The world shifted and sighed and stretched out underneath the buildings, homes, and cars that sat upon it. In California, the world split open a bit near the San Andreas fault. Cars littered the side of the highways and buildings nearby had toppled to the ground. People wandered around the area looking dazed and confused. The brave ones took their chances to take a peek down the sides of the earth that had pushed itself open, as if it was trying to escape from itself. All they could see as they peered down the deep ledge was a darkness. Those that took their time to sit and contemplate their existence by the hole were soon rewarded with something else. A faint but pulsating glow almost barely perceptible to the naked eye appeared way down, deep near the core. The strange metallic scent of metal wafted up along with the overpowering scent of rotten eggs.
What people did not see in that second but they began to see, later on, was the strange waves of smoke crawling out from the deep cracks in the ground. This smoke would later be seen hovering high in the clouds dancing that strange dance of colors. Mirroring what was going on in the northern skies over Washington State.
On the other side of the world, a tornado sweeps across the dry, barren, sandy wastelands of India. The funnel shaped cloud is as wide as it is tall and kicks up half the desert. Plants with shallow roots get torn up and out of their patches of land only to be whipped around in the blowing wind and then tossed and discarded. Tin roofs located in the path of the monstrous funnel cloud are pulled apart like a can of sardines, their insides exposed. People who were unable to find under ground shelter scream as the whirlwind sweeps them up in a powerful grasp and carry them to far off locations that they did not want to be swept to. In total, the natural disaster destroys over two thousand acres and kills over five thousand people in the sandy lands. The Red Cross calls in for aid, of money, water and food and medial supplies; and soon the news is plastered all over the television and the internet.
Again, what they fail to see is that the skies above the area is swirling with strange colored dancing lights. The lights also appear only at night and they seem eerily similar to the ones that first appeared over the northern hemisphere in the United States atmosphere. Soon, chat rooms and forums and calls are made that begin to question what all these lights and natural disasters are about. Many people begin speculating that this is a coincidence, that they mean nothing. Others spew religious doctrine and cite ancient prophesies that date all the way back to the Mayan Civilization or to Nostradamus. Street preachers are running up and down the streets in the world prophet-sizing the end of days which has been foretold since the ancient times and that it will come about in a way that will smother us all. Many people are selling books that discuss the end times and how this is just an extension of the myths surrounding twenty twelve. These books are becoming more and more prolific that two have somehow made their way onto the New York Times bestseller lists for the year.
No one knows what the lights in the sky have to do with the earthquakes, tremors, or other disturbing natural weather events going on all over the world means. Scientist around the world now run around trying to figure out the strange chemical component linked to all the areas with colored atmospheric conditions. Summits are being held almost every other day and the news stories all flock to the sites of all the activity.
They start referring to this strange chemical component as coneol and they cannot figure out where it comes from or what it exactly does, other than make pretty aurora borealis lights up in the atmosphere everywhere on the planet. Their spectrometers do not know how to deal with it, none of their computer simulations can create the exact composition of what it is made of, nor can they actually determine what its purpose is in the grand nature of things. They know that they cannot go down into the sweltering heat of the core of the earth, the only place that they have seen this chemical exist, nor has technology provided them with a way to get far enough down to the core of the earth, past the dangerous heat
Xep and her companions watch all sources of news outlets for new information. From the television they learned the exact location of site zero, the fancy pants name that the news has given for the area around Mount Rainier where the first unnatural occurrence of the auroras appeared up in Washington State. They also learned that it was heavily visited almost constantly and that between the stead stream of cars and trucks making the pilgrimage up to see the site, and the heavy record snow falls that the area was receiving that it was going to be almost impossible to get to the site unnoticed. Xep sighed and longed for the day when she could be back in her old body. If she had her old, small and soft forms, then she would of have no issues blipping her way up to the location, figuring out what was going on and them reactivating the stone Portals that sat only a few meters away from the fissure that continued to slowly widen as the days went on.
Instead, she kept an almost silent and steady vigil on the soft, but sturdy sofa that sat against the wall in Sardonios’s home. She glued her eyes to the moving images on the screen, hoping to detect something with her enhanced vision and hearing while watching, at a distance, the events unfolding around them. No one said much about the events going on now all around the world, but they were all thinking the same thing. It was bad news and it was only going to get worse. Even Portland saw its own fair share of issues the past few weeks as tremors seemed to almost be a daily occurrence. No one had been hurt yet but all eyes were trained to the two local volcanoes, Mount Saint Helens and Mount Hood, both of which were epicenters of activity in the earth’s growing core unrest.
