Seven stared at the newest golden triangle on her palm. It blinked calmly in the dim light of Moore’s makeshift bedroom, illuminating her bedroll and the slowly rising and falling chests of Luca, Emmet, and Moore nearby. There was only one room big enough to pile all of their bedrolls, but Seven was grateful to have it anyway given the situation.
She barely remembered the aftermath of their fight with the centipede—only the glowing warmth of power coursing through her limbs, the feeling of simply wishing away the larvae. Something entirely more impactful than Luck. Something she could actually work with.
Moore seemed to know little about the third Stack, but he no longer looked at her in quite the same way, and indeed, he’d avoided looking at her at all since she’d come back in a heap in Emmet’s arms. Seven wasn’t quite sure how to take it herself; if this was only the third Stack, what would she be able to do at the twentieth? She couldn’t help but wonder how much her father knew about her latent powers and if—in sending her into exile—he’d just wanted to be rid of a very expensive problem. Because Seven wouldn’t have been forgotten in Veilhome. No, she would have been impossible to hide.
Every rumor, every superstition would have fallen on the truly cursed child of Veil, and while her trick with the drained dice had been easy enough to hide, the rest of it would have marked her for a weapon—if not for House Veil, then for every other rival kingdom. It was shocking, really, that LMC hadn’t figured out what she could do—especially given how closely they seemed to watch Emmet.
Her ability to make new dice was equally elating and disturbing. Every dice she’d ever touched bubbled up in her mind, unbidden. Every useless one, every amazing one. Surely they’d all be useful for something when combined. And yet, the idea of exploring that aspect of her power made her almost dizzy.
One thing at a time, she told herself. She could deal with her Stacks later. First, she needed to figure out a way to make sure LMC paid for tossing Moore and the others down here.
Seven sighed quietly, turning over and hiding the golden light of her palm beneath dusty blankets. Emmet and Moore both had spent the last several days treating her like some sort of fragile glass that might break at any given moment, but the truth was, Seven felt fine. A little washed out from her fight, but fine—especially with the glut of shards floating around. Fine enough, in fact, that she couldn’t help but consider doing some actual work while everyone else was sleeping off the excitement of the last few days.
She had the shards to return to the surface. She had access to the tunnel that Moore and Luca both had confirmed led to the surface without touching any of LMC’s shafts. What she didn’t have was information about LMC. If there was anything she could dig up down here to implicate them in this mess, she was determined to do so.
Surely they don’t use this place solely as a dumping ground, she thought, flexing her hand idly. Surely they’re trying to hide something down here. If there was one thing she’d learned during her brief tenure with LMC, it was that they never let a place go to waste. Every corner of Luckville was stuffed with apartments, casinos, or corporate buildings. The outskirts were their easily accessible burial ground. And LMC wouldn’t have posted up here at all if there wasn’t something to be gained from it. Given what Seven had experienced down here herself, she could hardly blame them if they’d just sealed off the entire sector and forgotten about it.
But they hadn’t. And, by Seven’s way of thinking, that meant they needed it for something. But what? She thought. There was no way of knowing without snooping around the city, but increasingly, Seven realized that she knew exactly where to start.
The magma in the tunnels had a strange glow to it. She wasn’t exactly an expert in magma, but she swore the molten rivers surrounding the city had a sort of golden sheen to them. Besides that, the little canals of lava seemed to follow intricate pathways across the city. Perhaps they’d once housed water, but now, she couldn’t help but think that they housed something else.
Luck itself.
It was easy to miss, but with so much of it coursing through her own veins, Seven was beginning to notice the faint patterns of it, the unique signature that she realized she’d felt in some capacity every day of her life.
And if LMC was somehow mining Luck itself, she’d have plenty of evidence to bury them with—she just needed some confirmation.
Seven eased her way out of the bedroll, taking care not to disturb Emmet and Luca, sprawled out nearby. Fortunately both slept like particularly solid rocks—especially after the events of the last few days.
