Of Diamond And Water

Sonic didn't know how long he was walking - well, limping - through that small tunnel. He was alone, it was completely silent and the hedgehog was losing track of time.

And he was tired. Now that he was alone with himself and had no one to talk to, he finally noticed that the last days had taken their toll anyway. Not a big surprise though, first this trip through the desert, all these traps, the cold of the last night, walking trough all these tunnels, then being captured… this was a lot. Sonic had to admit that it was just natural that his body was crying for some rest.

But not here. This wasn't a safe place. Once he had found Knuckles and they had made it out of here safely and prevented that this turtle-freak could use that artifact and its power for his own aims, they could take a break.

After having heard what the 'Emperor' had said, Sonic still had no clue in what effort he wanted to use this power, but it couldn't be anything good. Sonic had heard enough insane ideas to know which one was dangerous, and that guy certainly was. And since there was nobody around besides Knuckles and himself, they would have to solve this problem.

Sonic's thinking was interrupted when his path ended abruptly at a door. But a closed one. The hedgehog searched for a way to open it, but found none.

"Oh great. Escape out of one prison and get stuck in another. Nice job, Sonic," he muttered to himself.

The blue hedgehog knocked his knuckles against the door. It was solid and certainly thick. But – he had to get through this thing.

"Well, looks like there's no way to avoid violence this time," Sonic sighed.

He stepped backwards, rolled his shoulders, threw a doubting glance at his by now thickly swollen ankle, then shrugged the hesitation off and lowered himself to the floor, curling up and into a spin dash. After spinning on the spot for a moment, he launched himself at the door. Sonic hit it with a crash and was bounced back by his own momentum.

After picking himself up, Sonic looked at the door. "Great. Not even a dent." He groaned. "And here we go again."

Five minutes, forty spins and one huge headache later, the rocky door showed at least some big cracks.

"Okay," Sonic muttered dazed as he curled up again. "One last hit and that should do it."

The hedgehog started spinning and a blue ball of spikes smashed into the rock once again. But this time, it finally gave way. The door exploded forwards, shattering into a heap of pieces of rock and dust. Sonic was flung with it, landed on the heap and uncurled only to sink face-down on the rubbish.

His head was pounding angrily now, his hurt foot and shoulder complained loudly about the last minutes' actions and the rest of him was feeling outright muzzy.

"Sonic?!" Knuckles' confused shout pulled Sonic half out of his dazed stun. Hands grabbed his shoulders. "Sonic?! Hey, are you okay?!"

Sonic pushed himself to his hands and knees, coughing on all that dust, and looked up at Knuckles, blinking irritant out of his eyes. The echidna was kneeling aside of him and frowned worriedly.

"I'm fine," Sonic assured him and tried standing up. "Owwwww…"

Knuckles grabbed him again, trying in the same time to steady the hedgehog and loosen the ropes that tied his hands. "Yeah, you look just great. What's the matter with your foot?"

Sonic gasped. "Fell into a hole. Twisted my ankle."

"Oh crap. Broken?"

Sonic shook his head. "No. But heavily sprained and bruised."

"Okay, come on here and sit down for a moment," Knuckles said and gently shoved Sonic over to a small tread. "Anything else? Apart from things I already know?"

Sitting down, Sonic shook his head and leaned against the wall at his side. "Only scratches. And some headache."

Knuckles looked back at what was left of the door. "No surprise here. Relax for a moment. As far as I see, we don't have many ways out of here anyway. I guess that yours was a dead end in the other direction too, at least I wouldn't knock my head into a rock multiple times if there was an easier way."

"I'm not masochistic, Knux," Sonic gave back and shut his eyes.

Knuckles swallowed the sarcastic comment he would have given to that usually and settled for a simple shrug Sonic couldn't see anyway.

While Sonic droopily sat on the treads, Knuckles passed the next minutes, in lack of anything else to do, with reading the writings on the walls.

It appeared some sort of legend or fairy tale. A story of gods and goddesses. And the history of an old culture. And while he was almost finished reading it, Knuckles slowly came to understand what the sense of that shining ball in the middle of the hall was.

