EXOPLANET

“Go get the headmaster.”

“Where’d the D.O. go?  Wasn’t he the one that started all this?”

“He’s with the girl—”

“Both of you, shush.  Where’s the headmaster?  Somebody go get him.”

“Kai should go.”

“What?  Why me?  Sehun doesn’t know any of you – what if he wakes up?”

“You can teleport, .  He won’t be awake by the time you’ve gone and come back.”

If Sehun had had the energy to open his eyes and roll them, he would have done.  He was awake.  Just not… awake awake.

“Fine,” said Jongin’s voice, irritated.  “I get it.  You’re older, so you can push me about.”

He must have gone to get the headmaster, because the first voice the second with exasperation.

“Chanyeol, for heaven’s sake, get a grip.  What did Kai ever do to you?”

There was a huff, and then silence descended.  A bit of movement followed here and there, and Sehun felt somebody checking his pulse and then laying a cool, damp cloth on his forehead.  It gave him time to process the conversation as his body adjusted to his conscious state of mind.  The last thing he remembered was the bald man with the eye tattoo ordering his men to kill him and Gaia, and then he’d passed out.  But now he was snuggly tucked up in a bed with somebody checking he was okay and Jongin had been mentioned, and a headmaster, so he figured he was safe.  Possibly even at the Academy.

He was still mulling over this, trying to push the gruesome scene from the throne room out of his mind, when a familiar voice distracted him.

“Is he awake?”

This was accompanied by a soft glow of light, and Sehun automatically flinched, more comfortable with the darkness.  He cracked open an annoyed eye.

The academy director and headmaster, Changmin, was standing beside the bed he was lying on, Jongin hovering a little behind him.  At the end of the bed were two boys, one very tall and the other very small.  He didn’t remember ever having met them.

“Kai said you had injuries,” Changmin said, holding up a hand.  The glow intensified a little.

Sehun eyed the two boys at the foot of the bed.  It took a moment or two, but the smaller one got the hint and dragged the taller one out of the room, leaving Sehun with just Changmin and a relatively inconspicuous Jongin who seemed to be wondering if it might not be a better idea for him to leave, too.

“The queen is dead,” he said hoarsely.

Changmin reeled back in shock.  “How?”

“Murdered.  People with a tattoo of a red eye.  Some kind of cult.”

“They were on the hill,” Jongin supplied, looking towards Changmin.

“And you were protecting her,” Changmin assumed to Sehun.

Sehun shook his head.  “The princess.  I’ve never been assigned to the queen.  Her last words were t-to bring Gaia here because she’d be s-safe.”

He didn’t know why there was a lump building in his throat.  He hadn’t even liked the queen that much, and yet he felt like he might burst into tears.

“And you were waylaid on the way?” Changmin asked.

Sehun nodded, and then hesitated.  “We would have got here, except all electronics and technology suddenly stopped and left us stranded.”

“So it’s not a localised power failure.”  Changmin sighed.  “We were warned this might happen – Chanyeol—”

He turned towards the foot of the bed, only to remember that he’d sent Chanyeol out of the room.

“D*mn,” he muttered, turning and hurrying out.  Sehun struggled to sit up and call after him, but his voice stuck in his throat and he was suddenly hit with a strange, painful tightness in his chest and windpipe.  Alarmed, he tried to in a breath, but all that happened was a weak coughing fit as the little air that remained in his lungs was expelled.  Nothing seemed to want to come in the other way – his lungs refused to inflate, and in a surprisingly short amount of time his vision felt like it was fading.

Jongin was at his side, trying to get him to lie down.

“Relax.  Relax and it’ll go away.  Well, it should.”

Sehun threw him a pitiful pair of puppy eyes and a whine.  It was easy for Jongin to say – he wasn’t the one who was unable to breathe!

The door opened again and the smaller boy from before came back in.

“Kai, move over,” he instructed, placing a tray on the table next to Sehun’s head.  Jongin reluctantly stepped to the side and watched in silence as the other boy fussed about with what appeared to be a bowl of water and various dried plants and a packet with powder.  By the time he was done, Sehun was convinced that he was going to asphyxiate from lack of air and his entire body was protesting with little pricks of pain from being forced into anaerobic respiration without warning.  He wanted to complain about it, but he still couldn’t find his voice, and he didn’t have enough air in his body to be able to make a sound in any case.

“Here.”  The boy slipped a hand under Sehun’s head and helped him to raise it (prompting a slight move from Jongin as if the other boy had wanted to do it instead and didn’t think the smaller one should be touching his friend).  “Drink this.  It’ll help to relax your body against the ebb and with any luck you should be able to sleep it off.  It’s not a cure-all, but it’s better than nothing.”

At first Sehun was wary to try some concoction he couldn’t even smell – his body was that adamant about no new air – but if he was promised some kind of relief from this, he figured it was worth a shot, and he took a hesitant sip.

The taste was muted, but very fresh – he couldn’t quite tell if it was orange or mint (which he found odd, since they had such distinct tastes) and eventually concluded it was both – but the liquid slid down his throat easily enough.  Two sips later and he could feel a physical difference in his body, as though his airways were opening up again, and he paused to inhale for the first time in what felt like hours – but in reality was probably only a couple of minutes.

The flavour of the liquid was much sharper after that – he detected lime, probably some pomegranate, and some herbs that he wouldn’t have been able to name if his life depended on it, but the boy had been right that it did make him feel a bit better.  He waited with the bowl at Sehun’s lips until it was empty and then removed it, placing it back on the tray.  Sehun slumped against the pillows.

The boy looked at him expectantly while Jongin hovered nervously in the background.  Sehun looked over at his friend, trying to catch his eye so that he could ask him how he’d gone from half-dead on a hill to a nice comfortable bed surrounded by friendly people, but his body was refusing to cooperate fully and the other boy got in first.

“What’s your magic?” he asked, looking almost as though he was poised to take notes.  “My medical skills are only rudimentary, but if you tell me I can wake up somebody who specialises in your magic area to look after you and make sure your ebb’s not doing anything nasty.”

Sehun just looked at him in bewilderment.

“I’m not a mage,” he croaked out after a good few moments of silence.

The boy looked puzzled for a few moments, but then his expression cleared.