Sol's Shine and the Kingdom of Terra

Chapter 12 Between A Rock And A Hard Place

 Despite getting knocked out by some strange gas, Sol could at least say he got the rest he wanted. It wasn't any secret that waking up and coming back to reality was going to suck, especially since William wouldn't stop shaking him. "Sol, wake up! Wake up! Wake up!" Sol shooed William away and rubbed his eyes. "I'm awake! Just stop shaking me!" Sol slowly sat up to check his surroundings, an underground cell that only had a few torched lights and a hard rocky floor. "I told you he was fine. He woke up just like we did." Jordan said.

"Do you guys know where we are?" Sol asked. "We don't know any more than you do." Jordan answered him. It wasn't long after that until Sol could hear some deep snoring coming from the other end of the cell. Sol, William, and Jordan's attention was now on the dwarf that slept in the same cell as them. That was when Sol looked at William again. "You couldn't have woken that guy up instead? We should ask him where we are." "I tried but-" The dwarf's loud snoring interrupted William's sentence and Jordan continued for him. "The guy sleeps like a log."

Sol got up from where he slept to walk over to the sleeping dwarf. "You guys aren't creative enough." All Sol had to do was pinch the dwarf's nose and cover his mouth. It wasn't until too long that the dwarf's eyes shot wide open as he became desperate for air. Sol took his hands away and took several steps back as he watched the dwarf swing at him with his fists. "You wanna start something?!" The dwarf exclaimed. "Hold on! I'm sorry! I'm sorry!" Sol practically shuffled around the cell he was in, trying to get away from the stranger he woke up.

When Sol stepped closer to the light from a nearby torch, the dwarf that was after him was able to get a better look at the person who had woken him up. The dwarf lowered his fist and became more shocked than angry. "You..." "Me?" Sol answered back. "How could you- How could you let her capture you?!" It was clear that the dwarf was able to recognize the prince from the Kingdom of Fire.

"Who are you talking about exactly?" Sol asked him. Jordan decided to jump in before the dwarf could answer Sol. "Before you get to that, there's something I have to ask you, Sol. What happened after we were knocked out? Like, what happened to Cinder, Yvonne, Sköll, or Hendrick?" It took a moment for Sol to properly answer him. Feeling ashamed of himself for having everything played out the way it did, he reluctantly answered Jordan. "Yvonne and Cinder rode on Sköll's back to get away from the station we were at. I don't know how they're actually doing aside from that. And Hendrick..." William and Jordan grew a little more concerned after hearing the last thing Sol said. "Hendrick is dead." Jordan and William were beginning to understand what Sol was saying to them. "Yeah, that's what I thought I saw before I passed out. They punctured Hendrick with spears right?" Sol nodded in response to Jordan's question.

From the look on William's face, it was easy to tell that he felt horrible about everything that happened. Jordan, on the other hand, felt much differently. "Don't worry about Hendrick. The guy had it coming. The rest of us are all okay." Sol had to immediately disagree with him. "Are we? I just said I had absolutely no idea what happened to Yvonne, Cinder, or Sköll. What if it had been anyone else who got punctured by those spears?! You wouldn't be saying the same thing then." "Sol, I've lost a lot more than this while you were gone in the Kingdom of Water. You're right. It could've gotten worse but it didn't. This is all we got right now." That was Jordan's best response.

"I feel like I could've done more too." William said. "What could you have done differently that the rest of us couldn't?" Jordan asked. "I don't know... but before we got on the train to Junistar City, I thought I saw someone looking at us. At the next stop, we were ambushed. I had plenty of time to act on that and I did nothing." In the moment, Sol and William looked at each other, both feeling guilty about their actions. The only solace the two of them had was knowing that they weren't alone with that feeling.