With shaky hands, I cupped my palms around the fragment as it floated up from the remains of the Bodokin with the slow grace of a leaf listing in the breeze. I didn’t dare touch it at first. It wouldn’t hurt me, but I did hold it in reverence. These magical pieces of a card were everything. In this primal form, still fresh from a slain monster, the fragment was magic in its rawest form. It was quite literally raw power.

  Many people don’t hold that with the proper respect, I fear. Too many buy and sell cards and fragments wholesale without truly earning them, so how could they appreciate the true value? Not me. I was going to do it right.

  The fragment was bright, but once it settled into my cupped palms, the shine dulled, and I was left holding a thin, sharp gray shard. One end was rounded, resembling one corner of a playing card. Mind you, not all card fragments took on the shape of a card. Some looked like chunks of crystal or sharp needles or everything in between, but most looked like the one I held.

  The dull gray color, taken from a lowly Bodokin, marked it as a [Common] card fragment. These were easiest to get, either by killing a weak monster or by buying them. They weren’t cheap compared to a lot of things in the world but compared to higher-tiered card fragments or whole cards, [Common] card fragments were practically a steal.

  I could have bought my first fragment as soon as I turned sixteen, the accepted age when card powers became viable, but I wanted my first to be one I earned. I made enough of a living helping around town, but my uncle had done it that way, and he said my dad had too. My brother Gareth did as well, so I wasn’t going to shirk that tradition just for an easier and faster head start. That’s not how I was built.

  No sooner did the fragment touch my palms than the searing pain of my burn wounds flooded through my brain. I cried in pain as I dropped the fragment and hugged my hands to my chest.

  “Son of a . . . Motherfu . . . I just had to grab the pan. Grrrrr!”

  I stifled the groan that did its best to escape as my teeth gnashed. Hands and feet were the worst place to be hurt but it was either that or a bashed-in skull.

  “Buck up, kiddo,” I told myself, echoing the words uncle Deebo and my brother would say to me whenever I faced some adversity.

  I pocketed the card fragment and hurried over to my backpack. Inside, I removed a roll of medical tape that I’d packed at the last minute on the chance that whatever monster I found might gut me. Score one for being prepared. Every little movement hurt, but eventually, I snagged the tape with my teeth, pulled, and was able to wrap it tightly around my right hand. With the burn bound and secured, I did the same for the left hand.

  Once they were both wrapped, I downed a small vial of fast-healing elixir I’d snagged from Granny Twellin in reward for helping in her garden while she was out of town. Once I started feeling better, I realized I probably should have taken the potion first.

  With my wounds taken care of, I was itching to get back to town but allowed myself a few breaths. With each lungful of air, I could feel the elixir work its way through my body. It soothed my pain drastically and boosted my body’s healing ability. although it would still take days for the burns to heal completely. Meanwhile, the elixir dulled the pain enough for me to actually use my hands.

  My stomach rumbled, and I cursed, remembering my nearly cooked meal. The hare had gone flying, and even if there were more catches in my other snares, I didn’t want to eat out of the pan at the moment. Not when it was still covered in Bodokin blood, skull fragments, and brainy bits.

  I collected the rest of my snares, gathering a squirrel and a tree ferret. I skinned and gutted them the best I could, then put them in my salt bag for later. I could sell them to Mr. Reid, the butcher, or store them. Then, back at the fire, I gathered up my bedroll and all of my things and located my knife. I’d had to use my poor whittling knife to slit their throats, and that was a right mess—but I found it not too far away, along with the Bodokin’s stone axe. I collected that, too, and the stone hammers. I could sell or trade them. Finally, I put out the fire and wrapped my pan in my greasy towel. It needed to be cleaned desperately, but I didn’t have time or water to do it just then.

  I hefted everything onto my back, heavier than before, but I had strong legs and a strong back, and even my injuries and my empty stomach weren’t enough to stop me.

  Nothing was going to stop me.

  Fortunately, the town wasn’t too far away, maybe half a day’s journey back to Parroia. Probably less now that I could mostly go downhill.

  With that said, the terrain didn’t help things. It was mainly rocky and dry with sparse grasses and shrubbery, plus an occasional cactus, until you eventually came to the woods. There weren’t a lot of animals about for the tanners, and the hunters and trappers went to the hills north and west of town where there was more and better game to be had. They avoided the southern hills where most of the monsters lived because they weren’t interested in life-or-death battles. The real adventurers and monster fighters ventured further out into the Badlands to find bigger, more profitable monsters. That’s why I’d pretty much had the region to myself.

  My feet were sore after the first few hours, but I didn’t let that stop me. The intensifying stomach pain was driving me mad, so I sucked on some dried sugarbark. It was too hard to chew unless you wanted to break some teeth, but the flavor was near endless until you sucked it down to a crystallized pebble. So, I did that to sate my appetite for the moment.

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  I heard Parroia before I saw the town. Men and women shouting and cursing down at the market. The bustle, the whistle of hawkers, and the strumming of Ole Jem’s guitar as she busked on the corner by Putrid Pete’s Saloon. The chime of the shift-change bells at the mines on the east side as the men took their lunches and a new batch went in to mine iron and coal, and maybe occasionally kill drillmoles, which would produce some card fragments. The only thing missing was a blaring train horn pealing through the noonday air—sometimes they ran behind. They usually came every day around noon.

  It was the sound of home, and I was glad to be back. I crested one last hill and then saw her spread out before me on a wide plain surrounded by hills.

