118 Years Ago

  “Why must you saddle me again with this imbecile, father? What have I done to displease you?” Vlas was pacing furiously in front of his father. Pob maintained a carefully neutral expression, trying very hard to look like part of the furniture.

  “Because I said so, Vlas,” Garan answered coldly. “I am your father, and you will obey me. Until now, my advice has served you well. You have always returned victorious from all the tasks I set for you.”

  “Not thanks to this idiot. He has nearly gotten me killed half a dozen times. You know what my Call is. My Joker only comes when someone better than me inspires me to greatness. How do you expect me to get more Arcana?”

  Vlas was almost screaming. He was only fifteen years old, yet already taller and sturdier than his father.

  “Why won't you go on an adventure with me? With you at my side, my deck would have gotten much better than it is now.”

  “I am doing my part, Vlas. I am inspiring you to greatness. I am setting difficult challenges for you to overcome.” Garan's face was expressionless, but he was seething with fury.

  “If you do not have more Arcana in your deck, blame it on your own mediocrity. I can set you an example, but I won't hold your hand all the way.”

  Vlas looked as if he wanted to say something more, but Garan cut him off again; “The meeting is over. Leave. Do not return to this house until you have killed that beast.”

  Vlas left the room in fury, with Pob respectfully following him at a safe distance, until they reached Vlas’s room. Pob carefully locked the door. They looked at each other for a moment.

  They both burst out laughing.

  “How can he be so smart and so dumb at the same time?” Vlas asked when he got himself under control.

  “It is called vanity, Vlas, when the creator made the first intelligent bastard, he put vanity in the world to counter him,” Pob answered. “I must admit your acting has improved a lot. It actually hurt a little bit,” he said quietly.

  “Oh, please, Pob, you know… damn it! I fell for it again,” he said while Pob howled with laughter again.

  “Like father, like son,” Pob said, wiping his eyes.

  “What is it this time?” Pob asked.

  “Some kind of ogre that wandered out of a dungeon three days ago. There is no way my father can believe I can take down a beast like that with the cards he thinks I have.” There was sadness in Vlas’s eyes as he said this.

  “He is trying to get me killed, isn’t he?”

  Pob’s demeanour suddenly turned serious. He had many defects, but he never lied to a friend.

  “Yes, Vlas, he is. He has been trying for a while. If you had returned home in shame when we beat the Tiny Kingdom, he would probably have disavowed you and forgotten you. But you came back victorious. That has unsettled him. He is afraid you will become more powerful than him.”

  “But how can he swallow that? It is obvious we are doing it together,” answered Vlas.

  “Not to him. I do not exist for him. His pride would never allow him even to consider the option that his son’s porter is actually part of a two-player team.” Pob’s face was solemn now.

  “Vanity, Vlas. Vanity is the answer. He has convinced himself that he is so extraordinary that his mere presence is inspiring you to greatness. That is why he has avoided you so much of late. He is afraid he will make you stronger.”

  Vlas chuckled. “I wonder how he would react if he found out that I already have three more Arcana in my deck than he has.”

  “He would have us both killed,” Pob was deadly serious now. “That is why we are going to continue with this little charade. Your father is a powerful and influential man who never lets go of a grudge. You do not want him for an enemy, Vlas, even if you have more Arcana than he does. Never doubt that.”

  Two days later, Vlas was back in his father’s presence, the beast’s head in his hands.

  “Father, I will do whatever you say, but please, grant me this: not with him again,” Vlas was almost pleading.

  “You will do whatever I say, and however I say it. Get ready. You two are going out again in three days,” Garan answered.

  108 Years Ago

  “And Useful Pob, and Useful Pob...” a group of street urchins shouted, running in the wake of Vlas and Pob.

  Pob was a master at misdirection. He had created Useful Pob, a comical secondary persona, and interpreted it with the determination of a method actor. Everybody swallowed it. …And Useful Pob! had become a universal joke.

  “Life is like Bounty, Vlas,” he had advised him. “Make them laugh at you. You always lose when playing against someone you find comical. It is almost like gloating.”

  “I named him after you, Vlas,” a young mother proudly said, holding a chubby toddler for Vlas to see. The name had become a fad after the slaying of the Gray Tribulation.

