ALEKSEY
A doctor walks into the room holding a tablet; the nurse from earlier, Fox, walks alongside her. She stops at the foot of the bed and looks at her tablet.
She wears a pensive expression as she reads through it, probably looking into my chart.
I tense up even more. I don't really like doctors; they make me nervous and uneasy. Which is always the case, especially during my time at the orphanage.
I risk a glance at the man sitting beside the bed; his gaze is intense. A predator observing its prey. I held his gaze, though, not breaking eye contact.
Someone cleared their throat, and I reluctantly brought back my attention to the two, but I kept the scowling man in my peripheral vision just in case.
The doctor, or I assume she is; she's not wearing scrubs or a white coat, a typical attire for doctors in the hospital. I haven't been to hospitals often, only when Derek, on rare occasions, got injured or sick.
Jeez, she looks like she just got out of work. She really does. I can even clearly see dark shadows under her eyes.
She wore her civilian clothes, a black hoodie, and a stethoscope resting on her shoulders. She paired it with dark jeans and her hair in a messy bun, a real messy bun, not like those stylish ones.
"So, Mr. Redverse-Wiseman,"
"Aleksey." I cut her off. She looks up at me, a brow quirked up. "Just Aleksey…" I mutter under my breath.
Hearing my husband's last name made my jaw clench. My jaw feels a bit tight. I realized I've been doing that often recently.
"Alright, Aleksey,do you remember how you got injured?" I nod once, werraly. "Okay then. You suffered multiple injuries when you fell. Your face was bruised and swollen for a time, but luckily, there were no fractures or significant injuries that would lead to permanent vision impairment. That's good. Now I can't say for certain since we really don't have much equipment in this dump, but—."
"Bunny." The man sitting to my left said placatingly to the doctor, and we all looked at him. His eyes were sending her a warning.
"Raven." She mirrors, matching his tone.
Bunny? Raven?… Really? We got Fox, now Bunny, and Raven, too?This can't be seriously their real names, right? Right?
She rolls her eyes at him and walks around the bed to my right. Lifting a pen light to my face, she examines my eyes. The sudden lights directed at them got my vision to lose focus for a bit.
Whatever she found in my pale blue orbs must have been satisfactory since she nodded in approval and wrote something in her tablet with a stylus.
"Eye dilations are normal."
She put the pen light away and put on the earpiece of her stethoscope. Bunny grabs my wrist, and I flinch back, yanking my hand away.
A big firm hand rests on my shoulder. I quickly look at the veiny hand that rests there. I draw my gaze up to the man's bulging biceps, up to his face, and finally meet his piercing green eyes. Pinning me to stay still.
I didn't even hear or feel him move from the chair. I let out a breath I didn't even know I was holding, and I look back at Bunny.
She put the flat part on my chest and put two fingers on my wrist.
"Take deep breaths for me."
And I did. I took three deep breaths in, accompanied by three breaths out, holding each sequence for a few seconds.
"Good." She pulled back and put the instrument away. "You have stabilized quite a bit. However, your left leg has several small fractures below the knee." She pauses, looking back down at my chart.
I swallow hard. Sweat is breaking out on my forehead. Why is she making it so suspenseful!?
"And?..." I scold myself inwardly, hating that my voice squeaked, but I couldn't help but ask.
"Stable— yes." She trails away again. "Tell me, on a scale of 1 to 10, can you rate your pain at the moment?"
I took a second to assess myself before answering her question.
"It's not really unbearably painful. Maybe a 6 or a 7. It does feel tingly, uncomfortable, and itchy."
"I gave him some IV Acetaminophen earlier," Fox interjected. "Ofirmev. I put it in the chart." He added.
"Oh yeah, I see it now." Bunny flicks through the notes. " We'll need to keep weight off it for a while. Your right leg was more severely injured."
I glance at my leg with the rods.
"Your tibia and fibula of your right leg were shattered into several pieces and broken through the skin." She continues. "Because of the swelling and the risk of infection, and your overall state at that time, we couldn't repair it internally with high-level healing spells and recovery magic right away. I'm sure you know why." I nod at her.
Makes sense. Magic is still a force of nature, regardless of what mystic zelouts would say; it still follows the rules of common sense of this world. And just like those forces and their laws, magic adheres to its own set of rules, especially the law of equivalent exchange.
To cast a spell, a caster would need to give an equivalent amount of something or mana to power it up. More mana means it's more powerful, but not always.
"Let me check your leg for a bit. I think it's time to remove these bandages anyway."
