UHRUK – LETHANAS

  As the sky lightened with the coming dawn, she clambered out of her hidey-hole beneath the rough assemblage of lumber that made up one of the many wharves along the docks. She made sure that she’d secured anything of value, which wasn’t much, in a flat leather satchel under her shirt, strapped around her waist. She planned to move her meager belongings, including her hammock, under a different wharf within a few days. Moving frequently kept you safe.

  The wharves of the harbor city of Lethanas creaked and groaned with every swell, which she’d grown used to, and there were always ships docked and watchmen treading over decks, which sometimes kept her awake. But it was somewhere to sleep, for now.

  The tide was out; beneath the wharves the water sloshed and churned, ripe with the scent of seaweed and rubbish and rotting fish guts. Most of the fishing boats had left earlier, so the docks were almost deserted. Almost. There were a few itinerant laborers loitering about, rough men with rough hands and rough clothes, and those she avoided. Here and there, insensate sailors slept on the ground, some with puddles of vomit and piss, having been too drunk to make it back to their ship. Her fingers twitched at the sight of unprotected coin purses and satchels, but she kept her hands to herself. Likely anything worth stealing was already gone, and if she wanted to be a thief she would have joined the Black Knives gang when they’d asked her. Now, she avoided them and they mostly left her alone. They knew she didn’t have anything worth stealing, except for her body but she’d disabused two of them of that notion. Maybe they’d find a carded healer and could afford to grow back their fingers. Maybe not.

  She found an out of the way spot beside a closed wooden stall, to one side of the dock market square, where soon the stallholders would set up for the day, selling produce and cooked foods. While crouching in a low squat, she gnawed on a heel of stale rye bread that tasted delightfully sour and had pale-yellow seeds of some kind mixed in with the crumb. She sighed, missing the taste of meat, but her lack of dietary variety couldn’t be helped, at least not until her luck changed. She should go back to the orphanage, and pretend that she’d returned for good and fill her belly with food until she almost burst before leaving again. But the other children were wary of her, and some were hateful. Most of their parents had died to undead or goblins, and well… Water was next, and a quick wash, and she considered which fountain to use and the best route to get there.

  Nearby, a line of wagons and carts entered the square and split to move to various stalls. It was almost time to go. She would have liked more time to think, but she’d slept in a little. The night had been colder than normal and her blanket was warm.

  There was a clunk right beside her as a boy dropped two wooden buckets on the ground and then rubbed his aching hands. Water sloshed over the rim of one bucket, and the boy swore. He must have carried the full buckets from the nearby fountain, the one she hardly ever used as it was always busy. This must be the boy and his master’s stall, and they’d be busy setting up for the day soon.

  She stood, clutching the remains of her bread to eat later, and was about to leave when the boy stepped closer and ducked his head in greeting.

  “Hi there,” he said.

  He wore a rough, homespun shirt, and similar pants held up by a rope belt tied off with a knot. His boots were good quality, though. Perhaps a gift? His brown hair was sun bleached and his skin sun-browned, and she could see pale patches that his sleeves didn’t quite cover, and he looked fit and plain.

  “Hello, returned to you,” she said. “I wish you a good day.” Her fingers and hand gestured in the traditional morning greeting, but the boy didn’t seem to notice. He stared at her face, a slight frown upon his.

  “You’re different to me,” he said.

  “I am,” she said, grinning at the boy to show him her sharp canines. She wanted to go, to leave before the market square became too crowded, but it would be rude to leave too abruptly after a well-mannered greeting. She owed him a proper conversation for his politeness.

  “Are you new here?” he said. “I haven’t seen you around, and we’re here almost every day.”

  “No. I am here and there, like the wind.”

  “Your accent is funny. And your voice is deep. It sounds nice, though. Kind of… furry.”

  The boy glanced back over his shoulder, probably at his father or master, who might start to wonder what was taking him so long and come looking.

  “I should not keep you from your tasks,” she said, taking a step back, “lest you get in trouble. I’m sure you don’t want that. But thank you for your morning greeting. It lightened my heart.”

  His frown deepened, and he scratched under one arm. “I’ve never seen someone like you. Are you a goblin?”

  She laughed bitterly then; she couldn’t help it. “No. I am Uhruk’Mekhar. We are not like goblins. Not at all.”

  “Ah! Uhruk! I’ve heard of your kind. But you have green skin like goblins do. That’s why they call them greenskins.”