  Vlas smiled at the mother and kissed the toddler on top of his head. Pob thought the mother was going to faint.

  “Do you know how ridiculous I feel each time someone tells me that?” he asked Pob. “Especially when they do it in front of the Tribulation’s true killer.”

  “First of all, I gave the deathblow; you did most of the work to weaken it. It was a team effort, like everything you and I have ever achieved,” Pob answered.

  “Secondly, I do not want fame. I am perfectly happy with my life. Part of our success is that everyone thinks I am just a porter. The more we can maintain that fiction, the more effective we are as a team,” Pob went on.

  “We are Players, Vlas, and good gamblers never give away their secrets.”

  “You know as well as I do that I do not want to be famous either, Pob,” he answered.

  “Suck it up. You are the good-looking one, after all,” Pob mocked him.

  98 Years Ago

  Vlas was losing badly in a pillow fight against Pob’s three grandchildren. They had cornered him and were inflicting a humiliating defeat. They were aged three, five, and six.

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  He had been Uncle Vlas all their life. They adored him. So did his sons and his wife, Kara.

  The wife he had married thirty years ago was still with him. Pob had not aged one single day since she met him, one of Bounty’s many strange gifts. He had stopped aging at thirty-five. Vlas had done so as well, but he looked to be in his early fifties. It was said that Bounty showed your true self, and Vlas had always been an old soul, even when he was a kid.

  Garan, his father, still looked like he was in his early twenties. Pob was not surprised — he had always been a brat.

  Kara looked every one of her sixty-two years. She had spent part of her marriage scared that Pob would leave her when the age gap became too apparent.

  She had accepted that he would never do so, but that did not stop her from worrying about him.

  “Promise me you will marry again when I am gone,” she told him softly, kissing his cheek from behind.

  Pob sighed. He never lied. Not to the people he loved.

  “Do you see all those kids playing with that man there, Kara?” he asked. “Sooner or later, I am going to have to go to all their wakes. I will not marry again when you are gone, Kara. Never. I won't be able to go through this again.”

  “I thank God for Vlas, then,” she said, kissing his cheek again.

  Suddenly, there was a knock at the door. His elder son, Uras, came back looking troubled. “Father, there is a gentleman here who wants to talk to you.”

  “No, I do not want to talk with that disgusting piece of shit you have for a father. I want to talk with my son,” said a too-familiar voice.

  Garan entered the room, his face seething with fury. It was the first time they had seen him in years. As Vlas’s exploits became legendary, Garan had become more reclusive, as if he were afraid he could empower his son just by existing.

  “I did not want to believe this,” he told his son. “You are consorting with this rabble? Is it true you are the godfather of some of these filthy kids?”

  “Of all of them, as a matter of fact, father. One even bears my name,” Vlas answered him coldly.

  Garan gaped as if he could not believe what he was hearing.

  Pob quietly said, “Kara, please take the kids outside and…” He could not continue. Garan had turned and slapped him viciously in front of his own family.

  “What did I tell you about mingling with the help, son?” he asked, not even bothering to look at Pob’s stricken face.

  “I did warn you that…” Now it was Garan’s turn to shut up as his own son savagely slapped him back.

  “Touch Pob again, and I will kill you,” he said with cold intensity.

  “Well, it has finally come to this,” Garan said, caressing his face while he summoned his whole deck, which appeared as an aureole of 91 arcana hovering over him. “I always knew I would have to kill you sooner or later; you cannot be trusted.”

  “Whatever you say, father,” Vlas added as he summoned his own deck. The one Garan had never bothered to check.

  Garan paled as he saw it had 94 arcana, three more than his.

  “Be aware, though. You will not survive a fight against me,” he warned him. “I have been killing monsters all my life.”

  Garan looked uncertainly at this powerful, unafraid stranger who bore the face of his own son. Then he turned and left Pob’s house, never to return.

  36 Days Ago

  “The council wants us to investigate what happened to the Guzzler’s den, and they want it now,” Vlas told Pob, as they took the Beli equivalent of coffee in one secluded bar. Vlas had to be careful with his public appearances, as people would literally throw their children at him all the time.

  “I am not surprised. Much of Belona’s food came from there. This is an unmitigated disaster,” Pob answered.

