Toe to Toe

“John Newman for Jessica Albyn?” John said, showing the secretary behind the counter his ID card. She plucked it from his grasp and stuck it into a thin slot on the side of her monitor. After a few moments, it dinged.

“Excellent, head to examination room 2.” She handed him his card back, and he stowed it away in his pocket before transferring it to his inventory. Looking through a large window to his left, he recognized the area as the hospital beds he had woken up in after his mission in Jarako. Directly in the window, he saw the proctor of Abigail’s second test on the bed.

The hallway stretched on ahead, with doorways littering each side. A helpful white sign overhead had different areas labelled with black arrows, though for his purposes ‘examination rooms’ and the accompanying forward arrow was enough.

A few intersections down, he saw a similar looking sign with a right arrow, and turned to see that this hallway had no doors on the left, and above each door on the right hung white signs with black text and braille underneath, denoting them as examination rooms. Unsurprisingly, the second one was the room he sought.

As he pushed the door open, he saw what looked like a mundane examination room, except the bench he was supposed to rest on didn’t have a paper sheet covering it. It did, however, have a faint, pale green glow. White cabinets lined the left wall across from it, and magical metal medical instruments John didn’t recognize sat atop the counter. A large mirror hung on the wall directly ahead. “Mr. Newman. I was glad to see you succeeded in your final trial. You and that Firenzia woman were by far my favorite applicants from the Springfield test.”

“Really?” John asked, sitting up on the bench and idly smoothing his jeans. He took off his hat, and stowed it away in his inventory.

“Wasn’t it obvious?” Jessica asked, pushing her emerald glasses tighter onto her face. She held her hand out, and the quill she had used previously materialized in it.

“Errright, yes. Of course. Now that I think about it. The feeling is mutual,” John agreed, always good to leave a good impression. Looking at her blouse, he realized that the Wand which previously adorned her shoulder was now joined by a Cup. “When you were our proctor, you were a Wand, right? You’re a dual-member now?”

“Indeed. Sufficiently advanced members of the Rider-Waite organization may participate in more than one division if they have the skills needed. Or if they agree to a mentorship. Now, I’ve been told you were cursed by a champion. Such curses are notoriously difficult to remove, but I’ve been trained by Justice herself in the practice of curse breaking. Do you have any physical symptoms?” A roll of parchment unfurled in the air and stayed static. She let go of her quill, and it hovered just above the paper.

“I do have a curse mark, and occasionally there’s a throbbing pain,” John explained, pulling aside his shirt to reveal the tattoo in question.

“Good to know; that isn’t particularly uncommon. Please take off your shirt.” She grabbed her quill from the parchment, and yet another soon appeared and took its place, still writing. “Do you know the magical or mental effects of this curse?”

“Sort of. I have an ability that tells me what effects do to me when applied, and it told me that the curse both attracts people with negative intentions to me and will get worse the longer I have it,” John explained, shucking his shirt and craning his neck to the side so the curse mark would be in clear view.

“I see. I’m going to examine the curse closely. This may sting.” Jessica touched her quill to the outside of the curse mark, and immediately its copy floating and writing on the parchment picked up its pace tenfold, scribbling along the page.

A deep, piercing pain tore through him, and his knuckles gripping the bench went white as his teeth ground together. His nails dug into the firm cushion, and he did his best to sit still.

After a few moments she was blasted back into the cabinets behind; the quill and parchment floated down to the floor. Her glasses hung askew on her face, but she quickly got back to her feet. Staggering slightly, she pushed her glasses back up before regarding him as though it hadn’t happened at all. “Whoever put this on you, did they have soul manipulation abilities?”

“He did. It was a champion of chaos named Crow. He nearly removed my soul at one point, and I saw him consume the soul of a Hydra. Why? Does this curse have something to do with my soul?” John asked, releasing the bench as the pain slowly subsided, never completely fading.

“Abilities that allow one to directly manipulate the soul are extremely uncommon. Even among champions the ability is rare. This is troubling. There are three main ways curses are applied. The first and easiest to remove are curses applied directly to body parts. In such cases, surgery to remove the affected area and regeneration potions suffice. The most common are curses that act similar to enchantments. A lasting spell that feeds off either the user’s own mana or ambient mana. Keeping the afflicted in a room devoid of mana in which their own mana is continuously drained may remove these curses if they are weak enough, otherwise targeted dispelling magic must be used.” She took another look at him, and he could tell her eyes were on his curse mark even obscured by her glasses as they were. She continued with a sigh, “Least common are curses applied directly to the soul. These are often the most powerful, and over time may even warp the soul to sustain their existence and growth, like a virus. The longer these are left unchecked, the worse their effects get. Worse still, many, including yours, are driven as deep into the soul as possible upon placement. In your current state, it is beyond the capability of any in this guild to remove the curse without causing permanent, irreparable damage to your soul.

“I’m so sorry, John.”

His body went cold as he listened to her explanation. The mark on his shoulder and the pain it caused felt hot, and he dug his nails into it despite the fruitless effort. “So that’s just it then? This wasn’t a part of my contract! None of this was supposed to happen! What about my hawk and elemental? They’re bound to my soul.”

