Cards of Remnant

Chapter 32: Starving

"Take me with you," she pleaded.

Rhodes sighed, his shoulders trembling with more weight than just the heavy duel disk he'd strapped onto his back. "We've talked about this–"

"I train until I'm seventeen and a legal adult, and go to a hunting duelist academy," she dutifully repeated, though with venom in her voice. "Or you could just take me with you."

"That won't give you a future," Rhodes refuted her. "You'd just join me in running."

"Better than staying here!" she insisted, thrusting her finger at the craggy web of scars surrounding her throat, peeking out from underneath the necklace and lightning dust crystal locked around her neck. "I'll run if it means I'll be free!"

"Running is not freedom!" her mentor snapped, whirling back around on her with eyes of blazing terror.

Out of instinct, she took a frightened step back, but he made no move to hurt her. He'd never strike her as the Madame did.

Instead, he just pointed to his own scar, a jagged, ugly wound that split across the right side of his face. "The man who trained me, who I trusted more than anything, gave me this the moment he found out I'd forged Number 104. When I escaped him, he sent my friends, people I went to school with, after my head. I have been looking over my shoulder, trusting no one, sleeping in shitholes like this because they don't ask questions, for years, and even then I know they'd slit my throat in a second if they ever found out who was chasing me!"

He finally noticed how scared she was at his raised voice. The rugged and weathered hunting duelist recoiled in horror at himself and stepped back with a deep breath.

He fell to one knee, making himself unthreatening as possible. "Running isn't freedom, little one. It's fear, forever and always."

Her face softened, her fingers clenching into fists at the fear lacing the voice of the only person who'd ever cared about her. She honestly hated him a little bit, for spouting high-minded ideals, for constantly telling her that she had to wait, for being able to come and go from The Glass Unicorn as he pleased while she had to remain and suffer the Madame's torture. But in the face of his utter exhaustion, the love she felt for him took over.

"If they won't leave us alone, then let's fight," she suggested, raising her old-fashioned, hand-me-down, duel disk. "I'll help you so you don't have to run anymore."

"Ha! They're not the kind of opponents you can help me beat, little one," Rhodes chuckled, a sense of despair marring the supposedly mirthful sound.

She pouted. "I'm stronger than you think."

"Not strong enough to match Oz's duelists," Rhodes insisted. "And even on the very off chance we did win, it would just let worse things have free rein on Remnant as a whole."

"Worse than the people who betrayed you?"

"Far worse. Things that threaten the world rather than just me."

"So you have to run to live or lay down and die? That's ridiculous!" she protested. "Without you, I am nothing!"

Rhodes froze, his expression's false mirth and its despair vanishing all at once, replaced with a look of deep paternal concern. At least, she thought that was what it was? It looked kind of similar to the looks some of the Madame's boyfriends sometimes gave her daughters if they were around long enough.

Her mentor reached around to the duel disk strapped to his back and withdrew two cards.

"Number 104," she gasped, her golden eyes widening at the sight of the black-bordered monster. She'd never been shown it before, the golden magician with three stunning interconnected rings. "It's magnificent."