Nothing moved of its own accord in the Land of the Black Sand. Even the coal-black sand restrained its tiniest specks from the whorls of the occasional drafts that blew across the dunes. So on the night Mozenrath cast what he thought at the time might be the last spell he would ever cast, the resulting seismic disruptions were felt in Agrabah and the violent blue flares as the sky itself cracked open were visible from the Princess Jasmine's own personal balcony. The earthquake would have thrown the princess to the floor had she not seized a marble pillar, hugging herself against the cool stone while glasses shattered and tea pooled around her feet, staining her silk slippers. She instinctively glanced up in the direction of the Land of the Black Sand in time to see the perpetually hovering black clouds tear apart, and she closed her eyes against the blinding glare of the thunderous sheets of electricity that seemed to explode from the very air itself. The image flashed on her eyelids, blazing blue and crackling with power. In her mind, she saw a bolt of silk gently waving in a warm spring breeze, suddenly ripped straight down the middle by cruel hands. The fabric of the universe has been torn, she thought illogically as the ground steadied beneath her and she stepped shakily over the rapidly cooling tea to the balcony. She gripped the rail, somehow surprised to find the marble still comfortingly firm beneath her. A door crashed open behind her, and she heard voices calling her name, but Jasmine didn't turn from the balcony. The clouds over the Land of the Black Sand had knitted back together, the sand seemed to have quietened, but there was something about the subsequent silence that disturbed her even more than the earthquake and the sudden jolt of lightening. It was a silence made heavy; heavy with presence. A foreign, alien presence.
"He's done something truly terrible this time," she said quietly.
Mozenrath stared down at the prone form of the woman on the sand before him. His lips parted in an O of surprise. He had not expected it to work. He was weak, and he'd become weaker still preparing for this spell. This had been the final roll of the dice. Not a gambler, Mozenrath resented that his life's work and his planning had come down to this, the random toss of a many-sided cosmic die. And he hadn't expected luck to favour him. Fortune had seemingly deserted him these past few years, and these spells could very easily go terribly, terribly wrong, but the chances of this exact scenario occurring were infinitesimally small. He shook his head, feeling a lock of black hair loosen from his turban and cascade down his cheek.
Surely he was mistaken.
He had considered trying this spell before. Many times before, actually, but all throughout the terrible confrontations with the street rat and then throughout the ragged urchin's ascension to the highest position of power in the seven deserts, he had waited. He had waited for the right time, knowing as the years passed that even the right time might not produce the result he so desperately needed. It was when he had at last hit rock bottom that he'd realised that there would never be a right time.
But the spell had worked. The most famous woman his world had ever known was back.
"Master like?" Xerxes enquired, unused to long periods of bewildered silence from Mozenrath and eager to put an end to the growing discomfort of silence.
"New girl pretty," the eel prompted. She was. Still, Mozenrath made no response as he gazed down at the still figure on the iron-black sand. The girl's hair was ridiculously long and voluminous; a deep brown, almost black, with a red-tinged spray that framed her body and, when she stood, would hang below her tiny waist. Her skin was as fair as his, despite the fact that she had been drawn from a country known for its heat and deserts. She was wearing a tight black tank top with spaghetti straps which barely seemed able to hold her voluminous chest up, and though her waist was smaller than his hand span, the tops of her silken breasts threatened to spill right out of the tank top. The silk black netting which clung to her legs beneath her short red mini-skirt matched the tank top and the outfit was complemented by a pair of heavy black boots. The combination emphasised her lean, muscular frame. He looked longingly at the sculpted thighs and the flat abdomen. A wrinkle in the shirt had yanked it up over her pubic bone and he could see the ridges of a sculpted torso. She was like a beautiful, pale, female version of the street rat and he was shocked to find himself aroused by that. Momentarily forgetting her past identity, he smiled wickedly as he mentally compared her to Jasmine. The princess was positively plain compared to this warrior woman! And maybe, he thought, just maybe, having her know her other, true identity might benefit him. For what was the street rat's fiancé but the princess of a small-time kingdom? This woman had been a living goddess. She could take down empires single-handedly. With that in mind, Mozenrath bent to carry her into the Citadel. It would have been easier to teleport them both into his lavish chambers, but he liked the idea of her opening her eyes to see him carrying her into the castle from the dead of the desert night.
It didn't happen that way. With her wide emerald green eyes opening, she slowly came into consciousness as Mozenrath laid her lithe body on the soft down covers of his enormous bed. As light as she was, he wished he'd just teleported them both into the room. Finding the task of carrying a 45kg woman a few meters - well, a few hundred meters, to give himself full credit - to be a difficult task only reminded him of that woman's necessity to his own failing health and her reason for being here.
"Welcome to the Citadel," Mozenrath said formally as a pair of huge green eyes focussed on him. "I am Mozenrath, Lord and Ruler of the Land of the Black Sand." She laid still, appraising him, noting the thick blacks and blues of the silks he wore beneath his cape and turban.
