The rest of Monday had passed without any hiccups and the part of Tuesday dedicated to the tournament rolled around as quick as things could do without manipulating time. “So, what’re we going to do today?” John asked, once more inside the room with the shadow-veiled ceiling. The jury table was untouched, but the kitchens had vanished. Instead, there was a single chair, standing in front of a small basin, mounted on a pole. It was filled with some sort of water that sparkled and moved despite the lack of air movement or light sources to reflect in such a fashion.

“Today’s challenge will be one where you contest against yourself!” Jeff exclaimed and looked at his notes. “Because you’ll have to- Wait a second, you serious?”

‘Still not in the habit of reading the show guide, despite leading the show,’ the Gamer thought and looked between Vita and Wendy. “Either of you ladies want to tell me what your hype-man is shocked by?”

“Your challenge will be to receive a vision,” Vita told him. “A prophecy, a simple snippet of the future, whatever qualifies, as long as we believe you’ve perceived something.” The Gamer was about to think that this would be a supremely easy task, when the pariah tilted her head and creepily smirked. “And you may not use the abilities of your contacts.”

John didn’t even need to question how she knew about the Vision of Calamities’ ability to conjure a vision of a short-term threat on demand. In the past, Nia had displayed the same capability, reading the enchantments of the goblin Ankleshanker and his equipment. Even further than that, she had suppressed certain attributes of the size-changing equipment to make it suddenly go to its maximum size. That a higher skilled blank was able to read the abilities of his lenses was just natural.

“I don’t think I have that ability,” the Gamer said truthfully.

“Yeah, you don’t look the part,” Wendy agreed with a smug smile, her head resting on her hand as she leaned on the table. “Which is why we arranged some prophecy water -trademarked product- for you. As long as you’re close to being able to make prophecies and you concentrate on that water, it should let you close that remaining gap. Temporarily.”

John scratched his head and sighed. Yesterday had proven that the Florida guild wasn’t unreasonable in its implementations. ‘I’ll just bet something I don’t care that much about,’ he thought and finally nodded. “Before I agree to this, I have a condition.”

“You’re always one to negotiate, aren’t you?” Wendy rolled her eyes. “What do you want this time? A pat on the head? A handjob?”

“We remind everyone that this is an adult program,” Vita said, staring at one of the cameras. “If you let your children watch this – what are you doing? Go teach them to raise some chickens. Like Fred.” The screen switched to the livestream of the guild leader immediately. Fred the Chicken was busy walking in circles and bobbing her head, occasionally pecking the lawn. “Adorable.”

“I would take the handjob, but my condition is different,” the Gamer said. “I want this to be taken off the air. On the chance that I DO have a vision and start babbling a prophecy, I don’t want it out there. At least not without deciding first if it reveals anything compromising.” For all he knew, he could have leaked Scarlett’s true identity or stir up some other fuzz with state or personal secrets.

“Yeah!” Jeff shouted. Unlikely support, but John would take it. “Prophecies have to be treated with some respect! No sane seer would just speak one in front of a live audience!”

“Urgh, everyone is always so uptight,” Wendy groaned. “Okay, fine, have it your way. We’ll keep recording and if you say afterwards that you don’t ever want the prophecy out of this room, we’ll delete the footage, happy?”

“What’s my insurance?” the Gamer wanted to know.

“I’ll become your sex slave if it gets out, deal?”

“I’ll treat you well,” John said with a perverted smile and a nod.

“I know, otherwise I wouldn’t say that. You’ve got a good reputation with the ladies, at least those that aren’t horribly stuck up.” Wendy leaned back and presented her body as much as she could without getting up or undressing. “And if I’m getting dominated, it’ll be only by the best guy on the continent!”

Although his insurance seemed to have a bit of a vested interest in going against John’s wishes, the Gamer still took it. Marching over to the chair, he watched as Fred was taken off the screen and replaced with the card that showed the current state of the bets.

“Before we cut the live connection, we should at least let the viewers know what you’ll bet on today,” Jeff declared and gestured at the screen above him. “Last time it was the meeting with the Horned Rat, what will you be willing to risk this time?”

‘It’s either the prune cakes or the national holiday,’ the Gamer thought, since he wasn’t sure at all if he could do this. ‘Well, they did give me assistance, so perhaps I should bet something I want to change somewhat? Something I’m not too sad about if it goes through as is?’ There was only one thing in the list that fulfilled that condition. “Rather than having an unchangeable clause in the constitution to leave immediately, the Florida guild will have the same right and process to split from the Federation as all other members. That’s the bet for today.”

“Alright, y’all have heard it!”

“And now you can sit bored at your home, because the Gamer has to keep his secret,” Wendy added and made a cutting motion with her hand. Some sort of pre-agreed signal, John was sure. “Alright, we’re off the air, do your thing.”

“Let’s see what ‘my thing’ is,” the Gamer responded and sat down. He grabbed the sides of the basin. By itself, it truly wasn’t anything special. Just a bowl of copper on a pole from the same metal. The water, however, seemed more interesting the more he stared at it. ‘Richard said it would take me about 1000 Intellect to get there, but he is as much guessing about my powers as anyone else. Given this crutch, there might just be a chance.’