Jessica let him vent, reading over the parchment while he unloaded on her. When she reached the end, she gasped in surprise. “Well there’s good news and there’s bad news. The good is that your soul is incredibly tough, rumors have floated around claiming you to be a champion, and the resilience your soul has shown under such a powerful, malicious curse is excellent proof of that. The chances of the curse taking over your soul completely are next to zero, it’s simply indomitable. Furthermore, your summons have souls of their own. The curse shouldn’t affect them.”

I would never allow such things to corrupt me, John.

“How does it exist at all then? I keep hearing how special I am, champion this, champion that, but it feels like it never actually helps me!” John choked, on the verge of tears. The curse mark throbbed in pain again, the tattoo on his wrist pulsing with it. “And what about this!” He held up his wrist for her to see. “Ever since I got the curse, this has been hurting too!”

“Well, that’s the bad news. I’m guessing that’s a mark left on you as a result of a soulbinding ritual. Unfortunately, the curse infected that magic. It acted as a backdoor of sorts, and what little of your soul the soulbinding enchantment used, the curse has taken over. If it’s any consolation, it couldn’t destroy the enchantment itself, so it should still function,” Jessica added, then approached him slowly. “While I cannot rid you of the curse, I can prevent the pain it causes. I can also safeguard the binding magic used for your summons, just in case.”

Before his eyes, the wiry black band on his wrist slowly faded away. Taking his phone out, he used the camera to see that it had been incorporated into his curse mark, surrounding the outside of it.

“I’ll take it,” John replied, exhausted even though the whole ordeal had hardly taken five minutes, “do whatever you need to do.”

She gently laid him back. “You can close your eyes if you wish, but try not to move.” She took out her quill once more, reading above the curse mark.

“Hold on!” He set his phone to gloved mode so that objects would affect the touch screen. Then, he took a bullet out of his inventory. Testing it out with Move, he was pleased to see it worked. “Alright, I’m ready now.”

A couple hours later, she stepped back, letting out a long breath and wiping her forehead. “There. The pain should subside completely by the end of the day, and it shouldn’t return. If it does, come to the infirmary immediately. I tried to leave it alone as much as possible, it has safeguards against being tampered with too much.”

Getting up, he put his shirt back on and the bullet back into his inventory. Walking over to the mirror and pulling aside his shirt, he saw that the large feather inside his curse mark now had the tip of a quill.

“Thank you,” John said, putting an arm on her shoulder. “None of this was your fault, and I know you did everything you could to help me. I appreciate it.”

She shrugged him off, returning to her parchment with her quill. “Just doing my job, Mr. Newman. I’ll put the results of this session in your medical file, which you can access at any time through the app. As this was a result of your past contract, the session is free.”

“Right. Well, have a good one,” John said, taking his hat out of his inventory and putting it back atop his head, preferring to do it manually and feeling the smooth material to simply equipping it.

“Stay safe out there, Mr. Newman. Analyze every situation,” Jessica advised, walking past him and out of the examination room. He took her lead and followed, leaving the infirmary and taking the elevator back up to his dorm.

A familiar redhead was in the elevator, and she smiled up at him as he entered. “Hey! John, right? You’ve made quite the name for yourself! You were in two top headlines in the past two weeks!”

“Nice to see you again, Elizabeth but… what do you mean? I knew about one but I didn’t know it was such a big deal,” John replied, hitting his floor and standing next to her. After a couple seconds of silence, she showed him her phone. He recognized the Rider-Waite app, though he hadn’t paid much attention to the news section. A mistake apparently, since the top article of the day was, ‘Isabelle Ardyn and John Newman Nearly Capture Chaos Champion: What To Do When Your Contract Goes Wrong.’

“Interesting… yeah that did happen to me, and I did survive but not unscathed. What was the other one?”

She swiped over to her saved articles, the first of which was the article she just showed him. The fourth was the one she was talking about, ‘Isabelle Ardyn, One Man Armory, and John Newman Capture Infamous Extinction Kings Member Asley Ardyn a.k.a Petal Tornado.’

He chuckled inwardly when he saw the self-important Isaac Zankov was nowhere to be seen. “Wrong place, wrong time. I wasn’t looking for either of those things to happen to me. They definitely weren’t worth being newsworthy.”

“Well… can I go on your next contract with you? Or train with you maybe? I didn’t get to see much during the trials, but I think we’d make a good team!” Elizabeth said, stowing her phone away.

“Sure. As long as it’s okay with my team, I don’t see why not. I was actually going to see if my friends wanted to train with me,” John replied, just in time as the elevator dinged, opening to his floor. “Coming with?”

“I’ll meet you downstairs. Let me know when you’re leaving,” Elizabeth replied, slipping him a piece of paper with her number on it and hitting the close door button behind him as he walked out.

Making his way to his dorm, he entered the barrier to see his friends had transitioned from Monte Racer to Monte Festival. “I’m going to go into the forest and make a barrier full of monsters to train in. Does anyone want to join me?”