The three men arrived back at their house an hour later, it wasn’t huge but it was a nice starter home that Billy’s mother owned and let him rent. Then let both Blane and Harry rent as well which worked great for them as a whole. They could meet up and have a few drinks, play some cards. There was no weirdness when one of them brought a woman home for some fun. The whole place was pretty much perfect and since they all seemed to work different shifts they might only see one another once or twice a week which made it easier still because there were no big dinners to cook and everyone kept to their chore list so that no one person had too much to deal with.
It was also the reason they hadn’t noticed Blane’s depression and spiral into his unhealthy obsession with his anime girls.
“I can’t believe you haven’t been with anyone since jess. Are you nuts man? You know if you don’t use it you’ll lose it, right man?” Harry asked him as they all set their bags down on the dining room table.
“Pretty sure that isn’t true, but even if it were it is my choice. I mean I still have a choice in if I want to pursue a relationship or not right? Or did this become a dictatorship where I have no choice?” Blane knew that later on, he would feel at least somewhat bad about his tone, but right then he didn’t care one bit. He didn’t care if they were trying to be good friends and look out for him. Or if they were just being jerks and bullies making fun of him for not living it up as a bachelor like they did most of their days off. He couldn’t count how many women and men had done the walk of shame through Billy’s room and out the back door. All he cared about was being left alone about the whole sore subject instead of getting salt rubbed in that putrid wound.
“Okay, guys, just for once let me be the voice of reason here and we just all chill the fuck out and drop the whole thing. Harry, obviously it’s getting to him that it’s being brought up, this is at least the second time today he’s gotten this nasty so maybe it’s time we let him alone about it? Blane, I’m sorry I didn’t realize how down you’d been and I’m sorry for being a crappy friend. I swear to you I won’t bring it up again, promise. Now, Harry, can you do the same so we can set this aside and return to our normal please?”
“No! No, I won’t promise to do that. Not yet at least.” He glared at Blane and pointed at him saying, “I challenge you, Blane, use your cards and face me like a man. If you can beat me then I’ll stop, but if you lose then you let me take you to the titty club next Friday and pay for a dance for you.”
“How the hell is that a loss?” Billy asked him, “You lose and you don’t bug him anymore, you win and he gets to go see some prime chicks at the club and get their tits in his face? You didn’t even ask if I was off work to go with you!”
“Oh shut the hell up, will you? Little mister tournament winner is either going to put his money where his mouth is or he can deal with me talking to him however I feel.”
Blane could see the anger etched on his face as he thought about the deal. Reaching into his pack he pulled out his deck and slammed it on the table. “Deal, but when I win I want to be left alone by you until I decide to speak to you again.” The venom in his tone was deadly and even Billy backed off a little bit, unsure of how to take it.
“Fine by me,” Harry replied as he pulled his deck out and slapped it onto the table, took his seat, and began shuffling his cards.
Blane followed suit taking his box out of his pack and as he drew his first hand he felt a rush of something unfamiliar to him. He couldn’t tell if it was fear that he’d lose a friend over this, or if this would spell some other type of doom. Possibly him having to move out and find a new house? He wasn’t sure entirely. Pushing the fear aside he looked to his friend —possibly former after this— and said, “Would you like to go first?”
“Roll for it.” He said pulling a ten-sided die from the pouch at his side and rolled scoring a three. Blane rolled the same one and got a seven so he could choose who would go first and acquiesced to his friend. “Don’t expect me to take it easy on you just because you’re letting me go first, got it?”
“I wouldn’t expect you to, and neither will I.”
He waited as Harry charged his mana with two throw away cards and then summoned a thrall creature before passing his turn. Blane drew his first card and charged his mana before playing Summon the Squad allowing him to play two of his female soldiers right away; Regalia, the Flower Dancer, and Chichi Yamada, the Silent Sentinel which put two sentinel tokens into play that he could block with.
They went back and forth that way for a while, each one building up their army until Harry had five thralls and two Non, Blane had seven of his women with three tokens left and he was ready to summon the big gun, a smile stretched across his face as he realized he was about to win the match and force his friend to leave him alone about his girls. And lack thereof.
