The sunlight tickles his nose as his mind slowly arises from it’s deep slumber. He looks out of the window, and can see that it’s daybreak. After the first few gentle seconds with a hazy mind, Nathan shoots up in a rush, and then crunches up because of the pain in his gut and shoulder.

“Seems like you’re awake.”, an unknown voice tells him. “Too bad”, he whispers to himself as he gets up from his chair. “Since you’re alive and all, you probably shouldn’t move around too much. Recovery will take longer that way, and that’s a pain for us.”

While the voice is talking about something, Nathan struggles to put together what happened. As his memories slowly return, he twists to his side and get up out of bed, ignoring the pain, and faces the stranger with his right hand in front of him, ready for battle.

“Woah, woah, woah! Calm down, I’m the one who got you in here and had your wounds healed!”, the man exclaims as he stumbles backwards.

“Who are you?!”, he screams at the stranger.

Suddenly, two other people, one rather buff, average sized blonde male, and a… pretty woman, with piercingly green eyes, enter the room and walk infront of the other stranger.

“Hey, calm down!”, the beautiful girl tells him. “I’m the one who patched up your wounds, okay? I don’t know what happened, but I found you in the river.”

Nathan squeezes his own head with his hands. Some faint memories seem to be returning. The sound of a raging river… a forest… and a druid? Was he still dreaming? Was that… her? He struggles descerning dreams from reality.

“Marc, are you okay?”, the blonde one asks the the creeped out man.

“Yeah, he didn’t really do anything, he just scared the crap out of me.”, Marc explains. He moves closer again. “So, Mister Chosen One, could you calm d-”, he stops midword, as Nathan pulls the girl towards him and lays his fingers on her throat. “You damn bastard!”, he screams at him, trying to move closer, but the other man pulls him back.

Nathan looks at the calm one, and asks him “So, it seem like you understand what is going on, correct?”

The man nods at him slowly and expressively as he covers Marc’s mouth with his hands.

“Good, it would appear you are reasonable.”, Nathan continues. “Now, I want you to answer three of my questions in consecutive order, and answer them properly. One: How do you know I am the chosen one? Two: What do you plan on doing with me? Three: What do you hope to gain from helping me? Now, think carefully on what your next words will be.”

A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.

The woman jumps away from Nathan in a flash, but he manages to grab her by the throat.

“That was not smart. I will give you the chance to answer, but if you try anything funny again, I will crush her throat.”, Nathan explains with his usual blank expression.

The silenced man’s anger turns into fear as he hears those words, but the woman herself seems unimpressed.

“So that’s the thanks I get for saving you. You really are a bastard.”, the woman tells him, when she suddenly tries to pull his arms away. Whirr. Sparks appear at her throat, but Nathan crunches up with a dampned scream of pain all of a sudden, letting go of her in the process. Both men look at her in disbelief. “You won’t be able to use Chi for a while, since healing those fatal wounds of yours required everything you had.”, she explains. “So, trying to use any Chi would only leave you in extreme pain, and without it, you’re actually nothing but a well trained human, but since your wounded as well, we might just be able to overpower you.” She slowly steps away from him towards the door and pulls away the hand the other man is covering Marc’s mouth with. “It’s okay, Lark”, she tells him. “Since you seem to place value on being reasonable, I ask you do the same. Since you’ve been unconcious for multiple days, we have had plenty of chances to kill you, and are still capable of doing it. But we haven’t. And the reason for that is because you being the chosen one has nothing to do with us rescuing you, it’s simply because we wanted to save your life. It’s just by chance that we found out you were the chosen one afterwards. I would advise you to just appreciate our help, and treat us properly, so that we can nurse you back to health soon.” The druid turns around and looks through his eyes. “My name is Lexanara, I am the one who saved your life. Nice to meet you, chosen one.”, she tells him with her hands behind her back, stepping out of the room backwards, then closes the door. Both Lark and Marc are dumbfounded, while Nathan face remains blank once more.

‘Maybe she is actually not stupid’, he wonders. As he smacks his mouth, he notices it to be quite dry. “Hey, you. Lark, was it? Do you guys have some water? And something to eat, maybe?”, he asks him.

Lark stares at him in silence for a few seconds. “Sure man. The pitcher next to your bed is filled with drinking water, and I can go grab some food. If you behave, that is.”, he answers. As Nathan starts chugging down the pitcher, Lark leaves the room, and drags the confused and shocked Marc along with him. As they leave, they find Lex to be sitting on the ground, leaning against a wall, taking deep breaths.

Marc can finally put together what just happend, seeing her on the ground like this. “Figures you would have to calm down after pulling that shit.”, he tells her while walking up to her. He crouches down, and gives her a big hug. “That was incredibly reckless. If you were wrong about the Chi thing, or if he had just decided to attack you some other way, who knows what would have happened.”

“That could have gone wrong in so many ways.”, Lark agrees.

“But - acting cool and superior like that was really bad ass.”, he smiles at her. “Like, really, really badass. Don’t scare me like that again, and watch out, but thank you. You managed to make that guy trust us enough that he might actually not hurt us but instead reward us somehow when he’s back to normal health. Or, maybe at least the king will.”, he reaffirms her, as tears start rolling down her cheeks.

“He’s right, you know, Lex. Even if that bastard isn’t grateful to you for putting your life on the line, and even threatend to kill you, he’s still gonna be worth something for us. You’re decision to help him was right, really.” Lark confirms, and Lex’s tears turn into crying, muffled by Marc’s shoulder.