  She opted to be gracious, still. “Some might say that. But is it really green?”

  The boy’s face scrunched up in thought. “It’s more green-olive-brown. Like a mix between green and brown olives. I know olives ’cuz we sell them. My da owns this stall, and we sell food to people.”

  “Because.”

  “Eh?”

  “Never mind.” She made a polite gesture indicating she was sorry but had business elsewhere. “Thank you for speaking to me, but I must leave now. I have… business elsewhere.”

  The boy nodded, his face serious. “Will you come back? You’re pretty.”

  She froze as heat flooded her face, though luckily her dark skin tone meant her embarrassment was hardly noticeable. No one had ever called her pretty before. She tried to brush aside the comment as the boy was young and inexperienced, but her eyes burned and she had to blink until her blurry vision cleared.

  “I… maybe.”

  His face lit up with a smile, and she immediately regretted lying to him.

  “My name’s Jakob,” he said.

  “I… I am Uhruk’Mekhar.”

  “Uhruk, I know that. What’s your name?”

  She shook her head. “I am Uhruk’Mekhar. We have no names.”

  “Oh. Why not? That must be strange, not having a name.”

  “We are nameless until we prove ourselves.”

  “Like, getting a card?”

  “It’s more complicated than that, but a class card would be the first step. Only the greatest among us are given a name. One cannot name themselves, nor can family do so.” Her chest ached at the thought of her family. They were gone, never to return from the realm of the gods above and below.

  “That’s a hard thing to do, getting a card. I’m sorry.”

  “Sorry?”

  “That you won’t get a name.”

  She quickly throttled the anger that boiled within her, clenching her hands into fists and hiding them behind her. The boy was young and callow, and didn’t mean anything by his inadvertent rudeness. Sometimes the gods above and below bestowed a class card on those they deemed worthy, so to say someone would never get a card was the same as calling them unworthy. Useless. Rubbish. And she wasn’t useless; she was a particularly clever person. At least, she thought so. And if she wasn’t bestowed a card, there were other ways. She was going to save up for a card fragment. And then a second. And more until she could visit a Deck Maker and have the parts melded into a whole.

  “Where do you live?” he asked when she hadn’t spoken.

  Somewhere hidden. Safe. “With friends.” The fat wharf rats counted as friends, didn’t they? “I do need to go. It was a pleasure meeting you, Jakob. Work hard. Maybe we’ll see each other again.”

  She turned then and walked away before the boy could ask more questions or his father showed up. Any parent here wouldn’t look too kindly on their child consorting with one of the Uhruk’Mekhar, who were widely thought to be only one-step removed from the hated goblins.

  * * *

  She crept silently along the flat rooftop until she reached the edge and poked her head up. Below her, five toughs from the Black Knives gang pushed and half dragged a man with rope-tied hands and a sack over his head. Each of the four men and one woman wore a knife with a black handle in a sheath on their right side: the black knife the gang was named after. One of them only had one hand—a shirker.

  They were at the border of the warehouse district, close to the docks, in the most run-down area that was almost a slum. The orphanage was nearby, a coincidence, and she hoped none of the children were out tonight. The Black Knives had teams roaming on this cloudy night, rounding up undesirables and anyone who’d wronged them. Some would be beaten, some tortured and maimed, and some awaited a worse fate.

  Like this man.

  She’d stumbled upon him handing out sweets to the children at the orphanage, but in one of the side streets when no adults were about. To some of the girls he’d given a copper coin, and she’d seen the glint of silver florins in his coin purse, as he’d probably intended for the waifs around him to. She’d accosted one of the boys and examined the treat: hardened sugar and sesame seeds, but not drugged that she could tell from the taste. Still, the man was off. She sensed it, could see it in his pig-like eyes above heavily pockmarked cheeks.

  It hadn’t taken much stealth to follow the man home, to a surprisingly well-kept house with a sturdy oak door a few streets away. She hadn’t seen him around the streets before, nor when she’d been at the orphanage. So, he must be new to the warehouse area, and though she had no firm proof, she knew he was up to no good. Dead eyes like that meant a dead soul.

