The Cursed Crystal

Chapter Two

    Celestine flapped her wings with the powerful muscles in her back, loving the feeling of flying in the sky-even at night-as the spring air flowed against her scales, moving her faster onto the wind. 

    She had heard the faint cry of Kunzite from miles away. As a mother, she knew his crows and coos; this one was filled with curiosity and uncertainty-she was sure her son had just been spooked by a cave rat or spider. 

    With dinner hanging lifeless within her massive jaws, she knew Kunzite would be soothed by the warm meat and the feeling of her hot breath on his scales. 

    As she approached her cave, she caught the distinctive smell of blood. 

    The dragon furrowed her brows in concern. It was a mix between human and dragon blood. 

    Something was wrong. 

    She let the dead goat fall from her mouth and pushed her wings hard into the sky, propelling her through the night at lightning speed. Dragons could see in the dark, and the dangerous cliffs and mountain caps were easy to navigate at fast speeds. 

    The cave entrance was in sight and she growled as she pushed her wings even harder until she slapped her clawed foot onto the rock, making it rumble as she climbed in. 

    “Kunzite,” she said, concern evident in her voice. She stepped on something squishy and crunchy at the same time. 

    Her almond shaped white eyes lowered to the ground and she gasped when she saw what she had stepped on; a human. 

    A young boy of the human race. Her heart quickened for a moment until she realized the smell of death on him was evidence that he had been dead for some time, before she stepped on him. 

    “Kunzite,” she called out, her voice strained. Where was her son? “Kunzite, this is not the time for games anymore. Just let me know you are alright?” 

    She slithered farther into the cave and the smell of dragon blood entered her nostrils. Blood coursed into her heart, located at the center of the bright glowing crystal on her chest; it was hot and thick as fear began building and welling up inside. 

    Where was the light from his crystal? It should have glowed on the cave walls wherever he was hiding from her, making it easy to spot him but it was completely dark in the cave. Her breathing became heavy with concern and fear. 

    Her eyes scanned the area until they suddenly came upon a sight she wished she had never seen. 

    Her baby was dead. Slaughtered. 

    She cried out. The sound would be deafening; the townspeople several miles away would hear it no doubt, but she didn’t care. Her son was dead. 

    She lowered her snout to push Kunzite, in case he could still be breathing but with his eyes closed and no response, she knew otherwise. 

    His crystal was gone, ripped out from his chest in a mutilated way. 

    Celestine felt the boiling of her stomach acid rising as her despair and loss turned into a rage she had never known before. 

    She whirled around in the cave, letting fire escape her mouth into the open air in a scream only a mother could understand. 

                                                                                                *

     Mollie gripped a golden scepter in her right hand and an orb of holy liquid in her left hand, held up to her sides as the king announced her new title as a royal decree. She wore a myrtle color gown with golden trim and sheer sleeves that hung to the floor for the royal ceremony. Her wavy, crimson colored hair hung perfectly down her back and in front of her shoulders. Her soft doe-brown eyes sparkled when she smiled.

    “From henceforth, she shall be known as her Royal Highness, Crown Princess of Dutchenberg,” the king declared, reading the last line of the decree and smiling warmly at his eighteen year old daughter. 

    Mollie looked up at him with a nervous smile and placed the royal objects back onto the pedestal table where her father and mother stood up from their thrones and clapped, igniting an applause throughout the ceremony hall. 

    The princess faced the crowd and gave them her most royal and graceful curtsy, keeping the thin, silver tiara with an emerald gem in the middle in place on the crown on her head. 

    Music began playing while Mollie climbed the steps, pinching the delicate fabric of her skirt and holding it up and took her place beside her mother to watch the many people dancing in the hall to familiar tunes and lyrics. 

    “You did very well, my dear,” her mother complimented, reaching out and squeezing her daughter’s hand. 

    Mollie smiled and quickly replied, “Thank you, Mother.” 

    After a few introductions, her friends motioned for the princess to join them on the dance floor and Mollie obliged, laughing as they partook in the traditional dances of the kingdom. 

    "Princess, may I have this dance?"

    "Oh! Please, princess I have been waiting for quite a few turns now."

    "How about a dance, Princess Mollie?"

    "Gentlemen," Mollie responded firmly, yet politely, holing her hand up to them. "I am flattered by your desires for a dance, but I must ask if you may allow me to reserve my strength for my studies tomorrow. Please, if you would understand?"

    "Of course, your Highness." 

    "Yes, you have so much to learn now with your new position."

    The men walked away and Mollie's friend, Lady Amira, leaned over with a playful grin and whispered, "Already turning down men, now?"

    "Please," Mollie responded, fighting the urge to roll her round eyes. "My mother and father would want me to focus on my lessons rather than men."

    "How does it feel to be officiated now," Lady Linota asked, another one of Mollie's friends. "Do you feel...power-hungry? Driven to insanity yet? Led by greed?" She let a grin spread on her lips and began chuckling at Mollie and Amira's shocked faces.

