*The Chronicles of F.R.E.E. Atania's Knight - Raquel Festow* Part 1

Chapter 4 - Realm of Earth

*Raquel Festow POV - Earth*

I hear a bird tweeting. At least, I think it's a bird... It's making a high pitched, rhythmic tweet constantly. It's actually beginning to get on my nerves. I also hear another rhythmic, pulsing whooshing noise, like the sound air makes when it goes in and out of your mouth as you breathe. Where am I?
My eyes fluttered open to a white ceiling, harshly sectioned into squares and I seemed to be laying on a rather uncomfortable, firm bed. I blinked and gingerly moved my head to the left. There were boxes all around me. some with green squiggles on them that I couldn't read. They just looked like zigzags. Who uses zigzags? Just underneath one of the boxes was paper jutting out of it like a tongue, with similar squiggles on yet more squares. Everything was very rigid, and... well, straight. Not a circle or curve in sight.
My body ached all over and the slightest movements seemed to send jolts of agonising pain through my body. I hadn't been given a healing potion it seems. I very slowly and very gently raised my arm to feel my head that was throbbing excrutiatingly. My fingers carefully slid into my hair and I whimpered in sorrow when I felt my beautiful, ankle length hair all matted and feeling like straw.
I looked down at my body and screamed. Every drop of blood left my body and my eyes widened so much in fear, they were going to pop out at any second. Snakes were eating away at the skin of my arms and had embedded themselves into me. One of the snakes had its stomach hanging from a hook attached to a pole on the bed. It's another form of torture! I started thrashing and pulling away at them in a blind panic, ignoring the throbbing aches across the whole of my body, as I desperately tried to remove them all. No sooner had I started screaming, a strange, solid curtain was flung open with a bang and in came four people dressed in white dresses.
"Pleize!" I begged them. "Pleize! The snakes are eating me! Get them off me!"
They didn't appear to want to help me at all, just pin me down to keep the snakes in underneath my skin. The bird's tweeting was getting faster and faster and the peculiar whooshing noise was getting quicker too. The four strangers were talking over one another trying to convince me into calming down and just laying there while I was being eaten alive. I thrashed away at them until I felt a sharp pinch in my elbow and I slowly felt like I was sinking into the bed, feeling sleepy and groggy. I calmed my screaming, even though my mind was still racing, and the birds tweeting gradually slowed down too. I began to breathe normally and took the chance to look at the four worried strangers surrounding me.
There was two men and two women. They were all wearing green cloth hats and white cloths over their faces to keep their identities a secret from me. One of the men had odd, oblong orbs in front of his eyes and the other had a wart in between his furrowed eyebrows. One of the women wore black lines around her eyes that made her eyes look sunken in, yet very pretty and the other was older, with deep crinkles in the corners of her eyes. All four had golden Aura's, but I still felt a little uncomfortable around them because I was in an unfamiliar surrounding.
"R-Relxa?" I slurred slowly.
The strangers all looked at each other before the man with the wart spoke.
"Hi." He spoke slowly and clearly, over prounouncing every word. "My names Doctor Versali. You are currently in Maidstone Hospital after you and your friends had an accident. Can you tell us your name?"
I stared blankly at him. Did he think I had been dropped as a child? "Raquel." I replied, just as slowly and clearly as he had done to me.
"O. K. Good." He put his pale green thumb up in the air and shook it a little. "How old are you?"
"Fifteen." I responded in the same way.
"Gaz, I don't think you actually need to speak to her like that... It appears she can understand you." The first lady mused.
Gaz looked at her and stood up straight, rubbing the back of his neck sheepishly. "Yes, well. We get that now..." He shrugged. "The other two haven't woken up properly, yet."
"What other two?" I asked them, keeping to the slow, clear speech pattern he had used before.
The first lady giggled a little. "You came to the hospital with two others. A boy and a girl. Do you know them?" She asked me softly.
I nodded, but then winced with the pain in my neck.
"Can you tell us their names?" She said, leaning forward to look at the boxes tongue.
