It was a small town, one that the city council was trying to turn into a big city with all of their renovations to the hospital, the extra-large hotels, and the lines of strip malls. But for all their work they couldn’t give it that big city feels. It still felt like a small town with its own problems and its crazy locals.
One such crazy local was Blane Grimm, a nerd with a higher than average IQ that he used to make good money on the side with his computer repair business. But he was a habitual loner since he had two good friends and zero dating prospects. He didn’t even want a girlfriend, his mother thought maybe he was gay but he’d assured her that he was attracted to women. Just none around here.
But what made him crazy wasn’t the fact that he was a nerd or the business on the side he had even though he’d just graduated a year before his high school. It was the fact that he was an otaku, and he was obsessed with the women from an anime he followed called Requiem for Humanity, and he was even more obsessed with all of the cards they’d brought out for the show’s trading card game. He’d read all the manga that had come out so far, watched every episode, and participated in card tournaments every month, even going so far as to win the city-wide regionals three years running.
It still wasn’t good enough for him though, no one, not even the woman he’d dated since junior year was as good as the girls on the cards. He just wished he could find some way to make them real and to make everyone understand that he was his own normal. They were the abnormal ones to him. And he would finally get his chance to make that happen soon enough.
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Inside Tabletop Tower, the premier gaming store in town, there were three dozen players gathered together for the finals of the city-wide tournament, the winner would go to the regionals and if they won that they’d go to an international tournament. The final match was a dream match between Blane, the winner three years running, and one of his friends Harry, who’d gotten close in the past, but never past the semi-finals of the tournament.
“I play Summon the Squad which allows me to summon Titania Silvress, the Reckoner and Regalia Geros, Archer Extraordinaire from my hand. Then I cast Fear Nothing on my side of the field to grant them quickness and plus two to their strength.” Blane straightened up and pointed at his opponent. “Then I attack you directly for fifteen points, which means you lose Harry.”
“It looks like we have a winner! Blane Grimm has won the tourney again! Now, gentlemen, if you’ll come over to the counter I’ll get your winnings together and you can see what you’ve won for all of your hard work.” The judge slash owner, Carver, said as he walked away to gather their bounty.
His opponent, Harry Greenway, sat back and shook his head. “And again you get so wrapped up in this game that you act like a dick. That was way overkill man, I only needed to lose five points and you would have won no problem, I have no hand so there’s no playing protection spells or anything. But you still decided to deal three times the amount of damage, three times!” He yelled at his friend as he slammed his hand down on the table.
“There is no such thing as overkill Harry, just enough kill. Besides you still placed number two in the tourney which means you’ll get a nice bit of prizes and some recognition from the creators too, how can you be upset about that?”
Harry uttered a disgusted sound and got up to walk away from the table before he did, or said, something Blane would regret, then headed to the front of the store so he could claim his prize while Blane sat there looking at his cards. He’d reassembled his deck and put his prize card at the front so she would be the first thing he’d see when unsheathing it later. His Kana, the Phoenix Dancer.
He hadn’t realized how much time he’d spent watching the card as he saw every line of her face, her body, and her sword, until his friend Billy walked up and tapped lightly on his head. “Earth to Blane, anyone home? Are you going to go get your prizes so we can get out of this bitch or what?”
Where Blane was almost six-foot, Billy was short, only five-four. And he looked every bit the dwarf from one of the fantasy movies with his short, stubby arms, long beard, and his affinity for caps, but not a billed cap like baseball players wore, no this shorty had to wear beanies with different colors on them and some had symbols for the various video games he played. The current one he was excited over was dark forest green with steel gray color coming down in strips on each side that he’d bought at a comic con last year.
“Yeah, sorry I just can’t stop thinking about her.”
“Um, yeah…you do know she’s just cardboard and ink right? She’s not real.”
“I know that, here,” he tapped his head, “But here she feels real.” He said touching his heart. “This is crazy, I know it’s crazy. But I can’t help but feel like she’s alive somewhere.”
“Yeah of course she is, the artist had to see her somewhere after all. Gods you need to get laid man, how long’s it been?” He asked taking a seat next to him at the table.
“Uh…I think Jessica was the last time I got some, yeah it was Jessica.” He said nonplussed.
“Seriously!?” Billy practically yelled jumping to his feet. “That’s been over a year man. How the hell are you not going crazy? Okay, so fantasizing about some ink drawing makes sense now.” Billy said as he put a hand to his chin thinking deeply about his friend’s situation.
