Serad sighed as he opened the door.
He had finally finished taking care of everything after several hours, but coming up with excuses and doing all the paperwork had been utterly exhausting, making him glad to get back, despite the situation with the Queen being far more serious.
"Well, if everything worked out after i left, then it isn't really that serious anymore."
Serad was walking over to the Vase, when he noticed that something was wrong. 'Did she wake up?'
He walked closer, quickly noticing that wasn't the case. "That's not right."
He only vaguely remembered what the Vase looked like, but he knew it didn't look like this.
His hands rested on the rim as he looked inside. It was empty, but the inside also looked different than what he remembered.
Serad was confused, especially when he realized that the inside seemed smaller than before.
"Is there another one in there?" He gripped the rim with both hands and pulled, until it came loose with a *thunk*.
"There really was another one in there." The thing seemed strange, looking almost like a person, contorted into the shape of a Vase,
but with a large opening where a person's behind would be, which revealed that it was completely hollow inside.
"This thing looks pretty expensive." It was the same pure white as the Vase he pulled it out of and exceptionally detailed,
which made the fact that it seemed to have been hidden even more confusing.
He kept inspecting the Vase with some curiosity, eventually tilting it forward so that he could see the bottom.
"Wait, is that...?" Serad froze as his brain started to connect the dots.
The Queen was in the Vase when he left. This thing was in the Vase. The face on the bottom looked like the Queen's.
The face looked squashed, as if it was being pressed against a pane of glass, but he could still recognize it.
"What- How- ?" He didn't know what to do. What happened? How did it happen? Was this really her?
"What do i do?" Serad sat down on the Queen's desk chair, putting the Vase down in front of him, and closed his eyes.
Not looking at it for the moment helped him process the situation, allowing him to calm down slightly.
"Alright." He took a deep breath. "Alright, what happened? Maybe i can do something even if i don't know. What can i do..."
Serad opened his eyes, looking at the Vase. "Did putting her back in work? I might be able to communicate with her if it did."
He put a hand on his forhead. "So... figure out how to do telepathy and hope we can communicate. And also hope she has a solution."
Serad sighed again and let his head hang. "I just have to figure out how magic works and take care of the Queens duties in the meantime."
He groaned. "And keep people from finding out." His eyes fell on the Vase again. "Where do i put this thing until then..."
The Vase was fairly eyecatching, considering the fact that it looked like a pure white, naked, contorted Woman.
And he had to make sure that no one would look at the bottom, as that would risk exposing what happened to the Queen.