Demon Card Enforcer 3, Chapter 34

Chapter Thirty-Four: Combat of the Absurd, Part II

 [Cough... this item is how Klireen was able to attack Wolfe directly in the newly altered last chapter.]

            Despite the running feet, for a moment, nothing happened.

            The doors to the dining room burst inward as an enraged ton of meat charged into the kitchen, quickly resolving itself into a massive, red-skinned warthog with pustules oozing yellow pus that Wolfe could almost smell. Its eyes were wide and pain-maddened, and one of its two tusks was broken, and infection on the end of it.

Pig-Greedy Soul

Uncommon Tier-1 Infernal/Beast [Punished Soul, Diseased]

1 Infernal or 1 Beast Power, 1 Any Power

Health: 20

Attack: 6

Defense: 4

Magical Attack: N/A

Magical Defense: 3

Special: Infectious: Anyone wounded by this card gains the diseased status, suffering -1 to all non-health stats and 1 true damage per 30 seconds for 3 minutes. Anyone gaining a killing blow on this card gains the same debuff.

Special: Squealing: This card must be attacked by all non-infernal cards on the field first before attacking anything.

“The souls of those that sacrificed all their honor and goodness on the alter of Mammon, but accomplished nothing worthwhile and died poor anyway, spend their eternity as diseased pigs in his realm.”

            “What the fuck?” Wolfe asked, turning and shooting the pig. It died in a single hit, exploding, and Wolfe felt a sudden chill was through him as boils grew on his arm and burst.

            Even as Wolfe fired, two men came around the corner, firing glock-17’s at him. One missed entirely despite three rapid shots from maybe twenty feet, and the other caught him in the chest with all three. It hurt like heck, but the damage—almost half his life despite the Infernal mantle—healed rapidly.

            Two more men came around the hallway side, flanking Wolfe. One was a powerful-looking, swarthy man in his mid-forties with black hair; a giant, black beard; and eyes so dark, they were also almost black. He wore a traditional red turban with a black gem—an actual onyx, not glass, in his case, to show his allegiance to Asmodeus, Infernal lord of lust. Gurjit Singh, head of the Singh crime family.

Next to him was his eldest son, Gurjit the younger, who was very nearly the spitting image of his father but a few inches taller and a touch leaner. Red and purple cards, six of them, floated in front of Gurjit the father, and four cards, two red, one a sickly yellow, and one a mex of both, floated in front of Gurjit the younger.

            Gurjit the younger touched a card, a sickly yellow and red mixed one, and Wolfe yelled as a gangrenous wound with a tiny creature or protuberance opened on his arm.

Festering Taint

Uncommon Tier-1 Infernal/Elder [Disease, Taint] Persistent

2 Infernal or 2 Elder Power

This Persistent may target any Deckbearer, Creature, or card with a health stat. It does 1 true damage, and reduces all non-Health stats by one, each 30 seconds. If any stat reaches zero, the entity is slain.

“The taint of the lower realms can end someone.”

            At the same time, Gurjit the Elder threw a card out.

Infernal Taint

Common Tier-1 Infernal / Corruption Persistent [Decay, Taint]

1 Infernal or 1 Corruption Power

This card deals 1 true damage every 30 seconds to anyone on the field that has any Infernal or Corruption debuff or negative status effect, per incidence of each. Anyone wounded by an Infernal or Corruption creature suffers the same, but this does not stack with itself. This does not count as damage or an attack for purposes of removing card effects.

“Sometimes, you can’t feel the taint of the Infernal until it has consumed you,” Javier de Villalobo, Cardinal and Champion of Gabriel.

            Between the pig and the two cards, Wolfe found himself down two stats in every category and taking three true damage every round—as well as losing a stat every round as well, with a mere seven rounds, or three-and-half-minutes, left to live.

            “Do you have anything to heal me?” Wolfe asked as another bullet slapped into his arm near harmlessly, healed away instantly.

            “No,” Shel called, firing over Wolfe and ending one of the two remaining guards.

            “Then I can’t just live inside your healing aura forever, I’m on a countdown. Gonna fire in the hole this thing.”

            Wolfe felt Malviere’s power entering him, but instead of firing, he took a minute to drop down, swiping his cards and whispering into his headset, “Initiate in twenty seconds six feet to your left of my position.”

            Fern’s voice, sped up like she was being fast forwarded, came through the connection. “I thought you didn’t want to do this?”

