Chapter 1

  Arthur was flung off his couch! Snapped awake by the horrible and jarring crash that outright knocked the wind from him. He sputtered, gagging, desperate to catch his breath. The world was tilting on an axis for him, vision darkening around the edges as his eyes as they narrowed... His thoughts swimming as though he were watching rolling waves beneath an ocean surface…

  He wobbled on his feet for a moment, trying to keep upright, one of his arms reaching out to the nearby wall and slipping as he staggered. For those initial moments, existence was akin to a nightmare carousel... Everything spinning round and round without end before it outright started to slide... In the next moment, he was suddenly lying on the ground, utterly flabbergasted by how he'd gotten there.

  It only took a murky dozen heartbeats for him to come to the unanimous conclusion that he'd fallen in a most haphazard fashion… Hell, he hadn't even felt the impact! The lights in Arthur's head simply having dimmed for an unknowable span of time as consciousness faded and an all-consuming blackness welcomed him with its warm embrace.

  He had no earnest way of knowing just how long he'd lain there, unconscious, unmoving and terribly confused... However, as the ordeal he'd endured departed, swiftly dissipating as though it were all some—bad joke, he was nevertheless left completely and utterly exhausted.

  “Uhhgnnn… fuck…”

  Picking himself up off the floor, wincing not because the mysterious malady that had befallen him persisted but because he'd managed to smack his head upon something as he fell... It wasn't the first time he'd taken a good whack to the old cranium... but, at the moment, it could be said that his brain had been thoroughly jostled...

  He'd played hockey in his younger years, following in the footsteps of his older brother, but stopped at a warning from his doctor. All the same, it was all more than enough for him to nearly forget about the massive crash that had awoken him, the key word being nearly… With dazed eyes, Arthur moved to his camper's control panel, noting with some relief that the large touchscreen and, perhaps just as importantly, the greater interior of his home was, thankfully, undamaged.

  Regardless of—well, whatever had happened, he knew, first and foremost, that there were no replacement parts for his camper readily available. Worse still was what might happen should he be forced to attempt to take the RV to a mechanic…

  The camper was six-hundred thousand dollars worth of next-generation off-the-grid living… Heralded by NU-Gen technologies to be the ultimate vehicle in its admittedly luxurious, if not a touch gimmicky, class. Somehow acquired and disconnected from its satellite tracking before it had even been released by his inspired crazy uncle who'd sold it to Arthur for little more than twenty-five grand cash.

  As to how the man had procured it, Arthur could only guess, but he assumed it had, more or less, something to do with the mans… career. A little arcane chicanery, as it were, both in regards to the vehicle's acquisition and his uncle's lacking of very deserved jail time.

  Thus, when he quickly performed a diagnostics check on what was his only home, he slowly began to feel the tightness of a potential panic attack just waiting in his chest, alleviating as one system after another returned positive and in working order, a deep sigh of relief filled the air as Arthur leaned back against the sofa and just sat there, collecting himself as he replayed what had happened in his mind.

  Was the crash real, or had it been one of those falling-off-a-cliff dreams? If it'd been the latter, then Arthur could say that it had undoubtedly been the very worst of such he'd ever gone through… Not that he often experienced those sorts of fantasies…

  No, his personal insomnia-inducing issue was Rebbeca, his sleep-paralysis demon who always liked to watch him from the corner of a room. Paralyzing him whenever he noticed her while lingering at the edge of a dream... Usually, right before moving to stand over him like she was angry, she'd been observed in a once near nightly game they had with each other…

  Of course, it wasn't real; he knew that, and the game part was merely how his younger self liked to rationalize it all… Rebbeca wasn't even a woman to begin with, simply an unidentifiable dark shape with the vague figure of a person.

  Now, while it was accurate to say that Arthur had sometimes overreacted in his younger days to being attacked by his own mind, now, much older and more used to his brain's nocturnal shenanigans, he often met the demon with a sort of cavalier cheer! Making jokes and challenges by equal measure, as much because he'd gotten so accustomed to it all as to prove that Rebecca was nothing more than a figment of his imagination.

