"Is she okay?"
"She's alright, don't worry."
She shifted her eyes behind her eyelids.
"When will she wake up?"
Her body felt too heavy to be moved. She tried to open her mouth but her lips wouldn't budge. Where was she?
"I can only assume—"
She opened her eyes with a loud gasp. She remembered water, loads of it. Then a hollow space followed by a small light and then... fire. Blazes of it everywhere. Hellfire on her skin, in her mouth, inside her lungs. She visibly shuddered.
"Gwen!" she was startled when she was pulled into an embrace but winced at the sudden strike of pain that erupted in her head. She noticed how Rose immediately backed away and bowed her head in silent apology.
"Where am I?" she pushed herself up on what seemed like a bed and looked around. The expanse of the room had a series of small wooden beds surrounded by a wall of grey bricks. The air smelled of medicinal herbs and she scrunched her nose, disliking the pungent odour.
"You're at the infirmary," Rose replied waving off who seemed like a healer.
"Infirmary?" They had an infirmary in hell?
Rose nodded, "In the Academy of course." They had an academy in hell now? Was that her punishment? To suffer a hell in another hell?
"It's not fair, God!" she whined, which resulted in a confused look from Rose. "First, you don't give me a stone. Then, you make me climb up the terrifying Percival. Then, you burn me alive and now you make me go through another hellhouse in your hell. What did I ever do to you?" She practically lashed out while facing upward; she didn't sign up for this when Edward found her on the outskirts of Avenelle and adopted her.
She never signed up for any of this, so why was she the one to pay?
"Hey, hey. Slow down, girl." Rose tried to calm her down but the frustration was too much to stifle, "You are not in hell, Gwen. We passed the trials and are now in the Alarys Military Academy. Don't you remember?"
"What do you mean I—" she cut herself off, her brain was desperately trying to function with the information. "Wait... What do you mean I am in the Alarys Military Academy? What do I need to remember? When did we pass the trials?" she tried to remember her last memory but it seemed so distant now.
The first two weeks of trials, her encounter with Rose and the two Grimvell men and then those subtle glimpses of the afterlife.
She couldn't recall the leftover weeks nor the completion of the trials.
Rose's expression softened along with her voice when she replied, "We lost Atkins when we reached the mountaintop. Then, we climbed down to the other side of the mountain together before you hit your head so hard that you lost consciousness. I had to drag you to the finishing wards the rest of the way." Gwen knitted her eyebrows, she would've remembered hitting her head.
"How come I don't remember anything..."
"Honestly, I'm wondering the same, but it may be because you hit your head so hard that you even forgot that you had a stone," Rose pointed at Gwen's throat, and Gwen realised that her tunic was changed into a white off-shoulder gown.
However, the biggest surprise hit when Gwen touched the area beneath her collarbone, and her fingers came in contact with a cold, hard surface.
She glided her fingers over its smoothness that reciprocated by sending a tingling sensation through her hand.
Wait...
She straightened up, rounding her eyes and clutching the pebble-like entity attached to her collarbone tightly, her mouth agape.
No, no, no. It couldn't be possible.
"Mirror. Give me a mirror!" She practically screeched when she tumbled out of the bed. Her thoughts were all jumbled up and she couldn't think straight.
A mirror appeared in front of her and she snatched it from Rose's hands, bringing it close to her face, and there it was.
An eye-sized gem was embedded in Gwen's skin just below her collarbone. It was white. Pure white, with strands of silver dancing in it. Her veins made a detailed frame for its edges and its sides faded into her skin. Its smooth surface was candescent, sending a hum of spark inside Gwen.
It was a moon stone. A real one. She couldn't believe it.
She pinched herself, then asked Rose to do it for a good measure just to make sure that she wasn't dreaming— she had to be dead. She looked up to see Rose frowning at her, completely oblivious to all the ruckus that was going on in Gwen's head.
"What happened... how did this...?" she found it hard to assemble the words as she looked up at Rose and then back at the reflection of her stone. After a while, she finally gathered her wits to say, "What happened after we fell in the sea?"
Rose's frown deepened even further, "The sea?"
"Yes. When Atkins was on our tail, we fell into the water, remember? So much water that it seemed like a sea. Then there was this huge black hole and then this strange force that pulled me into—"
She got cut off when Rose touched her shoulder, her face laced with concern when she said, "Gwen, are you sure you're okay? Does your head still hurt?"
"Of course, I am okay. Don't you remember—"
"We never fell into any water, Gwen. We just climbed until we reached the mountaintop and then descended the mountain in the next week before you hit your head on a boulder when you tried to jump from a ledge that was ten feet above the ground!" Rose rolled her eyes as if recalling the memory, "I practically dragged you to the wards that opened into the infirmary camps. You were unconscious for three days."
There was a moment where Gwen's face washed blank with confusion like the gears in her brain couldn't turn fast enough to take in the information from her wide eyes.
"Why don't I remember anything?" she definitely would've remembered being hit by a boulder. Her brain wasn't a ginger nut in a spice box. She had a good memory.
If anything went wrong with it either meant that she hit her head so hard that the spare parts of her brain were unwilling to function together anymore, or Rose was lying.
She skeptically looked at the redhead who was now hurriedly conversing with the healer. Concern and anxiety were prominent on her face as she glanced at Gwen now and then. Gwen softened a bit, recalling what Rose said a minute before. Gwen hit her head and Rose was the one who carried her to the infirmary, risking her own life on the way. Anyone else would not have hesitated to leave Gwen to die on that mountain, but Rose cared enough to save her.
"Why don't you lay down again? You must be tired." Rose guided her back to her infirmary cot and helped her lay down. No. Rose wouldn't lie to her. She had no reason to when she was the one who rescued Gwen. She was more than grateful for that act alone. However, she still couldn't shake the feeling that something was wrong and that Rose was hiding something from Gwen.
Gwen tried to remember what happened again, but all her efforts were futile. Her head throbbed with pain but she picked up the mirror once again and examined her new stone.
She had never heard of a white stone before and had no idea what it symbolized nor did she understand the concept of the strings of sparkly grey that twirled in and around the white. It was a unique stone, something she never heard of, but she didn't want to be the judge.
She was glad that she finally received a stone, although she wasn't exactly sure what she did to manifest it. She was tired to be living as an outcast and was finally glad to get a chance to live in the normalcy of the world.
However, even as she gazed back at the reflection of the magically gorgeous stone, she couldn't help but think what price she would have to pay for a favour so great.
But as she closed her eyes and grazed her hand on the luminous stone again, she decided that she could pay any price if only to be normal.