Prophesied

I had always heard stories about the stone atop the great mountain and the five elements it controlled. The tale says that the tides of the ocean come because the water is pulled towards the gravitating magic from the gem. Earthquakes are formed because the earth can’t handle the power that radiates off of this very mountain. Fires engulf the small towns below it because they can’t burn down this massive rock. And the sun and moon come back every day and night to witness the catastrophe that one little gem causes.

A small careless smile flashes across my lips as I recall my grandfather telling me this particular legend. He would let me sit on his lap in front of the wood stove and then he would speak in a low mysterious tone throughout the night. My mother had always scolded him for telling me the village’s most dangerous fable, but grandfather has always been a rule breaker. He used to get in so much trouble when he was about my age. My mother always made sure that he never forgets the immense amount of work he had to do because of his mischief. My mother’s voice rings in my head as I walk with my friends. Thorn, don’t you dare take another step, you hear? Don’t you do it! She begins to yell at me but I block out her voice as I take one weary step after another. Deer is in front of me and she is constantly slipping on the loose rocks which is putting the whole group on edge. Her long brown hair keeps falling in her face as she continuously leans forward to catch herself. Sage leads this expedition since it was her idea to climb up here and her brother, Hawk, follows close behind. They are both carrying two bright red bags with snacks and drinks in them and Hawk carries Deer’s bag since she had nearly dropped it half an hour ago. Rain stops for half a second to kick a larger rock off the path to try to make as few obstacles for the clumsy girl in front of me. Sage glances over her shoulder as the rock tumbles down the cliff to ensure it wasn’t our friend, her green eyes meet my brown ones and an unspoken conversation seems to pass between us.

Ready to take a break?

Is that your way of asking if I’m just as tired as you?

Just keep an eye out for a place for us to stop.

You’re the one up front, you’ll see something before I do. A bead of sweat falls into my eyes just as she turns back around and scouts for a place to rest. A barely noticeable cave is about six feet ahead of us. And Sage begins walking towards it.

“Let’s eat and rest over there.” Deer’s shoulders sag in relief as she passes through the entrance of the cave and immediately plops to the ground in exhaustion. I’m the last in and I have to wait a moment for my eyes to adjust to the suddenly dark space. After only a moment I can see Hawk crouched down just as he pulls out five strips of rabbit jerky. It was the jerky I had just dried the week before so the meat was still pretty fresh. He gives everyone a piece and I nibble mine so I can savor the taste. Sage can’t sit still and she stands up and paces and then must realize we’re supposed to be resting and sits down next to her brother.

“Hurry up, we don’t want to waste daylight.” Rain gives her an incredulous look before speaking.

“We should wait until the sun isn’t so high.” Sage shakes her head before Rain finishes speaking.

“No, we don’t know what monsters come out at night. Our goal is to find the gem and get it back home alive.”

“But if we continue in this heat there’s a much more dangerous enemy, the sun. At least at night, we’ll be able to run from the monsters, we can’t hide from him.” He looks at Deer who has nodded off, she is the youngest of us all and isn’t quite used to this kind of work. If we continue at the pace we’ve been going in that heat she could faint. Of course, Rain is right, but Sage is too headstrong to admit when she’s wrong. I don’t say this out loud, instead, I wait in the shadows, waiting for them to decide what to do.

“We can’t stop every time someone needs a break, we don’t need to stay here for the rest of the day. We have about 5 more ticks until the sun sets and his sister rises.” Sage’s voice is like fire and can scorch anyone, except her brother who always finds a way to douse the inferno inside of her. Rain’s fury is gentler because his anger is for everyone else instead of himself and it’s because of him that Deer is here right now. She has a dark past and was abused in her old village and so she ran away but didn’t make it to any villages. Rain had been hunting that day and saw her lying by the stream. He brought her back and we renamed her Deer since she was found in the forest at the wild herd’s favorite spot. No one talks about her past but years later, people still give her weird looks. Rain and Sage begin to argue and I can already tell that yelling is in the immediate future and a small headache blooms behind my eyes.

I crawl towards the back to find silence but their voices echo towards me. As I go deeper the ceiling begins to raise until I can stand and a faint glow illuminates the space now. I continue walking curious to see how far this goes and also to see where and if it opens out. I reach a large cavern where the light seems to be coming from but there isn’t any exit that I can see. When I spin around back toward the entrance and find the source of the light. There's a gem in the wall above the hole where I crawled out of. The jewel looks to be the size of my head and is pulsing slightly, illuminating the walls surrounding me. I look up following the light and stare at the drawings filling the ceiling. The lines are ragged and uneven, making the place look and feel older than time itself. There's a drawing of the six gods standing in a circle staring down at the world. The picture next to it shows small little figures fighting and dying. It must be depicting the First War when the tribes were all arguing over land and power because the crops were dying and the land was unusable. The gods had met to decide how to best deal with this issue. Shikra, the water goddess suggested they give a piece of themselves to the people. She said that maybe the earth needed repairing. The other gods agreed, but Zano, the god of death and the afterlife didn’t realize that his brothers and sisters had a different plan. While Zano was sleeping his five siblings gathered together and the second oldest, Tera, had gathered a jewel from the earth. Tera is the goddess of the earth. As she set the jewel down in the middle of their circle they all took a step back and prepared to give a piece of themselves to the people below. They stepped up from oldest to youngest, first Tera gave a piece of herself and the gem turned a dark muddy color. Next Fiero, the god of fire stepped up to the stone. The jewel turned a bright red as he gave his soul to the stone. Shikra turned the gem a dark blue before stepping back. The twins Luna and Sol stepped up at the same time. They’re the youngest of the gods, Luna is the moon goddess while her brother Sol is the sun god. As they put their souls into the stone at the same time the jewel turned a bright yellow with streaks of black. The gem rose from the ground as the twins stepped back, it was flashing with an assortment of colors. The light awoke Zano and he watched from afar as his siblings sent the stone down to earth. In his anger, Zano shot the jewel with a piece of his soul. The gem darkened and then fell to earth. Zano didn’t know that he had just given unlimited power to the stone. He didn't know that any human to possess the stone would be as powerful as the six gods. It wasn't long before the gem was found by an ill-intended chief. He used its powers to gain wealth and power. He was greedy and wanted immortality, so when Zano came to deliver the CHief to the afterlife, the chief shot the god of death with the stone. It killed Zano, no god could withstand the power of all of their powers sent upon them. Tera loved her older brother and in her despair stole the stone from the chief and then sent the stone to a faraway mountain. She begged the mountain not to let any human who isn’t worthy of the stone get near it. She asked the mountain that if the time ever came the stone should be destroyed and given to five worthy people. She took Zano’s soul out of the stone and instead put it in a sword so that humans could still die and no one could use the stone against the gods again. Centuries pass and villages began to form around the mountain since the land there was lush. Tera whispered the tale of the gem and her brother to the village storytellers hoping that someday soon someone would come and free the stone. My excitement bubbles up as I realize that I’ve found it, the Soul Gem.