Chapter 16: Unexpected ally

Eventually Rose located a hatch carved into the side of the wall of the quick tunnel and we entered it moments before the ceiling above our heads collapsed in behind us, blocking the entrance behind us. The hatch led to a tunnel that had a bright light at the end of it. The tunnel and hatch were oddly shaped for human access and so neither Rose nor Eric had to duck or crouch down to walk through. Rose led the way, with me on her back, toward the light at the end of the darkness. It took some time, and the three of them began to feel tired from the loss of blood, until they emerged into a lit room with other people inside. The other people noticed us walking through and one of them even spoke up. She was a girl with long blond hair. Her eye color would have been the same as Eric's of it wasn't for the fact that her left eye was made of glass and was accompanied by a nasty looking burn scar that pretty much covered her temple and branched down her cheek. She was even the same age as Eric and just as tall. Her face was nearly flawless other than the scar. Her body was also flawless other than her missing left arm at the bottom of the shoulder. Her voice was melodic and flowed like a female version of Eric in every way. "Eric?" she gasped. Eric wearily looked toward the owner of the voice and began to tear up upon recognizing her, "Ella?" he said just before fainting. After that, both Rose and Luna followed.

I awoke late the next day and found the girl leaning over me and talking, "Hello? Hello?" She kept saying over and over. When my senses finally returned to me, I began to stir and slowly arise from the bed I was placed on. She instinctively hovered her hand over me in attempt to keep me from hurting myself. "Easy there, easy." She prompted me. I sat completely up with a huge headache ringing in my skull and a real medical bandage wrapped around my head. "Can you tell me your name?" She asked me with some concern in her tone. I simply turned to her for a short while then continued attempting to hold my headache back with my right hand and answered, "Sunni Gummi" I kept myself propped up with my right arm and listened to her ask me other questions, "And how old are you, Sunni?" It was a little rude but I answered anyway, "Eighteen." Suddenly she changed her tone of voice to relief, "Good. It doesn't look like you have amnesia, at least for now. I'm Ella Lohengrin." The last name his me like a freight train. "Lohengrin?" I repeated. "Then you are a member of Eric's family?" "I'm his twin sister as a matter-of-fact." She answered me. "I take it he doesn't talk much about me." "He didn't talk much about his past at all. He believed that you were all dead." I told her. My head was still pounding so she ended up giving me a strong pain killer to help with it. They tasted like chalk mixed with bits of steel.

Once my head died down enough for me to get out of bed, she led me around the little hospital clinic and showed me her brother's room. I entered and was greeted by a groggy, "Hello beautiful." He had a bandage around his leg where the bullet wound was located and he was apparently eating a cup of red jell-o from his meal. I quickly walked up and climbed on the bed to give him a huge hug of relief. "I thought we were going to die back there. What happened?" He propped me down off of the bed and simply said, "We'll get together and talk later. You should get yourself a meal here first." He said to me. I gestured back at Ella and exclaimed, "And when were you going to tell me that you were a twin?" Eric looked at me like I had gone insane for a while and softened his look when he realized that I meant that in an endearing way. "I actually didn't expect to find any members of my family alive. So this comes as a shock to me too." He answered. I was too excited to notice my stomach grumbling at me and squealed, "Still, a twin! That's so great." "Alright, Sunni. Let's let Eric get some rest and get something to eat." I agreed with her with a simple slightly disappointed, "Ok", and allowed her to lead me, with her only arm, around the area.

She took me outside the clinic after the doctors did a quick check on me to see if I was alright and were astonished to find out how fast I was recovering from trauma to the head. Then they allowed Ella to take me out of the building to see the town. The entire town was developed throughout most of the forest where Drekmore once stood. The town was almost completely made from material stolen from random construction sites throughout the City of Dunwyn. "How did you guys get all of this?" I asked in complete awe. Ella simply smiled at me and giggled lightly, "We work as a family to acquire everything we need to survive out here. Everyone had their expertise and skills to aid the family and everyone always gets the opportunity to use them to their full potential." Remembering my own family, I became nostalgic once again and solemnly lowered my head in silent memory. Ella seemed to notice my nostalgia and asked, "Thinking about your own family?" I snapped out of the nostalgia and turned to look at Ella, who had a kind and caring look to her complexion, even the scared part of her face. I felt comfortable talking to her and it had been some time before I talked to a girl my age. "Yah, watching them all die in front of you kinda has that effect I guess." I didn't actually mean to sound pessimistic but I felt true in some ways. She actually lowered her head in her own nostalgia, "Yah, that's true." She said, agreeing with me. "You also saw your parents die?" I asked slightly shocked. Still looking solemn, she nodded and placed her right and on her left shoulder and gripped her missing arm tightly. "You lost more than just your parents that day, didn't you?" I sadly asked her. She stood where she was and simply gripped her missing arm tighter as it to attempt to squeeze another one out of the stump that was her shoulder. She then tightly closed her right eye and tears began to run down her right cheek. Seeing the slightly ghastly scenario of her sobs, I placed my right pay on her right side and quietly said, "I'm so sorry." And I also began to cry.

Later, after we had stopped crying and feeling sorry for ourselves, Ella continued the tour of the small town and we stopped at a quaint little restaurant for a bite to eat. "You wouldn't happen to be a vegetarian would you?" Ella asked awkwardly. "Ella, I'm a bear. I'll eat meat if I have to. And in all honesty, I could use a good steak right now." The moment the words finished leaving my mouth, my stomach second the motion by voicing its opinion loudly. Ella laughed at the timing of the situation and said to me, "I don't know about a steak, but I can introduce you to a hamburger." I raised my right eyebrow in confusion. "What's a 'hamburger'?" I asked. She simply looked at me with a strange expression and sarcastically stated, "You sound like you were raised in the medieval times." "I was." I told her assuming that Eric had already said something to her about the time stone. Her eyes went wide with disbelief and she looked like she was about to laugh at me, thinking that my statement might be a joke. "I'm not joking. Eric didn't tell you about how he met me?" I asked her. "He must have left a few parts out. He's always been fascinated with the legend of the gummi bears and often would pretend that he was one when we were younger. So you can imagine his excitement when someone traded you to him." She said to me. The tidbit of information about Eric's childhood was interesting, but still, "Please don't remind me that I'm considered a tradable object, here." Ella used her right hand to lightly scratch her right cheek in slight embarrassment and responded, "Oh, yah. That is probably very disconcerting to you." She then perked back up and asked me, "Anyway, if you were born and raised in the medieval era, then how did you get here?" I was beginning to wonder about her own story and decided to retort with, "I'll tell you my story if you tell me how you got that scar." She shot her eye wide open in surprise and then turned solemnly to one side to think about it. After a short period of silence, she finally answered with, "Alright, but not here. I'll tell you in Eric's hospital room. He probably has questions as well."

I enjoyed me first hamburger. The concept of the idea seemed rather ingenious to me. A ground up beef patty topped with vegetables and other things you can try. To say the least, it was very different than ordering a hunk of meat and cutting it up yourself. Of course Ella picked up the tab and I was grateful. On the way back to the hospital to meet up with Eric, I recounted the horrible events that passed by since my birthday. I seemed to have gotten use to explaining my story over and over and I noticed that I didn't get choked up as much as I used to while remembering the horrible events, despite the shivers that ran down my spine as I talked. Before I even realized it, we had arrived at the hospital's front door and all I could think of was how small the town truly was.