Evolved [Book 2 of the Life Hearts Trilogy]

Dreams - Gem

This problem was more than a demon.

Or at least, that was my theory.

When I had returned from the End in my own bed, startling poor little Gandalf, I had immediately gone over to Blue's empire. It was completely empty. I told myself that she was in the mines or something.

I only knew something was off when I flew over the Cod Empire on the way home. Jimmy was also missing.

At this point, I was pretty worried.

So I headed to Lizzy's base to talk to her about her missing ally. She was also gone.

Panicked, I went to the Grimlands to make sure that my closest ally was there. FWhip was, and he agreed to help me see if anyone else had gone missing.

We checked everyone's bases, even Sausage's, who we no longer trusted. We discovered that Pearl, Scott, and Joel were missing as well. That was half of the Emperors. I connected the dots, and realized that all the Third Lifers plus two had disappeared.

Oh, no...

They weren't asleep this time. They were just gone - vanished off the face of the earth. I was almost positive that they were all in a world like the Third Life one Blue had described to me, where they would be imprisoned and influenced by the Watcher until they all died and had to be released.

If this was a loop, if it had and would happen again...

It was probably time to reach out to the Listener.

The Listener was who gave me my wizard powers. They just looked like a muted grey silhouette when it happened, but that was probably in case I didn't accept. They wanted to hide their identity until they knew which side I was on. Since I had accepted the magic, the Listener had visited me in dreams to give advice several times. Although I had never reached out to them, it was probably possible and I had never needed to more than now.

I had bigger priorities for now, though. I would have to contact the Listener at night, when I would be in the Dream Void. But I had plenty to do during the day, too.

After the Ender Dragon fight, I had grabbed the egg from its place atop the portal. I needed it to hatch so that the power of the End would once again become divided between the Dragon and Xornoth.

I built a large platform on top of a mountain, where I could easily see it from anywhere in the Crystal Cliffs. On it, I put a pedestal and several pillars to ring it. Then I carefully placed the egg on the pedestal. I surrounded the pedestal with lava to keep the egg warm and magical crystals to protect it from thieves.

That night, I enchanted another crystal to help me sleep because, well, now that Blue was gone I knew it would be nearly impossible. I also grabbed the crystal I had used to contact Blue, at the beginning when the worst of my worries was that she was in a coma. Those were simpler days.

Then it occurred to me that if Blue was in the Dream Void, I might be able to communicate with her.

The moon was the main source of long-distance communication between people. It powered our communication devices that let us contact each other. And it would let me talk to the Listener.

I was eager to jump in bed and get the information I needed. But I didn't quite get what I was hoping for. Instead of starting out in the Dream Void like I usually did, I was immediately pulled into a dream.

I was up on the highest level of my tower, where I could see all of the Crystal Cliffs and part of the Grimlands. I was writing in my journal all about the Ender Dragon fight and the egg. While writing about it, I glanced down at the pedestal and saw an unwanted intruder.