Cards, Café, Coastlines (Private)
Posted: Sun Jun 22, 2025 4:33 pm
Talia Mafek sat alone at a seaside café on the quiet curve of Vale’s southern beach, her chair angled just enough to catch the breeze without squinting into the sun. A porcelain teacup, pale green with gold trim, sat cooling beside a small stack of papers weighed down by a heavy bronze Grimmlight coin. Her scratch book lay open, ink still drying on the latest scrawl of rules, glyphs, and monster silhouettes.
She wore a sleek, high-cut black swimsuit with gold threading that traced the pattern of ancient sigils across the seams—tasteful, regal, and tactical all at once. A flowing sheer sarong, fastened at her hip with a clasp shaped like a jackal’s head, shifted in the wind like desert smoke. Thin gold bangles clinked softly at her wrists as she reached for her pen, and her duel disk—compact and partially disassembled—rested near her bare feet in the sand. A pair of round-lensed sunglasses were perched on her nose, but she had pushed them up just far enough to keep an eye on the street beyond.
Across the sun-warmed boardwalk stood a cozy little comic shop, its window crowded with posters and hand-written signs:
COMING SOON — Grimmlight: Deepwood Awakening
Face the Shadows of the Forest. Hunt. Or Be Hunted.
A small crowd of kids bounced in and out of the shop, arms filled with manga, cards, and anticipation. She smiled faintly behind the rim of her teacup as one of them excitedly speculated what the Alpha Beowolf would actually do. Another argued that the new Ursas would be broken if they weren’t careful with the stats.
They weren’t wrong. But they weren’t right either.
Talia’s golden eyes drifted down to the Dust card in her lap. Unlike the cardboard cards of Grimmlight, this one was forged from dense composite and hand-etched with a crimson glow along its edges. The figure carved into the surface—a Beowolf lunging with jagged claws—flared softly as her thumb brushed across its surface, her Semblance feeding it raw intent.
This card wasn’t meant for the game. It was meant for her.
She tucked it beside her book and leaned forward, flipping the page in her scratch book to the draft for a new Battlefield card: Shadowed Clearing. It removed the line-of-sight ruling between opposing lanes and buffed Grimm with the “Ambush” keyword.
“It needs something more, but what?” she spoke as she scribbled in the margin. “Nevermore talons? A Sigil that buffs flyers, but I need a counter…”
Wind kicked up again, rustling the sarong around her legs and brushing her curls back from her face. The kids across the street were now doing mock battles with imaginary cards, laughing and lunging in the sand.
Talia closed her book and set her now empty teacup down gently, eyes narrowing behind gold-rimmed lenses. ”I am going to need to finish this up soon.”
She wore a sleek, high-cut black swimsuit with gold threading that traced the pattern of ancient sigils across the seams—tasteful, regal, and tactical all at once. A flowing sheer sarong, fastened at her hip with a clasp shaped like a jackal’s head, shifted in the wind like desert smoke. Thin gold bangles clinked softly at her wrists as she reached for her pen, and her duel disk—compact and partially disassembled—rested near her bare feet in the sand. A pair of round-lensed sunglasses were perched on her nose, but she had pushed them up just far enough to keep an eye on the street beyond.
Across the sun-warmed boardwalk stood a cozy little comic shop, its window crowded with posters and hand-written signs:
COMING SOON — Grimmlight: Deepwood Awakening
Face the Shadows of the Forest. Hunt. Or Be Hunted.
A small crowd of kids bounced in and out of the shop, arms filled with manga, cards, and anticipation. She smiled faintly behind the rim of her teacup as one of them excitedly speculated what the Alpha Beowolf would actually do. Another argued that the new Ursas would be broken if they weren’t careful with the stats.
They weren’t wrong. But they weren’t right either.
Talia’s golden eyes drifted down to the Dust card in her lap. Unlike the cardboard cards of Grimmlight, this one was forged from dense composite and hand-etched with a crimson glow along its edges. The figure carved into the surface—a Beowolf lunging with jagged claws—flared softly as her thumb brushed across its surface, her Semblance feeding it raw intent.
This card wasn’t meant for the game. It was meant for her.
She tucked it beside her book and leaned forward, flipping the page in her scratch book to the draft for a new Battlefield card: Shadowed Clearing. It removed the line-of-sight ruling between opposing lanes and buffed Grimm with the “Ambush” keyword.
“It needs something more, but what?” she spoke as she scribbled in the margin. “Nevermore talons? A Sigil that buffs flyers, but I need a counter…”
Wind kicked up again, rustling the sarong around her legs and brushing her curls back from her face. The kids across the street were now doing mock battles with imaginary cards, laughing and lunging in the sand.
Talia closed her book and set her now empty teacup down gently, eyes narrowing behind gold-rimmed lenses. ”I am going to need to finish this up soon.”