The desert went still as he collapsed facing the scorching heat, unable to move.
He was wounded all over. He tried to shield his eyes from the brightness that came from everywhere but his strength was gone. He could feel the heat and his own ragged breathing.
Then the window appeared in front of him again
[RIFT CLEARED — RANK D]
[CONGRATULATIONS: YOU HAVE CLEARED YOUR FIRST RIFT]
[CALCULATING REWARDS]
[TIER PROGRESS: 9th TIER, 41%]
[STRENGTH +3]
[AGILITY +4]
[MANA +2]
[REWARDS: SKILL (REGEN)]
The words hung steady in front of him, and for once, he didn’t rush to read past them. He let himself lay in the sand a moment longer, letting his pulse come down, before he could move.
[INITIATING RETURN SEQUENCE]
The words barely registered before the desert light started to thin at the edges, sand and heat bleed away like ink lifting off wet paper. He didn’t feel himself move. In a second, he could not feel the heat anymore but he could feel the glass shard still locked in his fist. There was sand still caked into every cut and crease of him, his body arriving in the bedroom several seconds before his mind caught up to where he was.
He hit the floor at the foot of the bed, not gently. He knew because the sound of it was loud enough in the dark room to bring a lamp flaring to life almost instantly.
"Emeric—" Isolde’s voice, sharp with something he did not have the lucidity to discern yet. She was already reaching for the wheel of her chair, closing the distance from the bed to the floor where he’d landed. "Emeric, look at me — what happened, where have you—"
He heard her. He understood, on some level, that she was talking to him. He couldn’t make his mouth cooperate with an answer. The room kept sliding sideways every time he tried to focus on her face, sand grating between his teeth, the glass shard still cutting fresh lines into his palm because his hand wouldn’t unclench from around it.
"Sand," he managed, which wasn’t an answer to anything she’d asked. "There’s sand everywhere. Don’t step in it."
There wasn’t any sand on the floor and she could not ’step’ in anything.
He knew that, somewhere underneath the fever starting to climb behind his eyes. He said it anyway.
The desert didn’t let go of him easily.
He was back in it before he understood he’d left the bedroom at all, lying flat with the light too bright and his body too heavy to move. Except this time Isolde was there too, seated in the sand in front of him the way she’d been seated against the garden wall the night the rift tore open his house, legs folded beneath her at that angle her body couldn’t arrange on its own.
You went into a collapsing wall for me, she said, except her voice wasn’t quite hers, warped at the edges the way sound gets underwater. Don’t do it again.
No promises, he tried to say back, but when he opened his mouth it wasn’t his that came out, it was the old registrar’s voice instead, sounding as flat and bored as it did: That’s it, then. Copy goes to the Ministry registry by end of week.
His mind was racing through various events. His father checking his pocket watch. A green pulse of light he couldn’t reach fast enough, no matter how hard he dug his hands into the dark.
Emeric. Her voice again, closer this time, more solid than everything else. Emeric, stay with me.
He didn’t know who was asking. He held onto the sound of it anyway.
He surfaced slowly and was hit by too many things. First sound, then light, then all of it at once.
The lamp was still burning, lower now, the wax pooled thick at its base. Isolde was beside the bed in her chair, close enough that her knee nearly touched the mattress, a basin of water balanced on her lap and a wet cloth in one hand, still damp against his forehead where she’d apparently been holding it. Her hair had come loose from its usual braid, strands of it stuck to her temple like she hadn’t slept either.
"You’re awake," she said, quiet, testing the words like she didn’t fully trust them yet.
His mouth was dry, throat raw in a way that felt like he had been screaming for hours. He tried to sit up and got about halfway before his arms reminded him, sharply, that they’d spent the night knitting themselves back together from a dozen separate injuries.
"How long," he managed.
"Six hours." She set the cloth back in the basin, her voice carefully even in a way he was starting to recognize as the sound of her holding something back. "You appeared on this floor at five in the morning covered in sand and blood, muttering nonsense, and you have been unconscious since. I have spent six hours cleaning wounds I don’t have names for, on a body that keeps healing faster than naturally possible and you are going to tell me exactly what happened to you."
He looked down at himself — at the cuts along his forearms, shallower now than they should have been this soon. The edges were bruise pink and closing but nowhere near healed.
Isolde hadn’t looked away from him once.
"Emeric," she said again, and this time there was no mistaking what was under the careful evenness of her voice. "Where were you."
He stared at her for a few seconds. He owed her an explanation but he was not sure how to begin.
He knew one thing for sure. He could not tell her that his skills came from doing things for her. He had no idea how that would play out.
She had taken care of him and heck; they were married now but some things would do more harm than good.
He realized he had not thanked her yet.
He stared at her hair matted with sweat and he realized for the first time how truly stunning she was. She was beautiful in a way that no woman he’d seen was.
What was he thinking?
He needed to do away with these thoughts.
Her brows furrowed as if reading his mind.
She raised it in a questioning glance as if expecting her response and she was.
"Thank you." He started by saying.