"I an Karena," she said evenly. "Where am I, truly, and what year is this?" Surprise showed on Mozenrath's angular face. He had not expected this question to arise so soon, despite the clearly unfamiliar background into which she had been dropped. She had also answered him in his own language. Reading this in his face, she spat, as if offended suddenly,
"I speak five languages. And I have travelled through ninety-eight countries. From what I have seen already, this is not one of them. Furthermore," she said, reaching into a pocket in the front of the skirt and withdrawing a flat, red-backed tablet, "you have neglected to remove my iPhone even though I was unconscious and defenceless against your taking it if you wanted to. If you were from my time you would know that every piece of vital and personal information about me is contained within this item and you would know how to access it yet you" she said, holding the slender, red-backed tablet up for him to see, "don't even seem to know what it is. I'm also still wearing my smart watch, which is synced to my phone." She held up her left wrist. A square screen attached to plain black straps glowered at him. "And finally - " she shook her head vigorously. From each ear a white bud dropped into her hands. "Blue tooth earphones, from which music should be playing, as it was only very recently, and which you clearly don't recognise either." She held the small devices up to Mozenrath. He cocked an eyebrow. She folded her her hand around the buds. "Awesome," she muttered, "The case is missing. I can't charge my fucking..." She frowned, then stared straight at Mozenrath with a far-seeing gaze he almost found unnerving. There could be no doubt about it, then: this was certainly her, the conqueror of conquerors, the destroyer of worlds. The wait had been worth it. A smile curled his upper lip. She was everything he would have hoped she'd be: sharp, observant, beautiful, strong, and completely ageless. She could be aged between fifteen and thirty, she was wise beyond her years, young in the face and strong in the muscles which rippled beneath her skin. She was like no other woman Mozenrath had ever seen.
"Mozenrath, Lord and Ruler of the Land of the Black Sand," she said, excusing herself from having to struggle to sit up, for she too suspected that she had not the strength yet to do so, "I do not know how you have brought me here, or why. As I am not chained I may presume that I am not exactly a prisoner, but the lack of restraints may be a psychological trick designed to rob me of hope when I discover that I am locked in a tower on a precipice or some shit." She smiled wryly to see the handsome young lord unwittingly smiling approvingly at her. "My interest in my capture is therefore piqued," she said flippantly, "for I am from a poor family and you would not be able to ransom me. If you still intend on trying to, I've already told you where you can find my personal information, but I suspect that you won't be able to utilise it here even if you can decipher how to use my iPhone. If you wanted to injure me in some sadistic way you probably would have done so by now and you could still try, but as I am trained in boxing, Aikido and Taekwondo - I would invite you to try." She smirked. "Taekwondo and Aikido are ancient Asian warrior arts of combat, and the fact that you did not already know that tells me again that we are not in 2019 anymore. I don't know if this means anything to you, but I currently hold two different martial arts titles in two different nations, in two different weight categories. I'm not considered particularly important but I am very well known in the way that people are well known in my time, and despite the fact that you will not be able to ransom me, my disappearance will not go unnoticed. So where am I really, and why am I here, Mozenrath, Lord and Ruler of the Land of the Black Sand?" Mozenrath smirked, but he felt uneasy, and this was not a feeling to which he was accustomed. Years of dreaming of this moment had done nothing to prepare him for it. She was dominant in any century, he realised. He had already established the girl's new identity, though Mozenrath didn't tell her that and he noted that she hadn't really told him anything about who she was, either. She was clever: she'd used a lot of words to describe a life that could've been anybody's, but which he did know to be hers, without actually revealing her identity.
And he knew quite a lot about her, actually. He knew, for example, that she was twenty-five-years old, that she lived in a large metropolis and that she had just graduated from a prestigious medical school. She had been an elite gymnast – she'd won a medal at something called the Olympic Games when she was seventeen. She was the first person in her nation-state's history to win an Olympic medal in gymnastics, and she'd been audacious enough not only to win a gold medal but to go on to win two more at that same Olympiad. At the age of seventeen she was considered one of the best gymnasts the world had ever seen. A prodigious academic, she had been accepted to medical school after completing a strenuous undergraduate program with two majors and an Honours attachment. She'd paid for her tertiary education with scholarships won mostly on academic merit but with a hefty dose of charisma mixed into a tale of woe and deprivation, or what was considered deprivation in her world. He did know about the Martial Arts and the national titles, just as he also knew about the library and the personal gym she kept in her house. Mozenrath even about the pole-dancing classes she'd begun taking after her graduation for fun. He knew that she was paid a lot of money to sit around in lingerie, and that she was a cover model whose sudden disappearance would indeed be noticed. That did not concern him. He knew her hobbies, all of them, from her love of chess and history to the secret stash of Goosebumps books hidden in the cavernous corners of her library, which dwarfed his own.
He also knew that he needed to keep the extent of his knowledge to himself when dealing with Karena.
"You will need to sleep for awhile," abruptly, standing to leave. "Dinner will be served in the Great Hall in two hours. You will find more suitable attire in the wardrobe on that wall," he gestured towards a double set of doors, then spun on the heel of one boot and stalked out of the room, his cape swirling around him.
The Conqueror of Conquerors entered the Great Hall fifteen minutes late, and walking with the air he would expect from the Conqueror of Conquerors. Mozenrath tapped his fingers against the trestle table, partly with impatience at having to wait for her, and partly with excitement. This was definitely her. He could see it in the way that she walked, in the way that she held herself. Women like Karena did not walk like that in 2019: Karena was a gymnast and her footsteps were light, but she was also used to wearing heavy black travel boots. She now floated gracefully across the marble floor, her chin held high, the princess line dress with its plunging neckline framing her breasts and her tiny waist sweeping gently along the ground around her silk shoes. Dozens of layers of silk flowed from the waist of the gown, a pale emerald colour designed to bring out the colour of her eyes. For jewellery she had selected identical gold cuffs. Her hair had been plaited into a long rope behind her, woven with gold silk strings that emphasised its cool dark whorls. She advanced to the heavily laden trestle table without glancing at it and immediately took the seat at the opposite end from Mozenrath.
