Yesterday

  “Well, how do I look?” asked Billy, as he watched the surprised faces of Bob and Jenna.

  “More human than I expected,” Jenna answered, “if you discount the blue coloration, the scales, and the slit eyes.”

  It was the first time Billy had attempted to respawn as a creature from a Beli dungeon.

  These dungeons were based on Bounty, just as the Earth ones were built around Avatars. Dungeons were like sponges; the energy they drained from nearby creatures shaped them in their image.

  “Not that surprising,” Bob said. “In human folklore, the idea of dragons having both humanoid and bestial forms is quite common.”

  “Did you check your true stats?” he asked Billy, a hint of anticipation in his voice.

  He’s becoming addicted to new powers, Billy thought. He is lucky this time, though.

  “The dragon’s powers are presented as Beli Arcana and cards, but some of them are based on two new Pantean Skills: Waycraft and Gamble.”

  “Sweet,” said Bob. He loved craft skills. They all had some type of elemental affinity that linked them to magic. Bob, not surprisingly, had always played Magic-Users in the DnD campaigns his nerd friends ran at home.

  Billy examined his Arcana. Pob had given him a comprehensive introduction to Arcana powers before he went off to patrol with his Beli proteges.

  Arcana were grouped into Major Suits. Beli Players only used the mightiest one in each Suit, even though the lesser Arcana were still technically part of the deck.

  “Forty-nine Arcana,” Billy explained, “roughly equivalent to an Avatar of the same rank. They are grouped into seven Suits: Drakes, Ways, Gates, Circles, Rivers, Dooms, and Ripples.”

  “The Seven of Drakes seems to be the most important one; the rest of the deck is built around it. I also get a Call: The Joker appears when I have been in contact with running water for three minutes or have been totally submerged in it for at least one minute. It is clearly a water-based deck.”

  He summoned the Seven of Drakes as a floating image the size of a poster. A hydra-like monster with seven heads could be seen emerging from a river.

  “As Pob explained, the more figures in an Arcana, the more powerful it becomes. This is a pretty powerful form, but nearly all its powers require being in dragon shape.”

  The Seven of Drakes

  The Arcana’s powers can only be accessed when the Arcana card is folded. Doing so transforms the Player into a dragon, with a power depending on the number and types of cards folded along it.

  Swords: Each Sword folded grants the dragon extra strength, size, and ferocity.

  Wands: Each Wand folded grants the dragon extra armor, health, and resilience

  Cups: Each Cup folded grants the dragon extra speed.

  Coins: Can be exchanged for any other suit.

  The only way to return to humanoid form is to draw the Seven of Drakes again and fold only the Arcana, without any accompanying cards.

  “That’s what you did, isn’t it?” asked Bob, “you folded the Arcana without folding any other card along with it. The humanoid form is the unenhanced dragon form.”

  “I did not want to try it by turning into an actual dragon. We do not know how big it would be,” answered Billy. “I could have tried using one of the lesser Arcana of the same Suit- the three or five of drakes or whatever, but I figured all the rest of the suits are built around this one.”

  “This is not how Swords, Wands, Coins, and Cups usually work, is it?” asked Bob.

  “No, it is not,” confirmed Billy. “Bounty is very flexible. Lots of Arcana have their own rules. They behave like a game within a game.”

  They were near a river, thirty miles away from Belona. Bob had cautioned against trying the new shape in the Belona River, as the mutated River Dragon was still haunting it. The last thing they needed was a subaquatic dragon fight.

  “Okay, I am going in,” Billy announced as he waded into the river. His head bobbed momentarily over the water. “This is pretty cool, I am adapted to the river even in humanoid form. I can breathe and see underwater as if it were clear air. I am diving to the bottom so I can draw again in one minute.”

  The river was a large one, at least twenty feet deep. Billy sat in the bottom with the same ease as if he were strolling through a park, and waited a minute for his Draw to be reactivated.

