It was a late spring night when it happened.
Seven streaks of light shot across the cloudy night skies. If you'd use your imagination, it would almost seem like they were looking for something, as they all descended towards the ground when they reached a certain area.
Their 'destination' was the floating Angel island, where eight gems of extraordinary value were kept and guarded on an ancient altar.
The gems, better known as the chaos emeralds, had been the bringers of destruction many times before when their powers had been used for evil, but also has caused the salvation of the world when used by people who could control their massive power.
When the streaks hit the stones they started glowing harder, waking up their guardian. The red lone echidna first felt annoyed and disgruntled by being disturbed from his sleep so abruptly, but this changed when he noticed the strange activity in the emeralds.
When the island started to shake and rumble Knuckles was swept off his feet, he had to think of something, quick.
He carefully got back up and faced the giant green emerald sitting in the center of the altar, raised his arms while reciting a chant in some ancient tongue. When master emerald started to glow, the chaos emeralds stopped. Knuckles let out a sigh of relief when everything started to have seemed to have calmed down. But his relief wouldn't last long; before he well realized it, six of the seven emeralds with one more flash of bright light, they were gone.
"Chaos control..." He whispered.
Then the red one that was left behind fell from its pedestal in the grass. Knuckles picked it up but he suddenly felt an electric jolt shoot into his body. It glowed one more time and suddenly it showed the image of a flame on the top, almost like it was engraved in the stone.
Just what was going on here?