(for everyone) a dark world aches for a splash of the sun part ii
part i
Their stunned silence is interrupted by the arrival of more masked figures, sharp spears pointed towards them. They are led by the attractive man Kyungsoo had the pleasure of meeting earlier who begins her jumble of words, gesturing towards them.
Kyungsoo had been utterly confused for a moment before he places the pattern in the words, stepping forward and conversing with the leader, after the exchange of several phrases, the language seeming to evolve from the initial harsh, biting to what was beginning to sound like the round and elegant lilt of French.
Kyungsoo knows he’s made a breakthrough when the masked figures begin to lower their spears, and the tense set in their shoulders drop to a relax line. Kyungsoo turns to the crew, excitement widening his eyes and setting the twinkle in them, explaining,” The languages of today must have found their roots in Atlantean!”
The leader exclaims, “I must bring you to father!” before welcoming them warmly, “Welcome to the city of Atlantis!” presenting the wondrous sight of Atlantis behind him with a flourish of his arm.
And just like that, the dying embers of Kyungsoo’s love for linguistics is rekindled and nursed into a small flame, and his ache for adventure is alleviated, if only in the slightest.
The crew and its vehicles are escorted by the masked figures and their leader over a barely held together bridge suspended over steaming hot magma, and while the bridge trembles and creaks, it doesn’t give way.
In one of the vehicles, Minseok and Luhan sit, and the air between them seems fraught with worry and tension. Minseok breaks the tension, and frowns, questioning, “What now Luhan? There’s a thriving civilization here!” Luhan’s face remains impassive and unchanging, his voice calm, with dangerous undertones, “Nothing changes.
They are led before an elaborate and tall set of doors, an armed guard on each side. As the doors creak open, they reveal an exquisite room, although to say room might be wrong. The area that is revealed is a pavilion set at the end of what looks like a pond, lilies bobbing about in the water and rocks serving as steps. In the pavilion, seated upon a plush chaise lounge is a regal man, in long robes and staff in hand. His clouded eyes may have told a story but the way they swiveled and looked through the crew spoke a different one.
The leader steps forward, and on a bent knee, presenting the crew to his King. Kyungsoo manages a rough translation from the snatches of words he catches, the words spoken still far too fast for him to keep up- Your Highness, visitors.
The King’s voice is rough and grave as he rumbles, “You know the law Jongin, we do not permit visitors of any sort, especially not anyone who has had the sight of Atlantis grace their eyes. Death to those that do.”
Jongin’s voice is pleading, “But…father, they may yet be able to help us.” He implores. The King’s stance doesn’t change but his voice hardens, “We do not need their help.”
“But father,” the man - Jongin, Kyungsoo corrects- tries, only to be silenced by her father. “That is enough,” The King thunders, rising from his seat to stand at his full height “we will discuss this later.”
Commander Luhan, sensing how the situation could sour for them, cuts in here, a disarming smile on his face, “It is an honour to be here in your magnificent city.” The King narrows his eyes but nods nonetheless for the Commander to continue. “We have come a long way in search of…” The King cuts him off quickly, “What you seek, you will not find here, “ The King pauses, arranging the folds of his robes neatly, “your journey, as long as it has been, has been in vain.”
While Luhan’s expression gives away nothing, Kyungsoo spies his fists clenching by his sides , knuckles white. However, as quick as his anger had risen, it has dissipated just as quickly, and he respectfully requests, “May we at least stay the night, to rest, resupply and leave by the light of the next day?”
The King considers this briefly, weighing out the pros and cons, before allowing the compromise for being the lesser of two evils, “Very well then, a single night, and that will be all.”
“Thank you your Majesty.” Luhan bows, Minseok and Kyungsoo following suit as they turn to leave. He throws one last, quick glance over his shoulder, and sees Jongin looking back, before sigh, a movement that isn’t limited to his chest, but rather a full-on weariness of the mind and body.
As soon as the foreign people exit the throne room, The King folds himself neatly onto his throne, remarking “You’ve grown soft, Jongin, a thousand years ago you would have cut them down mercilessly, slain them upon sight.”
Jongin slumps, sucking in a deep breath, here we go again, he thinks, the rehashing of an old argument. “A thousand years ago, we had no need for scavenging for food at the edges of ruins.” His father sighs, “There is nothing wrong with that, and certainly, none of our people are complaining about what we have.”
