Through the Earth

Liam and I left the hospital around noon and turned towards what seemed to be a forest. “Where are we going?” I didn’t want to go somewhere too distant since I still felt exhausted from using magic.

“We’re going to where the explosion happened. Don’t worry, it isn’t far.” We entered the trees and I finally started to feel at home. All the plants looked like the ones in the core, and that made me start to relax. “You never answered my question?”

“Huh.” I was snapped from my thoughts. “What question?”

“The one I asked when you first woke up.” Liam said. “What were you doing in that explosion?”

“Oh,” I muttered. I wasn’t sure if I should tell him, but I quickly decided that I should. I had no other allies and Liam proved that he wanted to help me by coming up with a story for my werewolf cuts and not mentioning the explosion. He lied to protect me, and I found that very brave. “Three years ago, the ruler of the core, Queen Silver, attacked the North Settlement, the place I grew up. The North Settlement is the core’s second biggest city and is in the middle of the Crystal Forest. Queen Silver destroyed it first and gathered all the goddesses she could. Few did escape, but the others either joined Queen Silver or were turned into werewolves.”

“Werewolves exist!” Liam stared at me in disbelief.

“Yes. Queen Silver conjures them up with witchcraft and they can bite goddesses to make them werewolves.”

“It’s interesting that this queen of yours has werewolf minions. A werewolf’s weakness is silver.”

“Really?” I didn’t know that. “Maybe that’s why they serve her without hesitation. Anyway, as I was saying, few people were able to escape the North Settlement. The same thing happened in all the other towns and cities Queen Silver attacked. I was able to escape with my friends, Sapphire and Ruby. I really wanted to fight against Queen Silver, but Sapphire forbade me from going on the offensive. For two years we would move around the core only fighting werewolves if they attacked us, but I wanted to do more. It wasn’t until we were attacked by another goddess, Onyx, that Sapphire changed her mind. Outraged that a goddess would fight against her own kind just to save her own skin, Sapphire finally agreed that we should start doing something about Queen Silver.

“We all killed many werewolves and fought a few goddesses for a year, but if we really wanted to defeat Queen Silver, we would need to sneak into her castle in Diamond City and defeat her. We would need more goddesses on our side, but we haven’t found the other goddesses that escaped the queen’s grasp. We were tracking a small group of goddesses in hope of asking them to join us when a lone werewolf snuck up to us but retreated. I ran ahead of my friends and chased it up a hill but was ambushed by a group of werewolves and the goddess Quartz. That’s where my leg was clawed.”

I motioned at my leg and looked at Liam’s face. He was taking this all in and looked bewildered like he only half-believed my words. I continued, “After the battle, I was left alone with Ruby and…” I didn’t want to continue but this is where Liam’s question would be answered. “Ruby turned against me and said that she’s been working with Queen Silver. I don’t know how long this has been going on or why she would do that, but she teleported me away before I could find out anything. I think I was teleported to a dark pit and after falling for a while I felt an explosion around me. My memory after that was a little fuzzy, but I think I blacked out.”

“Yes,” Liam confirmed. “Your explosion happened over there.” I looked in the direction he pointed at and felt a surge of energy. I didn’t notice it until now, but I regained my strength on the walk over here. The magic was very strong in this area.

There was a crater in the middle of a patch of grass surrounded by trees. I stared at it for a second, barely believing I was its cause. “So...you’re a goddess?” Liam asked.

“Yes. Didn’t I make that clear?” I was very irritated at his question.

“I was just asking. You implied that everyone in the core is a girl, so I was wondering if that makes me the first boy you’ve met.”

“If you really have to know, yes.” With that, I flipped my hair over my shoulder and walked towards the crater. Liam didn’t follow and chose to watch me from a distance. I crouched down and brushed my hand over the dirt feeling the sensation of magic vibrate against my skin. This must be how there is magic on Earth. The tunnel I fell through must be channeling the magic of the core through the mantle and into the crust.

“Emerald!”

“What?” I snapped as I looked up at Liam.

