Chapter Sixteen
We were still going to Japan. It was a trick.
"I thought you were going to Japan," said Elijah.
"Not anymore. Forget the luggage, we're off to China," I said.
I glanced over at Rufus.
He nodded slightly. He knew the plan.
"China," said the human from the ceiling.
He had an English accent.
Go figure.
"We'll find you," he said.
"Go for it," said Rufus.
We all got on the platform.
"I expected better of you, brother," muttered Josiah.
Elijah had no chance to speak.
The glass platform door shut and we flew at the speed of sound to Japan.
Rufus hit a self destruct button so the cave would explode in ten seconds.
Luckily by then, we were miles away.
On our electric map in the platform, one of our location exits blinked.
It was the Zylphia exit.
Our home was destroyed. Our World was gone. Melathiah's work was done for. All our evidence was lost. The humans had nothing and Elijah made a poor choice.
Majority of the people in the hotel probably caved in and a few may have died, but even if Elijah was the closest to the explosion, he would only suffer a few injuries.
There was no way to kill him, except for the cave magic.
Which there was no more.
"We're dead right?" asked Rufus.
He was thinking the same as I.
"No, why are we alive? The cave was destroyed. The magic is gone, dead. Why are we still here?" I asked.
Josiah chuckled.
"We have other caves, but, majority of them must be destroyed such as the China one," he said.
Rufus looked at the map and played with some buttons.
The China exit blinked on the map and stopped flashing.
It too was destroyed.
A few minutes later, we arrived to Japan.
The cave there was a lot like the one in Zylphia, but after a few days there, Rufus and Ephraim started to get very sick.
"Cave adjustments. It's common," said Rufus.
It wasn't common. I never experienced it.
"It's this new magic. It's killing us," said Ephraim.
Ephraim's point of view made sense.
I wouldn't let them die.
"What do we do?" I asked the group.
"There's nothing we can do. The magic in this cave can only be slightly different. Not much though. Maybe it's just their time to go. The magic has decided," said Josiah.
He was right.
There was no medicine, no vaccine, nothing.
All we could do was pray that they didn't have to suffer and that they would find a better place than here when they died.
Somehow, Rufus ended up getting better.
"Cave adjustments," he said.
Ephraim's symptoms were getting worse.
Elvira spent a lot of time with him.
She cried a lot, but we were all there for her. Especially Jeremiah.
Josiah never cried. He just sat in his throne way up in the air.
He would glare at the throne across from his.
Where Elijah once was.
Sometime I heard him mumble something about Elijah being weak and stupid but I couldn't tell.
He spoke some weird language. Old English or something.
Days passed.
Life in the Japanese cave was boring and different.
Ephraim was starting to get better, but soon went back to being sick again.
This time it was worse.
He could barely breathe.
One night, after he started getting sick again, everyone gathered around the hospital room and prayed for him.
He wasn't dead yet, but was almost there.
He died that early morning.
We were all passed out in the hospital room around him.
Elvira woke up and found her head lying on Ephraim's mattress.
She realized that he was no longer breathing.
We were all heartbroken.
Especially Elvira.
Her brother, and our brother as well, was long gone in a better place.
I didn't bother to be cheerful or make anyone else happy.
We were all going to die eventually.
No one knew who was next.
All we knew was that Elijah was searching for us and found our cave.
We packed our bags again and moved on, demolishing our Japan location.
There was no where we could go.
We went to every cave and Elijah still tracked us down.
Our last location was Antarctica.
Jeremiah finished that location after Melathiah's death.
We traveled down the path to Antarctica, and regretted It.