  The Black Knives knew not to mess with her, and she’d paid the debt from the fingers she’d bitten off with most of her coin, so they were all square. But the city guard wouldn’t do anything without proof, and the gangs were ruthlessly effective at stopping anyone encroaching on their territory. So, she’d left word with one of the gang’s street urchins who kept their eyes and ears open in exchange for the odd scrap of food or copper coin. There was a man up to no good, she’d said. Maybe casing the orphanage. Some of the Black Knives came from the orphanage, and though they’d sworn allegiance elsewhere, they didn’t like anyone messing with the place or the children. And they knew her word was always good.

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  Whatever they’d found out was obviously enough to send the man into the dark water off the deep end of the docks. She was curious, but not enough to ask around, and certainly not enough to interrupt what the Black Knives had planned with idle questions. The off man was a walking corpse; he just didn’t know it yet.

  One of the gang held a sheathed sword and smoked a cigarillo, the tip glowing brighter when he drew on the tobacco. He coughed when he did that, and she suppressed a grin. Young gang members were often too concerned with appearances. The smoker let the others do the work of prodding and dragging the bound man through the streets. At this time of night, shortly before dawn, there weren’t many people about, and those that were turned a blind eye and hurried away, swiftly disappearing in the darkened streets.

  The motley crew made their way onto one of the dilapidated wharves that comprised this end of the substantial docks. Signs had been posted, stating the wharf was dangerous to use and would be replaced in good time. She knew from overheard gossip that the signs had been there for years.

  The oldest boy, Cigarillo, motioned the others onto the wharf, where they made their way along crumbling timbers. She slid down a drainpipe and crept from shadow to shadow until she could slip beneath the wharf. There were heavy crossbeams here, and structural supports to ensure the wharf remained sound even in pounding storms. She scurried along them, hands slipping on rat droppings and bird guano. The rats knew the best paths; they always did.

  When she could make out voices, she slowed her pace to barely a crawl until she found a pylon to lean against. The massive log was wider than she could fit her arms around and protruded above the wharf. She swung out over the water and clambered up it, and ducked behind an empty, overturned barrel before anyone spotted her. Her palm ached from a sizeable splinter lodged there, but she’d deal with that later. Lying on the ground behind the barrel, she edged forward until she could see the result of her meddling. She knew it was always incumbent on those with honor to see things through to the end, no matter how unpleasant.

  And she liked to believe she had honor, no matter her current circumstances. An honorable, particularly clever girl.

  The Black Knives forced the man to kneel in front of them, his back to the edge of the wharf. Cigarillo drew on his tobacco and then handed the stub to another of the gang, a woman with braided hair, who eyed it suspiciously.

  “Go on,” he said. “It’ll put hair on your chest.”

  “I don’t want hair on my chest.”

  “You know what I mean.”

  She shook her head and handed the glowing stub to one of the other men, who laughed and drew deeply, and didn’t cough. Cigarillo flashed him an annoyed look.

  “Please,” the prisoner croaked, words muffled by the hood, “just let me hold it. Just for a moment. I—”

  A heavy clout rocked his head to the side, and he cried out in pain.

  Cigarillo nodded again, and another smack jerked the man’s head to the other side.

  “Tick, tock,” she whispered so quietly her words were lost to the wind. Like a pendulum.

  “All right,” Cigarillo said. “Let’s see if he has any remorse.”

  The hood was removed and shoved in a belt for safekeeping. Snot dripped from the off-man’s nose and tears leaked from his eyes. Maybe he did know he was done for.

  “Just let me touch it before you do away with me, please. It’s sentimental to me.”

  “Ha! Ain’t no way we’re giving you a weapon. Think we’re fraking stupid, do you?”

  “No! Keep my hands bound. I just… if you have any mercy, any decency…”

  “Well, your luck’s about run out,” Cigarillo said. “We ain’t got no mercy or decency. Had them beaten out of us a long time ago. Mercy don’t pay the bills, and decency’ll get you a knife in the guts.”

  They all laughed then, the Black Knives. From what she’d observed their boss, the Sheath, who she’d never seen or met, kept an iron grip on his crew. They would kill the man and be done with the whole ordeal soon, and go back to whatever they usually did for the gang. Likely helping to run one of the many gambling and drinking houses the Black Knives owned.

  But there was an oddness to the man’s behavior that made her take notice, that drew her curiosity. She doubted the Black Knives saw it—after all, they weren’t particularly clever or they wouldn’t be gang members in the first place.

