Play of colour: opalescence

When Opal made her entrance, followed by Aventurine, Rutile and a few disoriented guards, Ametrine turned to her – only with her head, though, since she was otherwise occupied with supporting Celsian’s limp body –, a complicated look in her eyes: it was a mix between shocked, awed and relieved, but the emotions on her face were switching way too fast to pinpoint them well, and got lost in translation. “… Opal?” She adjusted her hold on Celsian, and a knot at the height of Opal’s heart loosened when she noticed that the thief was still breathing, albeit unconscious.

“Hi, Ametrine. I’m sorry for being late.” Although Opal’s everything was still taut with tension, she managed to summon a tight smile for her. “I’m back.”

The knight was in the same boat as her, but she mirrored her expression. “Welcome back.”

Their long-awaited reunion was interrupted by the king, though, whose voice echoed from the other side of the throne room. “Opal Niji. We thought you were missing.”

“Surprise.”

“Moreover-” He frowned. “Aventurine? What are you doing here, at a time like this?”

“Hello, father. I hope I did not interrupt anything.” The princess elegantly put her hands one on top of the other on the front of her gown. Her smile was polite and perfectly pleasant, but it didn’t reach her eyes. “Why did you not tell me about this?”

“I am administering justice, Aventurine. You do not need to concern yourself over these matters.” His tone of voice gained a new edge to it, that was adopted by his daughter too.

“Like I did not need to concern myself over matters about the new Saviour?”

If Celsian was awake, she would’ve probably whistled: despite their current situation, Opal was debating in her head if she should’ve done it in her stead, but the king’s darkening gaze landed on her, as if he could hear her thoughts. “This reminds me” he said. “Why are you trying to protect the people who hurt you? Are they not criminals?”

“I think there’s been a misunderstanding, Your Majesty” Opal answered, putting as much disdain as she could in those last two words. Compared to the last time she was in that same room, she’d lost all the fear and uneasiness that came with talking to the leader of a country. She perfectly knew who she was, now, and what she wanted to do. “I don’t remember them forcing me to fight against my will. I don’t remember them chasing me in order to capture me or worse, either. They helped me despite everything, when all you did was putting me in danger.”

The king straightened his back, as though he wanted to appear more imposing. “It is true, then” he enunciated, a grave air around him. “You are not our true Saviour, but a minion of the Golem.” The guards present started murmuring and fidgeting in confusion. “By chance, a few of the knights stationed at Smaragdos witnessed that you transformed a part of your body into something else, like only the Golem and its monsters can do.” He shook his head. “I did not want to believe it in the beginning, but now it is evident that you are affiliated with it. It is the sole explanation.”

All eyes were pointed at Opal, waiting for her answer. She could feel the barely withheld tension, that was filling the air with electricity, but she just took a deep breath. “No.”

Before all that, Opal thought that she knew who she was: a normal high school girl with an even more normal life and a passion for a certain stained glass. It was who she wished to be, after all.

After arriving in Kristallia, she discovered that things had never been that simple: all of a sudden, she could wield powers out of her comprehension, and nearly everyone tried to convince her of the fact that she was the second advent of the Saintess. However, she remained attached to her beliefs. Even when she really should’ve gotten a clue and asked herself more than a few questions, she stubbornly refused to see what was in front of her eyes.

When she remembered everything, for what was the first time in her life she wished that she didn’t know something, that she could go back to her blissful ignorance. Her memories were painful, to relive as well as to accept, and for some time she hadn’t known who she was anymore. She’d felt broken in two, wrong in a way she’d never expected. She’d felt like a monster parading in a human skin, lying to her friends and family.

Those seventeen years of living as a human girl, however, weren’t a lie, or a dream: they were reality. And she wasn’t a lie either. Her emotions, her feelings, her smiles, her tears, her own will, all those things that were so human couldn't be faked. More than that, they didn’t belong to anyone else: they were purely hers. She was real.

The Golem made her from its body, creating nothing more than a puppet; Agata spared her and in many ways treated her as a member of her own family, but until the end she was incapable of seeing her as something different from an experiment and a means of retaliation against the kingdom. The people of Kristallia saw her as their new Saviour, while to the residents of her town she was but a simple girl. Every single person viewed her through the window of their eyes, seeing a separate facet, and wanted or expected something distinct.