“Look at your hair.” I picked up a lock of hair and stared in amazement. It was still brown, but green sparkles shimmered off my hair the way it sometimes did in the core. I always turned my sparkles off when I snuck through the forest so I wouldn’t be spotted by werewolves, but I did have them on all the time before Queen Silver attacked. I decided that I didn’t want to remember that time since as peaceful as it was, it was also kind of boring and made life feel meaningless. With a shake of my head, the sparkles left my hair. Liam stared at me with shock and wonder. I was getting a little tired of him always looking at me like that. It seemed like everything I did was strange and unusual to him.

“Ugg,” I groaned as I turned to stare off into the distance. My irritation was replaced with sorrow as I mourned for my life in the core. My life had just started to get interesting with all the battles I got to experience, and that was all taken away from me. There is no way I’m picking a fight with the humans when I don’t know what they are capable of. Will my life go back to being a void of emptiness? A tear rolled down my cheek but I wiped it away quickly in hope that Liam wouldn’t see me as weak.

Pushing all negative thoughts out of my mind, I immediately started making a mental list of spells that might help me get out of here. After a bit of brainstorming, I sat on the ground and crossed my legs.

“What are you doing?” Liam said.

“I’m going to do a wisdom spell. I’m going to think about the problem I want to solve as I meditate and after a little bit I’ll be sent a vision. The vision will tell me how to get home, but I will need total concentration. Please don’t bother me because not finishing a spell is very draining.”

“Don’t worry,” Liam said with a hint of sadness. “I don’t really bother anyone.” I shook my head and let the green sparkles shine again in my hair, knowing that it helps strengthen magic. I closed my eyes and concentrated on the invisible magic seeping through the earth.

“How do I get home?” I mumbled. “How do I go home?” The edge of my eyesight tinted green as I floated off the ground. A warm breeze blew against my skin as all sounds disappeared and everything turned black.

#

I opened my eyes and was standing in a long corridor made out of silver, gold, and diamond. I immediately knew where my vision had taken me, the castle in Diamond City, the home of Queen Silver.

Hearing footsteps behind me, I turned to see a girl with milky white skin in her early twenties. She was speed walking down the hallway with her gold hair flowing behind her. As she passed me, I immediately knew who it was. It was Queen Gold, Queen Silver’s older sister. They both ruled the core together ever since the creation of the first goddesses, but everyone loved Queen Gold better since she always made public appearances and didn’t hole herself away in the castle like Queen Silver.

Queen Gold disappeared three years ago right before Queen Silver attacked the core and no one has seen her since. I’ve always suspected that Queen Silver has something to do with Queen Gold’s disappearance, but no one can prove anything.

Queen Gold looked very young in my vision so I assume this is taking place in the past. I quickly followed her down the hallway to a pair of double doors made of diamond. She waved her hand and unlocked the door with magic.

“Gold!” Queen Gold turned her head in the direction of the voice searching for her. With eyes full of sorrow, she continued through the doors and locked them behind her. Since this was a vision, I walked through the door and saw Queen Gold reaching for a diamond floating in a beam of white light. The moment I saw the rainbow rays glistening out of the gem, I knew that it was the legendary Time Diamond. It is what makes goddesses live for thousands of years and age slowly. It was also said that it is able to take a person through space and time.

Gold grasped the diamond and stared at the door as the handle shook violently. A tear rolled down her cheek from locking out her pursuer, but that didn’t stop her from holding the stone to her heart and disappearing in a blaze of rainbow light.

The doors flashed as they unlocked and burst open to show a girl who was also in her early twenties. With one look at her silver hair and pale skin, my heart skipped a beat. Queen Silver! She looked much younger than how I saw her when she invaded the North Settlement, but that was the least surprising thing about her. She fell to her knees sobbing.

“Gold,” she cried. “You said you needed a break but I didn’t think you would steal the Time Diamond. You’d rather visit Earth than be around the other goddesses.” I’ve never seen such sadness from anyone in my life and felt sympathy for her as her cries echoed in my ears.

