ASCLEPIUS

79

"If I were a nucleic acid, I would be RNA. That way, I could have U!"

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"Urgh! How many books are there?!" You yelled in aggravation after going through your fifty something book.

It's better safe to check them all.

"But what are we even looking for exactly? A book? A note? A magic crystal ball?!"

Just something out of the ordinary.

"I don't know if you know this about me, but all of this is out of the ordinary to me! How am I supposed to know what stands out in a Chief's office?!" you laid back on the floor with the many books you checked surrounding you.

It had been around an hour now. An hour of nothing but checking the shelves of books.

You were starting to think that this was a waste of time.

"How can I find something that I don't know what it looks like..." maybe this was all for nothing. Maybe you were going crazy and misheard the conversation he had with Jin.

During your 'break', your eyes looked around the room you were currently in. The large black desk to your right and the shelves to your left towered over you and everything else looked normal to you.

A normal office indeed.

Your eyes trailed the walls and all the paintings that were on there. They were all abstract art with random shapes and colours and just as you were about to move your eyes away from them, one painting at the end caught your eye.

It wasn't abstract at all and it looked as if there were people on it.

Now curious as to what it was, you carefully started to stand and make your way over to the said painting and got a better look.

It was one of those paintings that you would find in a museum or in an art exhibition. Unlike the others, it wasn't abstract and it was clear that it was about Greek history.

"...is that Asclepius?" It would make sense to have a painting like that here in the very hospital named after him. You didn't know much about the God really, just that he had something to do with health.

Now that you thought about it, you had come across a book with his name displayed on it.

Swivelling on your heel, you went over to the very messy pile of books that were sprawled out and looked for the bright blue book.

"...ahah!" You exclaimed after pulling it out from the pile.

It was a medium sized book, the size of the textbooks that you had in school.

What are you doing?

"Finding out who Asclepius is"

You're wasting time.

"We still have a lot of time left, I'm just taking a break" and with that, you decided to block out the voice from your head as you began reading the book.

"Asclepius was the god of medicine. He was also the patron god, and reputed ancestor, of the Asclepiades, the ancient guild of the first seven Doctors.
He taught them the ways of saving a life and considered the Doctors his children. They became exceptionally good and saved lives everyday.
However, the more time Asclepius spent on Earth, the more he began to love the humans who lived there.
One day, one of his Doctors died tragically from an unknown illness they had and Asclepius couldn't accept it.
He used his powers to bring the doctor back to life which angered Zeus greatly. Zeus saw Asclepius as a threat to humanity by breaking the balance between Gods and Humans. Zeus bestowed the punishment of striking a thunderbolt upon him, thus killing him" you finished. Just as you were about to turn to the next page to continue the story, there were signs of a page being ripped out.

Confused, you carried on flipping through the book.

The first few pages were about his history and the rest were about his deeds to the world and how he managed to help people learn.

No sign of the missing page though.

"Wow, he got killed trying to save someone..." closing the book, you placed it back on the shelf and looked at the rest of the books around you.

Done reading?

"Yeah yeah, I'll get back to looking"

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A/n: I tweaked the Asclepius mythology a tiny bit to fit the story BUT he did get killed by Zeus 😭