  She had seen a few others in this situation. She’d watched some as a learning experience, but none had ever done anything except beg for their own lives, or try to bribe the gang, or threaten violence or undead retribution as if that were possible without the touch of corruption. To ask to hold something—a weapon from what they’d said—was strange.

  Cigarillo held up the sword he carried and eyed it approvingly. “Nice bit of work. What’s a dead man like you doing with it?”

  “It’s… a family heirloom. Not worth anything. Please… I can’t die without having held it once, before… please.”

  The young woman with braids looked at Cigarillo and shook her head. She was right, the Sheath would have a hand from each of them if they let a prisoner get hold of a weapon. And that would leave one of them with none, so he’d be as good as dead, too.

  Cigarillo drew a hand-span of the blade from the sheath and gave a low whistle. “Not worth anything? Are you dumb? This is orichalcum! I could sell this and live like a king for years!”

  The others froze at his words, and Cigarillo laughed nervously, his eyes shifting.

  “Not that I would,” he continued. “Any valuables go to the Sheath first.” He glared at the others around him. “Don’t you tell anyone I said different!”

  The braided woman eyed the sword. “Is it magic?”

  “Don’t know. Maybe.”

  “No!” cried the bound man. “It isn’t. You have to believe me! Just let me hold it for a moment; that’s all I ask.”

  Don’t, she thought. Something was wrong.

  “We don’t have to do anything. You’re boring me now.”

  Cigarillo slammed the blade back into the sheath and drew his black knife. The others did the same, and then as if someone had spoken a command they fell upon the prisoner all at once, stabbing and stabbing and stabbing until he slumped to the rotting timbers, blood pouring from innumerable puncture wounds. She turned away at the sight. The first time had been enough for her. The nightmares had taken months to fade.

  There was a long silence as they waited to see if the man—now just meat—coughed up any cards, and then a grunt, and a splash of the corpse hitting water. The gang traipsed off, joking and laughing like nothing had happened. She stayed still then, out of an abundance of caution, until she couldn’t hear their voices or footsteps.

  She scrambled to her feet and scurried over to the edge of the wharf, skirting the pool of blood dripping through the gaps in the timbers.

  Someone should say a prayer over the dead man, even though he was now just meat, and had to have been sketchy and interfering in whatever the Black Knives’ business was. Cigarillo was probably right, the man had been dumb. And now he was food for the fishes and crabs. She whispered a brief prayer of forgiveness for her rudeness to the gods above and below.

  Turning both palms up and curling two fingers on each, she prepared to gesture in the traditional final farewell to a stranger, when she noticed a faint glow in the water beneath her. Her breath caught in her throat, and before she could think she dove into the cold water. No stranger to catching crabs and searching through the mud for anything of value, she opened her eyes and tried to blink away the salt sting.

  There. She swam deeper, the current tugging her back and forth, until she reached the corpse. Tendrils of blood rose from the man, and she knew she should get away before sharp-tooths smelled it and were lured to a feast.

  But there was also a faint white mesh of light surrounding the body.

  How is it done? How do I do it?

  She panicked, then, and almost breathed in sea water. She hadn’t seen anyone claim one for themselves, but people talked, and she tried to recall what she’d heard as her chest hurt and her lungs began to protest. Wave a hand?

  In desperation, she held a hand over the corpse and thought, “Come!”, and then “Release!”, when nothing happened. She groaned in frustration as the mesh glow remained and her hand stayed empty. She couldn’t fail now, not when her salvation was so close. But she was terrified that if she didn’t take her chance right now it would disappear, and be lost, and she’d forever remain the outcast Uhruk’Mekhar who was too smart for her own good and had failed to avenge her family.

  She gestured then, an unconscious movement with shades of the traditional gestures for welcoming and safekeeping, and a wisp of light rose from the corpse’s chest and gathered in her palm. Light flashed, and she gasped and almost choked on seawater. She held a card. Not a fragment, as she’d expected, but a whole entire card!

  Eyes burning with saltwater and deliverance and apprehension, she launched herself off the body and up toward the wharf overhead. She swam as fast as she could to a thick pylon, card clutched in her hand, to notches chopped into a crude ladder, which she used to climb to safety.

  And then she ran. She didn’t stop, didn’t pay attention to who she passed or shouted at her, until she was nearby her hidey-hole and she’d scrambled over the edge of the wharf and into her hammock and under her blanket. She’d retained enough presence of mind to make sure she hadn’t been observed, but still, she would move straight away, when she could.