“You do not understand,” Jongin continues, brightening the overhead lamp of his father’s pavilion with a tap of the crystal strung around his neck. “Worse still, the people do not understand, they cannot protest something they have no knowledge of!” Jongin counters, and though his words are heated, the hands that sweep a wet cloth across his father’s brow are not.
“We have fallen.” Jongin breathes, and his father calls out his name, tone low and warning, a tired, tired dragon rearing up to breathe fire. At his continued words, the King stands down.
“I just…believe that perhaps the help we seek can come in the form of these explorers, if we let them in, maybe they can look at our past, and coming from a different perspective, they might hold the key to saving our future.” Jongin is earnest, and his guileless eyes cools his father’s rage.
Rage extinguished, The King still disagrees, “Our city is preserved, not fallen.” He places a leathery, warm palm on Jongin’s face, and wisely imparts, “All shall be clear when the throne becomes yours.”
Jongin leans into the touch.
Commander Luhan, Lieutenant Minseok and Kyungsoo meet up with the remaining crew by the entrance of the palace. When Luhan speaks, it is a quiet remark with venom dripping dangerously, “The King’s hiding something, and we need to find out what it is.”
The crew thinks it over, and Minseok shrewdly suggests, “Someone should be sent to talk to Jongin.” Seven pairs of eyes swivel to the shortest member of their expedition who narrows his eyes back suspiciously, muttering “I don’t trust any of you, not one!”
Kyungsoo’s protests are ignored as Chanyeol swings him over the shoulder in a fireman’s carry.
Chanyeol dumps Kyungsoo in an emptied hallway, and leaves him for dead, running off in another direction.
Which leads Kyungsoo to his current situation, pacing the hallway, as he formulates a plausible conversation starter that is nether suspicious nor overly friendly. He’s narrowed his options down to: I have questions and I think you have answers or Please let me stay here forever, and is repeating them mindlessly to himself when a hand is placed over his mouth and a “I too have questions that you have answer to” mouthed breathily against his ear. His back is pressed against a smooth expanse of planes and Jongin’s warmth burns through the fabric of Kyungsoo’s dress shirt, the corners of a smirked mouth pressed against his hair.
Jongin whisks Kyungsoo away, leading him somewhere, Kyungsoo almost asks several times, but the warmth of Jongin’s palm pressed against his own stops him. Their hands separating only when the heir leads Kyungsoo to an outcropping behind a waterfall, leading him to crawl along the ledge covered with snaking vines, their distance from safety (ie. The ground) makes Kyungsoo gulp.
Jongin playfully throwing a look of judgement over his shoulder before intertwining their fingers and tugging Kyungsoo along.
They arrive in a cave lit by dappled blue beams, and as Jongin agilely climbs his way down the boulders to land in soft dewy moss, Kyungsoo is left struggling a feet above ground.
Jongin lays against the bed of soft greenery spread-eagled with eyes closed, and Kyungsoo takes a moment to gape at his beauty after planting his feet on the ground. Jongin pats the space next to him and Kyungsoo folds his legs neatly beneath as he sits.
Jongin’s eyes spring open and he excitedly begins his endless stream of questions: How did you get here? You are a scholar, yes? Which country are you from? What is everything like where you are from?
Overwhelmed, Kyungsoo’s already wide eyes bug out further, as he tries to figure out which question to answer first. He stops Jongin with a single raised hand, suggesting a compromise, that they take turns at asking each other questions. Jongin bobs his head eagerly, grinning from ear to ear.
The exchange goes on for a while, each asking the other questions about their cultures. Jongin performs a tribal dance, and while the meaning is lost on Kyungsoo, its beauty, or rather, Jongin’s beauty isn’t. Kyungsoo demonstrates a bit of ballroom, stuffy dances the complete opposite of the raw of tribal.
They laugh at the vast difference in dance styles and continue comparing notes.
Kyungsoo stumbles into his next question, “How did you, and an entire thriving civilization end up several thousand leagues beneath an ocean?”
The smile slips off Jongin’s face, and rather than a reply, he offers Kyungsoo a story. A story of how the Gods had grown jealous of Atlantis’ prosperity, and struck them with a calamity, banishing them out of sight and out of mind.
Jongin recalls the day; the day the Gods threw a cloak over their sky, and of how chaos has descended, his people running about, shouting and screaming, He recalls the bright blue light that had according to his father called his mother to it. “And then I never saw her again.” He notes sourly, as if it were the ‘The End’ to her tale.
