I groaned deeply as I woke up, based on the groggy way I felt, the familiar feeling of bandages tightly wrapped around my forearms and hands, plus the various sounds of the machinery around me…I could tell I was still in the hospital. As I opened my eyes, the room I was in seemed dim; the window’s blinds were drawn up and the florescent lights were on above, but it was like something in the room was drawing the light out of the air itself. The sky through the window was heavily, heavily overcast and rain was pouring down the glass, there was something odd about the air that…it didn’t feel like a normal hospital, an energy, almost like that static feeling you get on the back of your neck right before a lightning strike.

Something by the door flashed like a sensor for when I woke up because within a few seconds, a woman walked through the door in a lab-coat, a very…very thick file on the clipboard she was holding that I could only guess was my own medical file, she seemed…young for a doctor, she had mousey brown hair tied back in a tail and a large central eye that was a vivid orange color behind a very thick pair of glasses or…more a monocle because of the one eye, a small pair of horns was on her temples, maybe only two inches tall or so from her skin as she walked in, though…something seemed to stun her for a moment as she walked in, pausing as soon as she opened the door as she cleared her throat and her eye rapidly blinked a few times as she then coughed a little.

“I see what they were saying with the…scent of your magic, quite pungent.” She said, slightly restrained like she was trying not to breathe too much.

“Oh, I see I’m still mad” I said as I sat up, “Well, miss cyclops, sense this is all just a figment made by my mind finally breaking, would it be possible for me to return to my apartment?”

She sighed a little as I said that her face was without a doubt…pity. I reached up to my upper arm, but the spots where I’d usually scratch at my skin was wrapped tightly in bandages, I looked at my arms to see that they were entirely wrapped from my shoulder down, even each of my fingers were individually wrapped. I was…truly hoping that all of that had been simply that…my tired mind finally breaking under its own weight and sending me so deep into a dream or something that I’d never wake up from it…that or I had finally died from a lack of sleep. Her expression told me everything she wasn’t.

“…it’s…not a hallucination?” I asked, she just softly nodded as she bit her lower lip, pulling a chair up to beside my bed.

“I’m…sorry this is how you had to learn about magic and…our world being here” she said, her voice honest and kind as she said that. “We…we brought in the best curse breaker in the city and…even he wasn’t able to do anything to yours.”

“Wait…curse?” I asked, she nodded, “I’m…cursed like…cursed-cursed?”

“I’m afraid so…based on our tests, this curse is as much of your DNA as your DNA is it. You are as much a vessel for the curse as you are the curse itself.” she explained

“You…couldn’t get rid of it?”

“It would have killed you if it had been possible” she said, her voice trying to be comforting as she went to rest a hand on my shoulder, but…my sheer avoidance for germs and things, I flinched away, and she just brought her hand back to rest on her lap.

“How?”

“I’m…sorry?” she asked

“How is…all of this possible?” I asked nodding towards the window, “How…how could magic be real? How could all of this be real? How could I be fucking cursed?”

She flicked my file forward before taking a thick packet out from behind it as she handed it over towards me.

“This is…usually the information docket that we give Seers who find themselves in Rook, we thought it best to give it to you” she explained

“…Seer?”

“Are you familiar with the name Anthony Varga?”

“Of course, who hasn’t heard his name?”

“He’s a Seer, well, was a Seer. A Seer is a human like yourself, nonmagical, detached from our world and not knowing that everything about our world exists just under your nose, but they have very aggressive heterochromia and this innate ability to see through illusions and wards. They can see magic just the same as someone like I can, or you can. However, at some point, Anthony Varga lost his humanity for divinity.” She explained, which did nothing more than confuse me more. I looked down at the packet she handed me as I lifted the top page of it and looked at the next page: it was…weirdly direct with everything that it said across it, there were all sorts of pictures, diagrams, and things across the pages alongside the masses of text that filled them.

“The city you’re in is called Rook, we are an underlayer to Seattle, most of the large cities in the world have a magical city within them” she explained

“So…New York?”

“Anex”

“L.A?”

“Arbore” she replied

“…London?”

“Multiple, but the main city is Camelot” she explained, “People are fully able to walk between the cities, it is a bit disorientating when you start to move between the cities on a more routine basis, but the body handles it well.”

“So…why does it matter that I’m here?”

“What do you mean?”

“I’m not magical” I said, a short laugh as I shook my head.

“That’s our issue” she said, softly drumming her fingers on the top of her clipboard, “In a sense you are magical, but you are also not magical: you are far more genetically magical than someone like a Seer, but we do not know if it would be possible for you to learn how to use it” she explained as she started…basically walking me through the packet.