Page 3975

‘Stop blabbering and give her something to eat already,’ said Chergoa. And she motioned to the right, where a pile of wrapped confections was waiting on a small table.

“Oh, right!” Ibai blinked across the short distance with his brown shadow, and by the time Emiliana even registered the change in his position, he was already in front of her again, offering a plate to her. “Sorry about the selection. Would’ve had something made fresh for you, but uh. I wasn’t actually sure that I would succeed this time, so I didn’t want the food to go to waste, just in case.”

‘We’ll visit the cafeteria next,’ said Chergoa.

Indeed, Emiliana’s stomach pain had not abated, and the treats in front of her were already making her mouth water. Was that a chocolate muffin? Oh god. She grabbed and unwrapped it in a hurry.

‘Don’t eat too fast,’ said the reaper, grabbing her shoulder and making the vigor run through Emiliana’s body. ‘It’s better if I don’t have to use this too much during your recovery. Otherwise, it’ll take longer.’

Emiliana tried to do as the reaper said, but it was difficult. She focused the other half of her attention on the questions she should be asking. Clarification. She needed clarification. “So... what exactly happened to me?”

“Oh, you were put into a state of suppressed consciousness,” said Ibai. “A kind of super deep sleep that you can’t wake up from on your own. I believe that this--and a few other, similar conditions--have been historically bunched into the general term of ‘sleeping sickness.’”

‘Yeah,’ added Chergoa. ‘I’ve seen it a fair few times over the years, though it’s always hard to gauge what I’m looking at.’

Emiliana had to finish chewing before speaking up again. “...What do you mean I was ‘put’ into it?”

Ibai backed up a few steps and bobbed his head a little. “Well, okay, that’s largely conjecture on my part. I’m guessing that Gohvis decided to induce your sleeping sickness while he was away, but I don’t know for sure. Maybe it really was coincidental. If your memory is still intact from your ‘meditation,’ then maybe he really didn’t do it.”

Her memory? She had to concentrate in order to think back. The meditation. It had certainly felt different from her previous training regimens.

But... it wasn’t a complete blank, now that she was focusing on it. Yeah. It had been about multi-tasking. Creating new divisions in her mind. Looking deeply within herself from multiple angles.