Kyungsoo apologizes for bringing up bad memories, and shares the loss of his parents in exchange, a vulnerability for another after all. Kyungsoo puzzles over a detail in Jongin’s tale, and backtracks, “Do you mean, you were there when it happened?” At Jongin’s nod, Kyungsoo’s jaw drops “Doesn’t that make you 88 years old?” He sputters.
Jongin calmly replies, “Yes.”
Jongin poses the next question, “How did you find your way here?” Kyungsoo reaches for his satchel, pulling The Fieldguide from its confines, “It wasn’t easy and we never would have made it without this book.”
Snatching the book from Kyungsoo’s hands, Jongin’s eyes eagerly run over its contents, Kyungsoo savours the heir’s expression, surprise and wonder. “You mean to say, that you can understand this?”
“Yes,” Kyungsoo replies, confused, “I can read Atlantean just like you, it’s part of my job as a linguist.” At her shocked silence, Kyungsoo continues, “except you can’t can you?” he finishes.
Jongin confirms his suspicions, “No one can, it has been lost to us since the time of The Flood.”
Jongin demands a demonstration, and so Kyungsoo does, flipping to a random page and reading it aloud, “Follow the narrow passage for another league, and there you will find the fifth marker.”
Cheekily, Jongin mocks Kyungsoo’s accent, calling it boorish, provincial and nasal.
And strangely enough, Kyungsoo, usual one who to dislike being mocked, finds he doesn’t mind all that much.
The extremely small details that make up one heir to the Atlantic Kingdom: Kim Jongin:
He walks around barefooted with his ankles exposed for the world to see.(Kyungsoo can’t shake the thought that such delicate, delicate structures support the heir to a thriving empire.)
He doesn’t grasp the concept of personal space. See exhibit A: He has once again reached for Kyungsoo’s small hand and enveloped them in his.
Kyungsoo is being led by a Jongin who had straightened up suddenly, and exclaimed “I have something to show you!” He drags the smaller man to a covered something, Jongin tugs the cloth off, revealing a worn vehicle beneath resembling a fish with its large eyes and streamlined body, the mischievous twinkle in his eyes at their all-time brightest.
He presents Kyungsoo with his dilemma by squatting to a lower part of the vehicle, and Kyungsoo does the same, to further aid his inspection of an inscription panel on the vehicle.
“No matter what I try, it refuses to respond, perhaps if-“Kyungsoo cuts Jongin off, cracking his knuckles and getting onto his knees for a more thorough investigation. He misses Jongin’s flushed face behind him at the sight.
“Place crystal into slot,” Kyungsoo directs, snapping Jongin out of his daze. Jongin does as he’s told, slipping the crystal as directed, into a slot. “Gently place hand on inscription panel, and turn the crystal to the right, then a quarter back with hand still on inscription panel.” Jongin completes the set of instructions.
To their complete and utter shock, the vehicle powers up, the headlights and inscription panel glowing the icy blue of the crystal strung around the necks of Atlanteans.
That is before Jongin, in a fit of pure curiosity and desire to find out the speeds the vehicle could reach rubs the inscription panel, and the vehicle swerves around the cave, making several swift, violent turns and crashing into the rock wall.
Jongin rubs the back of his neck sheepishly, mumbles an “Oops.”
They make their way back to the village, and witness the wonderful sights and smells of Atlantis, Kyungsoo with bright, watchful eyes and Jongin with a tender, loving expression.
Atlantis was most certainly a thriving civilization, Kyungsoo thinks, as they walk along the colourful street markets, children weaving in and out between their legs. Jongin inquires about the crew, and Kyungsoo enlightens him about them, telling Jongin of his observations of them. Of their eccentricities, traits and stories.
Before long, dusk begins to fall, and Kyungsoo, together with Jongin meet with the crew at the home of a kindly Atlantean, and together, they enjoyed a sumptuous meal, even if they cast suspicious looks at some of the crustaceans in the broth. (Sehun swears he sees one swimming about in his.)
Meanwhile, elsewhere, figures in military coats pull gas masks over their faces, opening crates of weapons, rifles and grenades, arming themselves.
Night falls in earnest, and Kyungsoo is out back of the village with Jongin, knee deep in water, catching fireflies, whom he decides are safer when they aren’t descending into a column of fire.
