Through the Earth
Chapter 9

We met up with Gold outside the throne room when she was fully recovered and barged right in. Silver was sitting on her silver throne in the spacious room and she was so shocked that she stopped using her witchcraft.

But Silver didn’t stay surprised for long and her hands sparkled as she continued collecting power for her spell to destroy the world. “Gold! Emerald!” Her voice sounded like an evil mix of calm and angry. “If it isn’t my two least favorite goddesses.”

Ruby stepped forward. “Why do you hate Emerald so much? I get why you hate Gold but you’ve always been telling me that Emerald is awful when you’ve never met her. I know that she is the one that killed more werewolves than any other goddess, but if that really was the reason you hate her, you would hate her a lot less than you actually do.”

“My dear Ruby,” Queen Silver said. “I was wondering when you would turn against me. I remember three years ago when you were out in the forest and I ran into you on the way to terrorize the North Settlement. You were so full of hatred and you told me why. I gave you the witchcraft you were born to have. I also made you as strong as a werewolf but let you keep your intelligence. I knew that a girl that’s only about thirteen thousand years old with the ability to think against me would be idealistic and want to turn on me after seeing my plans in action.”

Ruby asked her question again. “Why do you hate Emerald?” I noticed Silver, even for a brief second, flashed a look of sadness.

I decided to step forward. “I know how Gold has hurt you. She told me everything.” Silver looked down. I could tell that she tried to play tough, but on the inside, she was wounded by her past.

“Silver,” Gold said gently. “I’m sorry that I kept you from using witchcraft when our mom wanted you to share it. I’m sorry I disowned you because of the accident with my child. Please! I want us to be sisters again.”

Tears filled Silver’s eyes.“Stop!” Silver stood up from her seat. “You don’t care about me. You only care about humans.”

“If that were true,” Gold rebutted, “then why did I trust Emerald with the truth?”

“Emerald doesn’t count.”

“Why not?”

“Because you are both related! Emerald is your daughter!”

All four of us stood in silence, until Gold yelled, “Lier! My daughter’s soul was destroyed because it couldn’t make it to the outer core. You were there.”

Silver looked offended. “Why would I lie about something that ruined my life? After I banished you to Earth, I had a dream about that soul. It did explode, but a soul can’t be destroyed. It turned into millions of microscopic fragments that still kept inching closer and closer to the outer core. It took about five thousand years, but all of the pieces of the soul came together inside the outer core. It turned a shade of dark green and crashed into the Earth. It made a new goddess and on Earth, a new gem was created. That gem was called emerald.”

I stood there, barely believing what was going on. This means that Gold is my mom and Ethan is my dad. Gold looked at me, and a warm happiness filled her eyes. Meanwhile, Silver was trying not to cry.

“I didn’t ruin your life.” Silver’s voice cracked. “So you will pay for ruining mine.” She opened a portal and four werewolves stepped out, each with different colored fur. The colors were dark purple, cream white, jade green, and dark blue.

My heart stopped. It was Sapphire, Anthemist, Pearl, and Jade.

“I thought all the werewolves couldn’t move,” I whispered to Ruby.

“She must have unfrozen them for a heart-wrenching battle,” she whispered back. Jade was smaller than the other werewolves, but she attacked first, heading straight to Gold. Pearl followed her and Anthemist attacked Ruby, leaving Sapphire to charge right at me. I jumped over her with a quick boost spell and I wished I had my sword. Not because I wanted to hurt Sapphire, but because I needed something to block her attacks. “Emerald, catch!”

Ruby threw my sword to me as it materialized in the air. I grabbed it and turned just in time to block Sapphire’s claws from piercing my skin.

For five minutes, I battled Sapphire and tried to think of a way to defeat her when an explosion of red light knocked me to the ground. When I looked up, the only one standing was Ruby, and lying around her were Gold, me, and the other goddesses. They were back to normal, unconscious and unscratched.

“I did it,” Ruby rasped. “I can reverse the werewolf bite. That spell though was…very… tricky…” Ruby passed out, but before I could run to help, a searing pain pierced my abdomen, and I fell to the floor.

“Emerald!” Gold’s scream was full of outrage and grief. She tried to run towards me, but Silver, who stood behind me, kept her from going forward.

“I wouldn’t take another step if I were you,” she said. “Unless you want to meet my sword the way Emerald did.”

“Silver! Let me heal her!”

“It doesn’t matter. Goddesses can’t die.” Silver laughed. “Or at least not like this.”

