A Major Betting Blitz

[Isodol]

120th Trial of Ashan, Arc 720
The Four In Hand

The afternoon had become a paradox; whilst the sun speared the sky with its all too bright fluorescent rays, the air itself was chilly, much too chilly for the current season. Isodol cursed herself for having not brought with her an overcoat, the leather one, the only one that sometimes didn’t even perform its duty of keeping her warm. But it need not matter, for she would be plundering inside on her tipsy heels any moment now.

Her destination lay directly ahead of her and it screamed for her to hurry. She felt her steel flask burning a hole in her pocket, her mind constantly being torn from watching where she was going to taking just one more sip of the abhorrent liquid that resided inside. She closed her eyes, her eyelids fluttering as the wind knocked against them.

A sickening shock of lightening suddenly erupted up her legs, forcing her eyes open as she was almost nearing the count of 8. Looking down at what had caused such a terrible pain, she noticed a large barrel positioned against a wall standing directly in front of her foot. Isodol rolled her eyes and her eyebrows knotted together. Cursing herself for her obliviousness, she idled her drunken stupor to focus, or at least attempt to, on where she was walking.

A wave of clouds promptly squandered the sky, quenching the light until all that remained was an abysmal gloom. Was it supposed to rain today? She wondered, before waddling up to the front doors of the Four in Hand.

The building wasn’t as large as she had thought it would be. There weren’t too many windows for her to peer into, most likely to keep gamblers from remembering how long they’d spent there and what time of day it actually was. The doors were a splintered wood, or at least they seemed like it to her, whose vision was gradually producing double; double the windows, double the handles, double the slats in the walls. She stuck out her hand and pried the door open, revealing a waft of unpalatable scent.

She wrinkled her nose in repulsion. Wasn’t this supposed to be an eating establishment as well as a casino? Brushing back the stray locks of hair, she slid inside. The door made a loud resonating bang as it closed behind her. Was it really that loud or had she imagined it? There were no hostile glares directed in her direction, so she was probably in the clear. She let out a breath she hadn’t known she had been holding and made her way to the closest table.

Already three seats full, Isodol took the last remaining chair. One man grunted, pulling out a cylindrical wrapper of sorts and lighting it with a match he had scrounged up from deep within his pocket. The other man just eyed her quizzically as if noting her rather outlandish presence. The only other woman at the table refrained from making eye contact. She held a cloth in her hand, and periodically wiped at her nose.

Isodol cleared her throat. “What we playing?”

The man who had lit up guffawed, puffing out a thick wisp of smoke. “Aren’t you a little young to be messing with the bets, girlie?”

She didn’t like the way he looked at her. One of his eyebrows raised with inquisition, but his eyes held an unusual twinkle, his mouth twitching as though readying to pull itself into a smirk.

Isodol pulled back her shoulders and lifted her head a little bit. Mirroring the man, she too raised one of her eyebrows. Within, she felt barely an ounce of confidence, especially seeing at how burly and tall this man was just sitting down, but on the outside she licked her lips and lowered her voice, “afraid of a little competition?”

The man took out his stogie and stunted the flame on the surface of the table, until it was nothing more than a pile of ash and glistening ember. “Not at all,” he smirked, looking to his friend, the other man, across the table.

“Why don’t ya’ll just shut the hell up so we can play some blitz?”

Isodol turned to the woman. She had no distinguishable facial features because they were shrouded in a hat and glasses, but her lips were huge. Each and every word that flew off her tongue was also accompanied by a large globule of saliva.

Isodol could feel her own glob of spit rising in her throat, or was that vomit? Either way, she had to stop looking at the woman. She felt so off looking at her, like the woman was making her feel cringy or nauseous.

Someone was talking and it took a moment to realise it was her own voice. “I don’t think I’ve ever played blitz before,” she admitted, mentally palming her forehead for giving into confession. She had this burning necessity to not let others see her ignorance. She craved being right, and desired dodging mistakes. Even if she messed up, she would wind some elaborate explanation that would result in her seeming like she did it with intention. Nothing was an accident with her. Even her accidents weren’t accidents. It was all apart of the plan. The plan of life.

