Wake Me Up When It's All Over

Chapter 2

Logan was panicking inside. What was he supposed to do with the last member of a long-since extinct species? He avoided picking it up when he started the medical evaluation. It didn't seem to enjoy that, and he would really want to avoid stressing it out.

It was a cute animal, but he didn't have much to go on for how to take care of it. He couldn't let it stay in the wild, there were too many dangers in that option, and he couldn't bear to be the indirect cause of death in an endangered species

He used a little bit of magic to raise the ground it was sat on to eye-level, before reaching towards it, not exactly missing the small flinch at the action, he stopped about a foot away from the human, calling his magic to circle it and show him how healthy it was and any problems that it may have. He hissed in concern at some of the results

Specifically, the after-effects of a powerful sleeping curse. He looked for more information on that as he checked the other information. It seemed healthy, the age didn't come up, probably due to the curse messing with its aging process and the spell not knowing whether to count from year of birth or physical/mental age. What he was told, however, was that it was adolescent

All he could find from the examination regarding the curse itself was that the human had only woken up somewhere between six to twelve hours ago, and the curse was set sometime over seven hundred years ago. He guessed that explained the jitteriness. He would've been able to find out more if he had found it within two hours of its awakening, but other than that he was mostly concerned of what exactly would curse a young human

He released his magic, concluding the evaluation done. At least it seemed healthy, other than that anyway. Before the evaluation, he was worried about the unnaturally red colour of its hair, but now he decided it was likely the product of it playing in some sort of pigmentation from a berry or flower. He flicked his tongue out in annoyance, rattling his tail angrily. Janus immediately noticed his behaviour, and asked about it, starting him on a rant

"The human was cursed. It had a sleeping curse placed on it a few centuries ago and only just woke up today! I was hoping that a young human being alive meant that there could be a chance that they weren't hunted out of existence, but no, some idiot just decided to curse a defenceless animal and leave it in the wild. It was probably trying to locate more humans when it woke you up, because when the curse was placed, there were still humans! Poor thing, people are so cruel" His coils wrapped around himself tightly to calm himself down. He took a deep breath

It was obviously a naga or something similar that cursed it, humans were known to have a distinct lack of magic, which was one of the reasons they died off so quickly when nagas started evolving

Janus was staring at him with what looked like anger, but he knew it wasn't directed at him, but at whatever person thought it would be funny to put a poor animal under a curse for centuries, maybe more. Unfortunately, that person would be long since dead, and would never face consequences for their despicable actions

"Logan, exactly how long ago was this curse placed? I need to know where to look in terms of burial grounds to dig up the body"

Logan flicked his tongue out in a mixture of annoyance and amusement

"We don't even know the name of who placed it, and I'd rather not have one of my only friends get executed for defacing a burial ground" He slithered closer to his friend and, whilst the human was on a raised section of the ground and therefore could not run away, started preparing a den for it. He looked over at it for a moment trying to figure out how big he needed to make the den, before realising. The human looked scared, terrified even.

He looked down, the human was probably scared because of his examination, the only time before this that it would've probably seen magic was when the curse was placed, so it was probably scared that something would happen again. He swore under his breath, going a little bit closer. He lowered the ground back to its normal place so the human would be at a more comfortable level, though he did raise some stone to act like a wall to keep it from running into the woods

He carried on building the den after making sure the human was fine more and more. It certainly seemed more relaxed with the ground level, but it still seemed scared. He was alone with the human at this point, Janus had gone out hunting, which would take longer than usual because this time, he needed to find things safe for human consumption

The den was finished, and he muttered a small apology before picking up the human and placing it in the second stone circle that held its den. It stared up at him with wide, unnaturally wet eyes. Logan groaned, it better not start crying again. It started making chattering noises, before running into the den and hiding. He breathed a sigh of relief, thanking the gods that he didn't have to deal with a crying human on his own. He curled up in the other end of his nest, curling the end of his tail to a tree and starting to nap

--

Roman could absolutely confidently say that he hated this. Not only was it terrifying, it was confusing as well. He was left alone for the smallest amount of time, he barely had time to stand up before the ground he was on floated up to the blue snake's eye level.

It reached out to him and he flinched. He would've ran if he wasn't currently fifty feet in the air. He felt magic envelope him and he froze. What was it doing to him? He never liked the feeling of magic, no matter whether he was just witnessing it being used or he had a minor spell used on him, he hated it always. But, he had never felt magic like this before, it felt smoother, almost, it was nearly calming.

The snake had its eyes closed and its face was changing in unreadable expressions. That made him nervous, especially since he could still feel the veil of magic surrounding him. Its eyes snapped open after a few minutes and he flinched again. It went over to the other and started rattling and hissing. He stared, scared that he somehow did something to anger it.

He watched them hiss at each other for a while, and the blue one came back near him. He wasn't lowered down to the floor, and he was starting to get increasingly nervous, especially with the rattling the snake's tail was doing

From what Roman could remember, rattlesnakes used it as a warning before an attack. He couldn't bear to think that it would attack him, especially since he knew how easily it would win. He started wishing he had brought his sword, but he knew that it had crumbled down to rust sometime before he woke up. He carried on staring at the snake creature as it carried on with what it was doing. It seemed to be getting ready to build something?

The yellow one had since gone to do whatever it was doing, and Roman was left alone with this one. It looked up at him and he froze, was it gonna do something?

It came a little closer and the ground started levelling itself. He prepared to run before a six-foot stone circle came up around him. He looked up at the naga, trying to puzzle out what exactly was going on, before it dawned on him. Of course, they were *keeping* him. He scoffed, he was a prince, he wasn't going to be a pet to some giant snakes, no matter how big they were, or how easily they could keep him, or- or hurt him..

He shook his head rapidly, he needed to not think like that. After an hour or two, he heard a low hiss before being picked up and placed in a different stone circle, this one holding a structure that looked vaguely like a house. Was it trying to build a house for him? He looked up at the snake, before running into the house, glad for some privacy for once in the past day. The blue snake started to seemingly fall asleep, and Roman did the same. He hoped that when he woke up it would've been a bad dream, and he'd find his true love stood above him