"Why? Where are they?" I asked her slowly, dread coursing through my body.
"Don't worry, hun. They're safe." The second lady said.
"Gaz, why don't you and Andy leave this to us girls?" The first lady said sweetly to the two men.
The men nodded and left the room, closing the heavy looking curtain behind them with a click.
I looked back at the women. The younger lady removed the cloth from her face, revealing brilliant red lips and a toothy grin. The older lady removed her mask and her thin lips were pulled back into a warm smile.
"My name is Chelsea, this is Audrey. We're the nurses that have been looking after you for the past few months." The younger lady quipped, bobbing her head towards the older lady as an introduction.
"Relxa..." I said, bowing my head to each of them nervously.
"If you don't mind my asking, where are you guys from?" Chelsea perched herself on the edge of the hard bed, gazing at me curiously.
"I'm from Wacchica, Atania. Clara and Xavier are from Alzicante, Atania." I responded, my throat was feeling like a sandy desert. I raised my hand to my throat, grimacing at the rough feeling.
"Oh, of course, you're thirsty. Bless you, babe. Here." Audrey handed me a small cup, which I took gratefully and looked into.
The water was clear. Actually clear. No dirt, no brown tinge, it was clear as glass. I took a sip and it tasted so pure and clean I quickly finished the cup and raised it for more. Audrey chuckled and filled it up from a worn looking jug. After five cups, my throat finally didn't feel so coarse and rough. I sighed happily, feeling relaxed and safe with two people of gold Aura's, even after all I had been through.
"Rac iai!" I smiled at Audrey. She knitted her brow for a moment before morphing to a face of realisation.
"Ohh, rac iai means thank you?" She asked me and I nodded.
"Where are my fazeeb's?" I tried to sit myself up slightly, but slid back down causing me to tense and the aches and pains increased. I winced again.
"I don't know what fazeeb's are, hun. But I do know that you need some morphine. You had quite a lot of bruising across you whole body. Police are wanting to speak to you all about what happened so they can find the people responsible." Audrey's face darkened when she mentioned the pole eeze wanted to speak to me. I felt a chill course up my spine, should I be worried?
"What's a pole eeze? And fazeeb's means friend's." I explained, quickly, trying to sit up again as I watched Chelsea put two mulitcoloured worms in a tiny white cup and Audrey pour me some more delicious water.
"Take these." Chelsea said, ignoring the pole ezze question and handing me the little, short, red and white worms in the white cup. I looked down at them and wrinkled my nose.
"Can you take tablets?" Audrey asked softly, placing a hand gently on my shoulder.
I shook my head. They call worms tablets here? Strange.
"Ok, I will get you the liquid morphine for you instead then. We will give that to you orally." Chelsea took the cup from me and got off the bed. She turned back after opening the heavy curtain. "I'll check in on your fazeeb's too. Clara and Xavier was it?"
I nodded eagerly and leant forward, wanting to go with her, but she closed the curtain behind her. I looked at Audrey, concious of the birds tweeting again.
"Can you help me find the bird? I think it's stuck somewhere in these boxes." I asked, looking at the boxes around me.
Audrey burst out laughing. "What did you just say? A bird stuck in these boxes?" She threw her head back and howled with laughter. I chuckled along, a little frightened that she couldn't hear it and her reaction at my wanting to assist a helpless bird.
"That is the best thing I have ever heard!" She sighed to calm her laughing, wiping tears from her eyes. "Hun, there is no bird. These are called machines, they monitor your heartrate, blood pressure and other vital signs."
"My blood can feel pressure?" I raised my eyebrows. Maybe I've been doing my Releases wrong.
Audrey burst out laughing again. "No... Your blood pressure... The pressure of it going through your veins." She cried out between her chortling.
I was starting to get more alarmed at the way Audrey found everything I said hilarious. It was daunting and quite scary. I didn't know where I was. I am fresh out of using a Portal Bracelet for the first time, even though they're banned, and didn't know what Realm I was in.
