Part One: Amy and The Gem

Late was the hour at which Sally Acorn and Bunnie Rabbot arrived at the excavation site. Until three days ago, it had been a strip mine, a mile-wide hole filled with gigantic, buzzing, roaring, beeping machines that could be heard for miles around. Now it was deadly quiet, but for the soft pinking sound of shovels and chisels that came from the bottom.

Sally brought up binoculars to observe the dig site, and the ambient moonlight was bright enough to not need the night vision setting. Five SWAT bots stood and knelt around what looked like a half-buried mausoleum of white stone, digging away at the dark earth around it.

Tracks from the great digging machines criss-crossed the ground around the site, and up the sloping walls of the great pit. Sally could make out piles of crushed white stone within some of them, signifying more buildings. Under direct moonlight, some of the stones seemed to be threaded with glowing silver veins.

And exiting the mausoleum, with dark crates clutched in their arms, came several more bots. Sally's heart sank when she realized that these were Mobians: a fox, two rabbits, an armadillo, a few she couldn't make out, and…a chipmunk, like herself. All gleamed metallically under the moonlight, and their faces glowed red from the sensors that had replaced their eyes.

No matter how often Sally had seen it, it made her skin crawl and her heart heavy. It was her duty to protect these people, and Robotnik had made them his slaves. And they would gladly deliver her to him, if given the chance.

"They got outta here in a hurry," Bunnie remarked. "What'd you think they found down there?"

"Looks like some old human settlement," Sally answered, "Ancient. And if Robotnik is being this careful about digging it up, he must think there's more to it than historical value."

"We're going inside, aren't we?"

Sally cracked a smile as she looked up from the binoculars. "Scared of the dark?"

Bunnie grinned back. "Not at all, Sal."

"Good. Set up the lines, we'll be climbing the way in, then rappelling the way out." She tapped the communicator on her wrist. "Sonic?"

The nasal, cocksure voice of the Blue Blur answered. "Yeah, Sal?"

"There's Mobians here, as well as SWAT bots. Distract them, draw them off, but don't hurt them."

"Psh. Piece of cake!"

Before Sally could chide Sonic, a rushing sound, like the sound of an oncoming hurricane, filled the air. The two women clapped their hands over their ears.

Then the air cracked as Sonic broke the sound barrier on the other side of the mine, causing the heads of every bot to swivel. Metal arms came up, dropping the crates and revealing wrist-mounted weapons. All of them opened fire at the sound.

As Sonic zipped back and forth, up and down, left and right along the far wall of the excavation, Sally and Bunnie snuck their way down to the mausoleum. Even without Sonic's diversion, it wouldn't have been too hard; Mobians can easily go unseen when they wish, and there were plenty of carelessly-thrown boulders and rock piles to hide behind.

They soon made it to the mausoleum, and by that time Sonic had finally gotten the bots to give chase: aside from Sally and Bunnie, the entire dig site was empty.

Sally took a glow stick from her backpack, cracked it, then tossed it down the steep white steps of the mausoleum. It bounced several times, glanced off a corner wall, and then rolled a ways before all became silent. A faint green glow was still visible.

"Ah don't like that," Bunnie whispered, "Blind corners, Ah mean. Ya better let me go first."

Sally nodded. "Be careful."

As Bunnie went down, her heavy robotic feet made dead clicks on the dusty white stone. At least she's no slave, Sally thought. Her friend may be branded by Robotnik's machinery, but she did not belong to that vile man.

A younger, rather unwelcome voice jerked Sally out of her thoughts. "You're gonna need someone to watch the door."

Sally turned. A pink hedgehog in a red dress leaned against the wall behind her, her hammer resting on the ground. "How the–" Sally cut herself off. "Go home, Amy. This place is dangerous."

"And sneaking around here without a lookout isn't?" Amy shot back, "C'mon Sal, let me have this! I did good the last time I went on a mission, didn't I?"

There wasn't time to argue. "Fine," Sally said, as she took a spare communicator from her backpack. "If you see anything coming, tell me. Comms are on Channel Two."

Eagerly, Amy slipped the communicator onto her wrist. "Great! What are we looking for?"

Sally glanced at the crates the bots had dropped. "Search those," she ordered, "You have a bag?"