"Good evening,' he said evenly. "How did you sleep?"
"Deeply and well," she responded, her voice a sultry contralto. She looked over the table. Gold flatware, heavy china platters, thick linen table cloths and serviettes coiled into gold rings, bowls of flowers – recently cut, her nose told her – placed at regular intervals along the long trestle table – and an absolutely enormous array of foods and wines. It was impossible to tell, based on the cuts of meat, the fruits, and the wines, where she might be. That's okay, she thought: this is an interrogation but it need not be a one-way interrogation. And there are worse ways to be interrogated.
Two hours later, Karena was absolutely full and the selection of wines was starting to affect her.
"Your contempt for your current world intrigues me," Mozenrath smiled. "I can offer you unlimited research facilities here, and you would gain knowledge of an energy source unknown to your world."
"An energy that is not currently present on the electromagnetic spectrum accessible to humans," Karena agreed, eyeing the gauntlet.
"In exchange for you using the knowledge you gain to heal me." Karena lifted a golden goblet to her lips and pretended to take a slow sip. She had made her decision hours ago, when Mozenrath had first explained the source of his power. Unlimited research facilities, made possible by that gauntlet.
"I would need to transport certain items from my world," she said steadily, "which I know that you are quite capable of doing, since the shoes on my feet just so happen to be my favourites, taken from my wardrobe at home." She smiled, swirling the wine gently. "I would need to make frequent... visits to certain places to obtain the resources I require for the task you have given me." Places that I would never be authorised to access, she thought but didn't say.
"That will not be a problem," Mozenrath said dismissively.
"I would need my own wing in the Citadel," Karena went on smoothly.
"Fine."
"I also cannot promise that I can heal you," she said softly. "You said it yourself: we cannot access this energy in 2019. To the best of my awareness, nobody in history has ever studied it, let alone mastered it. It is entirely possible that I can merely subdue some of its... side effects," she said carefully, noting that Mozenrath was rubbing his temple yet again, his face pinched. He'd been doing that continuously for two hours.
"I realise that," Mozenrath said. Xerxes floated over to Karena and curled around her shoulders. Amazingly, she showed no reaction to this. Mozenrath watched in disbelief as her left hand drifted up to tickle Xerxes' scales.
"Does nothing bother you?" he blurted out uncharacteristically. Karena looked down the table at Mozenrath.
"Nothing," she said firmly.
Six Hours Later
In the depths of a night lit by a sliver of moon in the sky, Karena slipped quietly down the deserted, hallowed hallway, shivering in her lace underwear with its matching silk over-gown. She slid through Mozenrath's bedroom doors, which were slightly ajar. The young sorcerer was resting peacefully on his back in the middle of the enormous bed, his thick black hair tumbled around his face on the silk pillow slip. She stood over him for a moment, watching him with a cool appraisal. He seemed so fresh and innocent, his features uncreased by the furrow she'd come to associate with him, as unaware of his gaze when he was locked deep in concentration as he was now, locked deep in slumber. He looked positively innocent in sleep. Karena slipped over to the edge of the bed, lifted the covers and slid in beside Mozenrath. He didn't wake from his slumber until he felt her cool body press up next to his. Then he awoke with the start she had expected from him the moment she'd slid through the doors, despite the care she had taken to maintain her silence, figuring that the slightest noise in the inky depths of night would awaken him suddenly.
"What are you doing?" he demanded, sitting up and gathering the blankets around his naked torso.
"I'm cold and lonely. I thought you might be, too," she murmured in her sultry contralto, though there was no need for quiet in the dark, lonely chambers of the Citadel. The moonlight streaming into the room danced over her gown, which was open to reveal the lacy bra and matching lace underpants. He gaped at her. This is no frigid Princess Jasmine: this is the conqueror of conquerors, he thought for the fiftieth time that night. In the stream of moonlight now, her expression invisible, she knelt before him in the darkness, her gown open and trailing behind her. She traced her fingers lightly down the sides of her face and upped his chin in her hands.
"I want to touch you," she breathed, leaning forward and kissing him gently. Her mouth lingered on his lips, soft and sensual. She knew she'd said the right thing: he dropped the blankets and his lips parted slightly. She waited for him to move first and he did, his tongue flickering over hers and then retreating as quickly as it'd entered her mouth. He was afraid. He couldn't remember anybody ever asking to touch him, and he hungered for the caress of her fingers, her hands, her mouth. Karena leaned back, letting him view her taut, supple body in the moonlight, the pale yellow rays of soft light washed down her chest, through the deep valley of her cleavage and framing the hard muscles of her abdomen. She steadied his hands on her waist and kissed him again, slowly, taking her time, being sure to avoid forcing him. When his lips parted this time she sensed his sudden eagerness and her tongue slipped between his lips, a gentle exploration. She withdrew slowly and pursed her own plump lips around his lower lip, tugging softly. He opened his eyes. She ran her fingers through his silky hair with one hand and pressed the heel of her other palm into his chest, guiding him back down onto his back. Beginning with his mouth, she kissed her way down his throat, alternating between lips and tongue, lingering at the hollow in his clavicle, her hands running over his shoulders and then back up to safety, to his hair, instinctively knowing that she must avoid drawing his attention to the gauntlet, to the cause of so much of his anger. His hands found her back and she quickly unclasped her bra for him. Her bountiful breasts sprang free of the lace restraints and she slipped her shoulders out of the glossy white gown. He ran his hands over her arms and cupped her right breast in his left hand as she stroked his face with the back of her fingers, her long nails cool on his heated skin. She bent to his neck again and tasted that heat as he squeezed the soft, plump flesh, his fingers grazing one erect nipple. A soft moan slipped out of his throat and she purred against it, trailing her lips down the centre of his chest, careful to avoid the damaged right arm as she leaned onto him. The blankets had been pushed down below his groin and she touched the waist band of his pants with a feathery probe pf her quick, nimble fingers to gauge his reaction. This was a man, she knew, who hadn't had the pleasure of consensual touch terribly often, or at all. She kissed purposefully the skin at the edge of the waistband, avoiding tugging it down, but as she rose back up she brushed against his lower body and felt his hardness beneath the blanket and sheet. He groaned as she teased her way back up his chest with her mouth so she edged his pants down and leaned onto his torso, her breasts pressing against him. She worked her way back up his throat to his mouth, stamping love into his skin with a singular purpose. This time when their lips met he kissed her with a passion that surprised her, his tongue moving boldly into her mouth as he seized her upper arms and sat up, both of his hands finding her breasts. His skin was soft, for a man, his palms free of calluses, and his touch was not inexperienced.
