Chapters 26 & 27

Changes

Hello! I’m continuing my creative writing story, but I’m making a few changes in the process of how I share it. I will now be posting multiple chapters at once, though perhaps less frequently, and the cover art will change. The story’s the same, just the format is different. Thank you for reading, I hope you enjoy it!

Recap

Rienna is ten years old (bordering on eleven) and has lived her whole life inside the kingdom of Vieryen, surrounded by a magic bubble called the Suppression, which is named for its ability to suppress and tame all magic within it. She’s lived her whole life under the belief that magic is evil and everyone who lives outside the Suppression, in the Alyene, is long dead.

However, when her (magic) cats convince her to sneak outside the safety of Vieryen, an unlikely encounter with a witch leaves her stranded in the Alyene. With no idea where she is in relation to her kingdom, she and her cats walk across empty fields until they reach a strange wall made of vines. 

Rienna climbs a nearby tree to see over the wall and discovers a whole kingdom, even though it goes against everything she was taught. Unfortunately, she falls off the tree and onto the other side of the hedge, landing her in the unknown kingdom and separating her from her cats, Xio and Xia.

On the other side of the wall, Rienna meets a girl named Jen, an aspiring diplomat and one of the few people in the kingdom of Rufdand who can speak Rienna’s language. She soon discovers that someone is kidnapping Rufdand’s children, and the most likely suspects are the fairyeld guard, soldiers from Vieryen who Rienna thought had been enchanted by their Sovereign Jenni to survive the Alyene.

When the king of Rufdand asks for the crystal Rienna used to cut through the Suppression, Rienna tries to make a run for it with the help of Jen, not willing to lose her only way home. 

After a brief reunion with her cats, they are all captured by the fairyeld and brought to a camp called V4, where they find some of the missing children and are put to work tending crop fields. Thankfully, they are quickly able to escape thanks to the powers of the two cats and help free the rest of the kids the next day.

All seems well until Rienna’s magic crystal proves to be a cure to the curse affecting many of the children who had previously escaped, the king is more insistent than ever that Rienna hand over her crystal.

Rienna manages to split her crystal but grows increasingly paranoid that the king won’t accept the smaller crystal and will force her to give up her only way home. On a caravan out of the kingdom, she is accosted by a younger girl named Rildie who claims her mentor Måren Muril wishes to see her.

Strangely trusting of Rildie, Rienna follows Rildie to her village in the jungle treetops, where she discovers that Måren has been influencing her thoughts so that she would be more likely to trust the younger girl. Måren then reveals that she is yet another witch and is, in fact, the one who saved her from the witch and necromancer, Trusten Ylad, who had tried to capture Rienna and had stranded her outside the Suppression.

She explains that she and Trusten are part of an ancient and dwindling race called the fretch, and that the magic Sovereign Jenni wields is stolen from the very kind of crystal that Rienna planned on using to get home. A fellow witch, as well as a seer, predicted that someone from Jenni’s own realm would be the one to stop her and be able to carry out the will of the fretch.

Dubious but wanting to do whatever she can to help stop the Sovereign, Rienna agrees to travel to the crystal caves and find a way to prevent the Sovereign from stealing its magic. She is brought to Westrikov, an area consisting of four small towns that has been overrun with fairyeld, and finds her way to a back entrance where the river enters the caves.

As she makes her way down the river, a waterfall catches her by surprise, having never experienced one before. She and her cats managed to survive the encounter thanks to Xia’s magic, but now they are left in complete darkness, waiting for the sun to rise so that they may find a way through (and hopefully back out of) the caves.

Chapter 26: Shifting Walls

Eventually, Rienna dozed off. Sometimes she woke up spontaneously. Other times, she dreamt of sitting in a cave while trying to sleep. The ground beneath her was hard and rough, and each time she woke, her back was sore and she had to shift the contents of her bag to try and be more comfortable.

She didn't know how much time had passed when the first rays of light sparkled through the river's entrance and first showed some of the details of the cave. She was able to see that the waterfall wasn't as tall as she had thought it was; she could easily see where the entrance was above her.

She also realized that the river ended in a large pool instead of continuing beyond the waterfall. She couldn't tell how deep the water was, as there still wasn't much light, but she assumed the pool went down if it could hold the contents of the river pouring into it.

