Non-Stop

After the Astrea contract, a couple weeks of little import passed by. A brief interview with The Magician, in which John reaffirmed much of what he told the mage when the gamer had entered the guild, served as his spoken test to rank up. The mage deemed him acceptable, and after a few combat tests against groups of Fours and other prospect Fives of Swords, he was given the title.

On the day he had ranked up to a Five, Isabelle appeared before him. John felt like she looked different, though he couldn’t quite place what had changed. The stars on and around her glowed and pulsed with a synchronicity that they lacked before. Isabelle told him that Astra wanted him strong, and the swordswoman couldn’t disagree. Though she seemed internally conflicted about the whole thing, she ordered John to rank up and get stronger faster. Typically he would fear punishment if he refused such a command, but something about the way she spoke and the fresh glint in her eye told him that listening would be equally as beneficial as ignoring would be negative.

With that in mind, he started booking more, shorter contracts. A contract with his friends, a solo mission, and watching Jenny perform in the Inferno one day, a full day observational mission with Shelle the next. He learned a lot from the mage as she helped him grow comfortable using his magic casually in his life and creatively on the battlefield. He had taken to improving his Wisdom and Intelligence only after his Agility.

It was on the return from one such contract that he stopped at the elevator. It had been hardly any time at all and he already felt like he was ready to burn out, but the appearance of a friend popped a smile onto his face. “Hold it!”

“Sure,” John said, slipping the wood-frame glasses his mask had glamoured into off his face as the redhead neared.

“Hey, John! Congrats on the rankup. You’re really drawing attention,” Elizabeth said, punching his shoulder. “Your contracts must be wild. I’d love to work together sometime.”

“Yeah, sure, I’ll invite you to the next one,” John said, holding the sliding elevator door open for Elizabeth. “What floor are you going to?”

“Sixty-eight,” Elizabeth replied, taking out her phone to send John a friend request on the Rider-Waite app. The pop-up appeared in his notifications as she continued, “The next one where something big happens though. You’re getting a lot of fame and fortune from that, y’know? It’s pretty hard for a lower-ranking Sword to get noticed like you have.”

“It’s always just a wrong place, wrong time thing. In Valvia, I didn’t want a murderhobo chaos champion. And I only appeared in that article because I led him away from my friends. They way overplayed my role,” John explained, pressing the button for his own floor and sighing inwardly.

“You did take him on on your own though, right? That’s crazy! Sure, a bunch of insane stuff happens to you, but aren’t you usually running into it instead of away from it?” Elizabeth asked, slipping her phone into her jacket and staring at him with a raised eyebrow.

“Well, sure, but… how could I not? These people we meet when we take jobs,” he looked past his inventory screen as he put his own phone away, “they’re not just NPCs. We’re all players in the big game. Besides, anytime I’ve actually risked my life to do something, I probably would have died anyway,” John explained as the elevator lurched up, but Cinder’s head appeared on his shoulder in her incorporeal form.

That’s not true, John. You could have escaped Crow with little risk to yourself. Nobility is seldom a necessity.

And leave all my friends to die? We’ve been through this already, Cinder, I’d never-

Some would.

“Hello? Earth to John?” Elizabeth said, waving her hand in front of his face and breaking him out of his stupor. Cinder’s warmth disappeared from his shoulder, leaving him to ponder her words.

“Right, sorry. Maybe someday you’ll come with us on a contract that goes south, but you’ll wish you didn’t,” John said, thinking about the contracts he had completed. More had devolved to chaos than he’d like, but the faster, easier contracts seemed to be safer. Less time for something to go wrong.

“But you’re ranking up crazy fast. Becoming a Five of Swords is a big deal. There’s sort of a stigma about the line between Four and Five ranks, if you haven’t figured that out for yourself already. As a Five you don’t have a monthly contract requirement, and you get a regular equipment allowance. I’ve only been here a few months, same as you, but nobody else who went through our entrance exam has ranked up yet.” Elizabeth couldn’t hide the envy in her voice as she stared more through than at him.

The elevator dinged and the doors opened onto his floor. “Ookay, well, I’ll be sure to invite you to a contract we do soon, promise.”

“How’d the contract with the Champion of Gaia go?” The Magician asked as Shelle floated into his study. Three of him were poring over nine different books, but they snapped together into a single person to give his daughter the most attention he could.