“Don’t say I didn’t warn you, Harry.” Blane began as he charged his mana and summoned his best card, Kana Ouchi, Phoenix Dancer. “With her on the field, you won’t be able to stop me.”
Harry looked her over and knew it was dire. She wasn’t overly powerful but she had a high defense and her ability let him sacrifice a token to deal double damage to a target creature before bringing that token back with one point of defense taken and a point of strength added. She was truly beautifully drawn and he knew she was Blane’s favorite big gun to bring out.
“I attack your Non, Triognax, with Phoenix Saber Slash!”
“Oh, you warned me, but you should have kept an eye out on your cards. I cast Bonds of Weakness on Kana which drops her strength to zero so she can’t deal any damage to me, which means once she hits my Triognax she will die.”
Blane looked at him with a mixture of anger and surprise on his face. Harry had never defeated his Kana before, he’d always ended up getting beaten by either her or a combination of the other warriors when he couldn’t summon her. But now his attack phase had begun and he had to send the card to the card graveyard and accept that he had lost his best and favorite card, reassess his squad and go forward.
Now it was Harry’s turn and he played his own Summon the Squad to get more of his Non on the feudal and played a new card Blane had never seen him use before, Non Control, giving him control over one of his opponent’s creatures until the end of his turn then it would be sacrificed after then. Taking control of Regalia he used her along with the rest of his creatures to attack and wipe out Blane’s entire side of the fielding dealt twelve points of damage which made Harry smile. He was enjoying turning the tide and having the upper hand for once.
Blane looked at his hand and frowned, he only had one more turn before he was done and the match was over. There was no way he had to survive another onslaught like that; he didn’t have a Heaven’s Blessing or a Divine Provenience in his hand and the odds of drawing one was so drastic it wasn’t funny. Drawing his next card he wondered if he would be able to best his friend or if he’d end up in an unwinnable situation. He’d summoned some of his best warriors and they’d been taken out in less than two turns. Blane could feel the fear that he was going to lose creep up on his as he reached for his next card.
Touching the card he felt the same shock hit him as before and as he turned the card over he saw it was the new card that didn’t seem to have a place in the game. But the thing was he didn’t remember adding it to his deck, in fact, he was positive he hadn’t added it since he didn’t know how it was used in the game, so how had it ended up in his deck and now his hand?
Grasping at straws, that was all he could think he was doing as he looked the card over trying to figure out how the card could be used to help him win the match and keep with his life staying the way it was. But he could feel something coursing through him, begging him to play the card even though he had no idea why.
“What the hell, I play Portal to Another World.”
“What does that do?” Billy asked looking the card over more closely.
“Honestly? Probably nothing, it just seemed like if I was going to lose I might as well lose spectacularly.” Blane responded.
“You’re giving up? You’re giving up on this match because I beat your girls? What a waste of a possibly go—”
The card Blane had just lay on the table began to glow, drawing all three men’s eyes to it as they stared at the blue and black light emanating from the small piece of cardboard. The light —portal really because of how the light seemed to emanate out from the center of the card like the spokes of a bike wheel— grew and all of them felt a pull, like nothing they’d ever felt before.
They were being pulled into the black hole-like portal as it pulled everything in the room toward its center. Them, their cards, the table they were all sitting at. It all began sliding into the portal and they could feel themselves falling, eventually, it all went black.
----------------------------------------
Blane landed hard with a loud thud on grass, not the softest of landings considering that he fell gods knew how far and for how long. Everything was just blackness for so long he’d lost all track of time. He touched his head expecting to pull his hand away and it to be covered in blood, but to his surprise it wasn’t covered with anything except dirt from the ground beneath his body.
Trying to stand he watched everything spin for a few seconds causing him to fall back onto his rear on the grass. Vertigo wasn’t something he’d ever experienced first hand, but from what he’d read about it when doing a report on it in high school he knew that was what he was experiencing. And it most definitely was not a good time.
“Fuck, was there something int he food we ate earlier?” He asked the world around him, trying to process that all of a sudden he was outside and it wasn’t nighttime out. “Billy, Harry, where are you guys?” He called out, hoping they would hear and answer from somewhere around. When they didn’t answer him he started looking around wondering where they’d gone to. “Billy? Harry? Are you guys around at all?”
