Chapter 22: The Aschefell Estate
Aster awoke with a sharp breath in. He was a bit disoriented still, but he could remember almost everything.
The painful images came flooding back to him as he simply stared at the ceiling above him while trying to recall everything. His match with Straga was much worse than he was prepared for it to be.
He remembered a lot more than he cared to from his loss, bringing a shudder across his achy body.
Aster began looking over his injuries, finally building up enough courage to assess the extent of the damage. He was thankfully relieved with what he found.
His left arm still felt a bit tight when he made a fist, but it seemed the broken bones in his forearm weren’t so broken anymore. His ribs had a dull ache lingering, but he shifted his midsection around a bit and didn’t find too much discomfort.
He couldn’t feel any heavy scars where his face had been split open, but there was definitely a bit of tenderness and some throbbing where he was head-butted by the large humanoid dragon.
He was missing a tooth on his back right side, but it seemed the brunt of the damage done had already been mostly healed. Well, the physical part of it anyways.
Aster began really looking around the unfamiliar room he found himself in then. He knew it wasn’t anywhere in his father’s estate, and it certainly wasn’t his room at the inn. It seemed pretty well to just be a spare room stocked with the basics.
Aster leaned forward, and felt his muscles were all pretty stiff still. It wasn’t until the sheets fell as he tried to stand that he even realized he was stark naked, much to his embarrassment.
He spotted a simple coat and a pair pants hanging on a hook nearby, and helped himself to it, grateful to stretch his legs a bit. The garments engulfed the boy, being intended for a much larger sized beast, but he managed to make them work for the time being with a makeshift belt.
Aster made his way over to the door then, and pushed it open. He found himself in a hallway on the second story. The boy glanced around a bit, and after seeing nobody nearby, made his way to the large staircase and began descending it.