Chapter 1.2 Awakening

The next time I woke up, there was no noise around me, and I just lay there, recovering, feeling that the pain in my body had become much less. From time to time, the silence could be heard in the rustling of paper, but that was all. I decided to listen to the sensations of my body for damage to the spine.

My hardness seemed to stop when I tried to move my toes. I almost cried, honestly! How happy I was that I wasn't disabled! A careful check of the right arm shows that everything is fine, although the body feels a little off, but nothing serious. The left arm reacted with a sharp pain—a fracture.

I opened my eyes. When I looked around a bit, I saw an ordinary room, but in a kind of oriental style, and it turned out that I was lying on the floor, so to speak.

Where am I? I try to squeeze out the word "drink" again, but it comes out as a hoarse wheeze followed by a cough. I didn't pay attention to the voice. Judging by the sound, they immediately rushed towards me, and my eyes opened to a narrow-eyed woman with a round face. Buryat, or what? Or Yakut? And even in a robe.

It didn't matter. By the looks of it, she probably understood and immediately brought a cup with almost the same broth, which quenched the thirst well. Eh, okay...

— Young master, how do you feel? — The woman's voice is very young. Despite the question, there was some kind of "duty" interest in the voice, or what?

I try to answer, but my throat tightens, and I start coughing again.

— I'm going to call the doctor now. Wait. — For some reason, the woman bows and quickly leaves through the sliding doors.

It is a strange place, and the lighting is not as usual — a table lamp in a lampshade. I lift my head slightly and look around the room. Where have they taken me?

Then the door opened again, and an older man, also in a dressing gown, came in, followed by a young man of about seventeen, but all of them always had narrow eyes and swollen eyelids. The Mongols, perhaps? Several middle-aged and older people watched me from the open doors. No one was in uniform or wearing a wearing a white coat. What's going on?!

They asked me questions about my well-being, tested my reactions, and forced me to drink several strange substances from small bottles with varying degrees of disgust. They diluted the powder in a cup and forced me to drink it too — unbelievably disgusting!

But then something happened that shook my understanding of the universe: the old doctor folded his fingers in a strange way, mumbled something quickly, and his left palm glowed with a bright green light. I have never experienced such a surprise in my twenty-two years of life!

Grandfather passed his glowing hand over my head and continued to mumble something, and I could not take my eyes off him. Then he said something incomprehensible to the man, and he, spreading his folding staff, raised it above me, also muttering something, and his staff, surrounded by yellow light, began to drop clots of light on me.

The throbbing in my head was almost gone, as was the pain in my broken arm. With a strange interest, I look at my body and feel something floating in my eyes, so I can't help myself. A dark stream of shock overwhelms me. In front of my eyes, on the mattress, lies the body of a child in a white robe. Darkness.