All The Skills

Arthur was torn. Time was of the essence, and he truly did not give one fig about the local rules about card harvesting... except that he knew exactly what would happen the moment he and Brixaby were out of sight. He had once been in these people's place.

A single card, even a Common one, could change the course of a life. Some of these people were showing signs of injury in the middle of the deadened lands. Without a card in their heart deck, they might be dead men walking.

Even then, the pickings around them would be slim at best. The large Uncommon scourgeling he and Brixaby had fought might yield a whole card.

He doubted the rest of the scourgelings were good for anything more than Common shards. All combined, they might be enough to make a whole card. But if the officials from the city found out they’d been harvested…

All of this flashed in and out of his mind in a second. The wagoneers were yelling at Arthur to hurry to the other caravan, and the children there. Some were just outright demanding who Arthur was and if any other dragon riders were coming.

Arthur cut across them, "Who’s in charge here?"

There was a brief silence as everyone looked around. Then one man, bearded and grim, stepped forward. "I was the assistant to the second in command, but both he and the wagon master are dead. I suppose that puts me in charge," he said matter-of-factly.

"Listen," Arthur said, "I'll go help the other wagons, but I'll be leaving these scourgeling corpses behind. If you harvest them, then me and my dragon were never here. Do you understand?"

Thankfully, the man could read between the lines. His nose wrinkled, and he spat to one side. "Figures they'd have a card tax in this city too."

Arthur shrugged. The important thing was that the man had understood. With the message given, he turned to Brixaby and called over his shoulder toward the wagoneers. "We're faster than any cart. Don't go back, you may just get attacked again by scourgelings. We'll be bringing any survivors to the main city hospital."

That caused a burst of commotion, some begging Arthur to save their children specifically.

As if he would leave anyone behind.

The moment Arthur was seated, Brixaby took off, buzzing straight into the air and then shooting down the road outbound from the city at full speed. This was no leisurely climb up into the heights only to drop down again. This was a purple at full breakneck speed. Straddling his back with no dragon saddle, Arthur was slightly intimidated. He crouched down low, both not wanting to create more wind resistance and suspecting he might actually get blown off if he tried to sit up straight.

Still, he was a little surprised at Brixaby's enthusiasm. His dragon didn't typically care for the plight of other people, aside from Arthur himself, and occasionally, the riders of his retinue dragons.

When he said as much, yelling at full volume only to be barely heard over the shrieking wind, Brixaby curled his neck around to answer.

For once, his booming voice sounded normal through the wind. Arthur wondered if that was part of the reason why he was always so loud. Brixaby was built for speed in the air.

"I don't care if those people harvest Common scourgelings. Let them have it. We have much more valuable prey up ahead—Rare shards." Brixaby punctuated this by removing the Uncommon shards from where he had stored them in his Personal Space. He crunched down on them, eating them like a child would a handful of stolen cookies.

That had been Arthur's plan. The wand let the city’s administration know about unreported cards and shards in decks and extra storage spaces. But he was willing to bet they wouldn't check a dragon's stomach.

Uncommon shards didn't do much for a Legendary like Brixaby. But as the dragon crunched down, Arthur felt a ripple pass through his dragon.

Brixaby's speed increased, just that tiny bit more.

Arthur grinned—or he would have, if he wasn't afraid of getting bugs stuck in his teeth. Instead, he just crouched down lower and tried not to get in Brixaby's way as he sped forward.

Finally, after a good twenty minutes of flying flat out, a dark shadow came into view on the horizon.

It was completely unmoving, and as they drew closer, Arthur worried that they’d arrived too late.

Sure enough, the dark spots resolved into a band of six wagons. By the looks of things, they hadn't even had time to circle around before they were hit. Incompetence, maybe? They should have seen the scourgelings coming. Maybe they’d been hoping for a last-minute rescue.

The rescue hadn't come.

The animals pulling the carts had been slaughtered, cut to pieces, and already starting to rot, as if they had lain there for weeks instead of perhaps an hour. That was due to the scourgelings, and the influence of the deadened lands.