Seven paused at the doorway, her eyes lingering on Moore. How long had he known about everything going on beneath the surface of the kingdom? And yet her father had thrown him aside as refuse.
Increasingly, she realized that it was just her father’s thing. Throwing away what he thought was trash, when it was treasure all along.
Seven slipped into the hallway and out into Hell’s Maw again.
***
The city streets were quiet, but Seven kept her sword close just in case. It felt foolish, perhaps, to creep around alone while still recovering from her fight with the centipede no less, but someone had to do it. And if she’d brought up the idea to Moore and the others, she’d have been trapped in an endless cycle of arguments and caution. At least this way, she could make some real progress.
Besides that, she was fairly certain that no one else could even see the faint shimmer of the Luck she saw coursing through the magma rivers, and when she’d mentioned as much to Emmet and Moore, they’d both looked at her like she’d hit her head too hard the day before.
She had her sword, at least, and she had her Luck.
The golden triangle on her palm pulsed faintly as she walked, a rhythmic heartbeat that almost seemed to sync with the flow of energy in the magma channels. It was disorienting at first—like seeing the world through a new lens—but Seven found herself adjusting quickly.
She couldn’t help but wonder how long she’d been able to see Luck, coursing through her life, her hand, her every roll. There was always that faint sparkle at the beginning of her rolls—that of Luck, eddying around the dice. She’d thought, all this time, that Rook had tampered with the dice at her Beggar’s Chance tournament. In a way, she was still certain of her innocence, but what if her Luck had messed with the dice in some way?
She shook her head, trying to stay focused on her surroundings. Worry about that later, she told herself. She already had plenty of evidence that Rook and LMC weren’t innocent when it came to matters of the Beggar’s Chance tournament; in fact, it was entirely possible that both she and Rook had tampered with the dice. Certainly that would have been enough to set off the gaming commission’s careful checks and balances.
The streets of Hell’s Maw stretched out before her in careful geometric patterns, and as Seven followed the largest of the magma channels deeper into the city, she lost her train of thought entirely. Something was wrong about the city—something worse than the monsters crawling the streets, the magma surging in the canals at her feet. Something worse than Pocket’s faint quivering every time she stepped out of Moore’s tiny sanctuary. She couldn’t help but feel as though the place was familiar somehow, the layout recognizable in a way that made her skin crawl.
She paused at an intersection where three streets met at precise angles, forming a triangle. A plaza spread out to her left, circular and ringed with crumbling statues. She squinted at them, trying to parse why they bothered her so much. She couldn’t quite place them, but they still seemed familiar. Ahead, the street continued straight before branching into two paths that curved around what looked like it had once been a central structure. A fountain, she realized.
The same fountain she’d spent hours playing for scraps of dice at.
Seven swore and turned slowly, taking in the architecture with fresh eyes. The buildings here were old—ancient, really—but underneath the decay and the centuries of abandonment, she could see the bones of something she knew. That was the palace, stretching out on the hill that overlooked the plaza. Those crumbled buildings were the remains of the market, and Riverside wound in circles just below that, the magma river glowing in the distance.
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It wasn’t just familiar—it was identical. Identical, and impossible to mistake. Seven sat down on the side of the fountain, hard, her mind now spinning. It seemed impossible, really, but she’d experienced plenty of things in her life that made her doubt impossibilities. Still, at the very least, it was improbable.
This was Veilhome. Or rather, it had been something very much like Veilhome. The same spoke-and-wheel design radiating from a central hub. The same careful division of districts. Even the architecture—what remained of it—shared the same aesthetic sensibilities. Tall, narrow buildings with peaked roofs. Arched doorways. Decorative stonework that would have been beautiful before time and heat wore it down to suggestions.
Seven’s mind raced. How old was this place? And why would an ancient city buried beneath the surface share Veilhome’s design? Was Veilhome modeled after this city, or—perhaps even stranger—was this city modeled after Veilhome?