Audrey calmed herself down again and looked at me with tears in her eyes. "You're going to be a lot of fun to have around, you know."
"C-Can I ask you some questions?" I said, looking down at my bruised and scratched up hands.
"Of course, hun." Audrey soothed, sitting on the edge of the bed like Chelsea.
"Where-Where am I?" I said, looking her dead in the eye.
"You're in Maidstone Hospital, Kent. England. If that helps?" She replied, looking worried.
I shook my head. "No... What Realm are we in?" I said slowly.
Audrey's eyes widened. "Realm?" She repeated. "What do you mean Realm? Oh my, I think we need to get a doctor to see you right away. I will call Doctor Vasali back in for you."
I grabbed her arm before she could get off the bed. "Please, just- just answer my questions." I begged.
She looked at my hands gripping her arm tightly, to my begging eyes and back again. "You really don't know where you are?" She whispered in heavy concern.
I shook my head slowly. "We had to flee our Realm, Atania after the Order of Verdicts started attacking our villages. Please, what Realm are we in?" I felt tears of grief well up in my eyes as I thought of my parents, of Salihn, Clemency and Penelope... Were they all dead? Or worse, sent to Deathea, the Order's Prison Realm?
Audrey looked away from me, worry etched all over her face. "I suppose you would call this 'Realm' Earth." She said, finally.
"Earth..." I furrowed my brow, trying to remember if my parents had mentioned that Realm to me before.
Audrey gave me a hard look. "Was it these Order of Verdicts who did this to you and your friends?" She asked slowly.
I nodded. "Where are Clara and Xavier?"
"They're in the rooms next door. They're still resting from their injuries." Audrey said, looking at me sadly.
"Can I see them?" I asked, quietly.
"When you feel better." She said, stroking a piece of hair away from my face and behind my ear.
I looked down at my arms. "How bad was I hurt?"
Audrey looked down with her eyes closed. "It was a close call. You had a lot on internal bleeding so we had to administer a blood transfusion. You had been stabbed multiple times on your legs, and it looked like you had been kicked to your stomach and head a lot too. You had two fractured ribs and they had broken your skull. You're on the mend now, though."
"How long have I been here?"
"About three months, now. You were put into an induced coma because of your injuries, but you're a fighter, Raquel." Audrey smiled at me. "The others have been healing well too."
There was a soft tapping coming from the curtain and Chelsea walked back in holding a tiny tube with rings for her fingers.
"Here's your morphine. You should feel better in no time with this." She smiled and pointed it at my mouth.
I opened my mouth a little and she poked a tiny spout into it. A liquid was then squirted into my mouth. It was sweet at first but left a strange after taste behind when I had swallowed it.
"Can I have some health and energy potion now?" I smacked my lips together, a bizarre cold, numbing sensation at the back of my throat.
Audrey laughed. "If there were such things, there wouldn't be any need for hospitals, now would there?"
Chelsea let slip a small laugh and took the tube away. "I think you need to get some rest now, babe. You need to stay in bed while you're here. I promise you, we will let you know when your friend's wake up too."
I nodded and gave a small smile to the both of them as they left through the curtain again. I laid my head back on the oblong pillow, deep in thought.
This Realm was completely different to Atania, it seemed. They weren't as knowledgable about the health benefits of herbs, otherwise I wouldn't be attached to these boxes called machines and snakes wouldn't be eating me.
I glanced down at the snakes embedded in my skin. They didn't hurt and I felt too tired to try and remove them again. I looked at the 'machines' tongue again, but the same squiggly lines were on it, that made no sense to me.
I thought back to Atania. Did those knights manage to save everyone from being killed or sent to Deathea? Who were they? Was everyone ok now? Did they find my parents? I concentrated on the latches to them from my Aura. They were still attached. My eyes began brimming with tears at the thought of Wacchica and Alzicante in ruin, with all the villagers laying dead on the ground.
My eyelids began to feel heavy and were drooping closed every minute that passed. Before I surrendered to sleep, I thought of Clara and Xavier, willing them to be alright through my Aura and that I will see them again soon.