King Nishighi stood firmly in the center of the quiet, dimly lit inn room, his tall and powerful figure casting a long shadow across the wooden floorboards. After our small group had completely agreed that Lucian should be the very first person to receive the cure from the bottle, the king turned his head slowly toward the corner of the room where Lucian was resting. With a calm and steady expression on his face, Nishighi went to Lucian's bed, walking with slow, deliberate, and incredibly heavy steps that echoed softly in the silent space. The rest of us moved back against the walls, making sure to leave a completely open and clear path for the ruler as he navigated the narrow gaps between the furniture. He walked past the other beds where our unconscious classmates and Ma'am Cherha were lying perfectly still, his eyes focused entirely on his destination. When he finally arrived at the side of Lucian's bed, he came to a complete stop and stood tall over the sleeping boy. He spent a few brief moments simply looking down at Lucian's pale and motionless face, evaluating his condition with an intense and unreadable gaze. The entire room fell into an absolute and heavy silence, with everyone holding their breath as we watched the king's movements with extreme focus. Nishighi adjusted his posture slightly, leaning forward over the mattress so that he could easily reach the unconscious boy with the small container he held firmly in his large hand.
He raised his arm with a very smooth and controlled motion, lifting the bottle up into the air directly above Lucian's resting face. He carefully prepared the container, holding it perfectly steady with his fingers to ensure that not a single drop of the vital substance would be wasted or spilled onto the blankets. Once the opening of the container was positioned precisely over the boy's face, he slowly tilted his hand forward, and he poured the bottle at Lucian's mouth. The liquid inside the container began to flow out in a clean, smooth, and continuous stream, passing directly over Lucian's parted lips and entering his mouth without any difficulty. Nishighi kept his hand completely frozen in that position, allowing every bit of the liquid to empty safely into the boy's mouth. We all stood around the edges of the room, watching the process with intense anticipation, waiting to see how the remedy would affect our frozen companion. For a few short moments, nothing seemed to happen, and Lucian remained completely still on the mattress. But then, a slight movement occurred in his throat as his body automatically swallowed the fluid, and slowly Lucian wakes up from his deep, unresponsive state.
The pale color began to leave his face as a healthy warmth returned to his skin, showing that the deep coma was finally losing its powerful hold over him. His eyelids trembled slightly at first, fluttering open with extreme slowness as his eyes tried to adjust to the dim light filtering through the room's curtains. He blinked several times, staring blankly up at the wooden ceiling above his bed with a completely confused and groggy expression on his face. As his awareness returned to him more fully, he shifted his weight on the mattress, and he slowly sits up in the bed, using his elbows and hands to push his upper body off the pillows. He shook his head slightly from side to side to clear away the lingering dizziness from his mind, looking around the room at all the people gathered around his bedside. He took a deep breath to steady his voice, looked directly at us, and said, "What happened... Nah, don't tell me." His voice was a bit rough and dry from being unconscious for such a long period of time, but his words were completely clear and perfectly understandable to everyone in the room. He seemed to realize that something incredibly complicated and unusual had taken place while he was asleep, but he preferred not to hear any long explanations right away as he tried to gather his senses.
Hearing his familiar voice and seeing him sit up completely under his own power brought an immediate and massive wave of pure relief to everyone who had been worrying about him for so long. The heavy, anxious feeling that had filled the small inn room completely vanished in an instant, replaced by a deep sense of happiness. Celdrich, Elphyete, Euphyne, and I are glad that he's back, our faces lighting up with genuine smiles as we looked at our restored friend. Celdrich let out a long breath that he had been holding in his chest, looking incredibly happy to see his companion awake and speaking once again. Elphyete and Euphyne both smiled brightly, their deep worries completely disappearing now that the first of our classmates was safely out of danger and sitting up on his bed. I felt an incredible weight lift off my own shoulders as I stood there looking at Lucian, feeling completely grateful that the king's bottle had worked so perfectly and so quickly to bring him back to us. We all stood tightly grouped together near the bedside, enjoying the wonderful moment of seeing our friend fully conscious and alert after such a long and terrifying ordeal.
I took a small step forward, moving closer to the edge of the mattress so that I could speak to Lucian while he was still looking around the room at all the people gathered there. Since there were several individuals present whom he had never seen before in his life, I wanted to introduce them to him immediately so that he would understand exactly who was standing in the room with us. I said to Lucian to meet Nishighi, Ishighi, Hanashighi, Zhandra, Celes, and Salphy, gesturing with my hand toward each individual one by one as I called out their names clearly in order. I pointed first to the powerful king who had just cured him, then to his son standing nearby, and then continued to point to the other individuals who had accompanied us into the inn, finishing with the quiet maid and the remaining members of the gathering. Lucian listened closely to my words, his head turning slightly as his eyes followed my hand gestures, trying to take in the names and faces of all the new people who had suddenly appeared around his bed.