Amy picked up her hammer, and with a short motion made it disappear. "Hammerspace."

"Good. Fit whatever you can into it." Sally opened her comm channel again. "Sonic, what's your status?"

Sonic sounded almost bored. "Just leading them south. You guys got time to poke around."

Past the turn of the stairs, the white mausoleum opened up. The chamber was rectangular in shape, fifty feet on the long edges, thirty on the short, and the vaulted ceiling reached ten feet above their heads.

And all over the floor, scattered and trampled by careless robotic feet, were suits of human armor.

"Now how do you like that?" Bunnie said, as the light of her glow stick bathed the room in a dim electric green. "Take all that care to dig it up, then smash up the inside? The heck is goin' on?"

Sally picked up a helmet, and was surprised by the craftsmanship that had gone into it: it was heavy, conical in shape, with an open face and a nose guard. The cheek guards, etched to look like raven wings, swept down and out to protect the wearer's neck.

"Sal? Looks like it goes deeper."

Sally looked up from the helm and saw a dark doorway at the far end of the chamber. She cracked her own glow stick, and followed Bunnie through.

There was no blind corner or stairs beyond, but another, smaller chamber, with more dark doorways on each wall. In its center stood a sarcophagus, twelve feet long and five feet wide, and its great lid had been shoved aside to reveal a true coffin within.

As Sally bent to read the inscription on the side of the sarcophagus, Bunnie checked beyond each doorway for any more bots in the rooms beyond. Seeing nothing, she turned the great sarcophagus lid rightside-up to examine it. "Not a scratch on it."

"What was that?" Sally asked, looking up from the unintelligible, yet elegant script.

Bunnie elaborated. "This thing's gotta weigh half a ton, and they just shoved it onto the floor. But there's not even a crack on it, and look: the man carved on the lid was holdin' this!"

Bunnie then held up a sword and turned it in the green light of the glowstick. Clearly, it had been made for a large human: pommel to point, the sword was longer than Bunnie was tall. "Wow. Ah'd've thought it'd be broken, or bent under a weight like that. And not one bit of rust." She tested the edge with her thumb, and winced. "Still sharp, too. And somethin's written on it."

Sally considered the elegant runes that ran along the blade's fuller, then said: "We'll take that with us." Sally ordered as she studied the closed coffin within the open sarcophagus.

There was plenty of room to accommodate whatever treasures the dead man valued in life, which likely meant they were already packaged in one of the crates outside. The coffin itself didn't seem tampered with. Sally wondered what Robotnik knew about this place, that she didn't.

Perhaps a Chaos Emerald is in here, or something more potent? Knuckles had once told her that the seven Chaos Emeralds and the Master Emerald were only the easiest of the Great Gems to find, not necessarily the most powerful.

Bunnie found the sheath and returned the sword to it. Then she slung the weapon over her shoulder, rifle-style. "You think Robotnik's after this, maybe just overlooked it?"

"Maybe," Sally replied, finally making up her mind. "We need to open the coffin."

Bunnie looked at her, then the coffin, clearly uncomfortable. "Beggin' your pardon, Sal, but Ah don't think we should. Disturbin' the dead like that, Ah mean. It might…" She trailed off. "It ain't good."

The moon disappeared behind a cloud, shrouding the excavation, and Amy, in darkness. Amy produced a flashlight from hammerspace, and she set to her task. The crates were all plastic, held together by how their pieces locked into one another; this made opening them quite easy. Just as well, because they were all extremely heavy.

Her first crate contained nothing but armor, steel greaves and gauntlets, made brittle and black by the ages since their making. She frowned. Robotnik's lost it, she thought as she examined one gauntlet. It's just junk.

She opened another crate, and was greeted by a stack of breastplates. They too were blackened and brittle. When she took one off the top of the stack for closer examination, she noticed a thin, silver design on the left side of the plate: a tree, with a round canopy made of dozens of spindly branches.

She decided to slot the plate into hammerspace. Whatever it meant, it was a cool design, and she knew Tails would have a field day studying it.

Another crate. More identical breastplates.

Sally's look wasn't unsympathetic, but her impatience showed through her voice: this was no time for superstitions. "You believe in ghosts?"

"Sometimes," Bunnie replied. "But there's more to it."

