The thief sprinted across the flat, gray soil at normal human speeds. There wasn’t any sense he was using any sort of body modification.

Brixaby snorted in amusement. And even though Arthur was feeling completely lousy, he smiled too. He was halfway rooting for the thief, despite himself. He’d always had a soft spot for underdogs.

And it was clear that the man had less than no chance of getting away. Two of the Lightning Cats, including Jon, were fast on his heels. Unlike the thief, they had enhanced speeds. Jon pulled out in front as if he wasn’t wearing a good thirty extra pounds of chainmail armor.

He caught up with the man in no time flat, but just as Jon reached for him, something interesting happened.

The fleeing man… shifted his position in space. Somehow.

No, that wasn’t quite right. Arthur had a hard time understanding what he was seeing. It was as if for a moment, the man grew impossibly, illogically, irrationally flat. He was as tall as he’d been, and the same width. But there was… Nothing to him at all. Jon’s hand fell to his shoulder but had nothing to grip onto.

Jon fell forward, completely taken by surprise, and the man ran on. With his second stride, he popped out of his odd flat state and became normal again.

"What happened?" Brixaby asked. "Was that an illusion?"

"No…" Arthur drew out the word, because he was unsure, himself. "I think he shifted some aspect of himself. He had height and you could see him from side to side, but he just became flat." He shook his head. "I think he bent reality somehow or… Put himself into another reality?" He shook his head again.

Now he was intensely curious about what kind of card caused that to happen.

Also, how anyone planned to catch him. Maybe something as extreme as hiding all of the mass in your body had a cool down.

But the thief pulled the same trick again and again whenever somebody caught up to him. They’d reach out for him, and suddenly there would be nothing to hold onto. The thief became thinner than the finest piece of silk. There was literally nothing to hold onto.

Despite everything, the thief was getting further and further away. Arthur was just starting to wonder if he should send Brixaby after the man and see if the man could dodge a stunning shout. So far no one had tried a ranged attack, but that would be the next step.

Then, to Arthur's surprise, one of Lopez’s men actually managed the trick. He was one of the few who rode a horse and he rode up beside the man while twirling a loop of rope over his head. He cast the rope out, and as he did it took on a white glow of a card power.

As the thief made himself thin, the air around him suddenly flexed. His condition reversed back to normalcy, and the rope settled over him, tightening over his arms and torso in an instant.

Brixaby rumbled in pleasure. "Nullification magic."

Arthur trusted his dragon’s judgment, considering that Brixaby’s natural magic was also nullification. He likely felt sympathy with the power in that lasso.

The thief yelped and tried to shrug the rope off, but the undersheriff dismounted his horse in a flash. With expertise, he twisted the thief up in loops. The thief soon found himself hogtied and tossed over the saddle with the horse being led back to the auction.

Everybody cheered and then was treated to a show as the man was scanned for cards he did not have in his registry.

"The heart deck is clear, but you have five cards in your anchor, and only registered two." Lopez tsked. "Give them over. All of them in your anchor tattoo."

"But I only took three," the man protested.

This caused a minor uproar in the crowd. It seemed most people assumed the man had tried to sneak away one card, or maybe some shards. Three extra cards got on people’s nerves.

Lopez was less than sympathetic. “You know the rules. You steal, you forfeit the whole shebang,” he said. “Don’t make us have to kill you for them. You know the city administration won’t care, and you’ll be dead even if they did.”

He flicked open a knife that had the etchings of runes engraved on it. The few runes Arthur identified from his enchanting book suggested that it was a knife made to cut through all types of personal shields. It was a nasty piece of work.

Arthur winced and resisted the urge to rub at his own painful card anchor tattoo. At least the thief had been fortunate enough — or smart enough — that he hadn’t put the stolen cards in his heart.

The thief whined a little bit about this not being fair, but he must have caught the looks of the people standing around. No one was on his side, and by some dark expressions, they wanted all of his cards.

Finally, he gave in, allowed himself to be untied, and sullenly removed five cards from his anchor.

Arthur hoped one had been the thinning card, but it seemed that one lived in his heart.

The others were very interesting, though, and quickly sent an uproar through the rest of the adventurers because three of them were body modification cards. One was an inner healing card powerful enough to reattach limbs.

Arthur was interested in an academic sort of way, but far more interested in the thief’s two non-body modification cards. One was a feather fall card which was useful for somebody who regularly rode a dragon. It would be like having his own personal safety device. The last card made his heart sink to his toes.This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.

Endless Grindstone

Utility

Rare

The wielder of this card will be granted the ability to pick up new crafting skills at a vastly accelerated rate, with the chance to learn the basics of a new skill by casual observation reduced to one in three. The wielder will be able to learn these and previous skills 50% faster.