"What's all that fuss about?"

Sonic's sudden question after minutes of silence caught Knuckles by surprise and he winced. "So, is your head better again?", the echidna asked.

Sonic shrugged, still sitting and without showing any intention of changing that position soon. "It's pounding now, but I guess it dulls slowly. At least I got rid of this jackhammer feeling."

"Nobody told you to crash something that is meant to contain brain against a door that certainly is much more solid." Knuckles grinned. "Although I'm not too sure on how far it does contain brain…"

Sonic snorted. "Would you have any better ideas how the hell I should have gotten out of there, Knucklehead?"

Knuckles just grinned broader, ignoring the insult.

Sonic sighed. "If my foot wasn't currently telling me that jumping at you is a rather bad idea, I would." He shot Knuckles an acid glance and turned away, for the first time actually looking at the source of light in the room, his angry expression rapidly changing to astonishment. "Wow…"

Knuckles followed Sonic's gaze. "Yep, that's was I said I guess."

"So we found it. And apparently before the others did. Can we take it outta here or something?"

The echidna shrugged. "I don't think so. And I don't know if that would be a good idea."

Sonic looked back at Knuckles. "So, what's all that scribbling about?"

"It is a story. Some kind of religious text. A story about the gods the people that once built that place here believed in." Knuckles leaned against on of the pillars in the room and started telling to Sonic what he had found out. "The legend begins with something about the creation of the world. And then, there were two parties of gods. Good gods and bad gods."

"Of course. The usual crap," Sonic interjected.

Knuckles nodded. "The highest good god was the god of water. No idea why. His rival was the demon of storm."

"Sayhutao." This time Sonic nodded.

"Yes, exactly. They fought all the time. The god of water wanted to help people by providing their land with water. That's what the legends here say." Knuckles shrugged. "It's just a tale. But then it comes to a more … historical report or something. About the people who built that temple. For centuries the people living in this area here suffered from the droughts, until someone … built or found a mystical object that gave them the powers to stop these problems. The Diamond Globe." Knuckles pointed at the shining ball. "The land here is filled with water underground. We've seen that."

Sonic once again nodded. "And it was quite a lot."

"Naturally," Knuckles continued, looking at the wall again to support his memory, "the water of all the subterranean rivers comes to the surface at one point and creates a big lake. Underneath this lake, this temple was built. And in it the diamond globe was used to keep the temple safe and provide the country around with water. As far as I understood this, the Globe can be used to control the flow of the rivers and how much of the water gets to the surface."

"Doesn't sound like something evil," Sonic stated and rubbed his nose.

"Generally, no. But it happened once that one of the priests guarding and using the Diamond started to abuse its power. He drained the rest of the land of the water people needed to survive. And the land didn't recover for decades." Knuckles looked from the wall to Sonic.

"What happened?"

Knuckles looked back at the writings. "The priest who had abused his power was banned, but the people had seen how dangerous the thing they had built to help all of them was. And they started discussing if and how far they were allowed to intervene in the gods' work. They even discussed if the gods they were worshipping existed. Finally the highest priest claimed that the world would balance itself."

"So, they didn't want to manipulate the rivers here any longer?"

Knuckles nodded. "I guess so. And as we already know, the culture that created all of this doesn't exist any more. They left this place and… whatever." The red echidna shrugged.

Sonic frowned. "Then, why didn't they destroy the Globe?"

"Some of them feared that it might be needed in the future. And I guess it still was a valuable treasure for them, a relict of their history. So they put it in the temple, which was now in the middle of a desert, and left. But a small group didn't want to give up on the power they had had. They thought it was a god-given power and their right to use it."

"The 'Servers of the Diamond'."

Knuckles nodded. "Yes. After it had been prevented that they could reach their aims, every follower of the prohibited Diamond cult was banned from society and the Diamond Globe was from then on being guarded by a trustworthy person."

Sonic tilted his head. "The old guy you met? If he was the one, why did he leave here?"

Knuckles shrugged. "No idea. Maybe he thought nobody was left to know about that after all this time. Maybe he thought it was safe now."