    The other girl in their group, Lady Danielle, placed a hand over her chest, baffled at Linota's words and muttered, "By the gods." 

    The princess let out a breath of giggles and shrugged. She leaned her back against the cold stone wall of the ceremony hall as they watched people spin and twirl around the dance floor. "Honestly, it's just a title; I feel the same, quite truthfully."

    "Yes, but a title that comes with so much more," Linota stated, giggling and wiggling her eyebrows. 

    Mollie rolled her eyes with an amused scoff. "Is that all you girls think about?" 

    "We're just saying," Amira said in a low voice. "The main thing you must worry yourself over are suitors: dukes, knights and princes." 

    When she heard the word 'prince,' Mollie's insides squeezed a bit, thinking of a certain man she knew. His features plagued her thoughts at night and the feeling of butterflies erupted within her belly when she thought of their next scheduled meeting.

    "Look at this," Danielle gasped, pointing to the princess's face, "What are you thinking about that makes your cheeks blush like so!"

    Mollie's cheeks burned hotter in embarrassment and she placed her hands over them to cool them down. "Nonsense!"

    "Tell us!" Her friends urged, excitement building within them but Mollie turned them down in a fit of laughter and responded, "Nothing that concerns you! Now let's get back to dancing!" 

    As the ceremony hall livened with louder music and more dancers, the king grabbed his daughter’s attention and snuck her out of the hall to an adjoining room that was the royal library. 

    The king was a tall, broad-shouldered, wise hazel eyed man with a thick brownish red beard and a jolly laugh. He had always been playful and loving with Mollie but his demeanor in the library was different, and it concerned the princess. 

    “Father,” she asked, “What’s wrong?”

    “I just wanted to have a talk with you before the ceremony concludes,” the king admitted. He led them to a wooden table in the middle of the library. When they were both seated and the princess was focused on listening to him, the king said, “I don’t want to lecture you, Mollie, but I want to make you aware that with your new status, you are more than just a mere princess to marry, but a future queen.” 

    Mollie raised her brow. "Does this have anything to do with the few men that had asked me to dance?"

    The king cleared his throat. “I am highly certain it was more than a few men, Mollie-however the main importance is that in these upcoming weeks, I am sure there will be many suitors with gifts as prospects for marriage but I wanted to warn you to be cautious.” 

    Mollie tried to hide her grin as she replied, “You don’t need to worry, Father. Suitors may ask for my hand but I have no interest in them.” 

    Her father frowned. “What do you mean?”

    Mollie shrugged, a certain man coming to mind as she tried to hide an even bigger smile. “I don’t know his name but I know he’s a prince,” she explained. “If anyone has my interest, it’s him.”

    “I would like to meet this young man," her father said, straightening his back. 

    "I think you'd really like him, Father," Mollie gushed, her cheeks pink from the ale in the ceremony hall and thinking about the prince. 

    "Until I do, tread carefully," the king reminded. "Not everything is as it seems." 

    “I will!” she said absently, wanting to get back to her friends and the festivities. She stood on her feet and pulled her father to his as well. “Now let’s get back before we miss the whole ceremony.” 

    The two of them scuttled back into the hall, letting the door close shut behind them and that was the end of that conversation. 

                                                                                           *

    Fire roiled in her throat as wrath, vengeance and distraught fueled Celestine’s powerful wings to soar her through the sky towards a place only dragons knew of; an instinctual safe place where they were not hunted nor bothered since humans knew not of its location. 

    Her nocturnal eyes pinpointed the greenish light of the lair and she dived for it from the height she was at, falling through a series of green and yellow lights until she reached the bottom of a damp, cold cave with levels that went several stories high; it was a dragon’s court. 

    The moment where she screamed into the night, she echoed the ancient call to all dragons that her case must be heard for revenge and immediately flew to its location. 

    Slowly, the sound of heavy, clawed feet began trickling down the cave to Celestine’s ears and when she looked back up to the many levels above her, thousands of different colored eyes and crystals looked down upon her. 

    Growls echoed off the walls with complaints of the hour to which they had been called, the interest of why a case must be heard so urgently and a few dragons with the anticipation that there could be a war against the humans. 

    “Who has called the old and new dragons to the ancient court,” a dragon demanded with a deep, rumbling voice that made the others in attendance quiet down and lower their necks. 

    Celestine turned in the direction of the voice and lowered her neck as she locked eyes with the alpha dragon, Calcite, a massive dragon with searing red scales, bright yellow wings with black claws and horns on his feet and head. His milky-white eyes and crystal lit the way as his heavy body stomped slowly in her direction. 

    “Alpha,” she begged, lowering her head all the way to the floor in a bow as she quickly explained, “My infant son has been slaughtered, yet by what I am still confused by.”

    Calcite sucked in a breath, the acid in his stomach churning as it involuntarily heated up in anger at the death of a dragon. “Tell us,” he demanded. 

