Cheater is just a fancy word for winner! [Moonie]

[Anguish]

Today was a slow day for Sylas. So far he had only made a few coins, and he had been in the inn for hours. He hadn't even been in the city long enough to visit all the different inns, so there should still have been people who didn't know any better than to play a game of cards with him.

At least the inn he was at was relatively nice. There were a lot of people drinking and dancing to the music, just not a lot of people gambling. He could kind of understand why. The music was nice, even if he wasn't paying much attention to it; or the person performing it. He was focused on what he was doing, worried only about the next game. Finally, a large man took a seat at his table and took out a pouch full of coins.

"Ah, finally a game!" Sylas said politely with a hearty laugh, trying to lure his opponent in. "What shall it be, then?"

The man shrugged. "It doesn't matter to me. Dealer's choice."

Sylas shuffled his deck of cards and placed it in front of the other man for him to cut. "Traditional poker, then. No wild cards. I assume you know the rules?" He said as he picked up the cards and began to deal. The man simply nodded, and Sylas smiled at him again. "Good. Let's begin, then. One silver coin is the ante."

Sylas looked at his cards, a Five of Fire and Queen of Water. He placed his bet of one silver coin, which the other man matched. He then proceeded to play the game, burning one, then flipping the next three cards. Jack of Air, Five of Earth, Five of Water. Once again, he placed a single silver coin as his bet, and the man matched.

The next card came out, a Ten of Fire. Sylas continued his slow betting, and this time the man raised him by two silver coins. Sylas matched him happily, knowing that the end result of this game would only be him making money. Then the final card, the Queen of Air. Sylas bet two silver coins, which the man raised to five. Once again, Sylas matched.

The man flipped his cards to reveal the King and Ace of Fire, resulting in a straight. Sylas revealed his, which gave him a full house. As always, Sylas won.

They played two more hands, Sylas winning both of them. He was content with how the games went, and made a good amount of money of this man. Everything was going fine, until the man stood up and smashed his fist down on the table. "Cheater!"

Everyone turned to look at what was happening, and there was no way for Sylas to avoid the conflict. This was going to be bad.

[Zero]

It wasn't the fanciest inn that Elysia had ever played in, but it sure as heck wasn't the worst either. The innkeeper was a nice enough sort too, letting her barter for room and board for the night. All she had to do was play her lute, sing, and recite poetry. Not a bad deal for either of them. She got a warm, dry bed to sleep in, plus hot food, and the innkeeper got to watch his customers linger to listen and dance to her performance. The longer they stayed, the more drinks they bought, and the more money the innkeeper made.

Some of the men tried to buy her drinks too, and her lute case had a smattering of coins in it to boot. A good day for a young bard, indeed! The only downside was the locals only really loved a handful of songs, so she ended up singing the same folktales over and over again. Great for them, mind-numbingly boring for her. At least it freed up her mind for actually observing her audience. There was some guy with cards that had been at the table all day, but he didn't seem to be attracting a lot of attention.

She didn't know a lot about gambling, to be honest. Sure, she found that a lot of inn common rooms had at least a few games of cards or dice going on, some people just liked to risk their coin for a chance to gain a lot. Elysia figured coin in the hand was worth more than potential coin, so she played and minded her own business anytime she encountered gamblers. Today wouldn't have been any different, except the merry mood in the room changed abruptly when a fist loudly struck a table and the word cheater rang out.

Her fingers faltered on the notes as she stopped singing and turned to look with everyone else at the pair of men. Elysia had no idea if the guy was cheating or if the accuser was just a sore loser, but either way an angry crowd was not a good thing. Bad for business, and bad for your health too, if you were the one about to get your face smashed in, which kinda looked like what was about to happen to the dark-haired card guy.

Now, if one were to listen to logic and reason, one would stay out of it. Except Elysia was a bit more impulsive than reasonable, and she hated to see someone get the tar beat out of them. Violence was seriously not her thing! Hopping down from her seat, the little bard hurriedly interjected herself into the middle of the mess. "Hey now, let's not get all riled up over a handful of coins. Why don't you let me buy you a drink there big fella and we can all cool off and go back to having a good time, right? You know, singing and dancing and nobody fighting!"

[Anguish]

This was the main predicament with Sylas's magic. No one can prove he's cheating because of the nature of his magic. Also, he could easily defend himself against this man if the situation got worse.  However, when your combat magic depends on you pulling whatever card you want out of the deck at will, it doesn't help your cause when you're trying to prove you didn't cheat.

He was lucky this girl was here. If he could manage to defuse the situation it would end a lot better for everyone. Unfortunately, Sylas was never any good at getting himself out of trouble. He was only ever good at getting into it.

"That's a great idea!" He chimed in after the girl proposed for the fight to stop. "Violence is rarely the solution, after all!"

The larger man wasn't too thrilled with that idea. He said nothing, but it was clear in his eyes that he wanted nothing more than to punch Sylas multiple times in the face. He was still hoping for this to get resolved peacefully, but just in case he was ready to grab his deck of cards and fight. As a last effort, he looked over at the girl again to see if she could calm this guy down.

[Zero]

Wow, the big guy still didn't look all that happy, did he? Elysia was starting to think getting involved was a really bad idea. A thought that was confirmed a moment later when she heard one of the people that had been admiring her music just a few minutes ago shout something that had sweat start beading on her forehead.

"They're both swindlers! I bet she's just a distraction so's people won't notice that other one's a dirty cheat!"

What the hell? That was a bit of a stretch! She'd never met the guy before, she just didn't want to see him get his teeth knocked out. Fights were bad for business. "I am not helping him cheat! I've never seen him before in my life! Let's not get all hasty and nasty now."

She had her hands up in front of herself defensively, fingers spread in a placating gesture begging for calm. What a messed up situation. More people were mumbling, echoing the sentiments of the bigmouth and the big man. Then the innkeeper said that she probably was just another con-artist, whipping the crowd into an angry buzz of very not good.

"You thick-headed, sausage-choking, pig-faced rat!" Elysia hollered, pointing an accusing finger and a rather hearty glare at the innkeeper. "I've already been performing for hours! You're just trying to get out of giving me my fair pay!"

Wrong thing to say! She really should think before she spoke more. The big guy grabbed her very roughly and rather painfully by the upper arm, jerking her almost off her feet as he gave her a violent shove towards the door, with the innkeeper demanding that they both leave right now if they knew what was good for them.

[Anguish]

Sylas was backing away towards the door now, but he was never good at avoiding trouble. He was only good at getting into it. He had his right hand behind his back holding a single card, twirling it around between his fingers. He wasn't sure if the girl who had gotten involved was still watching, but if she was looking at him carefully enough it was quite possible that she could see the image on the face of the card changing as Sylas twirled it.

Finally he stopped twirling the card, holding the face of the card so that it was showing instead of being pressed against his back. Jack of Air. He stopped backing away from the innkeeper and the other man and grinned. "That wasn't a very nice way to treat a lady, now was it?"

The big man didn't like that too much and charged at Sylas with his fist raised. When he got close enough to just be out of range of hitting Sylas, he held out the card that was behind his back so that the face was pointed at the man. "Release."

With that one word a blast of wind sent the big man flying across the room and caused him to slam into the wall on the other side. He then looked at the innkeeper and grinned again. "Now, we don't still have a problem, do we?"

The innkeeper shook his head and turned away from Sylas, who then turned and left the inn, twirling the card between his fingers.