John awakened and that alone he regarded as a miracle. That he was feeling a soft, warm and overall pretty well was another thing, lying in a bed that supported his upper body in a somewhat upright position. Gamer’s Body had a way to make even clear losses feel like there was nothing wrong the next morning. Although his body was feeling absolutely dried out and sluggish. Moving his arms alone was a wilful undertaking. Also, somebody had bandaged his eyes for some reason. He could feel himself blink, but everything was dark.

For a moment, that made him think that he had been captured, but he didn’t feel any bindings on himself. The smell of narcotics in the air also indicated that he wasn’t captured but in an Apothecary facility instead. ‘Why would my girls bring me here? They know I just reset to one state,’ John wondered, his mind still working sluggishly.

“John?” he heard his girlfriend; her voice was atypically neutral and quiet. “Are you awake?” She must have noticed his twitching hands. Soon he felt her warmth around the right one.

“Yeah…” he answered in a parched tone; his vocal cords needed some oiling, so to speak. “Can somebody get me some water? I am super thirsty. Also, I got a window telling me I am actually dehydrated.”

“At once, Master,” he heard Aclysia’s voice, quiet and careful. Her feet tapped over the floor. Then he heard the sound of water pouring out of a sink. Being unable to see any of this was pretty bothersome.

“Can you take this bandage off, by the way?” he asked in the direction he thought Rave to be. “Don’t really see the reason for it.”

“John, you…” There was a moment of pause, a sound of heavy gulping. “You… you aren’t wearing any bandages.” The sound of sniffing followed. “We… we didn’t know what to do, they couldn’t fix it and now…”

“What do you…” the Gamer began to ask, then quietly reached out to Aclysia’s mind. Reluctantly, wanting to shield him from the sight, she let him look through her eyes. He saw himself tense when he realized his eyes were truly uncovered and open. He blinked a couple of times, slowly moving them up to Aclysia. An empty gaze, brown eyes with a milky stain spanning over them. Blind eyes. “I see… can I have the water?”

Silently, Aclysia reached it towards him. He attempted to use her vision to move his own limbs. It was much worse than trying to coordinate oneself while looking in a mirror. Although he was used to coordinating with things outside of his body, he had at least always had his own perspective to anchor his movements to. Now he had nothing of the sort. Moving ever so slowly, he eventually managed to grab the glass.

A bit of the water spilled as his quivering hands failed to keep it steady. He drank too quickly, almost choking and spitting some of it out again. A pitiful sight, that was what he must have been at that moment. Slowly, he accepted reality as what it was.

The Hellfire Damage, as it washed over Abraham and only harmed his face, pushing his health under 10%, it must have burned out his eyes. “How did I survive?” John asked; he didn’t believe that he was simply lucky enough that the attack stopped after he fainted.

“U-uhm, it was Undine” the shy voice of Gnome almost made John jump. He had no idea who was in the room, and now that he knew that he wouldn’t be able to find that out with his own eyes, it was sending his paranoia into overdrive. “Once you fainted, she was able to revert and protect you… s-she is fine! Don’t worry! She is pretty mad at you though for… not letting her do that in the first place and… not that we need to talk about this now… because… uhm…” She just stopped talking.

John closed his eyes and took a deep breath, not that the former gesture made any difference. ‘I guess that takes Observe and Possession off my list of usable skills,’ the Gamer thought; both were heavy losses to his kit. ‘Unless…’ he attempted to find the Mandala Sphere with his mind. Nothing. It must have gotten destroyed when John had tried to use it to block. He tried to open his character screen. It opened up in the nothingness that was his field of vision. ‘At least that still works,’ he thought as he ‘looked’ over it, confirming the Mandala Sphere as destroyed. There were other things missing from his inventory, the Gamer’s set and his hat, Untouchable, most of all. Currently, he was wearing one of those white hospital shirts.

All of that aside, he couldn’t believe that Possession was just useless now. Gaia was many things, but she had never struck John as cruel enough to make a core part of his skillset defunct. The description of the skill also didn’t say that he had to look at it. Hearing something wouldn’t work, neither should smelling, but touching something, that sounded like it should be possible.

It was like he was re-imagining the skill, strongly concentrating on the feeling of the glass in his hand. After a couple of seconds, he felt mana flow from his brain to his fingertips and his consciousness slipped inside the glass. ‘Okay… that works,’ he thought and looked around from down there. It wasn’t the best solution and it would take practice to use as quickly as the old Possession, but it worked.

Now he could look around. Right of him was Rave, his beautiful girlfriend. Her eyes were wet and looking at him with concern. He hadn’t said anything in a while, but right now a clump in his throat kept him from asking and saying all of the things he needed to know and say. Aclysia was standing next to Rave, Gnome a bit behind her. On the left side of the bed, Eliza was quietly sitting on a stool and staring at the floor. Beatrice was standing in front of a nearby wall, Metra leaning against the same next to her. The ancient weapon had her own eyes closed and looked ashamed of herself. The room was a typical hospital thing, cramped and centred around the white bed he was lying in.

“If I get a pair of glasses or contact lenses, it’s going to be just like seeing normally,” John tried to give everyone a bit of hope, including himself. His voice made it sound anything but convincing, being downtrodden with clearly played enthusiasm.

Even though those replacements would work, it wouldn’t be the same. His own eyes weren’t easily replaced by a camera. He would also have to wear them all the time and pay the mana cost continuously. Possession no longer got its ridiculous range as well. This was more than an inconvenience, like a scar would have been; it was crippling in multiple ways.

He took a quivering breath in, wrestling down his emotions. “What else happened after I fainted?”

