Cards drew themselves from Pan’s deck as he stared at Apollo surrounded by three enormous wolves. Instinctively he read the titles.

  Following Footsteps, Slow, Five Finger Fillet, Transporter Accident, and Pox. He immediately felt nauseous from the Infected status he gained from merely drawing Pox.

  The wolves were truly huge. Each was at least eye-level with Horse, and the hunch to their shoulders was higher than that. They looked more like thorny bison, except their heads, feet, and tails.

  Their grey fur was comprised of thick, stiff hairs which clustered to hide dark thorns which seemed to be growing off their bodies. Pan’s mind went back to the cards, remembering their effects. He had studied what was in his deck recently and was able to recall their effects without needing to read them, and Slow he had seen when facing off against Horse.

  Following Footsteps showed a trail of footsteps that glowed with green fire. It had a hold effect like Rack and Wheel. While it was in his hand, his footsteps glowed. If he discarded the card, it would outline him with a faerie fire, increasing his own visibility to others. But if he played it, he would gain a stack of block for each card played before it this hand.

  Slow he already knew. It gave him a debuff that would slow his movements for some time after playing. He also noticed something that he hadn’t the first time. If he had discarded it, it would have instead increased the duration until his new hand.

  Five Finger Fillet showed the hand of someone playing the game – the one where you put your hand on a table and tried to stab between your fingers in a pattern as quickly as possible without hitting yourself. Playing it upgraded the card and put it back on top of his deck, unless it had been upgraded at least five times. In which case it would give him a buff to damage he dealt. But if he discarded it, it would give him a Bleed debuff. The card noted that the debuff got worse somehow when the card was upgraded.

  Transporter Accident had been rather gruesome. It depicted two people physically intersecting one another, likely in a teleportation accident like the name implied. When played, it would swap his position with that of a targeted individual in a limited range, but it had a 25% chance of teleporting only him and temporarily merging him with the target.

  Finally, there was Pox. When drawn, it gave him Infected. It made him feel nauseated, which he only learned just now. It also lowered his Virility, the seventh stat which determined his health pool. If he discarded the card, it would give him another stack of Infected, doubling the duration. The card needed to be discarded, though, because playing it discarded a copy of Pox to the deck of every individual in an area. The picture on the card showed a person suffering from skin legions all over their body, mouth open and screaming.

  The growls gently effervesced in the moment of surprise. The reading only took a moment, and nobody had moved. A green haze accented each of the wolves’ shadows, which Pan recognized.

  It’s just like the summoned creatures from the curse cards, except those had been purple. The haze identifies what color of card created them, he thought.

  The growling was then supplanted by Athena’s war cry. Two cards flashed in quick succession in front of her, which Pan could only see the backs of. Athena glowed with the same light that typically formed her spear. She hopped the rope line, her fist charged with power, meteor-bombing one of the wolves threatening her brother.

  The creature recoiled from the strike, but only slightly, taking the hit to its armored shoulder. While the creature shrugged off her attack, it was Athena who seemed to come away from the engagement the worse off. She gripped her fist, staggered from the thorn wolf’s barbs. He wanted to move, to help his friends, but he couldn’t. It wasn’t a magical rooting effect, only his fear.

  The longer I have these cards – the more that happens to us – the less willing I’m becoming to act.

  Apollo turned from the teller’s counter to put the wolves in front of him. The one behind him – now the one in front – was slowly advancing. Pan saw only the back of the one Apollo was facing, but he could see the bared yellow teeth of the one stage right. And he could see the panic on his friend’s own face, eyes darting from wolf to wolf. Then he nodded, almost imperceptibly.

  Then a few things happened at once. A card flashed in front of Horse, and then another in front of Apollo. Pan couldn’t see the one that Horse played, but a round object materialized in his hand. The card that Apollo played was Acid Shot. The picture was that of a glob of thick yellow liquid flying through the air. The substance materialized, splashing the advancing wolf. It clung to the creature’s matted spikey fur. As it sizzled, the fur and thorns it touched began to melt away. Then Horse threw the thing he had conjured.

  It hit the wolf to Apollo’s left – the one Athena hadn’t hit – and shattered, letting out a thin wisp of smoke. It seemed rather ineffectual to Pan.

  If it was a smoke bomb, it would have begun filling the room. The little bit it released was pathetic.

  Despite this, it had an immediate effect. The creature began to shrink and atrophy. In the barest of moments, it became the size of a regular wolf.

  A card flashed in front of Athena. Dig In, a card showing a spear with its butt in the ground and its point menacing a doomed mounted combatant, already airborne with its horse headed straight at the weapon.

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  This time her weapon formed. While she was still on the ground next to the wolf, nursing her injury, she took the spear and ran it up point first under the wolf. Then, like in the picture, she planted the handle against the ground. The building had a tiled floor, but the weapon remained fixed as though by magic. The wolf, now propped up on the spearpoint, thrashed futilely.

  The weapon didn’t pierce the creature’s fur armor, but the wolf had lost its leverage. It stood awkwardly on its hind legs, unable to reach the spear with its front legs or roll off the point. Some more thorns released themselves in the attack, showering Athena with more clapback damage. She grunted in pain, covering her face.

  In a matter of seconds – and without Pan’s involvement – the group had managed to turn the surprise attack around.

  “Very interesting,” came the skeleton’s voice from behind the teller counter. “Now you must finish them off if you’re to pass your patrol examination.”