  It had been ages since he'd physically revolted in such a violent manner to her presence, and what was weirder was that he tended to always remember when she visited in the first place, which, he was reasonably sure, she hadn't. Without question, the crash had definitely been something more tangible than a shadowy bump in the night…

  Arthur's next stop on the old train of thoughts was that a particularly large bear, or maybe a moose, had knocked into his RV… Neither animal was one with which an individual typically wanted to tangle with while unarmed… and, even when out with a rifle, they were best to simply be avoided... That wasn't to say he had no means by which to defend himself, but scouting was a primary skill of a self-proclaimed survivalist that any good outdoor enthusiast should employ when able!

  As it happened, Arthur had the perfect solution! With a quick navigation through his console, he eventually found the option to allow the windows to return to a transparent state. Naps were best taken when within a dark room, and he'd severely tinted the glass to allow himself an uninterrupted break.

  He watched as the nearby panes shifted toward clarity, transitioning from a near-perfect black to a crystal-clear condition that allowed him to view the outside world sans the intervention of technology. At first, as Arthur peeked about the immediate area, he felt a tinge of concern when he didn't actually notice anything indicating to what he was looking for.

  The threat of the unseen gave him a chill as cool and crisp as any person with arachnophobia might get from spying a spider in their bathroom as they went about their most vulnerable moment on the toilet. Only to look back and realize the tiny monster had vanished from sight, a phantasm ready to reappear when it was least expected, perhaps even crawling up the side of the toilet itself…

  Thankfully, he wasn't afraid of the eight-legged freaks, not anymore, at least... Living in the wild tended to harden oneself to much of nature's many denizens. However, it was the fear of something else, something far more concerning, that had Arthur's breath catch as a realization of a terribly wrong situation hit him like a speeding freight train.

  His camp was gone…

  His shed, his fire pit, stacked wood, smoking hut, the damned lake! It was all… gone… Panic filled Arthur's gut as his eyes rapidly darted about the unfamiliar greenery, the man spinning on his heel to look out the opposite window, expression collapsing as he stared dumbly at—at… What would one even call that?

  "A village? A fucking—medieval hamlet?" A… a… oh boy…

  He shook his head in bewilderment, just watching as tendrils of smoke rose from chimneys of brick and timber homes with what looked like clay shingles layered upon roofs.

  There couldn't be more than a dozen or two such buildings scattered about in the distance while, further still, Arthur could see far-off barns and crop fields that largely surrounded the sleepy settlement, most having a sort of—run-down look if his eye could be trusted. Had someone found his RV and, towed it to some remote village—without him so much as stirring during the journey?

  No! That was... heh… utterly ridiculous! There wasn't a hint of civilization around him for hours in any direction back at his home base! Not to mention that it would have taken a reasonably substantial tractor to even tow him from his little slice of wilderness. The pop-outs were even still engaged! You couldn't even get the bloody tires to so much as spin so long as they were out…

  Nooo, there was something here that wasn't making any sense… something that had his mind running without traction… but, an unlikely prank or maybe a glitch with… well, the RV's system discounted, he really didn't know what to even think for it all…

  Regardless, he knew he would have to go outside and figure this all out, one way or another; after all, it wasn't like he could just sit there and close his eyes until it all went away… Sucking noisily on his thumb in the fetal position while waiting for mommy and daddy to make it all better again! No, he had his adulting license, for whatever such a thing was worth… and he could handle this like any other rational and reasonable person.

  Plus, Arthur knew what dreams felt like; he'd been granted the double-edged blade that was lucidity in both his nightmares and fantasies and from a young age, no less. And though he had to admit that the backdrop for the situation was—freaky enough for a nocturnal realm of his own imagination, the rest possessed a definitive—mmhmm… realness to it? A sort that was definitely unquestionable to his mind. He was awake. He was cognisant, and, annoyingly, this was no dream.

  "Shit… I'd of preferred it if it was a dream..."

  Jerking his head to clear it of what cobwebs remained, he turned, moving to exit the motorhome from its only door, locked as it was, but pausing as he did so when his gaze fell upon a most bizarre sight.

  Up until that moment, Arthur had earnestly thought he'd manage no more surprises throughout the day, having been so recently convinced that either A, he was about to be arrested or B, his stolen vehicle had, in a strangely comedic fashion, been stolen… one had to learn to laugh at all of life's many, and sometimes personal, fuck off's after all...

  Yet, when his eyes locked onto a sort of halo effect emanating from a floating handful of abnormally large and luminescent cards, he felt, perhaps for the second time in as many minutes, utterly perplexed by two entirely separated mysteries. His head cocked almost involuntarily as he peered at the queer happenstance, a hand raising to scratch at the back of his neck while his jaw slightly slipped from where it had held itself.