I was shocked that Queen Gold wanted to leave the core, even if only for a little bit. A queen using the Time Diamond for her personal needs is treason, for it can only be used to protect the goddesses. I was also shocked that Queen Silver would mourn for her sister like this. They seemed to be playing opposite roles.

In a flash, my vision took me to a circular room where Queen Silver was frantically flipping through spell books and my intuition told me it had been many months since Queen Gold’s disappearance. I’ve seen plenty of spellbooks in my lifetime, but I’ve never seen ones as old as these. Taking a closer look at the text, I noticed that it wasn’t written in the language of magic, so I assumed these are spellbooks for witchcraft.

Silver flipped the pages for a little bit until she found what she’d been looking for. Turning to the center of the room, she blasted a silver beam out of her left hand towards the floor, opening a portal. As she looked at the different spell books, the portal spread out, showing blackness as the portal’s destination. Using her right hand, she beamed out another silver light that looked fierce and sharp. It pushed into the darkness making it grow deeper as she pushed her beam farther. It was almost like she was carving a tunnel through the portal. The beam in her right hand continued to penetrate through the darkness until it hit something and disappeared. It was replaced with a vine of silver fire that reached through the rock and was soon followed by a muffled explosion. The fire retracted and pulled someone out. With that, the portal and fire disappeared, leaving Queen Silver standing there staring at Queen Gold.

Instead of wearing a gown, she wore a shirt and shorts that only looked like something a human would wear.

“Silver!” Gold looked furious. “Why’d you bring me back? You promised not to use witchcraft.”

Silver looked paler than usual and seemed like all her energy was barely enough to help her stand. “It’s not my fault that I was cursed with witchcraft,” she rasped. “I...needed...you…” Silver collapsed into her sister’s arms and Gold’s anger shifted to anxiety.

Once again, my vision converted my surroundings and this time, I was in what I presumed was Queen Silver’s bedroom. Silver was lying on her bed asleep with Gold kneeling on the floor with her head in her arms which laid crossed on the mattress. Silver woke up with a gasp, making Gold jump up startled and relieved.

“Oh thank goodness, Silver,” she cried. “You’ve been asleep for two weeks.”

“I have?”

“I was so worried.”

“And I was in distress,” snapped Silver. “You’ve been gone for five months and who had to cover for you? Me!”

“I told you. I was getting stressed out from all my duties. I needed an escape.”

“There are so many relaxing spots in the core! You could have gone to the lake or the forest. You could have even locked yourself in your room. Why go to Earth?”

“I wanted something new,” Gold said. “The Time Diamond took me 20,000 years into the future to a year the humans call 1998. Humans are not barbarians in that time, so I could explore without having to worry about being attacked. I’ve never felt more free.”

“And I’ve never felt more trapped. I had to tell everyone that you were in a conceal spell to get some rest. They believed me at first, but they don’t trust me the way they trust you. After two months passed, the other goddesses grew more hostile towards me and I had to shut down the castle. I had to get you back so I broke my promise. I used witchcraft to bring you home.”

Gold held out her hand and the Time Diamond materialized in it. They both stared at it for a moment. “Were you ever going to come home?” Silver asked as she leaned back on her pillow. Queen Gold glanced at her sister like she wanted to tell her something important, but she kept silent, leaving Silver’s question unanswered.

Silver sighed and turned over. “You’re the only one that loves me, but if you won’t stay for me, stay for our people. They need you.” Silver shut her eyes as a tear fell onto the pillow.

Gold walked towards the door but paused before opening it. “I’ll stay. As amazing as Earth was, you’re right. Our people need me and...I love you too much to abandon you. ” With that, she left the room and walked back to the hallway from my first vision. She opened the diamond doors and returned the gem to its beam of light.

“Goodbye,” she muttered.

My vision flashed forward to a more recent time. Gold was now in her forties and pacing the throne room. The doors burst open as she turned her head, and Queen Silver strode in. She looked calm, but her eyes burned with anger.

“Silver,” Gold said with slight hostility. “What are you doing here?”

“I’m not allowed to walk around my own castle now?”

“Of course you can, just not the room that I’m in.” What happened to them? In my last visions, Silver did everything in her power to get her sister back and Gold was willing to stay in the core to make Silver happy. Now they wanted nothing to do with each other.