The man who had been smoking grunted again before going silent, reaching out to retrieve several cards from a deck that had somehow magically manifested on the center of the table.

Maaaaybe she shouldn’t be gambling on something new when she was still not quite one-hundred percent cognizant. But that little voice in the back of her head urged her to continue. It would be fun, it whispered, deviating from the logic that was also fighting for center stage in her mind. It would be… a thrill.

Isodol conceded and grabbed the same number of cards from the deck as the man had before her. “Whatever,” she muttered nonchalantly. “I’ll learn as I play.”

She held the cards up to her face so that her eyes were barely visible from over the tops of them. Her icy orbs stared. She always lusted over a good thrill.

[Isodol]

“It’s not as complicated as you think,” said the man, the one who wasn’t nearly as burly and intimidating as the one with a new cigarette nestled between his lips.

“Why don’t you enlighten me,” Isodol had said moments before, trying to make teaching her about the game more appealing. While the thrill of the unknown also left a nice taste in her mouth, she wasn’t arrogant; she knew that if she went into a game blindly where stakes were held, she was bound to lose. And these folks did not appear to be the merciless type.

At first, there was a quiet squabble amongst the trio. The mysterious woman clad almost head to toe in clothing didn’t say much, but the two men bantered for a few minutes about whether to waste their time teaching a newcomer a game that “should’ve been common knowledge” in a place like the Four in Hand.

She had cleared her throat a couple minutes in and tilted her head to the side. “Wouldn’t it be more fun if you had a challenge?” she said, attempting to persuade the majority. “Otherwise, you’d probably look like cowards just stealing from a baby.”

The men had stopped their muttering and turned to her then, nodding their heads in agreement. Now, one of them, the slenderer of the two with hair as red as beetroot, was vaguely telling her the basic mechanism of the game they deemed Blitz.

Isodol was struggling to understand the fundamentals, her eyes flicking to the red-headed stranger and his cards that were set haphazardly on the table in front of her.

“You got your numbered cards,” he said, pointing to the obvious 2-9 of various suits. “And you got your unnumbered cards.” She noticed the King which stuck out like a sore thumb. It was entirely black like someone had taken a piece of charcoal and desecrated its entire face out of sheer frustration. “You’re trying to aim to a total of 31, but you can only count the cards that share a suit.”

Isodol rubbed the space between her eyebrows, already succumbing to the headache that resulted from her sobering up.

“For example, I got a three of hearts, a five of hearts and a two of spades here-” he showed her his hand of three cards- “so I have a total of eight points.”

She added the numbers up in her head, nodding in agreement at his calculations.

“The two of spades doesn’t count cause it’s not of the same suit as the three or five of hearts. Now, if you got yourself an ace, that’s eleven points. Doesn’t matter what suit it is.” He somehow managed to pull an ace from the deck on his first try. “If you have a four of spades and a six of spades, you may be thinking, well that’s ten points. But-” he held up his finger- “if your ace is a different suit than those spades, you go with the highest point total of your cards.” He gestured to two cards of the same suit, their total adding up to a lesser value than the ace which held a total of eleven points.

“Unless you wanna go with having ten points over eleven,” he chuckled, throwing his example cards back into the centre of the table. “Kings, queens and jacks are all worth ten. The goal of the game is to get thirty-one points in your hand or as close as you can to it.”

The half-breed was still reflecting on the rules of the game when the woman leant over the table and started raking in the cards. Her fingers were old and veiny, knotted with years of overuse and arthritis. A large black rock was stationed between two thick steel bands that wrapped around her finger. It glistened only slightly in the dim lighting of the room.

The woman patted the edges of the cards so all were flush with one another. After shuffling for a time that felt like breaks, she slowly began to deal them out until every player at the table had three cards. The rest of the cards were placed in a pile in the centre of the table, only the first card of the pile facing up.

“You think you’re ready?” asked the woman. Isodol couldn’t see the woman’s eyes from behind the glasses she wore but she could tell there must have been a mischievous glint in her eye solely by the way her voice held an edge.

“What’re we playing for?” Isodol stated rather than asked, taking hold of her cards with one hand and pulling a strand of hair behind her ear with the other.