"Or he got lonely here and left," Sonic continued guessing. There was just silence from Knuckles and Sonic glanced over at him. The echidna stared at the Diamond Globe, no, through it into an unknown infinity somewhere in space. And then Sonic realized that Knuckles must be very well able to understand these problems and that his words might have hit a tender spot. "Um… Knux?"

Knuckles blinked, being pulled out of his thoughts. "What?"

"Are you okay?", Sonic asked carefully.

The echidna looked at him for a few, long seconds, then nodded. "I'm fine. I just thought that I would never…" He didn't finish his sentence, but he didn't need to. Sonic knew if he had finished it, it would have ended with …

"I know," the hedgehog said. "Never doubted that." He smiled when Knuckles looked over at him. "I couldn't imagine you without that green oversized stone of yours."

Knuckles smirked and lifted a fist at the hedgehog in faked anger. "Watch out for what you're saying, or I'll give you some more of a headache!"

Sonic grimaced. "I better shut up."

Knuckles' smirk broadened. "You are actually considering shutting that big mouth of yours? Wow, rare pleasure. I'm starting to think that this door did you more well than harm. Maybe the knocks on your head put something back into place in there…"

Sonic grunted. "Very funny." But then he grinned too. "At least you are in the mood to be kidding around. Although this is a weird place and time to be joking." He quickly waved his hands at Knuckles. "Don't take me wrong, I appreciate jokes. And from you, this is – how did you phrase it – a rare pleasure. You know some more?"

Knuckles shrugged. "No. Maybe I'll be thinking about it."

Sonic finally stood up and slowly limped over to the middle of the hall and regarded the shining ball from a closer distance. He quickly discovered the small pearls on the side of the socket and reached out curiously. "Hey, these glow or stop glowing when you move them!"

Knuckles stepped to his side. "I found that out too. Don't touch them, I got no idea what will happen when we mess up the adjustment or something."

Sonic crossed his arms. "So you think it is some kind of control thing?"

Knuckles nodded. "I could imagine that it's a code."

"Code…" Sonic narrowed his eyes as he looked down on the pearls. Fifteen on each of two lines. Sonic chewed his lip, then lifted his gaze to the echidna aside of him. "You know what I'm thinking of?"

Knuckles just shook his head.

"All this crap with the numbers?"

Knuckles shook his head again.

Sonic groaned. "Having our slow day, what Knucklehead? And I thought I was the one who's got a sore head."

Knuckles gave him a thump. "Quit calling me that! More helpful would be telling me what came out of your insane brain now."

Sonic grinned, having provoked Knuckles once again easily, but continued talking. "Right from where we started, we always came across the stupid things about the numbers. Six and nine and so on. We agreed that the puzzle you were told was a location plan, right?"

Knuckles nodded. "Yes, every part described something on the way here. Although we figured that out after we had been through all of this."

Sonic tilted his head, running a hand over his spiky head. "Nearly every part made sense later. Everything apart from the thing with the numbers."

"But he told me they were very important," Knuckles added.

Sonic nodded. "Right. We simply didn't have any clue what they could mean. But now that this looks like a code here…"

"Then why don't those guys use it to do whatever you can do with it?" Knuckles folded his arms.

Sonic looked at him. "Maybe they don't know about that."

"You mean…"

Sonic nodded. "Yes. Then you really do know something they don't. But you didn't tell them when they asked you while you were their prisoner, if on purpose or if you just forgot about that stuff for a while doesn't really matter I guess, and so they are as stupid as they were in the beginning."

Knuckles whistled through his teeth. "Back to the problem at hand," he suggested, "we can't get it out of here without risking something we can't control to happen."

Sonic nodded, serious again. "But we gotta think of something. We –" Sonic broke off when one of the not broken doors opened with the sound of rock scraping against the floor. Still standing aside of the diamond globe, Sonic and Knuckles whirled around.