  She lay in her tattered hammock, clothes dripping wet, growing colder and colder until her teeth chattered and her muscles shivered uncontrollably. But still she couldn’t make herself open her hand, from which came a white glow.

  She squeezed her eyes shut and opened them again, and the light remained, as did the metallic hardness of the card in her hand. So it wasn’t a dream. Taking a few deep breaths, she forced herself to sit up and quashed her fears into a tiny clump she shoved aside. Fear is only fear, I will face it head-on and it will not kill me.

  Plans. She had a well-reasoned plan, as did most people who dreamed of coming into a card, which she should follow.

  But the whole affair didn’t make sense. No one carded would be here in this decrepit part of Lethanas, even though it was a major city in the Eternal Empire, when they could be making a good living anywhere else. A good living at a minimum. A card meant wealth. A card meant power. A card meant freedom.

  But one man’s foolishness was now her salvation.

  She opened her hand, and in the diffuse light of the card, examined it. The edge was stamped with a complex pattern, and the center bore the image of five glowing cobalt swords that seemed to be flying around.

  “What do I do now?” she said to herself.

  The card shattered in her palm, dissolving into silvery motes that were absorbed through the skin of her chest. And in her mind’s eye, she saw the card, sparkling with a sheen that made her smile for the first time in months.

  Ethereal Blades

  Rare F tier

  Skill card

  Reduces your energy shield to transform your equipped weapons into ethereal swords.

  Ethereal Blades have added damage equal to a portion of your energy shield.

  Secondary ability: None.

  Rare! A combat card, though, but beggars couldn’t be choosers. But what was an energy shield? Another card she needed to procure? And how much, exactly, was ‘a portion’?

  And no wonder the dead man wanted to touch his sword. If he’d been allowed to, the five Black Knives would probably be dead. Instead, the man was meat. He should have kept a tiny knife in his boot so he’d never have been caught out without a weapon. That would be her first task when she was relocated and safe.

  Wait… if the skill required energy shield to function, then where was the man’s energy shield skill card? Shouldn’t he have had it absorbed? She decided the best explanation was that his class card, which had ‘died’ or been lost with him, must have provided an energy shield of some form. She wasn’t so dumb that she couldn’t figure out that the shield would help to protect from getting injured.

  But what now? A rare skill card was fantastic. Far better than she’d been hoping for. She now needed a class card, didn’t she? She shivered uncontrollably then, and realized her hands had turned a strange purple color from the cold.

  I need dry clothes and warmth.

  With numb hands, she fumbled for the pouch strapped to her chest that contained her last coin—a gold florin—and breathed a sigh of relief that it was still there and not on the seabed under the wharf. She was in worse shape than she’d thought, and she was about to clamber out of her hammock but froze when one of the gods above and below spoke to her.

  [Skill card activated!]

  [No class card detected. Considering…]

  [Congratulations! You have been selected to receive a Class Card.]

  The air in front of her materialized sparkles of golden light, which then merged into a card. Another card! She grabbed it before it flew away or dematerialized.

  [Accept class card?]

  Yes! Thank you!

  [Soul Drinker (Rare) F– tier added to your class/heart slot.]

  [This process is irreversible.]

  Soul Drinker?! Oh, that doesn’t sound good.

  Soul Drinker

  Rare F– tier

  Class/heart card

  A proportion of damage taken is suppressed.

  A proportion of damage dealt is leeched as Energy Shield.

  [Access to card dashboard granted!]

  Card dashboard

  Total cards: 2 of 7

  Class/heart cards: 1

  Skill/ability cards: 1

  Heart pounding, skin freezing and nose dripping, she climbed out of her hidey-hole using numb fingers and ran for all she was worth. Anyone could identify her now, and she had to find somewhere safe before she was killed for her cards—because if you had a class card you were sure to have at least one skill card, possibly more. And from the looks of things, her skill card was completely useless without energy shield; with her class card only slightly better off—half useless. So her lucky new found cards would do virtually nothing to protect her, and to make matters even worse, she’d have to somehow procure a third card that generated an energy shield or evolve other cards to do the same.

  Even the orphanage wasn’t safe, and so she ran and ran to the only place she thought she wouldn’t be killed and that would—possibly—take her in and offer sanctuary.

  The Misk’Imas Institution.

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