"Now, can you tell me how you got a broken jaw, six broken ribs, a broken hand, and a swollen eye?" Salka was back to his earlier mood, and Sagiri had never felt such intimidation. It was as if he had no choice but to answer the question honestly. He, however, had not decided the best course of action, and he had not even processed why they had attacked him as if they wanted to kill him.
"I fell down the ramp," he answered, ignoring all the warning signs in his head. Silence followed, and neither side spoke for a long moment.
"From the roof?" Salka asked, and Sagiri evaded his gaze. Of course, he knew Captain Salka knew he was lying, but he had not yet decided what the course of action was.
"The boy needs to eat and rest. He has to rest for a day. You will question him tomorrow." Sayaku said, watching the conversation unfold. She was a healer, of course, she could tell he did not fall, but her job was to heal, not interrogate.
"Recruit Sagiri for lying to a commander, you will have to be punished. Think about your answer clearly before tomorrow, or I will make that 'fall' feel like a walk in the arena," Salka said in a low voice. His aura emanated danger. Sagiri did not dare watch him until his back was turned and he walked out the door.
"Why did you lie?" N'varu seethed as soon as Salka was out of sight. "It was the tamelku twins. wasn't it?" he continued, his anxious demeanor morphing into anger. "They need to be punished for what they have done. Why are you protecting them?" N'varu paced around the room. Sagiri could understand his line of thought, but he did not have evidence either. They had made sure to make sure he could not see their faces. If he had not the ability to perceive their hate, they had pretty much left no loose ends. Yet he had no intention of forgiving him. He did not specifically feel any rage or any urge to revenge. Something inside of him, a part of him so dark he had never touched, wanted to make them know pain. it did not want to make it fast, but it wanted them to suffer. slow and long till they begged to die. He did not try to deny that part of him. He felt dangerously calm.
"I will go right now and tell the captain. I can't just stand by..." N'varu started turning to leave, but what Sagiri said next had him frozen.
"I want them to die," Sagiri spoke lowly, and N'varu stopped suddenly in his movements, turning swiftly to Sagiri as if he hadn't expected him to utter such words.
"What?" N'varu asked, completely taken aback.
"I do not protect them. I want them to die by my own hand." Sagiri could not even recognize his own voice. It was like the power inside of him held a very dark side, and he had for the first time merged with it. Only now did N'varu realize his pupils had gone black, and he was not completely in control. When the Scouts had come to his village when he was twelve, the power had lashed out on its own with just the need to protect its vessel, yet now Sagiri had allowed it to merge slightly. Ever since he woke up and looked at his mutilated body, a feeling of rotting had started inside of him. He had it let it fester while he received treatment. With every click of his bones back into position, the rot had festered and become a disease.
"Keeper?" N'varu said, rushing to his side, but the power inside him was leaking, and it pushed him back a few feet, making him skid on the floor.
"Keeper, stop! you are losing control, and your body is too weak," N'varu said, getting up from his feet and pushing himself closer to the bed again, his footsteps slow as if he was being blown away by a typhoon, and it was taking him everything to hold on.
"Humans don't deserve kindness." His eyes went completely black. N'varu panicked in his weakness. Sagiri had given in to his deepest feelings of punishment. He did not have mere emotions like hate or revenge inside of him. What he felt was the need to punish and prune the hate that festered in the human race. That was scarier than revenge.
"If you use all the remaining energy that you need to heal your body, you will lose control." N'varu tried to pump sense into the boy, but he was walking on the edge of his madness to punish, and until he punished someone, he could keep going down and down his desire to punish until he was completely lost.
"They are a wrong which I must make right," he spoke more to himself than to N'varu. He had received medicine to help him recover quickly, but if he pushed it, things were not looking very good.
"Keeper, stop!" N'varu said, panicking fully, but it was futile. Sagiri had now levitated a few inches off the bed. The markings under his skin were glowing violently, and N'varu could see the glow even under the uniform.
'This is bad,' he thought. He needed to act and act fast before things went totally wrong.
He let himself sink into a sitting position and forced himself to fall into conscious slumber. It took him a few moments. It was hard trying to get into that vast concentration space with Sagiri losing control, but he had to. When he opened his eyes again, they had gone completely white. he used all the strength he had to break past the leaking force from Sagiri. It felt as if he was moving a boulder, but he ignored the pain. He only had one shot to put the boy to slumber, and he could not miss.
