Part 1: The Mission
Chapter 7: Storm on the Mountain
When Ruby and Sapphire emerged from the other end of the tunnel, they were greeted by sheet after sheet of snow, and a mountainside made unrecognizable by it.
"Ice falls from the sky here too?!" Ruby growled, "What's next, rocks? Fire?" She kicked at the snow, furious that all this running had lead them to a white dead end.
Sapphire immediately ran to a dip between the many banks of snow, "no this is perfect. Hurry and crouch down." Ruby tilted her head but trotted to Sapphire's side, where she was already raising a formidable barrier of ice.
"What are you doing?" the red gem asked ad her charge raised a roof of ice, then snow above them.
"Hiding us, now shush." The blue gem commanded as she finalized their tiny cave of ice and snow. Ruby scowled, but only until the sounds of Galena emerging from the tunnel twisted her face to panic. She could hear the grey gem treading over their hiding space, mere inches above them.
"I will find you two…" the Professor warned, slowly stepping away from them, "you can't trick me…" the two gems waited in silence, until her footsteps grew into faint crunches in the distance, and disappeared altogether.
"I think she's gone…" Ruby whispered, having scooted closer to Sapphire in her fearful state. Sapphire responded by thickening the snow above them.
"Yes, but she's guaranteed to go back into the kindergarten if we wait a bit longer… and the storm has yet to improve." Sapphire kept a calm demeanor, which after a few moments fully calmed the tense Ruby. The red gem then laughed, dryly.
"I'm fire, you're ice." Ruby leaned back against the curved walls of ice, "can't believe it took me this long to work that out. I really am dumb…" Sapphire pursed her lips and leaned next to her. Ruby could almost feel a calming aura coming from the little blue gem beside her, as she tried to put her thoughts into words.
"Ruby, considering what we've been through recently, it's ok for you to not make that connection." Sapphire held out her gem hand, next to Ruby's slowly unclenching hand, "in fact, the longer we travel, the more I notice what we have in common. Or at the least what compliments each other." Sapphire smiled at her escort, whose eyes drifted from her face to their gems.
"They're even on opposite palms." Ruby thought, a smile growing on her face. Slowly, she let her natural heat channel and intensify in her left hand until steam was visibly rising from her gem. Sapphire tilted her head, then shrugged and cooled her right hand until ice crystals formed over each of her fingers. Slowly they raised their palms to face each other, pressing them closer and closer until a good sized spark of electricity burst from the mere inches between their gems.
"Gah!" Ruby fell backwards in stunned fear and quickly checked her gem for damage, "did we seriously just make electricity?"
"Temperature differentials." Sapphire laughed lightly, checking her gem, "this has been a shocking development." She smirked at the red gem on the ground, and she laughed and leaned up to face the blue gem.
"Laffy Saffy, lord of ice and bad puns." Sapphire blushed a darker blue, but could not hide a smile.
"Oh, why do you call me that?" She asked, shaking her head. Ruby responded by shrugging, leaning back with her arms folded behind her head.
"It's…. it's that mental gems never laughed around me before." The brute gem stared off into space, trying to remember her few encounters with higher gems, "they glare, bark orders and generally treat us lesser gems like scum. So… the fact that you do sticks out to me, I guess."
Sapphire's smile fell, and she sighed softly, "That's not all that marks me different from other mental gems. The notion that brute gems are lesser to us… I never quite bought it. I mean, look at us." Sapphire turned to face her escort, carefully placing her gem hand over hers, "we've got worlds in common, ignoring our castes." Ruby's eyes widened and her face turned a deeper red; she felt glad to be validated by another mental gem in what she always knew was a false sense of inferiority and yet…. Something uncomfortable loomed in the air between the two gems, and she felt now spark would diffuse it.
"Ah, I think we should keep moving. Professor Strange-Gem should be gone by now, huh?" the red gem began punching through the ice sheltering them.
"She is…. But the storm is not." The seer gem stood behind her as the shell broke, the winds blowing the remaining snow away. Ruby climbed out, then helped Sapphire out of their hiding place.
"Yeah, but once we get out of here it's only a three day's walk to the sea." Ruby reminded her, wading into the snow.
/
The snow refused to stop its assault on the mountain, and the two tiny gems found themselves lost within it. Sometimes Sapphire would lose Ruby's trail in the sheet-thick flurries or in vice versa; sometimes one or both of them would fall through a thick bank of snow and need to be carefully dug out to proceed. Worst of all, and most frequently, thin layers of ice would form on the snow and one wrong step would send one of the small gems rolling down the mountain. It was after one of these slippery setbacks that Ruby began to panic; Sapphire had fallen a long way and over the howling winds and blinding snowfall she could not find her.
