All Of Them, None of Them

As perplexing as some of the images you saw behind all those doors were they will have to wait. Something tells you that you cannot risk letting Harmony win this upcoming duel so you must throw yourself into the small amount of time for training that you have.

You get up, noticing Liam is already gone (which is probably a good thing as that might make certain dream memories awkward) and that he has left you a hand drawn map showing you what training field to meet him on when you are ready. You get dressed in comfortable workout clothes and make your way to breakfast, the cafeteria being mostly empty as most students apparently prefer to sleep in and take a later breakfast on their days off. However, you have no time for such luxuries and wolf down your food as quickly as you can before heading off for where you have been instructed to go.

The West Garden is a maze of plants and flowers. You are fairly certain you see the occasional vine writhing or a tree shifting its position behind you to subtly change the pathways but the basic design stays the same. This means the map Liam left for you swiftly guides you to a side room in the maze large enough to function as a training area without having to worry about casually spying eyes. The large white ashe tree that makes up part of the back wall apparently also interferes with a lot of scrying magic so mystically spying eyes are also accounted for.

Not that you think Harmony would even bother with such tactics, her self confidence assuring a fair fight on that level at least.

You come upon your tutors standing side-by-side as if they had been waiting for you this whole time but, given how Keira is pulling down and smoothing out her skirt constantly, both of their shirts are mis-buttoned and Liam's shirt collar is only half in place, you wonder what you might have stumbled on if you had arrived a minute or two earlier.

Raising an eyebrow at the two of them, though neither seems ashamed of having been caught in such a state, you watch Liam move to a small wooden box. He kneels down to open it, pulling out two decks of forty cards before heading over to you and handing over one of them. Inspecting the cards, you are surprised to find that while the backs are lined with a gold border that has very small pentagrams at each corner, the rest of the cards on both sides are completely blank.

Liam holds up one of his cards and while the back is a bright yellow color, you are surprised to find that the front is still blank. When you ask about that, he responds, "The back is this way because it's my deck and its attuned to my magical energies. Most non-Elementalists will get backs that are all different colors, while Elementalists like us get one color based on what elemental energies we're connected to."

"Liam is Fire and Wind," Keira throws in, "Which actually combines to form lightning magic, so while he can summon strong Fire and Wind monster, his strongest would be Electric-based ones. Hence the yellow color."

"Good thing I like the color yellow, eh?" Liam adds with a wink at Keira, who smirks back.

You start to ask what that means but stop as you remember the sight of Keira bending over on your first day.

"Anyway," Liam continues, "the reason the front's blank right now is because the cards aren't the monsters themselves but kind of a physical representation of our magical energies to summon them."

At your confused look, Keira takes over again with, "Basically, every monster you can potentially summon needs a certain number of cards to be spent to do it. So if you try to summon a monster that takes three cards, for example, the three cards will be spent to call forth that monster."

"Though word of warning," Liam adds, "if you're thinking 'does that mean I can just swarm the field with little one card monsters and bum rush her', then yeah you can but if she summons a four card monster or something like that then each of your one monster cards she destroys will destroy three cards in your deck cause of the magical backlash of the monster being unsummoned."

You nod and ask, "So the idea is that whoever runs out of cards first loses?"

"Exactly, dude," Liam replies with a nod, "But first let's see what we got to work with. Focus on your cards like you did with your Affinity Liquid back in Prof Aspecta's class. Let your energy go into your deck so we see what kinda monsters we'll be able to form strategies with."

You nod and look down at the blank cards in your hands, closing your eyes for a moment as you let the magic within you spread out towards your palm. Your fingers tingle for a few seconds and when you reopen your eyes you see the white cards have now become a pure, jet black color. Both Liam and Keira look shocked, the former muttering, "Oh right... Void."

The couple shares a look. "Okay," Keira says, "Let's try a test game or two. We'll walk you through the basics and then see what we got to work with."