Finally, after what it seems like weeks of watching the new casts almost repetitively she spots a strange pattern. Xep was watching a repeat cast about the fissure located at Mount Rainier and how they were comparing it to the one that opened up just recently in the Himalayan Mountains. The pretty girl with long curly red hair, wearing a fur line parka, stood outside the barricade that the United States Forest Department had to erect to keep people from going into the dangerous territory around the slowly widening hole in the ground. Already they had one fatality and the government was trying to prevent more from happening. She was talking about the chemistry of the fissures and how they appeared almost identical once the exploded from deep within the core. The screen swiftly went from focusing on her face to a side by side areal view of the lands around the two openings.
Xep was sure that she had spotted it; the clue, the one thing that could give her side some advantage over the other. It was the one that no one seems to have managed to report on yet. The one thing no one seems to notice are the large strange stone circles appearing almost unanimously across all locations that have had occurrences of the strange auroras. She recognized the pattern of the seven stone circles seated nearby both openings. It sparked an idea in her head.
“I think I have something,” she said out loud to Sardonios, who, up until that point had his nose buried deep in a book on archaic minerals. A tall pile of more books on minerals, and properties sat next to him, awaiting to be cross referenced. Ever since the scientists gave the smokey substance a name of coneol, he had been obsessed with being the one to crack the code. He had a hunch that it was related to alchemy and that it had been discovered and written about long before it had been rediscovered a few weeks ago. Paige and Tristian had long been gone, they were out shopping or making mischief as they were wont to do, having found themselves bored with the constant studies. Occasionally they would check in on Xep and Sardonios and be updated with the process.
“Oh, really. What is it?” Sardonios replied, as he kept reading on in his book. He focused his eyes on a passage that discussed how metals could be crushed up and then converted into tin or gold only by sending a small precise shock of electricity through the center of the stone. Apparently, this process was a popular way that alchemists of old would attempt to make fool’s gold by harnessing the power of a lightening bolt, and focusing it deep down into the core of a stone. Early attempts to produce new minerals and substances only ended up with the stone exploding into dust and the metal melting down into a pile of goop that rendered both materials useless to further attempts. It also fused the two chemical compounds together to the point where the process could not be reversed.
“Each fissure has opened up around a series of stone circles. They are like what you would call Stonehenge, except these circles are what me and my kind use to visit. They are our portal destinations and require certain amounts of stone and mineral energy patterns to work. I am beginning to wonder if there is a connection between what is going on and the veil, the energy that connects us. Which would mean that your hunch was right. That this does relate back to alchemy and to the arts of magic. I think, after seeing this, and having spent some time in your world, that I have a hypothesis as to what is going on.”
From having heard this, Sardonios removed his glasses and set the old worn book aside, “You have my full attention my dear. Please continue, as I would love to hear what you think you have.”
“Well,” Xep continued as she turned down the volume of the television set and shifted her position so that she could face the old man. She scrunched her face together as she attempted to find just the right words to describe her theory. What you call magic and I call normal, is the use and manipulation of energies and other items to help you achieve goals in your life, right? For example, you can use the power of a tiger’s eye stone to focus and distill your will down to the point that your mind has a razor sharp intellect and it boosts creativity. Well, the Portals consume energy to activate. A very specific type of energy. One that requires a deep draw from the core of the earth. I think that the stone portals require the use of this coneol element that your scientists are constantly babbling on about. The reason that they have not found a way to crack the secrets contained inside is simple, it is the element of magic that is required to make things like my existence possible.
From what I have seen on this television, they are seeing more and more of this coneol escaping from the core. Which means that the core is not made exclusively of molten lava, but of high concentrations of this coneol. Which is now being let out into the atmosphere. We call the magical energies that run amok, without focus, wild and it has the power to do powerful and destructive things to the world. I have seem more technology in this world than I have seen a connection to the deep and natural magics that exist in my world. You never use the stone portals. You have even said that no one knows what they are or how they are used. Magic is a forgotten language here in this world.”
“I am not sure I follow your logic,” Sardonios interrupted.
“Hm, let me try and put this into simple terms. Okay, so what if coneol, this magical element, is the cause of all these problems? We have seen, on our side, that when you do not allow the magic to go and do what is willed and asked of it, it gets twisted and grows wild, to do what ever destructive force it wants. What if the fact that your people have ignored this power for so long that it has built up so much that it is in fact destroying the world. That it finally figured out how to escape and is now emptying out into the world uncontrolled, into the atmosphere and is making the beautiful patterns in the atmosphere.
I believe your desire to be so technological oriented is now turning into your downfall. And that if coneol is not controlled soon, it may destroy your world and then seep back into my own world.”
Sardonios leaned back in his chair and paused. He looked down at the pile of books at his side and then let the one in his hand drop. His face flushed and he turned his head towards his laboratory, “I grok what you are saying now. What do you suggest we do about it?”
“There is only one thing we can do,” Xep said, smiling, “we try and save the worlds ourselves.”