  Cards weren't anything odd in his life… after all, Arthur had a whole whack of the damned things in his wallet! And, he'd always loved playing such games with his closest friends with either more collectable or regular examples rather than bureaucratic.

  Ukuer, poker, president, Pokemon when he was a kid… oh, he was sure he was forgetting a few, but… Glowing cards, however, held a certain—mhmm... unusual quality about them that gave an individual pause, no matter who they were. And floating glowing cards were, of course, something of a holy trinity of words preluding countless more fictitious dreams that no doubt many children possessed, himself included. Specifically those of a trading persuasion...

  As for himself, well, he'd liked video games as much as the next kid when he'd been younger, but… as with many in life, responsibility and expectations had stripped Arthur of much of his childhood fancies… Time restraints, expectations and finally, the wilderness itself had stood as relatively firm barriers poised against maintaining many of his old hobbies.

  Still, it was with an offhanded candour that Arthur nevertheless pinched at his arm, feeling the spike of pain run through his nerves just to be certain… It might be a touch cliche and played out, but one thing he'd never actually felt in a dream was genuine pain. That being said, dreams could still be tricky things…

  "There's no way… right?" He murmured to himself, blinking several times as if the action itself would make the scene before him disappear.

  The whole—card situation was, in theory, something he could discount on its own... The whole appearing somewhere else after taking a nap was, of course, something he could ignore—okay, well, not ignore, but rather, explain in both an articulate and rational manner. Appearing a kilometre or so away from a medievalesque village when he was supposed to be in the middle of nowhere, and the magical-looking tarots that had abruptly appeared like some godly gift? Well, suffice it to say that the somewhat repressed nerd in Arthur was all but screaming his bloody head off!

  The cards practically called to him, chiming bells in his head, tolling to the tune of some sacred song! A prelude to start a grand adventure. Yet, as he mentally accepted that what he was about to do was reach for a set of magical-looking tarots with the earnest prayer in his heart that the magic in them was more than mere name, he felt a force within his chest burst into reality!

  "H-holy shit!" Arthur cried out, half jumping and half stumbling backwards as three now somewhat familiar shapes materialized in the air at chest height. Each spinning with a slow, divine reverence, tilted on a slightly diagonal kilter, right in front of where he'd just been standing.

  There was this magnetism he felt while gazing at them, a sensation of longing… like they already belonged to him… were precious… Irreplaceable… and yet, he could only have one, for they were each of them one and the same. Possibilities, that's what they were… not real, not yet, but all he might have to do to make them so was to simply reach out and pluck one… He tried to shake himself free of the mist that seemed to snare his thoughts, the strange notions and queer knowledge that shouldn't be there but, nevertheless, was all the same...

  He tried to refocus on what was important, to free himself and figure out exactly what was going on… yet the oh-so-wonderful allure of the three tarot cards before him was as a siren's song to a love-lost mariner wandering the coast… Irresistible... whispering with thought-numbing echoes in his ear, their call arriving as a seductive melody so enchanting he could hardly look away…

  As if on a cloud, Arthur floated back towards the trio, half-hooded eyes staring at the intricate artwork that covered each surface with rapt attention, all else in the world falling away to inexistence...

  The first card depicted a somewhat unsurprisingly given the connotations, ornate and gleaming sword. It was unsheathed and pointed downwards, its long double-edged blade straight and broad, looking to be as good about the job of chopping as it was a killer's bludgeoning tool. A vivid border, one that appeared to almost be filigree by how the card's edge shone like worked silver, created an unending pattern around the tarot's perimeter.

  The work was art... an entire history of unspoken battles raging across the card's edge, knights and banners, monsters and demons… the forces of good and evil clashing within an endless and silent war… it was all very—heroic. The warrior, or so it was titled on the opposite side… an undeniable promise that heralded a call to peerless adventure and physical trials…

  There was just one problem… Arthur wasn't the heroic type. Oh, he was trim and fit, to be sure, healthy as anyone could hope to be on account of his once debt-riddled parents receiving a small fortune for allowing an up-and-coming company to modify his genes in the womb. The process was an apparently wildly experimental procedure for which they'd risked their child's life for money... Mixed, of course, with a healthy lifestyle without excess or waste, and Arthur was in decently good shape...

