by Jamie Davis
Time moved differently between their Earth and Fantasma. Family back home had questioned how fast Cari was growing up after spending so much time in Kareena’s realm. Princess Cari had been nearly four years old in true years, though she would have been only two and a half in official terms back home. Mona had said her parents in particular were starting to ask awkward questions.
A memory crossed her mind, and with a grunt of effort, Kareena levered herself to her feet and steadied her body with the cane. The Empress ambled across the carpeted floor and opened a drawer in the tall dresser against the wall. After lifting the silk undergarments free and setting them on top of the dresser, she reached into the bottom of the drawer and pressed against one of the rear corners.
A false bottom levered upward. She removed it, revealing a hidden space about three inches deep. It was empty save for a small wooden box sitting in the middle of the secret opening.
Kareena picked up the box, which was covered in ornate carvings of mystical runes, inlaid with gold and mother-of-pearl. After releasing the latch, she opened the lid to reveal an ovoid object resting on black velvet inside. It was gray with a transparent layer stretched over the top of the base material. The top layer was made of a strange substance Kareena had never seen before. At one end of the object were two rectangular buttons.
She turned the object in her hand. She remembered the arch mage Tildi the Elder had called it a mouse, though she’d been unable to explain the name to Kareena at the time. The Empress ran a finger across the smooth surface and over the two buttons at the end. It fit well in her hand, with one end in her palm so her forefinger and middle finger each rested on a button.
Long ago, when Hal Dix returned to his own land with his wife and daughter, Tildi had given her this box with its strange contents and told her she could use it in her time of greatest need. It would call her hero back to Fantasma once more. She had forgotten all about it until now. The memory of it returned when she’d looked at the hooded figure carved into the head of her cane.
“This is crazy,” the Empress muttered. “Hal is older than I am. Even with the strange difference in time, he’s probably dead and gone, like all my companions from the war.”
Kareena stared at the magical device in her hand. What would happen if she pressed the buttons? Magic didn’t work as well as it used to.
Before the mage Tildi died years ago, she had explained how the advent of gunpowder and other technologies stole energy from magic, making it far less reliable. There were no more arch mages in the land. Only the healing power of earth magic had any reliability anymore, and even that didn’t work as well as it once did.
If she pressed the buttons on the mouse, there was no guarantee the magic still existed to bring Hal here. Even if it did, he could not be young and vibrant enough to take up the call and return to Fantasma.
Still, Kareena had no choice.
She had to try before it was too late and even young Timron was taken from her.
After returning to her divan, Kareena sat once more and stared at the bizarre device in her hand. With a final nod, she pressed her fingers down on both buttons at the same time and waited.
When nothing happened after nearly a minute, Kareena pressed them one at a time, in different orders and combinations. She continued trying to activate the “mouse” for almost an hour before she gave up. Whatever magic had once been housed in the device must have faded with time, like much of the magic in Fantasma.
Kareena shook her head. Tildi must have been right when she said magic and advanced technology, like gunpowder, could not coexist in the world.
She stared at the useless device in her hand. Perhaps it never worked at all, no matter what Tildi had said it could do. She would never know. There was no magical help coming, no mythical hero to swoop in and save what was left of her family and the Empire from those who would steal it away.
Her failing health would bring about the end of her dynasty, and all hope for a Fantasma where all races and peoples were respected would be ended. Soon, opportunistic nobles like the Duke of Charon, who believed in the ascendancy of man over the other races, would take over and divide the land up between them until their petty squabbles tore apart everything she’d worked so hard to bring about.
Kareena, the last Empress of her line, placed the mouse talisman back in its box and closed the lid, letting the latch snap shut, sealing the device away forever. She would not take it out again. The time to believe in such things as a mythical hero had passed.
She couldn’t see inside the box, where the red light on the underside of the mouse blinked once, twice, and then repeated again and again in a rapid succession of flashing patterns too quick for the eye to track. Kareena couldn’t know the device had sent its magical signal across time and space to a world very far away.
Chapter 1
Cari Dix ducked under the lunging thrust of her opponent’s rapier, raising her off-hand dagger upward to push the blunted tip up and away to the right. She used the opportunity to press her rapier attack with a lunge of her own.
A grunt from her opponent, as well as the jolt up her extended arm from the contact, told her she’d connected for a hit as much as the flashing message in her mask’s heads-up display did.
She pulled back, laughing with delight, retreating as the rules of the sparring ground required so the two in the ring could reset for the next point. She waggled her dagger back and forth in front of her masked face, as if to say, “Not this time.” Cari had been giggling at her opponent’s expense since the bout began.
There were few who were her equal in here despite the fact she was barely sixteen years old. Her fencing master often told her she possessed the physical maturity of a woman several years older than others her age.
Her masked opponent surprised her when he shouted in anger and charged at her as she walked back to her starting point in the ring.
“Don’t you dare laugh at me. I won’t be beaten by a girl.”
