That was the last thing Balair heard inside the strange black space. The ancient voice echoed in the distance, growing more distant as time passed, before absolute calm resumed. Balair was once again left with his thoughts, as he had been for quite some time now. The eerie silence in the void did little to help him out of his spiral as he spun through it, hugging his knees tightly.
After a long period of absolute silence, Balair began to hear distant voices. One a lady, her voice sweet and commanding, and two others belonging to men. One of the two certainly belonged to their very useful sergeant, Hansen. The three seemed to be arguing.
Balair slowly opened his eyes. The lights flooded in, blinding him, and his hands rushed to cover them from the assault. The lights weren't all that bright, but after spending so long in that place, any light at all, no matter how dim, was going to be a pain to look at.
Hansen was the first to notice the stirring boy.
"He's awake…" he said as he sank into a leather chair just behind him, going silent. The room followed his cue and went silent as well.
Balair slowly tried to sit upright. His body ached all over, tired and begging for rest, but he pushed through it as if a madman took control of his body and exercised past even exhaustion.
"Ugh," the boy groaned, continuing his efforts to sit as the three looked on.
You know, helping a badly injured kid up is the least you can do, right?
Balair screamed in his mind. His eyes slowly adjusted to the light, his hands still shielding his eyes as he looked around the room discreetly. His gaze landed squarely on golden irises that reminded him of the giant serpents he ran from back home. His mind almost moved his body to run before his current plight reminded him to groan even more.
He looked closer at the owner of the golden eyes. She was a woman, and apart from her very scary eyes, every other part of her being screamed perfection. She had on athletic gym leggings, which wrapped around her form, accentuating every groove of her lower body. The deep red of the fabric was a good mix for the black flat shoes she had on. He then looked up again. Her red sports bra tightly hugged her chest, hiding very modest friends in their wraps. Her abdomen was carved to perfection, perfectly complementing her slim, slender physique. Now he thought about it, since arriving in the barracks, he had not seen a single woman on-site. After the experience in the void, this was a welcome sight. It was as if all his aching had vanished as he looked upon the splendor before him.
… wait, am I dead?
He questioned, as he blinked. As if to remind him, he felt a jolt of pain run through his body.
Yup… I'm certainly not dead. I don't think heaven would hurt so much, and it certainly cannot be hell because what would she be doing in it?
He looked around again, his eyes now adjusted to the dim lights of the room. Taking note of his surroundings, his hands sank some meters into a soft material, feeling something hard just beneath it as he set his hands down from his face, their duty fulfilled. He looked down and saw he was sitting on a bed which was lifted a few meters off the ground. Looking to his left, he saw a familiar face: the trusty Hansen, who sat almost dozing off in the leather chair next to his bed.
Looking to his right, the beautiful woman stood, arms crossed, her golden eyes glaring at Hansen as if to strip him of his life. Just behind her stood a hulking man leaning against the white-painted walls of the room, with another man standing adjacent to him.
Unlike the three voices he heard earlier, there were actually four people in the room. It seemed to be a hospital; the mechanical beeping he heard in movies softly chiming just beside him confirmed it, and the famed hospital scent reaffirmed it.
As Balair began to take hold of his surroundings, the man standing next to the hulking figure took the initiative, walking up to the bedside.
"It's good to see you awake, Cadet Balair. We have waited a long time to be able to talk to you. Do you have any discomfort? Please do tell so we can call on the doctor to take a look," he asked, all smiles, his eyes shut as he spoke. He sounded friendly but looked anything but, especially with those eyes Balair could not see.
On hearing what the man had said, Balair shot up from the bed, a panicked look plastered on his face.
"How is Dustin?! And Jim! How is he?!" he shot, frantically trying to unplug the feeding systems that were keeping him from starving. A look of realization flashed through his face as he looked down at his abdomen, raising the blue hospital scrubs that clothed him and feeling around for his previous wounds. He remembered not having any wounds in the void, but this was the real world. His wounds were not so little that they would be this perfectly healed in whatever time he was down for. The only person capable of such healing was the Divine Marshal, and there was no way in hell he was going to be meeting somebody of such standing anytime soon, if ever in his life.
But more importantly, Dustin and Jim were not in good shape last time he saw them; he had to get information on how they were doing.
After a few dozen seconds of frantic self-search, Balair seemed to calm himself to some extent as he sat back down on the bed, his muscles forcing him to do so even though he did not want to. The strangely quiet onlookers continued their weird competition of silence as he finally calmed.
"How are they?"
He was calm. Very calm. His breath held as he waited for a response, the man before him speaking up to break the silence.
"They are both good. Dustin got released two days ago, while Jim, well, let's say the doc–"
"He's fine," Sergeant Hansen spoke up, his eyes still closed as he cut him off before he completed his sentence.
The smiling man widened his smile as he stared point-blank at Balair.
"Yeah, so they are all good as we just confirmed…" he paused as Balair finally let out the air he had been holding in on getting the news.
"Now… I'm sure you have noticed the group of people before you. Before we get into business, I'll do a tiny introduction…" he paused again, as if to build suspense.
"The person sat there, of course, your Platoon Sergeant Hansen. The one just behind me is Lady Nilith of House Esquil. The big guy at the door is Noah, and finally, there's me, Sabastin of House Delford," he said, his smile widening as he got to his own name. Balair's eyes landed on the owners of the names as they were called. Nilith, unlike the rest, did not meet his eyes; instead, she looked at the back of Sabastin's head.
"Are you done talking, you pompous buffoon?" Noah called, his deep voice resounding as he walked up to the bed, stopping a little distance from Nilith, who retreated slightly, her shoulders slumping a few inches from their previous height.
"We have to talk, kid," Noah said, folding his arms across his chest as he looked down at Balair from his height.
Grumble! Grumble grumble!
A familiar sound resounded as Balair tilted his head up to look at the person addressing him, hunger crashing whatever party had been holding in his fluid-filled stomach.
"After lunch," Noah added, a hint of disappointment present on his face.