I dredged on and the closer I get to the core, the more I felt my skin melt slowly. The suffering was about to end, everyone’s suffering was about to end. I thought of the Alchemist and I could imagine him fight The Legion’s soldiers one by one. I also thought how his fight was futile, how he would eventually succumb and burn from their weapons.
We were so little. We were so meek. We were so weak. We don’t deserve spring, we don’t deserve salvation, we don’t deserve to be saved. And yet, I was that one pretentious savior that walked that earth, thinking that there is still something new to be created.
I crawled as I had lost my legs from the lava that surrounded the core. I was just a husk of a body that I used to have. There was a spherical opening that contained an orb that was black as the night.
It was the orb of the Legion. It was the heart of the machine. I grabbed it with my free hand and I felt the orb fight my hand away. Blackened tendrils came out from the orb and penetrated into my skin. I felt intense pain. The tendrils were taking control of my veins and my arteries, slowly consuming me from the inside. I shouted in pain as I pulled it away from its place. Through the pain and through my suffering there was only one clear thought in my head: everything was going to end one way or the other.
I felt like the orb knew that so it doubled its onslaught on my body. But its fight was futile. The pain, the anger, the hatred it showed me only fueled me even more. I had felt what they felt and it felt good. I laughed menacingly as I pulled off the Legion’s orb from its core and threw it into the lava. It melted from the heat in a matter of seconds, as if it never existed in the first place. My left arm was now soot. Pure black. Similar to the bodies outside. The only thing left on my body was my head, my chest, and my right arm which carried the Heart of the Oasis. I had protected it from the lava and from anything that would destroy it. I pulled myself up into the container one last time, with every inch of my strength I placed the orb inside. My vision started to fade. I started to lose my consciousness, my very being. With the last of my vision, I could see the veins of the machine turn from red into clear blue. The lava started to turn into water. The pipes turned into branches that harbored leaves. Our salvation came. Our act to redeem ourselves made it through.
Spring has come.
...
I woke up under the shade of a tree. Its leaves and branches blocked the sunlit sky. I heard children’s laughter from far away. I sat up, seeing endless vibrant colors towards the fading horizon. There was no shade of black or gray, just blues and pinks. I closed my eyes and continued to hear the sweet laughter of our dear children. They were happy, as I was.
I don’t care if this is a dream or if it’s just a mirage of the dead body I had left behind. If it is a dream, it is hope towards the future. If it is a mirage, it is beauty within itself. There is peace in my mind knowing that spring has certainly come and we were the pioneers of it.
In our fight to restore our world we had created a whole new world after it. As long as there is hope there will be spring. As long as we hope, we will have spring.
This is the creation of our earth.