As soon as I finished speaking the names of everyone in the room, Lucian shifted his position on the bed to get a better look at the large group. Suddenly he looks at Nishighi, Ishighi, Hanashighi, Zhandra, Celes, Salphy, his gaze moving rapidly from one face to the next as he evaluated each person I had just introduced to him. His eyes passed over the powerful and intimidating figures of the rulers and warriors without stopping, scanning through the crowd until his eyes finally landed directly on the figure of the maid standing perfectly still near the king. His gaze locked completely onto her neat and quiet appearance, and a look of absolute wonder and amazement spread across his face. He stared at her for a long moment, completely ignoring everyone else in the room, and says, "I must've been dead because I've seen an angel," as he looks at Celes with a completely starstruck and stunned expression. He seemed completely captivated by her presence, speaking the words with total sincerity as if he truly believed he had passed away and entered a completely different realm after waking up from his long coma.
The casual and light atmosphere that had briefly filled the room was interrupted in a completely sudden and unexpected way by the man standing near the back of our group. Sir Vael had been watching the entire scene with a highly amused look on his face, and Lucian's dramatic comment to the maid seemed to prompt him to take immediate action. Sir Vael suddenly snapped his fingers, creating a sharp, loud clicking sound that echoed powerfully through the quiet spaces of the inn room. The exact moment his fingers came together, the reality of the room shifted completely in the blink of an eye. Before Lucian could even realize what was happening to him or finish his thought, Lucian suddenly got teleported up into the air, vanishing instantly from his sitting position on the mattress and reappearing high above our heads near the high ceiling of the room. At the exact same instant, a portal appeared directly in the empty space beneath him, opening up a dark, circular void in the middle of the air. Another matching portal appeared directly above him near the ceiling, creating a perfectly aligned vertical loop right in the center of the room.
Because of the sudden change in his location and the appearance of the two connected voids, Lucian began to drop rapidly through the air under the force of gravity. He fell straight down into the lower portal, only to instantly emerge from the upper portal near the ceiling a split second later, causing him to fall down through the exact same space over and over again in a continuous cycle. And Lucian kept falling down for 20 seconds, trapped completely in an endless vertical loop that kept him suspended in mid-air without any way to escape. During the first second of his sudden fall, Lucian's eyes went incredibly wide with absolute shock as he realized he was no longer touching the bed. By the second second, his mouth opened in surprise as he dropped through the lower void. During the third second, he began to wave his arms around wildly in the air, trying to find something solid to hold onto as he plummeted downward. By the fourth second, he emerged from the ceiling portal again, his body moving at a rapid and continuous speed. During the fifth second, he spun slightly in the air, completely disoriented by the looping motion. By the sixth second, his clothes began to rustle loudly from the constant rush of wind as he kept falling. During the seventh second, the rest of us stood completely frozen in place, watching his repeating descent with extreme surprise. By the eighth second, Lucian tried to shout, but the suddenness of the movement made it difficult for him to catch his breath. During the ninth second, he passed through the lower portal for the ninth time, appearing instantly at the top of the room again. By the tenth second, which marked the exact halfway point of his strange punishment, he was still falling completely out of control through the center of the space. During the eleventh second, the continuous motion created a rhythmic sound in the room as he vanished and reappeared. By the twelfth second, his arms were flailing out to his sides as he tried to stabilize his body in mid-air. During the thirteenth second, he dropped straight down through the vertical line, looking completely helpless. By the fourteenth second, the speed of his fall remained completely steady as he looped through the two portals. During the fifteenth second, he looked over at Sir Vael with a face filled with absolute confusion and silent pleading. By the sixteenth second, he emerged from the ceiling yet again, falling headfirst before straightening out. During the seventeenth second, the loop continued without a single moment of slowing down or stopping. By the eighteenth second, the entire room remained completely silent as we all watched the bizarre spectacle unfold above us. During the nineteenth second, Lucian seemed to completely give up on trying to stop himself, letting his body drop heavily through the empty air. By the twentieth second, the full duration of his tumbling ride finally reached its complete and final end.
Before Sir Vael finally stopped the active spell, he gave a casual look at the looping boy and decided that the lesson had lasted long enough. With a simple mental command, he closed the magical gateways, causing the two dark circular portals to vanish from the air in an instant. The sudden disappearance of the portals broke the endless vertical loop, restoring the ordinary space of the inn room. With the lower portal completely gone, Lucian's downward momentum carried him straight toward the furniture located directly beneath him, and Lucian fell into the bed, landing heavily right back onto the soft surface of his mattress. He hit the blankets with a loud thud, bouncing slightly against the pillows as the mattress absorbed the full impact of his long drop from the air. He lay there flat on his back, completely out of breath, incredibly dizzy, and utterly disoriented by the twenty seconds of continuous falling through the room. He stared blankly up at the wooden ceiling, his hair completely messy and his arms spread wide across the sheets as he tried to recover from the sudden experience. Sir Vael looked down at the crumpled boy resting on the mattress, a large, highly satisfied grin spreading across his face as he thoroughly enjoyed the results of his sudden action. Sir Vael said, "Classic." His voice was completely relaxed, casual, and filled with deep amusement, treating the entire magical prank as a funny and traditional joke that he thoroughly enjoyed performing.