Source & Soul: A Deckbuilding LitRPG

“If you can’t beat me, you have no hope in the Rising Stars Tournament, Basil. It’s a fact, my boy, simple as sunshine.”

I had expected Tipfin to say as much in our final day of practice duels, but still, the words stung. If the old duelist had thought me capable, he wouldn’t have bothered to bruise the air with his doubt, would he?

“Especially considering I don’t have all the cards I should,” Tipfin groused, pulling at his narrow salt and pepper beard.

“It’s still a good deck,” I countered, opening and closing my hands in preparation for the cards I would soon be summoning from my Mind Home. Scary, I had almost said, but I didn’t want to give Tipfin additional ammunition. The brackets had been finalized earlier in the week for all of the noble participants, and they placed me up against Losum Drakk, who used an Archer-centric deck, capable of dealing damage to whoever it wished, the opposing duelist included. “He’ll decimate flying decks, and be able to race fast decks for the kill.”

“Pfff,” Tipfin said dismissively. He stood precisely twenty-four feet away from me in the round training hall, perfectly shaped brown bricks making up the floor and walls, infusing the room with Order. “Orelus is what pulls it together. Without that Mythic it has no oomph. And that fool boy should be using some Air Source to refresh his Archers. I don’t know what their resident trainer is doing, letting him go without.”

I agreed with Tipfin about the Air Source, but I knew Losum never would. “He’s terrified of heights.”

My trainer raised a bushy eyebrow at me. “Are you telling me that family can’t afford an Air fabricator? Preposterous.”

I shrugged. The Drakks were some of the wealthiest people in the city, but money didn’t solve everything. “They probably bought one for him, but when I say he loathes heights, he truly does.” Years ago our families had gone on an excursion together to Pirtash Peak, the small mountain in the eastern portion of the city where summoners cultivated Air. Nine-year-old Losum had wet himself halfway up and refused to go any farther. A fabricator would give him a few Source without the usual work involved, but he’d still feel their essence when summoned, and if today’s Losum was anything like back then, he’d probably sick up from the sense of soaring freedom using Air made me experience.

“Regardless,” Tipfin said, “let’s get this farce over with. If you can’t beat me without this deck’s key component or how it should be played, I don’t know why I bothered to train you for the last five years. I might as well have retired after finishing with your brothers.”

I swallowed hard. I had hoped that this match would give me a boost of confidence before starting the tournament tomorrow. I had participated in countless duels in my time working with Tipfin, and a few tourneys hosted by schools around the city, but the Rising Stars Tournament was a much more serious affair. Not only was it open to anyone who had enough cards and courage, which often drew in duelists from outside the city, but the Sun King always sent the top five placers to officer training in the army.

The Orc hordes would come massing next season – so consistently you’d think they cultivated Order – and I wanted to finally be able to stand with my two brothers and the King against them. What’s more, my fiancee Esmi was a much better match than I ever could have hoped for, and I needed to prove to everyone, myself included, that I was worthy of her.

“Well?” Tipfin asked. His temper had grown much shorter this last year, I thought. He had his hands raised, ready to summon his own cards.

I nodded, and since we had no announcer for our duel, Tipfin barked, “Begin!”

Wasting no time, from my left hand I pulled two Source cards. Unlike Losum, I had spent hours and hours atop Pirtash, surveying the land below and sky above while the high winds stripped me of my worry. From that time, I could summon three Air Source, and one of them sat in my hand now, a card with glass edges and a swirl of roiling clouds in its center. The other Source was Order, the card depicting a bright sun, bathing perfectly lined fields of golden grain.

I didn’t even need to look at the Summon cards in my right hand to know my play, flicking the Air Source up, where it dissipated, reforming into a tiny stormcloud, lit from within by self-contained lighting. It drifted upward to swirl above my head. Looking over at Tipfin, he had also called a Source forth, but it was moving slower, the Order taking the form of a porcelain ball that gradually floated up. That was a major advantage of Air: it was quicker than any of the other three Elemental Sources, as well as all four of Existence, of which Order was part. It was true that Planar could beat me out for speed, but I didn’t expect to face any demons, fae, or other such far flung peoples in the city’s Rising Stars Tournament.

No Summons in my deck could be paid for with a single Source of Air, so while I waited the few seconds it would take for my mind to recover enough to draw more out of it, I looked over my right hand to think through future turns. All my cards were silver-bordered Uncommons, as were most of the Summons I possessed. My family was noble, but my brothers had gotten the lion’s share of the good cards from our personal library, so that when it came my turn, only the less desirables had remained tucked into the pages of our generational tome. I had done my best to refine the collection over the years, and despite Tipfin’s frequent criticism, I was quite proud of the deck I had crafted that now sat within my Mind Home. I knew the look of each and every card in it better than almost anything else in my life, so it took me less than a second to recognize the two Souls and a Spell I held: an Assassin, a Headsman, and Penitence.