Again he didn’t hear or see them and he began getting to his feet now, taking stock of his surroundings. There were large boulders littering the ground and what looked like impacts around as well as if a battle had raged here some years ago. Luckily he hadn’t smacked his head off of any of them when he landed. Grass seemed to grow in tufts here and there as most of the ground was barren and there were trees enough ahead of him to say there was a forest of some sorts. More of a grove than a forest he decided and again he was wondering just where he was and how the hell he’d gotten there.
“I’m telling you I heard it come from over here, I just don’t know what it was.”
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Blane’s ears perked up as he heard a voice coming towards him, especially one that didn’t belong to either of his friends.
Scrambling quickly he got behind one of the larger boulders and crouched low, unsure whether to be afraid and keep hidden from this new person, or if they would prove to be someone who could help him get out of the grove and back to his house. Back to normalcy.
“I still do not understand, why would we hear something out here? There are no more Nons or thralls to attack.”
That voice, to his ears it sounded like music. Like the most beautiful sound he’d ever heard in his life. And he saw a pair of women, damned good looking women to boot, walking into the grove and he watched as they looked to and fro quickly. Saw one had dark braided hair down her back and wore something out of one of his filthy smut mangas that he loved to read. Her bikini armor was small enough he could see almost everything, and the color made her hair seem to pop, but he also noticed there was something on her chest like a tattoo or birthmark of some kind. He couldn’t tell exactly what it was until and unless he got closer.
The other had dark hair as well but it wasn’t pulled back into a braid, hers was cut like a mohawk and brushed to the side, he wondered if she was some kind of metal head for a second but noticed she wore a ninja outfit that hugged her every curve with lotus flowers covering it.
His eyes seemed to lie to him as his brain caught up to it and he realized, in disbelief, that they were familiar to him, very familiar. “No fucking way.” He muttered under his breath, but it was enough for the metal head to turn towards him and point.
“There it is again, it’s a voice, but it sounds different, and…masculine” she said, the other woman looked at her, the shock of her words evident on her face.
“But, that cannot be. There are no men left in this part of Tesvala.”
“Don’t you think I know that? But I’m telling you that’s what it sounded like. Oh, don’t look at me like that miss high and mighty.” She shot back.
Blane looked around trying to figure out what to do. Should he go introduce himself to the beauties, or should he run and hope to find a way out?
As he looked around he didn’t notice they were getting closer to him until he heard one of them say “I told you it was a man I heard!”
His eyes shot up as he tried to jump away from them, a sword swished in front of his face and sliced into the stone just an inch before his nose. “Fuck!” He shouted falling backwards onto the ground.
“Who are you? Speak the truth and you shall be spared the sword, you will be given a fair trial.”
“I—I can’t believe this, you’re really her. You’re Kana Ouchi, and that makes you Regalia Tallmadge, and you’re both, you’re both real.” He said exhaling his disbelief.
“Why wouldn’t we be real?” Regalia asked him narrowing her eyes as if she were trying to decide if he was telling the truth or not.
“Well, um, because you’re both cards.”
“Cards? What is a cards?” Kana asked tilting her head tot he side staring at him from an angle.
“He must be a new type of Non, some sort of trickery to make us let down our guard. We must take him to be interrogated by the Lady.” Regalia suggested, a smile creeping across her face. She would enjoy watching him be interrogated, or even just doing it herself, and Blane could tell from the look on her face that if it was more terrifying to him that she’d let him be tortured, or that she would be turned on by it.
Blane remembered that when he’d passed out —or fell through a portal, he still had a hard time admitting that one to himself— he’d had his cards right in front of him, reaching around the ground he touched the dry dirt and grass beneath him looking for them to prove he wasn’t a Non. They think I’m a Non, I have to give them a better reason to believe that I’m not. He thought to himself as he searched, giving more evidence that they were really the women from his cards and that he was in some other world where it was all real and happening.
Gods how he wished it was a prank and that his friends would come out of the trees nearby to laugh at him, but as the seconds wore on he knew that wasn’t going to happen.