She forced herself to her feet and wandered the streets, grateful at least for the temporary reprieve from the denizens of the cathedral city. With the queen’s defeat, it seemed like many were lying low, perhaps wary of Seven and the others.
Her initial destination was temporarily forgotten as she tried to piece together the puzzle lying in front of her. There was something even stranger about the city than the familiarity of it, the similarities to Veilhome. A sort of pattern emerged as she followed the magma channels carving through the city in deliberate paths, the only way the strange city deviated from Veilhome at all.
The central hub of the city loomed ahead—a massive structure that she recognized as the palace back in Veilhome. It had partially collapsed, leaving only skeletal support columns that jutted into the massive cave like some sort of eldritch creature. She stared at it for a moment, circling the plaza, wary of the movement out of the corner of her eyes, but she could barely focus on the monsters lurking nearby at all. Instead, she found herself focusing on something stranger.
A pattern.
While the cathedral city shared many similarities with Veilhome, there were specific ways in which it deviated from the norm; the magma channels which wove through the city; the few structures jutting from the wreckage that she didn’t recognize from Veilhome; even the camps of monsters were familiar, but not in the way Veilhome was.
No, they were familiar from something else.
Seven spun slowly, taking the city in. From this angle, with the magma channels visible as golden threads through the stone, the entire city layout resembled something else entirely. She could swear the channels formed a shape, no less. Lines connecting at precise angles, creating zones, territories. Territories she’d defended before over the warm wood of a game board.
Seven swore softly under her breath as it all clicked together in her head.
It was Gambler’s Chance board.
How did I miss it before? She thought, her mind spinning. Then she realized why; when she’d been flying through the city, not only had she been running for her life, but her ability to see Luck hadn’t quite developed yet. LMC had done more for her by throwing her down here to die than she’d been able to do for herself in years. Luck now wasn’t just a suggestion, but something tangible and accessible—and now she could see its intricate lines over the board of the cathedral city.
The huddled buildings of monsters she’d passed earlier—those were camps on the board. The triangular intersections marked tower positions. The curving streets that she’d thought were just aesthetic choices were instead lanes that players used to navigate the board.
This entire city was built like a Beggar’s Chance board. Or, perhaps more accurately, Beggar’s Chance boards were built like the city.
For a moment, all Seven could do was stare. It didn’t make sense. She was no historian, but she certainly hadn’t heard of any sort of Veilhome clone beneath the mountains, and Beggar’s Chance was a relatively new game, only brought to fame because the Rook family had—
“He knew,” she breathed, stunned. Pocket emerged from her shirt, glowing faintly blue, like he’d just woken up from a nap.
“Knew what.”
“Rook’s family knew about all of this,” she explained, marching forward, following the largest magma channel as it wove away from the palace—the Ancient, the heart of the board. “Beggar’s Chance only became a game recently. It was a new thing, and the Rook family popularized it.” She shook her head, dodging a few crumbling pieces of marble. “But this city looks just like a board, Pocket. If they built the game, that means they knew about this city. It can’t just be coincidence.”
“I’m failing to see how that helps us at all,” Pocket said, yawning. “Why would he go through all this trouble just to copy the city’s design? Doesn’t he have better things to do with his time? Like pancakes, or collecting weird dice or something?”
Seven racked her mind for the reason. There was something else here. Something she was missing. Something bigger than the obvious connection between Rook, LMC, and Hell’s Maw. She jogged through the city as she thought, following a hunch in the back of her mind that she hadn’t quite finished piecing together.
“He was always obsessed with the game,” she told Pocket. “Manic, almost. He never spoke about anything but the game. Other players talked outside of tournaments, but Rook was always alone. Always one step ahead of everyone else. They were afraid to engage with him, and when they did, he’d only talk about the game. It was like it had some sort of deeper meaning for him.”