  Parroia was a decent-sized town, especially for the Badlands. A couple thousand people called her home, which might be nothing compared to the big cities back East, but for the Badlands, they had it better than most. Busy enough to keep everyone employed and small enough that you didn’t feel suffocated by too many people.

  Mines were dug into the cliffs on the eastern border of the town. On the north side lay a small lake, more a large pond than anything, that was the main water source for the town, though you could fish in it. Deputies constantly patrolled to make sure no one polluted or dumped trash in the lake. You’d think people would care for their only good source of drinking water, but people were stupid and selfish.

  The train station on the southside of town welcomed only one train a day, and that never had too many people on it, beyond traders and supply runners. Other people occasionally passed through, but card fiends usually went further west near the Fissures where the real monsters came into the world. We didn’t get the serious types around here often, and that was fine by me. Parroia was just a whistle-stop to bigger and better things for most people, but she was my whistle-stop.

  I walked along the train tracks for a while, which more or less represented the boundary of the town. I’d say the twelve-foot sand-and-limestone wall around the bulk of the town represented the boundary, but that had been built a long time ago, so a lot had been built outside of it, like the stables, the grain silos, the entire mining company, and the train station. The lake was there too.

  Most towns had huge walls. Some further west supposedly had walls as tall as trees because they had more frequent monster attacks by much stronger breeds of monsters. The closer you got to the Fissures and their scars, the stronger the beasties tended to be. Here, we weren’t very close, but that didn’t make things truly safe like they were the further east you went.

  It took me about five minutes to get to the train station, which was near one of the wide-open entrances into town. Stalls and merchants hawking their goods lined the road from the station to the town. Places like Mabel’s Coal Sculptures and Monster Oddments, Harrick’s Straw Goods, and Madam Emely’s Elegant Trinkets—all with fake jewels for the most part. I loved it all. I smiled and nodded as I passed them, and most of them did the same if they weren’t busy with a customer.

  I stopped at Twellin’s Potions. The old witch had a stall here run by her assistant while Granny worked at the main store inside the walls.

  Only pretty Tannis, Granny’s great granddaughter and current assistant, was present. She had a heart-shaped face with a smattering of freckles across her nose, light auburn hair a bit messy no matter how much she tried to wrangle it, and always a kind word to say.

  As I approached, she was sitting at a table beneath the embroidered quilt that covered the top of the stall reading an old leather-bound tome. From my perspective, it looked like a logbook. Maybe she was checking inventory, but I couldn’t say for sure.

  She heard me approach but didn’t look up. “I’ll be with you in a moment, sir, madam, or individual.”

  I cracked a wide grin. “I don’t think Granny would see this as very customer focused. She’s written you up for that before.”

  Her eyes snapped up, and the book snapped closed. “Griff, you’re back!”

  “Indeed.”

  She smiled shyly. She always was a bit shy or at least seemed that way around me. Although nineteen and a few years my senior, she was already a very capable assistant to her grandmother. As always, my eyes lingered on the swirls of ink that traced their way across her bare hands and arms. She was carded. Several cards, at least.

  There was a tattoo of a needle and thread on her left hand—a [Common] card for [Sewing]. On the opposite hand, she had a small windy pattern, an indicator of a [Speed] card. In practice, it let her use her hands in a faster manner, good for writing faster and longer, among other things. Twisting up the same forearm as the windy tattoo was a swirling pattern of runic flowers with a faint blue sheen to them. The more elaborate pattern meant it was from an [Uncommon] level card, the next tier up from [Common]. That one was for [Gardening], an essential skill for an Apothecary.

  I knew she had more cards hidden away. Some I knew of and some I’m sure I didn’t. Many people had hidden cards tattooed on them. In fact, people often wore gloves and long sleeves to hide things they didn’t want discovered, though that was less common in a town like this where everyone was friendly and mostly used their cards for work and trade.

  “You’re alive, so I suppose that means you succeeded?”

  I nodded and pulled out the gray card fragment from my pocket. “I did! A bit unorthodox but a kill is a kill. I’ll tell you about it sometime when I have more time.”

  “I’d like that.” She smiled sweetly, her cheeks flushing a shade. Tannis was definitely the kind of girl you want to make a future with, but I wasn’t long for Parroia and definitely didn’t want to make any connections that I’d have to leave behind.

  She folded her hands and put them on top of the book she had been studying when I arrived. “Now, I assume you need something?”

  “Yeah, one sec.” I put the fragment back in my pocket and retrieved the squirrel from my salt bag. I presented it to her. “I had to use one of Granny’s elixirs on my hands. Burned ’em something fierce. Would this get me another bottle? I need to save my coins for the Cardsmith.”

  “Normally, I’d say no,” she began, but she gave me a wink. “But for you, and considering this momentous occasion, I think I can offer a discount. So yes, you got yerself a deal, Griffin.”

  “Thank you kindly, Miss Tannis.”

  I handed her the squirrel, and she gave me another small vial of elixir. We both packed our prizes away and smiled at each other. She waved me off.

  “I’m sure you’re excited to get your card, so I won’t hold you up. Good luck, Griff!”

  I tipped my hat to her. “Appreciate it, Tannis. I’ll see you later.”

  And then I was off again, my pain and soreness, even my hunger forgotten. I supposed I should’ve bartered for something to eat. There were plenty of food stalls around, and I had one spare copper I could have used for some jerky at the general store, but I was too excited now that I was back in town.

  No more delays. No more obstacles. It was time to see the Cardsmith of the town, Master Elloy, so I could get my first card forged.