As with a stained glass, she was composed by thousands upon thousands of different tiles, millions of coloured glass pieces, that all together created a single picture: her very own. Only by looking at herself there, with all of her sometimes round, sometimes jagged edges and all of her muted or vibrant colours, she could actually see who she was, and decide who she wanted to be.

She was a piece of the Golem, with the power of the Saintess. She was a daughter, and she was a friend. She wasn’t a puppet, or a tool for revenge. She wasn’t a monster, she wasn’t a hero. Maybe she could move mountains and control the very ground they all walked on, but she remained a girl whose main preoccupation was to return home with her friends. She could transform into whatever she imagined, but, in the end, she wouldn't have wanted to change anything. She was over a million coloured tiles, she was the sum of her choices. She was herself.

“Who cares about which powers I have? So the Golem created me: who cares?” She moved her hand and her fingers transformed into crystalline horizontal stalactites, which pushed some of the guards to unsheathe their swords in instinctive fear.

Aventurine, despite the more and more darkening look on her father’s face, held a hand up in order to stop them from attacking, and they thankfully listened to her. She nodded in Opal’s direction: like Ametrine and Rutile, the princess too seemed to want to hear the end of what she was saying.

Opal let her arm fall and her hand returned to how it was. “I’m not its minion. So the Saintess gave me her Untethered Magic: who cares?” It wasn’t important anymore. “I’m not your Saviour.” She shook her head. “At the end of the day, I’m exactly who I told you I was when we met for the first time.”

She smiled, feeling at peace despite the situation.

“I am Opal.”

Before anyone could react, she displaced the ground under Ametrine and Celsian’s feet with a flick of her hand, bringing them closer to her.

“I thought you had more common sense than this, but I understand now that I was wrong” the king finally replied. “This has already gone too far. Guards, seize… seize that thing!”

Rutile, Ametrine and even Aventurine were moving to protect her before the king had finished giving his order, and to simply say that Opal appreciated it would have been be the greatest understatement of that century, but the best way to defend was to stop the attack before it even came, so she sent the startled guards’ swords quite literally flying and stomped a foot on the ground, making it tremble long enough that the knights couldn't stay upright and fell on the hard stone.

“Of course” she commented, continuing to speak. “Because if I died, someone you could control would inherit the Untethered Magic. Was this how your ancestor convinced Agata to bend to his will and fight against the Golem?”

The king suddenly stood up, looking furious. “How dare you! Everything my family has done was for the sake of our people!”

“Oh really?” Rutile spoke for the first time during that conversation, and everyone turned to him. He clenched his fists, making a step forward. “If that is true, why did you not do anything when you knew how to stop the Golem from going on rampages?” The room got silent all of a sudden, so he continued in a quieter voice. “The Golem gets violent only when there is not enough krystageia in the land, the same one we exploit through our magic to create our cities. There was and there has always been a way to avoid this conflict, so, if you knew about it, why did you still send your people to fight and die?”

“An entity like the Golem should just be eradicated from this world!”

“At the cost of the people’s lives?”

“Do you even have some evidence of what you are affirming?”

“As a matter of fact, yes, I do.” Rutile revealed to everyone present the papers he had previously shown Opal and Aventurine. “Everything I just said is written in these documents, that were compiled by the Saintess herself.”

At that point, the guards seemed to have lost even their will to look menacing.

“It ends here, father” Aventurine commented without losing her composure.

“I cannot accept it.” The king shook his head, and with a thundering expression that promised a world of pain he raised his hand in Opal’s direction: at the same time, a thin and deadly lance extended from the blue jewel encrusted in the silver ring he wore on his finger, pointing directly at Opal’s neck.

Before Opal could even think about doing something about it, however, the lance got intercepted and destroyed by a rocky branch, that retracted soon after into one of the glowing stones that sat in a corner of the room, together with Ametrine’s sword. The king fell back on his throne, shocked.

“Hey, buddies, you nearly forgot about me, didn’t you?”

Opal’s eyes widened, and in that moment the castle itself could’ve disappeared without her even noticing, because her attention was fixed solely on the person in front of her. “Celsian!” she exclaimed, more or less in sync with Ametrine and Rutile.

Their friend was a bit wobbly on her feet and needed the knight’s hold on her arm to actually stay upright, but as soon as she turned to them she graced them with one of her signature smiles. “Sorry, I couldn't let you have all the cool parts.”