    “I hunted dinner and headed back to my cave after hearing his cries. When I arrived, there was a dead human at the entrance of the cave and Kunzite was dead in the back of the cave-his crystal-" she paused, trying to get the words out as her raw emotions threatened to spill out. She sharply inhaled, then said, "His crystal is missing."

    Shrieks, hisses and growls echoed throughout the cave in response to the atrocity. 

    “A human killed an infant dragon for its crystal,” an anonymous dragon was heard. “That’s never happened before.”

    Another dragon spoke up in fear. “Will this be the driving force that makes us go to war with the humans?”

    Another accused, “We advised you not to raise your infant in those mountains-those monstrous creatures can still reach you there and look! Your baby is dead!” 

    Celestine felt her heart split open. Keeping her voice as still as possible, she begged, “Alpha, I wanted to use the Mother Crystal to find out what happened.” Her white eyes looked up at the alpha dragon and pleaded, “I must know. If he died in vain let me get revenge.” 

    “If the Mother Crystal shows you something you would have no control over, what will you do,” Calcite asked, raising a thick, scaly brow. 

    Celestine looked defeated. “I will accept Kunzite’s death as a matter of something out of my control and leave it alone.” 

    “And if it shows you something you do not like?”

    Celestine felt anger within her grow. To know who hurt her child and how they did it, it would make a fire within her burn for a long time that she didn’t know she could put out herself. “I-I’m not sure, truthfully.” 

    Calcite seemed satisfied by this answer and with a lazy glance, addressed the hundreds of dragons in attendance. “I will escort Celestine to the Mother Crystal. Your judgments will commence once she is finished.”

    With a turn, Calcite turned around and led Celestine down a dark passage that only their eyes could see. 

    To a dragon’s skin, this climate was comfortable, almost enjoyable in the caves: damp, clammy, musty, rocky. It had been the reason why she thought the eastern mountains would have been a good place to raise Kunzite; how wrong she had turned out to be. 

    “Do you feel your chest pulsing,” Calcite asked in his deep voice, but softer and soothing, not as commanding as it had been with the other dragons. 

    “Yes,” she answered, feeling the crystal on her chest heat up the farther they walked. 

    “The Mother Crystal knows you’re coming,” Calcite replied, walking a few paces in front of her. They were silent for a while as they trudged down the cavernous hallways, deeper and deeper into the earth until Celestine’s chest was burning when they entered into an opening of the hallways where a giant crystal floated in midair, creating a rippling effect of thousands of different colors onto the surrounding walls. 

    Celestine’s eyes blinked with fascination as she gazed upon the floating gem. 

“Do you see all the colors,” Calcite asked, glancing at the walls around them. 

    “Yes.”

    “These are the colors of dragons that are here on earth with us,” he explained. “While thousands more are the colors that have not arrived yet or have passed to await rebirth.”

    “I’ve heard of the cycle,” Celestine whispered. “You’ve told me this story before.”

    Calcite turned from her and stood directly in front of the gem. “Stand here,” he directed. “Let her find you.”

    Calcite moved out of the way back into the darkness of the hallways as Celestine stood where she was told and cautiously looked at the crystal. 

    There was a soft ambiance of whispers she couldn’t understand as the colors of the crystal flashed on the cave until a distinct white color shined through the middle of the gem, pointing its light out as if searching for her until it landed right on Celestine’s crystal and in that moment, the dragon gasped as her eyes rolled back to the top of her head as the crystal repeated the sound of Celestine’s devastated scream. 

    A bright, white light flashed within the cave and Celestine cried out, falling onto her belly when her feet gave out. 

    Calcite moved into the cave slowly to make sure she was alright but there was some urgency as his concern grew when Celestine cried on the floor at the feet of the Mother Crystal. 

    “What did you see,” he asked tenderly. 

    “What I did not want to see,” she answered with despair. “Kunzite died horribly. I wished I had not seen it; I only wanted to know who killed him.”

    “The Mother Crystal tells us everything we need to know,” Calcite said. “For a reason unbeknownst to me, she gave you that information.”

    “I don’t need your parables, Calcite,” Celestine snapped, laying her head on the ground as hot, stinging tears dropped from her eyes and landed on the cave floor with a hiss and steam.

    “His loss pains me just as much as you,” Calcite said with comfort. He gently lowered himself to lay beside her on his own belly and added, “He was my son as well.” 

    Celestine closed her eyes and cried for several hours beside Calcite, her mind an overflowing mess of emotions and uncertainty. 

    “What do you want to do,” Calcite asked, glancing at her still and unmoving body. 

    She huffed a breath from her nostrils, hot and stinking of her stomach acid as she opened her eyes. “The Mother Crystal showed me everything. She provided options.”

    “What is the option you want?”

    Celestine looked off absently as she thought silently. 

    Water dripped off the walls, echoing throughout the rock tunnels around them; Calcite waited for her answer silently and patiently. 

    Celestine didn't need to think about the option. She already knew what she wanted to do. She was going to make the prince that killed her son pay.