Athena activated a card, Multi Strike, which showed several after-images of the head of a spear, implying it being thrust many times, rapidly. Her spear formed in her hand as she ran towards the half-dead cyclops as it raised its club. The living head furrowed its brow, and its skeleton head bounced and clattered like a shaken marionette puppet.

  Pan looked at his cards. He hadn’t noticed with everything else going on, but while he had played his first two actions just fine, when it came to playing Rack, the card remained stubbornly in his hand. His actions had renewed, and he had drawn back up to his five cards. He would have to select Rack and two more to play.

  In addition to Rack, he still had Miasma and Wheel. There were also two new cards, the drawing of which he hadn’t felt through the healing effect of the potion he had chugged. The heal over time effect had remained on him through his Joint Pain confrontation with the Kentucky fried chicken.

  He had not read them, and didn’t have the time now to get into their long descriptions.

  Hex depicted a fully fleshed and feathered chicken, sans head, laying ragdoll amidst lit candles on a chalk symbol.

  Dress Down looked more comical, depicting a cartoon warrior in heavy armor, a battle being waged behind him, but where his metal pants should be, there were only his heart-covered boxers and skinny legs. The warrior seemed to be in the act of discovering this for himself, surprise and embarrassment drawn on his face.

  Pan took this all in quickly. Even as Athena charged, Horse flashed a card, a basic Slash attack, and charged forth with his curved blade. “She won’t be giving me crap this time,” Pan heard him mumble.

  Looking to Apollo, he saw the Scholar in the act of selecting an attack of his own. Something with range, as he remained where he stood.

  The creature still had its weapon raised, poised to attack.

  But something tugged at Pan’s thoughts. There was something missing.

  He pulled out another health potion, and his gaze hovered over Miasma. He didn’t want to play the card. According to the description, it conjured a large haze which inflicted fear on whatever was caught in it. Not only would Wheel and Rack hurt him, but he could easily catch his allies in the haze if he placed it wrong. He also didn’t know what the fear effect would cause the two-headed cyclops to do. Would it cause it to run away? He’d have to let Athena and Horse not to chase it into the fog.

  Still, there was another reason he didn’t want to play the card. He couldn’t place his finger on it, but there was something different about this encounter.

  He put a hand on Apollo’s arm just as he was about to play a card. “Wait,” he told the Scholar. “Did you see that thing play a card?”

  Athena loosed her attack. Just like with the Nightmare spawn cyclops, she only came up to the thing’s thigh. Her spear struck again and again, the weapon moving so quickly Pan could barely count the attacks. It struck the creature five times, and it groaned in pain.

  “Well, we want to deal with it before it can attack, right?” Apollo asked.

  “But then why would it raise its weapon if it hadn’t played a card yet? It’s had plenty of time.”

  Horse didn’t slow as he approached for his Slash to land. His weapon dragged on the creature’s other leg, causing it to reel.

  “It’s not holding that thing like it’s intending to attack with it. We need to call the others back. Arctus set us up.”

  Apollo looked at the little faun. “You think he’d do that?”

  Pan was about to answer, when the monster groaned again. Horse, his charge putting him behind the cyclops, had played another card. Pan hadn’t seen it, but the centaur had stabbed the cyclops in the back with a dagger.

  The huge creature hadn’t roared, but groaned louder than before, but mournfully this time. It threw its weapon arm back, and that’s when Pan saw it.

  “Stop!” he shouted, bounding forward and waving his arms at his allies. The creature collapsed, its legs failing, and the floor shook.

  Another card flashed in front of Athena, one with a picture of a person being dissolved in bright light called Purifying Rays.

  “Stop attacking! Athena! Hold it!”

  No spear formed. Instead, she held her arm up palm out to the prone creature. It was still clutching the hollow thing they had thought was a weapon. Athena’s hand shone as if illuminated by a spotlight.

  Pan rammed head first into the small of Athena’s back, and both of them went down.

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  With the wind knocked out of her, Athena propped herself up on her arms, coughing. “What did you do that for?” she demanded.

  Pan, dazed, didn’t provide an answer.

  “Great, I lost the magic,” she said, looking at her palm. It no longer glowed.

  “I’ll take this guy out,” Horse said. He looked about to play a card.

  “Before you do, we might want to look at this,” came Apollo’s voice. He was examining the thing the creature had held. Horse held his action.

  The thing Pan had taken for a stalactite was actually hollow and relatively light. It was a large, stiff piece of paper, rolled up into a cone. When unrolled, it showed crudely drawn cartoon images of two cyclops heads surrounded by pictures of dungeon goods. It read “Paul and Phemus: General Store – Nobody’s beating our prices”.

  Apollo chuckled. As Athena was getting back up from the tackle, he turned the poster around to show her. “Pretty clever huh?”

  She rubbed her lower back as she read it. “No, it’s stupid.”

  “It’s like in the Odyssey,” Apollo started, “They end up on that island and they’re taken prisoner? He eats one of Odysseus’ men every night? But when he talks to it, he says his name is Nobody, so that later when they take him out” – he smacked a fist into his open palm – “it screams ‘Help! Help! Nobody’s killing me!’ Even their names together like that-“

  Athena’s shriveling glare found purchase, wilting Apollo’s explanation. With her brother quiet, she turned on Pan. “So what do you want to do with him, now that you’ve assaulted me and cost me a spell?”