“Well for one I’m not as much of a horn dog as you are. I don’t need a different woman every day, or even every week. I have the perfect woman here and once I have my cube set up I’ll have a digital version of her as my waifu that will talk to me, show emotion, and wear what I want her to wear. I don’t see the problem here.”
Billy pressed his fingers against the bridge of his nose saying, “Dude, stop being a nerd for just one second okay? That thing isn’t even human, it’s a machine. It’s not something you can cuddle after making love, okay? It can’t keep you warm at night, it’s not going to be here to congratulate you for winning a tournament for the zillionth time in a row, it can’t even cook you a halfway decent meal after a long day of replacing RAM or installing a new memory core. You need a human to do that, not a holograph or whatever she’d be.”
Blane had heard the same thing for a while now from all of his RPG friends, and his mother constantly tried to set him up with one girl or another from her church even though he’d told her vehemently that he wasn’t interested in any girl that went to church. Or any church for that matter. Blane wasn’t atheist or anything, he just felt there was something up there that didn’t need to be labeled and that all of the religions he’d encountered were one pyramid scheme after another built to get everyone to give their money away freely and thank them for the opportunity to “tithe” to the church.
And none of them would take his word for it that he didn’t need that human connection they so desperately craved. He had a good job, his cards, it wasn’t great but it was good enough until he could get his business to soar and then he could do pretty much whatever he wanted. But nope, they would not stop nagging him about it.
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“I know all of that, but I don’t want to get into a relationship right now, maybe not for a while, if ever again. Why can’t you guys just accept that and leave me alone about it?” He felt a little like an ass because of the nasty tone he was getting with Billy, but at the same time he, Harry, and their other friend Oliver were constantly bugging him about it and saying it was supposedly better for his health but didn’t understand how if they kept bugging him it would give him high blood pressure which wasn’t good for his health.
Billy stared at him for a second before blowing out a breath saying, “Fine, I’ll try to tone it down, but you need to look at finding someone before you turn into a decrepit old crone.”
“You do know that crone is a female term, right?”
“Well considering you aren’t using your dick for anything you might as well be one.” He said walking away and leaving Blane to watch him go, angry at his comment, and wishing he could find a girl like Kana or one of the other girls in his game. The most recent block of cards and the world had changed the dynamic of the game. There was a new villain group called the Non, and he didn’t like how once they’d been added to the game things took such a dark turn.
Walking to the counter he collected his winnings and smiled at it. There was a box of the newest set of Requiem cards, Dreams and Nightmares, and both starter decks for the new set. He was excited to see what new girls he would get from this part of the block and wondered what they would do to end the reign of terror that was the Non in this final part of the block.
“This is so going to give me some great cards, I can feel it.”
“Yeah, more cards for you to use when we all play together. Yay.” Harry muttered sarcastically as he collected his three decks and promptly left the building heading to his card in a rush.
“Geez, what’s his problem?” Carver, the judge, and the store owner asked.
“He thinks it was wrong of me to overkill him, and I guess he’s kind of right. I did way more damage than I needed to win.”
“Eh, he’ll get over it I’m sure.”
“I hope so, I hope so.” He thought wistfully of what he’d do if he messed up one of his longest friendships over a card game. Would he have to beg Harry to forgive him or would it blow over in a couple of days? He wasn’t entirely sure and that part scared him.
Walking back to his table he opened the box of cards hoping to find something he could use to piss off his opponent in the state championships in two weeks. But looking through the cards he noticed the theme was even stranger than before. The thralls looked even more zombie-like, the Nons looked more Lovecraftian than before, and everything seemed to be taking place either at dusk or at night.
Then he noticed a card that seemed out of place with its gold border, and when he touched it a shockwave rode his nerve endings, all the way to his shoulder. The back of the card was gold and red as opposed to the normal black with a red spiral. Portal to Another World was printed on the front of the card and the text was specific enough that it was creepy. “By casting this card you create a portal to bring a creature from another world into Tesvala, or to take yourself to another world like Tesvala.” He stared at it a second before calling for Carver to look at it and see if it was a prank or a serious card.
The portly man walked over to the table and looked down at the cards, “Find some good ones did you?”
“I don’t know about that, but I did find a very strange card. Have you seen this one before?” He asked handing Carver the card with a look of confusion about him.