"Ah, see who we have here again. How nice of you to join us again." The 'Emperor' gave a snort of laughter as he entered the room, followed by the eight others. Seeing how two of his underlings itched to get over to where Knuckles and Sonic were standing to arrest them again, he made a short wink. "They can't escape their fate. Nothing will be able to stand in our way now. And once we activated the Globe, there won't be a way for these two to escape from here without us wanting them to." The turtle turned to Sonic and Knuckles. "Just step away from the Diamond and you will be granted the mercy of seeing it a little longer before you die."

"What a pleasure," Sonic declared sarcastically.

Knuckles didn't answer. His mind was racing, struggling to make a decision, a decision with results he couldn't hope to oversee. But he had made a promise for this Diamond's safety, and he had some experience with powerful things being endangered of abuse. And he could very well remember being forced to break the Master Emerald apart to safe it. Sometimes security could only be achieved by destroying the power. In case of the Emerald, it had been a short destruction and he had restored it afterwards, but what he was going to do now was very likely to be permanent damage. But it looked like it had to be.

The echidna leaned down and his fingers pushed six of the pearls on the upper chain and nine of them on the lower to the side so that they glowed. Then he shoved Sonic away. The hedgehog didn't protest, having seen what Knuckles had done.

And the turtles had too. All of them darted to the pedestal with the shining globe. The ball had started spinning slowly. The three closed doors opened all on their own, revealing long, dimly lighted tunnels.

The 'Emperor' fumbled with the pearls again. Then he turned to look at Knuckles and Sonic. A deep rumbling had started to fill the cave. "You failed, you stupid fools," the turtle laughed maniacally. "You activated it for us! Thank you very much for that friendly favor. Did you really think you could escape us? Soon, we will carry out the judgment on you with the power we have now."

Sonic stared between Knuckles and the turtles. The eight servers were standing in line behind their leader, looking at the globe shining brightly, spinning on the pedestal. The small pearls were grouped and still showed the numbers six and nine, the ones Knuckles had adjusted. In the slight hope to better destroy that Globe than letting the insane fanatics of this guild have the power over the source of live on the complete continent. If he had understood how to work this thing anyway… Knuckles still wasn't sure about that.

The echidna stepped closer to Sonic's side. "Do you hear that?", he whispered.

Sonic's ears twitched, then stopped abruptly when the constant deep rumbling mixed up with a faint sound of splashing, then quickly turned into thunder rolling through the cave. "What's that?"

"What I started, Sonic. The Diamond Globe is destroying itself. And I'm scared this place with it." Knuckles' eyes sparkled with a tiny hint of fear. "They were too slow." A small touch of satisfaction sneaked into Knuckles' voice in spite of the situation.

Sonic shuddered at the roaring growing ever louder and more threatening. Gooseflesh crept over his skin and he flattened his ears against his head.

The Emperor turned around. "What is happening?", he addressed his fellows, "The Globe is supposed to give us control!"

The other turtles just shrugged.

And then Sonic saw it. Shooting towards them incredibly fast. Water, racing through the tunnels that had just opened, filling them completely. The noise was closing in to deafening level. "Knuckles! We gotta get outta here!"

"I know! But how?!" Knuckles' voice betrayed some of the panic Sonic himself felt.

Fear taking control of Sonic's body, his heart began pumping adrenaline through the hedgehog's veins. "Hold on to me!"

Knuckles stared at him. "Do you really think you can run on that foot of yours?!", he shouted, albeit taking hold around Sonic's shoulders.

"Do I want to drown?!", Sonic yelled back, knowing how hysterical he sounded. Right now, even his ego didn't care.

Against the painful protest of his injured ankle, the hedgehog accelerated as fast as he could. Sonic bit down a scream of pain when his foot felt like it actually was on fire now, then found that the sound of water everywhere and approaching ever so fast did a great job to help ignoring it.

With Knuckles clinging to his shoulders, Sonic ran, gathering speed with every meter he covered. He dashed out of the cave with the shrine through the door the turtles had come in just a few minutes ago and along the next tunnel.

Sonic shot a quick glace over his shoulder. The water was already nearly close enough to enable the thousands of flying drops to touch his legs.

"Sonic, faster!", Knuckles yelled over the noise of splashing thunder.

Faster?! For him it was easy saying so. It wasn't his foot screaming at him with every step. And at a few hundred miles an hour these were a lot per second. A lot more than Sonic liked right now.

