Chapter 14

I didn't catch anything else she said after that. My body started convulsing as I collapsed on the ground. The drugs I had taken had completely flushed out of me by that point, the toll of which was making itself known. I gasped for air and lay groaning on the ground. The world became a blur around me. I vaguely felt someone yank me up and into the air. My world started to fade to black, and the only thing I could see or hear was Zach yelling at someone above me. Then darkness.

It's funny how weird it feels to be unwillingly forced to sleep. Your body, just shutting down and telling your brain no. I only woke up for brief periods of time, a few seconds at most, and saw flashes of activity around me. I couldn't tell what was happening. Then the dreams started. Nonsensical dreams at first, dreams of stupidity, fun, childlike behavior. But then the real dreams started. The first time I had ever punched somebody. The image of my mother crying and clutching her face as my father stood over her, blood dripping from his knuckles. The memory of walking into my house, only to see blood splattered on the wall, my mother's still body, and the gleaming silver of a pistol clutched in her lifeless hands. I will never forget that. 

By the time I woke up fully, I had seen and dreamt a thousand things, almost all of them forgotten. I awoke in almost the exact same hospital bed that I had been in before, only this time there were people in the room with me. Zach sat dozing off in a chair beside me, Mino was staring out of the window overlooking a lush green forest. The kid was also awake, sitting across the room twiddling with the string on his bow. Judging from the rough nature of his fingers and the way he held the bow, he had been shooting for a long time. 

I slowly sat up with a groan, alerting the two to my presence. "Good, you're up." Mino's normally cold voice held a hint of worry and concern. But her next sentence disproved any notion of actual concern for me as a person.  "I was afraid I was going to have to find other people to work with. At least, work with when you two get stronger."

Zach started to stir in the chair next to me due to the voices, his hand coming up automatically to wipe off the bit of drool that had gathered at the corner of his mouth. "Wazzuppp?" He yawned with a stretch.

Mino answered in a deadpan voice. "I was just saying it's good he didn't die." Zach looked at her with an incredulous look. "Well, no shit." He said in a sarcastic voice. I just stared at the two of them bantering back and forth as the kid looked on in amusement. There was a question I had to ask. "Why are you guys even here?" The two of them stopped talking immediately and turned to look at me. 

The look on her face was hard to describe. It almost looked….sheepish. She answered me in a voice that could only be described as someone not really knowing what to think about a situation, unsure of herself. "I… I feel bad about how the situation went down. I'm the more experienced one of the three of us, and yet, I literally did nothing. I was knocked unconscious in the first, what, two minutes of us starting, and you guys had to do everything." She took a deep breath in. "What I'm trying to say is, I'm sorry. There." She quickly turned back around and began staring out of the window again. 

The room was silent for a few seconds as we took in what she said. Zach opened his mouth to say something, but the words I'm sure he was going to say flew out of my mouth before his. "It's cool, really. We handled it, we did what we needed to, so no problem." I turned to Zach and then subsequently the kid. "I'll talk to you two more in a second, right now, I am fucking thirsty, and I want to get out of this hospital bed right now." They both let out light chuckles as I threw the covers off of myself and swung my legs over the side of the bed. I was still very wobbly, but the power of being Selected must've been making me more used to my body being battered. I lightly stepped onto the floor, the hospital gown I was wearing fluttering open.

"Get ready to go, I'm going to the bathroom real quick and checking in with hospital staff." I relayed to the three of them. They all nodded. I closed the door behind me and worked on locating a bathroom. After finding one and stepping in, I immediately turned to the mirror and stared at myself.

The goblin boss had left some deep scarring on my face, several scars on my left cheek and above my left eyebrow. I slowly prodded the skin around the scars. I couldn't really believe it. Those wounds are just a permanent part of me now. That event will always be etched in my memories because of it.

I quickly used the urinal in the bathroom, unleashing who knows how many days worth of pee into it, before making my way down the hall to where I knew the workers resided. After a quick discussion of them insisting that I'm fine, and them constantly stating their surprise at the healing speed of the Selected, I was discharged and allowed to go home. 

I bantered back and forth with the other three as we walked out. I found out I was asleep for three days. I wanted to ask about the drugs Mino had that I took, but I decided that I could wait. I honestly didn't want to think about being Selected for a while, I just wanted to relax. And as we walked out, I had this warm feeling as I talked back and forth with the three of them. I couldn't describe it, not really. I just knew I wanted to keep that feeling. I hope that things are more relaxed from now on. 

Deep within a dense forest, there was a clearing. A big building with a red plus sign could be seen in the distance. The clearing was deathly quiet, even the birds that could normally be heard singing halting their song. It was still. Then silently, quietly, the ground began to give way. The dirt and grass caved in on itself, expanding more and more, until finally, the collapsing started. And the only thing left was a big, gaping abyss of darkness covered by the trees. A pit. And from it, a single hand appeared, grasping the edge.