Sally suppressed the urge to sigh. More warmly, she said: "What is it?"

Bunnie clarified: "Ah…Ah can feel how old this place is. It's been old enough for the hills to bury it, and forest to grow over the hills. But it feels so odd. Like it's pushin' on me, like Knuckles's little sky-island."

It took Sally a moment to register what Bunnie meant: like the home of the Master Emerald and its guardian echidna, this chamber carried an undercurrent of real power.

"I can't say you're wrong," she said slowly. "But that's all the more reason to be thorough. You wouldn't want Robotnik to get his hands on the Master Emerald, would you?"

Bunnie scratched the back of her head. "Ah guess not," she said quietly.

Ah. Sally knew what to do now. She came around the sarcophagus to Bunnie's side, and put a hand on her shoulder. "How about this," she said, "you break the seal. But I'll open it." Offering her hand, she asked: "Deal?"

Bunnie smiled again. Then she shook the proffered hand. "Alright. Deal."

When she let go of Sally's hand, Bunnie ran her own flesh hand along the ancient black lacquer, trying to feel out how the coffin was secured shut. "Wax," she finally said, "It's sealed with some kinda wax." After a moment's hesitation, she placed her palm where she guessed the dead man's forehead would have been.

Then Bunnie closed her eyes. "Ah beg your pardon, sir," she said quietly, "We don't mean any disrespect by this." With that, she placed a finger of her robotic hand on the seal. The tip quickly grew red. Tracing her finger along the seal, she carefully melted the wax.

When she was done, Bunnie took a step back. "All yours, Sally-girl." But just as Sally gripped the lid to pull up, Bunnie was at her side again. "Hold it."

"What's wrong?"

There was no hesitation in Bunnie's voice this time. "We'll open it together, on three."

"Very well." Sally got a firm hold of the lid, and Bunnie copied her. "One."

Bunnie swallowed. "Two."

"Three."

Amy opened another crate, and huffed her disappointment. More breastplates. Where were the necklaces, the rings, the diamonds and rubies? "At least a couple books," she muttered, "gimme something."

The moon came out once again, as she tried yet another crate. No breastplates: at the bottom of the crate, swaddled in sheets of thin, translucent yellow foam, was a ball of black glass, about a foot in diameter. She drew aside the sheets, and picked up the ball with both hands.

Under the moonlight, Amy presently saw that the glass ball wasn't a solid color. It was really more like a giant marble, with twists of white, dark green, black, blue, and red that seemed to move when she looked into it. No….it actually is moving. Amy looked closer into the glass. Yes, there was definite movement, and it all originated from the core.

That too danced and flickered like the flame of a candle. Amy's eyes widened as the core suddenly doubled in size.

Sally felt her heart leap. What emanated from the coffin was far beyond mere light.

If she'd been asked, Sally would have said that all the lazy afternoons she'd shared with Sonic, all the clear nights she'd spent reading bedtime stories to Tails, and all the spring mornings of her short childhood, had been condensed into a diamond the size of her fist.

She reached out to the diamond, heedless of the skeleton on whose breast it sat. Then as she lifted the diamond from its resting place, its light changed: it absorbed the glowsticks' dim green light, and shined it back out. The mausoleum's white stone turned vibrant green, like Knothole on a summer's day.

Sally felt like she was walking through Knothole on a summer's day: the warmth of the stone flowed into her hand and diffused throughout her body. She had no idea what this gem was, where it came from, or what power it carried, but she knew she had found–

The diamond turned hot in her right hand. To both her and Bunnie's amazement, glowing white script suddenly snaked 'round her fingers, up her wrist, forearm, and around her bicep!

Bunnie gaped at the lettering on Sally's arm. "Sol Emerald?" she ventured.

Sally's reply was cut by a scream from outside. Amy. The SWAT bots came back, they caught her! Without a second thought, she bolted for the door, Bunnie only a moment behind her.

Amy was alone. She was standing frozen, with what appeared to be a crystal ball raised to her face. Orange and green flames silently blazed within it, and white flashes pulsed the outline of Amy's fingers.

Worse, the girl's expression was blank horror. Her lips spasmed as she screamed again, the horrid, guttural scream of someone fighting a night terror.