The hedgehog lowered his head and narrowed his eyes, desperation mobilizing energy that drowned out exhaustion and pain. Then Sonic's heart stopped beating for a second when the tunnel ended at a wall, only meters in front of him appearing behind a turn. Dead end.

Unable to stop, Sonic did the only thing he could do to prevent being killed by his own speed on impact. He ran even faster, eyes focused on the wall, then ducked a little and his feet met the vertical rock, catapulting his horizontal motion upwards.

Fearing to crash into the ceiling now, Sonic glanced up. They were in a big tube, winding upwards, the former wall now a steep slope. And Sonic's eyes widened with surprise.

He saw light. Daylight. The blue sky.

And seeing it as a light of hope at the end of this tunnel, Sonic ran even faster, putting in all his energy and strength.

But he was slowing, even though his heart threatened to burst his ribs and his feet were humming on the rock just as fast. He was slowing. And the water was closing in, rocketing up the tube of stone, wet hands reaching out to pull the hedgehog in.

Sonic fought as hard as he could, but he couldn't make it. Wetness touched his feet, swallowing them, then his legs. Sonic staggered, then fell backwards with a yelp.

Cold liquids surrounded him, blurring his vision and clogging up his ears. Sonic struggled helplessly, panicking with all that water around him.

He needed a moment to realize the hard grip under his armpits. Turning his head, Sonic saw a blurry shape of red. 'Please Knuckles! Don't let go!, Sonic begged silently.

The hedgehog's vision was growing dark, when suddenly his head broke through the surface and he gasped.

"Sonic! Okay, chill out! I gotcha," Knuckles shouted at him, trying to pull him out of headless panic.

Sonic looked over his shoulder, finding Knuckles holding one arm around him and keeping the two of them afloat by paddling with his second arm and both feet. The hole in the rock above was closing in quickly when the water carried the two friends upwards.

"I'm all calm," Sonic managed, his shaky voice promptly making him a liar.

"Good," Knuckles replied, ignoring the obvious fear in Sonic's tone respectfully, "I am, too."

The small glimpse of daylight exploded into brightness all around them. For a second or less, Sonic was shooting up into the air, his stomach feeling like being turned upside down, then he crashed into the water again. The impact knocked the breath out of Sonic's lungs and reflexively the hedgehog gasped. What proved to be a big mistake. Instead of air, he swallowed water.

Hands grabbed him and pulled him up to air again. Sonic coughed violently. It needed a felt eternity for his breathing to calm. Exhausted the hedgehog went limp, simply trusting his life into Knuckles' hands.

"Sonic? Still with me?", the echidna asked worriedly, almost into Sonic's ear.

The hedgehog opened his eyes again. Knuckles was paddling in front of him, holding under his armpits to keep Sonic up too.

"I'm okay," Sonic gasped.

Knuckles slowly nodded. "That was close." For a moment the echidna allowed the hedgehog some quiet to recover a bit, then he spoke again. "Sonic? We need to move."

"Huh?" Sonic finally looked around. They were surrounded by water as far as he could see. The water of the subterranean rivers had found a way to the surface and flooded the formerly dry basin. "Whhaaa!"

"Hey, hey, hey, chill out. I gotcha," Knuckles tried calming him. Damn hydrophobia. "I'm a good swimmer and the lake isn't endless. The next embankment has to be a few miles from here."

"Miles?" Sonic took a deep breath, trying to get his pulse to something approaching normal.

"Yeah, but don't panic." Knuckles' violet eyes met Sonic's. "We can make it."

Sonic slowly nodded. "O…okay."

"Good. I can't swim like this. Can you hold on to my shoulders so I can carry you?" Knuckles nodded at his back.

"I think so." Sonic took hold on Knuckles' back, placing one of his hands on each of the echidna's shoulders. "Do you want me to do something?", he asked, starting to feel a little more at ease.

"You could paddle your feet," Knuckles answered when he started swimming.

Sonic tried and grimaced. "You mind if I only paddle one of them?"

Knuckles chuckled empathically. "No."