The Journey

by Arnav Koppala

  After jumping into one of the tubes, it ejected me. Then I run straight into the water and pummel into the sea. I let my mind drift as the magic rushed into me. There had to be a connection to all of this because I felt alive and almost unstoppable. I filled up all my reserves of magic. I hold back the water with more strength and warp the water to push everyone inside.

  I swim into the hangar as fast as a torpedo. I entered into the hangar completely dry. But then I remembered, balance. I burst pure magic energy back into the water and let it absorb back into the water.

  After that last magic, I stumbled on imaginary wires making my head a little woozy. I did not need a blackout right now. Please not right now. One thing is for certain, water and wires do not at all make a good combination. I think, I am hallucinating. Is that a magical morphing pony that I see before me? You could forget drowning from water if there was voltage coming through wires.

  I did not know what was coming next, but I was sure that it would not be easy. The voice came back and this time it congratulated us for my efforts in saving them. They all groan and get out of the pile and onto the foam floor. I thought about it. Where would the relic be?

  Think like the relic. Feel like the relic. And I look at the couch. Seriously. Is that where the relic is? Out of all the places; where could the relic be? I look under the couch. It is not there.

  I tune my senses more. I find 20 different locations of where the relic is. But they were all small signatures. I wonder. I imagine each of the signatures as pieces of one larger component.

  All the signatures slowly began to shake and they all began to merge into one single point. The signatures like blobs, coalesced with one another forming the relic. The whole relic was right there in front of me. All I had to do was take it, but it kept drifting away from me. I did not see what the problem was except that it turned into a puddle of water and disappeared into the floor.

  I stare at the spot thinking, how many more challenges will there be. How many obstacles will I have to conquer? How many times do I have to repeat the same process over again? I answered my own question. As many times as it took. Duh. I did not see it at first, but something was going on. The alarms were going off and the control panel popped up from the exact same spot. Finally, the water seeped into the floor.

  It showed that the whole stellar quadrant was about to blow because of instability. And it was at the that point, I knew what to do. I let the hangar flood with water, and I push all my friends in the cylinders, which eject themselves creating a barrier between them and the water.

  I let the water engulf me as my body tingles with freshness. I swim upward and look down and what do you know? The whole city of Atlantis itself was the relic. It was just so huge.

  I concentrate on the water around me as the water churns with magical energy and the magic seeps into me. I build up enough energy and release it through the bottom of my feet, but it was not enough. I remember the Leviathan. I call it to help magnify the beam.

  It pummels through the water with enormous speed and circle the beam of power as it surges through the center of Atlantis reaching deep to the end of the roots of this great city. That was brilliant timing. The seams of the streets and the cracks in the whole city light up with a blue iridescent glow.

  I would have never imagined it to look so beautiful. What I did not realize was that Atlantis wasn’t fully emerged as the whole surface of the planet began to rumble and shake. The trembling left me feeling faint.

  I strain on my powers, but I let my body become a vessel for the hydraqua as the water forms a gigantic whirlpool around me. Atlantis slowly starts to rise as the building began to fully form its original shape followed by a planet shaking boom, signaling the end of formation of Atlantis.

  The buildings then slowly twisted and turned as the whole planet slowly began to shift even more. Some of the buildings morphed into one another as the city became smaller and smaller and smaller. I try to use more of my magic, but the magic is overwhelming me. I needed some help but from whom?

  I slowly remember that I could call on my dragon. With this much energy surging in the water, I was sure that I could do it. I had to stop the beam, but my body would not let me. I thrashed around, and it still would not stop. I thought let me release the beam slowly. I know all of this was happening because of all the energy that I had been using throughout this entire ordeal.

  I slowly closed up my body. I could feel the magic rushing back to home base; retreating back, and the beam slowly came to a stop. The whole Atlantis slowly began to unfold itself. Going back into its original position. I was on a time limit. Every second that passed by me would end up as more time to fix Atlantis.

  I call upon my dragon, which right after, opens a huge rift in the sea as out comes my dragon. He gargles the water and squeals in excitement. I could tell he felt like this water had so much magic to offer. I fused with my dragon and my Leviathan and together my call upon all the magic in the water. The Leviathan sucks in the water.

  It transfers through my body, and simultaneously the quintessence magnified, as raw quintessence billows out of the dragon’s mouth. All I had to do was wait for three minutes and all of Atlantis would finally become the relic. I slowly directed our fused form closer and closer for accuracy. Each building compressed and twisted into one another forming the relic.

  Finally, the relic was complete. The last gear clicked and the relic was in my hands……..but it went out of control as it almost instantaneously converted all the hydraqua into energy, spewing out plain old H2O and buried itself into the core of the planet. I was about to go after it, but I felt like this was supposed to happen. I slowly let the water churn around the whole planet.

  With the added energy of two legendary creatures, I would have definitely been able to do this with ease. The relic sent shockwaves of energy as the whole stellar quadrant was being revitalized. Slowly, the whole quadrant seemed to turn from red to violet to blue as the star’s life was renewed and the integral stability of the space in between was kept intact.

