Now in one of Ms. Lia’s beds in the medical ward of Academia the boy looked even more out of place. Gerrit stood next to the bed, taking in even more sights of that weird clothing. The pants were a dark shade of blue and a bit rough to touch. His shirt was the smoothest woolen shirt he had ever seen. Yellow stripes zig-zagged across the breast and around the sleeves. And those shoes looked the most interesting. As far as Gerrit could tell no real leather was used to craft them.

Just where did this boy come from?

Apparently Ms. Lia wanted to know this too. She was always so kind and concerned about students getting hurt. For a teacher to carry in an unconscious student a large accident must’ve happened somewhere in Academia. The Professor had a hard time explaining that he had finally opened a portal to someplace else and that this young man just came hurling through, smashing one of his bookshelves in the process. Who knows how the dire his situation would’ve been had he come out through the back, crashing right through the third story window. Maybe one of the other students in the court would have reacted fast enough to cushion the fall with some wind manipulation.

The nurse’s familiar, a green glowing chinchilla, danced on the other side of the bed. Green tendrils hopped over to the boy wherever the familiar ran past. It looked almost cute and from experience Gerrit knew that being healed by the elven earth magic always tickled you from within.

When he thought that both adults were deeply engaged in a discussion, Gerrit leaned over Davis’s head. The brown hair seemed almost a bit chaotic in the way it was laid down. Slowly the scratches and small cuts vanished from the face leaving it looking unblemished again. With a tiny curled smile Gerrit reached onto the nightstand where a bowl of water and a cloth were waiting to be used. After wringing out the excess water the young apprentice started wiping the dust off Davis’s face.

Further down the body life began to return to the limbs. Davis subconsciously wiggled his toes. Every time the cloth touched his face and chinchilla trampled on his hand more and more senses came back to him. Soon he could actually feel the texture and moisture of the cloth being rubbed across the face. Something was sniffing and tickling his hands with its tiny nose. With a groan Davis began stirring on top of the sheets.

“Urgh…”

Gerrit realized the sounds too late, enamored with the facial features below him.

The boy ripped open his eyes displaying shock. Davis had remembered the sudden purple mess and bookshelf appearing in front of him and rushed into a sitting position. On his way upwards he was stopped but another immovable object making him fall back again groaning even louder.

“What the…”

This place didn’t fill his nostrils with the smell of dirty rat infested back alleys. It rather smelled like…hospital? Also this wasn’t his bike that was Davis laying on. It was a proper bed.

Footsteps rushed over towards the two youngsters after hearing the muttering of words. The doctor’s familiar was jumping gleefully, having done its job once more.

“Where the heck am I?” exclaimed Davis loudly.

Both the Professor as well as the nurse stood on either side of the bed, the Professor next to his apprentice. Rubbing his head the boy scooted upwards, this time with open eyes to avoid any more pain.

Getting an even better look this time Gerrit almost lost himself in Davis’s eyes, blue-grayish like storm clouds. Only a whispered ‘wow’ escaped from his lips.

“Young man you are at Academia, in my ward.” Ms. Lia threw a stern look at the Professor taking the opportunity to speak, knowing his reputation. “What is the last thing you remember? Your teacher told me some absurd things.” This time the Professor was clearing his throat throwing stern looks.

“Teacher? No I was on my way over to Maron’s place.” Confused Davis took his first look around the room. The floor was lined with marble but not the kind you’d see on a tile floor. This place looked like they had put down big chunky marble slabs and called it job done. “Am I in a hospital?”

“That’s what I just said, did you hit your head a bit harder than the Professor told me?”

“Who’s that Professor you’re talking about?” The confusion started to get mixed with annoyance. His gaze began to switch between the three faces. A red-head his age, someone who really could be called Professor and a cosplaying nurse were looking at Davis expectantly.

“I am the Professor, Roland L’Ordore.” The gruff man to his right said, a smile splitting his beard apart.

A snorting Davis relaxed a bit against the wooden headboard. “L’Odore? Like smell in French? Is your hospital doing something for dying children right now? I’ve never seen people cosplay at work.”