"Ah got this," Bunnie growled, as she bolted past Sally and swatted the ball out of Amy's hand with her robot arm. It flew ten feet and fell to the earth with a heavy thump.

Sally caught Amy as she crumpled to the ground, gasping. Without thinking, Sally raised the strange diamond over her head to examine Amy under a better light. Dilated pupils, short breath, and she's pale as paper. She checked Amy's hands. No burns. Good. She waved a hand in from of Amy's face. No reaction. She must be blind.

"Amy?" she asked gently, "can you hear me?"

Amy did not reply. Her eyes stared through Sally, past the gem, at some horrific point in the aether above them. Her trembling lips and breath were the only signs she was even alive.

Amy, what did that thing do to you? Sally looked to where the ball had fallen, then Bunnie. "Did you feel anything when you touched that?"

"No," Bunnie answered, "but Ah don't think we should–"

"Grab it. It might be what Robotnik was really after."

Bunnie was about to argue, and then she stopped. When Sally wanted something done, and done now, she could get you to do it with just a look. But this look seemed to carry far more weight than it usually did.

"Put it in my bag," Sally ordered evenly, "Just use your left arm to carry it."

While Bunnie went to retrieve the ball, Sally unzipped her backpack, wrapped the unknown gem in a handkerchief, and placed it in a side pocket of the pack. When she finally let go of the gem, the writing on her arm dimmed, then turned black. She was reminded of a tattoo, or…a brand.

She didn't have time to ponder what it all meant, not yet. Still supporting Amy's head, she patched into her comm. "Sonic, have you lost the patrol?"

"Got 'em all stuck in the Web Wall a few miles back."

The Web Wall. Sally ignored the impulse to tell him that was dangerous. "Amy's hurt. If we don't get her to a doctor, she could die." She related what she'd seen as briefly as possible.

Five minutes later, Sonic zipped over the edge of the excavation. With Sally's help, he gently lifted Amy into his arms, and soon disappeared back over the rim without a word.

"You forgot to give him the bag," Bunnie remarked.

"No," Sally said, shouldering her pack, "I didn't forget. I don't feel comfortable sending these ahead without knowing what they actually do."

"You gonna tell your Sugar-hog about your arm?"

"One thing at a time. I don't want him worrying about met until Amy's safe."

Bunnie smiled ruefully. "You really don't like the idea of me flyin' The Tornado, do ya?"

Sally motioned for her to follow. Just as they'd finished rappelling up the side of the excavation site and gotten to the top, Sally's comm crackled to life; it was Sonic's voice again. "Sal, you there?"

Sally bit her lip. "Yes. Is Amy okay?"

"Vanilla said she's in shock, gave her something to knock her out." He coughed. Sally knew that cough: it was Sonic's method of stifling jokes that he knew weren't appropriate for the situation. "So, a crystal ball did that to her?"

Tails cleared his throat in preparation for his next voice, then stopped to give Cream a reassuring pat on the covers. "If you're too scared, I can stop here. We can read something else."

Cream's teeth chattered with fear, but she shook her head no.

"You're sure?"

Cream shook her head again. "It'll be scarier if you stop there!"

The story he was reading was about a rabbit going on a long, long trek, with thirteen badgers and a cranky old moose. They were just escaping from a cave full of hobgoblins, when the rabbit hit his head and woke up in some deeper, darker cave, with a cold, dark lake, and…something, a hissing creature that muttered to itself in the blackness.

They were playing a game of riddles. If the rabbit won, the creature would lead him out of the caves. If the creature won, it got to eat the rabbit.

Tails smiled as he began to read the riddles aloud. Cream was six, and braver than she knew: when he was Cream's age, Sally had read this story to him, and at this point in the narrative, he'd hid under the covers and begged Sally to skip it.

Instead of skipping it, she'd pretended to be the creature, slowly prying the sheets off his head and hissing: "Is it tasty, precious? Is it crrruchable?" At the point when Tails was sure he'd pee himself with fright, she'd put her mouth to his ears and cheeks, making omnomnomnom sounds that made him laugh.

Cream didn't seem to need such encouragement. To dampen her mounting fear, she apparently wanted to figure out the riddles herself. "What's the next one?"

