Wooden wheels clattered against the stone of an old moss-covered bridge. The creek below was clear as glass, blurry silhouettes of fish visible everywhere as they swam against the current.
Kael sat at the back of the wagon, rolling a card between his fingers. He turned it over.
'Queen of spades...'
He looked at it for a moment, then flicked it into the air and caught it between two fingers, turning it over again absently as the clouds drifted by.
It was strange how it had started. Almost spontaneous in a way that wasn't like him. But somewhere along the journey he had spent time learning card magic. Not for the entertainment of it. For everything else around it.
He thought back.
It was long before he had become a Luminaire, but only days after his mother had died. The sun had burned unreasonably bright that day. He remembered thinking it strange, how unbothered the world seemed, while he was left alone with his sister who couldn't yet form full sentences.
He had run. For what felt like an eternity he had just run, and when the world came back into focus he had reached the outskirts of Farkath.
A faint smile threatened the corner of his mouth.
What had he expected, really? His legs had been short then, barely strong enough to carry him that far. He had been exhausted before he had even started.
Tired and confused, he had found a rock that would barely reach his abdomen today but had forced him to climb at the time just to sit down.
He was in the middle of cursing the world when a man as pale as snow had noticed him and walked over, spreading a hand of cards with an exaggerated but genuinely kind smile.
His hat was split down the middle, one half black, one half red, the brim curling up at the sides into two exaggerated points tipped with bells that rang faintly with each movement. His trousers were equally absurd, so voluminous that young Kael had privately concluded two people could have fit inside them if they tried.
A black spade was painted beneath one eye like a tear. Beneath the other, a red diamond.
The man fanned the cards and ran a finger along their edges.
Stunned into stillness, Kael reached out and took the one that caught his eye.
The strange man raised a hand over his eyes and turned away with an exaggerated flourish, shaking the remaining cards. Kael blinked and placed his card back, unsure of what he was supposed to do next.
The moment he felt the card return, the man turned around with a smile. Then, with the ease of someone performing a step he had rehearsed ten thousand times, he threw the entire deck into the air.
To Kael it was a blur. The man's hand seemed to move at random, going wherever it pleased, and yet one after another the cards found their way back to him. The further they drifted the fewer remained in the air, until a neat pile rested in his palm again.
The man crouched down to Kael's level, raised the deck, and pointed to it with his other hand. Then he spread the cards in a single graceful movement, all of them facing inward, golden patterns on their backs.
All except one.
Queen of spades.
Kael had nearly fallen off the rock. That was the exact card he had chosen. He had watched the man shuffle. He had watched him turn away when the card was returned. He had watched the entire deck thrown into the air. And somehow, through all of it, the man had found it anyway.
—
Kael tossed the card up and caught it without looking.
From that day forward he had been fascinated by the man. Not because of magic. He had never believed in that. But because of how his hands moved, fluid and unhurried, as though they had never once doubted themselves. Because of how effortlessly he had fooled Kael using nothing but sleight and confidence. The way he had redirected attention so completely that Kael hadn't even known where to look until it was already over.
Magic, in any real sense, wasn't magic. Everyone knew that.
But it was an art. And like any art it demanded more than most people assumed. You needed the feel of the card, yes. But you also needed to know precisely how to move to guide someone else's eyes without them realising they were being guided. You needed to understand every probable combination well enough that hesitation became impossible. Confidence didn't come from certainty about the outcome. It came from having removed uncertainty about the process.
The card stilled in his hand. Its edges began to glow faint red.
Though the reason Kael now carried cards and had spent time learning the art had nothing to do with magic itself.
When he first learned to apply traits of the Crimson Arc mote onto objects his mind had gone immediately to a blade. He had bought one from a blacksmith in a small city they passed through. It made sense at the time. Ever since his mercenary days he had worked with different weapons to broaden his understanding and his hands, and a blade had been an obvious starting point.
