ran like he had not allowed himself to do since he had first gotten his skill card. Not even when he’d gotten word of Ernie’s sickness.
I need a running skill, he thought wildly. But that wasn’t in his range of skills. Stealth and his Card Shuffling skill had saved his life twice already today. He wasn’t sure what else he had left to draw.
Risking a glance behind, he was shocked to see the scourge-wolf was still loping along at the same distance as before. Arthur was pacing it. If he had better endurance…
A moment later, the wolf was joined by another. Then a third. Then, absurdly enough, some of the scourge-bunnies joined in to run him down as a pack.
True wolves and bunnies would never, but each one of these creatures was a predator.
Whatever luck the Gambler class had given him had run out. Arthur seemed to be pulling the scourge in from all through the forest.
He panted, legs burning. He could go all day running messages up and back to the moving caravan, but he could only sprint at top speed for so long.
One wrong step and he would fall. Then they would be on him.
One thing wolves and bunnies couldn’t do was climb. Hopefully.
Arthur looked around wildly and focused on a large pine with branches low enough for his use.
He turned sharply toward it. The tree was just off the road, but those few steps he took brought the scourglings closer.
Arthur jumped and grabbed a branch, that ripped at his palms. He hauled himself up with strength born out of sheer panic. He used the next set of branches like a ladder, climbing fast.
The whole tree shuddered as one of the wolves hit the trunk. One scourge-wolf leaped upward and hooked a branch with its paws, but then fell back. The branch it touched turned instantly black and started to die.
As did the trunk of the tree.
Arthur kept climbing. His only hope would be to find a spot to leap to another tree.
But there were none within a safe distance. He could try, but he would more than likely fall through the branches. If the hit to the ground didn’t kill him, the scourglings would.
He climbed on, hoping for some answer.
The tree was a tall one with the top ending well above the general canopy. The moment he climbed above the neighboring trees, he was buffeted by a hot wind.
Off in the distance, an orange dragon had summoned a fireball the size of Second’s cart. It exploded onto a mass of flying scourglings.
Arthur kept climbing until the branches became so small they snapped under his boots. He clutched the trunk for balance, feeling the tree wobbling. Though he couldn’t see it, he could imagine the base of the tree was rotting away under him.
“Boy!” Came a girl’s voice. “Tess comes!”
He looked up to see a small purple dragon shoot through the sky toward him. Its body was the size of Bella the donkey, discounting the tail. It had four wings: two on each side which flapped so fast they were a blur. It stopped to hover right in front of him like a hummingbird.
“Jump on Tess!” she said. It had been her voice, high and clear like a young girl’s. “Tess catch!”
A rider sat crouched low on the space between Tess’s wings and her haunches, with a tiny saddle like a horse race jockey. The head was encased in a leather helmet, goggles, and a cloth mask over the bottom of their face.
As Arthur felt the tree shudder, the rider extended a hand. They were still too far away for comfort, but Arthur had no choice.
Gathering himself, he leaped from the tree. His hand scraped at the rider’s arm for a stomach-dropping second before he caught the wrist. The purple dragon squealed and dipped to the side, thrown off balance by his weight.
Then Arthur’s other flailing hand caught Tess's back ridge. With the rider’s help, he pulled himself behind them. Tess righted herself with a flick that almost sent Arthur tumbling off the other side.
There was almost no space between the back of the saddle and the wings. Arthur stayed on his stomach, legs in the air. All he could do was stick his fingers under the saddle straps and hold on for dear life.
Below him, the tree he’d been climbing toppled sideways to the ground.
“Tess caught boy! Tess caught boy!” the dragon cheered like a girl who had just captured a butterfly.
The rider said something he couldn’t catch. Suddenly, the wind screamed as Tess lifted higher — straight up, using her buzzing wings. Then she darted forward faster than any galloping horse.
Arthur never thought he would be afraid of heights, but he was very aware of the sheer amount of sky between himself and the ground. His fingers had a death grip around the saddle straps, every muscle coiled tight as he clung onto the dragon and tried not to die.
Below him, the valley seethed with scourglings, though it seemed the hives were mobbing up the aerial battles. Tess shot back and forth, deftly avoiding the last scourgling flyers.
Arthur expected he would be taken to a safe spot: the town he had been headed for, or maybe even the caravan if he was lucky.
It took him too long to realize Tess was heading straight towards one of the rips in the sky.
Tess was taking him to a hive.
“No, wait. Take me to the caravan—“ Arthur wanted to say, but between fear and the screaming wind, his mouth had gone dry, tongue glued to the top.
