“You stay here and double yourself like there’s a fire under your ass,” I told Yveda. “Whatever comes your way, you stop it, understood? I don’t care if it’s that lich lady riding one of the Twins like a horse. Nothing gets past you.”

  The demon pursed its lips. “This whole place is a stiff breeze away from falling down on its own. We should find a more defensible location.”

  I clenched my fists, hearing the screams and shouts from up ahead. “This is the place, you get me? You let anyone past you and I’ll shatter your card.”

  “You should be more careful with your threats,” the demon said quietly, glowing eyes slitted. “I might decide it’s safer to let you get killed while your back is turned.”

  I growled, my feet already pulling me deeper into the Lows. “I’m not going to break your card. Just hold the line!” The last thing I needed was a wave of Orcs or undead hitting me from behind as I tried to clear out my streets. “And once you hit two hundred, send fifty in after me.”

  I pelted away. I already had my Iron Maiden Plate and the Talisman of Spite equipped, and I summoned a Demon Marauder as soon as I pulled it.

  It would have been wiser to sit still a while longer and amass my forces – Edaine had drilled that into my bones during War Camp – but I couldn’t. I had to get to the fighting in the Lows as quick as I could. Logic had nothing to do with it. I needed to be there half an hour ago, and every second longer I took burned my brain like a hot poker in the hand.

  I rounded a corner and suddenly the street was full of wights, wraiths, and skeletons. A handful of somebodies fought against them well down the street, and others were running away. Some of the undead had Death Source over their heads while others had the vividness of summons. If they weren’t human, I didn’t give a shit who was who – they were in my neighborhood, and every last one of them was going to die.

  “Go get ‘em,” I told the Marauder as I unleashed a Spell.

  Mayhem reigned as the street filled with fire gouting up from between the cobblestones. Unearthly shrieks filled the air, and damn near everyone within a hundred feet either collapsed into a moldering heap of bones or else shattered into destroyed card dust. The Marauder gave me a bitter glance as it lost half its health, but it didn’t pause in its attack. There were still plenty more enemies outside the boundaries of the Spell that needed killing. Even with my Plate’s Resist 1 I was forced to discard a Ghastly Gremlin, wishing I had my Ravening Hatchlings in hand. Thankfully, the damage topped up my Talisman’s charge, so any other hurt my cards did to me would be just that much more I could dish out.

  The people fighting down the street were well out of range, thankfully. I didn’t want to hurt my own people. They’d suffered enough. The thought that out of all the spots in the city these bastards would choose to pick on the Lows filled me with a blinding rage.

  I pulled more cards. I already had all my Source out and up – I’d started pulling Source the second I left my mother behind outside of the city – so everything I drew now was something I could use to protect the people.

  “Finally,” I growled, summoning the card I knew better than almost any other.

  Leaping into the fray, I put my cards on the float and lashed out with the Hammer in one hand and my Artifact brass knuckles on the other. The Hammer did more damage, but I could hit freely and continuously with the knucks, since they weren’t from a card; they didn’t carry all the rules of card combat, unlike my Hammer, which after a single swing would hang heavy and useless in my hand until it refreshed next turn.

  I realized, though, as a wight went down under my Hammer and two more skeletons died as I punched them with my clawed brass knuckles, that I was gaming the Twins’ rules just a little bit. The soul elevation that still throbbed within me had given me Fated Attack damage on my soul card, so every little tap I gave, even bare-handed, would do 1 point of damage and inevitably connect with its target… but in a freeform brawl like this, I could still swing the knucks freely, entirely evading the whole “wait a turn to refresh” issue that weapon Relics suffered from. In a handful of heartbeats I was able to destroy four more of the weak undead creatures that clogged the street. The Marauder appeared at my side with bone dust on its lips and gave me a wink as it tore into my side, doing its turn-end damage. I channeled the 3 damage through the Talisman toward an undead Summoner on the far side of the street whose type I didn’t recognize. It went down with a cry, and its summons shimmered into nothing.

  A spare moment of heavy breathing gave me the space to summon again.

  I targeted a bigger Soul down the way with the Night Terror’s Arrival ability, sending the bloated, stitched-together corpse to a knee in a Focused state.

  “Elevate me,” the demon demanded. Those were usually the first words out of its mouth these days. “I need to taste fear again!”

  “Kill some shit and I’ll think about it,” I snapped, swinging my Hammer again now that I could. A winged, fanged skeleton creature shattered under the blow. Twins, but it felt good to be able to hit this much harder every time. Maybe if I kept working on my punching like I’d been doing during War Camp, my next elevation would take me up to 2 Attack on my soul card. The thought was dizzying. The Night Terror dashed off to prove its mettle.