As more and more light filled the cavern, Rienna began to bring out breakfast for her and the cats. This time, she took some salted meat for herself since the cats had eaten a whole fish the day before and still weren’t overly hungry. She also refilled her wooden canteen and attempted to wash her hair.

Now, all she needed to do next was figure out how to stop the fairyeld guards from taking crystals from the caves. No problem.

Okay, she thought, What do we know? Apparently, there were crystals somewhere around here, not that she saw any. Apparently, there were also miners mining said crystals, though she saw no sign of them either. Wherever the main entrance was, she was sure it would be busy at this time of day, including fairyeld.

Maybe they should collapse the entrance the miners used? Surely there would be a time when no one would be trapped inside. Of course, Rienna didn't have any explosives. She didn't even know how to start a fire anyway.

Perhaps they should find the entrance first.

"Alright," she finally said, "Do you guys know which direction the miner's entrance would be?"

"We are to the east of the entrance, right?" Xio asked her.

"Yes. I think so,” Rienna said, surprised. Why hadn’t she thought of that?

"Then we should go that way," Xio said, pawing the air in the direction of the waterfall.

"We have to go all the way around the pool?!" Rienna's legs already ached from the uncomfortable rocks and from yesterday’s exercise.

"Well, I didn't design them cave." She imagined Xio was rolling his eyes. "So let's goes! The more we sats here, the longer wills take." He bounded off into the darkness with Xia quickly following after him.

Rienna sighed and stood, picking up her backpack. She rushed after the cats, trying not to lose them in the artificial night while trying not to slip on damp spots of rock and moss.

After a moment, she caught up to the cats on the other side of the cave. Searching along the wall, she found a tunnel opening, only noticeable by the growing darkness around the area.

Rienna was suddenly grateful she was not afraid of the dark.

They walked through the tunnel, Rienna holding her hands out to the side to make sure the tunnel hadn't widened into another cave. The sounds of the waterfall faded the farther they went.

Rienna thought about what Måren had said about an entire ecosystem being damaged by the mining. So far, she hadn't seen or heard anything living in these caves. Unless the moss on the rocks was super special, it seemed unlikely that anything inside the caves was being affected.

Besides the crystals.

Out of nowhere, a gust of wind gently blew through her face. She was caught by a whiff of dankness. She crinkled her nose at the smell.

The wall fell out of reach from her right hand. She felt around, making sure there wasn't another path before turning the corner.

A familiar pink-purple glow burst out of the darkness.

A crystal.

Rienna ran excitedly towards the light. She stumbled on the uneven ground but managed not to fall on her face before she reached the crystal.

It was beautiful. Unlike the one she had stolen from the spy, it glowed brightly and continuously without being broken. It was also larger, about the size of her hand if she splayed her fingers.

Entranced, Rienna reached out and touched the crystal. It was warm, like the Suppression had been, and sent an exciting jolt through her hand and down her arm. She felt the hair on her arm stand on end and slowly flatten again when she let go of the crystal.

She looked around and spotted another glowing crystal. She ran over to it, and suddenly it seemed the walls were full of miniature glowing specks and the occasional unusually large crystal.

"This is amazing!" she breathed.

Xio came up behind her ankles. "They are stuffed with the magic," he said. "I can felt their energies."

"Me too, I think," Rienna said in awe. She twirled and stared up at the crystalline ceiling. There were crystals the size of sprouting plants and crystals the size of her head. She knew they were just crystals, but something about them seemed alive.

She walked forward, farther into the realm of crystals. She was dazzled, hardly aware of where she was going or what was around her. Soon, there was no sign of the rocks beneath the crystals; it was all sparkling pink and purple glass.

The room shuddered, and Xio yelled suddenly from behind her. A glass-like sound of two things crashing together resonated through the tunnel. “Rienna!” Xio’s voice yelled again, muffled.

She spun around and came face to face with a wall of crystals. She just barely saw the last few crystals click into place as they recreated the environment.

"Xio! Xia!" she yelled, wincing as her voice was magnified and echoed.

"Rienna!" Xio yelled back. His voice barely passed through the sudden barrier.

She couldn't believe what was happening. Since when could crystals move?! Suddenly, the crystals seemed sharp and dangerous around her rather than exotic and beautiful.

"Xio!" she yelled again, sinking to the floor, unsure what to do. She had become spellbound by the crystals and then separated from Xio and Xia because of it. The worst thing was that she wasn't sure she could just blame it on magic; it could have easily been Rienna's own curiosity that made her rush ahead, and nothing else. I couldn't have known that the walls could move, she tried to reassure herself. But she couldn’t help but feel that this was all her fault.