“John, there is just… so much…” Rave took a deep breath. “I don’t know how to tell you this. All of this… You have been out for sixteen hours…” Her grip on his hands became tighter. “I actually have no idea where to start.”

“Suggestion: let me do this,” Beatrice chimed in. “I will present the happenings quickly and chronologically.”

John nodded approvingly, “Do it.”

“Abraham is dead, the White House is destroyed,” right out of the gate came terrible news. Terrible and expected news, John had held out more hope for Abraham than the building. That put Sigmund’s killcount on the Little Maryland on two generals, one president and countless soldiers. “Following his attack, Sigmund visibly grew stronger, announced he beat the challenge and left.”

That, too, wasn’t unexpected. The only way that John survived was that the Contender didn’t see any reason to finish him off. Since he had only ever murdered out of negligence, seeing it just as part of battle, it was well within the black swordsman’s character to let John go. Humiliating, at least to a person as prideful as John was, but ultimately, he was happy to still be breathing.

“I assume all of the documents stored there have been lost as well?” the Gamer asked.

“Yes,” Beatrice put it as directly as always. “We got Chemilia and Ted out of there. While their lost limbs couldn’t be saved, they did survive.” That was good at least. “We lost sight of Nia in the process. She hasn’t returned.”

John tensed in the bed. “It’s been only half a day, right?” he asked. “It’s Nia, she’ll be back, she is odd like that.” He genuinely wanted to believe that. Between the timing and how utterly she had been outclassed in the fight… no, she probably was just in the menagerie. “Is that all?”

“In absence of any government, power defaulted to the remaining generals. Chemilia and Ted declared you president. The southern guilds already declared that they won’t go along with this. The true scope of the secession is still to be seen.”

“All we did, smashed by one man spoiling for a fight…” John mumbled. Most of the army he wanted was dead, half of the generals were dead, the land he wanted was splintered, what he got cost him his own eyesight. “I suppose the bad news don’t stop there?”

“The Lake Alliance gave us their ultimatum,” Beatrice presented. “They demand that John Newman be executed and Fusion be dismantled. If we refuse to meet that demand by tomorrow, they will invade our territory.”

‘They won’t even give me the choice of leaving, huh?’ he thought, once more unsurprised. There was blood in the water now and the patience of that faction had been thin from the start. “That’s it?”

“In response to that public ultimatum, the Hidden Tradition sent you an offer. They are willing to act as our ally if you bring them Eliza. That concludes my report.”

That was, finally, unexpected. In this sea of bad news, there was the single good one. Well, somewhat good, it heavily depended, “What do they want with her?”

“They didn’t specify and wanted to wait to talk to you personally,” Rave answered, John finished his glass of water. “They only roughly outlined that they wanted to try and separate Thana and Eliza.”

John almost choked when he heard that. “They can do that?! To what end?”

“Again, didn’t say,” Rave answered, and John handed away the glass that was his current eyes. Tears began flowing over his girlfriend’s face. “Can we not talk about politics for 10 minutes? John, ya lost your eyes!”

“Yes…” he answered in a defeated tone. “…I honestly don’t know what to do with that. Possession will make it less hindering than the average person has to deal with. They are just… gone, and nothing I will say or do will change that.” He wasn’t even sure if he was still talking about his eyes or the people that were lost in this fight. “Should I tear out my hair and curse the world? It were my actions that put my in that position. My ambitions and decisions. I overlooked something, got careless and now I pay the price.”

He moved out of the bed and up to his girlfriend, as slowly as it took him to stay accurate. Wrapping his arms around her, he too began to weep. The warmth of her body only made him realize that he would never see her smile on his own again. From now on it would all be replacements, he would get used to it, he would have to, but the finality of it was still clear.

John Newman was blind. The cost of his conquest of the Little Maryland had been too high. “I can still feel you,” he tried to keep his spirit up as he quivered from exhaustion and unloaded sadness. “You are still here, smelling of peppermint and bubblegum.”

“Of course I am, ya doofus,” she sniffed and their embrace got as tight as it could. “I am not going to leave ya because you can’t ogle me anymore.”

“I am fucking killing him,” the quiet voice of Eliza rung out. “He almost killed you twice, he made you blind, he made the people I care about cry,” the promise of death was hanging in her every word like the thin string of a guillotine. “When that bastard ever shows himself,” her tone drifted into a predatory growl, “I will kill him.”

John’s inability to deal with his own condition paled in comparison to what the blood mage had to deal with. Still, it was her that was angry for him. As she looked up, dots and lines inside her left eye slowly turned around her iris. Her skin turned as white as bone, her hair grew longer.

“I will break every single fucking bone in his body and leave him bleeding forever.” Was it just Eliza making that promise now or was the blood mage just as present as the goddess of genocide within her? “He will never sleep again, and when he is broken and crying for release, I will kick the asshole in the ribs and only make the torment worse.” Claws of blood and bone extended out of the bed of her fingernails and ripped into the bed. It was clear who she was thinking of while tearing into the mattress. “Sigmund is going to die!” she screamed off the top of her lungs that the windows cracked. “I WILL TEAR DOWN EVERYTHING HE CARES F-!”

“ELIZA!” John shouted back and grabbed the blood mage by the wrist. He tried to, missing her hand once, then succeeding and pulling her towards him, including her in the hug with his girlfriend. “I understand that you are angry, by god do I understand it,” he whispered to her, “but stay with me. You being with me is more important than revenge.”

“He made you blind…” Eliza joined the two of them in their tears, choking on her words. “Blind… John… your beautiful eyes… he took your eyes… I don’t… I fucking will…”

“Whatever we do next,” John made his tearstained voice as resolute as he could, “we do it together.”