Chapter Four

“Are you... well?” Elain’e asked.

Anne glanced around, at the destroyed camp, and at the few bodies she could see laying in the dirt and grime. It took her a long moment to build up the courage to speak. “I think I’m alright,” she said.

“I’m sorry,” Elain’e said. She was looking at Anne, her thumb idly running up and down the surface of the card in her hand. “I shouldn’t have pushed you quite that hard quite so soon. I... didn’t consider the kind of person that might come from the summoning.”

Part of Anne wanted to be angry. This much violence, it was wrong. But a glance at Elain’e, and at the remorse in her eyes barely concealed by the pouty glare she wore, and Anne decided to forgive the girl. “Should we go, ah, somewhere else? Do you live near here?”

“I have a carriage,” Elain’e said. “It can lead us to Castle M’ango.”

“You have a castle?” Anne asked.

“The clan does. Though really, it’s just my grand-patriarch and myself that live there on most days. There’s staff too, of course.”

“Does anyone... take care of you?” Anne asked.

Elain’e frowned. “I don’t need that kind of help,” she said.

Anne nodded. She could vividly remember Jake’s own teenage years when he said something much the same to her. Of course, he also expected her to still make him breakfast and dinner at the time.

Elain’e started walking with sure steps away from the corpses she had made. “Your power seems to be interesting,” she said while waving the book card around. “This has potential. A lot of potential, even.”

“That’s nice,” Anne said. It really was. She didn’t know why she was here exactly. It felt surreal. One moment she was at home, checking in on Jake while the roast-- “Oh no!”

Elain’e flinched. “What is it?” she asked.

“The roast!”

“The what?”

Anne clasped her hands over her mouth and then stared at the chat. Jake’s name hadn’t come up in a while. “Jake! Jake, sweetie, are you there?”

“Okay, Jake, listen to me. The roast is in the oven. There’s a timer, the little red one. When it rings, you need to open the oven and pour the marinade on the meat, and a bit on the carrots and potatoes too, then you put it back in for another half hour. Okay?”

“Who are you talking to?” Elain’e asked.

“I... look, when I came here, I left some food in the oven. And my son, he’s one of the people in this little chat box things. I’ve seen him watching shows and things before. He gets distracted easily. I just want him to make sure the roast doesn’t burn.”

“If you say so,” Elain’e said. “Do you think you can ask for more things? More specific things, perhaps?” She wiggled the card around.

“I don’t know, sweetie, I don’t want to rely on charity, especially if those people are spending their own money on these things.”

Elain’e shrugged. “It could be useful. So far we have a book in a card that I haven’t unsealed yet, and a cart of mangoes.” She licked her lips again. “Which are a delicacy. And quite valuable.”

“Oh, I know. They’re so hard to buy though. I can never tell when they’re ripe or not.”

Anne chatted about groceries, a subject she really could go on about for hours. Elain’e interjected at times, but Anne figured she was too young to be doing that kind of shopping all on her own, and Anne knew that she was really just talking to work off some of the nervous energy rolling around in the pit of her stomach.

They were a good ways into the forest when a card appeared right in front of Anne. She caught it, then stared at it while still walking. “This is strange,” she said. The card was a flat grey, with flecks of decorative rust on its edges. Its image depicted a scarred and crater-covered mountain. The text read ‘A Damaged Mountain.’ Its seal cost was in the millions, the numbers barely fitting on the card, but the cast cost was low.

“May I see that?” Elain’e asked.

Anne passed the card over, then gasped as the girl nearly tripped over nothing.

“An entire mountain?!” Elain’e said. She held the card close to her face. “This is insane!”

“Um,” Anne said.

“You don’t understand, sorry. This is a mountain.”

“Yes,” Anne said. “The art on the card is very nice?”

“No, Anne, this is a mountain.” Elain’e waved the card about. “A whole mountain. You can’t just have a whole mountain appear out of thin air! We’d die. Not Evilia would be crushed from here. The earthquake alone would kill thousands!”

“Oh,” Anne said. “Can’t you just, tear the card apart?”

“That would make the mountain appear too, but worse,” Elain’e said. “We need to find a way to get rid of this. All cards will eventually summon themselves. Magical ones and living things in cards will unseal the fastest, but we basically only have a few hours to work with here.”

“What do we do?” Anne asked.

“We pick up the pace,” Elain’e said. “We can... tie the card to a flying creature, send it out over the ocean, maybe.”

“I feel like that’s also a bad idea,” Anne said. She didn’t know much about geography, but she wasn’t entirely ignorant of the possible impacts a mountain appearing over the ocean could have. “Oh, what do we do?”

A card appeared before her, and she gasped as she picked it out of the air.

‘Worn-Out Army of Jake Maia,’ read the card. There was an image below that, of an army in tatters, an army of teenaged boys that seemed very, very familiar, though she wasn’t used to seeing her son in thick padded armour and carrying shields and spears.

“Can that help?” Elain’e asked.

Anne shook her head. “I don’t think so,” she said.

It hurt her to say it, but Jake really wouldn’t know what to do here. He was a sweet boy, but not a very useful one.

“Damnation of all the gods,” Elain’e swore.

Another card appeared, the third in as many minutes. “Oh!” Anne said as she looked on the cover. “This one... might?”

The image was of a young asian girl, in an outfit like in those shows her son watched, but her legs looked like sci-fi thrusters, and she was flying. ‘Non-Magical, Highly Mobile, Heavily Armed and Armored Killbot,’ was the name of the card. It barely fit at the top.

“It costs more to cast than I can,” Anne said. Nearly a thousand points of mana to cast.

Elain’e looked at it, stared in confusion at the image, then nodded. “I can cast it,” she said. “Give me just a moment, and pray that we don’t end this entire nation by burying it under stone.”

Anne nodded, shifting from foot to foot while Elain’e summoned more and more cards. She cast a few, releasing that she had an entire desk sealed away, as well as some large, glowing stones and a few strange brass devices. She placed the robot card down, touched a few devices to it, then nodded to herself. “This should help with the casting,” she said. “It’s a bit beyond me without something to assist.”

“That’s fine, you're doing your best,” Anne said.

Elain’e cheeks turned the faintest shade of red for a moment under the praise. “Yes, well, death by crushing is an excellent motivator. Now one moment.”

The girl closed her eyes, then glared. The card she was touching disappeared with a burst of smoke, and, from out of thin air, a young girl appeared. She was a head taller than Elain’e, and much older, maybe in her late teens. She might have been a young-looking twenty year old, even.

“Greetings,” a purely robotic voice came from her lips. “I am Newtonian Electronic War Terminator. Please say ‘Newt on’ to activate me.’”

Anne glanced at Elain’e, who shrugged back. “I have never seen anything quite like that before,” she said as she idly turned the things on her desk back into cards that disappeared without much fanfare.

Anne, having nothing to lose, cleared her throat. “Newt on,” she said.

The robot-girl opened her eyes. “Greetings, General. I am ready to serve.”

“Oh, I’m hardly a general,” Anne said. “I don’t have any titles, nothing beyond mom.”

“Correction, greetings, mom.”

“Ah, well, yes,” Anne said. She shifted her weight, then raised the mountain card up. “Can you get rid of this?”

The girl’s arms split open, revealing large canons hidden within. “Target acquired.”

“No, no, I mean. Put it somewhere far away.”

“The ocean,” Elain’e said.

“I was thinking more... Can you get to space?” Anne asked.

***

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