"Rienna!" Xio called out again, this time to catch her attention. "Another passageway has opened up on this side. We'll follow it. If you keep going, maybe we'll find each other again."

"Okay," Rienna choked out with a sniff. "I'll find you," she promised.

"Bye, Rienna. We're going to find each others. It be fine."

"Bye!" she called out. "Bye..."

She brought her hands to her face and began to sob. What had she been thinking? Why did she ever agree to this? She tried unsuccessfully to wipe her tears as they rolled down her face.

It was just too much. All her life, she had thought magic killed all humans. Then she thought maybe it wasn’t so bad. Now, she was alone, lost in a crystal maze, with all her knowledge about the world completely out of whack. 

Sometimes it had felt like a fun adventure. Other times, times like this one, she wished that everything she had been taught was right, that she could rest at home knowing she was in the best place in the world to be.

But instead, it had all been lies, and now people were suffering because of the fairyeld and her kingdom. Whatever happened, she had to keep trying. Nothing was going to get done if she just sat here crying.

She took a shuddering breath and stood up. "It’s going to be fine," she told herself. "It's going to be fine." She kept repeating those words, over and over again, barely whispering them as she stumbled forward through the tunnel.

She felt like she was going insane as she walked. The walls kept shifting around her, making creepy scuttling sounds. She would turn a corner and look back to see a dead end. She swore she heard whispers around her and saw tunnels that weren't actually there. Everything kept changing. She was a fly caught in a web, struggling to find a way out.

She felt like the caves were leading her father and farther away from Xio and Xia, farther and farther away from the world. The crystals became dizzying. They grew bigger and bigger, and they were all so different... yet exactly the same. And it was all just crystals except for the ground beneath her.

The tunnel just kept going. She walked, sometimes ran, for hours. She would frantically sprint down the crystal hallways before collapsing to the ground, crying and wanting to give up.

"Let me out!" she screamed at the walls. "Let me out! Please! Let me out..." She cried uncontrollably, tears streaming down her face as she turned corridor after corridor. There was never a fork in the path; it was just one, long, winding tunnel.

She felt the pure panic setting in as she grew more and more hysterical. "Please!" she screamed again. She sniffed and wiped her snot on her sleeve. "Please..." She stumbled forward and fell on the ground, scraping her knees.

She felt as if she could cry no more tears. Her eyes were so puffy that she could hardly open them. She covered her face with her arms and stared down at the ground, the only place that wasn't pink or purple. She tried to calm down, but she couldn't. She just kept crying as much as she could, tears no longer falling from her face. Her hands clenched her hair so hard that she almost felt like she was pulling it out.

She took a deep, shuddering breath and tried to calm herself. She couldn’t do anything in this state; she needed to cool off. She closed her eyes and focused on the comforting darkness. She was going to be okay; she had to be okay. Don’t think about the crystals right now. Calm down. Don’t worry about the cats right now. Just calm down. Calm down.

…

Rienna slowly regained consciousness after a blissful sleep. She kept her eyes closed, savoring the in-between world of dreams and reality.

She still tasted the salt of the ocean on her tongue. Breathing in deeply, she knew she must be close by since she could smell the water. She felt the ground beneath her. Rocks. She must be at a coastal cliff.

She smiled and slowly opened her eyes.

Rienna frowned. The sky was pink. Why was the sky pink? It looked like a bunch of tinted glass had broken and then floated up into the sky.

Then she remembered. She was in the crystal caves. Trapped beneath stone and crystals, separated from Xio and Xia. The salt she tasted and smelled was from her tears, not the ocean. She’d never even been to an ocean.

She sighed and sat up, looking around the cavern. She was not in the same spot she'd been in when she had fallen asleep. There were no tunnels going elsewhere. Just one giant cavern covered in sharp, purple-pink crystals.

In the center was a giant cluster of crystals growing out of the floor. One was as big as a person. It seemed to reflect the room in its strangely polished panes of glass. Except something about the reflection was off, different.

Rienna stood and walked over to the monstrosity. It was certainly beautiful, like the rest of the crystals, but the reflection... She walked around the room's centerpiece, trying to figure out what was wrong with it.