Tails humored her, reading it in his own voice. "'Alive without breath, as cold as death. Clad in mail, never clinking. Never thirsty, always drinking.'"

"What's mail?" Cream asked.

"Chainmail. Like the armor on a knight, and it clinks when you move it."

Cream thought for a long moment. Tails could see her lips moving as she put the pieces together. Doesn't breathe. Cold. Armor. Thirsty, Dri–

Vanilla knocked on the doorframe to the bedroom. She looked very, very tired. "Miles? I need to talk to you."

Tails and Cream glanced at each other, and Tails shut the book. "What was it?" Cream whispered.

"Fish," Tails whispered back, mussing the top of her head.

"I knew that," Cream lied. Then she sat up in bed, concerned. "What happens to the rabbit?"

"Don't worry," Tails assured, "He has more adventures after all the riddles."

"Does he get eaten?"

Tails didn't have the heart to leave her on a cliffhanger like that. "No. Remember that ring he found in the tunnel?"

Cream looked lost for a moment, then nodded.

"It's a magic ring," Tails said.

She brightened, as Vanilla tucked her in. "Like the ones from the lake?"

Tails grinned. "Close enough. It helps him escape, anyway."

That satisfied Cream. She relaxed, smiling up at him and her mother. "Night, Tails."

Vanilla kissed her daughter on the cheek, shut off the lights, and closed the bedroom door. Quietly, she led to Tails to the master bedroom of her warren–The Old Warren, as it was called–where Amy now slept.

"How is she?" Tails asked, as Vanilla poured hot black tea for them both.

When Sonic brought Amy into The Old Warren an hour ago, her eyes had been wide as dinner plates, and the sheer stillness of her body had given Tails the creeps. Only her lips moved, twitching grotesquely against her motionless face.

But, just after Sonic had set her on Vanilla's bed, Amy began to tremble. Violently, like she'd been drenched in ice water and was trying to shiver herself warm. Now she lay on her side, with thick sheets pulled up to her neck, and Sonic had gone to check on the patrols that guarded Knothole's perimeter.

Vanilla sat on the end of the large bed with her tea, and studied Amy. "The good news is that there's nothing physically wrong with her," she said, rubbing the fatigue from her face. "But I'm worried about her mind. She began babbling, just before I gave her the poppy extract."

Tails's head cocked curiously. "What did she say?"

"'Come hither, if thou aren't all recreant.' Then she began wailing in another language, but I couldn't make sense of any of it.." Her eyes turned back to Tails. "Can you?"

Tails thought. Where had he heard the word "recreant" before? He loved old books as well as his technical manuals, and over the years The Freedom Fighters had compiled a small library from their forays into Robotropolis. And he'd read most of them.

But Amy hadn't. Come hither, if thou aren't all recreant. That's clearly above her vocabulary. A creeping sensation went down his neck. Tails didn't believe in ghosts, but he had read a few stories about possessions and hauntings. He was now very interested in the ball Amy had picked up.

Aloud, Tails confessed defeat. "No."

Vanilla's lips pursed thoughtfully as she sipped her tea. "In any case, I want you here when she wakes up, which could be at any moment. Can you do that?"

"I can," Tails said.

Yawning, Vanilla said: "Thank you, Miles. And thank you for keeping Cream occupied: she's had enough to scare her lately."

Tails shifted guiltily. "I, uh…no problem."

The fatigue on Vanilla's face flipped to alert suspicion. "What were you reading to her?"

Tails held up the book, a thick volume with a red cover, in confession. "The Westmarch Cycle," he said, "Aunt Sally used to read it to me."

"Isn't that the book with the forest of giant, talking spiders?" Vanilla asked.

"That's not until–" Then Tails remembered, and his cheeks reddened with embarrassment. "Oh. Yeah. There's a few spiders. But it's–"

"Skip it."

Tails tried to explain. "I mean, they're killed pretty easily. Shouldn't that–"

Vanilla held up a hand. "Skip those parts. Nobody, least of all Cream, needs to hear about spiders right now."

Author's Note: This story was born from a bad case of writer's block, sleep deprivation, and a dislocated shoulder. I'll post a couple more chapters in the coming weeks, and then I think I'll have worked through the blockage enough to have another No News From Tiantsin chapter out by Christmas. Thank you all for your patience.