“I don’t see you exchanging anything!” Tipfin snapped, unable to drop his role of teacher even when he was supposed to be my opponent.

Within the first few moments of generating your opening hand, any duelist could call on the pity of Fortune to let them swap some of their Summon cards for other random ones in their deck. Tipfin was a great believer in making the most out of Fortune’s kindness, and I had been part of enough matches to know that a bad opening could spell disaster for even the most skilled duelist.

However, since my deck was cobbled from the family’s remainders and discards, I only had two copies of many of my Summons – sometimes just one. So if I was fortunate enough to get a decent combination, I’d much rather keep them and find a way to make the cards I had work rather than risk getting something even worse. I had tried to explain my thought process to Tipfin on more than one occasion, but after so many years tutoring my older brothers, who had three copies of everything, the stodgy duelist just couldn't seem to grasp the subtle change in strategy my deck required to be effective.

“Fortune’s luck,” I said to him over my cards to explain why I wasn’t changing any of them, and he gave me a skeptical look back.

As if to accentuate the point, three of the cards in his own hand vanished, instantly replaced with new ones. He let out a sharp bark of a laugh and then tossed one into the air.

I had studied the deck list for my opponent as soon as Tipfin revealed his findings to me, honestly obsessing over it the last few nights. None of his Spells would make sense to cast yet, and the only Soul he ran that could be paid for so cheaply was the very backbone of his forces.

Sure enough, when the floating card snapped out of existence in a flash of light, standing in front of Tipfin was the Soul of an Archer.

He looked to only be a few years older than me, face framed by a baggy hood and a bow over his shoulder he quickly unslung. Like with all summoned Souls, his skin and clothing had vibrancy to their color and texture, as if he was somehow more present in the here and now than either Tipfin or me – a trait I always found odd, yet equally entrancing, considering it was he who was long dead and we were still alive.

Also, since Tipfin had let me look at the card before our duel, I knew its stats and abilities without the need of gamemaster glasses, which most duelists wore to see the details of unknown cards they faced.

“Shoot him,” Tipfin told the Archer.

This card was only a Common, so it reacted silently to the command, pulling an arrow from the quiver strapped to its back and knocking it in a practiced motion. Its dull eyes found me – the one part of it that didn’t shine brighter than us – and then released.

The arrow crossed the intervening space to me in half a second. Even though it was just a Common, only the most skilled and talented of people left cards behind when they died, so it was no surprise that the arrow he fired flew straight at my face, targeting the space between my eyes. It was too quick to have any hope of dodging, and I had no defensive Spells to cast in reaction, so all I could do was watch it streak toward me. Before it connected with the bridge of my nose, the metal head froze a bare inch from my skin, everything around me slowing down.

This was Fate’s Grace, a moment I had heard more than one priest describe as a “glimpse of the divine” or “the closest one can get to communing with the Twins.” In my training with Tipfin, he had been much more practical about it, calling the brief freeze in time one of the many critical points that separated master duelists from those who played at the role but would never fully grasp it. During Fate’s Grace, I had the opportunity to decide if I would block the incoming damage with a card in hand, thus losing a known resource, or let the attack strip a random card from my Mind Deck, leaving my hand intact but potentially depriving me of an even better card in the future. A few wrong choices could leave a duelist so far behind he never recovered, which was of course why Tipfin was forcing me to make such a decision so early.

I knew that an Archer’s shot would do a single point of damage to me, which, without my Scalemail Relic, was annoying for my deck to deal with – yet another fact that Tipfin knew all too well. This was because my deck featured many cards with decently high Source cost, which meant I could block mid-sized attacks effectively but also that I would be overpaying to stop a single point of damage. Out of my current hand, all three of my Summon cards could stop 2 points of damage, so to use them now to stop only 1 felt like a waste.

The arrow was slowly nearing me, so I needed to make a decision quickly. Yes, it was frustrating, but this was exactly why we were doing this practice match, so I could test counterplays before the real thing.

I nearly chose to block the arrow with the single Source in my hand, which was capable of stopping 1 damage – an even trade – but in the end I let go of my Penitent Spell. The silver-bordered card drifted out of my hand and then suddenly zipped between me and the arrow. Time resumed, and the metal head slammed into the floating card, both vanishing in a small spray of sparkling light that briefly obscured my vision.