  He summoned the Joker and wished it to transform into the Seven of Drakes. He got two Swords, one Coin, and one Cup. He wanted to go for speed, so he exchanged the Coin for another Cup and folded the rest of his Hand.

  The river displaced violently as he emerged in the shape of an enormous water dragon, the size of a trailer.

  Bob and Jenna cheered him from the bank.

  Billy did the draconic equivalent of a smile and dove to the bottom again. On the next draw, he got lucky and got two Cups in his hand. He summoned the Seven of Drakes again, rejected the other two cards, and kept both Cups. He folded again, adding those two Cups to the other two he already had in his Fold. With four Cups in the Fold, he was not going to get a form much more suited for speed.

  He felt his body changing as he activated the magic.

  When he reemerged, he looked more like an oriental dragon than a western one, long, graceful, and snake-like. He was also noticeably smaller than when the two Swords had been part of the Fold.

  “This is the speediest form I am capable of turning into,” he announced into the minds of the other two Losers through the blood link, as he was no longer capable of human speech.

  “Okay, let’s try the other Arcana, the River one,” suggested Jenna.

  The Seven of Rivers

  Unauthorized tale usage: if you spot this story on Amazon, report the violation.

  The Joker can only be transformed into this Arcana if the caster is already under the blessing of the Fold of the Suit of Drakes.

  Swords: Each Sword spent grants the dragon power to control the beasts of the river he is swimming through.

  Wands: Each Wand held in the Hand grants the dragon the ability to carry and protect one traveler from the perils of the river.

  Cups: Spend Cups to grant the dragon natural regeneration for one minute.

  Coins: Coins can be transformed into any other suit.

  Billy noticed none of the other Suits could put cards in the Fold. The complete deck was based on the dragon form.

  “How will the magic be manifested?” asked Bob. “In any way I choose,” Billy explained. “Bounty is quite flexible in that regard.”

  He got one card of each minor suit. He transformed the Coin into another Wand. And wished for a two-person saddle to manifest on his back.

  “Are we supposed to ride that?” asked Jenna incredulously.

  “Give it a try, it will be fun,” Billy urged her.

  Billy approached the bank carefully so that Bob and Jenna could mount the saddle. He felt the protective hand of magic close around them like a glove.

  Then, he dove to the bottom.

  Jenna squealed in delight; even though they were swimming through water at great speed, as long as they were in the saddle, the liquid interacted with them as if it were air. The effect felt more like gliding through the sky than swimming.

  It also affected vision, giving the Losers a beautiful, unrestrained view of the whole river.

  “Do you think this is going to work?” Bob asked Jenna as Billy zoomed through the river like a flexible torpedo made of magic and cards.

  “I don’t know, Bob,” answered an ecstatic Jenna, “but we are going to have the time of our lives finding out.”

  This morning

  Billy was acquiring a taste for Qod, the Beli equivalent of coffee. It was not as invigorating as caffeine, but smelled better and had a delicious, tangy aftertaste.

  Jenna and Bob were also concentrating on their breakfast. No one had talked much this morning.

  Finally, Bob sighed. “Okay, we are all thinking it, but no one dares to say it. What do we do about the Unfocused?”

  “What do you mean?” Billy asked, alarmed.

  “Bob, only you and I were thinking it. Billy is as pure as snow, and twice as naive, if snow could be naive.”

  She turned to her boyfriend. “You know we are going to set an inescapable trap that is going to wipe out all the Imperials at the same time,” Jenna told him.

  “Should we warn the Unfocused we are doing it today or not?” she asked.

  “Of course not! Let’s whack them!” Billy answered vehemently.

  “No?” Jenna could not believe what she had just heard.

  “This is not the way this discussion was supposed to go,” she said, confused.

  “Bob and I were supposed to praise the tactical benefits of wiping out the three factions at the same time, and then you would convince us it was the wrong thing to do, acting as our moral compass. And Bob and I would never admit it, but we would be secretly relieved, because the truth is that none of us was really willing to betray them that way.”

