Journey for the Gem

Journey for the Gem- Chapter 13

*~* JADE'S THOUGHTS

Jade's breath was rasping in her throat as she sawed her hands raw trying to break free. Ruby's eyes were wild, and Jade knew that hers were just as bad.

Lights flashed in the darkness.

"Is that... a river?" Ruby wondered, stopping the pawing action that she had been doing.

"FOCUS, Ruby!" shrieked Jade, feeling like frothing at the mouth. "No, no, seriously," Ruby insisted, looking around. "Seriously, look down."

Jade yelped in alarm as a river spiraled directly toward them, only they had stopped moving. In two seconds Jade was drenched and soggy. The water was horribly hot, like a frying pan.

"Jade! Look out!"

Ruby's voice came clean and clear even underwater. Jade didn't wait, and swam down like a rocket. A large boulder flew inches above her, skimming her shoulder. Then it was her turn to yell "look out!" to Ruby.

Unfortunately, Ruby wasn't as lucky. The much smaller but still as sharp boulder slammed her directly in the face and she whirled out of sight with the impact.

Jade dove deeper, not even considering the sinister, dark-looking cave as she stroked after the fallen Ruby.

^_^ RUBY'S THOUGHTS

Ruby stood up, thinking about how weird it was under here. Usually an impact that large would break someone's nose, but hers wasn't even bleeding. She saw Jade, looking anxious as a mother hen with a little missing chick, swimming around. Her shoulder didn't look broken or even scratched, which was surprising, recalling how much a boulder that large had scared Ruby out of her mind. Nothing scared Ruby. NOTHING.

"Jade! Over here!" she called.

Ruby took a first look at Jade and paled.

She stood up, dusted herself off (as well as someone can dust themselves off underwater), and looked at Jade with motherly murder.

"What?!"

"Turn around."

Jade turned, whirling to look at what Ruby had seen.

Keres was smirking, her long hair looking pretty. Only if pretty meant like she had copied it out of a book that read "Medusa's Styled Headless-Chicken Hair."

Gladly, her fingernails were not dripping water.

"Look whose come to the underwater-magic seashore." Keres' smirk came back, bigger and uglier than ever.

^_^ RUBY'S THOUGHTS

"So exactly how the heck did we and you get here? How the sugar plum fairies are we breathing? Start explaining, because we know you called us through the TransPortal to here, just like last time," Jade said. Ruby glanced over at her, grimacing. She knew Jade was angry with Keres, since the last time they had seen her, she had worsened the condition of Jade's broken leg. Unspoken, the group agreed that she had sent the dude-in-black to chase Jade, and she had probably hired Songbird to threaten the group to give her the map which led to Kim, who had directed them to the cave where the prophesied ManyGems stone was possibly hidden. This was why Ruby and Jade were here in the first place.

"Actually, that was not me the first time. I like to be more precise and catch half the group off-guard and away, in danger and betrayed by me. Of course, if we were friends in the first place, it would be a betrayal."

"So why are we here? What do you want of us?" Ruby asked demandingly as she could. In truth, she was slightly scared. Keres had a glint full of more malice than usual, and it was starting to creep her out.