Bunny moves towards my leg. With a swiping motion of her right hand across the length of my leg, the bandages got sliced in half. It uncurls, unwrapping, and lastly, neatly slithers away like a snake in the air to rest at the sides, between my open legs.
"You—you didn't utter a spell!" I blurt out in surprise.
She looks at me with a smug smile, then winks. She was silent-casting! It's not unheard of; silent-casting is common enough, but the people who are usually able to do it are either highly skilled or highly powerful, or both. Well, she is a doctor. But that got me wondering, how powerful are these people?
I lift my hand up and secretly tap two fingers twice on the middle of my brows, continuing the upward motion to disguise it and making it look like I want to brush my hair up. In truth, I activated my magical sight. My third eye, if you will. Everyone has magical sight, but mine turned out to be a little different from the rest.
"That's healing nicely." She writes a note on her tablet. Fox looks closer at my leg and nods in approval.
When everyone uses their sight, they usually see a shimmer or a hazy glow of mana surrounding something or someone. Only when someone allows you to see their real strength can you see the full potent force and amount of mana someone has.
My sight, for some reason, bypasses the concent part and goes straight to seeing the flow of mana within them and around them.
"I think it's healed enough that it won't need the bandages," Fox commented.
"Yeah, definitely. The soft tissue has sealed well. The fixation still needs care, but the wound itself doesn't need compression anymore. Put him on some IV NSAID," she adds.
"Ketorolac — Toradol?" Fox asks. Bunny nods in approval.
They discuss dosage and medical stuff I can't really follow. So I glance at them with my sight.
Sure enough, Bunny has slightly above-average mana, but what she lacks in mana is made up for in skill and control. I can tell by the way her mana has that steady hum. I glanced at Fox next, and he's really powerful or even more talented than Bunny. Interesting.
It's no surprise that the council would have many talented people, but something tells me they aren't from the council or from the civil government either. The thought that I'm held captive by a group of… what exactly? Criminals? Gang? Outlaws?… They're not terrorists, are they?
I risk a glance at the most threatening one in the room, the man with a scarred face and piercing emerald eyes. I didn't react or let it show, but I'm terrified. His mana is thick, powerful, and tangible. I didn't know why I hadn't noticed it until now. That's probably a testament to his control, and that terrifies me even more.
I undid my sight with the exact motion I did as Bunny and Fox wrapped up their discussion. I only caught that last part.
"…a couple of days from now," Fox said.
"We don't have much time left." Raven protested.
What's going on here? What are they talking about, exactly?
"I know we need to move soon, but—" Bunny interjects.
Raven cuts off Bunny. "We've already been stuck here for two weeks now. My men and I—"
"I know it's getting more risky by the day, but we can't exactly move him with his leg looking like that." Bunny cuts off back, pointing at my legs.
"So use some healing magic on him." Raven's face darkens a little, brows furrow, jaw tight. "You said that once he's awake and lucid enough, you and Fox would be able to do it."
Bunny's jaw also clenched at that. "You of all people should know how taxing it is to the body when under a healing spell."
Raven clicked his tongue at that.
Healing magic is different from regular magic or spells, somehow. I'm not a scholar or anything, but as I understood it, healing magic and similar varieties of it not only use the caster's mana but also the one being cast on.
Meaning, healing magic doesn't heal someone out of thin air. The caster casting the healing spell actually entices, guides, and speeds up the body's natural healing capacity.
So, your body is still healing itself; it's just been fast-forwarded.
In my case, as badly injured as I was, if someone tried to use any healing spells on me, or especially any high-level healing magic, I would literally turn to dust. The thought made me shiver.
"I do agree with Raven on this, Bunny," Fox said in a diplomatic tone.
"What!" She protested
"Now, before you get your panties in a bunch," Fox raised his hands in the air, placatingly. "We can't stay here any more than we already have, three days more at most, five at max."
"I know. But—" Fox holds a hand out to stop her from continuing.
"Hey, sis." He moves closer to Bunny. "He's already proven that even without any major magical assist, he heals fast—" Fox looks at me directly. "surprisingly fast." I wince at that. "So how about this? He's well enough to take a healing session today, and we will intensify it in the next three days," Raven at my side grunts at that. "Or two!?… days, in the next two days. What do you say?"
"Alright." She concedes. "Good to know that you're not an idiot." Fox playfully frowned at her comment. She looks at me and asks. "You get why we didn't heal you right away when you were brought here, right?"
"Yeah, I'm not a doctor or anything, but I know enough what would happen if you tried to use a healing spell on me at that time." I grimace.