  “And then you go all gangsta on us?” she asked incredulously.

  “Think of all the money we could make stripping the boots from their corpses and selling them in the black market,” he told her with a deadpan face.

  “And besides, you do not need to warn them because I already told Eleon this morning,” Billy concluded, while Bob and Jenna gaped open-mouthed at him.

  “Where do you think those scones you are eating now came from?”

  “Pity,” mumbled Bob. “I liked Eleazar’s boots. They would have sold for a pretty penny.”

  Then he admitted, “I warned Gala, too.”

  It was Jenna’s turn, “I might have mentioned it while talking to Eleazar last night. Oh, god, they must think we are such pussies…”

  “Probably,” admitted Billy. “No raspberry ones today.”

  “How do the new skills go, Bob?” Jenna asked him, trying to change the subject.

  “Both are pretty awesome,” Bob explained. “Waycraft is based on spatial magic: blinks, teleports, distance distortion, and measurement…the whole shebang.

  We have been using Shadowcraft until now to dimensional travel, but this one fits better in that role, as soon as I design some perks for it.”

  “Gamble is obviously about games of chance, Pantean ones, which are even more exotic than the Beli’s.”

  He tried to get the last doughnut, but Jenna beat him to it again.

  “I have become a master at games like Blux or Four Chimneys. I feel pretty confident I could win a tournament.”

  “Of course you would, dumbass,” Jenna poked him. “You would be the only one attending.”

  “Gamble becomes much more interesting when combined with other Skills,” Bob went on. “It allows using chance as a restriction. I came up with this perk this morning.”

  Steel Lottery (Gamble 2): The user can throw a Palooga ball with such skill that it bounces against several random targets. Each bounce causes the ball to lose precision, as if thrown by a player with three fewer Body points. This precision loss accumulates. Steel Lottery can be used once every thirty seconds.

  Requires knowledge of Ball Ricochet (Palooga 2)

  “What's so special about it?” Billy asked. “Ball Ricochet 3 does the same thing, and you may choose the targets.”

  “It is only a rank two perk, Billy,” Bob explained. “Adding the chance element took a whole rank off it. I activated it in less than one hour. The downside is that it could hit allies as well as enemies. I could not use it while fighting in a group.”

  “Bob, if the targets are being chosen randomly, you become a potential target yourself. The ball could also strike you. Are you trying to make it into FailArmy?” Jenna asked.

  “Damn, I had not thought of that,” Bob admitted.

  One hour ago

  Billy swallowed the bitter pill Bob had concocted for him. It was a long-acting pill that would allow him to acquire achievement points for the next eight hours, even in a locked system.

  If everything went according to plan, Billy would get a massive amount of them before the night was over, perhaps even some new powers.

  He met the other two Losers in the hall.

  Both had donned their elven armors and weapons. Billy had been using his when he respawned as the River Dragon—they would be floating around somewhere in the Blue Room. He would get them back as soon as he respawned in his true form.

  He knew both Bob and Jenna were carrying small metal boxes of largely untested medicinal pills. They had paid a heavy price to obtain working Alchemy, and they were going to squeeze it dry.

  For a second, he thought about Pob and his four Beli patrollers, wandering around in the underground, trying to give hope to the hiding population. He was reminded of their small army of Beli players, still training in the Secret Mountain.

  If everything went according to plan, they would not even be needed.

  Billy scoffed at his own thoughts. Of course, things would not go according to plan.

  He knew that the Beli would play an essential part in the future.

  They had become entangled with the Losers, and fate had a way of shaking you up and down when you did that.

  “It is already time,” Jenna said, “we should go there.”

  They walked towards the entry of the Forest of Bethela, previously known as the Guzzler’s Den.

  They took their time, savoring the sight of the already half-destroyed megacity.

  If their attack worked, this was the dawn of a new Belona.

  Now

  They entered the dungeon.