            “I’m dead in three and a half minutes if I don’t kill the deckbearers, Fern, thanks to an unusual attack form. Caution and careful expertise are no longer the path—if they even were when they found us here.”

Fern, still speaking rapidly, said, “Okay, Wolfe. On it. Don’t die.”

            “Working on it.”

            He checked his cards and saw that he had both his Obsessive Infernal Cultists, the Bulgae Moon Chaser, the Infernal Rift, and a Demonic Portal card.

            With his increased power and speed, Wolfe kicked the backpack across the floor, hard, so that it entered the dining hall. Wolfe then popped over the edge of the steel counter again and used his Infernal Rift, targeting Gurjit’s son—he would rather have gone for the father but given his last instructions to Fern he had made that a bad option. He also fired his gun vaguely in the direction of Gurjit senior, who promptly leapt back out of the kitchen, to Wolfe’s left, and hid behind the wall.

            The son disappeared, presumably to his ninety second trip to a faux Infernal realm.

            “Down! Everyone, person or card, down!!” Wolfe yelled, dropping behind the stainless-steel counter a third time and scrambling around the side, grabbing Shel whom he half-dragged behind as well.

            He got a notification that his penalties had increased to three off every stat; two of them now down to six of nine.

            Wolfe opened his mouth half-a-second before a massive explosion went off, blowing the dining room to pieces. A pressure hit him as fire washed over him and debris rained past him, speckling the wall of the kitchen with slashes to accentuate the new burn marks. For a fraction of a second Wolfe couldn’t hear and his skin burned, but the healing kicked in almost instantly, fixing him.

            Shel started to stand, but Wolfe grabbed her and pulled her back down. “Not yet!”

            Wolfe got a notification of a deckbearer death and the disease effect from the boar disappeared, restoring a single stat in every category to him, as well as Malviere being slain – she hadn’t made it behind the counter, Wolfe assumed. He also dismissed three deckbearer notifications past that.

            A second later, a second explosion, smaller and more muted, sounded.

Wolfe rolled to his feet, still suffering from two of the debuffs and with a mere few minutes to live. He rushed from the room, over the still-active Stone Fire Arch and its rainbow doppleganger, and out into the hall.

            The windows of the hall had been blown inward, the edges around damaged, and Gurjit was lying on the floor facedown. The rainbow lights playing from the kitchen made the crimson splash of his blood across the hall feel like a clash of genres, like sudden horror in a kid’s movie. Two men were down and dead near Gurjit, and Gurjit himself was lying face down, his back raw meat.

            “It worked,” Wolfe muttered, aiming his Edge at Gurjit.

            Gurjit rolled over onto his back, letting out a grunt of agony as he did, to face Wolfe. He tried to raise pull his pistol but seemed to lack the strength.

            His face was a rictus of hatred. “Wolfe, I swear I’ll—”

            Wolfe didn’t wait, raising his Edge and pointing it at Gurjit’s face. The bang was loud, even with much of the wall missing, and Gurjit jerked once.

            So easy, for a man that ran the crime family for as long as I worked for Big Man Grimm, Wolfe thought, surprised a bit by how little it meant to him.

            A good twenty cards appeared on his chest, and Wolfe grabbed them quickly before turning around and walking back into the kitchen. Wolfe’s fever was growing, and more and more pustules were forming and bursting. He could feel himself weakening rapidly, and his own breathing was becoming ragged. That card is an absolute piece-of-shit card, and can end me past all my preparations, Wolfe thought.

            Shel came walking over the Stone Fire Arch as well, but Wolfe pointed her back toward the Dining room. “Go get the cards in their please, we have to leave as soon as possible. I may have been quiet with the Infernal airsoft plan, but needing to use the explosives means we’ll have police on us in minutes.”

            Shel nodded and ran into the other room.

            Wolfe raised his gun, waiting. Perhaps it was unsportsmanlike, but since he would be thirty seconds from dead by the time the guy appeared, it didn’t feel unfair to him.

            A moment later, Gurjit Jr. appeared, his head right where Wolfe’s barrel was.

            Wolfe pulled the trigger, and Gurjit Jr. blew backwards like a comic character, head first with gore exploding from it outward. Instantly, the feverish feeling left Wolfe, and he straightened, no longer in agony.

            He grabbed the next set of cards, the ones that Gurjit had dropped on death, just as Shel came back into the room.

            “Let’s go,” Wolfe said, motioning to the newly aerated wall.

            They ran out into the night, as fast as they could go, heading for the Van and Fern, hoping that no police were following them.