"You're not an idiot either. There is still hope for humanity after all." Bunny exhales.
She looks at Raven with an innocent smile. His mouth twitched in response.
"I was scared that I would need to pull out a whiteboard and go through Healing Magic: 101 for dummies again." She smirks at me.
"Again?" She brushes me off like she didn't confuse the hell out of me. I see Fox at the corner, chuckling at some inside joke.
"Ehem." Raven coughs and Bunny shakes her head in amusement.
"So, back to your leg. We placed an external fixation device—those rods you see— to keep the bone aligned while your body recovers enough for a healing session. As we discussed, in front of you, we'll do a session with you later today." She pauses. "But, time is not on our side, so when you get more strength after tonight, and your mana stabilizes a bit more, we'll reassess the next steps." I gulped down a thick amount of saliva. Gosh, I hate doctors.
***
A little while later, Bunny and Fox left the room. And that leaves me with Major Permanent Scowl face over there, who's observing me like a hawk. Awkward silence fills the room.
He's just standing there; no noise, just silent. He should really change his name to Hawk instead of Raven, seeing how intensely he's looking at me, jeez. His unnerving gaze makes my skin crawl.
"My turn now, Mr. Aleksey."
I plan not to talk or answer him, but he must have read my intent, cause he raised a brow at me in what I assume to be amusement.
I can't say for certain. It's just a feeling, or am I projecting what I think in his actions a bit?
"So, how did you end up like this?"
I didn't answer.
"Silence won't help you."
I clench my jaw shut.
"Fine…cooperate, don't cooperate," he drags the chair closer to the bed, making a screeching sound that grated my ears, and sits on it. "It doesn't really matter since you're stuck with us anyway."
I glance at him, my body tensing up. My hands grip the sheets so hard they turn white, while a small cluster of blood bucks up through the IV tube in my left hand. But I didn't let any emotions slip.
"Is that the right way to treat your savior?" He prodded.
Savior my ass!
"If it weren't for me and my team, you'd still be bleeding out in the woods—or beast food."
My breath quickens at the thought of getting mauled by a magical beast roaming in those woods, but I still hold my mask on.
Scare me all you like, I'm not going to break. I faced more intimidating men in the past than this.
"Well, I suppose that ending would be more favorable than being captured by the council." He said dismissively. I froze at his words. "Do you know what they would have—"
"You're not from the Council?" I cut him off. My mind is still stuck on that tidbit of information.
He tilts his head slightly, like that alone was an answer. "There he is."
"Are you, or aren't you?" I glared at him. Anger grips my tone.
He leaned back into the chair, crossing his legs casually. His hands clasp together in his flat stomach. Only then did I notice how form-fitting his clothes were.
A simple black T-shirt pulled tight against his frame, not hiding his impressive physique. A leather shoulder holster was strapped to him, carrying a pistol on both sides.
"You still haven't answered me. But I'll bite. I'll give you this one." He pauses.
"…And?" What's up with these people and their dramatic pauses?
"Oh yes, right. To answer your question plainly…No." He deadpanned.
"You're not from the council? Then who are you people?"
He tisked at me, shaking his head. "You're already behind," he said calmly. "Let's not make it worse." His mouth curves slightly.
I didn't know that a smile could make someone look more menacing before. I nod at him to continue.
"So, back to my question. What happened that made the council in such a frenzy?"
I grimace; this time, I let it show on my face. I don't want to talk about it right now, but do I have a choice?
***
It took me a while to start. While my brain is having a seizure trying to think of ways not to talk about it, shifting and dodging emotions like I'm playing whack-a-mole, only I'm the mole. He's staring at me and observing me without making a sound.
I roll my eyes at him and let my shoulder slump.
I really don't have a choice then.
I rub my face hard to get rid of the frustration and tiredness I feel, and talk. I can't take this awkward and tense silence anymore.
"It all started at the age of seven, when the Redverse adop—"
"Don't get smart on me now." He frowns at me.
Well, that didn't work. Of course, that didn't work! What was I thinking? Bore him with my autobiography? Hoping that he gets so annoyed he'll go up and leave?
I'm having an internal argument with myself.
Great, just great. I deadpan to myself inside.
I let out a huge sigh and look at Raven directly in the eyes. There really is no escaping it. I gulped audibly. Vile rose from my stomach, and I feel sick to my core, but I steady myself and begrudgingly talk.
Talk about what happened that painful night; talk about the betrayal of my husband, talk about the sin I committed. Talk about killing my adoptive younger brother.