But he had quickly realised how narrow his thinking had been. How uncreative.
He needed something ranged. His first instinct was a bow, the arrow that had pierced him a natural inspiration. But he had abandoned that quickly. Too cumbersome and dependent on circumstances he couldn't always control.
So he had settled on something else.
Playing cards.
He considered card magic the pinnacle of dexterity, which was reason enough on its own. But the cards themselves were practical in ways a bow could never be. They were everywhere. Used by mortals, ordinary Luminaires and nobles alike, unremarkable in any hand. With practice they became perfect throwing objects. He already had the strength. What remained was the skill.
And while it had taken time. He was confident in it now.
Combined with the second and final mote he had managed to acquire, and his ability to apply mote traits onto otherwise ordinary objects, the cards had become something considerably more than they looked.
The Stern mote. Rank two. When activated it could make an object as large as a plate as durable as quartz, regardless of what it was made from. Porcelain, paper, it made no difference.
By applying the Stern mote onto a card simultaneously with the Crimson Arc, the cards became capable of cutting through beasts, humans and Dreadborne alike. What looked like nothing in his hand became something that bled whatever it touched without stopping.
And again, without fully realising it, Kael had created something close to his first mote art.
Not on the level of Taric's or Vael's of course, but a mote art none the less.
"Whoa."
Julian pulled back on the reins. The horses stopped immediately.
Three men stood in the road, arms folded into their pockets, faces hidden behind bandanas.
"We're just passing through." Julian said, his voice already uncertain.
Rank one Luminaire aura radiated from each of them.
"Passing through? Everyone knows this road belongs to us, old man."
One of them began circling the carriage.
Then he stopped.
"Oh?" Predatory eyes settled on something.
Kael followed the man's gaze to where Syleena was sleeping, and raised an eyebrow.
'Not only are they demonic Luminaires. They're fools too.'
Syleena was suppressing her rank three aura, which to them would have made her look like nothing more than a sleeping mortal. What Kael couldn't work out was why she had deactivated her soul-bound motes long enough for them to notice her at all.
He watched her for a moment longer, then sighed. She wasn't going to act.
Julian kept talking with the two men at the front, his voice growing shakier by the moment. The fact that they had let a mortal speak this long suggested they had only recently turned demonic, some lingering trace of restraint still present.
The covered man took a step back when Kael dropped down from the carriage, eyes narrowing.
"You. Leave now and we won't touch you."
The man said.
Kael wasn't suppressing his aura. Even though he appeared rank one from the outside, his Will and soul were as strong as any rank three. Suppressing that still required the same effort it would at rank three, and he hadn't learned to manage it yet. In that regard Syleena had the advantage.
Kael gave a small nod back.
"Don't hurt us." His voice came out shaky, his expression radiating something that looked genuinely like fear. "You can take the girl. Do whatever you want with her. Just please don't hurt the rest of us."
The man raised his chin, visibly proud of the effect he was having.
"Smart man."
Kael turned and walked toward the front of the carriage.
One of the men at the front noticed him and raised a glowing pen.
"What do you think you're doing, bastard?"
Before it had fully risen a red arc cut through the air, drawing a clean vertical line along the man's arm. The pen fell from his grip and dissolved into golden specks as he dropped to his knees, clutching his arm with his other hand, trying to hold in blood that was coming faster than it had any right to.
"What the—"
The last Luminaire didn't finish.
A crack rang out, sharp as a whip. A card snapped forward in a blur, punching straight through his head before ricocheting off the trees behind and disappearing from view.
Both men hit the dirt at the same time, without grace.
Kael stepped into the forming pool of blood and went through their pockets.
"You alright?" he asked Julian as he started back toward the rear.
Julian exhaled slowly and nodded.
Kael glanced down at the third Luminaire on the dirt, still alive, tied with a rope to the wagon. He ignored him and jumped back up.
Syleena lay with her hat placed over her face, blocking out the sun.