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But it wasn’t a normal field.
The grass that swayed in the breeze around her was almost translucent, as if made from stained glass. The field glittered in the pale rays of the moon like it was made from, well, crystal. It wasn’t until she blinked and rubbed her eyes that she realized that the grass itself was glowing. Faintly, barely noticeably, but it was—a whitish opalescent color that seemed to shift as it moved.
The trees around the field were the same, the leaves white and shimmering with every color of the rainbow.
It was the same kind of glow that had come from the Iron Crystal—the glow of the magic of Avalon. Wherever she was, it was magic. Pushing herself to her feet, she brushed herself off and took in her surroundings. The sky overhead was one enormous band of galaxy, like seeing the Milky Way on a dark night.
Gwen had never seen anything so beautiful in her life. Yet it didn’t…feel real. And it had nothing to do with the fact that everything was faintly glowing. She felt kind of detached, like the world around her was also an oil painting. Fuzzy, and indistinct when she wasn’t looking directly at it.
Like a dream.
She was in a dream.
But whose?
Not hers, that was for sure.
“Hello?” she called out, but no one responded. Just the faint whisper of wind, and the rustle of grass and leaves.
Where was she? She had been yelling at Avalon, and then the tornado, and then here.
A dragonfly flitted past her, and it might have been made of stained glass. It rested on a long blade of grass next to her. She marveled at it for a moment before she couldn’t help herself and reached out a finger to touch it. When she got close, it flew away before disappearing altogether.
It wasn’t real.
More proof that this was a vision.
Shutting her eyes, she took a deep breath and let it out. She tried to…she didn’t even know. Sense what was going on around her? She listened. And she waited.
And then she knew.
She didn’t know how she knew. But it was like the world around her was whispering, and the moment she stopped to truly listen, there it was.
This wasn’t just a dream of Avalon.
Avalon was a dream.
The whole island—all of it. That was why there were no natives that weren’t animals. Even then, she got the sense that they were all borrowed from different worlds as well. The land, the trees, the mountains, the volcano—it was a dream. A dream of some enormous, otherworldly thing that she could feel there at the corners of her mind.
She was in the presence of a god. Or as close to it as she could imagine, she supposed. Keeping her eyes shut, she tried to focus on it some more—tried to glimpse the entity that had brought her here.
Shapes danced in front of her eyes in the absence of light, her mind desperately trying to come up with something in the nothingness.
The shapes were horrifying monsters—long-limbed with thin, terrifying claws that were as long as her whole body. The figures had gaping, empty eye sockets in misshapen, almost insectoid-looking skulls. They loomed around her, nightmarish, but strangely…beautiful.
She jolted, her eyes shooting open. Whatever this creature, or creatures, was, it wasn’t some bearded old man, or any of the other possible options for deities. This was something else entirely.
But she didn’t feel threatened. Whatever these things were, they were watching her. Waiting. Whispering. This island was their dream, and now she was a part of it.
But it didn’t stop her from feeling extremely small and snack-sized. Shivering, she wrapped her arms around herself and tried to breathe. Her breath caught in her throat, and she felt her heart start pounding. She hadn’t suffered a panic attack in weeks. But here it was, rearing its head again.
Was it Avalon’s magic that calmed her nerves?
Or was it Mordred’s presence?
She supposed it didn’t matter which one it was. Or if it was a mix of the two. She went to shut her eyes again but thought better of it. She struggled to focus on her breathing and counting back slowly from ten. Just focus on the next number, on the next inhale and exhale, muttering the numbers to herself.
But her mind didn’t latch onto the numbers.