“Professor, I recommend that this boy stays here for another day or two. I have no idea what kind of weird experiments you do in that so called office of yours.”

This type of behavior always enraged Gerrit but before he could say something his teacher extended an arm in front of his chest. People always frowned upon the Professor when they knew about his reputation.

“Please rest assured Ms. Lia, that all students of mine are safe with me. At any time.”

“Could anyone please explain to me where I am?! One second I’m on my bike, having to take a detour through some shady back alley, the next second something purple appears in front of me and I’m crashing into a freaking bookshelf in a library across town.”

This made both the Professor and his apprentice perk up, diverting their focus from the Elf. “You saw something purple? Did it look like water? What was it like inside? In which city did this portal appear?” The Professor became ecstatic at this news.

“Yes yes, it was almost like a water fountain. We are in Asheville, right? Right?”

Both mages to Davis’s right began celebrating.

“We did it Gerrit! We successfully created a portal!”

“Your work finally paid off! But do you know where Asheville is?”

Annoyed the nurse scuffed and took off, leaving her familiar to monitor the boy.

The man’s demeanor changed back to a more professional teaching level. After clearing his throat he looked back at Davis. “This here is Academia, a school for teaching young people like you how to focus their inner strength and change the world around them. Say…Who is your teacher at Asheville Monastery?”

Now they had completely lost the plot, was all Davis could think. “I’m sorry sir but Asheville has no monks especially none that teach or do….magic?”

“A farmer village then? Is it south of Capitol?”

By the second it got more absurd for Davis. “What? No! We got like ninety thousand living here.”

“There are living a hundred thousand people in Capitol, it’s impossible that I haven’t heard of this city you’re talking about. Maybe your home is on another continent?”

>>A continent?<<, Davis thought. >>Impossible…<< The boy slumped back down a bit. “Can you get me back home again? The new Beast Trapper game came out today and I don’t want to waste any more time here with some weird larping guys. If my mom doesn’t hear from me on Sunday she’s going to be worried.”

“Hey, don’t get disrespectful.” Gerrit didn’t get the whole gist of what the boy was saying but overall it did sound disrespectful. “The Professor carried you all the way over from the east wing to the west wing.”

“Oh come on, you can’t tell me that you don’t look weird in your fantasy archmage robes and whatever you want to pass as student uniform. You and your dad are weird guys along with that wannabe elf earlier.” Seconds after Davis spoke those words he had the still damp cloth in front of his mouth.

“Pscht. You don’t want to have Ms. Lia hear you say these words ever again. She’s one of the best elven healers around otherwise the headmaster never would’ve asked her to come all the way here.” Gerrit looked proper mad now. He couldn’t fathom what problems Davis had with them.

“Gerrit, could you watch over him while I contact a good friend of mine?”

“Of course sir. Will I be excused of afternoon classes?”

The Professor grinned. “But don't you slack off on your studies.” This boy appearing talking about the weirdest things and cities even Roland never had heard about was mysterious to say the least. Maybe one of his longtime friends had an idea how to solve this mess. Hopefully it wasn't as dire as he thought.

Gerrit still scoffed a bit at the mysterious boy. Being this disrespectful to one of Academia's teacher's was usually awarded with a hay cart full of extra homework. Why did he not reprimand this guy?

Meanwhile Davis felt weird just sitting on a hospital bed getting the silent treatment by this Gerrit person. “So…I’m Davis. Let me guess your name.” Pretending to think really hard the boy put his pointer finger up to his chin. “Don’t tell me!” he yelled when Gerrit opened his mouth to point out how stupid it was to play this game. “You look like…no not a Daniel…Also not really like a Harry…Now I got it!” With a big shit eating grin Davis now pointed almost right in Gerrit’s face. “People call you Gerrit.”

“Wow, in just one year you might be Academia’s top student. How good are your barriers? Can you throw a proper fireball? Maybe change the direction of a raging river when a storm comes to town?” Although it wasn’t really his intention Gerrit’s words carried venom with them. This took Davis aback.