  He wasn't superhuman by any stretch of the imagination, but give it a dozen more years, and one never knew, maybe the likes of such might just appear in the world by man's very hand. But, just because he went for a hike every morning and was, in point of fact, marginally more durable than the average person, didn't mean Arthur was a fighter…

  This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.

  He'd never actually thrown a punch in his entire life! Or, at least, not any outside of mandatory tests… No, he was a self-titled gentle giant who had the somewhat lanky height and mass associated with the claim.

  No, the truth was that Arthur had always been a thinker, preferring to work out any imagined issues he might have through words and reason. He'd always admired the age-old sayings of many a grand strategist and brilliant tactician, in that a battle should be won long before ever taking to the field. It was why he'd always loved playing wizards or summoners when playing games… Preferring synergy to raw power in nearly all forms. The mind was his ultimate tool, not some petty sharpened blade…

  In the end, Arthur promptly passed the first card by, eyes falling upon the second, which offered the promise of knowledge over war. The tarot held within it a picture of a book, a hefty and weathered leather-bound tome with more pages in it than a small town's local library.

  An ethereal hue hung about the thing much in the same way as the cards themselves, potentially alluding to a hint of magic within its writings. A runic script that Arthur could scarcely understand, one that seemed to almost tickle at the fringe of comprehension, swirled about at the tarot's edge, the strange markings glowing gently in a cascade of shifting and pulsing colour that became truly difficult to stare at, yet simultaneously captivated his attention and gaze.

  On the opposite side, he spied the card's name; the scholar—its existence holding rather obvious promises, just as had the first. Arthur had always been a good student and liked learning, even if he didn't like the classroom. He could, if pressed, make himself learn through a more scholastically conventional means but had always found that he was more successful in his endeavours when he manually worked his way through a problem.

  He was a tools man, liked doing things with his hands over writing things down, solving problems with both practicality and, when needed, calculations within tangible and relatable scenarios rather than the endless theory drafting of disjointed and scarcely interesting class work.

  It was closer… definitely closer, given the promise of magic the card so earnestly made to offer, but, still, it wasn't quite—him… And, strangely enough, the gravitas of the situation simply wouldn't allow him to stray from his true self.

  The final card immediately caught his attention, the presence of a large rotating brass gear holding his eye as might a particularly attractive woman at the bar. The cog was a simple thing, made of metal and without rust or wear. On the perimeter, a more dystopian steampunk theme played out within the tiny mural.

  Arthur wasn't what one might name a complicated individual. He enjoyed what he liked, avoided what he didn't and blended in with the crowd when he was able to. Friends found him fun and humorous to be around, and he was never averse to a good night out with anyone who asked, but his first and foremost self-proclaimed perfect evening was one wherein he spent it alone, lost amidst the presence of his own thoughts.

  When such opportunities arose, they were generally spent working on whichever little side-project he was most interested in at the time, his focus on any single one of them fleeting at best in lieu of a curiosity that pushed and punished him towards endless iterations of how to achieve something in brash or new ways. Making things was where his heart honestly lay, as evidenced by his wilderness workshop, wherever it still was, filled to the brim with various schemes and interpretations of animal traps, which had been the latest of his mind's sometimes narrow fixation.

  It was titled; the engineer, an apt description, he thought, given what the tarot portrayed. At first, Arthur had sort of imagined that the three cards might represent a sort of homage paid to the famous holy pillars of such genres, might, magic and crafting… and, in the end, he didn't think he was entirely far off the mark…

  But, there was a slight feeling of personalization here that he could appreciate. Indeed, if the final card had been named something along the lines of craftsman, then he might not have been so inclined towards it. There was a powerful magic, in its own right, about the use of proper words when trying to entice someone, a way to play upon egos and emotions that wasn't so easy to determine of an individual without the right talent. But what did that say about the other two cards?

  Had the second been named magician, then, likely, he would have given it more consideration than he had, and if the first had been called something more along the lines of general, then surely he would have given it more than a passing thought… M-maybe he was just thinking too much into all this… With a small sigh, Arthur disregarded the initial two tarots; the allure of what the final card offered was simply too much for him to deny.

  Mentally, he reached out to the geared tarot, fingers moving towards it in conjunction with his thoughts until they brushed against its surface, the act producing a gleaming light that immediately made him pull away. Again, a familiar scene opened before him, only, this time, the cards that sat spinning in the air were all slightly different variations of the one he'd chosen. In an entirely similar fashion, all three cards depicted a familiar form of deviation while this time adhering to the criteria of the original he'd chosen.

