literature

Cover of Dark - Chapter 2: Pleasant Awakenings

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    I awoke groggily in a rather comfortable bed. My ears rang slightly, my vision was a little blurry, and my movement seemed impaired. This led me to believe I must have been on some sedatives prior to waking up. My face and my back ached a bit from where I was hit, and my legs felt tired from all the running.

    The bed had a white sheet and a pillow my head was propped up on. There were also small railings on either side to keep me from rolling off. The room was mostly rectangular minus a slight bend in the middle. The walls were painted grey and had all sorts of circular patterns etched into them. The floor around the bed even had a large metal circle around an triangle of three interconnected loops that were all one continuous line. I could feel power come from it, and hear it hum.

    I looked down at my hands. For the first time I noticed the tattoos I had all down my arms and shoulders. They had intricate overlapping patterns that almost seemed tribal in some spots. They coiled and twisted around symmetrically from my back down my legs and arms. I followed the lines from my back down my arms. On the outside of my forearms lines connected to a circle with a symbol that resembled the letter H, but the sides were curved, and lines crossed each other in the middle. Other lines coiled around the other side of my arms and down my wrists to a circle with a three pointed star in the middle. That's where the burst of light came from when I escaped. The tattoos even flowed down my legs to the bottoms of my feet, where there was yet another symbol. This one was again, a circle, but had a triangle inside with each point touching the circle that enclosed it.

    Other than the tattoos, I had white skin, but not pale, slightly muscular arms and slightly noticeable abs. I felt my long hair, and pulled some hair out to see its brown color. I also noticed that, other than my eyebrows, I didn't have hair anywhere else. I found this interesting, but didn't think about it too much.

    I just lied there for a while, waiting. The bed was quite comfy, the breeze that came in through the window smelt good, I honestly didn't have a desire to move. Ten minutes went by before the door opened. The blonde man from early shuffled in. His outfit was much more relaxed, just a T-shirt and jeans. I hadn't realized how tall he was until I had the door frame, that his hair brushed up against, to compare. He was easily six foot eight or more.

    “Oh hey, you're up!” He looked happy about it. “How're you feeling?” he had a western accent just like mine.

    “Okay I guess…” I wasn't in excruciating pain, I wasn't bleeding, and I wasn't being chased. All things considered this wasn't too bad.

    He leaned casually against the doorway with his hands in his pockets. “That's good, you were hit pretty badly and the doctors here had to do quite a number on you.”

    “Oh, I feel a lot better. Thanks.” I don't know why, but I was still afraid, I didn't understand what was going on or who any of these people were. Did this guy also want to hurt me like the hooded group did? I don't know, he did rescue me from them, so perhaps he could be okay.

    He pushed himself off the doorframe and walked over to my bed. His gait was casual, but confident. He held out his hand toward me.

    “Name’s Kazz, Kazz Hammond. I brought you here so I'm in charge of you for the time being. Who are you?”

    I blinked at his hand. I didn't know. Who was I? Did I have a name? I shook his hand wearily.

    “I… I don't know,” I stuttered.

    Kazz frowned, and studied my eyes, then started to pace. “The doctors said they didn't detect any brain damage…”

             “No, no, it’s not like that.” I went on to explain how I woke up the first times, and how I escaped, really all as a backstory to why I just didn’t know who I was, and that it wasn’t the blast that hurt my brain. As I told my story, Kazz pulled up a chair next to the bed and sat backwards in it, his arms crossed over the back rest.

             Kazz was focused and listened intently. He looked as confused as I was, but he had a certain hint of worry in his face that I also didn’t understand.

    “Well, that answered a lot of questions I was going to have to ask you, minus the tattoos it seems. Glad we got you out of the Veracious camp when we did. I'll have to take this to the Arch Mages and see what they say. In the meantime, sit tight I guess. I'll be back later. Oh, and while I'm out, think of a name.” Kazz smiled as he said the last part, then he stood up.

    “Arch Mages?” I was rather confused.

    “Yeah. The guys in charge. I'll be back as soon as I can. Oh, and welcome to Vivid Base Camp 76.”

    Through the doorway I saw there were two guards posted outside my room. I felt uneasy and my stomach twisted a little. Kazz seemed nice, but I knew there was much I wasn't being let in on.

