[Maybe it's selfish of him, but at the end, with Heldalf half-keeled and with his own breath scraping his throat raw, Sorey is glad to have someone to shove Rose against when he breaks the platform. He's glad to see two faces instead of one as he falls, he's so glad that at least one of them made it out.
And when it's all over and he sees his friends, sees Mikleo escape Heldalf's grasp and float gently back out of harm's way, he thinks, Thank goodness. It's only me. Thank goodness everyone else is all right. Any doubt he'd had left vanishes, and he approaches Maotelus, accepts him wholly, and sleeps.
He doesn't dream.
He doesn't experience the passage of seasons or years, doesn't even feel the world purifying itself, the malevolence slowly being uprooted from the continent as Maotelus sleeps inside of him. He doesn't feel the shrine go up around the altar upon which he rests, and he doesn't feel it crumble centuries later. The light never dies though the pilgrimages taper off until only a few Shepherds and their companions come to pay their respects. Ivy crawls up the walls of his own ruins as the years tick past like seconds and still, sightlessly, soundlessly, he sleeps.
Until, one day, he doesn't.
Sorey wakes as if from a good night's rest. He blinks sleepily up at the ceiling above, collapsed and thatched and collapsed again across the centuries. His body doesn't want to move at first so he works slowly on twitching his fingers, sniffing hard and sneezing. Did he collect dust? No, probably not. Maybe it's allergy season.]
H-hello? [Sorey croaks. After a moment of fumbling he manages to slide down off the altar, half-collapsed on the broken stone and weeds surrounding it. It's probably been forever. Years, more than years by the look of the ruins. He doesn't remember much of this; there aren't any hew marks on the altar so it was probably made, probably by Edna, along with the rest of these ruins.] Softie, [Sorey snorts, pushing himself up on trembling legs. Is he still human? Well, he's not currently dead, at any rate. He probably is.
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And when it's all over and he sees his friends, sees Mikleo escape Heldalf's grasp and float gently back out of harm's way, he thinks, Thank goodness. It's only me. Thank goodness everyone else is all right. Any doubt he'd had left vanishes, and he approaches Maotelus, accepts him wholly, and sleeps.
He doesn't dream.
He doesn't experience the passage of seasons or years, doesn't even feel the world purifying itself, the malevolence slowly being uprooted from the continent as Maotelus sleeps inside of him. He doesn't feel the shrine go up around the altar upon which he rests, and he doesn't feel it crumble centuries later. The light never dies though the pilgrimages taper off until only a few Shepherds and their companions come to pay their respects. Ivy crawls up the walls of his own ruins as the years tick past like seconds and still, sightlessly, soundlessly, he sleeps.
Until, one day, he doesn't.
Sorey wakes as if from a good night's rest. He blinks sleepily up at the ceiling above, collapsed and thatched and collapsed again across the centuries. His body doesn't want to move at first so he works slowly on twitching his fingers, sniffing hard and sneezing. Did he collect dust? No, probably not. Maybe it's allergy season.]
H-hello? [Sorey croaks. After a moment of fumbling he manages to slide down off the altar, half-collapsed on the broken stone and weeds surrounding it. It's probably been forever. Years, more than years by the look of the ruins. He doesn't remember much of this; there aren't any hew marks on the altar so it was probably made, probably by Edna, along with the rest of these ruins.] Softie, [Sorey snorts, pushing himself up on trembling legs. Is he still human? Well, he's not currently dead, at any rate. He probably is.
We'll be waiting.
Time to go.]