  Now, the first appeared the same as that initial example he'd reached for, the brass gear spinning slowly within, the steam-driven world of inventions and limitless bizarre innovation existing at its fringe. On the back, Arthur read, 'The Mundane' as the tarot spun around, causing him to frown as his gaze slid over to the next, just managing to catch that the second card was titled, 'The Arcane' before it turned.

  On the second card's opposite side was a large and partially jagged crystal gear that was wreathed in sparkling magic. The thing pulsed with power within the tarot's depths while its border was made up of an unending tide of magical contraptions. Traps, staves, swords, armour—tools of all manner and persuasion really, littered the card's perimeter, most with tiny but visible runic markings upon them.

  If the first was meant to offer a life filled with fantastical but probable inventions that could somehow only be achieved by a world driven by magic, then the second promised the advent of an existence wherein he did nothing but work with ridiculous concepts. Axes that created streaks of lightning in the air, toilets that could flush waste halfway across the world with portals, guns that could fire spiralling chakrams honed to the razor's edge… well, if nothing else, the concept itself was rather intriguing…

  It would open up an entirely new reality of ideas and plans for him! He could make flying carpets or… no… no. The more he looked, the more he was getting the impression it was what one might call enchanting than anything else… The whole carpet thing would probably still pan out, but he got the sense that this wasn't precisely what he was building it up to be… A shame, but understandable in a manner given what he'd really been hoping for was, in a way, an amalgamation of both cards as one.

  He supposed the fact that wasn't an option either served as a sort of limitation to whatever this was, which, truth be told, was not at all uncommon within the fictional realms he enjoyed delving into. Yet, it was no less disappointing all the same.

  He guessed that enchanting might not precisely fit the bill either; after all, he didn't really have a semblance of true understanding behind his assumptions, and maybe he was wrong! Yet given that he wasn't seeing airships and golems, but instead, tools galore, well, he just couldn't shake the feeling he was right.

  So, it was with a slight tinge of frustration that Arthur looked to the final tarot, once again, an eyebrow raising as he noted that what he saw essentially boiled down to a card within another card… Its border was wispish, without fine detail like the others, more a shifting mass of incredibly dense glowing fog… The depictions focus within its core still managing to hold a distinctive and recognizable shape. On its back waited the words: 'The Soul.'

  "The—soul?" Arthur asked, chewing on his lip as he watched the title rotate out of sight.

  If the card was implying that it offered the opportunities to—and, this was a leap but... engineer souls, then was it also implying that these... tarot cards were, well, his soul? Or rather, variations on what it was or what it could be?

  From a specific, more... mmhmm... deranged perspective, Arthur could see it; he didn't agree with the concept as a whole, primarily because he'd never actually believed in any sort of afterlife… but, then again, he was willing to suddenly believe in magic, wasn't he? How was this latest tidbit truly any different? Was that what this was? Was he somehow working with his… his soul? What did his soul, if he even had one, have to do with cards?

  He certainly enjoyed collecting them in his youth, but he'd have never said that they were his reason for living or any such ridiculous devotion to a game! In fact, he could even say that he'd long since outgrown such hobbies as others sharing his interests drifted, pulled towards their own individual lives beyond the confines of childhood… Some getting girlfriends, others getting jobs…

  "No... This is... heh... this is crazy!"

  For one, if the soul were real, and, for whatever reason, his had been suddenly—unlocked… And, now, he was about to dive headlong into some hidden occult other-half of earth, which, honestly, sounded as if it might be as batshit crazy as it did when spoken aloud rather than in his own head, then, did all the previous cards represent some form of power he would receive?

  Were he honest with himself, that had already sort of been his working theory, even if he did still believe something beyond his understanding was at play here. But, following that logic, everyone would have a similar card, and he'd seen at least ten that were just floating in the air before—well… before he'd been confronted with something of a forced decision.

  If he were to choose the soul engineering card, then would he be able to somehow make new souls, or was it more that he would be able to adjust the parameters of whatever the card entailed? S-similar, he thought, to the very concept he was even now currently undertaking.