“Loser pays for a round.”

Perhaps it was her natural born recklessness or her tenacious inclination towards danger; maybe it was because her head was still a little foggy from last nights drunken masquerade or her longing for something more than the mundane. Whatever the case, Isodol nodded her head after only a mere moment of contemplation.

“Loser pays for two.”

[Isodol]

The world was collapsing in on itself. The room was caving in, the wallpaper peeling off the walls like lolling tongues. The chairs were melting underneath where she sat, the floor consuming the legs like they were nothing. They were honey, those that sat around the table; their fleshy masses slowly oozing towards the ground, blending themselves in with the carpet until it was impossible to differentiate one from the other.

She drew from the deck of cards. The center of the table seemed to be the only place in the entire building that wasn’t liquefying before her very eyes.

A bead of sweat dribbled down the side of her head, but she made no move to brush it away. She blinked instead, strengthening her gaze. Her hand held an eight of diamonds, a two of hearts… and an ace of diamonds.

The turns being taken by the players seemed lengthy. The time between her opponent’s ability to draw and hers was expansive and continuously increasing. The roof of her mouth began to itch, her mouth felt arid like the deserts of a mid-summer’s season, but she dare not show it. Save for the trickle of perspiration that was now hanging onto her chin like stalactite in a mine, she dare not show the possibility on her oncoming failure.

The man in front of her lit up another cigarette. He played his cool all too convincingly. Isodol felt something was up, but couldn’t locate the source of her suspicion. She glared at his hands, the one holding the smoke and the other holding his cards. She glowered at his lips which were drawn slightly upward like he was holding in a secret that only benefited him. Her eyes darted to the other man. He seemed less reserved. His eyes kept flickering back and forth between his cards like he was trying to find a missing piece to a puzzle he had spent years trying to finish. Lastly, her gaze drifted towards the woman. She had removed her hat and her hair was a striking, and rather blinding, white, but it seemed as though not from old age. Strange, the half-breed thought. But of her composure? There was nothing amiss; nothing stood out that made Isodol think she was losing the battle.

Her emotions were getting the best of her. She, like one of her opponents, was losing her cool. She couldn’t catch up to it, it was running so fast. Her pulse was running so fast, as was her breathing. She had to pause, the let her mind change the switch to easy mode before she would be able to focus again.

Breathing had always been something of a challenge for her in situations where high stakes were commonplace, where danger was ever present. Yet, she knew it was possible to get her body, and her mind, under control. She had done it before, therefore she will do it again.

She didn’t close her eyes- couldn’t. She wouldn’t let her opponents see a crack in her otherwise stoic façade. But she did take a long and deliberate blink. She let her eyes go out of focus. She directed her attention to the wall behind the other players’ heads. She counted each and every beat of her heart like it was a drum hammering away to a rhythm she couldn’t hear. She tried to alter the song of the blood pounding in her ears. She focused on that and fortunately, thankfully the rhythm didn’t sound so much like thunder anymore; the pulsations quieted, and her breathing slowed.

Oh, how she so desperately wanted to take a drag from that man’s cigarette. What was it- his fifth one since starting this game?

Unbeknownst to her, her hand stretched out towards the pile of cards in the centre. It pulled at the top one and dutifully placed it into her hand but not before retracting the two of hearts. Dare she look at its replacement? Dare she view her fate?

She was all forms of sober now. The droplet of sweat had hit the ground several minutes ago, leaving a slight streak of wet in its place. Least it isn’t tears, she thought. Not mine anyway.

She took one final look at both men and the woman and she found everyone was doing just as she was. Everyone was looking at one another. Some held expressions of malice, others held slight worry, and others still held nothing at all.

Isodol looked away quickly, her icy orbs connecting with her newly drawn card: five of diamonds.

[Isodol]

“You knock.”

Isodol had remembered one particular rule of the game: the one to end it. She felt fairly confident in her hand. Her optimism controlled her tongue, its hands like vices as it twisted and turned the meaty muscle into stating what she wanted most.

“I knock.”