    About five minutes went by before a tall blonde woman walked in. She was six feet tall, and dressed in a white T-shirt and a matching white dress. Her curly hair was done up in a messy pony-tail, providing a slight contrast to her near flawless face, marked only by a small scar on the bottom of her chin. I could hear her high heels click on the floor as she walked in. She looked like she was in her mid to lower thirties. The name tag on her shirt read “Angela Downes.”

    “Hello… um… you,” she checked her clipboard. Her

accent sounded either Swiss or German. “How are you feeling? Any pain?"

    “Okay I guess, considering. No pain.”

    “Right, I’m going to take just a few measurements then.” She wrapped a nylon bag around my arm and inflated it to take my blood pressure. She had my put a thermometer in my mouth to take my temperature, then took a listen to my lungs.

    “Do you think you could stand for me to take your weight and height?”

    “Sure I guess.” Angela raised one of the gates on the side of my bed, making it easier for me to just rotate my legs off the side, then hop down. I half expected to stumble or trip, but I was fine. I followed her outside of the room and into the hallway. The walls were a light shade of pink with more of those ring patterns engraved in them. About every nine feet was another light blue metal door like the one I had just walked through. The only interesting thing about the hallway were the two guards posted outside my door. Each of them were dressed just like Kazz had been when I first, nearly literally, ran into him. However, I didn’t have a chance to notice the detailed orange sextant logo stitched into the right shoulder of the coat. It looked reminiscent of the green scroll logo from wherever I was earlier.

    “You’ll have to excuse the guards, this is a secure facility, and there are plenty of them around.” I looked up and down the hall as she said that, and none of the other uniform metal doors had any guards by them, somehow I didn’t believe her.

    We only walked a little ways down from my room into a small almost unnoticeable side room with a scale and measuring stick. She took my measurements in silence. The way she made nervously made eye contact with me told me that she didn’t believe what she said either.

    I looked away and made eye contact with myself through a mirror I had just noticed was in the room. For the first time I saw my dark green eyes and long brown hair that went below my ears and parted on the right side of my forehead. My chin was round, and my jawbones were soft. I wasn't very tall though, five foot six at best, I was easily dwarfed by Angela not to mention Kazz. I didn't know what to expect, but I guess I could have done a lot worse.

    Angela held out a small rectangular device that was the size of her palm. It had a glass surface and a purple fingerprint in the middle.

    “Would you please place your thumb here?” She asked politely. I did as I was told, lining my thumb up with the fingerprint. Immediately wavy purple strands of light flickered to life on the glass around my thumb. The light was soon accompanied by an aura of the same color, moving and dancing in a steady rhythm. The device vibrated and Angela pulled it away. She studied the screen for less than a second before her eyes nearly bugged out of their sockets. She quickly regained her composure, but it was too late, I had already seen it.

    “You fall on one of the highest percentiles for mana power I've seen in quite some time.”

    “I take it that's a good thing right?”

    She nodded as she pocketed the device.


    The rest of my day after being walked back to my room was spent pretty quietly, with me twiddling my thumbs and unsuccessfully trying to make sense of what all had transpired. Vivid? Veracious? What did the Veracious want with me? After a little while Kazz came back, and the guards entered the room behind him. I tensed up a little, but tried not to show it.

    He waved. “Hey, how you doin’?”

    “I’m alright.”

    “Good, we’re gonna take you down to interview with the Arch Mages. You okay with that?”

    I glanced at one of the guards behind Kazz. His eyes darted away and he shifted his feet just a tiny bit.. Perhaps he was as uncomfortable with this as I was?

    Or perhaps he was afraid of me. The thought gnawed at the back of my head.

    I tried to make a joke to ease the tension in the room. “It doesn’t look like I have much of a choice.” Now that I said it, it wasn’t very funny. Kazz tried to hide a grimace, and clasped his fingers together. It made things worse.

    “It would be highly advisable to conduct the interview as soon as you are able, but if you are unable, the interview can be rescheduled for a later time.” He exaggerated his enunciation. “That's what they said more or less verbatim, so if you’re feeling okay now, then-”

    I cut him off. “It’d probably be better to get it over with right?”

    “Yes.” He nodded.

I took a deep breath and sighed. “Alright, let’s go then.”
Still don't know what all is going on, who these people are, who I am, but they aren't hurting me, so that's positive enough for now.
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TheClosetMailman's avatar
Mana?
Can you drain it and store it in a jar?
*Holds knife and jar*