  Magic and robots, be damned! If he were right about this and was being offered an opportunity to create the very things that gave people special powers, then wouldn't that sort of trump anything else he could possibly hope for? Wouldn't he be able to make a card that, say, summoned a giant death mecha with lasers and a cockpit from which he could soar through space? Now, that was an idea that he could certainly get behind.

  This, of course, all hinged upon the fact that Arthur wasn't, even now, still on the floor, bleeding out and twitching with pooling drool from a head wound, half-mad, and currently living out his final moments in a delirious dream-like existence where magic and souls were all real. Full stop…

  "Ahhhhh… screw it… what's the... worst that could happen?"

  He reached for the final card, this time managing to grasp it as the others dissolved into painfully, blinding light, shooting into the iteration he held as it glowed like superheated plasma and reformed into something that was entirely tangible to the touch.

  Blinking away the stars in his gaze, Arthur eyed the tarot in his fingers, not seeing that anything had really changed about it, even as he began peering about his camper, the world of white that had enveloped him beginning to recede like it had never existed. Creeping away, just as it had arrived, as if lurking yet still upon the very precipice of reality where it waited to be called on again.

  Arthur cleared his throat with a sort of awkward and—nervous energy... He licked his lips and shuddered as he fought to regain a semblance of sanity, turning the card over, almost on instinct, before hesitating as he was met with a frankly massive wall of written text that hadn't been there before.

  He was silent as he quickly scanned the paragraph, a slight frown forming upon his face despite how his every geek fibre swelled with excitement… The gist, as he learned whilst he rapidly read it, then re-read it just to be sure, was that he was now able to—reset a soul's power and reconfigure it to his machinations…

  Simple, right?

  It was unique, claiming that no other version of itself existed or possibly could exist; he earnestly didn't know...

  In all honesty, so far as explanations went, the wording actually seemed rather vague, filled to the brim with so much room for inferred guesswork that he could confidently say it felt as though there were little to no restrictions upon the evident power he'd just wholly stumbled right into!

  That being said, Arthur had long learned that nothing in life was as good as it first seemed, especially when the potential pitfalls surrounding something felt purposefully and perhaps even maliciously absent… There was also the tiny and somewhat worrisome addition of a single line written in fine ink that appeared just below the card's name, the phrasing making Arthur frown for a moment as his gaze swept across the words with a contemplative break of the surrounding silence.

  "Soul Engineer… Utility Card, Derived from racial card—Human Ingenuity… Soulbound, upon being lost by its owner or forcibly taken away, this card will be destroyed." He flipped the tarot over, looking to see if anything else had changed before turning it again, taking a deep and long breath and clearing his throat. "Be destroyed." He parroted, softly clicking his tongue while staring hard at the entirely concerning nibble of a warning. The problematic and worrisome connotations between the phrases, destruction and souls, weren't at all lost on him. And Arthur felt a chill run down his spine as he involuntarily shivered at the thought… "Right, so…. either I really am crazy, or this is really is actually fucking happening then… Right!"

  Arthur shook his head; he felt like he was doing that a lot lately… eyes drifting to spy the handful of apparent souls that were currently floating in his kitchen with a weary gaze...

  Now, while this was a stretch for a man who'd grown up in a decidedly Jesus-loving household. If cards were souls, which, given the concepts he'd been picking up until this point, seemed a reasonable enough leap in logic. And assuming that every person was born with a soul that was inside of them... Why was there a random bunch of so-called souls sitting right where they were?

  His own card, he could somewhat work through, intellectually speaking, of course, even if he didn't understand it nor even begin to comprehend what it would mean for the concept of an afterlife. But the cards that were floating in his RV weren't even sitting at chest height! In reality, it could be said that they were more or less hovering a few inches or so off the floor…

  "Right," he thought, head tilting to the side while chewing his lip, where his trailer's wheel would be… Hmmm…

  A sudden thought occurred in his mind, the colour draining from his tanned face as he observed the soul-stuff while it casually waited, as though expecting him, no, almost demanded him to pick them up. In a slight daze of uncertainty, Arthur did precisely that, reaching down with a single hand to collect the stacked bunch, which accepted his touch with an almost ready willingness to them that was all kinds of skittery and alien…

  On a guess, he released his own yet-held soul card to the air, watching it disperse in a cascade of showering light. Then, imagining it to manifest a heartbeat later with those strange new instincts of his and nodding along as it did so. Once more, appearing at a uniformly measurable chest height and arm length, waiting for his perusal. He banished it again, this time without the intent to bring it back, instead focusing on the new cards in his hand and doing his best not to think about why they were there to begin with...