Kyungsoo and Jongin pinch a few by their wings and deposit them into a lamp. Kyungsoo admits in a quiet voice, “We weren’t actually expecting to find the thriving civilization that is Atlantis, in fact we would have thought we struck gold if we just found broken pottery and remnants of this empire.”
The admission changes the mood, and Jongin, now somber, confesses, “We are not thriving, we live that much is certain but our culture is wasting away.”
“ But you , you could help. ” he adds, almost as an afterthought, one that Kyungsoo almost misses.
Jongin is a sneaky, sly, sly fox, Kyungsoo thinks, surprised. Conveniently bringing Kyungsoo out back under the guise of relighting the lamp.
When all along his actual purpose had been to convince Kyungsoo to dive with him down to the mural that would be their first step in helping to save Atlantis. And convince Kyungsoo he did.
Kyungsoo sheds his dress shirt, folding it neatly on the banks of the river, and off they go, Jongin leading their way with the glowing crystal strung around his neck and sure, powerful strokes through the water.
They emerge, breaking the water and gasping for breath in an airpocket. Jongin shocking Kyungsoo by challenging, “Ready for more?”
Without waiting for a response, Jongin dives deeper, and stops before a broken off part of a rock wall, his crystal illuminating the colourful, though dulled by water erosion, mural. The small portion that Kyungsoo manages to examine before they have to resurface for air reveals a star in the middle of the mural.
They dive again, and this time, Kyungsoo takes ahold of Jongin’s crystal, moving to around to see the mural had been larger than the star he had seen. He guides the crystal, and Jongin by default, around, examining the mural bit by bit and piecing it together as a whole.
Finally, when they resurfaces, Kyungsoo excitedly explains, “It’s depicting the heart of Atlantis, there are brief mentions of it in The Fieldguide, and its also what’s been keeping all of Atlantis alive and thriving.”
“So where is it now?” Jongin questions.
That’s when Kyungsoo realizes, the missing page!
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He had anticipated the missing page, but the betrayal no. Kyungsoo surfaces with Jongin, both clutching to the banks of the river.
He looks up and is met by the hardened look in all seven pairs of eyes, and the menacing weapons-rifles, maces and axes. Money, Kyungsoo thinks, their motivator, and they’d admitted it too. He just, just believed too much, trusted too easily and wanted a family too badly.
His suspicions are confirmed when Luhan, wearing a smirk, lifts the missing page, and taunts, “Looking for this?”
Kyungsoo splutters and pleads, “Luhan, please don’t, it may be a source of riches to you and a power source to me, but to these people, it’s the only thing keeping them alive. Luhan saunters about, arrogance filling his chest as he mocks, “Minseok darling,” he purrs, “how much do you think it’s worth?”
The corner of Minseok’s mouth curl up, “Triple the original, I’ll wager.”
At the response, Luhan’s expression transforms to something truly evil, and he snaps his fingers. Men surge forward, tugging Jongin by his white locks and handcuffs both of them.
“Knock knock,” and an explosion ensues, blowing apart the doors to the throne room. The guards inside point their spears at the intruders, and Luhan shoves Jongin forward, who stumbles to the ground.
The King orders the guards to stand down, opening himself up for vulnerability, anything to protect his son. Armed men flank the King, holding him up forcefully by his arms, and when he refuses to say a word even when questioned, Luhan knees him in the stomach. This takes the crew by shock.
Curled up, the King groans in pain on the ground. Yixing rushes towards him, medical training taking over as he tends to the elderly man’s wounds. A murmur passes through the crew, “This wasn’t part of the plan.” Ripples through them.
Luhan cocks his gun, his eyes soulless, giving no emotion away as he levels it between the King’s eyes, demanding the crystal with a crazed look set to his features. The eyes of the crew widen simultaneously, and several seemed ready to stop the Commander if need be.
Luhan laughs instead, and looks to Minseok, whose eyes are sparked alight by the lust and pull of riches and promise of blood. Instead, Luhan steps before Kyungsoo, gun pointed over his heart.
All Kyungsoo can offer, because it’s all he knows, is that “The Heart of Atlantis is hidden in the eye of the King.” The linguist makes one last plea to the Commander, “Please, you don’t know what the crystal can do.”
Minseok snarks, “I’ll bet several countries would pay to.”
The crazed glimmer in Minseok’s eyes takes on an understanding one as he looks out to the pond in the throne room, and notices the placing of the stones tiles, matching it to the main symbol of Atlantis.