  Vlas was a Player second only to Discovery, the elusive director of the old Academy who had achieved Godhood seven generations ago, effectively sealing the appearance of new Arcana for everyone.

  Pob did not know how to feel about Discovery. He had not met him once; he only knew him through his apparitions in the public notifications system.

  It had been easy for these two for decades. Whatever you could say about Discovery, he was a genius administrator and a master at dungeon taming; he had turned all of Belona’s sixty-nine dungeons into an efficient machine that ate Essence and produced prosperity.

  No more dungeon invasions, no more monster hunting… life had been easy, long and tedious, only punctuated by small tragedies, as Pob’s children and grandchildren led easy, long, and happy lives which ended inevitably with Pob going to their wakes.

  He had fulfilled his promise to Kara and never married again.

  He had many friends and maintained good relations with his now distant relatives, but Vlas was the only stable element in his life.

  Vlas had never married or had a partner. Pob had always known he had absolutely no interest in sex or having children. He had been a terrific stepfather, but those days were over for him, too.

  They shared that desperate friendship that develops among immortals when they see everyone else age and die.

  “Ok, let’s head there,” Vlas finally said. “I swear if someone throws another toddler at me, I am swatting it back to the mother,” he added darkly,

  Pob had to chuckle at that. Vlas was not one for gallows humor.

  “They will probably make a heroic song about it,” he added. “How you survived an ambush in which evil mothers showered you with their kids, trying to bury your legend and all that...”

  “You are still bald, you know,” Vlas answered.

  “Come on, we have known each other for nearly two centuries. You can come up with something better than that…” and they went on, gently making fun of each other, like an old couple, until they reached the entry to the Den.

  A whole Beli crowd was already cheering for them.

  Their smiles faded when they saw who was waiting for them at the entrance: Garan, Vlas’s father. They hadn’t seen him since that fateful night at Pob’s home many years ago.

  Garan was a significant figure in Belona’s politics and was widely recognized as the third most powerful Player, after Discovery and Vlas himself.

  “The council has decided that we should go together on this one,” he quickly offered, before anyone could say anything.

  “They want to play it safe.”

  “The council?” Vlas scoffed. “They are nothing but an extension of your will. I don't know or care what game you are playing, but you will stay out of our way when we enter the dungeon. If you want to start adventuring with your son, you’re two hundred years too late.”

  Garan's face went cold, but he said nothing and followed them quietly.

  That was when Pob knew something was wrong. He had never seen Garan swallow his pride before. Never.

  It was too late to return now, anyway. The Den had to be explored; there was too much at stake.

  They entered the rift together, and their world exploded. An enormous insectoid beast had been crouching on the other side, waiting for them, as if it knew the exact moment they would come in.

  The attack was so sudden and unexpected that they did not even have time to register it before it struck.

  Pob woke up thirty minutes later, chained to a wall. He tried to summon his cards, but the chain vibrated, unleashing a searing pain that shattered his concentration.

  He opened his eyes and witnessed a horrific scene. The broken corpse of Vlas lay between his father and the insectoid beast that had attacked them. He was obviously the prime target and had taken the brunt of the blast. Pob had survived only because Garan thought he was insignificant.

  They were speaking in Beli. The beast was intelligent enough to have learned it.

  “Remember, we want Discovery too. Do not fail us, Garan. Do as we say, and there will be a place for you in the new world. Someone has to act as a spokesman for your people,” the beast said.

  Pob’s world had shattered in one single instant. Vlas, the scared boy he had raised into a hero, the loyal friend who had shared all his adventures, the only family he had left, was dead, and his father was making deals over his corpse.

  “You finally did it, Garan!” he shouted at him. “You are now the second most powerful Beli Player in existence, on your way to the first, if you also betray Discovery.”

  “That is the way to go, Garan!” he added. “When your own talent is not enough, eliminate the competition.”

  Garan looked momentarily displeased, but he promptly ignored Pob again. “Pay no attention to him; he is just the help.”

  Pob chose not to answer. He kept his face carefully neutral, hiding the raging torrent of passions inside him. He wanted Garan to think that.

  He was, before anything else, a Player, and a good Player never shows his cards.