First, the bitter taste of medicine came to his mouth. Then he felt an uncomfortable sensation on his back, made prominent by the weight resting on his belly.
Groaning, Damien slowly opened his eyes, a blinding light coming from the large window to his right immediately flooding them and making him wince. He tried to remove whatever was resting on his belly, but his hands wouldn't budge. Such was the case with his legs and neck, too.
With a racing heart whose pumps could be heard in his ears, Damien scanned his surroundings by darting his eyes wherever they could reach.
'Where am I?' He wondered.
He couldn't recognize anything familiar about the room.
The ceiling was white, but it didn't have a bulb hanging from it. The same was true of the plain, boring sticker-less walls by the large alien window located right above his bed.
Shifting his eyes to the left, Damien was surprised to see a curtain separating him from whatever lay on the other side. Then it hit him. He wasn't home. He was in the hospital. A rather strange one, considering there wasn't any machinery beeping nearby.
Then came the memories from the fight. Like a movie on repeat, they flooded his mind, and he closed his eyes, trying to piece everything together.
'I remember the flames and shadow. Oh, and how they controlled my body,' he thought bitterly.
The last thing he had expected after the fiery frames gave him another chance at life was the power that came with it. Although they led most of the fight after taking possession of his body, he had felt it—the immense pleasure that came with knowing he could trounce his enemies.
It was thrilling. Especially when he could protect Ahara and the others from harm.
'I want to become like that again,' Damien thought to himself smugly, but the idea vanished almost instantly when he remembered the last part of the fight.
The part when he was finally able to control his body.
The pain he felt had been too unbearable, unrealistic even. His bones had wriggled like rubber when he tried to stand, his muscles cut through as if a butcher had practiced cutting meat on his flesh. He even remembered seeing a bone through an incision in his thigh.
'No wonder I can't move,' Damien reasoned with himself, seemingly feeling the pain course through his body once again as he opened his mouth to speak. But only a sad excuse for a voice came out, and he closed his eyes, laughing at his sudden uselessness.
Just then, the weight on his belly shifted, and he abruptly opened his eyes to meet with Ahara's grey hues that were staring directly into his soul.
"You're awake..." she mouthed, slowly clasping her brother's face.
Then in a much more excited voice, she called out in a loud voice: "My brother's awake! Call the doctor, please, my brother's awake!"
Immediately returning to Damien's side, Ahara wiped the tears from her cheeks and cupped her brother's face with her cold hands.
"Oh my goodness, you're awake," she repeated, kissing his forehead. "I thought you were going to die."
Damien wanted to reply but couldn't. It was as if something was clogging his windpipe and stopping his voice from coming out.
"You were in a freaking comma for two weeks."
Now that shocked Damien more. Two weeks? It felt like he'd been asleep for one night, but he'd been out cold for fourteen days?
The sound of the door creaking open came from behind the curtain to reveal a blonde-haired middle-aged woman who stood at the foot of Damien's bed.
"Doctor Sandbloom!" Ahara exclaimed, standing to allow the doctor to pass as a stool scraped on the ground.
"When did he wake up?" The woman asked, passing by Ahara.
Unlike the white robes Damien was used to seeing doctors wear, she was dressed in a sky blue cloak with half-moon glasses hanging above her nose bridge.
"I don't know the time, but when I woke up, his eyes were open."
Turning to the boy, the Doctor smiled, "Morning, Damien."
Then she rolled her eyes at herself, a pink blush masking her cheeks. "Please excuse my forgetful head," she added, touching his chin.
With a soft tug, she opened Damien's mouth, depositing a sweet-tasting liquid inside, and he swallowed, a burning sensation immediately filling his throat. Like an iceberg being defrosted, Damien felt the lump in his windpipe slowly unclog. Then the burning stopped, and when he opened his mouth to speak, the sound coming out was clearer this time, but not the words.
"Give it time, you'll be able to talk like normal soon," the doctor said, snapping her fingers, and immediately, the blanket covering Damien floated above him.
SNAP!
Came another click, and Damien found himself half-naked as the doctor began applying lotion on his sore muscles. Unlike the burning liquid, it was ice cold, enough to make goosebumps erupt all over his skin. Thank goodness Sandbloom was fast with applying the lotion, or he'd have shivered to death before she returned the blanket on his body again.
After she was done, Doctor Sandbloom cleaned up the area with another snap of her fingers before turning to face Ahara, who had been watching her perform her duties in silence.
"You better stay with him until the council members arrive."
"You called them?" Ahara spat in disbelief.
"Yes. It's part of protocol that I do whenever a minor comes here after an illegal fight in the human world. Besides, he's quite the talk of the town ever since it came out that he used primal ascension at such a young age."
"But you can barely feel any aura coming from him now that the ministry confiscated the gem!"
"That doesn't change the fact that he attacked rogues before getting a license!" Doctor Sandbloom shot back. "I wish there was a way to protect him from the law, but that would be supporting a criminal, and I don't want to take part in any unlawfulness, thank you very much."