  I used the Leviathan’s ability and scoured the whole planet in search of the cylinders before realizing that I used some of my magic to bind the water around the cylinders and the water around me together. They were right behind me the whole time. How did I miss that? I turn to look back at them and I see a small glint in the distance.

  At the horizon, laid the relic and something else. I swim over there and see the relic. And for a moment, I saw Sakuta and a bolt of electricity forming a force field. Wait. Does that mean that…? I tried to take my mind off that. Taking in too many matters would shatter my minds integrity.

  I slowly pick up the relic and use another one of my Leviathan’s ability and forms a portal to the next destination. I found three cylinders into the portal as they vanished into the shiny golden liquid like surface. And then, I defused the Leviathan and dragon as the rift came back and the dragon went back through the Leviathan.

  Well, I could not leave him, so I transformed him into a pendant and I clipped it to my chain necklace. I pummeled through the portal unaware of the most dangerous alliance between Sakuta and the Light Demon which happened to be lurking right next to the portal.

  The ship moved like an ignorant program, running its commands digitally and ignoring the commands physically. The ship itself excelled in design, sleekness, and technology, while lacking in instructions. The ship did not even come with a manual. Could this ship be malfunctioning or worse was there some force behind all of this?

  There was no way to detect what it was going to do next. I wanted to know if there was an atlas or map that would at least show me what direction we were moving towards. For all I know, we could have been so far off track headed in the opposite direction instead of journeying towards the center.

  I was so afraid and scared at the same time. Being brutally honest, I was terrified. I could not believe it. We were about to head into a planet, whose winds are moving at the speed of light. Tha
t was 186,000 miles per second. This ship was navigating itself.

  I decided it would be some time before we got to the place of our destination. It had already been close to two hours and we were close to our arrival time. Maybe, in a few more hours, we would arrive. I walk around and with exhaustion, plop onto the ground, only to rise from it in an earth-like chair with some sort of quicksand cushion, adjusting to the shape of my body.

  Even though the cushion might have been soft, it was not comfortable. It was hard for me to sit still. I felt like I was sinking in the chair and it was sucking me in somehow. I stood up and adjusted the cushion, so I could at least try and make it work. Letting out a few sighs, I finally was able to sit back down.

  I relax into the chair, letting my thoughts set adrift in the ocean of Nirvana. My thoughts held on only by a string of tether connecting it to my brain. What was going on, on the inside of my brain would have made for a great neuron study by a neuroscientist of all people. Whatever was taking place on the inside of my brain anatomy was moving just as fast as the speed of light that the ship was moving.

  I grab both sides of my head and tried to shake what was happening but there was no use. It was just making my thoughts and memory all mesh together. I need to escape all of this and just get away from it. All that we had undergone was taking its toll on me. I needed real rest that only I would get once this was all behind us.

  Being off in a foreign land of my thoughts, caused me to completely miss all the details of the chair. Preoccupied with myself, I forget the headrest for me to lean back. That is why the chair cushion was agitating me. I was irritable and just drained. I sat back down carefully and leaned my head against the back of the chair.

  As I started to doze off, the chair starts to respond to me and it slowly sinks into the floor and morphs into a bed-like structure. This time, the quicksand cushion spreads and starts to give me a massage. This was starting to work in my favor and I was glad. I feel right at home, back at earth.

  Boom! My tethers cringes and began to thicken like a vacuum turned on sucking the air out leaving no air behind between my thoughts and my brain. Earth. It had been so long. I was longing to be reconnected with my family and friends back home. The excitement from expecting to reunite with my former life and traveling the unknown was too much for me.

  Everything was gone. There was not a trace of what I once knew but just the memories of it all that consumed me. I had never even had the chance to really say good-bye. In the blink of an eye, everything changed. All I remember was my home, my school, my life. My old life was so far in the past and gone out of sight.

  There was nothing more to it. There was something more to this than what I was experiencing. I wondered if I would ever get back home. They say that home is where the heart is. I wanted to be back where I knew what was going to take place.

  Where I was, change did happen and that is the inevitable, but things were constant. I had an idea of what was coming next. I wanted to go back home but I felt like I could not. I felt like there was something more to earth then it already was. What was it about earth that I did not fully understand yet?

  Why was there a portal? It was the Legendary Star of Magic. It was not just your typical portal. It was for multi purposes. Jack reached level 10 magic; guardian magic. Everybody had magic, but did they obtain the highest magic level possible and grow to learn the power of that magic? Only time would tell.

  It was all because of him that on that exact moment that I felt a strange spirit in me. I was me but what was going on, on the inside of me was like I was another person, or something had a grip on me. I was undergoing a transformation and was a new being. There was something taking place with me and I wanted to make sense of it but there was no way to describe what I was going through because it would not have made sense to anyone else but me.

  I was going through an awakening of something new. Earth was something else; weird. There was a secret that Aunt Glalie and Uncle Peter were keeping from me. I would not be the least bit surprised if they swore into secrecy to keep everything to themselves and not utter a word. I was in pursuit of knowledge.

  What was it about Uncle Peter? It was not normal and mostly confusing. What did Austin see? What did his vision allow him to uncover in his deepest secret? I was being antagonized by secrets of the unknown.

