Mountain [18+] ✔️ Complete

Eighteen • Everything and Nothing

The year that the four of us turned nineteen, we decided to do something special. We'd already been getting into bars and stuff with fake IDs, so being old enough to legally bar hop didn't have that much appeal. No, we wanted to do something more epic to celebrate.

So, being the asshole new adults we were, we broke into Canada's Wonderland. It was risky and stupid, and thinking back on it now it amazing that we didn't get caught or arrested. But we didn't care. We were young.

We toyed with the idea of figuring out how to control some of the rides, but ultimately decided that would get us caught, so we did the next best thing.

We climbed the Leviathan.

The thing is over 90 meters tall, and we climbed to the top of it, sat on the track, and shared a bottle of whiskey and a joint in the moonlight. It was stupid, reckless, and one of the greatest nights of my life.

Looking back on it, knowing what I know now, it was a magical night. We had a buzz on, legs overhanging the side of that track, and I wasn't nervous or worried. I was with the people that mattered the most to me in the whole world. It didn't even cross my mind that we would fall or get hurt, because we were together, and when we were together everything was perfect. The universe was in alignment, because our quartet could accomplish anything we wanted to. Together.

As the four of us stood, hand in hand in the grass, looking up at the trembling purple cloud that we'd come to slay, I had a moment of clarity. It was as if time stopped, and I was thrown back to the four of us, sitting atop a three hundred foot metal track, shoulder to shoulder. Held together by our love, our friendship, and though we didn't know it at the time, our magic.

The magic that thrummed through this mountain, through us, through the elements, through Marius.

Even through this demon, this being that had attacked us because that was all it knew.

We opened our mouths, as if electrically charged, the links of our hands creating a circle of life and power that was so familiar, so together.

I was true North, calling the essence of the Earth, the mountain beneath us rising up to meet—the Air, at true South, where Lyla stood, head thrown back as she expelled her song before the—Fire, rising and dancing with Damien's powerful hands at true East—and Archer reaching out to the crashing ocean at true West, feeling every molecule of Water in the wind grazing our faces.

Everything seemed to swirl and bend and—was this a ritual, was this something we were doing, or was it just carrying us along with it? The sound coming out of my mouth wasn't something my ears could even really comprehend, was it a song, was it a screech, was it some animalistic roar or just the very sound of the ropes of our magic being plucked by mother nature herself?

I felt a pull, a tug, deep in my belly, wrenching at me but not in a painful way, more like my soul was trying to grow, trying to evolve-

Orange licked my senses, my face, my body, but I wasn't afraid. Icy water churned up my back but I didn't grow wet. Wind caressed my face but didn't blow me away. I wasn't afraid, because I was with the people that mattered to me most in the whole world.

I let go, and the earth gave way beneath our feet.

And then, white.

And then, nothingness. But also everything.

Purple, dark sick tendrils surrounding us, clawing at my heart, my face, my core, my soul.

"Soon." Marius' voice in my head.

I screamed, clamping my hands tightly around Archer's and Damien's, we couldn't let go, couldn't give in, we had to fight fight fight-

And then it felt as if the universe dropped.

Everything, the air, the earth, the very molecules making up my body, everything dropped like I was hurtling down a rollercoaster track, leaving my stomach and my heart in my throat, and everything spun and tipped and lurched and I couldn't see-

"Sapphire."

I'm not holding anything anymore. No one. I feel... empty.

"What's happened?" I ask, and my cheeks are wet. I didn't realize I'd been crying.

"Sapphire."

It's Marius, I can hear him. Where is he? Where is everyone? All I can see is white. It's disorienting. Usually it's a fog, blanketing the world, but now it's just nothingness. I don't know which way is up or down except that I'm standing, standing on something.

"Where are you?" I ask, and just like that, he materializes in front of me.

He's naked, just like when he'd been born in the flames. I reach for him, and he falls into me, and I'm naked too, the skin-to-skin contact making my body sing with happiness. But there's a flat note, a syncopation in that tune that tells me something is wrong, something has happened, it's happened because it was meant to happen but that doesn't mean I have to like it.

He's gone.

"You're gone." I'm crying again.

He takes my cheeks in his hands, and I can already feel that they're less solid, they're so fragile, and as he wipes the moisture from my cheeks it's almost like he'll press right through them.

"You did it, you saved the Mountain," he says. "I wish I could repay you."

"Live. You can repay us by living," I beg, clawing his back as if I can just grip him, pull him back from the void.

He laughs wetly, and I look up into his beautiful ocean eyes, seeing tears glinting there, roiling like soft waves whispering against the shore. "That's not how it works, love."

"I know," I say, my voice hoarse and thick.

He's pressing through me now, my hands slowly coming back towards my own body as I try to hold onto him.

"Be with each other," he says. "Love each other." He presses his lips against mine, and I feel his heat, his magic, his life force enveloping me before I fall to the ground, the light gone, snuffed out like a spent candle, and my heart breaks.