“He’s pretty good at improvising. He has a penchant for learning and understanding, and his heart’s in the right place,” Shelle replied, floating through his personal library with its bookshelves stretching into an unseen horizon. She made a mental note to ask him to refresh a few sections of her dream library with new books. “I’m almost surprised you didn’t sponsor him into the guild yourself. How much do you know of The Hermit’s intentions?”

“Frustratingly little,” Alvaro admitted. “I knew of the young mage, though I had no idea he was the Champion of Gaia at the time. Given his disposition, I thought it best to wait until he was strong enough to be inducted at a position higher than Four of Swords. However, I sense you had a ‘but’ in there.”

“He has a bit of a one-track mind. If he actually does decide on a plan, he stops considering potentially better alternatives,” Shelle explained, conjuring a thought bubble from the wind between them. John’s exploits in her dreamworld fast-forwarded through his myriad attempts to delay the stand-in of Orca’s gang. “It’s a dangerous trait in an otherwise sharp person.”

“Potentially makes him susceptible to mental corruption, even if the nature of his soul as a champion resists magical corruption,” The Magician let her unsaid words hang in the air as he floated over the tome his main body was engrossed, ‘The Deade Arte of Sealing Magicke’; magical script ran across the front cover: “Potentially a great asset against the Entity’s crusade for living things and the faith energy they put into desire. Unsuitable for sealing, however.”

“I don’t like this.” Shelle brought Judgement’s notes out of her pocket space; the younger mage recalled the empath had researched sealing magic once before deciding it was ultimately ineffectual for her purposes. Much to Shelle’s confusion, the note the enigmatic Major Arcana member gave was a single page scrawled with a mix of Enochian and Adamic. Regardless, the mage considered herself to be a **** of nature in her own right yet still couldn’t decipher Judgement’s text. “Isabelle is the only suitable vessel?”

“She’ll be informed momentarily. I was hoping we would have more alternatives. It is worrying… but we’re combating a being the likes of which we’ve never seen before. We cannot be sure we can defeat it, kill it, or destroy it. To seal it in a Champion would subject it to an inhospitable environment. Then either through ascension or **** it should be destroyed when the Champion’s soul is subjected to the Dream,” Alvaro explained, taking the offered page from his daughter. He spoke a few words under his breath and the note glowed a heavenly white before it burned to a crisp. Shelle recognized with a sharp breath the mass knowledge transfer she had only seen her father perform once before. He never specified, but she guessed a decade of studying or more was in that small note. That he resorted to using it instead of his preference of learning through research and reflecting on the knowledge to make for better spellcasting worried her. How much time do we really have left?

“When you were building our home, our first home, you told me that a plan was a fragile thing, like a spell. You can painstakingly formulate every intention, every action, but without the proper resources and support, it fizzles out,” Shelle said, feeling a little silly as she looked into her mentor’s eyes and repeated his lesson, sure she was messing up the delivery. “This plan has an easily exploitable weakness. I know it seems like Isabelle is invincible, but even she has her limits. Her whole appointment was a sham, she’s not even-”

“It is a bit unwise to belittle one member of the Major Arcana to another, Shelle,” Alvaro smirked as he chided her, “or need I remind you who defeated your Shade? Isabelle is now Strength, and she is to be treated as such. Though there is another.”

“The Paladin. His dedication to shield the weak is relentless, a bit full of himself though. He also isn’t a champion. What makes his soul particularly unwavering?” Shelle asked, imagining the hulking knight fighting with himself over corruption.

“The blood of a demigod in his veins. Descended from Heron quite possibly, certainly from some light-based deity. Thirty or more generations back, but divine power is in his veins. Greek and Egyptian mages have collectively found this to make god-descendant souls with potential power similar to that of a champion. Typically such families have been rooted out with **** prejudice by champions that serve rival gods, especially since the greater divine wars in 11th century Earth. Those most resilient have found their way through, and to us, it would seem.”

Abigail and Crossfire cleaved their way through the forest together, participating in a local Valvian bloodsport that drew in tourists and kept the number of dangerous beasts in residential woods low.

“So if you move your body in the way you want to summon the flame, the mana flow will match your movements and make it more effective,” Abigail explained as she sidestepped an enormous stinger flying past her face and blasted the offending wasp with a fistful of flame in the same motion.

“Well, my body doesn’t have natural mana paths like yours but my armor does, so I’ll give it a try,” Crossfire replied, banishing his sword and summoning metal gauntlets to his fists. Five massive larvae with snapping mandibles scuttled toward him, and he lunged forward thrusting his palms out. Flames erupted from just above the surface of his metal gauntlets in great streaming gouts, washing away the angry, advancing fuel in a wave of great fire.