Carver looked at the card and took it in hand to turn it over and see the back, then reread the front for the third time before handing it back, “I’m honestly not sure, I’ve never seen that card before. Maybe it’s a misprint or something.” He looked as confused as Blane as he looked at the rest of the box arrayed in front of him on the table. “Have you found anything else that seemed strange or new?”
“Not really, this card though…I don’t know about it, it just seemed different. There’s something about it, when I first touched it there was this electric shock I felt race up my arm.”
Carver stared at him a moment and said, “You must have imagined it, or maybe you have a pinched nerve or something, go see a chiropractor and maybe they can help you.” He said as he went back to his register to rind up another person from the tournament that set three packs of cards and a new deck in front of the register.
As Blane continued looking at the card he felt like he was connected to it in some way, as crazy as that sounded. It was like he could hear a voice telling him to cast it, to play it in his next match. And he wondered briefly if he was going insane.
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“Kana, how are things on the Western front?”
“They go slowly Lady Galentine, too slowly. We need something to help us defeat the Non and we need it sooner rather than later. Has there been any word from the Najiri if they can send aid?” He replied to their Queen as she turned the seeing stone over in her hand and set it down on a rock next to her, “One second my lady.” She said drawing her deep crimson-colored blade from its sheath and held it at the ready. She hated killing the thralls of the Non, they were someone’s husband, father…son. But as much as she hated it she loved living just a little bit more.
Three of the thralls came at her shambling at first and then rushing her with a speed she hadn’t seen before. Their arms flailed wildly as their teeth gnashed together, long wildly sharp teeth filled their mouths and their nails turned to claws as they elongated into deadly weapons.
They still had the bodies of the men they once were, but their skin had a deathly gray pallor, their eyes milky white as if they were blind, and their ears had elongated into points that allowed them to hear so much better than a normal human. One could barely tell who they were before the change, and she’d noticed the longer one had been a thrall the paler their skin was, and the longer their ears and teeth appeared to be.
Two of these were a darker gray telling her they’d been turned recently, probably within the past month or two from one of the northern nations. But the other one, the leader of the group he was so pale he was nearly incorporeal.
“Phoenix protect me.” She prayed as she charged the closest one and feinted left, it struck at her only to find empty space as she drew back and sliced clean through its head, severing it at the nose and sending part of it flying into the others. The thrall dropped dead and she continued her combination as she spun and struck in a downward diagonal motion to slice the next thrall from shoulder to hip, her sword glowing red as it sliced easily through the flesh and bone of the diseased creature.
She turned her attention to the last one, but he’d gotten inside her guard and tackled her to the ground.
“Kana!”
She could hear her lady cry from the stone, but she couldn’t lose her focus, not now. The creature pinned her hand knocking her sword to the ground and pressed it’s other claw to her throat ratcheting her head back. “Food. Food. Food” it said in a low growl as its mouth opened to take a bite out of her face and she tried to kick it from her position to no avail.
A thud rocked the thrall and two more thumps sounded causing the creature to fall over onto its side releasing Kana from its hold. Folding her body she launched up to her feet with her hand out, “Come to me Phoenix.” She said and called the blade to her, spun it once, and drove it into the creature’s face pinning it to the ground. Twisting the blade she muttered the same thing she always did after a skirmish. “I give you mercy and freedom.” Before pulling her sword clean of the twisted and diseased thing and wiped the blade clean on its ragged clothing.
“That was a close one, it’s a good thing Lady Galentine contacted me or you would have been thrall food.”
Turning Kana saw her friend and rival Regalia, one they called a flower dancer because she had such an unnatural affinity with plants and used them in all of her weapons. She could get them to grow and twist to her whims.
“Yes, very lucky indeed. Did you have to show me up like that though?”
“Show you up? There’s no one here to see it. I just saved your life not ten seconds ago and the least you could do would be to be a little nicer to me. Hells I don’t even need a thank you, just a little common decency would be great.” She was angry now, her tone changing and her eyes drawn to points like a spear tip.
Kana stared at her for a second before speaking, calming herself as she spoke. “Yes, you are right and I apologize for that. We’ve just been competing for so long it’s hard to shut that off.”
“Well let’s try to soon, we can’t be at each other’s throats now, not with this happening and having other creatures at our throats for us.” She started to turn away and said, “We need to get back to Lady Galentine, we need to find out if there’s anything we can use to help us win this war. Maybe she has some news for us that there’s help coming on its way.”