“There!” His shout nearly got him stabbed as Kana drew her sword back, but followed his finger as it pointed to a heap of cards and part of the dining room table where he’d been playing against Harry when all of the craziness had started. “That’s my proof, you don’t have anything like this here do you?”
Both women followed his finger though Kana kept her sword positioned to slice through his neck if his gesture turned out to be a trap. But as their gazes found the items he was pointing at both women were confused, they knew what the large wooden table was, though it was nearly in half somehow. But the rest were small items they had never seen before in their world. The paper was somewhat thick they found as Regalia stooped to pick up one of the cards and examine it closely.
“What in the hells are these?”
“Those are called cards, they are a part of a game that my friends and I play, well that the whole world plays.” Then a thought struck him and he held up a hand to stop Regalia’s question, “Allfather protect me, if this is really Tesvala and you two are the real Kana and Regalia then that means you’ve been fighting the Non for years now. All the men from Entar and your own have been either killed or turned into thralls, a fate worse than the slowest death. But that must mean you have magic like in the card game. Have you learned to use your abilities yet?”
“Abilities? How do you know so much about us?” Kanda demanded as she glared him down, pinning him in place with her anger.
Blane put his hands up in defense and said, “I’m Blane Grimm and I’m an earthling, it means I’m from another world called Earth. And you two and this world are a part of my favorite card game and anime.”
“What is an anime?”
He looked them over and asked, “What level of technology do you have here?”
“This one is a sorcerer! We must slay him before he uses his spells on us.” Regalia said quickly drawing her bowstring back and nocking an arrow with a wickedly prominent pronged tip.
“No, no, no I’m not a sorcerer,” he began holding his hands up in surrender, normally he would say he wasn’t prone to being afraid of others, but having a character become real and point an arrow at your eyes wasn’t really on his list of normal things to deal with. “But I do think I’m not on my world anymore. This isn’t Kansas is it?”
They looked at him incredulously and a smirk stretched across Regalia’s face, “If you’re from another world then you are a sorcerer, you say that you know about us that we are from some game. But I think you are a Non spy, and I will find the truth out about you.” She promised launching an arrow into the ground beside him as he threw himself away from it sprawling on the grass as his hand landed not he deck of cards he’d brought with him through the portal. “Those pieces of paper won’t help you.” She said turning as they heard a screech and both women kept their weapons at the ready.
“It sounds like a group of thralls.” Kana said.
“They must be coming to recapture their sorcerer.” She looked at him again, “I hope you understand you will never win.”
“For the love of, I’m not a fucking Non!”
As he yelled a group of thralls, all so gray they were transparent, rushed at them teeth gnashing and claws clacking.
“Allfather save me.” He muttered as Regalia sent arrow after arrow flying at them, but these thralls had experience, dodging her arrows as they took them to the arm or took a small scrape as it brushed past them. None were felled by the steel.
Kana kept her weapon ready and as they closed in she lashed out slicing through arms and legs, her sword biting into one torso and then the thrall’s throat on the backswing. There were so many of them, each one that fell was replaced by another two like a hydra’s head. “I don’t know how long we can fight them.” She said slicing through another’s head.
“It doesn’t matter, we just have to kill as many of them as we can before they kill us.” Regalia replied as she sent two arrows into one’s face dropping it before she reached back for another and found her quiver empty. “Athena protect us.” She muttered before drawing a short dagger from her hip and switching her grip on the bow so she could swing it like a staff.
“Fuck, fuck, fuckity, fuck. How the hell am I supposed to help?” He said staring at the carnage in front of him. The two of them had killed a dozen thralls and yet still more seemed to fill the gap. He couldn’t even see where they ended just that there was a long line of them.
The pile of cards began to glow and he saw one card was under them casting it’s glow to make it appear they all were. “Huh, what’s, oh. But— hell it can’t be any worse than this. Stalwart Sentinel!” The light coalesced into a duplicate of the image on the card, a female knight in full armor with a curved shield like the Romans carried in one hand, a spear with a leaf-shaped tip in the other, and the mark of the phoenix on her breastplate. “What the fuck!”
Regalia chanced a look back and saw the knight standing there and said, “What in the hells…” before being thrown to the ground by a thrall who stomped on her knee, there was an audible pop as she screamed obscenities at the creature.
