Roland winced. How badly he hurt! What had happened to him to make it this painful?
He rolled one shoulder back, the sharp stabbing sensation in the middle of his back beginning to fade.
Slowly, he tried each of his muscles. Everything seemed to be working all right. He took a deep breath, testing his lungs and ribs. A little sore, but nothing too bad. He yawned. Had he been asleep?
The quiet was unusual. Were the babies asleep?
He looked around, realizing for the first time he wasn't at home. Or in a clinic. Where was he?
The floor, or ground, underneath him was sort of a pale stone flecked with something that shimmered in the soft light. Which was strange, because there was no sun overhead. Where was the light coming from?
He struggled, calling to mind the last thing he remembered. Realizing that Gwen must have meant that destroying the objects wasn't just a sacrifice, but would require sacrifice. The decision to cast his life down had been made in only a few seconds, but it was built on a foundation of preparation and forethought.
The city had been falling. The objects held the keys to all the worlds, and to let them into the hands of the Void meant suffering for all the inhabitants therein. It meant the suffering or death of his wife and his children, for when their magic was fully discovered, the Void would subdue and use them, or destroy them.
When he'd married Serafina, he'd known in his heart he would not hesitate to lay his life down for hers. When his children were born, he made the same promise to each of them.
And so, when the revelation of sacrifice had struck him, he reacted more on instinct than anything else. Had it worked?
Was he dead? Or had be been cast into another world by the objects?
He froze for a second. Had he been concentrating on the objects too much, and had activated one of them?
Had he been transported here? He'd keenly felt the stabbing through his back and out the front of his chest.
He looked down. There was no wound. He opened his shirt, which was still ravaged by battle, but his body was clean and healed underneath. An aftereffect of Finn's tea?
Or was this something different? Had the wound been fatal?
"Where am I?" He asked aloud, gazing upward at the pale sky. It was white, with a golden tint, like the sun trying to burn through a foggy morning.
Should he walk somewhere? Stay put, in the hopes that someone else might activate the same portal-opener and let him back into his own world? Of course, that was a terrible plan if…
"Am I dead?" He spoke a second question, though the first was left unanswered.
"Yes."
Roland spun around, saw no one, and nothing. Just the pale flecked stone and sky stretching forever in all directions.
"Who's there?" The prince asked.
Silence. Apparently they were unwilling to answer the question. The voice had been clear. He was dead.
Was it lying?
"No."
Roland turned again, and the view had changed. In front of him, on the ground lay shattered pottery. Each shard was beautiful and unique. One swirled with pink and green, a second vibrant and bright with all manner of colors. Another was matte and black as midnight, while yet another was smooth and sandy-colored.
As Roland examined the broken pieces, the earth began to shake. The shards quivered on the ground, and began to bounce into each other.
An overwhelming fear gripped him that the pieces would be shattered further, and he stooped to gather them before they could break one another, but they evaded his clutches. One cut his palm as he tried to grasp it, and he drew his hand back.
Blood dripped from his fingers, staining the perfect stone ground as it continued shaking. He wondered how it didn't crack apart. Red fell on the ceramic fragments.
Some of the shards began to stick together, fitting perfectly one to another. They weren't pieces of separate creations as he had thought, but belonged together.
Roland's eyes widened as he watched what was broken reform into its original shape. The pattern was so intricate that he would never have noticed it in the individual pieces. The glazes, the colors, the flecks of something beyond description all came together like music. A masterpiece.
Before he could make out what the final, original shape of the creation was, the earth beneath him moved again. He was shaken and distracted, but caught a glimpse of something behind him.
Spinning, he tried to confront what was there.
It was suddenly night all around him, dark but for the brilliant stars overhead. He gasped at the tapestry. His own world had nothing that could compare to the beauty and color painted in the sky above him.
Something like fireflies in the air let him see that he was still in the same place.
He had the urge to lay down and rest, staring at the wondrous sight. There was no chill in the air. He knelt and pressed his hand to the earth. It was warm. His hand had healed, he noticed, as if it had never been cut.
He swallowed, growing nervous. This place was strange and unpredictable. Had he been here seconds, minutes, hours? It could not have been days for he felt neither hunger nor thirst.
Of course, if he really was dead, would he feel those things?
"No."
"Can you just speak to me?" Roland begged. "Are you Fae? Are you something else?"
The Fae could read thoughts, and this mysterious voice had answered questions from his mind twice. Silence reigned again.
Roland sighed heavily and laid down to rest.
Did one dream when they were dead? Maybe he was already in a dream. Maybe all of this was some sort of hallucination from a fever. Had the cut on his back become infected maybe, or the goblins' poison had taken hold?
"No."
"Is that all you can say, yes and no?" Roland sighed.
"On the contrary, my child. I am capable of saying much, but are you ready to hear it?"
Roland tensed. Titania had called him "my child" on many occasions.
"A poor imitation, and nothing more." The voice answered.
"Who are you?" Roland asked again.
"You would know me best as the Sorcerer."
"The Sorcerer? As in the only one, whose will the Fae seek?" Roland asked. His mind flipped anxiously through all the additional information Serafina had shared with him in the few days before the war. The Cetoans held that he had created the world, and then it had shattered… or something along those lines. His mind was fuzzy. Probably because he was dead, he thought sarcastically.
A chuckle met his ears, causing Roland to color with embarrassment.
"There have been many that call themselves by my name." The Sorcerer explained.
"And I'm dead, so now I get to meet you? Or at least talk to you…" Roland whirled in a slow circle, confirming that there was no one in sight.
"Do you want to remain so?"
"Remain dead? I'd rather not. This place is lovely," He quickly brushed over the faux pas, "I just would like to go home, to my wife, and my children." He paused here. If the Sorcerer could see as much as the Fae, then he would already know about…
"Yes," The voice interrupted his thoughts. "They are safe, but you must keep them so until the appointed time."
"That's a phrase I've heard before and didn't like even a little bit," Roland grumbled.
"You will receive help when it is needed."
"That's comforting, I suppose." The man ducked his head. No matter whether the person he was speaking to was the Sorcerer or not, he was clearly insanely powerful, and Roland should hold his tongue and be more respectful.
Then again, having his thoughts read meant that holding his tongue wouldn't mean all that much. His sarcastic attitude would come through anyway. It was probably the whole dying thing. That would make anyone a little bit cranky, wouldn't it?
"You have yet more work to do." The Sorcerer relayed.
"So that's it? I get to… come back to life?" Roland asked. Maybe that was just code for moving from this world back into his, except that he'd been thoroughly healed of the goblin's terrible wound. "No consequences from destroying the sacred things?"
He hated to ask, but he also wanted to know.
"They are sacred to the Fae because I made them. Pieces of each shattered world kept in the original. Without them, things will change."
"Change how?" A sinking feeling hit Roland in the stomach.
"You already know, but do not yet understand."
That was incredibly helpful. He opened his mouth to ask more, to pour out every question that Gwen had ever evaded the answers to…
"It is of little use to ask such things. You will not remember this, until the appointed time. Go now. You are missed."