Tristan Palmgren’s KeyForge short story Contract, the opening tale in Aconyte Books’ Tales From the Crucible anthology, explores the baffling logic of the Crucible through the eyes of an elven assassin aiming to pull off an audacious hit. Having gradually lost her sense of identity ever since her city was ripped from its world to join the Crucible, Vira lives for moments of exhilaration and the faint hope of some kind of vengeance. When she takes on a commission to kill a supposedly unkillable Archon, she knows how dangerous the consequences will be but determinedly accepts the contract anyway.
An action-packed story set in the midst of a huge vault battle, this crams in a lot of world building – Vira’s backstory, the concept of the Archons and their forces, the game-within-a-game concept of KeyForge – without sacrificing the personal stakes or getting too bogged down in details. There’s a lot to take in, but it does a good job of illustrating the impossibility of truly understanding what’s happening in Crucible and the value of accepting that fact and rolling with it. Ultimately it’s about someone with nothing to lose, who’s searching for something that moves her, and who finds that perhaps she’s not quite as empty as she thought. It’s also pretty good fun, along the way!
Click here for reviews of other KeyForge stories from this anthology.
