Gatekeepers Book 1: Darkness

Results

When Draycos came to, he immediately flinched from the pain coursing throughout his entire body. He could tell that his injuries had been healed to some extent, but not completely like during his training with Zero and Damrabe. Draycos could feel the bandages wrapped around most of his torso. Groaning, he opened his eyes.

He was lying in a bed placed in an extremely large room, about the size of an indoor soccer stadium with a vaulted ceiling, filled with beds of various sizes. Ornate steel framed windows stretching from near the ground to almost all the way to the ceiling were placed in the stone block walls at regular intervals, and the late afternoon sunlight streamed through them. A large French door made of almost black brown wood took up almost the entirety of a wall at one end of the rectangular room.

Draycos heard parchment crinkling and looked up behind him to the right to see Vertex leaning against the wall behind the head of his bed, holding a rather thick leather-bound book in one hand. The book was large enough for Draycos to use as a table.

"Vertex?" Draycos called out weakly.

Vertex looked down at the sound of his name and saw Draycos looking at him. A pleased expression quickly flicked across Vertex's face before it disappeared, and he closed the book with a snap.

"Glad to see you're finally awake," he remarked as he squatted down next to Draycos's bed. "You feeling alright?"

Draycos attempted to sit up but fell back on the bed in pain; his entire chest felt like it burned the moment he tried.

"Hell no, I'm hurting all over," Draycos groaned, gritting his teeth to deal with the pain. "I would've thought my injuries would already be healed by the time I woke up. Where's Damrabe?"

Vertex sighed. "He's been busy the last two days helping the king deal with the repercussions caused by the actions of one of the Killwing branch family heads," he responded. "I'm sure you're smart enough to understand that the endurance assessment test you underwent wasn't meant to be that way. That branch family head had tweaked the spells used to conjurer that mock dragon that injured you so that it was much more powerful than it should have been."

"Two days?" Draycos echoed. "I've been out for two days?"

"That's right, and honestly, the head doctor here said it would probably be about a week before you regained consciousness," Vertex told him. "All your ribs were smashed, and three of them punctured your lungs. Your left shoulder was dislocated, and the arm was destroyed, and your stomach, spleen, and intestines were all badly damaged." Vertex shook his head. "It's a miracle that you're even alive right now. Any other human should've died from the blood loss. You were in intensive care for over a full day as the doctors and fairies worked on you."

"By the way, where are we?" Draycos asked as he kept looking around.

"You're in the infirmity located at Dragonspire Castle, which is obviously the Dragon King's castle," Vertex informed him. "Theravor had you brought here immediately upon your collapse at the end of your exam. Many of the dragons were in an uproar about that, but he wasn't going to listen to anyone complain about it. Theravor said that he and the Dragon Council would take responsibility for this since it was a member of the council that caused the whole incident."

"The exam!" Draycos suddenly cried, surprising Vertex. He bolted up and instantly clutched his chest before coughing up some blood.

"Idiot," Vertex commented as he shook his head. "The head doctor and his assistants can't compare to Damrabe and his healing abilities; you're still injured. Any more movements like that will reopen all those injuries."

"Th-the exam," Draycos managed to get out between gasps of pain, wiping the blood off his mouth. "It's been two days now, right? Do we have the results?"