  Fresh cries from the human fighters down the street drew my eye. A new figure had joined the fray, and it was tearing through my people, leaving broken and bloody bodies in its wake. My guts clenched. Of course this mass of foot soldiers would have a leader at its head. That was the one I needed to take down.

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  “Hey!” I screamed, carving a path toward the distant fight. “Come pick on someone your own size.”

  The rampaging figure looked up from where it had its face buried in the exposed guts of one of my people, gore smearing its face. It laughed joyfully, and fangs glinted in the dying light. My blood chilled. I’d just drawn the attention of a vampire. From my limited experience, they tended to be very powerful, and now it was pushing aside its own minions to get to me.

  The creature had curiously colored pale skin, like its skin had once been darker before it had been drained of blood, and its ears were pointed. An undead elf, then. It was bulky and muscled like a man, but it had faint curves under its tattered robes that might have meant womanhood. It hardly mattered – it obviously intended to kill me and every other living creature it could get its hands on one way or the other. It tossed its head, the end of its long silver braid flinging drops of gore against a brick wall. “It’s not often someone asks for me to come kill them,” it laughed. Its voice was musical and had an obvious note of glee. It was enjoying this.

  I didn’t waste any time coming up with a smartass answer, I just jumped in and started swinging. This piece of undead shit was killing my people, and it didn’t deserve any words.

  I put Nether into the first hit with my Hammer, and even though one of the vampire’s summons – an undead crow with red eyes – dove in to take the blow, the Overkill blew through it to hammer into the vampire’s face. Its eyes went wide, and it laughed aloud.

  “Oh, a real fight,” it said with relish. “Thank the Endless.”

  I punctuated its thanks with a slash of my clawed brass knuckles to its midsection and a pulse of power from my Talisman as a little extra. My face felt carved from stone. This monster was going to die.

  It let two cards slip from its hand to absorb the damage, and I wished I’d thought to put on my glass eyepatch. Knowing what cards it was using and discarding might be the difference between walking away from this fight and not. Bouncing back from my blows, I dug in my pocket to find the treasure. It might cost me a move to put it on, but it would be worth it. I managed to get the glass over my eye just in time to see what was coming at me.

  The summons, of the same type as the one I’d had the Night Terror focus just a few moments before, swung its stinking, meaty fists at me. It would hit like a falling building, I knew, and it was tough as hell. Still, I had Armor 3. I was no easy meat myself. I took the blow, using Fate’s Grace to discard a Bog Imp, and hit back with my knucks. At the same time, I popped off another Wildfire. The Abomination growled as its flesh sizzled, and I turned the Talisman on it, letting the reflected damage that I’d taken finish it off. It shattered into motes.

  My eyes cleared just in time to see the vampire itself reach out to lash at me with a familiar-looking blade. I could have had the Night Terror step in to take the blow – it wasn’t dead yet, though my Marauder had just bitten the dust – but I recognized the weapon as a Vampiric Blade. I hadn’t seen it summoned – the Abomination had been in my face – I knew it only did 3 damage; my Plate would block it.

  I felt a ripple of shock as I let the blow land and the shreds of a single card puffed out of me. There was a sense of cold and despair as the blade’s Lifesap did its trick. Its blade did 4 damage, not 3! The vampire grinned at me.

  “Thanks,” it hissed. “The first of many.”

  My fury doubled. I’d thought I’d known what the card would do, and I’d been wrong. Not every card of the same type is going to be identical, smartass! You can’t take unknown hits on the chin like that!

  Fortunately, I had the perfect answer. My Hammer had some new tricks I hadn’t gotten to use yet, and it was high time to show them off.

  I devoted 3 Nether to pump up the hit and waded in, swinging at my opponent. Whatever it blocked with, I wanted to make sure my Overkill activated. Sure enough, another Soul stepped in – an armored Wight it must have already had in play – and I tore through it, the excess damage spilling onto the vampire. Card confetti fluttered away, suggesting it had something it really wanted to keep in its hand, but then its eyes widened in rage as its Vampiric Blade shimmered away into motes of light. I felt a surge of satisfaction as I slammed my clawed knucks into its face twice in quick succession. The Hammer’s upgrade had given it the ability to strip away an opponent’s Relics when it hit, and it was going to save my ass.

  “I think I might have to turn you once you’re crushed,” the vampire said, baring its fangs in a malicious leer. “This is fun.” Most of its Source dimmed, and a huge summons misted into being next to it.