“You absolute idiot” commented Ametrine, managing to sound both surprisingly fond and incredibly exasperated at the same time, swatting the thief lightly on the head. “For how much time have you been awake, exactly?”

“Ah, my sweet, knowing that would take away all the charm-”

The knight swatted her again, and Opal snickered. She would’ve done more, like, say, squeeze her in a hug and not let go, but a shiver suddenly ran down her spine, seconds before a desperate guard came sprinting into the throne room.

“Your Majesty! It is the Golem! It- it is on the outskirts of Kruos!”

It was as if death itself had made its appearance, or if the doomsday had just been announced in advance.

Agitation started spreading among the other knights, but Aventurine stood proud before them. “Do not panic, remember your training!” she said in the middle of chaos, her authoritative voice drowning out the noise. “First of all, bring the civilians to safety!” The guards were still distressed, but they stood at attention, and even Ametrine straightened her back a bit at the princess’ words. “For the rest, I will go-”

Opal could imagine what she was on the verge of saying. However… “Your Highness!” she exclaimed, determinedly stepping forward. “I apologise for interrupting you, but your people need you here, not on the frontline. Let me deal with this.”

“What?” Rutile shouted.

Aventurine, on the other hand, looked at her in surprise. “… Are you sure?” When Opal simply nodded, the princess got serious again. “Very well. In this case, Opal, please… protect this land.”

*

“Opal, we’ll come with you.”

“We’ll what?”

Sadly for him, Rutile went ignored.

“We will. You will not, you idiot, have you seen yourself?”

“Right, Celsian, what happened to you? I was worried.”

“Nothing, I’m perfectly fine!”

“I won’t move from here until you tell me.”

“I don’t think it’s that important to know-”

“They crushed one of her soul stones.”

“Ametrine, you traitor!”

“They what?!”

Opal and Rutile’s synchronised yell was so loud that it nearly made all the glass present in the throne room break.

*

“Are you really sure you shouldn’t rest?” Opal asked Celsian, more than mildly worried, while they where skidding down the corridors of the castle at a speed that would’ve earned them some kind of punishment in any school Opal had ever attended.

“And leave all the fun to you? No way!”

Opal wasn’t sure where the thief saw the fun in running towards their possible demise, but appreciated her support nonetheless.

“Do refrain from moving so much, please, or we will both fall” said Ametrine, who was carrying Celsian on her back.

“Hey, this wasn’t even my idea, I can walk on my own if-”

“No.”

The thief rolled her eyes, smiling.

Opal snickered at the scene, remembering that, after having retrieved Ametrine’s sword and Celsian’s remaining soul pebbles, the knight had given up and hauled the other on her back, since she was weakened by one of her soul stones having been shattered but would’ve never accepted to be left behind. Something had changed between them while Opal wasn’t there, something she couldn't quite put her finger on, but she was happy for them.

On the other hand, Rutile sighed loudly, shaking his head. “I’ll never understand you. If I had such a good excuse to rest, I would take it.”

Says the one who stubbornly followed us although he was by no means obligated, Opal thought with a fond half-smile.

“Oh, come on, it’s all good exercise for you!” Celsian piped up. “Now you’re not at risk of dying from a little run anymore!”

“I don’t want to hear that from you!”

“See, nice lungs!”

“I said, stop moving so much!” exclaimed Ametrine, adjusting her hold and huffing. “In any case, Opal, why are you doing this? You have never wanted to fight against the Golem, without talking about the fact that, well…” she trailed off, suddenly hesitant.

“Weren’t you the one who berated me for that?”

The knight’s gaze met hers without flinching. “Yes, because I could not understand how you could live with yourself, when people’s lives were at risk. However…” She looked away, before turning to Opal again. “It should have never been your responsibility. It was not at the time, and it is not now.”

“Thank you, Ametrine.” Opal smiled, grateful. “To be honest, I still don’t want to fight.”

“Then why-”

Opal shook her head. “I think I know of a way to end this peacefully. I hope it’ll work.”

“It will, I believe in us” Celsian reassured, as if it was the most normal thing in the world. Then, she grinned. “We’ll convince your absentee parent to go away and leave us alone.”

Opal blinked for a few seconds, taken aback, but then she burst out laughing. Celsian had evidently been awake for longer than she’d thought. “Okay” she said, smiling with renewed confidence. “I’ll hold you onto your word.”

