Sol's Shine and the Kingdom of Terra

Chapter 21 Her Story

Every now and then, Nico would think about the message that was meant for him and what it could possibly mean. "See her story for your own eyes one day" was written inside the book as if the black box he had contained more information inside. Nico and Eve watched Yvonne like a hawk. She continued to tamper with it to see how it would function. Using the knowledge on what she got from Nico on how he stumbled upon the black box, Yvonne figured the box had to contain some form of storytelling in a way or to at least contain certain information. The question was how to get that information out.

The long strip of black tape inside had to have given her the answer but she also had to be as delicate as possible as to not completely separate it from the box. "How long is this going to take?" Nico asked. "It's going to take longer the more you complain." Yvonne said to him without taking her eyes off of her work. "From what you said, it seems like this box is meant to tell a story. I'm trying to put something together that can help us understand it. If there aren't any words to understand then the next best thing I can think of are images or pictures." Yvonne had only taken a couple minutes to understand the black box just to spend a longer time building something that could read it. Nico had to help Yvonne out by using his shadow magic to grab various parts around Junistar City so she could put it together.

What Yvonne had unknowingly made was a screen for the VHS tape they kept calling the black box. As Yvonne put the final piece together in her contraption, they were finally ready to understand what they held came from and when. "Just a warning, when you press this button it should tell us everything we need to know about this box. But this stuff is so far beyond me that it should all fall apart and break after it's all over. You only have one chance to see it." "I only need to see it once. I'm not going to wait any longer to figure it out. It's time." Nico pressed the button on Yvonne's device without hesitation. The next several minutes of their lives however would turn upside down.

Neither Yvonne or Nico could hear anything from what they were seeing, but what they saw was essentially a video of a small girl growing up in a city that was once called Kyoto. Even if Yvonne and Nico couldn't understand some of what they were seeing, they could easily understand that the world this girl lived in was much different from their own or rather it was something that used to be a part of their world long ago in the past. "In the box tells the story of a very special girl, but along with that shows Magnora for what it was before" was another thing Nico remembers from the message told to him. The place they call home, Magnora, used to go by the name Earth. This information would be lost to Yvonne and Nico however.

Even still, the two of them watched this girl grow up with each small segment celebrating her birthday. It wasn't until the girl turned 16 that everything started to go wrong. The girl had just unwrapped a present with a new camera inside when she started to cough violently in which the video Yvonne and Nico watched immediately cut off to the next scene. Now it was the girl's 17th birthday but they could tell right away something was immediately off. The girl they had watched grow up was now laying in a hospital bed without any of her hair. The girl did her best to smile as she held a cupcake in her hands but Yvonne could instantly tell that her smile wasn't as great as it was before. It almost seemed like it was forced as if she didn't want the other people she was with to worry about her.

Even if Yvonne couldn't understand the implications of what was really going on, she could tell that something terrible was happening to the girl before her eyes. The girl started to write a few things down on a piece of paper, places she wanted to visit but all of it was written in a language neither Yvonne or Nico could understand much like the writing that was already on the black box. The video didn't cut to the girl's next birthday however. Instead it was her going to various places Yvonne or Nico haven't seen before.

The girl visited many places like the Eiffel Tower, Sydney Opera House, Pyramids of Giza, Statue of Liberty, Mount Fuji, and much more. They were seeing a brand new world through this girl's eyes. But more importantly, this also proved something else to them, that this world had already been recreated before. Nico was absolutely sure of that fact after he recognized the Stonehenge that was in the video, one of the only ancient relics aside from the VHS tape itself that survived that era. If Sinnel got everything he wanted, everything would be lost and not even the star demons themselves would get what they want. "This doesn't make any sense. I don't get it." Nico thought of how his ancestor was a star demon and how they could have perfectly seen this coming. The only thing that would make sense is that Nico's ancestor wanted everything to end and never wanted a new world in the first place.

The black tape going into Yvonne's contraption went out the other end and the video eventually ends abruptly without either of them knowing if the girl was okay or not. Although Yvonne figured that since they never got to see the girl's 18th birthday, that the girl's life must have ended abruptly as well. "I can't believe this. This is..." Yvonne started to tear up. "That was the world before ours, before these gods came along and ruined everything. That stone structure in the video looked like something I had seen earlier. I think they tried to recreate some of the things we made or made up. They can't differentiate fiction from nonfiction." Nico said.

"What makes you say that?" Yvonne looked at him. "The only race that was shown to us were humans. The only traces of elves or orcs that we've seen were in story books from what we've seen from the black box." Nico told her. "What are we supposed to do now?! This is insane!" Yvonne said to him. "I think that's obvious. We need to kill the gods to ensure that something like this never happens again." Yvonne didn't like his answer. "You can't just expect to just get away with killing all five of them. You're being ridiculous." "I'm just saying what needs to happen, not that I can actually make it happen myself. It would be easier to just kill Sinnel since every other god is against him and that he's the only one with this idea of recreation in his head." "That's still easier said than done." After Yvonne said that, they could both feel the ground tremble.

Yvonne and Nico escaped through the shadows to appear just outside of Junistar City to understand the commotion. Everyone else within the city sounded the bells and the train's steam engine could be heard roaring from where they stood. But in the distance, the reason for the dwarves' sudden uproar became clear. Ferocious Fenrir was treading the land and heading towards the Kingdom of Fire. Whether Yvonne figured that the wolf was a threat or not, the time she spent in Junistar City eventually had to come to an end.