A Practical Guide to Sorcery (Book 3)

Chapter 91 - The Sun is also a Star (Part 1)

Sebastien

Month 1, Day 21, Thursday 11:30 a.m.

Siobhan was struggling, desperate to escape but trapped in a body that wouldn't listen to her commands.

A bracing sting on her cheek provided a way out. She woke with a gluttonous gasp of air, bolting upright in a bed she didn't recognize—a room she didn't recognize—with someone holding her arms to her sides, restraining her!

She panicked for a good few seconds. Fighting against the shackling grip, she let out a low, panicked moan as she grasped around for her Conduit, which wasn't there—until Damien's familiar, if tired, face resolved into coherence in front of her.

He was forcibly keeping her from flailing her way off of a University infirmary bed. "Help! We need help over here!" he yelled, turning his head. "Sebastien, you're okay. You're safe," he said in a lower, soothing tone that did nothing to disguise the worry underneath.

The sound of her other name helped ground her, and she stopped struggling to escape, blinking rapidly at his reassuring grey eyes.

The healer bustled up. "Panic attack?"

"He was having a nightmare," Damien said. "I tried to wake him, but he wouldn't, so I tapped him—maybe a little too hard—on the cheek, and he woke up fighting and making these noises like he was hurt."

"'M fine," Sebastien mumbled, still panting, the crashing thump of her heart against her sternum slowing. She looked around, unable to help her paranoia, or the niggling sensation that she was seeing things that shouldn't exist out of the corner of her vision. In a way, the clear signs of panic were a relief. Her body was reliably responding to the stimuli sent by her mind, which had plenty of cause for hysteria.

"We gave him a strong calming potion along with the sedative—I'm surprised he still managed to have nightmares—but sedatives can make it harder to transition from sleeping to waking. Sometimes they cause sleepwalking and the like." The woman turned to Sebastien, pulling a vial out of the pocket of her apron "Mr. Siverling, everything is alright. You are safe in the University's infirmary. You've had a big shock, but nothing can harm you here. You need your rest to recover, so why don't I give you another calming potion, and once you're feeling better we can help you get back to sleep?"

"No!" Sebastien snapped. "No calming potions. No sedatives. Not now, not ever. Never again! I—I have a bad reaction." Professor Lacer must have transferred her to the infirmary after free-casting that sleep spell on her. With the sedatives keeping her from waking herself up, she'd been trapped inside her own mind. With her nightmares.

The woman seemed taken aback. "Oh, I'm very sorry, Mr. Siverling. It wasn't in your file. Are you allergic to any particular ingredient? The laughing poppy, perhaps? We do have alternate brews available—"

"No," Sebastien said again, more insistently. "Calming potions only with my permission, but never sedatives. Nothing that will force me to sleep."

There was an awkward pause before Damien spoke, his voice small, the tone almost childish in its hesitance. "Is that what the Aberrant did to you? Force you to sleep?"

The healer's eyes opened wide, a hand flying up to cover her mouth. "Oh. Oh, I'm very sorry, Mr. Siverling. It was just standard procedure—"

Sebastien ignored the woman, climbing off the bed and searching for her things. Someone had stripped her to her underclothes and dressed her in worn cotton pajamas—the standard garb for everyone admitted to the infirmary overnight, apparently, as she saw others wearing the same on their own beds.