The tale of the brave knight (II)

Next up, Helena played the card of demons, more specifically succubus, and I played the card of the greedy king since I wanted to preserve the other to use them in a more opportune situation and drew the card of a pestilence.

Ugh, can't you give me something like a dragon, a war, or a siege?

As time passed, I started to enjoy more and more looking at the perfectly choreographed fight rather than understanding the story; it was an extremely simple story, so there wasn't much to follow.

"While on his quest to slay the demon lord, the brave and valiant knight stopped at the city of Litua to rest."

Wait, I think I've heard that name before.

The background changed once more. This time we were in some sort of impoverished city. The muddy streets were filled to the brim with corpses, as a strange phenomenon had struck the city.

I was getting slowly more and more invested in the story we were creating. After some time, I simply stopped paying attention to the cards I was playing or what the narrator was saying and simply enjoyed the movie-like experience the illusion was showing.

During the night, a group of succubus attempted to take the life of the knight, and he, as usual, defeated them; it was all a ploy of the king that reigned over that kingdom.

In the capital, there was a famous arena where all the most famous knights would duel to decide who was the strongest in the world, and the king was rigging the matches to hoard wealth.

Using the succubuses, the king was deciding the victors of the arena before the match even started.

After exposing the king, he was dethroned and exiled along with the rest of the royal family for having sided with the demons. The demons were hung in the city center the very next day; the royal guard barely even seemed willing to protect the king.

Then, diseases struck twice in a row in the same city, and the valiant hero remained there to help the victims. In the meantime, he got close to a peasant called Veronica. A mage.

The knight had started recruiting people to join him in his heroic quest, and the mage was his first companion to join; next up was a bard, an assassin, and a beast tamer.

As they ventured around the world, they faced various enemies; some were humans, some were demons, and some were just large beasts.

I adored the knight's weapon; his preferred choice was a spiked ball attached to a very long metal chain. He would throw it around, spin it over his head, use the chain to block incoming attacks, or wrap it around his arm to block using his arms. Sometimes he would even kick the spiked ball into his enemies after pulling it back.

Then, just as the group set foot on the demonic continent, they were greeted by the dragon king.

Hold up, I feel like we missed some crucial step in this adventure; shouldn't we focus on the demons and their army? Why would you put the card of the dragon king? What kind of person would use such a card so early?

It was Helena.

Ahhh, what a headache; it was all going so well too.

What, is she getting bored and wants to rush the story? It's useless, after all; I'm the one who holds the demon king's card.

I threw in the tower card, and it was promptly ignored by the narrator. It was present in the background of the illusion but served no purpose in the story.

The dragon king was among the few characters who actually possessed colors, possessing black scales, yellow glowing horns and eyes, with weird red runes carved all over his body, bleeding dark blood out of them constantly.

That fight was impressive to look at.

The knight was capable of jumping so far and so high he would effortlessly catch up with the dragon whenever it tried to fly away to unleash its fire breath, using the large spiked ball; he first broke its wings while also leaving as many injuries all over the dragon's body.

His companions weren't slacking either, but his jumps, backflips midair, and seeing how he skillfully utilized his weapon left a deep impression on me.

The battle was arduous, but the heroes came out on top ultimately. The group infiltrated the kingdom, uncovering every mystery possible there was about demons and their culture. They knew where they stored weapons, what kind of weapons they used, they learned the magic they used, and more.

When they returned, they used the information gathered to prepare themselves for—

When the card representing war touched the nightstand, the whole room began to tremble, then I dropped the card of the demon lord, and the narrator dropped the port city card.

We found ourselves standing on a ship, currently navigating a tempestuous sea, while navigating towards the port city of the demons; around us was a fleet of ships so large they expanded as far as the eye could see.

We could see giant dragons flying above our heads, the loud cannons mounted on the walls of the city shooting at us, and the sound of the cannonballs either crashing against the ships near us or in the sea.

"Keep navigating straight ahead! We're almost there!" The knight shouted as loudly as he could.

The bard was using his spell to make the words of the hero echo throughout the sea while the mage was charging up her magic circles. Through magic, she was capable of controlling a large quantity of seawater, shaping it into spears with chains attached to them, and used those to try to bring down the dragons.

The knight, by spinning his spiked ball, was able to wrap it around one of those spears and use its momentum to launch himself at the enemy dragons.

Whoa, that's so cool.

He was bouncing from one chain to another, spinning his body to swing the massive spiked ball, and eventually successfully landed a heavy blow to the dragon's head; the dragon rider later almost killed him.

Even if I was squinting my eyes, it was extremely hard to see how the fight was going; at that instance, he looked like a blue line going back and forth between dragons. The crew of the ship was also in turmoil, rapidly reloading the cannons to keep the sea monsters away.

The beast tamer summoned a massive kraken, and just as the many soldiers were about to take a moment to breathe a sigh of relief, the massive kraken began to strike the ships nearby.

The beast tamer revealed himself to be a demon, and in a swift surprise attack, he managed to best both the assassin and the bard in a single attack. His creatures emerged from underwater, devouring those soldiers in a single bite and disappearing before any of the soldiers on the boat could react.

The mage instead reacted in time, creating a massive ice pillar around herself, piercing the head of the sea serpent that tried to eat her.

"What's the meaning of this?" she asked the traitor while making the ice shatter, sending pieces of the serpent's head flying all over the deck of the ship.

"You know all too well what it means; you saw the greed of the humans, the way they treat each other, the way they shift the blame of their misery to others; there's nothing to elaborate on. If we return victorious, that will only make them greedier for these lands and sour the already delicate relationships between the kingdoms."

"It doesn't have to end in this way."

The tamer turned around and extended his hand towards me. I naturally raised my hands, thinking he wanted to harm me; instead, he simply stole a card out of my hand, the mirror card.

"And with this, finally my family will have the proper burial it deserved a century or so ago."

The mirror card shattered into a thousand pieces and recomposed itself as one card that was already played in the past; here, it copied the dragon king.

"Wasn't this supposed to be an illusion?" I asked Helena's father, startled and confused by the situation.

He didn't respond to me. He remained silent, looking at the bard with disdain in his eyes.

The corpse of the dragon king emerged from underwater and began sinking all nearby ships with a single flap of his wings; using his golden fire breath, he began to wipe out the human army.

But when I turned back to see what was happening, I saw the beast tamer on its knees, pierced in the heart by a large spear made out of ice, and the magician standing before him with a sad look in her eyes.

He was trying to get the large spear unstuck from his body, but it was all useless; he was far too weakened by the blow to have enough strength to stand up and fight again, and just before the girl could finish him off, a cannonball was able to strike her, killing her on the spot.

"Why!" I shouted as I turned around, trying to know who was responsible for that sudden death.

Helena was the one who decided to kill her.

"Because the tamer is so pitiful." She answered.

"What part of him is pitiful?" I asked her.

I was enraged; he has sided with the enemies, sabotaged the war, and killed half of the hero's party. Why would a person like him deserve to survive in this situation?

And before I could focus on any of those thoughts, the whole ship was shocked as the hero had finally landed back on the deck, completely drenched in blood, shortly after the many dragon corpses also crashed down into the ocean.