  At least, not until he was ready to go outside…

  There were precisely ten tarots in the… deck, as he was deciding to call it, each with various takes on colours and visual alterations that, at first glance, probably denoted a possible kind of either and or both, hierarchical system of capabilities and an organizational categorization of structure in broad strokes. All of it regulating and potentially implying what one might expect any given soul to actually do from the standpoint of ability and comptenecy.

  Only one of the lot was what Arthur would have named as silver, or, perhaps, possibly rare as its name was written out as though the ink used was derived from glittering moonlight itself. It was called. 'The Abyssal Cultist,' a self-titled class card and, supposedly, it offered its wielder an inherent or greater understanding of its possessor's chosen fanaticism…

  Blood magic, shadow magic, dark rituals and pacts with extra planar entities were all among the licorice assorted—list of bestowed powers that the card would offer… The specifics of the spells themselves delved a touch deeper the more he read, the text seeming to almost expand as he focused upon any given subject.

  There had been very few moments in Arthur's life when he truly felt as though he were wandering into a terrible situation with no evident way out… and, unfortunately, this happened to be one of them… An ominous foreboding welled within the pit of his gut, one which he tried his best to ignore, moving through one problem at a time the best he was able.

  The other nine cards were all fascinating, of course; there was one that was named personal storage, for example, and another that dealt exclusively with languages, which, should Arthur's growing hunch to be correct, would undoubtedly pay dividends given the sinking suspicions in his heart… All the while, more still felt like they were variations upon a frankly uninspired fantastical realm of what he might otherwise expect to see. Ice shards, a barrier, food and water conjuration…

  All in all, there were only two souls that were labelled as class cards, the second being another variation of a scholar tarot with a different picture than what he'd been offered. A stylized scroll replaced the big book. The description providing the owner with a more generalized understanding of rudimentary and foundational academic concepts that didn't expressly exclude nor include the possibility of magic; however, the implications of the matter were quite evident.

  It made Arthur question if these cards were the only means to express the, dare he say it aloud, arcane, silly as the concept was… Or, if they were more a crutch to be used in place of dedication and learning… much like the language and scholar cards sort of hinted at…

  If magic existed as languages did and were, in effect, things that people either invented or could otherwise learn on their own, then were the cards sort of like—cheating? And more, what would bloody well happen if he used the scholar card to learn basic magic and then took it away?

  Would he suddenly lose all that knowledge, even if he'd been working with it for years? Honestly, the thought stung Arthur, making him question if using such a thing was even a good idea! The notion that he'd suddenly have this—gap in his comprehension of the world that hadn't been there before, an integral piece of his memories just vanishing, was... eerie and frankly disturbing to contemplate…

  Either way, it wasn't as though he actually knew any magic, and he certainly wasn't about to add a card like the abyssal cultist to his own repertoire. No, that one just had too much of a nefarious ring to it to even consider… The storage card he felt to be safe enough to regard with a touch less suspicion, just as the language card and even the scholar one… but he couldn't help but feel a sort of hesitation in simply trying to press the tarots into his chest. The desire to do so waiting almost longingly at the fringes of his psyche.

  The implications of the ten cards were a clear and definable number that he could work with… That many cards to any individual's personal soul deck seemed a plausible enough number to place as a restriction on such a thing, given his somewhat limited experience thus far… But, questions if such an action as adding cards to one's soul or joining souls to souls was a limited, if not permanent, measure burned at the forefront of his mind…

  If he were to add the tarot that claimed to give him the ability to summon basic fresh food and water twice a day, would it then be with him for the rest of his life? That, of course, wasn't to say that never having to worry about such things was precisely what one might call terrible, but the notion nevertheless gave him pause. Unsure what else to do, Arthur stacked the cards neatly back together and placed them up in one of his cupboards, right next to his spice rack.

  Then, taking a deep breath, he closed his eyes and prepared himself for what came next…

  ***** In an attempt to get more constructive feedback, I'd like to invite anyone interested in doing a review exchange to shoot me a message! Important! I'm not looking for blanketed 5 stars. I don't trust that stuff, and I doubt anyone else does, either. The only time I actually feel like I improve is when people are honest about their feelings. I'm looking for people's genuine thoughts and am perfectly willing to read a story and give the same in return! *****