The Harvester clanked and raged on when we got inside. It was hot and if my skin weren’t so used to the heat of our unforgiving world then I would’ve actually felt it. Instead what I felt was a prickling pain on my skin. The Alchemist had lost one of his arms during the raging battle outside. It had been burned from one of the flamethrowers and he screamed in agony while it happened. Even the Ancients feel pain, even the Ancients still know of death.
All of the colors we could see inside the machine were red and black. It was only metal clanking and lava pouring out from the ground and in the different veins of the machine. There was no living thing inside. As we made our way into the core of the machine, my heart sank. The Harvester was a living entity by itself and there wasn’t a need for anyone or anything for it to function. It functioned by itself. All it needed was…
In the core of the building was this humongous opening. It was the entrance towards a gigantic heated furnace. Inside it was literal hell on earth. We were only outside but I felt the burning heat on my skin and it was unbearable. I looked around the entrance and that’s when I saw a pile of dead bodies stacked on top of one another. My body froze. I ran towards the pile with my veins and arteries freezing over. I didn’t mind the heat, for me it didn’t exist. What I could only see is my child’s smile. His sweet lingering smile and his emerald eyes that came from his mother. Had I lost him? Had I really lost him?
I pushed and pull bodies away, but all of them had the same skin and had the same face: Ashen black. They were all sacrifices to the machine. They all came from the sins of the father. They were all my children. All of my world's children. Tears fell from my eyes. I started so sob and it echoed throughout that hell. The machine echoed my sadness, as if it could feel it. But that wasn’t true. The machine could not feel sadness, it was only mocking me, laughing at me for everything I had lost. I felt the Alchemist placed his remaining hand on my shoulder.
“We both have lost something to the machine. We both had lost something of importance to them.”
He was right. I had lost my own flesh and blood he had lost his entire life. We were both fading men and we were fading fast.
“There is only one way out of this,” he said as he knelt in front of me and showed me the Heart of the Oasis on his hand, “Go inside and end this."
I saw sadness in his eyes, but within that sadness there was a glimmer of hope.
There was a bustling noise from whence we came. That was a sign that we had lost the battle outside and the Legion came to take what is theirs. Our men held their ground long enough, but even they too know that the end is inevitable and that we were nothing more but fuel to the machine.
“I’ll hold them off,” he said, “Although I can’t say for how long, especially now that I only have one arm.”
He looked at me and smirked. His bark of a face still showed much emotions, he was still human and I knew that he would never had let go of his human form unless it was dire. He gave me the orb.
“Go in and place the orb into the core of the machine. The orb will do the rest.”
We stood up together. No words were further said. There was only one end to this story.
It was living hell inside the machine. I felt the heat sizzle through my skin as if I was some kind of meat ready to be cooked. There were pipes around the machine that released fumes, they were clattering and shifting. I knew then that even if the machine could function by itself, the core of the machine--the heart of it still required maintenance.
I could see my child’s fragile hand replacing the broken pipes of the machine. I could hear his skin sizzle as his hand burn under the heat of the pipes. I could see his skin turn black from the heat around him. I could hear his agonizing pain, his moans. I was meant to suffer the same fate as him. I was meant to live his harrowing life inside that machine.
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.