Hollow

Chapter 5: The Restoration

He wakes up feeling his body warm and cozy, wrapped in an embrace of soft furs and sheets, but his face is cold in a somewhat unfamiliar, but not entirely unpleasant way. Like a cool breeze to ease a headache or ice cold water of a stream splashing his face on a hot day.

Best of all, he feels no pain at all. Not in his ankle where he had been shot the other night, and for the first time in a while, there is no pain at all in his right hand.

He can't believe he had forgotten what it felt like to just be comfortable.

He blinks his eyes open against a soft light shining through a window to his left, the rays of sunlight reflecting off the specks of dust drifting through the air. There's a stone ceiling with wooden beams supporting the weight above him.

Sitting up, a brown fur blanket falls from his torso, pooling around him on the bed. A bed? The last thing he remembers is the blinding light coming from his hand and then the explosion of stone as the Jeal was destroyed. He felt weak, and then everything went dark.

Now he's in an unfamiliar room, safe and warm in a bed. Looking down at himself, the rags he was dressed in have been replaced with a grey jacket and black leather trousers, both suited perfectly to his lithe form, which he almost forgot the feeling of since leaving home. Human clothes never fit him quite right, so these must be either elven-made, or specially designed to fit him.

Looking around the room, he sees a small bookshelf beside a wooden desk and chair. And neatly folded atop the desk is a green bundle that he immediately recognizes as the cloak that was given to him by his guardian. He dreaded having left it behind in Nestamund when the Jeal tore it off his back while he was running, but it seems to have miraculously made its way back to him.

He lifts his right hand, seeing that the black corruption is completely gone. The violet mark is still on the back of his hand, but it's no longer glowing.

He sits there a bit longer than he intended, just staring at the purple imprint on his skin. Thinking about what Dumaine said about it still frightens him. Could it really be a blessing of the human Divine? Then what about the elven goddesses he has always followed? Why would this be put on him and not some human who actually believes in what it means?

After a bit too much time of sitting there and questioning the meaning of his entire existence and beliefs and his place in the universe, he wills himself to get out of bed, put his cloak on but keeping the hood down, and he ventures beyond the room in search of answers.

As he stalks through the halls, he sees through the small paned windows that white flakes are falling from the sky. The sight is so foreign to him that he almost wants to stop and just stare at it for hours, but his top priority is figuring out what happened and how he got here, wherever 'here' is.

"And the handsome, dashing, brave hero single-handedly saved the day! Along with his humble elven sidekick, of course," down the hall, he hears the familiar voice of Dumaine so he starts to follow the sound.

A woman scoffs. "You know that only the Hollow can kill horrors. You're not fooling anyone, Dumaine."

Llwell reaches the end of the stone hall and sees that the wide door is open a crack. He hesitantly grabs the edge of the door and pushes it in, taking small steps into the room but staying in the doorway, trying to remain as unnoticeable as possible in the large room of three people, all humans, and Dumaine being one of them.

The mage is leaned back against a large table that holds a map of Drallilas with an apple in his hand. The other two people, two women, are watching him. The tallest woman with black hair looks irritable, while the slightly shorter woman with brown hair just looks unamused, save for a small grin on her face as she watches the mage go on.