  The misshapen skeleton-thing towered as high as the tenements on either side of the street. At the same time it appeared, every single remaining summoned wight, skeleton, and wraith fighting in the streets who had escaped the range of my Wildfires suddenly puffed away, the shards of light streaming toward the massive abomination and into its mouth. It swelled even higher, blotting out the smoke-obscured sun.

  “Oh, shit,” I whispered as it swung its fist. The great bony knuckles crashed through the side of the tenement to its right, making the whole structure creak and sag. Terrified screams came from the folk hiding within. I couldn’t worry about them just yet – in half a second this had gone from a reasonable fight to me wondering if I was about to die. The mighty fist fell on me.

  The pause of Fate’s Grace gave me a moment to calculate furiously. There had been maybe 20 Souls absorbed by its arrival. I had both Ravening Hatchlings in hand, a couple I could discard, and the one card I had to hang onto if I was going to survive. My armor would absorb 3 damage, and I had 12 cards left in my deck. I could just squeak by… I thought.

  The blow fell on me like an earthquake, leaving my ears ringing. The Marauder, the Bog Imp, and the two Hatchlings flew out of my hand, and a sheer blizzard of card confetti burst out of me, completely emptying my Mind Home. A tearing pain ran through my belly, and I coughed, tasting blood and feeling a dribble of it pass my lips. Twins, I wasn’t quite right in my count. How badly am I hurt?

  I’d gone to my knees under the blow, and I thanked Fortune that I was able to get back up even if my knees wobbled. I hurt all over, and I’d likely need healing if I made it through this, but for right now, I could do what I needed to. I had exactly one move left. I focused all my remaining Source and split it into two streams. One went to powering my claws, and the other summoned the single card I’d held onto.

  The starlight skin covered me, and a grim smile grew on my lips. “Shame you devoted your big guy,” I whispered to the surprised vampire. “He might have saved you.”

  I went absolutely berserk, jumping onto the creature and hitting it over and over with my knucks. They didn’t have Fated damage of their own, but I figured they probably did about 1 damage in normal hands. Together with my new Attack value on my soul card and the Nether powering my hits, I was doing 5 at once, and I hammered down like a crazed craftsman pounding a nail after he’d just found his wife in bed with another man. Artifact weapons are the way to go in the real world.

  The vampire spluttered and shouted beneath me, struggling mightily. I had 3 turns of invulnerability – it was strangely pleasant to not worry about my deck disappearing at the end of that; it was gone already – and this shithead had to die before that ran out. The vampire was shedding cards rapidly. As soon as my Nether Source refreshed, I devoted them this time, putting all of it into my brass knuckle blows.

  “Wait,” the vampire protested, flailing. Its summons were hammering at me – and its huge Legendary would join in momentarily – but this wasn’t a Relic weapon they could magically jump in to block. This was actual brass crashing into its actual face, and there was no room for anything else to get in the way.

  “Get out of the Lows!” I roared, my vision blurring in my fury and exertion. The vampire had stopped shedding card confetti, and I knew the end was near. Still, it took a few more hits before I felt something give under my hand. The piece of shit must have had some crazy Health on its soul card. Didn’t matter now. My claws dripped red, and the form underneath me lay still.

  I staggered to my feet, groaning. The huge Legendary was gone. I had maybe ten seconds left on my Sucking Void. Undead summoners were still rushing back toward me from where they’d been fighting out of sight before I arrived. A quick glance backward showed a wave of purple demon figures approaching from the rear. Yveda had sent in a squad like I’d told him. I didn’t think they’d get here in time.

  I squared my shoulders and brandished my Hammer and my knucks. Going down fighting for the Lows wouldn’t be so bad.

  A swarm of human figures rushed in from a side street, intercepting the approaching undead. I blinked. There was Naydarin, one of my urchin enforcers, flinging fire at them, and there was Bryll, appearing in one spot to stab with her wicked little knife before disappearing and popping back into being twenty feet away. But there was Viker, the shopkeep, and he had a Soldier and a Troglodyte Spitter summoned. My head swam. I hadn’t given him any cards yet, had I? And Mariska, the faded mother of six who’d been talking about starting a school – she had cards of her own, the daft woman. She was going to get herself killed!

  There were a good twenty of them, all with two or three cards, screaming and cursing and fighting for all they were worth, standing between me and danger. Yveda would be here in moments to back them up. I sagged to the ground, feeling something grind uncomfortably inside of me. Maybe I wouldn’t die today after all. Maybe.

  Footsteps approached, and I looked up dully. I’d narrowly escaped death twice in as many minutes, and even so I felt mildly surprised by what I saw.

  “Hello, Big Man. Thought you might need a little help.”

  It was Harker, standing there offering me a hand.