He launched a flurry of rapid attacks, pushing Cari to retreat as she danced backward around the ring. Despite being on the defensive, she was having fun, laughing the whole time as she parried every blow with either her rapier or her dagger.
Finally, though, she had enough and decided to end the contest. Technically, it had ended already when her brutish opponent broke protocol and pressed an attack before both of them reset. Cari decided to teach this misguided man a lesson about his betters.
Engaging his blade against hers, Cari slid her rapier up his until their guards met, stomped down on her opponent’s foot, and drove her booted heel down on the bones of his instep. Next, she punched out hard, once, twice, and then a third time, with the blunted tip of her dagger against the padded tunic her opponent wore.
The man doubled over in pain, dropping his rapier and dagger to clutch his middle with a groan.
“Miss Dix! That will be quite enough!” Master Thorne shouted across the practice arena.
Cari spun around and pulled off her wire mesh mask with its heads-up display and threw it to the floor in anger. “He came at me first, Master Thorne! I was only defending myself.”
The tall, broad-shouldered weapons instructor crossed to the sparring ground to stand between Cari and her hapless opponent. The man who’d been sparring with her still clutched his belly, groaning in pain as he limped away. He didn’t bother to hide the naked anger in his eyes. Cari thought she caught a hint of fear in his gaze as well. That brought a fresh grin to her face as the fencing master approached her.
“And you wonder why no one will spar with you.”
“Am I not supposed to defend myself? He broke protocol when he refused to disengage between points.”
Her opponent straightened despite the pain in his abdomen and pointed an accusing finger at her. “You, young lady, should learn better manners and sportsmanship when sparring in the arena. Someday, someone’s going to put you in your place.”
“Yeah, well, it won’t be you, that�
��s for sure. If this were a real fight, you’d be dead six times over by now.”
“Well, I’m never sparring with you again, and I’m filing an unsportsmanlike conduct complaint against you with the HEMA central authority for your poor attitude during the bout. You’re a danger to anyone who steps into the ring with you.”
The angry man turned and stalked away after gathering his mask and blades from the floor.
The master of the practice arena watched him leave then turned back to her. He shook his head. Disappointment revealed itself in his expression.
“Cari, you are a gifted swordswoman, but you have a chip on your shoulder that I don’t know how to train out of you. I’d hoped pitting you against more skillful opponents might help challenge you enough to break the attitude, but I see no change at all.”
“I’m not going to let anyone tell me what I can or cannot do. He challenged me today after I told him I could best any person in here, with any HEMA-approved weapon he chose.”
“You showed up today looking for a fight. I can only assume you’ve been arguing with your parents again. I watched you goad him in front of his friends until he had no choice but to challenge you. That is what I’m talking about, Cari. You walk around like you always have something to prove. Sometimes, it is best to let the hidden challenge lie. It only matters that YOU know you’re better. Proving to everyone in the room, over and over again, only serves to make more enemies.”
Master Thorne held out his hand. “Give me your practice weapons. I think you’re finished for the day.”
“But I want to spar some more.”
“I said you’re done. When I agreed to instruct you in Historical European Martial Arts, you agreed to listen, obey, and learn at all times when you were here. Well, it’s time to listen and obey. Go home and think about how you can avoid the next challenge for a change. That is what you have to learn now: when NOT to pick a fight.”
“Where’s the fun in that, Master Thorne?”
“This is a sport that is supposed to be instructive and fun for all participants. You have to respect your opponent and offer them the opportunity to bow out of a fight gracefully, not press the fight until you’ve proven they’re defeated in every possible way. Think on that while you head home. Don’t return until you can offer a sincere apology to Mister Head for embarrassing him today in front of his friends and colleagues from work.”
Cari almost said something about many men needing to be embarrassed sometimes but stopped herself at a warning glance from Master Thorne. He’d made her swear to follow his instructions without question. She’d already gone too far. Cari swallowed her anger, gathered her gear from the sparring platform, and headed off to the locker room.
It did her no good to argue with Master Thorne. He was the one person in the room who could defeat her almost every time they sparred. He was blindingly fast and seemed to have an unlimited list of new tricks to best her. Him, she respected, mostly because he didn’t look down on her just because she was a teenaged girl. That idiot Head had made one too many blonde jokes to his friends while she warmed up and stretched nearby. She’d listened and known they were talking about her while she danced around the sparring robot, parrying each cut and thrust in a dizzying array of attack after attack.
She’d like to see him try and take on the bot at those settings. He wouldn’t last ten seconds. He was just another dumb man who thought ladies shouldn’t play at swords with the big boys, just like her father.
It was 2032 for God’s sake.
Women had proven they were just as capable in almost every other endeavor. While they had to concede men had the advantage in most sports due to their increased strength, in edged martial arts like HEMA, speed and quickness were almost more important than brute strength.
Cari had plenty of both and didn’t back down from anyone when it came to proving it.