“Kill them!” Blane shouted, unsure if the knight was an illusion or solid matter, and unsure if he was even able to tell it to do anything.
But as he watched the knight charged the thrall and knocked it back with her shield before dropping into a protective stance in front of Regalia. As the creature regained it’s balance she drove her spear into it’s heart and removed it seeing the things face change into first shock and then death as it fell to the ground.
Blane reached down and grabbed as many of his cards as he could and began looking through them. “Um, Regalia, Priest’s Blessing.” He said as he held up another card and her knee began to glow, the bone knitting itself and her leg righting itself as the card healed her. “That worked? That worked!” He shouted as he tried to help her to her feet and she stared in stunned silence at her knee and then at the knight slaying thrall after thrall. “Are you okay to walk?” He asked her.
“Huh…oh um, I don’t know.” She tested her knee, putting the slightest of pressure on it and realized she felt a lot better than before the thrall had shattered her kneecap. “Yes, how did you do that?”
“I have no idea honestly. It’s like these are spells of some sort.”
“Can you summon more of that one?” She asked pointing to the knight.
“I, guess so…I don’t really know how this works.” He said meekly.
“Well then do it! We can’t let them survive or they’ll bring their leader here.”
He looked at his hand and saw a few decent cards, but one in particular he liked, “You said you hadn’t learned your abilities yet right?”
“We don’t have abilities. You mean have we learned magic, and no we only have a handful of mages left in the land, none of them are willing to fight these creatures.”
“Kana Ouchi, the Phoenix Dancer!” He called out raising the card to just in front of his face. A light erupted around Kana and the thralls backed away, repelled by the light as she stood in it’s center.
Her armor changed in form, armbands appeared on her biceps colored red and accented by two red feathers each, her greaves elongated and gained feathers as well. The pieces covering her chest and pelvis changed in color and a band appeared over her forehead as her sword began to glow red and he saw a line of red light stretching from his chest to her back.
“I feel much more powerful.” She said flexing her fingers and hefting her sword again.
“Use Phoenix Saber Slash!” He yelled to her.
“How do I use that?” She asked, but as she looked confusedly at her blade it began to glow and fire seemed to erupt along the blade itself. “Phoenix Saber Slash?” She said unsure if it was some sort of incantation or activation word. But as she spoke it her blade’s flames increased and she swung the blade in an overhead slash slicing through one of the thralls and sending fire racing through the three behind it in the same manner.
As the remaining thralls stared at them one turned to the others and spoke, actually spoke saying, “The Traveler is here, we must leave.” And they all turned and raced away from the battlefield leaving their dead to rot on the ground.
“What was that power?” Kana asked as she looked at the sword as it and her armor returned to normal.
“I think it was some kind of locked potential. Maybe having this sorcerer here will give us the strength to defeat the Non.” Regalia said.
“Whoa wait a second, you were just all for killing me and now you want me to help you?”
“Of course, you healed me when you did not have to, and you saved me with that knight of yours,” she said indicating the woman standing in a guard position not ten feet from where Blane stood. “If you were a true threat to us you would have let them kill me, you would not have helped us. But they are scared of you which makes me think you are more important than we realized.”
“Wait, I have one question,” he began turning to the knight who stared daggers at Regalia and Kana respectively. “Who are you?”
“I am your Stalwart Sentinel, my name is Grace and I am here to protect you as you summoned me from my homeland.”
“Where is your home?”
“It is Ickaros, I do not know where this land is, however we have the tale of the Traveler there, so when you summoned me I knew you were the one prophesied so long ago.”
“Prophesied? Prophesied to do what exactly?” His demeanor changed, he was at once both scared and excited. Never before had he ever been important for anything other than his cards, his tournament matches were his favorite time because it was the only time people cheered him on.
“To reclaim the throne of the eternal.” She dropped forward a bit and took a knee. “I’m sorry, I have to return to Ickaros, to my family. Summon me again when you need me and I will be there.” The knight began to glow and disappeared from sight leaving them standing there in shock, and Blane wondering if he was hallucinating or if he really was in some alternate world where he could do magic.
He wasn’t sure which would be more terrifying to him.