"Don't worry. She will be fine."
A humble, low-pitched voice answered from beyond the dark void before Aletha.
"She just had a case of severe exhaustion. Give her a day, and all her symptoms shall be recovered."
Aletha opened her half-lidded eyes to a humble nursing room with a window at the side. The sun's rays pierced the glass and entered the room, illuminating the curtains that surrounded her.
Surprisingly, the room was quiet; all that was heard was her relaxed breathing in her ears.
A soft and cushion-like surface supported her back. Her bare feet angled out, fingers lacing around her body, stretching and rolling her neck.
(Where am I?)
As her vision cleared, Aletha noticed that she was lying on a soft, white bed inside what seemed to be a single infirmary room.
The window curtains billowed and swayed with the gentle wind, flowing rapidly in hypnotizing patterns.
When she slowly moved her head, she noticed a lantern hanging and hoisted above, not too far from her head, rugs beneath the two stools of the bed, and cabinets and shelves filled with books and potion bottles all around.
Taking an easy smile, she tilted her head up to the ceiling and rested her head against a soft pillow, whispering.
"So… I passed out. Sigh, silly me." Aletha said as she turned her head slowly to the window.
Behind the glass barrier was a beautiful panorama of a wooden urban forest of buildings.
From one corner to the other, structures stretched high and low, with paved roads winding through narrow pathways and aisles.
Horse carriages bustled around, and ships docked at a bay nearby.
A wall of tall, lush green mountains surrounded half the city, with waterfalls falling peacefully and delighting the flora below. People roamed around and conversed in the town, while Aletha lay in her hospital room at the highest point of the hospital.
Her eyes broadened in realization as she lifted her head from the bed.
"Wait?! Am I in Linuxinia City?!"
Suddenly, the door to her left creaked open, revealing a beautiful woman with gray hair and green eyes, dressed in a thin white coat and wearing a stethoscope around her neck.
She held a clipboard and carried a soft, welcoming smile as she stepped into the room, replying to Aletha in a soothing voice.
"Yes, you are. You're in the highest room in Linuxinia Hospital." As she slowly planted her bottom on a chair next to Aletha's bed, the doctor slowly grabbed her stethoscope and asked.
"Will you please move your chest? I need to detect your heart rate."
Without resistance, Aletha slowly nodded and lifted them. The doctor slowly placed the stethoscope at the side of her chest and neared Aletha's ear closer to Aletha's neck. After a few seconds, she slowly reeled back from the bed and nodded her head.
" Heart rate is normal." She said humbly as she slowly lifted the blankets over Aletha. "Health is fine. You should be back in working condition, patient."
Although she felt uncomfortable with the device placed on her body, Aletha decided it was best not to question it. After all, she had never truly experienced what it was like to be in a hospital, let alone knowing that such a place existed in her world.
"So, why am I here?" Aletha asked kindly as she lowered her head back on the pillow.
"You're here because a few people going by the name of Ubel, Dina, Shuffia, and Alai escorted you to Linuxinia hospital."
The doctor replied as she fiddled with her notes on the desk far at the other side of the room.
"They said that you collapsed on the ground and asked for assistance. Luckily for you, though, all you had just experienced was severe weakness."
As the woman grabbed a pencil and began writing on the pile of papers near her, the doctor continued, and Aletha sat up curiously, feeling the sunshine rain down on her.
"The conditions that we have discovered in you include severe dehydration, malnutrition, and pure exhaustion." The doctor said as she turned her head over to Aletha. "I strongly suggest that you consume foods and engage in water intake daily. It is unhealthy for any human to refuse to do that."
"But… I'm not a human." Aletha replied as she scratched her head. "I'm a Ruler."
"A Ruler…?" The doctor raised an eyebrow. "I suppose delusional thinking has also been linked to your severe exhaustion."
"No. I'm serious." Aletha answered as she lifted herself from the bed. "I'm a Ruler. A member of the Adtraic Family. Aletha Adtraic."
Rubbing her chin, the doctor scratched the back of her head, figuring out why she had familiarity with the name. That's when her formal tone immediately disappeared, leading the doctor to shout aloud.
"ALETHA ADTRAIC?!" She exclaimed, alerting the other doctors in the hospital. "No. I-I thought you were a myth. I have read books about you when I was little."
"Really, they have books about me?" Aletha mumbled with her round eyes.
The doctor hastily nodded and approached her, her eyes sparkling in awe as Aletha's long, straight white hair captured her attention.
"Yes. Many books, actually. Not just you, but your family." She replied with queasy breaths. "When I was still in school, I had to read five books about the origin and write a summary for each one. I had always thought those folktales were myths and legends. B-But it turns out…"
The doctor wriggled her eyebrows in shock and disbelief, pushing her chair and tossing her notebook to the side.
"I'm treating an actual Ruler! N-Nice to meet you. My name is Dr. Talia. A pleasure to meet you!"
"A pleasure to meet you too!" Aletha replied with grinning eyes.
As the moment's intensity faded, Aletha scratched her chin and asked Dr. Talia.
"Um, Dr. Talia. Do you know where Ubel, Dina, and Alai are?"
Without resistance, Dr. Talia pushed herself up from the chair and replied with an enthusiastic tone, forgetting her formality.