Most of the wagons had been knocked over, overturned, foodstuffs and basic supplies torn out and stomped on. Scourgelings generally didn't eat food in the traditional fashion, though they certainly killed anything living. They were attracted to sources of magic: Enchanted items, card anchors, and, of course, anybody who had cards in their decks.

Arthur saw evidence of that too. Several bodies—all adults—lay twisted and already decomposing on the soil. Their chests had been torn open to reveal the organs inside, as if the scourgelings hadn't wanted to wait those extra seconds for death to take place before harvesting the cards. They had done it the fast way.

Arthur looked away, sick.

There was no sign of scourgelings anywhere. They’d moved on.

"Is this the right caravan?" Brixaby asked, looking around. "Or do you suppose there might be more wagons up ahead? "

"Why do you say that?" Arthur asked.

"I don't see any child bodies. Or perhaps they were so small that the scourgelings ate them whole," Brixaby added to himself.

"I don't think scourgelings do that," Arthur replied. He looked around again, forcing himself to take in the scene without any emotion, much like what his dragon was doing. "Let's land and get a closer look."

Stolen novel; please report.

Brixaby did, and as Arthur dismounted, he glanced down at the gray soil under his feet. Most of the wagons had been knocked off the side of the road, and there were faint impressions of tracks here and there. Though, the constant wind had already eroded most of them, and the tracks that were left were muddled and overlapping. Likely, the scourgelings had just move up the road, to the next set of victims.

He and Brixaby would have to hunt them down, or else no one coming into the city would be safe on this route.

Finally, reluctantly, Arthur turned to the destroyed wagons. "If there are any kids, they probably hid inside," he said quietly. "I should…" He took a deep breath, clenched his fists, and then let his hands relax. He couldn't let himself be overcome by this. "I should return the bodies to their parents."

Brixaby wiggled his head back and forth in a so-so gesture. "Yes, and also search the supplies. Do you think the scourgelings left anything valuable behind? Pieces of metal, perhaps? Tools?"

"Brix," Arthur said, a little sharply. And while the dragon didn't look ashamed, he at least didn't continue. Arthur let out a breath. "Just... check the other wagons, please.”

Arthur moved towards the closest wagon, which still had the remains of two bison yoked to it. The poor animals hadn't even had a chance to fight back.

The door of the wagon was left open, having landed with the door side up, and Arthur was able to hoist up. Bracing his knees on the side of the open door, he poked his head in.

All the contents were in disarray, and it looked as if a small scourgeling had been inside to randomly rip things apart. But there was still a lot that was left untouched. These people weren't simply visiting the city. They were moving in, and they had brought everything of value with them. Their whole lives were stuffed within a couple of wagons.

And now the survivors in the first wagon caravan would have to start over again… if they could.

For a cowardly moment, Arthur wondered if he could pass the bad news along to one of the sheriffs to deliver to the other wagoners. Domingo or Lopez surely had given this kind of news before and would know how to do it with tact and grace.

But… no, Arthur supposed that this was part of his duties too.

Though… among the spilled linen, broken cans of food, metal tools – which he did not touch, as he didn't feel like being a grave robber today – there was no reek of rot and no sign of a body.

What happened to the kids? he wondered, repressing the shudder that wanted to race up and down his spine.

Maybe the scourgelings had eaten them. There were no signs, no blood, and most importantly, no bodies.

Conventional wisdom said scourgelings didn’t eat small animals — or small children — whole. Then again, conventional wisdom also said scourgelings didn’t have the ability to plan. Yet the Mind Singer had built a pseudo community within a hive she had taken over. She had even successfully farmed dragon eggs.

But baby dragons were born with full cards in their cores. Young humans didn’t have that magic. They should be uninteresting to scourgelings, except as something to quickly kill.

Maybe they all escaped? But running off meant traveling deeper into the deadened lands, which would only make them sick, then kill them.

That was grim, but in Arthur’s estimation, their best chance.

He and Brixaby needed to deal with the rogue Rare scourgelings first to keep what happened here from happening to other wagon caravans.

Afterward, they’d do a wide sweep and see if they could spot anyone else in the dead lands.