“So the guy liked ancient architecture, maybe, or he was a fan of the Sidhe Moore told us about. Big deal.”
“No,” she said quietly, trotting over a metallic bridge, Luck glistening beneath her boots. “I think it’s something more. Rook’s specialty was always managing his lanes. He knew when he could send his units in and out of them. His micro-control of that part of the game was so good that it took me years to figure out what he was doing. It was like that was a game within itself. And his favorite thing to do by far was dam the lanes up to make sure that everyone else was starved of resources. What if…”
Seven was practically running through the city now, heedless of the mobs nearby, heedless of the growing hum of Luck against her skin. It was stronger here by far. Concentrated. Impossible to ignore. She stumbled through a collection of industrial buildings, her gut sinking steadily. She knew the layout of Veilhome. Knew what was on the other side of that familiar cluster of buildings, surrounded by gardens and apricot trees.
Seven took the steps to the terrace two at a time, ignoring Pocket’s protests, ignoring the burning ache in her legs, the faint roars of the creatures nearby. She burst through the orchard and onto the hill where she’d spent most of her childhood evading Moore. The trees were scraggly and charred, but they were there. She leaned against one, panting, stunned at the sight before her.
A lake spread out before her, reaching so far into the cavern that she could barely see the end of it.
And it was filled with Luck. Sparkling, beautiful Luck, far deeper than the lake where she’d spent her childhood. The entire lake was gorged—like it had suffered several annual rains at once.
The liquid—if she could even call it that—glowed visibly, waves of light rippling across its surface in an ethereal way that made it impossible to judge whether it was magma, luck, water, or something entirely in between.
The lake of Luck was stunning enough, but Seven frowned as she realized that something else was off about the lake. The shape was wrong, the water too high—even for recent flooding. She squinted, trying to make out the dark smudge in the distance that occupied the opposite shore.
It was a reservoir, perhaps, if her eyes weren’t playing tricks on her. Dozens of metal pipes followed the reservoir wall, jutting out at regular intervals. Industrial. Modern. Completely out of place in this ancient ruin, and nothing like anything in Veilhome.
More damning still was the path those pipes took; she followed them with her eyes as she jogged along the bank towards the smudge on the horizon, careful to avoid the sweltering Luck at her feet—she had a feeling it might not play nice if she were to slip.
The pipes climbed away from the reservoir and up the cavern walls, disappearing into holes that had clearly been drilled through solid rock—perhaps by some unfortunate miner. They went straight up towards the surface. That alone was enough to make Seven panic. If LMC was able to mine liquid Luck, what else were they doing?
Her footsteps quickened along the path, practically stumbling through the scraggly trees, the crumbled benches, the broken marble pathways. She burst through a thicket of trees, their tendrils digging into her flesh, and swore at what she saw.
It wasn’t a reservoir. It was a dam.
And it was blocking every drop of Luck from leaving the city at all.
Pocket peeked from her shirt and let out a low whistle. “Well, that explains a lot,” he said. Seven shook her head, too dumbfounded to speak.
Dozens of metal pipes jutted from the lake at irregular intervals, industrial, modern, and completely out of place in the ancient ruin that was the city at her back. They snaked up the side of the cavern, glowing with the telltale shimmer of luck before disappearing through solid rock that had clearly been drilled—maybe even by the machines she’d found with Luca. Worse still, each pipe headed straight towards the surface.
“They’re mining luck itself,” she breathed, her voice catching. “Harnessing the same power I’ve been using, but in industrial quantities.”
“Possibly bad for your angle on the market,” Pocket said. “Can’t sell it for high prices if someone else gets in on the action, you know?”
Seven shook her head, still stunned at the enormity of it. “The whole, ‘Your luck is our profit slogan’ hits a little differently now, doesn’t it?”
Pocket didn’t respond immediately, but when he finally did, he glowed the same color as the pool of Luck at her feet.
“Your dad must hate money.”
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