I send yet another box flying downstairs, and get to the next one.

"Could you stop doing this?" Ada shouts all the way from the first floor.

"Does it matter, though?" I answer, "it's going to trash, anyway."

"Yeah, along with our flooring, if you keep throwing these boxes!" Her voice is more annoyed than angry, so I just apologize quickly and chuckle to myself. The oddities of owning a house.

I turn around looking for something to help me lower the boxes, because I am not spending half a day running up and down the stairs. My knees are messed up enough already. The dust is swirling in the light from a small window. Most of the attic is still pretty dark, but I spot some cables coiled on top of an old chair. Those will do. As I wade through an endless sea of boxes, stumbling and cursing, I trip and grab onto something, but it slides and falls on top of me.

I sit up and rub my left elbow. Where is the flashlight? Ah, there it is. The treacherous thing that didn't help me keep my balance is lying on my knees now. A binder, and a heavy one. I flip through the files with some board game cards in them. Well, Ada's about to regret sending me to clear up the attic. I am too curious to be productive, after all. Still, I get to the chair and grab the cables. Now set next to the window, I keep looking at all the cards. Could they be worth something? I take one to check if there's the name of a game on the other side. Nope. Just some off-white pattern on a dark blue background. I flip it. 'Lesser explosion' it says, with a picture of a few sparks underneath. I'm about to put it back when it escapes my fingers and falls to the floor.

But before I even think of picking it up, some light, weak and shortliving, is next to my feet, and something sounds like a small firecracker. I shine my torch on the floor and find the card. It's the same, not even burnt at the edges, unlike the floor underneath it. Scorch marks radiate from the card, still warm to the touch. I take the card reluctantly. What kind of sorcery was this? Ok. Open a random page, pick a random card. Garlic bread? All right, let's put it on the box right here. A plate of garlic bread spawns in front of me. Huh. I pick it up and find the garlic bread card still intact underneath.

A few hours later, we sit on the floor in our soon-to-be living room, cards sorted in a few piles around us. Ada pockets a few.

"What are we supposed to do with those?" she asks.

"Well, we could or could not save on groceries," I grin, eyeing a pile of food cards.

"Are those even safe to eat?"

I choose a watermelon one this time. Ada gets the knife. The fruit is so ripe it almost cracks under the blade, revealing red pulp with rare drops of seeds inside. It feels like a trap, but I take a bite, and soon Ada joins. It's sweet, and juice drips down our hands and forearms.

"Seems fine," she says, "hope we won't die." The flashes in her eyes say she's sure we'll be fine.

"Even if we die, it's worth it," I smile. "By the way, what are those cards you seized earlier?"

I don't mean anything by the question, but she tenses. She narrows her eyes for a moment before answering.

"Oh, just some cleaning supplies and stuff. We still have a lot to do in this wizard house," she sneers.

But something feels off.

I was cleaning my grandpa's attic as he'd asked me to only a few days before passing. He'd promised me a secret and a gift at the end of it and asked me to pay close attention to what I would be touching. The secret wasn't important, but I'd a lot of cherished memories here. As I dusted off an old binder, I felt grooves in the cover and back of the book. There was an intricate pattern carved into it that I couldn't see well.

The poor lighting didn't help, but I opened the binder to sate my curiosity. Opening it I found a boatload of cards with various of descriptions and names on them. Taking one out to inspect closer, the name read 'Lesser Explosion'. The description was blank, though I could swear there was stuff written in it only a few seconds ago.

Thinking it was something like a magic trick card, I turned it round and around checking for what the trick was. Not only was I unable to find the trick, I also fumbled putting it back where I found it from and dropped it accidentally. A loud pop was heard with a spark of light, startling the life out of me. Picking back up the card, I noticed it was warm to the touch and although there were scorch marks around where the card had fallen, the card itself was fine.

Putting it back with far more care, I took out another card. I'd examined the previous card to hell and back before it fell and there was no gunpowder or anything that would cause it to go off like a firecracker. This time the card read 'Water Blade' and I let the card fall.

The card touched the ground and... nothing. Thinking I was silly, I picked up the card and turned it around to see the backside. That small gesture seemed to be enough as an activation trigger and a blade of water shot out the length of a small table. The blade cut through the wood like it was paper, and I seriously worried about the structural integrity of the attic for a second before my mind turned back to the card.

Seeing how the ceiling wasn't about to fall on me I let out a small breath I didn't know I was holding. Turning my head back to look at the binder filled to the brim with similar cards, this time my hands were trembling as I put the card back to where I found it.

My hands were trembling out of fear, but the silly grin on my face betrayed the excitement I felt from my discovery.

Was this what my grandpa wanted to show me? Where had he found these cards? And how did they even work?! Logic dictated that there was no room for a mechanism to shoot out water in the shape of a blade with enough power to cut through wood and possibly metal in a small card the size of my palm.

But seeing is believing and to be honest, seeing what I couldn't help but call magic, I didn't hesitate much to believe it was magic.

I run out of the attic, binder in hand, almost stumbling in the steps leading downstairs. The cold autumn air cooled my head a bit and helped me focus. The house was in a rural area and there was no one around me for a dozen miles at least. With better lighting and no danger of accidentally collapsing the roof of the house on my head, I sat on a small stool, letting my feet rest on the grass and opened the binder.

'Fireball' check.

'Summon Eldritch Being' check.

'Air Burst' check.

'Healing Touch' check.

'Dragon's Breath' check.

'Light Annihilation' check.

My eyes turned back to the eldritch being card, but I wasn't sure if that would kill me or not, so I went with a classic. Making sure I wasn't facing the card anywhere people lived in case it would summon an actual Dragon's Breath, I took out the hard and swiped it in the direction I wanted it to activate much like I'd done with 'Water Blade'.

The illusionary form of a dragon appeared in front of me, the size of its head almost twice my height, as it readied to breath death to anything in front of it and I realized that perhaps while not summoning the eldritch being was a smart choice, going for the dragon one wasn't.

Awe and devastation were the only words that came to mind that would describe what I was feeling right now. In front of me the ground was scorched and where the fire had actually touched the ground, lava. This continued for almost a kilometer in length and the only reason there was no more fire burning was because there was nothing else to burn.

In a dazed sort of way, I took out the other card I'd prepared in case a fire broke out and reading its name again, I decided to switch it out for a lesser version. 'Water Tsunami' didn't seem like a bright idea if I wanted to keep this under wraps any more.

The grass that was cool to the touch only a few minutes ago was nowhere to be seen, as were the rocks and some trees that had been in the way. 'Water Downpour' helped make sure there wasn't going to be a forest fire, but this was already getting a bit too much for me to handle... not.

Grandpa, you chose the wrong person to share this secret with.

Welcome to the Prompt! All top-level comments must be a story or poem. Reply here for other comments.

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>* Stories at least 100 words. Poems, 30 but include "[Poem]" >* Responses don't have to fulfill every detail >* See Reality Fiction and Simple Prompts for stricter titles >* Be civil in any feedback and follow the rules

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