She inched closer to him and he pressed his lips to her right nipple, his tongue darting out and circling the hard pink rosebud. She heard a quick little gasp escape her mouth and she tossed her leg over him, so that she was finally sitting astride him. She felt his hardness throbbing against her and she lifted his chin from her breast, finding herself hungry for his kiss again. He kissed her throat, moving nimbly along her clavicle, his arms encircling her and her arms him.
Entwined in each other, her breasts pulsing against his chest, their kiss turned hungry on both their parts. Karena realised that she was in danger of losing control and she eased her weight against him. He reclined obligingly. She wasted no time: her lips trailed down his midsection, straight to his manhood, and she took him in her mouth at last. She heard his excited gasp and his breath quickened with pleasure as she trapped him between her tongue and her upper palate, sucking him into her mouth inch by inch, slowly enough so that she could take him right into her throat without gagging.
This was not an easy task: the man had length and girth and his hips thrust up instinctively as the last of him slid into her mouth. She allowed him a few long thrusts and then slid her tongue around his cock in smooth, undulating circles as she rose slowly until she trapped his head in her mouth, lavishing it, sliding her tongue into the slit and relishing his moans. She cupped his sac in both hands and slid right down, her belly low to the bed, taking one of his balls into her mouth at time and sucking, her right hand moving quickly to his shaft to resume stroking. He was panting heavily as she finished with one long lick from the bottom of the shaft to the top, sucked the head into her mouth once more, her tongue swirling around it one last tantalising time before she brought her head up and he tossed her effortlessly onto her back and speared himself between her legs. She tilted her hips up before he could enter her, flicking her legs up easily on either side of her body so that her ankles rested on the pillow beside her head, his cock perfectly aligned with her slit. He slipped, and discovered for himself that his cock was perfectly positioned by the change of angle, dipping into the flowering lips. He plunged into her and she moaned loudly, clutching at his back. With each thrust he withdrew the length of his cock so that he could ram it back into her, the soft pink walls convulsing around him rhythmically. The heat from her rose to mingle with his and that rhythmic clenching and unclenching was his undoing. He felt her climax suddenly and violently as he hit her wall one last time and that triggered his own orgasm. He thrust his hips into her as hard as he could and she pressed his buttocks down, pulling him in even harder. His come spurted into her cunt as his body tightened and his head drooped, his hair brushing against her cheek. He could feel her walls convulsing; this, he knew, was not voluntary. She was coming, her breath hot in his ear, and he became aware suddenly of her soft, smooth flesh pressed against him, the sweat on her palms as her nails dug into his buttocks and then released, her hands dropping to her sides. Perspiration settled around his hairline but he didn't care: he collapsed into her, not minding his weight, which he would've been mortified wasn't substantially greater in his weakened state than that of the gymnast-lingerie model beneath him. He lay still for several long moments, delaying the moment he'd have to slide out of her, his eyes closed, as she stroked his hair and his face. The moon had moved overhead, and the exhaustion of the last twenty-four hours was building within him. He kissed her softly, and she kissed him back, and a special warmth flooded through him. He slid onto the downy mattress beside her and she curled up into his arms.
He slept.
He slept for a long time. Uninterrupted sleep he'd not known since childhood, sleep unperturbed by dreams or nightmares. Thick, dreamless, blessed sleep.
Karena awoke suddenly as the morning rays tentatively sneaked through the black clouds ahead and passed through the clear ceiling, conscious and alert as soon as her eyelids lifted.
She was leaning on one elbow, staring into his eyes as he slowly came to consciousness the next morning.
Wide awake. She was already wide awake.
"Do you know something? I really like your accent," she said suddenly, smoothly. She climbed back onto him without any further attempt at preamble, and he saw that when she was straddling him naked in the light of the day, with the underwear and the silk discarded, she was even more beautiful than before. And she rode him hard and fast, pinning his arms to the pillow and pumping those strong hips, clenching inside in that trained, rhythmic motion. He gasped and, feeling completely at her disposal, came hard into her again, thrusting his hips up as he felt the release. When he was finished he lay, panting, staring up into her bright emerald eyes.
"Now," she smirked, "you owe me one."
And with that, he knew that dominance had been established.
By her.
Over Mozenrath.
Later
Clothes. She had wanted to return to 2019, she said, to get her clothes. "I can just conjure your clothing," Mozenrath had said lazily from the bed.
"No, you can't," she'd said flatly," squeezing her bathing water from her long hair with a soft towel in the doorway. Barefoot, her face stripped of makeup, she looked as innocent as a child. "And when I get back you will see why."