The two men across from her looked up at her and then down at the pile only a little more than halfway gone. She watched as their eyes scanned their cards. She tried to see any glimmer, any glisten of apprehension in them. She could detect some unease in the red head’s but the man, who yet again held another cigarette between his thin lips, gave no indication to his predicament.

“You know that means we all still get another round right?” the woman asked. She had finally removed her glasses and her eyes were all but terrifying; one of them was as cloudy as a murky swamp and the other was a vivacious green.

Isodol exhaled deeply, sucking in the chilly air as if she was drowning. Was this really the decision she was going with? Was she as certain about her standings as she had previously been? She wondered if this extra turn would dump her into last place like yesterday’s trash. The woman’s expression had a quizzical nature, but her eyes held mischief. Would she bet her hand that the redhead had a worse hand than she?

She nodded and rolled her eyes playfully as if she hadn’t just been doubting everything that made up the world. “Of course I know that,” she finally said, feigning credence.

She set her hand down, the faces kissing the table. She cleared her throat. A large mass of phlegm had somehow accumulated there. It was her nerves. Her anxiety was doing strange things to her body. She looked at her hands and began picking at the extra skin around the cuticles. But what was she so nervous about? If she lost to these people, the only consequence would be to pay for their drinks. Alas, she knew not how much drinks were here. This was her first time inside this establishment. However, the most important reason why she was hypothetically sweating proverbial buckets was because she hated to lose.

She made the calculations in her head. There were four of them which meant she had a one in four chance of losing and a three in four chance of winning, in some respect. Her ego may not be as bashed and bruised today as she had initially thought. She was able to trust herself with those odds. She didn’t know these people or how they played, but she knew herself and her luck wasn’t completely fictitious. There were times where she had found just the right person at the end of the day, someone who was willing to free up a cot in their house for her to stay the night. She had narrowly missed creating an intimate connection with a wet and cold back alley on several occasions.

Hands tentatively stretched for cards, eyes skeptically searched hands for successes and minds clattered and clanked as the cogs churned. Isodol was done contemplating and the cogs had come to a soft halt. All she had to do now was wait for the remaining turns to lock themselves in finality. And they did as the last player discarded an extra card so his hand only held three.

“What does that mean now?” But her question was more rhetorical than anything.

“Put ‘em down in one… two…”

Her hand couldn’t have slapped down her cards any quicker. She scanned the diamonds and hearts, spades and clubs. She heard a chortle one of the men put an end to his cigarette. Short-lived, just like Isodol’s thoughts as being the one with the highest point total. She wasn’t out yet, though. The woman’s hands, she counted, had two more points than herself, but the redhead, with his newly cast sour expression, had only managed to reach twenty-two points.

A large grin started to carve itself in her face. Her chapped lips cracked alongside her knuckles as she leant back in her chair with her arms held behind her head.

“Looks like I’ll be having a shot of rum, my good fellow.”

[Doran]

Isodol:

Knowledge:
Deception: Remaining Stoic in Distress
Gambling: A Game of Blitz
Meditation: Slowing One's Heartbeat
Intimidation: Copying Expressions
Detection: Reading Facial Expressions
Gambling: Detecting One's Bluff

Loot: -
Wealth: -
Injuries: -
Renown: 5, for taking part in a game of cards.
Magic XP: -
Skill Review: Skill Play: Mostly appropriate to level. I’m not sure if Isodol should be able to analyze the other players like that with 0 Detection and 0 Psychology though.
Points: 10

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Comments: This was an entertaining solo! Your writing style is very easy to read. I quite enjoyed the description of Isodol going to the Four in Hand and more or less walking into a barrel because she’s so drunk and all those details that you added to your narrative, such as Isodol wrinkling her nose upon noticing the smell in the Four in Hand or the gamblers (looking at that woman would likely have made me nauseous as well!). The game itself was quite well-written as well! You did a good job in my opinion, and I already look forward to reading your next thread. Enjoy your rewards!

P.S.: I would probably have added “Resistance” to the list of skills used as Isodol drank alcohol, “Discipline” as Isodol was trying to stay focused during the game and perhaps “Detection” or “Psychology” as she was studying the other gamblers. And Mathematics for making the calculations, of course.