Seth Casel
Creative Writing
High School: Homeschooled
Hometown: Media, PA
Summer Institute Program: Creative Writing
Seth Casel is a writer, tabletop gamer and Magic-The-Gathering-certified nerd. He is a high school student from Media, Pennsylvania. Seth is currently working on his first full-length fantasy novel that was inspired by a Dungeons & Dragons campaign he was lucky enough to play in his dreams. He lives with his parents, younger brother and a corgi whose temper is as short as his legs.
An excerpt from "Crown Jewels" by Seth Casel
“Pair of swords,” Lucretia said, a smirk crossing her face as she splayed her three-card hand on the table.
Krazlat, whose red-scaled form took up half the room, grinned, a bit of smoke coming out of the dragon’s snout as he did so. “Got your number again, bloodsucker,” he commented, flipping over his own hand. “Pair of crowns.”
“Why must it always be me?” the vampire said, roughly shoving her cards towards Arabelle, who dutifully shuffled the cards back into the deck. Arabelle also gave a slight smirk at the vampire’s misfortune and doled out the hand’s rewards. “11,590 gold pieces to Krazlat.” She pushed the gold to its winner, who gave Lucretia another draconic smirk before his claws scraped his winnings towards his substantial pile. The group used astral tokens for most of their currency dealings, since manually putting in at least 1,500 gold pieces each hand would have been extremely cumbersome. 15 astral tokens would have been much easier to keep track of.
That was what Arabelle mused about as she dealt the next hand, the cards shuffled by her own hand, that was in fact fair, contrary to Lucretia’s opinion on the matter. Lucretia, in fact, was the first to receive her cards, giving them but a glance before sighing and flicking them back towards the deck before sighing, leaning back in her chair and taking a small sip of her drink. Her doing so had unnerved Arabelle at first, given that she knew exactly what it was, but she’d learned to take it in stride after the eighth or ninth session. Besides, Arabelle had never been one to turn down business.
The demon Braziel on Lucretia’s left was the first player of the five who liked his hand. “Thirty-five,” he enunciated, shoving that many astral tokens into the middle.
“You drive a hard bargain, demon,” Krazlat said from the next seat over, flicking his cards into the middle.