“Not bad. Better than my usual wordless flame conjuration, but my armor defaulted to using chi for the technique instead of mana. It could tell chi was better suited for it. Have you ever tried using chi? It doesn’t have quite the same amount of study mana does, but a little know-how can go a long way,” Crossfire said with a confident smile; his aura turned volatile as the rest of the mana in him converted to chi.

“No, never! Everything I learned before joining was what my family could teach me. Mostly pyromancy.” Abigail laughed, dancing a flame between her fingers.

“Interesting…” Crossfire trailed off as three more wasps hovered into view ahead. “Why don’t I show you what I know?”

John meandered back into his dorm living room, feeling so tired he could pass out. He stopped a door short of his and knocked, unsure if he actually wanted an answer.

“John?” Abigail asked, rubbing her eyes as she opened her door for him, showing her room shrouded in darkness.

“Abigail, good, you’re awake,” he said, flipping her light switch with Move as he walked in. The light revealed the bags under his eyes and his slumped shoulders.

“It’s two in the morning, can’t this wait until tomorrow?” Abigail asked, glancing at her phone, which was charging next to her bed.

“I need to talk to you,” John said, the glamour of his mask wearing off as he folded it back into a belt buckle and clipped it on before switching his loadout. Now instead of his normal battle regalia, he sat atop her desk in a mind-blowingly comfortable set of Palacevania pajamas Jenny had gotten him for their three-month anniversary.

“Is this about the contracts we’ve been doing?” she asked, taking a seat in her black mesh desk chair and looking up at him.

“Yes, and I need your help,” John said, taking out his phone and scrolling through the half dozen contracts they had completed as a group in the last month.

“What’s the problem?”

“Abigail, you’re stronger than me.”

“I’m listening…”

“You fight like it’s second nature to you. Even after everything we’ve been through. Sometimes it feels like I’m too strong for my own good, sometimes I feel powerless to help those who need me. But you! Sometimes I feel like our friends are holding us back. I need someone who can just keep up with me. I love them, but they’ve made things harder more than once,” John explained, rubbing his forehead with his left hand. He could feel the heat radiating off her, even a foot away.

“What are you saying?” Abigail asked, tipping back in her chair and looking up at him with squinted eyes.

“I want to do contracts with just the two of us.”

“Nope!

“Let me explain!”

“Not happening.”

“I don’t mean all of them! If we do more contracts a week, we can get even stronger in an even shorter amount of time. There are benefits from the guild for doing more contracts in a shorter amount of time. We could rise through the rankings. We’re Fives right now, but we could be Eights in just a month!” John said, leaning forward on the desk and grabbing her shoulder, “that means more space for us, and better benefits that we can share.”

“So what, just not tell them? We should at least offer. This’ll get in the way of doing contracts with them,” Abigail argued, getting off her chair and leaning toward him, close enough for waves of her heat to roll onto his face.

“We can go on the same amount of contracts with them! For the group as a whole nothing has to change, but I can’t keep things going the way they are. I’ve… I’ve been going on contracts on my own. Without any of you. It’s exhausting, but I’m going to keep doing it, with or without your help. But I wanted to come to you first.”

“You could die every time you go out alone!” Abigail shouted; the ends of her hair and her fingertips sizzled as the rage in her voice sought to convert her to flame.

“That’s why I want you to help me!” John said, jumping down from the desk to kiss her and lower her flames, calming down her impassioned heart. “And, every time I get stronger, **** gets further.”

“With what we’ve seen, I dunno if that’s true…” Abigail said, leaning into his hand as he caressed her cheek.

“What are we waiting for? We’re young, we’re strong, we’re eager to fight. There’s never going to be a better time to risk our lives than now. Do you want to fight alongside me?”

“Of course!”

“Then let’s do it!”

“Do you think we can make it without them?”

“Abigail, we’ve trained and we’ve fought and we’ve almost killed for the chance to be a part of this guild. There’s not a doubt in my mind that we’re ready. I just need someone like you to help keep me steady.”

“Nothing’s going to stop you.”

“That’s right,” John replied, looking into her unsure face, “but you can help me.”

“I’ll do it,” Abigail decided, her hand gripping his tightly, “but we still go on a contract a week with the others, like usual.”

“I promise,” John said, rubbing his thumb against the back of her hand. “I have two more scheduled for tomorrow, should I put you on?”

She pulled him into a tight embrace, but he didn’t see the way the pyromancer was gritting her teeth when she said,

“Do it.”