He did. After replacing the amethyst oblisque on a simple drawstring around her neck with a sharp, clear sapphire-blue oblisque that felt harder than diamond, Mozenrath showed her how to use it. "Time travel had better not have any anti-ageing side effects," she said, sounding quite serious and managing to look perfectly ludicrous with her fresh face before she closed her fist around the small oblisque, closed her eyes and disappeared.
And standing now over the pile of clothes, shoes, hats and accessories she'd teleported from 2019, he saw that whilst conjuring most of it wouldn't have taken any serious effort on his behalf, it would have taken some serious time. "The daughters of foreign dictators and kings own less than this," he'd said scornfully.
"Scuse me," she said, leaning forward to pluck a slender screen from the pile. "But I saw a ballroom back there last night and there's something I have to do." The black boots, white singlet top and white skirt had been replaced by skin-tight black leather pants and a matching top that criss-crossed over her breasts and revealed her entire abdomen. The princess wore something similar, though looser and somehow less sexually aggressive. Possibly it was the colour; possibly it was the fact that Jasmine's pale blue top hung more loosely over her breasts, whereas Karena's pushed her breasts up. And where Jasmine was soft and feminine, as he'd already discovered but really noticed now, Karena was solid muscle. The kind of muscle one just didn't see on a woman. It was not unattractive, however.
She had re-painted her face: silver and blue eye-shadow this time, and the thick eyeliner brought out the emerald in her eyes. There seemed to be glitter in her hair and he realised that she was wearing a gold headpiece which slotted into her fringe beneath the black hat with its full rim and blue satin ribbon and rained gold through her long hair even when it was tied up in that long ponytail. Her hair trailed around her as she disappeared down the hall. He heard the sound of a new pair of shoes running on the marble floors: instead of her heavy black travel boots she was wearing knee-high lace-ups with thick platform heels that pulled her up almost to his eye height.
He shook his head and wandered down the long hall, lit by wall sconces and the dim light which trailed in from the crystal ceilings. The entire Citadel had been topped with a crystal roof, as though some previous ruler had had a thing for the light. Despite this, the rooms were all still decidedly cool and dark, with the perpetual heavy black clouds over the land. He heard the sound of music pumping from the ballroom she'd mentioned, which was actually one of three, and when he arrived in the huge doorway he was surprised to find her dancing in front of the screen she'd seized from the enormous pile on the ground. He'd seen video material on her iPhone and this tablet seemed to be a bigger version of that. She'd set it up on a pillar at one end of the room and she was dancing in front of the mirrored walls. He'd never seen dancing like that, though. Or heard music like that. He knew that she was a gymnast, but she'd told him that she couldn't dance. Beneath her skin-tight pants he could see her powerful quadriceps rippling with movement. He winced as she flipped forward suddenly, turning beatifically in the air as she sailed through a free-walkover that even his uneducated eye could see was going to fall short, but he was quick enough to see her left leg shoot out and plant a boot onto the ground to break her apparent fall before she dropped flat onto her back with her arms stretched out at her sides, flinging her hat out to one side, laughing. He looked at her, lying on the floor, her footprints clear in the thick dust, her shiny hair spread out behind her head, its dark brown strands interspersed with gold. She was breathing hard but happily. The dust had risen from the floor and was floating in the air above her. Sunlight glinted through the crystal ceiling, streaming down around her, and the rising dust seemed to sparkle. The moment seemed to hitch in time for him, and then the music changed.
"Ooh! I love this song!" she snapped her hands up to the floor beside her ears and pushed up. Her legs flicked up and tucked underneath her arched back so that she went from lying flat on her back to standing in under a second. That, he'd seen the street rat do many times before. She was dancing already, mirroring the dancers on the screen in front of her while her own reflection showed him her clear, happy face. She looked like a child playing, suddenly innocent again. She dropped close to the ground, her right leg extended out to the side, and spun around on her left foot, snatching up the black hat and dropping it neatly back onto her head as she spun, her eyes never leaving the dancers on the screen. She leapt forward and balanced on one arm, her hips bent so that her torso seemed to bend right in half, her legs parted in a split, and then she put her other arm on the ground, pushed her torso straight up, snapped her legs together and walked around in circles a wide circle on her hands. When she'd completed four rotations and her back was facing the screen she lowered one of her legs slowly to the ground in front of her, her back arching impossibly. Such a powerful display of flexibility and strength. Her top leg bent at the knee, her foot flexed in the air, and still she held the position. The song finished and a new one began, this one with a hectic tempo. Her bent front leg straightened and she pushed off the ground, sprang back off her hands and suddenly she was tumbling backwards across the marble floor, effortlessly. Her mood had changed. He didn't know how, but he could feel it. It was as though the air in the room had been pushed up with the dust on the floor and sucked out the doors, taking with it the room's natural chill and replacing it with a frantic heat. There was anger in her movements now, a certain viciousness that expressed itself in the way she moved her hands, her head, and in the way she pointed her boots. Dust continued to fly off the floor, but instead of sitting in the sunlight, it careened around the room with her, a dust storm in a ballroom. He shrank back against the shadows, unwelcome here. The instruments playing on the tablet were unfamiliar to him; the structure of the music was completely foreign, and so were her movements, all of them, but when she had pushed back from that bridge, her mood had changed and she was angry now. Even in her anger she moved with a smooth grace that he himself admired, and he wanted desperately to keep watching her. She drifted towards the doorway, risen onto the toes of her boots, back straightened, chin up, her arms and hands fluttering around her in quite a different way to the original boot-stomping, shoulder-swaying movements she'd begun with, and although she seemed to look straight at him she didn't see him. Interrupting her now would be... inadvisable. Shocked at himself suddenly, at the realisation that he was scared of her, this conqueror of conquerors, this tiny woman, scared of her, scared of seeing that look in her eyes focussed on him. He backed away, almost stumbling in the dark, closeting himself in the shadows but refusing to walk away despite the work he had to do. He was wasting time watching a girl from the future dance and turn somersaults. It was ludicrous. There was so much work to do today and...he kept watching.