“Dude, no reason to be this toxic. This truly is some fantasy magic academy stuff? Can you do all these things?” Davis’s eyes showed a twinkle amidst their stormy grey. He was willing to entertain the idea of this being some weird fantasy world. Maybe he didn’t actually took a right turn at the intersection but was caught in the middle of that accident and his brain now tried to keep going while being comatose or maybe even close to death. Maron had mentioned that for people having near death or coma experiences their ‘dreams’ sometimes felt like a lifetime. A second after spending some serious thought on it the headache and pain in his limbs felt too real.

“Well to be honest not all of it. My barriers can be like five meters wide and withstand the sharpest sword Capitol’s most famous blacksmith can smith. If I had a primal stone though not even a boulder hurled by an ogre could hurt me.” Usually Gerrit wasn’t one to boast about his arcane skills. Just this once he felt nice about rubbing it in. He was able to impress someone with such simple things as a barrier spell. “If you want to I can show you some stuff.”

Now Davis was all ears. Let’s just indulge in this a bit more. Fighting big evil monsters in this world probably was more exciting than anything ‘Beast Trappers’ could’ve brought to the table. “Yes please!” The boy was almost like a child seeing a stage magician for the first time.

Gerrit laughed and stood in front of the bed’s foot side. “Okay. First, I will conjure a magical rope. One of the easiest tricks.” For simple stuff like this Gerrit only had to focus for a second. Getting a meter of rope didn’t even make the stone embedded his silver ring glow. Smiling the student scrunched up the twine and threw it in Davis’s direction. Before he could catch it just vanished back into thin air. “Next up!” This time Gerrit concentrated a bit longer. He put his hands together in front of his mouth as if he would breathe into it. Now the ring also began to emit a teal light, almost like a LED. When he felt enough movement between his hands he released a bunch of blue glowing, see through butterflies. Immediately the small creatures fanned out filling up the space between the two boys.

Davis and Gerrit were both giggling. Ms. Lia hollered at them to keep it down. She hated it when someone made a ruckus in her ward.

“This is really cool dude. Can you do something besides party tricks though?” Davis teased his babysitter to see some more interesting tricks. He expected full blown magic arrows and explosions.

“You call this party tricks. Oh wait…”Gerrit gladly accepted this challenge. As he had to train this new spell anyways this was a good opportunity. Just to be safe he took a step back. What he was about to do took a lot of focus. Soon he would have it down though and be able to create a copy of himself in seconds. The ring now was almost like a blue keychain flashlight shining in all directions. When the light faded away a second Gerrit stood there grinning. “You still think those are mere party tricks?” said both Gerrits at the same time.

Now Davis was stunned. “This. Is. AweSOME!” He jumped out of the bed to properly take a look at the mirror image. Everything was the same. The chaotic mane, the emerald green eyes as well as every little freckle around the nose and under the eyes. Hiding behind Mirror-Gerrit’s head Davis dared to touch the face. To serve as a second reminder to keep it down Ms. Lia’s familiar the chinchilla came and nabbed Davis’s calf making him jump a little. “Whoa, what’s that little thing?” Back at home he had heard the name chinchilla of course but personally had never seen one. Especially not the green aura variety that could heal peoples injuries. The scratches it had produces vanished with another green tendril jumping over.

“Last warning you two. I don’t think that you want to help me out until next month, right Mister Levisay?”

“I am really sorry. Do you think I could take our visitor outside into the court?”

The nurse came over, took a proper look at Davis’s eyes, felt his arms and legs and tried to tip him over onto the bed again, to no avail. “He looks fine to me. Be back in an hour, we don’t want your mentor to know anything about this, right?”

Snickering some more Gerrit went and held open the door. “Are you coming, ya snail?”

Davis could only imagine what wonders waited for him beyond that door.

A/N: Please don't forget to like and subscribe, maybe leave a nice comment. Your words are the only thing that keeps me going.