  Pan also found his feet, the daze fading quickly. He noticed he hadn’t lost any health from the impact, and wondered if Athena hadn’t either. “I figure we talk to him. This game has NPC’s right? Non-Player Characters? Arctus is one. At least, I think he is. I don’t think he’s from the real world.”

  Athena kicked the prone cyclops in its over-sized ribs. It curled into the fetal position at the touch. “Don’t hurt Phemus,” it moaned. The group shared a round of glances, and Pan shrugged.

  “We won’t hurt you,” Athena started. It wasn’t convincing. “What were you doing threatening us with that thing?” She indicated the poster, even though the cyclops was tucking its heads under its arms and couldn’t see.

  “Vagrants have good things to sell, and Phemus does too,” the creature said. “Phemus was going to unroll the poster and ask if the little vagrants want to trade.”

  The tone of the big guy’s voice had Pan feeling like a heel, even though he hadn’t participated in the attack on him.

  Apollo rolled the poster back up and with it tapped the cyclops on the shoulder. The flesh-covered shoulder, not the skeletal one. “We won’t hurt you any more, especially not if you have good things to trade.”

  “Oh good,” the cyclops sighed. He unrolled himself and sat up. Even sitting cross-legged, he towered over the group. He was eye-to-eyes with Horse, the tallest of the four of them. The skeleton head rattled and jittered, making only the sound of bones in the dark cavern.

  “This is Paul,” the non-skeletal head said, pointing with an elephant-thick finger at the skeleton head, “and I’m Phemus.” He squinted his one eye at them. “And you are a Scholar, Skulk, Hoplite, and- Oh. Oh no.” He shook his head sadly when he got to Pan. “I don’t think Phemus has anything for the poor little goat person.”

  “Well, let’s see what you do have, Phemus,” Apollo said. The cyclops held up his hand and then spread the fingers. Nothing happened, but Apollo reacted.

  “This is the shop menu,” Phemus said. “You can sell me things, and if you have the money, you can buy from me too. I won’t sell you anything you can’t use though. Scholars get blue cards, so that’s all I’m allowed to sell you. Except brown cards. Anyone can use those.”

  The inventory cards, like the potions and the meals, were brown cards, Pan remembered.

  “So you can only sell me yellow cards and Horse, here, can only buy black cards?” Athena asked. Apollo was busy reading the invisible screen.

  Phemus’ head nodded. The skeleton head kept jittering like a cold chihuahua.

  Pan regarded the creature again, now that they weren’t in battle. The creature had two heads, one eye each, and long tusks at the corners of his mouths. The skeleton head – on the creature’s right - was connected to a skeleton neck which was in turn connected to the exposed bone of its shoulder. The flesh ended just before the skeleton’s neck in black tatters. The arm on the creature’s right side was also entirely bone, connecting to the bony shoulder. The rest of the creature was living flesh, all the way down to its feet. Its fingernails and toenails were thick and ragged too, split along the grain and gnarled like claws.

  Pan suspected something terrible had befallen the cyclops, considering there were two different faces drawn on the poster, and neither of them were a skull. But he figured it would be rude to ask.

  “Aww nice,” Apollo said, “an ice attack. I wonder if ice mages are good on defense in this system.”

  “Don’t sell the cards we just got from that chicken,” she chided.

  “I won’t,” he sighed.

  “I guess while you’re doing that, I’ll use this upgrade.” She was referring to the amber gem Pan had given to her. But at the mention of a gem, Phemus perked up.

  “You have gem?” he asked, crawling towards her all eagerness. He made a gesture over her, snapping Apollo out of his shop menu – “Hey!” – and trapping Athena in an equally invisible menu.

  “Will you trade Phemus the gem? We have many strong yellow cards for the Hoplite woman.”

  She was taken by his excitement at first, but had barely wavered when the giant had advanced on her. She looked at him curiously. “And what do you want from it? Are gems that good?”

  “Oh!” Phemus exalted, “Gems are very very good. Big market. Card upgrades are rare. Look, look! What yellow cards you want for gem?”

  She raised an eyebrow – a gesture Pan had to wonder if cyclopses would even notice – and said carefully, “Well, Phemus, these look like good cards. But I think I will hold onto this gem of mine.”

  The creature looked crestfallen.

  “But,” she continued, “if you were to put this gem in a card, which one would you put it in?”

  “Amber gem? That’s easy. Put it in the Multi Strike you used against Phemus. Gem gives card chance to stun. Good on cards that deal many tiny bits of damage.”

  Apollo interrupted, saying, “I have lots of creep control in my cards. Why not give the gem to me?”

  Phemus held up a finger, shushing him. “Amber gems don’t go in blue cards.” He spoke slowly as if explaining to an idiot. The skull’s teeth continued to chatter.

  Pan sidled up to Athena and whispered, “Do you really think we should take advice from this guy? He’s a merchant, yeah, but maybe he’s got some ulterior motive.”

  “Done. I’ve slotted the gem into my Multi Strike,” she said, ignoring Pan. “Now let’s see what you’ve got for sale.”