I had chosen the Spell because, though it interacted well with my Headsman, I didn’t need it to take out Tipfin’s Archer. Also, I only had one copy of each of the three Rare cards owned, all still in my Mind Home, and I wasn’t about to risk losing any of them by letting the arrow do a random point of damage to my deck.

The interaction had been just long enough for the tightness in my mind to lessen, indicating I could pull from it again, so I did with a mental tug, two new cards appearing between my fingers next to the others I still held. This time, instead of drawing one Source card and one Summon, I pulled both from my Summons. I was rewarded with Carrion Condor, which I was quite glad to see, as well as the gold-bordered Master Assassin – one of the Rares I had just been protecting – which I would have preferred getting much later.

I tossed my Order Source into the air almost absently, looking at my four remaining cards. Master Assassin was one of my favorite and best Souls, but its utility came near the end of a duel. It was true that having it now meant I didn’t need to worry about coming up short in the late game, but I hoped it wouldn’t clog my hand in the interim. After all, if I turned into a pincushion in the next few rounds, it wouldn’t matter what I might have done if the duel had lasted longer.

When my ball of porcelain Order joined the one of Air that swirled above me, I drew on them both to power my first Summon of the match. The Source entered my body through my head, tingling my hair, before shooting down the back of my neck, out around both arms and then through my fingers, straight into my card of choice. Since I had used two different Sources, I felt two different sensations: Air, as always, making me feel light on my toes, almost like I was on the edge of falling even though I stood straight, or about to shoot into the sky, electric energy dancing over my skin. Order, on the other hand, came with a profound sense of balance and dignity, as well as a nagging need to straighten my tunic, which was hanging more off of one shoulder than the other. These were passing sensations, there and gone in a flash, and something I had learned years earlier to not linger on.

Instead, I watched my chosen card break into glittering motes before reforming in a flash before me. A helmeted Headsman stood with his back to me, a large ax connected to a long pole already in his hands.

“Remove the Archer,” I told him, and he lumbered forward dutifully. The Archer for his part was still recovering from the shot. Common card as he was, firing the shot had completely depleted him for the following turn, a state Summoners called “devoted,” and he stood slumped, as if half asleep. He did stir slightly when the Headsman lifted the ax over his head, but not enough to move away or defend himself, so my card had no trouble splitting him down the middle with his weapon. The Archer Soul didn’t cry out, instead breaking into shards of light that spun through the air before fading away.

The kill had been guaranteed, not only because my Headsman had 3 attack compared to the Archer’s measly health of 1, but because the Headsman’s special ability was that he could automatically destroy any devoted Soul card, regardless of its health. It was a good ability to be sure, and one that let me compete with decks that had cards that were much better than mine, but I paid for it in the card’s high casting cost.

I glanced up, seeing that the two Sources above me had both become dull. Like Summoned Souls, Sources could be devoted to gain extra power from them, each yielding 2 Source of their given type instead of the usual 1 gained from merely focusing them. That’s exactly what I had done in order to afford the three Sources my Headsman required. Also, attacking with a Soul the moment after they were summoned devoted them, so now it was my card who stood slumped in the middle of the training round, giving me no choice but to let it spend my next turn in recovery.

Meanwhile, Tipfin had been busy, drawing two cards of his own – Source or Summon I couldn’t tell since all cards had the same smoky glass background. He’d also summoned a second Source during this time, another porcelain ball of Order that glistened much brighter than his first. Like me, Tipfin had been forced to devote his first Source to summon the 2 cost Archer so early, which meant he couldn’t use it again yet. That left him with only his new Source to call cards forth with, and a max spend of 2 if he wanted to devote it like he had his first.

That was why I had risked attacking with my Headsman as I had. He was certainly vulnerable now, unable to defend himself if he was attacked, but the only things that could do enough damage to kill my Headsman in Tipfin’s deck were his Master Archer and High Paladin, neither of which he could summon even if he devoted his remaining Source for 2. For now, I was safe.

Or so I thought.

Tipfin released a card from his hand into the air, and another Archer Soul took form. This one was a shorter woman with wide shoulders, but despite the difference in appearance, I knew she’d have the same traits as the other; it was only as Souls leveled to Uncommon or higher that divergences occurred, and there had been bronze in the flash of light that accompanied her summoning, marking her as Common.

Her attack would be 0, and even if she devoted to shoot an arrow it would only do 1 damage, not enough to kill my Headsman with his health of 2.

Without hesitation, Tipfin said, “Fire at that boy, the duelist,” and the newly created Soul did just that, another arrow streaking toward me, just as fast as the first had flown.