  So much for getting real rest. I wanted to enter in a deep sleep and dream. I had a far greater chance of knowing something by sleeping than all this silence of things that were hidden before me. Something sparked within me. I got this burst of energy that just overtook me.

  I got up from the bed and went over to Austin. He looked at me and I communicated telepathically over to him. “We need to talk. Right now, we must have a conversation.” I said. Alex nods over at me. We both walk into a different room onto the ship and find Mathew randomly inspecting this tablet he had in his hand. If it were not for him being caught off guard, by our arrival, I would have been able to see all the details of the room.

  Mathew was hiding something too. Startling him caused him to be tranquilized, almost paralyzed. He looks up at us, yelps, and tells us that nothing happened. “Yes. Mathew, I totally believe you.” I sarcastically retorted. “We need to discuss Uncle Peter.” Whatever was going on Mathew looked shocked. Had we entered in on something that we were not supposed to be aware of?

  I swivel my head over to Austin. “What you saw, Austin was…” He looks at me as if he saw a ghost. I saw stripes of black, gray, and nothing swirling in his body, none of them merging together and all pulsating in and out. Austin quivering said, “I have never seen anything like it.”

  It even made me dizzy just to look at him. Behind me, I heard papers shuffling around. I did not have to turn around to see Mathew with that tablet. I kept watch on Austin. It almost made me fall asleep and never wake up again. It was not as if I could just lay down in this room and pass out.

  Yawning, I told him and Mathew that this should not have happened and that this was almost impossible. For all I know, we need to—I did not even get to finish because we all lurched forward losing balance. It just happened so sporadically that it was hard to stand up. I stretched my hands out as to steady myself. There was nothing to grab onto.

  The spaceship was in the vortex’s vicinity. There was a lot of turbulence. The ship stayed intact. Mathew knew that the ship could not tear because it was sturdy but that did not mean that it was going to make it to our destination and keep us intact. How many more hours did we have to go through this?

  Again, I looked over at Mathew suspiciously and circumspectly. I kept noticing the tablet. Since we lost our balance, the tablet landed on the floor. There were pages all over the floor. Mathew was trying so strenuously to grab them. I will let him figure that out on his own. This was so out of the ordinary.

  I run over to the control room and set a temporary gravity terrain with two times more gravity, to keep us all from lurching everywhere. I started messing with all the controls. Whatever button I touched, started to do the opposite of what it was designed to. What I just did caused us to be even more off balance. I tried to remember what I had just pushed.

  I looked closer and saw numbers and the corresponding labels of what was controlled. I use my magic and generate some oxygen and direct it over towards the engine room. This had better work. If the engine to this ship cut off, it was over for all of us.

  I slowly create and generate power for myself. I use the air and suck it in, which gave me more power and more energy, but the winds were a different story. It had to be the winds force against the ship that caused this. The wind was howling as if letting us know that we were going to go through resistance. “Hold on everyone. Do not try to move at this time.” I said.

  I started speaking to the winds, but they did not respond to me. The winds had so much power that I felt it miles away. My mind seemed to reach out towards it and touch the air. The winds stopped. This created a temporary suction, dragging us even faster, t
owards the planet’s core.

  We had to be getting closer. How much time did we have left from the previous two hours? Surely, we were almost arriving. The air seemed fluffy but magical. I piloted the ship with my magic and the extra air in the engines and landed it on a pile of marshmallow-like clouds. The landing was smooth as could be.

  Surprisingly, it did not take long before the ship sank into the clouds. However, I was not surprised at all because I felt that I knew that there was a bay right beneath us just for our plane. I felt some sort of presence as if there was a center to this plane. I felt something else. There was more going on than what we were seeing with our natural set of eyes.

  Here came the howling of the winds again. If this continued, we sure would not be arriving at our destination. The winds then picked up and moved at the speed of a category 5 hurricane. The sound was not delightful at it. The sound just kept increasing. There was like a competition going on between the winds and the clouds.

  The clouds pushed up on us ejected into the winds but thanks to my magic, I used my magic against the winds to calm it down. The air remains at the same speed. We exited the spaceship and jumped onto the cloud. I was so grateful that not only did they calm down, but the sound started to diminish as well. I should not be in such a hurry for things to clear up. Could the sound of the wind be trying to communicate to me?

  I remember the magic in the air. I exhaled and then inhaled and suck it all in. I was full of air and had buoyancy to me. My body feels invigorated as I float off the ground automatically. I had this light-headed feeling, but I dropped to the ground as my magic dissipated. The winds automatically picked up and dispersed my friends all over the planet.

  I let loose only a little of my magic. The winds slowed down a couple hundred miles per hour and stop and revert to their normal state. With the thought in my mind, my friends flew over to where I was. I listened closer to the winds because I do believe the farther away we were the quieter the sound of the wind. The higher the wind had to mean that we were getting close. They fly over to me and stare at me in astonishment. I float over to them and tell them that this is a test. I could tell that there was something off because I felt the pressure change. “Everyone, quickly get close.” I stuttered.