"SAPPHIRE!" the tiny gem roared digging into several banks of snow looking for her charge.
"Idiot, idiot, why couldn't you just stay in the ice-cave thing?!" Ruby gritted her teeth and pressed on, no longer able to find the skid her charge had made. It was like trying to find a piece of crystal in a massive mound of ice.
"Saaaaaphire!" The red gem wailed once more before falling to her knees, sinking into the snow as the heat of her stress melted out a small crater for the brute gem to curl up in and hide.
"I've failed…. I've lost you." She whimpered, feeling more useless than ever before. She didn't even notice the soft crunching of her charge approaching her.
"There you are… Ruby?" Sapphire stood behind her, and as Ruby turned to face her time seemed to speed up as she took to her feet and took up the blue gem in a very, very warm embrace.
"Where were you? I kept calling for you, why didn't you answer?" the red gem's tears continued to flow and sear away from her cheeks as Sapphire put a soothing hand on her cheek.
"I was- I tried to follow what I thought was you, but…" Sapphire's eye locked onto Ruby's, conveying the gravity of her realization, "something is following us. It's not Galena, but it could be dangerous. We should keep moving while-"
"NO!" Ruby yelped, louder than she had planned, "I don't want to lose you again!"
Sapphire blinked, surprised at the sudden outburst, "Ruby…" she began, before the soft cracking of snow alerted them to another presence. In between bursts of falling snow, the two caught sight of a grey being. It was not at all like Galena however; its eyes glowed yellow, and it stood on all fours, staring at the two of them intently. And then another stepped forward, and another until they were surrounded by a dozen beasts; all panting or growling or sniffing the air.
"They're called wolves…" Sapphire said, not moving an inch, "predators of this world. They hunt in groups and… and…" she trailed off as one loped towards Ruby. They were both well aware escape would be next to impossible, between the terrain of the snow and the numbers presented before them. Ruby held Sapphire's hand in hers as the beast pressed its nose into her face, sniffing profusely. From this close, they could tell this animal had not eaten for a long time; almost certainly from the decline of life around the Kindergarten. Ruby gasped as the animal licked her face, and stared at her for a moment in silence. It then barked, then turned and trotted away, the rest of the pack turning to follow.
"I-it must have realized it can't sustain itself on us." Sapphire reasoned, her jaw hanging a bit. Ruby scowled with a trace of suspicion, not uncommon to Brute gems in the field
"Yeah, and I'm starting to think the native life of this world is…. Safer than we've been told. Like we've been lied to, you know?" Sapphire nodded, at a loss for words.
"So um, do you think they know the way over the mountain?" the red gem asked, looking at their clawed tracks in the snow.
"o-oh, probably." Sapphire scanned the future briefly, "yes, it appears they do."
"Then let's follow them!" Ruby smiled, trotting to catch up to the earth animals.
"Wait, wait!" Sapphire floated to catch up to her, "you trust these animals to get us over the mountain more than yourself?" she looked at Ruby incredulously.
"No, I trust YOU and your visions." Ruby smirked, catching up to the wolves and following behind them. Sapphire sighed, and shook her head.
"I guess that's fair." She thought, catching up with the pack.
/
The pack had chosen a winding, but far more reliable trail than anything the two gems had been able to find, and they were content to walk through the night and the continuing storm.
"They must be on the verge of starvation," Sapphire reasoned, "it's sad that they can't just take in energy from their perfectly-good sun."
"But in this weather?" Ruby laughed weakly, though the snow had slowed they had yet to see the other side of the mountain. The pack crossed over a ridge that must have lined the summit a few hours from sunrise, and as if on cue the snow finally tapered off.
"Finally!" Ruby groaned, shaking the last of the snow from her hair, "that was starting to get annoying."
"I didn't mind, save for the fact that it was getting us lost…" Sapphire admitted.
"Well it's COOL when you do it." the red gem retorted, before they both giggled softly. At that moment, the sun began to rise and the gems and their wolf guides caught the sight of the valley below the mountain. It was flowing with tall grass, streams and horned beasts which the wolves immediately began stalking towards. In the distance, Ruby and Sapphire could catch the fleeting glimpse of the ocean, shining like a thin ribbon of blue.
"Can you believe it Sapphy?" Ruby chuckled, stepping from snow and rock to the first fleeting tufts of grass, "we're almost done out here! We're almost home free."
"Yes, it's amazing." Sapphire admitted, before her eyes fell upon something in the foreground, "But… my future sense is telling me we have to go THERE first." Sapphire pointed out towards the fields, and Ruby's eyes fell upon some faint smoking wreckage in the distance, which even from as far away as they were smelled of death and ruin.
"o-oh no…" she choked out, before breaking into a dedicated gallop towards the carnage.