  Apollo made a break towards his sister, past the acid-splashed wolf in front of him. But the creature had recovered all too quickly from the acid attack and moved to block him, cornering him again. The smaller wolf – the one which had been hit by Horse’s weakening smoke bomb – lunged and clamped on Apollo’s leg.

  “Auuggh!” he cried, the teeth sinking into his fleshy calf. If the creature had been full size, it would have been the whole leg.

  Athena’s spear shattered while she was brushing thorns off her face, the wolf dropping on her and pinning her.

  Pan’s eyes flicked to the Transporter Accident card, which came forward to meet his glance, ready to be played.

  I could swap places with one of them, he thought desperately. But which one? It’s only a twenty-five percent chance of screwing up, and that’s only temporary. But who do I save?

  He remembered how excited Apollo had been seeing the skeleton getting a haircut. The way the Scholar had stood up for him against Athena’s judgement. He liked Apollo. He was nice and accepting and always joking around.

  But would he want me to save him instead of his sister?

  Athena was arguably the worse off, her wolf being much bigger and her movement far more restricted. But would Pan survive if he swapped places with Athena? If the bad outcome happened, she would be in even more danger.

  If he cast Following Footsteps, he would gain two stacks of block. Would that be enough for him to take a hit from the wolf? Surely it wouldn’t save him from two. He would be doing this to sacrifice himself to save her.

  But then Horse screamed, “I’m not gonna let this happen, dude!” and cast another two cards. Pan didn’t see either of them, but he saw the effects.

  The first was a hole opening in the wall between the teller stations. It opened like a cartoon hole, appearing and rapidly expanding like an aperture. Then the centaur jumped the rope line and charged through the hole, which had stopped growing when it was big enough for Horse to enter while ducking.

  His hooves glowed with power from the card he had used, and he trampled his way to the hunter.

  The wolves looked up, distracted by the threat to their summoner. And then the skeleton exploded in a shower of crispy, blackened bones and a cloud of ash. Immediately, the wolves flashed a neon green, and then disappeared.

  Only the four of them were left in the room. Athena on her back, no longer pinned, covered in small thorn wounds. Apollo gripping his bleeding leg. Pan too stunned to move.

  They were in danger and I just stood there, he thought in the silence. Useless. I’m entirely useless.

  Horse started coughing. “He’s in my lungs!” he managed to say. “I can taste him! I got that ash in my mouth!”

  Pan conjured a pair of health potions – his third and second to last – and hoofed it over to the siblings, ducking easily under the rope cordons.

  He handed one to Apollo before kneeling down to tend to Athena. He helped her sit up, stricken more by the emotional toll of looking down the barrel of a dire wolf than from the clapback damage.

  She drank the potion, which closed up her perforations. Apollo’s wounds had done the same, but his leg was still wet with blood.

  “So now what?” came Horse’s voice from behind the teller counter.

  Pan looked at him to say he had no clue what to do next, but something was happening behind the centaur. Horse registered the look and turned.

  The cloud of ash, which had been lazily expanding and falling to the ground, was now doing the same thing in reverse. The teller’s blackened skull rose above the cloud, flying back from the corner Horse’s bullrush had sent it to. The rest of the creature’s bones made a cacophonous clattering as they reassembled like the pins of a bowling strike played backwards.

  “I don’t have another Passwall!” Horse cried from the other side of the teller station. “Where’s the door?! This window is too small for me to fit through!”

  But before any of them could react, the skeleton had re-formed.

  “It takes a lot more than that to kill the dead!” the skeleton cried. “But you’re going to regret attacking your proctor!”

  Pan ran towards the window, trailing hoofprints which burned green, and hopped up on the counter. He headbutted the tiny glass window. The force dazed him briefly, making floating colors flash in his vision, but the glass cracked so he tried again.

  “Hey!” the skeleton cried, distracted by Pan’s desperate vandalism. “Hey, you stop that!”

  But Pan headbutted the glass again. And again.

  “I’m not going to be useless!” Pan cried, “I’m not going to sit and take this while you hurt my friends!”

  The skeleton went from frustrated to worried as the glass finally broke. There wasn’t enough room for him to fit, so he gripped the jagged edges and started breaking pieces off with his hands. It cut his palms and fingers but he wasn’t worried about that right now.

  “Ever since I got here,” he said, breaking pieces of glass off hand over fist, “I’ve been at someone else’s mercy. I’ve been mauled, disfigured, cursed, and weakened. But I’m not going to take it lying down any more!”

  The hole was wide enough, so he stepped through and jumped down, making more the burning green tracks. He discarded Pox and Slow, giving him another stack of Infected, doubling the duration of his stat debuff, and increasing his wait time until his next hand. He played Five Finger Fillet, which paused to show the card being upgraded before returning to the top of his deck. He played Following Footsteps, giving him two stacks of block. He prepared to cast Transporter Accident. While he was close to his target, he was now banking on the twenty-five percent chance of the bad outcome. He and the skeleton would physically merge and would give his friends time enough to prepare for another fight. He hoped, anyway.

  “If you guys see Maurice again, give him a piece of my mind,” he said over his shoulder to Horse.

  The skeleton had been fretting more over the damage to the building than to the faun attempting to threaten him, but when Pan said that last, his whole expression changed.

  “Maurice? Maurice sent you guys?” the skeleton asked. “Why didn’t you say so in the first place!”