Ahara groaned in disbelief, shaking her body animatedly. "You could have ignored calling them for a while, at least until he's able to walk."
"They should talk to him whilst he's like this, maybe it'll score him some pity points and they'll decide against banishing him from Gibbous."
"He was never a Gibbous citizen to begin with, Doctor Sandbloom. Damien doesn't even know where he is," Ahara tried to reason with her, just when a groggy voice disrupted their conversation.
"Umm, excuse me, but can you guys tell me what's going on? I can hear you talking about me, but I can't keep up," Damien said in a slow-paced voice that made the room go silent.
Ahara immediately dashed toward the bed, sitting on it and taking his hands into her's.
"I'll explain everything later, okay? Right now, please focus on recovering so we can get out of here as soon as possible."
With a heavy sigh, Damien shut his eyes. "I am not a kid anymore, Ahara."
"I know, but you're not an adult either, so stop worrying about adult stuff and get some rest."
"What's the problem with me trying to know about my current predicament? I mean, you guys aren't being secretive enough to make me not want to ask questions."
"He makes a valid point," came the doctor's voice, and Ahara glared at her.
Sighing, she turned back to her brother. "Listen, Damien, I don't want to see you sprawled on a hospital bed with blood covering your entire body ever again. One time was traumatic enough. So please, let me be the big sister that protects you from harm and you, the small brother that accepts my affection without questioning it."
Silence.
Tucking the blanket around him, Ahara took his sealed lips as an answer and rose from the bed.
"I asked the nurses to use a spell on you that'll make you forget every unusual thing you've witnessed until now. We leave after the council is done talking with you and your memory is back in shape."
"What about me..." came Damien's weak voice, his eyes closed.
"Huh?"
"I said, what about me, Ahara? Do you think I enjoy seeing you sacrifice yourself for me all the time? I see you going to work daily, toiling so that I can have a normal life with everything the basic teenager needs to look cool and be "happy", but have you ever wondered what I want? What makes me happy?"
"Damien..."
"I don't want to see you suffer too. I want you to lead a normal life, to find a boyfriend who'll make you happy, to make friends and go out on weekends for fun, to be more open with me. But how can I do that when you keep closing the doors on me every time I try to ask a question and get closer to you?"
A sigh came from Damien as he opened his eyes to stare at the ceiling.
"What's so wrong with me acting like an adult sometimes? Aren't most people happy when their siblings do that, because they can finally start telling them secrets?"
Ahara hurriedly sat back on the bed, her heart clenching when she noticed the tears streaming down her brother's face.
"I didn't mean to hide it from you, Damien. It's just that...I want to keep you safe. You're the only family I have left."
Clasping his hand, she tried to bring it to her face, but Damien tugged it away from her.
"That's why you shouldn't be hiding anything from me at all, because I'm the only family you have, and you mine."
But his words fell on deaf ears. Ahara's hands were shaking, her eyes glued on her brother's hand. "You...you moved..."
"He did," the doctor replied, mimicking Ahara's expression.
Damien rolled his eyes. "There you go again, trying to avoid the topic," he flicked his hand to the side dismissively. Then it dawned on him, and his eyes grew wide too.
"I moved!"
"You did!" The women called out in unison, their faces lighting up the depressing air in the room.
Doctor Sandbloom snapped her fingers once again, and a Raven immediately showed up on her shoulder, leaning in as if to hear what she had to say.
"Call my assistant and tell him to bring more muscle cream. We have a very curious patient to grace this year's beginning," she commanded excitedly, pushing Ahara out of her way so she could check on Damien's moving hand.
"Do you feel any pain?" She asked him, and he tried shaking his head, but it didn't budge. The flop didn't escape the doctor's notice.
"Hmmm, so the cream only worked on your hands? Well, either way, your body is very strong. If I may say so myself, your healing capabilities are almost similar to those of an X-ranked hero."
"Don't give him any ideas," Ahara warned the doctor, but stopped when Damien glared at her.
"Don't worry, I learned my lesson after you rebuked me, and I'm going to listen to your side of the story once we're alone. But that doesn't mean the council will rule in our favor."
"That's true," Sandbloom added as she laid Damien's hand on his chest. "The easiest punishment you can get is banishment from Gibbous. Other than that, it's either public slavery for the rest of your life or prison."
A deadly silence fell in the room. A silence that was immediately filled with a sickening aura that made Ahara and the doctor still in their tracks. Damien felt it too. Even the person hidden behind the curtain groaned in protest.
Then, as if a gust of wind came and blew it away, the aura vanished, its source showing himself somewhere in the room after closing the door with a bang. Damien tried to move his neck, but the damned thing still wouldn't budge.
"Principal Twiller," Ahara screeched in a rather too loud voice.
"No need to become stiff ladies, I'm not here for anyone but the boy," came an old man's voice.
"And don't worry, Ahara. He isn't getting banished from Gibbous, not today at least."