“I know that!” Gold was a volcano of anger. “I can’t bear to see my daughter like that!”

“If you heal her, it won’t matter. I’m killing all the goddesses today and your love for her won’t save her.” Something about Silver’s words felt wrong.

I remembered something Gold once told me. “Love is stronger than any emotion.” Right now I only felt hopeless, but I was willing to try anything. I started thinking about people who love me.

Sapphire, who raised me and wanted me to succeed in life. When I went missing, all she wanted was to know if I was safe.

Ruby, who wanted to be around me when I wanted nobody. She may have turned on me, but she saw the light and backed me up when I needed her.

Liam, who is the kindest human I know, gives me joy when I’m in his presence. He would give up his life for me if he knew it meant I’d be safer.

Gold, who trusted me before she knew we were family. Seeing me in pain breaks her heart, and she will do anything to see me well.

Thinking about all this love, it reminded me of what I was fighting for. Something stirred inside me. All my negative emotions were washed away by the tsunami of love rushing in, fueling my magic like I’ve never felt before.

My wound started to close up as I got to my feet and stared at Queen Silver. “You really think love can’t save me. Love overpowers every negative thought and feeling in your mind and leaves room for only the good things in your life.”

I stepped towards Silver and magic started to glow in my hands. “I used to think love was just something useless that only humans would be stupid enough to take seriously. Yes, goddesses do feel love, but they never found it necessary. No wonder the greatest magic user was a human. Diamond felt love.”

I lifted my hand and stared at Silver right in the eye as she trembled. “I now know what my purpose is. It’s to love, and there is no way you will be able to stop me when I have love.” With all my might, I blasted Silver against the wall with the strongest beam of light I’ve ever seen. She hit the wall and fell to the floor.

“Emerald.” Gold muttered from behind. I turned to face her. “You’re okay.” She looked so relieved as I ran up to her and gave her one of the biggest hugs. “What happened?”

I stepped back from Gold and looked her in the eye. “I took your advice. I knew my magic wouldn’t be strong enough since I was feeling so many negative emotions, so I tried thinking about love and it worked. It brought back so many memories of people that cared about me, and I guess it was enough to fuel my magic.

“You guess it was enough?” Gold sounded surprised. “You just self-healed, made Silver cower in fear, and were able to knock her out. I haven’t seen such power in anyone except… except Diamond.”

“You think I could be as strong as her.”

“Maybe.” Gold looked at me thoughtfully. “You are half-human and the only goddess with an organic soul. That makes you more like Diamond than any goddess.”

I smiled up at Gold. “Thank you, um...mom.”

Gold beamed. “Let’s continue the plan.”

“Now that I know the power of love, I believe in it more than ever.” We walked up to Queen Silver, who was lying there unconscious. Gold’s plan was to use her magic to give Silver a vision about all the times they spent together, and how she didn’t want to give that up. After that Gold would apologize again and hopefully Silver would finally see how sorry Gold is.

Gold kneeled on the floor and put her sister’s head in her lap. She put a hand on Silver’s forehead as a beautiful gold light radiated from her palm.

“Silver, since the beginning of my life, there was only one person that was always there for me. We were only kids when we first started ruling the core and it was very intimidating, but I knew it would be alright since you were by my side. I know that I told you to not use witchcraft, but that was because I didn’t want to lose you to evil. In the end, I was wrong. It’s not about what magical powers you have. It’s how you use it that matters. Please forgive me for my short sightings. I never wanted it to be this way.”

Gold turned off her magic, and Silver’s eyes fluttered open. “You’re the one that should forgive me.” Silver sat up and tears started to run down her face. “When I lost Emerald and you turned on me, I should have tried to make it up to you instead of letting you hate me. It was my choice to do all those evil things. You have nothing to be sorry for.”

“Yes, I do.” Gold was now crying, as well. “I was angry at you for something that was a pure accident. If I just forgave you, you would have never turned evil in the first place.”

Silver looked down at her hands. “Maybe we’re both at fault.”

“So we’re friends again?”

“Yes.” Silver smiled. “Yes, we are.” They leaned in for a hug and didn’t let go for a long time. Silver sighed. “You may have forgiven me, but the other goddesses won’t.”

Gold leaned back. “I think the time is right.”

“Wait, you mean that?”

“Why are you both being so cryptic?” I interrupted. They both looked at each other.

“There is something we need to tell all the other goddesses,” said Gold.

Silver stood up. “You two, wake up all the goddesses in here. I’ll go turn the ones outside back into goddesses.”