As the group walked along the mountain path, Antonio had a hunch they got closer by the minute. After all, he's leading the others to the destination with the laptop in his hands. He felt it was his responsibility. Just then, a force hit him in the head and knocked him back a bit.

“Are you all right?” Tommy asked, rushing over to his friend in concern. “What happened?”

“I hit something? I don’t know what it is...” Antonio replied, adjusting his glasses and rubbing his forehead.

What hit him, though? Tommy moved his hand over the space in front of Antonio and felt some invisible force that prevented him from going any further. “Whoa, you’re right.”

“That gem must be inside the force field,” Mandy proposed, snapping her fingers and forgetting about keeping quiet. “It would explain why you didn’t see the jewel earlier...”

“But how do we get over there?” Antonio asked.

Before Mandy could answer, the force field turned visible for the four of them to see, as its surface area slowly evaporated and disappeared from their sight. Weird, it was almost like someone, or something, expected them to show up.

“Well, that answers it, but why did it disappear like that?” Maggie asked, tilting her head.

“I got a bad feeling about this,” Mandy’s eyes drooped as they darted around the room. “You guys should hurry up and get the gem, then hightail it out of there!”

“Well, you heard her boys; let’s go get the gem back!” Maggie grinned and marched ahead.

Tommy, Antonio, and Maggie walked past the barriers and came to some ruins. Stone pillars grew out of each side of the path, some smaller than others due to missing broken chunks. Some rocks and tiles on the ground looked to have some pattern, but they seemed hard to transcribe. At the center of the ruins was a pedestal surrounded by pillars on all sides.

A giant tree sat on top of the big central tower of the rubble. Floors went up through it before finally reaching the top of the tree.

What could be inside it? The group thought.

The three didn’t have much time to marvel at the new surroundings for long, though, as they quickly found out the gem moving straight toward the front entrance of the ruined tower. They looked at each other and nodded before proceeding with caution.

.-.-.-.

As the group headed inside, they noticed the many rooms around them, some of them reflected off an odd shade of light. They kept hearing weird banter coming from one of the other chambers.

Maggie, Antonio, and Tommy tiptoed over to the next room on the first floor and peeked their heads out around the corner. There, a female with burgundy hair tied in a ponytail, sat before a strange device with brightly colored marbles functioning as buttons, with empty holes as the setup.

Whoa, that girl’s got Earth tones that could easily blend in with a tree trunk. Maggie thought to herself.

The burgundy-haired girl looked up, and Maggie softly gasped.

Did she hear me just now?

The girl instead focused her attention on the white gem floating right beside her.

“Ah, hello there.” She greeted the object. “It has been a while, hasn’t it? Happy to see you again...”

She took the hovering gem and placed it in one of the holes on the strange contraption. As she pressed the colorful, jewel-like button, a magic portal appeared right in front of her.