He did not give Sagiri time to react before he hit the vital spot where his neck and brain stem. Everything that followed happened simultaneously. He held onto the sagging boy who had now lost all consciousness and laid him carefully back down, not to tamper with the bandages.
"I don't know how long I'm going to be able to keep him under control," N'varu said to himself, falling to his feet after gasping for breath. that had taken almost all of his strength to pull off, and the boy had not yet reached his full potential. He felt weary and proud at the same time. He did not need to stay away from home for much longer. He shed a tear and wiped it away. Just this once, he was going to leave the decision about the tamelku twins entirely in Sagiri's hands.
When Sagiri opened his eyes again, the room was empty with only food beside his table. He was in so much pain that he could barely move. The pain medication had worn off, which was the major reason he had woken up. He groaned, trying to stand up from the bed, but he failed miserably.
A junior healer came by and helped him to the cleaning room before helping him eat and gave him another dose of the pain medication, dark pills, and healing pills. He passed out again, another side effect of the pain medication. The process kept repeating itself for the rest of the day and the whole night. N'varu had not come back again, and he did not have any recollection of when he had left. He only remembered the rotting in his heart getting so loud, and him agreeing about punishing the twins for the pain they had caused him. They had messed up with his schedule to finish reading the three lower years' books, and for that, he was not willing to let go. not even his benefactor had made him feel the cold urge to punish like this before.
he had not yet decided what to tell Salka when morning came, and he had a feeling that Salka's way of punishing was worse than that of Fuwuka and Torena. before he could worry again, he fell back to dreamless slumber. Only for a while, however, before he was pulled into a familiar dream with that familiar woman and a throne made of the earth. It was silent, and for the first time, he did not stay in the dream much longer. He woke up feeling uneasy, but was under the influence of the drugs.
Miss Sayaku had been right, however, about him needing a full day to recover. He had not fully recovered anyway, but whatever was in the healing medicine had worked magic on him. He could finally move by himself. The pain was still there, but it was no longer searing and hot. The pain was uncomfortable but manageable. N'varu had finally arrived with his change of clothes after the morning meditation. After bathing, Sagiri changed, and he immediately felt better. Sayaku came again, and after veiling his eyes, he changed the wrappings, tying them much tighter this time so no bone could heal with a crooked shape.
N'varu helped him back to bed after he had eaten before he left but not before telling him about his episode of losing control. He also warned him not to let it happen again.
"Don't let your urge to punish overtake you. We were lucky this time. No one was around. Good luck doesn't happen twice," he warned before leaving to start his classes. He had only been allowed to visit because Sagiri had confirmed they were friends. until the culprits were found. No one was allowed to come near him. Sagiri was still high on the drugs, and he fell asleep soon after N'varu left.
When Sagiri woke up again, however, it was not silent, nor was he alone. The strong presence in the room was what had jolted him out of his deep slumber. He understood immediately why it had gotten too suffocating for him to breathe. His right eye swelling had gone down, but it was still significantly swollen. He was, however, to open it in a narrow slit together with his left to take in the three men who were looking at him as if he were a specimen.
Principal Senraki was standing in the middle of the room with Captain Salka and the discipline division commander, Torena. They were speaking with healer Sayaku in a serious voice, and when he finally opened his eyes, they all turned to look at him. Torena held his usual expression. Sagiri guessed he needed to be there because bullying was forbidden in the school, and since no one could believe he had fallen down a ramp, the only explanation was that he had been bullied. He had only been in Principal Senraki's office a few days back to answer bullying charges. He was in a hard spot, and he, for once, did not know which way to escape. Salka was seething silently, but Senraki was on a whole other level. Sagiri could not perceive his feelings, but his presence held a darkness that was almost tangible in the moment.
"He is awake. It is time to begin." Principal Senraki said in the most serious tone that Sagiri had ever heard come out of him. He looked scary, and his presence held an even darker aura than Captain Salka. It did not look good for him at all. A moment of silence followed like the silence before a storm and since sagiri could not get a read on the three men he could only wait for what awaited him to unfold.