Fate’s Grace slowed time again, giving me an opportunity to look at my three remaining cards in frustration. All of them could block the arrow of course, but I wasn’t about to spend my Master Assassin on 1 point of damage. I couldn’t use my Carrion Condor either, as that was the play I planned to make next; my deck with its Headsman and Assassins was good at killing things, which, when my Condor was on the field, strengthened the great bird, letting me then do a large, often undefendable, attack to the opposing duelist. The regular Assassin was the only one I could afford to lose, but I didn’t want to part with it either. My own cards dying would also power the Condor, but only if they were on the field.

With a prayer on my lips, I didn’t choose anything, letting the arrow strike me when time resumed. The metal head easily cut through the light sparring shirt I was wearing but then ricocheted off my skin, a spray of colored shards bursting from where it had connected instead of blood. In those fragments, I saw the pieces of another Condor, and my heart started beating again. I could afford to lose one of those. If the card had been my Equality Spell though, I would have almost no way to come back if I started to lose.

I pulled two more cards into my hand, barely noticing the arrow clattering to the brick to my right – the summoned object wouldn’t dissipate until the card that brought it into being did. One was a Source, since I couldn't afford to fall behind in my power to fuel cards, and the other ended up being a Spell, Execution.

Seeing it, I lamented no longer having my Penitent Spell, as the combination would let me kill even the Mythic card Orelus that Tipfin wished he possessed. However, I actually had two more Penitents in my deck, so I could still draw into the pairing later in the match.

I played my new Source while my other two were still recovering, sagging in the air without much luster. My Headsman was looking much more alert but I knew it would still be another few seconds before he could act, so I waited like I had known I would need to.

Tipfin did the same, his new Archer unable to be used again immediately, and the old trainer didn’t seem willing to expend his third Source as quickly as he had the last two.

Moments like this were when duelists often bantered with each other, and I knew the same would be expected of me on the morrow, so I decided to give it a go.

“You’re throwing your Archers away,” I said, as boldly as I dared. “Using a Shieldbearer first would have given them some protection.”

“They’re fodder,” Tipfin snapped back, paying more attention to his cards than to me. “And much more expendable than this motley assortment you continue to use. I already have the Source and deck advantage.”

That stilled my tongue from making a rebuttal. I knew what he said was true: he’d landed two attacks on me, losing me two cards, while I’d only managed to remove one of his; not to mention he had done so for less Source since he had cast his first Soul before me, giving the Source he had used more time to recover.

I willed two new cards into my hand, immediately tossing the Order Source card into the air as soon as I saw it. Tipfin might be right, but it was also true that I had a better card on the field who would soon recover, and I had enough Source to summon my Carrion Condor, which Tipfin’s deck couldn’t easily remove.

I’d get to start playing my game now.

I was about to release the Condor from my fingers when the door to the training room burst open, banging loudly on the brick wall. I jumped near a foot, and Tipfin shouted at the newcomer, “Randel! What in the Twelve are you on about?”

One of my older brothers stood in the opening, his arms wrapped around a large stone gargoyle of all things. No regular person could have carried a piece of marble that size, but both of my brothers had already advanced their own Souls to Rare, flecks of Gold appearing in their eyes, and in Randel’s case, gaining the strength of three men. He had one foot raised, which he had obviously used to kick the door open.

“Ah, Master Tip,” he said, catching sight of the old trainer, “still managing to stay upright despite the gout. Fortune truly does favor the old.”

Tipfin’s jaw worked in reply but no words came out, which gave my brother an opportunity he didn’t hesitate to take.

“Esmi’s come to call on you,” he said to me. “Looked like she even brought you a gift.”

“Esmi?” I said, my voice going much higher than expected. I had always met my fiancee to be at preplanned events, never something impromptu like this. And she had brought me a gift? I couldn’t even imagine what it would be, as we hadn’t exchanged anything of the sort yet.

“Indeed,” my brother confirmed, “and I would be a poor host if I left her alone much longer with Gale.”

“Gale?” I said, my practice duel with Tipfin all but forgotten. “Gale is with her?” Gale was the older of my twin brothers, and a notorious womanizer. He also delighted in telling anyone I tried to associate with the most embarrassing stories about me possible.

“That’s what I said, isn’t it?” Randel said, turning down the hall while continuing to talk, his voice carrying back through the door. “He was reminiscing about that time you fell down Mount Pirtash when I left. But that was nearly a half hour ago now.”

I dropped my hand of cards, and without me willing any Source into their summoning, they all burst into starry fragments that I ran straight through. Tipfin called something after me, but I didn’t hear it in my mad dash to get out of the room and reach Esmi before Gale could do more damage than I could repair.