Arthur was just thinking of chalking this up as useless and going back to Brixaby. There was nothing more to see here.

He had climbed down from the wagon when he heard his dragon call out, “Arthur, I am in need of your reading skills.”

“Reading skills?” Brixaby knew how to read.

Curious, Arthur walked back from where he came and saw his dragon crouched off the side of the road, puzzling over something in the dirt. As Arthur got closer, he saw someone had managed to scratch words into the nearly stone-hard soil. A knife lay to the side, discarded.

The wording was not written in their language, but in Texan.

“Someone hasn’t been practicing,” Arthur teased, bending down to get a closer look himself.

Brixaby grumbled something, but Arthur didn’t listen. His own reading skills for the language were still basic, at level 5. It didn’t help that the message had been scrawled in haste, which meant the handwriting wasn’t easy to understand.

Arthur sounded out a few words, but when he got to the crux of the message, his heart skipped a beat.

Twenty survivors, coffin length down. 24 hours of air as of 13:30.

He had no idea what 13:30 was meant to mean, but... twenty survivors. The children had been hidden.

Arthur stood up. “Brix, tell me you have an extra shovel.”

“Only because you insist on using them as weapons.” The dragon reached into his Personal Space and handed Arthur a rather well-made shovel. Arthur spared a moment to look at it and note the stamp from Mesa Free Hive on the handle. Well, he couldn’t chide him for stealing. Arthur was the one with the thief class. And it was a really well-made shovel.

The spade end broke the hard crust of topsoil at the first try. "I think someone with an Earth Manipulation card created a vault down there," Arthur said. "Coffin length down. That's six feet, I think? Help me dig."

Brixaby could dig, somewhat. Unfortunately, his claws were better at cutting through earth than moving it. While he could manipulate a shovel of his own, his shoulders didn't work the way a human's did, which meant he couldn't throw the shoveled soil out of the way. He was better at breaking up hard bits and shoving the loosened earth to the side.

It was left to Arthur to dig down. He did so, desperately, and aware he was shortly hip deep in soil that was poison to anyone without a card.

His imagination gave him vivid pictures of how it must be for the people down below: no card anchors to give them light. That would be a magical signature for the scourgelings to sniff out. They'd be trapped in the dark in an increasingly stuffy hole, their only hope that someone would come and save them.

Arthur dug faster. Sweat poured down his face, and he received several levels in his shovel proficiency skill, bringing him up to level 7.

Six feet down, just when the top of the soil was over his head, the tip of his shovel scraped an area of earth packed so hard it was almost like stone.

As soon as he struck it, muffled knocking came up from below.

"Hold on!" Arthur called, driving the shovel into the packed earth. He guessed whoever created this had packed the earth here to keep the soil above from crushing the people below.

Brixaby, perched above, called down helpfully, "Arthur, hurry."

"What do you think I'm doing?"

"You may want to hurry faster."

Shooting his dragon an annoyed look, Arthur braced his boots against either side of the narrow hole. "Move aside! I'm going to break through!"

He brought the shovel down with all his strength, plus what his 20 Point Spree card could give him, focusing on his strength attribute.

The covering to the vault inside shattered like the shell of an egg. Relieved cries came up from below, and a slim hand poked out, reaching up.

"It's okay," Arthur said. "You're safe—"

The moment the word was out, a whistling cry cut through the air.

Arthur's head snapped up toward his dragon. Brixaby was looking out across the dead landscape, his expression grim. "I did warn you to hurry."

Arthur's mouth went dry. Down below, the cries of joy turned into wails of fear as they heard the whistles too.

Whatever Brixaby saw out there, out of Arthur's view, caused him to mantle his wings aggressively. "Rare scourgelings.”

“They’re coming?” Arthur asked.

He shook his head. “They are already here, digging out of their own holes. They have lain in wait for this moment."

Arthur had been a fool. The Mind Singer had shown the ability to think and plan... and so had these scourgelings. Much like Brixaby, their bodies weren’t meant for digging. So they’d waited for someone else to do the hard work for them.

This had been a trap.

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