For hours.
Karena stopped dancing when the music stopped. The iPad had only been at thirty percent when she had picked it up. Karena slid over to the pillar and picked it up, staring at the blank screen. A blank slate. She sighed and looked up at the crystal ceiling, sliding the iPad back down onto the pillar. A smile that would've been interpreted as being peculiar had anybody been around to see it flashed onto her face. A blank slate.
She walked through the dust hanging in the air in the once-magnificent ballroom and continued on through the labyrinthine halls, guided by the sound of work noises. Following these somehow familiar sounds through the completely foreign citadel led Karena up a steep, winding staircase and around a sharp corner flanked by a tall stone pillar with a dust-caked vase poised delicately on top of it. It was the first object of decoration Karena had seen on her walk through the castle, her skin cooling rapidly in the dim light. The tapestries which hung from the walls did not provide much insulation. She walked over to the vase more quickly than she would've liked to admit and bent to look at it closely. The vase was definitely Greek. She was sure of that. But she was uncertain of anything else. The entire citadel seemed to be constructed of and adorned by a mish-mash of elements found in the west and in the east. It would have been opulent once, possibly even a little crass. Now, her boots echoed down the deserted halls and left prints as evidence of her being there, evidence she'd initially tried to remove by swiping her feet along the smooth marble only to discover that that just left a trail in her wake. Karena found herself standing before a set of heavy doors at the end of a hallway. She didn't recognise much of her surroundings, and this baffled her. I've travelled the motherfucking world, she thought as she clomped up the steps. I've studied history. Art. Ancient fucking warfare! I know how to figure out where I am, yet... yet she still hadn't figured out where this Land of the Black Sand would be on a map of her world. She'd brought a map of her world back with her, and she was mentally crossing the Republic of Georgia off the map as she felt a draft waft over her. She was frustratingly unfamiliar with the stone used to construct the walls and with the strands of wool woven into the tapestries. Her nose picked up nothing more familiar than the scent of dust and her fingers nothing more than the threads of gold woven into the wool to bring flashes of light to the pieces. Flashes of light which would never be seen in this place. Affecting an undaunted air (blank slate), Karena pushed through the heavy doors, their wood unfamiliar to her touch and the polish unfamiliar to her smell, and walked into the lab. Her lips parted in the smallest of gasps and she turned in long circles, staring around her in shock. The rest of the stronghold was choked with dust, but it had seemed impregnable. The lab, on the hand, almost gleamed. Every surface had been vigorously scrubbed clean, the floor-to-ceiling bookshelves alphabetically ordered, the jars and bottles meticulously labelled and arranged symmetrically on shelves on the wall behind the main work table, which was cluttered without being messy... and half of the tower had collapsed on the western side. She stared at the rubble.
"So this is what happens when you tangle with the might of the street rat," she said flatly, knowing that half a tower hadn't collapsed because of a fist fight between two small guys. Mozenrath finally looked up at her, determined to ignore her sarcasm and finding himself relieved at the sight of her shocked expression. So the bitch can be taken be surprise, her surmised, feeling a semblance of his old self seeking back into his bones.
"Come here," he ordered, relieved to hear that some semblance of authority had returned to his voice. She looked up in obvious surprise and he smirked. "I don't like to repeat myself," he said lowly, "and I do believe that you will want to see this." Karena walked over to the young lord, whose arms were crossed over his chest. He turned from her to the black stone wall behind him, waved his hand through the air and something happened. The air before them both seemed to swirl, and then a bolt of light slashed open in front of them, seeming to burst and tear simultaneously. "Explain this with your science," Mozenrath sneered. Karena's eyes widened. She was staring through, or into, something. More vividly than the videos she'd been playing on her iPad, the colours blurred into a thick mix before ordering themselves into shapes.
"The Princess Jasmine and her street rat fiancé," Mozenrath said faux-grandly. Karena peered at the scene in front of her. She'd never have believed it if she'd not been standing in front of it, but she was looking into a lush green palatial garden. A marble fountain spotted water high into the air beneath a sky so startlingly blue she found herself suddenly stricken by homesickness. Beside the pool in which the falling water gathered sat a beautiful young woman with almond-shaped brown eyes, plush pink lips, a soft, deep cleavage and a long, elegant neck. Karena noted the bizarre similarities in their outfits: the princess Jasmine was wearing pale blue harem pants and a strapless silk top that hung more loosely over her breasts than Karena's electric blue, PVC version. Jasmine was laughing at something, a delicate hand covering her mouth, and for the first time Karena noticed Aladdin balancing on his hands next to her on the edge of the fountain. "She's so soft!" Karena said scornfully, looking at Jasmine's delicate frame. She could see, however, that Jasmine would not be a weak opponent. There was more to her than loose silk pants and a pretty smile; Karena could see that. Jasmine's movement's were delicate but quick, suggestive of agility. "She certainly is soft," Mozenrath sneered, though he hadn't even known that the female form could develop Karena's strong muscles whilst retaining its curvature until just a couple of days ago and he'd had no idea of the potential contained within those muscles until just a few hours ago. He eyed her covertly now, comparing her to the princess and their weirdly similar outfits. Jasmine looked like a doll; Karena resembled a marble statue. He remembered the malicious smile on her face as she'd held that dagger to his chin. He studied her studying Jasmine, a curious smile playing on her blood-red lipsticked lips.