In the locker room, Cari pressed her thumbprint against the locker’s touch panel, and the door popped open. She reached inside, grabbed her gym gear, and stowed the electronic mask and padded tunic covered with tiny touch sensors, meant to register hits in the sparring ring.
Cari glanced at her watch. Damn, she was running late.
That last sparring match had put her over her planned workout time, and she’d have to make good use of the ride home. She was supposed to finish up her weekend homework tonight so she’d be allowed to go to the Renaissance Faire with Julie and Stella over the weekend.
Cari ran, pulling her long strawberry-blonde hair -into a ponytail and through the back of her baseball cap before slipping the duffel bag’s strap over one shoulder. She might be able to make it home in time for dinner if she hurried. The last thing she wanted was a fight with her parents again, especially over being late due to something as frivolous as practice sword fighting.
She placed her hand on the window of her car, and the door popped open after reading her implanted biometric chip and identifying her palm print. Cari threw her duffel in the back and climbed in. As the door swung shut, the internal voice prompt sounded.
“Good afternoon, Cari. Would you like to go home?”
“Yes. Use the fastest possible route.”
“Travel will begin once seatbelts are fastened for all passengers.”
Cari pulled the belt across her body and snapped the buckle into the receiver. She didn’t understand why cars still had safety belts. There hadn’t been a fatal car accident since autonomous cars had been mandated five years ago. It was hard to believe her parents had survived to adulthood given all the ways people could die during routine highway travel back in their day.
As the electric motor quietly spun up to speed and the car pulled away from the curb, Cari opened her personal communications interface between her implanted comm chip and the car’s wireless transceiver and selected her history assignment from the recent documents on the holographic display before her. She began dictating the next part of the report while the car took her home via the interstate. She had a half-hour between the HEMA gym and home. That would be plenty of time to finish her report on the historical importance of simple explosives, like gunpowder, on warfare in the late Renaissance period.
Cari had just finished the report as the car pulled into the driveway at home, the wrought-iron gate closing behind the red sedan as it drove up the lane and into the garage bay. A glance at the car’s dash chronometer told her she was late for dinner despite hurrying home. She hoped her mom didn’t go into the whole “personal responsibility” thing with her again. If she heard one more time about how important trust was between children and parents in the digital age, she’d scream.
As soon as the car pulled into its charger in the garage and the parking brake engaged, Cari slipped out of her seatbelt, grabbed her duffel, and jumped out to head inside. Mom and Dad were already seated at the kitchen table when she walked in.
“Cari, you’re late,” her dad, Hal Dix, said. “You were supposed to be home an hour ago.”
“You know you’re supposed to call us or leave a message in the family comm system so we know you’re running late,” Mona Dix, Cari’s mom, added.
“I know, Mom. I got distracted at the arena.”
She noted her dad’s glance at her duffel with her practice blades attached to the outside. He shook his head.
Here it comes, she thought.
“Cari, your mother and I have been more than patient with your extracurricular activities, no matter how strange they are, but they do not take the place of real-life responsibilities. You can’t just disappear into your little fantasy world of swords and battles and not tell us what you’re doing or when to expect you.”
“Your father’s right, Cari. You owe us the respect you give to your blade instructors at the very least. What would Master Thorne think of the way you treat us at home? If you were unable to attend one of your planned sessions or were going to be late, you’d comm him about it as soon as you could. Why won’t you extend to us the same courtesy?”
>
Cari started to roll her eyes at her mother’s tone and tried to stop herself before it was too late. She was unsuccessful.
“Don’t you make that face at me, young lady,” her mother snapped. “Perhaps we have been too lenient with all this swordplay nonsense you’ve insisted on engaging in. It’s time to join the real world, Cari. You’re not a child, living in an imaginary, made-up world anymore. Have you finished your homework assignments?”
“Yes, I completed the last one this afternoon on the way home. And the work with my swords is not nonsense. It’s a sport that is every bit as real as your triathlons or Dad’s golf outings. Besides, I would think you’d want a daughter who knew how to defend herself.”
Her dad sighed. “Cari, this is just a holdover from your obsession with that fantasy from your youth. I fear we indulged your imagination a little too much.”
“Dad, just because I choose an unconventional sport like HEMA doesn’t mean I still believe in Fantasma. I gave that up a long time ago. I know it’s not real. You wasted a lot of money on Dr. Susan just so she could convince me that magic and alternate universes were not real. I’m not a child anymore. I’m nearly a grown woman.”
“Sixteen is not a grown woman by any stretch, Cari,” her mother replied. “We just don’t understand why you won’t hang out after school with your friends like everyone else. We made sure your birth-control implants were up to date. You should find a nice boyfriend like your friend Stella.”
“Mother, for the last time, I’m not having sex with some random guy just to prove to you I’m a normal teenager.”
“I don’t think that’s what your mother is suggesting, Cari. Besides, you know how I feel about such talk.”
Hal’s face reddened at the mere mention of Cari having sex. That annoyed Cari even more.