The water smoothed over after he had been looking at it for several seconds. Then it started to swirl. Intrigued, he leaned over the basin. The swirl shifted with the angle of his gaze, always allowing him to see just a tiny dot at the bottom of the bowl. He continued to stretch until the vortex was in the centre of the bowl, because this kind of symmetry just felt right.

“Ya seeing anything?” Rave wondered from the side. “Cause ya seem mighty intrigued by some water.”

John looked up for a moment. “Can’t you see the whirl?” he asked, glancing down to make sure it was actually there.

“Uh, no? Guess that answers my question with ‘yes’ then,” Rave said.

“Peculiar, I can’t perceive this either,” Aclysia informed them. “Neither with my own eyes or through your eyes, Master.”

“Peculiar indeed,” he mumbled and already regretted not having bet on something more important. ‘Well, it is how it is,’ he thought and calmed his mind as best as possible. Once more he leaned over the basin and stared only at it. Minutes passed and he erased more and more things from his attention, as they kept distracting him. Thoughts about the day, ways this situation could turn out to be a trap, wondering if and how Moira was following things, tiny buzzing thoughts that kept bouncing around in his head.

Overthinker that he was, extinguishing them all was a meditative exercise of medium difficulty. Still, none of that helped, until he pulled his attention even from Jack. The Extension was only sitting in his office at the moment, so all that had to be done to that end was to convince the girls under the table to stop for the time being. Once that was done, the thought capacity normally split between them, normally more than enough to analyse any situation even when halved, unified in him.

The whirl grew and showed the dried bottom of the copper bowl. Unlike what John saw through the translucent surface, that which the water gave way to was pitch black. There was movement in the darkness, as if it was pulling closer and closer together. The vortex opened further, until there was only water at the edge of the bowl. Everything else was blackness. Then, John’s vision was completely consumed by this dark, as if he had submerged himself in it.

A split. The darkness was a split in the back of a metal form. His vision zoomed out of the crack and showed the golden and bronze rim, decorated with veins of silver-white and spots of grey. The crack at the back was wide, reminding John of the discarded carapace of an insect.

“I shall meet the hull of a hated man again.” The words passed his lips and he knew exactly what he was looking at, understanding it beyond comprehension.

More of the picture became visible. The metal body was a humanoid form, but its proportions were contorted and mutations wrecked what would make it identifiable as a man. An absurd number of wings, most crippled and shrunk like wilted flowers, grew from all over its back. The face was twisted into a four-way split maw, protruding outwards like a snout. The right arm was so long the wrist was on the same height as the knee and the needle-like claws dragged over the concrete floor. Black ooze covered the ground, spreading in a network that reminded John of mycelium. Stalks with teeth and eyeballs blinked and shifted into the other, growing from the black net.

Their attention shifted between the standing hull and something else. John willed his vision in the direction. “And I shall learn,” he retched, “of the hated foe, two faces.”

What he was looking at was the thing that had crawled out of the shell. It glistened, muscles and fat visible and bleeding, the skinless thing writhing. Its legs had fused and bloated. They seemed to possess no bones, the flesh pulsing again and again like a crawling snail. A dry, lidless eye stared with pain and fervour; a lipless maw snapped for air. The right of its face was covered in black, writhing on top of the bones like maggots, and manifesting into a stubby horn at the top. More blackness spread from its ribcage, parts of it covered in fungoid growth that seemed like exposed gills. Gills that twitched sometimes, closed, and turned into eyes. They didn’t see him, but they basked in their glee.

“The cor…ruptor and… the… corrupted…” he barely managed to press out, before the entire vision was ended abruptly by him bowing over to the right. Vomit splattered on the floor. John tried to keep the rest of his breakfast in. A new detail surfaced in his memory, the way more mycelium had pumped out of the decrepit arms and the bloated fingers, more boneless things that had oddly smooth tips. The parts of the hand that were still normal had their bones cracked by maws that grow on the skin.

With a second contortion of his entire body, John added yet more stomach acid to the floor. Before almost falling off the chair. Only Aclysia and Rave holding him with caring and calm hands kept him seated. They rubbed his back as he spat out whatever remained in his mouth. He had already made the mess, a bit of saliva on top wouldn’t make it worse.

“What the fuck did you see?!” Rave asked, extremely agitated for obvious reasons.

John took a tissue out of his inventory and wiped his mouth off. He would have answered then, but Aclysia offered him some of that taste freeing water from her own storage, and that seemed like a higher priority. Once the bitter, salty taste of vomit and wasted bacon was out of his mouth, he took a quivering breath and mostly calmed. The vision he had seen quickly faded, the fundamental understanding and clarity he had possessed went with it. For a moment, he had known everything about that scene, where it was, how it came to be, what made it be, all of the clues and things he had heard, be it only a little sentence at the side, that allowed him to draw certain conclusions.

“I’m not completely sure,” he told her and went through what he remembered. “Jeremiah, most likely, getting consumed by Lorylim. His metal skin had been ripped off him. No, it was more like the flesh underneath broke out of the chrysalis – or maybe like metal and man rejected each other?” He shook his head. “Sorry, I’m trying to make sense but…” He shivered. “Give me like… twenty minutes…” He looked to the jury. “Sorry, but can we delete that footage – for appearances sake alone?”

“Y-yeah,” Wendy nodded along, “my word on things and all that! You go do rest, pretty sure you had that vision and won today.”