"Karena just like master," Xerxes said from the other side of the room, where he was circling apparently aimlessly but, when Mozenrath looked more closely, seemed to be watching Karena also. And in the eel's eyes, cold terror. He looked back at Karena, who had lifted a hand to the vision as if to reach out and snatch the miniature figures from the vision. The expression on her face was incredible: she was instantly fascinated by Jasmine. Aladdin flipped down beside her, laughing, bending double to tickle her.
"Aladdin, stop!" She pleaded in a voice that had always sounded grotesquely girly to Mozenrath and which now sounded positively shrill. Karena's lip turned up in disgust as Jasmine weakly struggled against her fiance's embrace. They were playing, as Mozenrath had come to understand. Did Karena understand that?
"He's well-nourished for a street rat," Karena remarked. "And he's fucking hot," she said, her wide eyes squinting as though her vision could zoom in on the street rat's chiselled jaw.
And then the shit hit the fan.
Mozenrath was shocked and surprised by the wave of jealousy that hit him. He swiftly raised his right hand, unthinking, reflexively, and backhanded the woman standing next to him across the face with a sharp snap of his thumb and forefinger. The blast from the gauntlet slapped her hard across the face. She tumbled backwards, spinning across the table. There was a loud clatter as jars tumbled off the end of the table. Glass shattered on the floor. Karena broke her own fall on the table, fingers splayed.
"Oh, HELL no," she said evenly. She pushed herself up and lashed out with an electric-blue PVC-clad leg. He didn't even see her move. Her flying back kick caught him straight in the gut and the air whooshed out of him. Clutching at his abdomen with his left arm, he raised the gauntlet and she saw fear in his eyes. She kicked the gauntlet away easily and he found himself thinking that the street rat looked like a rank amateur compared to the fighter who could dance. He stared at the spot in the air where his gauntlet had been and she kicked him in the stomach again, a simple front kick aided by a quick jump that added to the already monstrous strength of the fighter who'd been training in a gymnasium for more than two decades. That simple kick pushed every last ounce of her power as a fighter and a gymnast into Mozenrath. It would have knocked down a man twice his size - it had - and she didn't even know how frail he truly was. He fell to his knees this time, unable to breathe and terrified that she would see him curl up into the foetal position of the severely winded. His pride hurting more than the bruises that were already beginning to develop beneath his silks, he blasted her hard and heard her gasp as her feet came off the ground and she spun through the air. She landed hard, unable to spot the ground in time to break her fall. "Ohhhhh..." she groaned, one hand to the trickle of blood thumping from her temple. His breath heaving in his chest, greedy for air, he hit her again. She reacted as though she'd been kicked in the stomach, her small body flinging up off the floor. He heard her grunt an "Unh" of shock and bewilderment, and then she was groaning, curled up against the pain as he stared at her through heavily lidded eyes from his own position on his knees on the other side of the room. He crawled to the work table and hauled himself to his feet. "Don't you ever-" his voice was shaking and the threat was cut off when she leapt to her feet and charged at him with a savage growl. He wasn't fast enough to deflect the onslaught of kicks. He couldn't anticipate any of her movements. She was fast and she was precise. He felt his ribs crack beneath a particularly vicious side kick, but he did not feel, much less see, the spinning hook kick connected her her boot to his jaw. He didn't feel anything. The last thing he saw before her hammer kick came crashing down on his head was the stare he already knew to fear behind her fighting stance. By the time that had registered he had already smashed into the floor. Karena stepped right over him. Groaning and tasting blood, he rolled over and watched her stalking off, her shoulders thrust out and her chin high. Bitch.
He winced as he pulled himself to his feet, dripping blood from some place, and he gingerly touched his jaw. He snapped his fingers together angrily and stepped into the bathroom closest to his chambers. His robes dropping to the marble floor, he limped down the stairs into the bath, staring down at his bruised torso in shock. The street rat left lighter bruises than Karena did, and although he'd seen true rage in her eyes he got the distinct impression that she hadn't been trying that hard. He was almost certain he had at least two broken ribs and, feeling along his jawline, he came across an enormous bump from which his fingers fled with the pain of touch. He couldn't believe it. He tried to lean back against the marble bath, but couldn't get comfortable. He ended up dragging himself uselessly out of the bath, finding a soft clean robe and crawling into his massive bed, alone and miserable. He had done this. He deserved this. He stared up at the crystalline moon above him. The clouds had parted for once, and he could see the stars sprinkled across the early night sky. He thought back to how Karena had slipped through his doors just last night and pressed her cool body up against him. He thought back to this morning, when he'd hid in the shadows and watched her at what seemed to be her most private moments, dancing alone in the dusty ballroom. The dust-choked, neglected cavern that had somehow become a golden ballroom when she had entered it. He saw her shoulders swaying in time to the beat of that strange music, the sunlight glinting off her electric-blue pants as she arched her back and split her legs into that amazing bridge position, and the ripple of her muscles as she flipped lightly across the room. He saw, clear as day in his mind, her fresh face, stripped of makeup, her feet bare and her hair dripping with water from the bath. And he was blinking back tears suddenly. Tears of frustration. Tears of anger. And finally, crucially, tears of sadness. Mozenrath felt something tear open inside him somewhere. His right hand ached. His ribs ached. His jaw ached. And - dare he admit it? - his heart ached. The great Mozenrath, Lord and Ruler of the Land of the Black Sand, brought to his knees by some random woman from the future.