“Were you ever going to come home?” Silver asked.

“Huh?” Queen Gold didn’t seem to remember Silver’s old question.

“That’s what I asked you after I brought you back. Were you ever going to come home?”

“Oh that. My answer is no. I didn’t want to come back. Were you really wondering what my answer would be all these years?” Gold asked with disgust.

“Oh, I knew what you would say. I just wanted to hear you say it.” Silver held out her hand as a beautiful gem took form in her hand.

“The Time Diamond!” Gold gasped “You hypocrite! What makes you think that you can use it and I can’t? It can only be used to protect the other goddesses.”

“You’re right. I’m going to use this to protect them from the traitor they call Queen Gold.” The Time Diamond shot out a black and white rainbow that hit Gold in the chest. It seemed to suck up some sort of power from inside her that filled the rainbow with color as it returned to the diamond.

“What did you do? Wait, my immortality-”

“-is gone?” Silver finished. “Yes. So is your slow aging. I want you to live like the human you wish you were.” Gold tried to run forward but she was stuck to the ground. “Oh, I don’t want you going anywhere, not until you know what is at stake.”

“What does that mean?” Gold tried to hide it, but I could hear the fear in her voice.

“I have just mastered the art of taking nothing and forming it into creatures, to be more specific, werewolves. I will use them to take over the core and rule everyone that hates me with violence and force. Those who don’t hate me enough to rebel will be given a chance to prove their loyalty, but eventually, all of the goddesses will be under my complete control. I don’t want them to have free will for too long. Once I deal with all of them, all of their power will be mine. Meanwhile, you will be on Earth, knowing your days are numbered with no magic to help you get back.”

“So that’s all you want?” Gold spat. “Power.”

“No! I want revenge. Once I control all the goddesses, I will be able to destroy what we swore to protect, and you will go down with it.”

“That means…” Gold stared terrified at her sister. Silver wanted her to die.

“Enjoy Earth,” Silver said in sarcastic cheerfulness. “You’ve always been a natural at it.” She held out the Time Diamond again and it glowed as a rainbow portal opened at Gold’s feet, making her fall into the darkness below.

My vision started to fade into darkness, but I didn’t want it to end now. I still needed more answers. “No,” I yelled. The darkness flickered as I tried to continue the spell. I needed an answer to one more question and tried to get another vision, but as I pushed harder, a terrible headache penetrated my brain. I screamed in pain but didn’t let go.

“Emerald!” I heard my name but didn’t know where it was coming from. “Emerald!” It felt like someone was shaking me as the forest came back and I fell to the ground.

I looked up to see Liam tense with fear as he kneeled down next to me. “Are you okay?

Infuriated, I yelled, “I told you not to bother me!”

“I know,” Liam said sadly. “But you were in pain. You have blood coming out of your ear.” Startled, I lifted my hand to my ear and sure enough, warm liquid was flowing out.

Why was I so foolish? You should never try to attain more knowledge with that spell than what you are supposed to or else you would suffer the deadly consequences. But I wanted to know where on Earth Gold was taken to.

I shuddered as I thought about Queen Silver’s evil plan. It sounded like she wanted to take control of everyone in the core and somehow that would lead to Gold’s death. All of the details of her plan weren’t mentioned in my vision, but it didn’t matter because Gold is in trouble.

As I thought about Silver and Gold’s emotions in their last conversation, it reminded me of how Ruby spoke to me before she sent me away.

Maybe if Gold and I felt the same way before coming to Earth, the way we got here is similar, too. If I remember correctly, I was teleported to a tunnel that made me fall the rest of the way to Earth. That makes sense because you can’t make a portal directly to Earth since it is too far away.

According to my vision, Silver carved a tunnel through the Earth to retrieve her sister. If my theory is correct, Queen Silver had to teleport Gold to Earth through that same tunnel because there aren’t any other holes that go through the Earth. If Gold and I went through the same tunnel, then both of us came out to the same spot on Earth. This means Queen Gold could be somewhere close by!