They continued to run, but as soon as they reached the gatehouse and got out of the castle Opal created a rudimentary horseless trolley from stone. She felt slightly bad for the paved road and the marble sculptures that got destroyed, but sacrifices had to be made from time to time – maybe she could’ve helped with the reconstruction, though –. “Get on!” When everyone was on her questionable vehicle, she made the wheels turn, their destination being the outskirts of Kruos.

In the capital, the knights were urging the civilians to reach the shelters, and many people were being accompanied directly to the castle. They were sporting expressions that were all variations of terrified for their lives, and Opal couldn't blame them: the Golem, visible even from the royal palace, was a gigantic being made of living krystageia, a conscious amass of layers upon layers of sediments and rocks; it was advancing at a monstrously slow pace, but its clay creatures had already entered the city and were in the middle of destroying its stone buildings and attacking the residents.

Opal was a bit too busy with steering the wheels and generally making sure they didn’t run over innocent civilians or crash into a building, but her friends took care of as many clay beasts as they could. Rutile was protecting all of them with his liquid shield, stretched to its limit, so Ametrine and Celsian, that was now well enough to stand on her own, could focus their attention on eliminating dangers and obstacles of any kind: they were working as the well-oiled cogs of a more sophisticated mechanism, as if they’d spent much more than a few weeks together.

When they were reaching the outskirts of Kruos, Opal yelled at the top of her lungs: “Gals- and Rutile! Don’t let the Golem stop me, I’m counting on you here!”

“What do you mean-”

As soon as they got out of the city and in front of the Golem, and before her friends could ask more questions – all very sensible, no doubt – about the dubiousness of her plan, she made the trolley skid to a halt and jumped, evoking stone pillars from the ground to act as the steps of the most ambitious staircase ever created. The Golem was so tall that the southern part of the capital was in shadow, but she managed to reach its head and land on its front.

Opal couldn't help it: as soon as she touched that stony skin, she instinctively felt at home, as though that was the place she actually belonged to, where she could’ve always returned. She supposed that, in a way, it was true: she was quite literally a piece of the Golem, she was born from there, and it was one of the reasons why she didn’t want to destroy it, if she could help it.

The Golem didn’t manage to grab her, neither with its enormous hands nor with its creatures, because her friends managed to somehow stop all of its attempts, as she’d asked, but the more she let herself get relaxed in that promise of homecoming the more her feet sank into the body of the Golem, getting absorbed, and she couldn't allow that to happen.

With an effort that had no right to be that mighty, Opal detached first one foot and then the other, before slamming the palms of her hands flat against the Golem’s forehead.

She didn’t want to fight, she wanted even less the powers that Agata had forced her to take, and destroying the Golem would’ve been ultimately useless, so she took the only option left: the Golem instinctively absorbed magic, if it didn’t have enough already flowing in its body; it didn’t need to be convinced with words, unlike her, so she transferred all of her power, everything she had, into its body. With a scream, she poured up until the very last drop of magic she had into that living hill, until she couldn't even hold her eyes open anymore.

She fell in the middle of an explosion of light, with not even the strength to move, but her friends caught her in the air, bringing her safely to the ground. They all watched in awe as, after a few seconds of tense stillness where everyone held their breath, the Golem started slowly turning around, returning where it came from, and all of its creatures went back to being clay.

“Opal… Opal, you did it!” Celsian exclaimed, her eyes positively glowing with joy, hugging her from the spot where they were seating. “I knew it!”

“Opal... thank you.” Ametrine’s voice cracked on the last syllable, and she brought a hand to her mouth, glancing away. Opal looked at her, and was surprised to see that a few tears were escaping from the knight’s glassy eyes.

“But… but how…?” Rutile asked, incredulity painted all over his face.

Instead of answering with words, Opal turned her head and lifted a hand toward the ground: her fingertips crystallised, shining under the rays of the sun and ready to transform into something else if she so wished, but she didn’t even manage to convince a single grain of dirt to move.

She started laughing, something that felt cathartic and freeing, and when she calmed down she looked at the sky and smiled, satisfied, truly relaxing for the first time in what felt like centuries. Maybe, it wasn’t a feeling at all.

She still had the powers of the Golem, but...

“I don’t possess the Untethered Magic anymore.”