"Why yes! They are all in the waiting room!"
"Hey, Dr. Talia. Can you keep it down there?" Said a distant, low-pitched masculine voice. "We have an ill patient in the other room."
Immediately, Dr. Talia covered her mouth and gulped down a breath of realization, keeping herself from being fixated on the Ruler that is on her bed right this instant.
"Yes. Doctor Andrew. I apologize."
However, as she kept her mouth sealed shut, Dr. Talia couldn't help but mumble in her mind.
("I can't believe it. I have an actual Ruler in my hospital room now! I MUST be dreaming!")
. . .
When the doctor had left the room, Aletha stared into space for five minutes, waiting for her friends to arrive in her room.
During this brief idleness, she wondered what had happened to her brother and the quest she had been forced to abandon after being removed from a literal train crash. She twiddled her thumbs and turned to the window, watching as her world came into motion. Her gaze caught animals roaming around, carriages bearing purple stripes rolling up and across the streets of the cities.
She stood out from her bed and opened her mind to the lines of people walking along the sidewalks, the ships that repeatedly moved back and forth, and the sun shining brightly across the azure horizon.
Compared to the tame wilderness beyond Linuxinia City, she preferred…
(I like the activeness of this city more than the tranquility of those forests I saw back there.) Aletha thought in her head as she gazed at the panorama. (There's so much to do here compared to outside. Hopefully, I can get out of this room soon.)
Thereafter, her thoughts, the door to the room creaked open once again, revealing Doctor Talia. However, instead of approaching the room alone, an unfamiliar face stood at the side of her, keeping their piercing gaze directly at Aletha before masking it with a lying smile.
He had brandy-colored obsidian eyes, pale ivory skin, a high forehead, and a lanky figure. As the unfamiliar man approached the room, Doctor Talia informed Aletha in a formal tone.
"Patient, a visitor wants to speak with you." Doctor Talia said as she slowly stepped back to the door.
"Visitor?" Aletha mumbled with a raised eyebrow. "I don't remember having a visitor. This isn't Dina, Ubel, or Alai…"
However, before the Doctor could hear Aletha, the door was slammed shut, leaving Aletha and the unfamiliar man alone in one room.
. . .
An intimidating atmosphere brewed inside the hospital room. Aletha kept her eyes forward at the unfamiliar man, pointing out his every feature. From his chiseled, beard-filled chin to his wobbly and fierce eyebrows, Aletha detected that nothing about the man was friendly. The sounds of the outside filled the silence between their breaths, waiting for someone to speak.
The man took a deep sigh and raised his body high, slowly approaching Aletha's bed.
"You're correct. You don't have a visitor." He said with his formal, deep voice. "You are in extreme debt. And I'm here to collect it."
"Debt?!" Aletha screamed, eyes widening in confusion.
As the strange man sat in the chair, leaning forward attentively and caging his fingers, he took a deep breath and asked Aletha a question.
"I suppose you remember boarding the winged train a few days ago. Correct?"
In return, Aletha answered the man, nodding with a tight expression to show her skepticism at the stranger.
"Y-Yeah. I was with a group and we were supposed to ride the train." Aletha asked with a trembling voice, scratching her head. "B… But we experienced a crash."
Pausing in between, the man slowly lifted himself and hovered his intimidating gaze over Aletha.
"Yes. I know it very well. And I assume that you remember meeting a certain blonde-haired woman within the underground city of Clearstar, right?" The man said with a flare in his eyes. "The one that you sent to prison…?"
Upon the man's words, Aletha's face paled at the terrible recollections.
://: "Alright, take those barrels off that whiny, foul, and greedy shrew. Let's not kill her before we get our payback."://:?
She remembered how her body was almost crushed by the barrels.
:///: "You know exactly what you did, you repugnant twat! Stop lying with your doll-like face and pay up!":///:
The steel-hard fist she had endured, crimson scattering everywhere. Aletha remembered it as clear as day.
Concurrently, as the memories faded back into reality, Aletha bit her lip and answered, her heart trembling with fear.
"Y… Yeah. W-What about her?" She answered with a queasy tone.
"You will be sent to prison as well. Astait's Prison. The worst and most secure prison in the world of Gincad. Claimed rightfully where no prisoner can escape."
The man said bluntly as he turned toward the window.
While the wind pushed his brown hair back, his dark eyes leered over to Aletha and continued. "That is, if you don't pay your debt within the deadline."
"Deadline?" Aletha mumbled while reeling her head back against the wall. After she paused, she imagined the prison the man mentioned.
She thought of it as a huge stone block of epic proportions, embedded on an anchored iceberg with several towers overlooking it, covered in the endless drifting snowflakes.
As the imagined place faded away, Aletha gulped down a breath of fear and resumed with slurred speech.
"W…What? What deadline? How much do I have to give you?"
Rubbing his two fingers together, the man fixed his monocle on his eye, stepped forward, and answered with a stern and straight tone.
"You must pay around eight hundred thousand Gincoins for damages. You have approximately 7 days to make your payment and settle your debt. If you don't pay by that deadline…"
The man quickly drew up to full height and made unwavering eye contact with Aletha, expressing his warning with absolute certainty.
"... we will hire hitmen to track you down and send you to Astait's Prison. Your sentence-- for life."