The rip loomed larger until it seemed to take up the entirety of the world, the iridescent green dragons still holding it open.
Then, they were inside.
Big apologies to everyone who thought it was a time-loop card. I may have cliffed too hard.
Comments
Connor
And commentary as a reader! (Maybe this should go first next time.) The phrasing on the Return To Start card is interesting. "When the wielder of the card is *attacked* with another card's power" is pretty specific, and I imagine this contributes to its relatively low ranking given how useful this power could be. (Not that rare is exactly low in objective terms.) It's not obvious how "attacks" are determined, and certain forms of power application (e.g. mind control, say) might not count as an "attack". Even conventionally "obvious" physical attacks involving a card's power might not trigger Return To Start: for example, if someone with a super-strength card throws a rock at him. And then back on the interpretation front, it seems possible the card might trigger even in response to harmless effects: imagine if he's attacked with a card that summons the equivalent of a flame from a Zippo lighter, or if a glancing blow lands on him but does no real damage. That could be a critical liability if fighting in a group or in defense of someone helpless: you take one hit from a card's power and get hurled far away (possibly arbitrarily far, depending on what location is keyed in), leaving behind your allies or your now-defenseless charge. Though on the positive side, there's also nothing in the wording that explicitly keeps the card from activating in response to an attack from one's *own* cards. If the card can be applied this way, it could essentially function as a once-a-day teleport if needed. There's likewise some flexibility in the wording about locations: my assumption is that he can only key in a location if he's there at the moment, but that might not be true, or might cease to be true with sufficient experience using the card. Overall, very intriguing. (Has there been any indication that cards can grow with their user? Or that phrasing can change at all, or interpretation of it become looser with experience? Or is that kind of modification only possible to the very limited degree that Special cards might permit.) > They had meant to kill the pair of them. Planned it out. Very interesting that they didn't claim the rider's card, then! I wonder what got in their way. (It's hard to imagine that the murderer lost track of the body entirely, and even if they did, they'd have vastly superior mobility with which to search for it compared to Arthur and Second. Interesting...) > It was easy to imagine his cards being plucked out of his heart and swallowed down the gullet of a scourgling. Gotta say, not enthusiastic about the idea of a scourgling with a Legendary card and the time to take advantage of it! Though it's not clear how well that particular card would work for a being of presumably (at least initially?) lesser intelligence. I'm surprised we're going for the dragons so quickly, since I'd assumed they'd float around the periphery being mysterious for a bit longer while Arthur figured things out. Really, this extracts him from a lot of immediate trouble he was in, which is nice for him, but also soft-resets the plot. On the plus side, it's somewhat of a relief to be free of Second (for now?), and I'm excited for dragons—because dragons, obviously—as well as for opportunities for neat cards and worldbuilding and new characters. The dragon/rider pair he just met is already promising, and there's the question about the dragon murder. On the minuses side, this close to wipes the slate on the short-term plans he'd set up so far and removes the one big "desirable at a distance" in the setting which seemed to constitute fodder for longer-term plans (dragons), with the exception of perhaps reuniting with his father (which I think nobody expects until much, much further along). But you've earned trust so far with the story, and I'm on board for this. (Very long comment, this time. Sorry for all the reading I've forced you to do. Thanks for the chapter.)
