Elise

She woke up.

Everything was spinning, and it felt like she lost her balance, even though she lied in a bed, which was strange, because she could not remember getting into bed.

As a matter of fact, she could not remember going to sleep, either.

She had been training with Jonathan and the Archmage to activate Jonathan’s magic, and then… Something must have happened, but what?

She could not remember what that might have been.

Suddenly, she realised that somebody was talking, but for the love of Magic, she was unable to even distinguish between words, and understanding the meaning of what had been said was something she did not even try.

She shook her head in a futile attempt at understanding the situation, or at the very least the words that were spoken, which would almost certainly help with the first situation.

She tried to sit instead of lying, but, after she managed to get her upper body up from the bed, all her strength left her, and she fell back down.

Luckily, someone helped her to get back into her original position, or that might have ended with her rolling off the bed, and by now she was certain that it was raised above the ground.

Raise, such a strange word and so similar to raze, at least from the sound. She giggled at herself, a silly thought, but that was her mind right now, full of silly, at least in part nonsensical and off-topic thoughts.

But slowly, ever so slowly, her grip at reality began to affirm itself, until it finally was completely back and in charge.

She still was not feeling well, but she was feeling better than before, as well as finally being able to understand the spoken word again.

This felt like a massive improvement in relation to her situation before, so she took it happily. But now, she decided, to move unto a more pressing need: “Can I please have a glass of water? My mouth feels dry.”

Her voice came out raspy, which helped underscore her question, but also nearly unintelligible, which almost certainly did not help in transporting the question to the voices she still could not identify and understand.

Oh, she did understand a word or two in every sentence they were saying, but combined with the addled state of her mind that could have been very easily nothing at all because it was not enough to pull a general meaning out of what amounted to thin air, or more precisely, hot air.

Hot, moving air.

What was she now thinking about, she asked herself.

No matter, she decided and continued to try to understand the words that were being said.

Suddenly, someone gave her a glass of water, which shocked her, until she remembered that she asked for one.

If she were more coherent, she would have found her addled mind funny, but if she were coherent that would not have been an issue, so there was that.

But because she was not coherent, she thought about how strange it was that asking for a glass of water was second nature to her by now, considering how expensive they were.

Admittedly, many glasses at the school were not in the best shape which most nobles would tend to use, but experiments of certain kinds of magical students.

But it was still impressively clear and expensive.

She finally identified the voices as the Archmage and her summon, Jonathan.