No. Not some random woman from the future: the conqueror of conquerors. Except he didn't know for certain that that was who she really was: he hadn't even established that yet. This whole plan was imploding. He didn't even know if she knew who he suspected her of being, and he couldn't send her back without finding out. He also didn't know why he couldn't stop thinking about her. So he was partly relieved when she walked into the room. The electric-blue PVC was gone, as was the hat, and she was now wearing a flowing black, ankle-length skirt that, when combined with a simple black tank top, looked like a simple but elegant gown. The soft silk swished around her black-and-silver ankle boots, which clicked across the marble floor until she reached the cushion of the Persian rug. Her hands were folded in front of her beneath her breasts. And she was still wearing the sapphire oblisque. Giving that to her had been the biggest mistake of his life, he realised with a sudden flash of anger.
"I have something for the pain," she said softly, moving towards him. She opened her palm to reveal a small plastic cup full of white tablets. Drugs from her world. She reached out to the crystal chalice beside his bed and held it to his mouth. He washed the pills back in a stiff silence. She sat beside him, saying nothing, for what felt like a long time, her knees bent and poised neatly beside her. He stared up at the crystal ceiling in silence, waiting for the drugs to begin to work but far too proud to ask when he could expect relief from the dull pounding in his jaw and his head. His ribs seemed to be alright provided he didn't move, so he lay on is back, staring up in stony silence. He began to grow slightly sleepy and then... and then he began to feel... to feel... good. He felt good. Happy! He felt happy! A light shone into his eyes: Karena was holding her iPhone up to his face and a small light was aimed directly into his eye. She nodded and clicked the phone off, silently sliding it on to the table next to the chalices. The chalices from which they had both drunk just last night. One of which she had held up to his mouth just a little while ago to help him swallow the...the drugs. The drugs from her world. He'd been angry at the time. What had he been angry about? It didn't seem relevant any longer. The warmth was spreading through his body. She picked up his left hand, touched her first two fingers to the pulse on his wrist and her lips moved as she began to silently count, staring at the gold device on her left wrist. His skin warmed to her touch and Mozenrath turned his head on the pillows to look at her. She didn't seem to notice. She simply laid his hand back down and set both of hers in her lap.
"You are beautiful," he murmured slowly. There was a vague nagging memory tugging at him, a warning note sounding in his ear, but he couldn't, wouldn't listen to it. Not... not right now. Later, he admonished his inner voice. Later you can go back to tormenting me. Karena's face loomed over his, expressionless. Her eyes could brighten up any dark place, he thought sleepily, reaching for the silver chalice again. She put a firm hand on his and gently returned it to his chest. "No more wine," she said softly. He snapped his fingers. A flurry of weak blue sparks sputtered out and died in the air in front of him. He blinked. Snapped his fingers again. And the same thing happened. He stared at the gauntlet for a few seconds, dumbfounded, and then slowly turned his head to stare up at Karena in shock. "It's not permanent," she said in that same soft yet firm voice. He felt his arm grow heavy. His entire body felt ether-light, except for his right hand. And he knew, consciously, that that should bother him. He should definitely be concerned about the fact that he had apparently just been drugged and robbed of his only weapon. Yet he wasn't. Not at all. He even found himself smiling a dazed smile. "What's that expression?" he heard the slur in his voice, and didn't care. He tried to add that to the list of things he had found he no longer cared about and realised that he couldn't do that, either. "The expression," Karena said, her voice fading away as she bent over and brushed a lock of hair away from his forehead so that she could kiss him there, "is Checkmate."
He awoke suddenly to see her removing a needle from his arm.
"What the hell was that?"
"Just something for the pain," she said in the same soothing voice she'd used last night, clicking the buckle on the tourniquet and slipping it off his arm.
"No! Reverse it!" he ordered, although he could already feel the effects taking hold. And this time they were much stronger. "Reverse this right now!"
"I can do that," she said, "and I can do it anytime I want. Which I will, when I'm sure that you're not going to blast me with that thing again." She waved a hand at the gauntlet.
"But if your world doesn't have magic..."
"This really is a painkiller. It's a wonderful little drug called morphine, and I didn't realise that it would neutralise your power. But because I now know how to do that, I can't be sure that you're not going to kill me as soon as you get it back. I'm betting that nobody has figured out how to neutralise the gauntlet's... energy," she fished for a word and came up with that. There was no word for what it felt to be struck by a blow from that thing. "And now I have figured out how to neutralise it. So you have two choices: you kill me or you trust me."
"It's draining me, Karena," he said miserably, and Karena noted that the young lord had just used her name for the first time.
"The gauntlet. It's drawing my very life force. I need to figure out how to stop it," he all but whispered.
"That is why I'm here." That soft, healing voice.
"Yes," he whispered. Karena returned to the bed and sat down next to him again, leaning over him so that her lips were poised directly over his and her eyes were staring into his. She closed her eyes and kissed him softly on the lips.
"I will find a way to harness the power of that - thing, without it draining your... life force" she vowed, more shocked than she realised she would be to be using such bizarre terminology, shocked that she would make such an astoundingly impossible promise. She stroked his cheek. Such soft skin, for a man.
"I won't use it on you. Ever again," he vowed.
"I know," she whispered.