Connor
Copy edits! (Probably looks like a lot, but most of it is minor, with some notes on clarity during moments of action. Apologies in advance, regardless—I know you're writing this at a pace of 5 chapters per week.) > He jerked up and back [...] Jerking to his feet Close repetition of the verb "to jerk" > A scourgling whistle cut through the forest. Arthur turned toward it, tense. His dagger was gone, and his new Trap card wouldn’t work until after the next sunset. The other point I'd expect him to think about here, if he's assessing his resources with respect to danger from scourglings: if death by dragon doesn't trigger the card, then would death by scourgling? I'm guessing not (unless the scourgling has a full card it can make use of, and does). > He’d seen the scourglings go straight for the cards, first. Like it had smelled it on the downed man. Plural/singular agreement problem: "the scourglings ... it had". "The downed man" is similarly unintroduced, though I can guess at which one in particular this is meant to refer to. > Doshi the silver dragon had smelled his legendary rank card. legendary -> Legendary? (capitalization) Note that earlier in this chapter you refer to a "Rare-ranked card" exactly as written between the quotes, whereas here you say "legendary rank card", with no hyphen and no -ed. This kind of terminology doesn't need to be 100% rigidly uniform, but it might be worthwhile writing up a style guide for yourself and keeping a checklist of easily overlooked terms to CTRL+F for so you can check them over while editing. > Now Arthur had a rare card to add to it. rare -> Rare? As above, noting additionally that this is a third variation ("rare card") in addition to the prior two ("Rare-ranked card", "legendary rank card"). However, in contradiction to my previous assumed edits—if you're making a deliberate choice to keep things uncapitalized when possible, I do respect that, because Fantasy Capitals can very quickly get out of hand, and are often difficult to justify in-universe if you set aside their non-diegetic purpose of Emphasis for the reader. Then all that matters is figuring out when you use which form, and keeping things consistent. > Hopefully, the town the caravan had last left would take him in. Quite hard to parse correctly on the first go; garden path sentence. > Or maybe there were so many around that all were whistling. Unclear what this means. (Literal interpretation is that when there are enough scourglings, this somehow causes them all to whistle. Complication: technically, this sentence is still referring to the trees/underbrush mentioned immediately prior, not the scourglings, and I'm being forced to guess from context that you do in fact mean the scourglings, not the vegetation.) > “Boy!” Came a girl’s voice. “Tess comes!” "Came" should technically be uncapitalized, since it's acting as a speech verb attached to "Boy!" If you find this unbearably awkward looking, as you might, then rewording might be in order. > It had four wings: two on each side which flapped so fast they were a blur. Raises a slight question of how he is able to count them, but perhaps they're not *that* much of a blur? The next sentence explicitly makes an association with hummingbirds, however, and then again throughout the chapter. > horse race jockey "horse jockey" by itself is fine. > Tess's back ridge Less awkward if not forced into a compound noun: "the ridge on Tess's back". > With the rider’s help, he pulled himself behind them. them = the rider? Or both the rider and the dragon? (I'm assuming the former, with they/them being gender neutral.) Sentence feels odd beyond that though, even if you were to swap for "him" or "her" for a sanity check. > There was almost no space between the back of the saddle and the wings. Assuming the wings are grouped together, this implies that the saddle is foward of the wings. If this is true, then the previous use of "haunches" should be changed, because haunches refer to *hind*quarters. ("A rider sat crouched low on the space between Tess’s wings and her haunches.") If this is false, then I'm not 100% sure how I'm supposed to imagine all of this, including the bit about Arthur being on his stomach (I thought he'd been pulled into the saddle? I guess it doesn't say that he was pulled into a *seated* position, even if that's what I was assuming. But then I'm furthermore not sure why he's forced by his position to remain on his stomach. And then remains that way all throughout what follows, up to arriving at the hive portal.) Overall, might need to iron this out a bit. Currently I'm assuming what is intended is that there are four wings projecting from the dragon's shoulders in the front, then the saddle behind. Note that there are also logistical issues with the space the wings will be crossing through and getting Arthur into the saddle; not sure how that works. > he clung onto the dragon "clung onto" -> "clung on to" ("to the dragon" being a modifier for "clung on") Though this is nitpicky, and eventually English will probably just give up on the distinction entirely. But think of it like "climb up to" or "walk over to". > the hives were mobbing up the aerial battles mobbing -> mopping? > “No, wait. Take me to the caravan—“ Arthur wanted to say Since this speech doesn't actually occur, consider rendering in italics and without quotes. Retconning the act of speech requires the reader to take a mental image they've already formed and discard it for another, which is jarring. > The rip loomed larger until it seemed to take up the entirety of the world, the iridescent green dragons still holding it open. Might be better to work in the green dragons detail elsewhere, since while you probably want to convey that piece of information as the author, in this particular moment it works against what Arthur is actually focused on. Could maybe use some physical description of the rip as they approach it. I believe they can't actually see through it, correct? It's just flat black? That would probably be horrifying to fly towards.
Solo
Anthrax: a serious infectious disease caused by gram-positive, rod-shaped bacteria known as Bacillus anthracis. It occurs naturally in soil and commonly affects domestic and wild animals around the world. People can get sick with anthrax if they come in contact with infected animals or contaminated animal products.
Honour Rae
ha! Great timing. I admit the first time I watched it as a kid, I didn't really like it. By the 10th, it had grown on me.
Gunnar Crider
I just recently watched that for the first time lol
Honour Rae
They're heading to the castle Anthrax....
Gunnar Crider
Tess seemed unreasonably happy to have caught a boy. Why do I get the feeling g the hive will be an all girls hive.