Then she realized what was missing: her. No matter where she went, she couldn't see herself in the crystal. She tried jumping, holding up her hand directly in front of it. Still, the only things reflected were the other crystals.

She peered closer, putting her hands on the crystal, staring as hard as she could at the reflection. She felt the jolt of magic the moment she touched it. It was stronger than any of the other crystals, causing her to gasp and stumble backwards a step.

She glanced at the crystals above, then at the ones in the crystal in front of her. The crystals above weren’t reflected in the crystal either. It was like looking at two different pictures and the one in the crystal was of a younger cave.

"Why are you so weird?" she whispered to the giant crystal.

A large insectoid leg poked out of one of the crystals and shook as though it was responding to Rienna.

Rienna yelped and jumped away from the crystal. She looked up, somewhat expecting to see a giant bug staring down at her, but there wasn’t. The ceiling remained unaffected by what was shown in the large centerpiece.

Cautiously, she tiptoed closer to the giant crystal. This time, she looked at it not expecting a reflected image, but something actually inside of it. It was the right approach. This time, she realized that it was a bunch of tiny baby crystals growing inside of a larger one… and an insect leg was sticking out of one cluster.

Gently, she tapped the crystal near the bug. It rustled and groggily stood, revealing six insectoid legs and a small buggy face with large black eyes. On its back grew a cluster of tiny crystals.

The crystals are living things, Rienna realized with shock. "You actually are alive." The bugs must have been part of the way that blocked her from getting to Xio.

"Are all of you alive?!" she asked loudly, looking up at the ceiling.

The walls responded, hundreds of crystal-backed bugs scuttling around. Sounds of glass hitting glass reverberated throughout the room.

Suddenly, they poured down the walls and surrounded Rienna, pressing her into the center of the room.

Chapter 27: Them

They were thousands of years old. They watched each age the humans called golden fall into despair. They saw kingdoms rise and fall and witches slowly disappear. They remembered when dragons ruled the continent and when there had been floods and when there had been droughts.

They saw the beginnings of Four Towns. They remembered a beautiful young woman who was strong-willed and came from a newer kingdom that was plighted by a witch.

They heard her tell her story of sorrow. Of children being stolen and consumed by the witch. Of the poverty her kingdom was facing. The locals refused to help, fearing for their own children's safety. They watched as she cried and pleaded for their help, explaining that the other nearby kingdoms had already rejected her.

They wanted to help her. They knew they could. So they led her to the caves, their home. They showed her their power and told her what she could do to fight the witch. They granted her the non-living crystals that were full of magical power. She was their friend.

They saw her leave and watched her protect her kingdom from the witch. She became a hero, and they were proud.

But the magic didn't last forever, and as soon as the woman realized that, she came back for more.

They were more than willing to help her again. But soon they couldn't stand to give her more. They had watched her use her borrowed power to control the people who had refused to help. They watched the protected kingdom grow in size, and each year it grew in prosperity as well.

She didn't like it when they stopped giving her crystals. She was mad. She called them liars, betrayers, and evil. She had stomped off angrily, and they were sad as they watched her go.

They thought that she would never come back.

But she did. They saw her return with pickaxes and soldiers. They knew what she planned to do. They tried to reason with her, but she ignored them.

They screamed as their home was torn apart, as their bodies were ripped away, mistaken for regular rocks and crystals. They had given her too much power. Too much knowledge. They learned what it was to regret.

In the next centuries, they evacuated the outermost tunnels. They learned how to misdirect the miners into traps, and watched with great sadness as they killed innocent people who had been forced into labor by the woman and her kingdom. There was nothing they could do.

Then something strange happened. A human child left the protective barrier the woman had created. They saw her confront that same witch and escape with the help of another one. They watched as she went to the first kingdom that had rejected the woman. She became friends with the inhabitants and saved dozens of children who had been caught by the woman's soldiers. They watched as she used a crystal to cure the children of the magic that played them. They remembered how proud they had once been.

Then the child started to journey down toward the caves with the help of the kind witch. As she traveled through the nearby towns, they watched her kindness sway the locals. They knew she would make it to the caves. They found hope.

Then the human child entered the caves. They wanted to see her with their own eyes. They wanted to talk to her. They led her through the tunnels. They watched with confusion as the child broke into tears and screamed with a sadness they recognized. So they helped her once she fell asleep. They brought her where she needed to be. They watched as she learned the truth. They knew what they had to do. They had purpose.