Bingo, Luhan breathes.
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Luhan hops to the middle of the spiral pattern, which begins to sink downwards. He pulls Kyungsoo onto it, and Minseok jumps on, Jongin struggling in his grip.
They arrive in a spacious cavern, several large stone masks floating and making their orbit around an icy-blue glow.
Luhan takes Kyungsoo by his narrow shoulders and shakes him frantically as though trying to shake answers out of him. Kyungsoo, unable to provide answers of any sort, endures the shaking and Luhan’s questioning of things he has no answer to.
The crystal around Jongin’s neck suspends itself in mid-air, attracted to the floating structures, and the same icy-blue overtakes his eyes. He takes several steps forward, his eyes unseeing and his actions not his own. They all pause and wait to see what happens next.
Jongin steps into the water, and where the laws of nature would dictate that his feet be plunged into water, the laws of the crystal provide Jongin an immunity to nature, and Jongin begins to walk on water.
He walks, on water , pausing once to mutter “All will be well, Do Kyungsoo,” to stand beneath the structure, which raises him up, the stone masks ceasing their movement, and the icy blue glow in the middle engulfs him within. A magical event begins to occur and the Jongin the crystal beams back down is seemingly crystallised and transparent and yet still, Jongin, able to move, and blink, but Nothing beyond that.
It ends in an anticlimax, Sehun tightening the screws of the tank housing the crystallised Jongin, ignoring the glares Kyungsoo aims at him. Jongdae, seated in one of the vehicles, looks into the sideview mirror, looks back to see Kyungsoo staring right back at him as he shouts bitterly, “Good job everyone, rousing success, congratulations for abandoning the lives of thousands for the riches of a few.”
Luhan stalks over, and pulls his fist back, punching Kyungsoo in the face, hard enough that the small linguist falls to the floor, blood trickling out the corner of his mouth, and spits “Get off your high horse Kyungsoo. We’ll helping the progression of a more superior civilization at the sake of another, as part of Natural Selection.”
Jongdae chances another look at Kyungsoo, and seeing the bruised and broken figure on the ground, he feels his conscience come back to haunt him. He flings the door of the vehicle open, pulling Baekhyun with him to stand behind Kyungsoo, Sehun and Chanyeol follow, hearts aching for the linguist and set on doing the right thing.
“Fine.” Luhan hisses, and he and Minseok start their vehicles, driving into the bridge suspended over lava they had entered Atlantis from. The crew watch, unable to do a thing, knowing Luhan and Minseok had weapons and as such, the upper hand.
Luhan detonates the charges set at the bridge, severing and preventing the crew from chasing them.
The magnificent waterfalls stop flowing, and the glowing crystals around the necks of the Atlanteans dull.
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“Kyungsoo!” Yixing calls, voice tinged with panic, “You should come here now!”
In the time it takes to get to the throne room, Kyungsoo’s heart races wildly, thinking about all the other things that could go wrong, before bursting through the doors.
Yixing’s face is ashen as he tells Kyungsoo, “It’s internal, he might not make the night.”
Kyungsoo pales, and feeling his legs go weak, settles onto the chaise lounge. Eyeing the crystal around the King’s neck, he lights up, exclaiming, “The crystal!” At Yixing’s bewildered expression, Kyungsoo reasons, “It has healing properties, it can-!”
He is cut off by the loud and insistent “Where’s Jongin?” of the King, unwilling and unable to lie, Kyungsoo can only look on sadly.
“No! He has been chosen by the crystal, just as his mother was.“ The King’s despair and weariness is in every line of his frail body.
“In times of crisis, the crystal picks someone of the royal lineage, more specifically someone of royal blood. The royal blood must run through their veins, and it does in Jongin. It is alive in that it thrives on the collective emotions of all those who have come before us, and in return, it provides us with prosperity, longevity and protection. The more it absorbs, the stronger it becomes, and over time, it has developed a consciousness of its own.” The King dissolves into a fit of coughs which sound faintly wet.
“In the height of my reign, I had thought myself invincible, and had sought to use the crystal as a weapon, but its power was far too great to be controlled. That one poor decision led to our downfall, and destruction.”
Yixing voices the thought Kyungsoo has been thinking, “So you hid it beneath the city.”
“To keep history from repeating itself.” Kyungsoo continues.
“Yes,” The King confirms, “Jongin too could suffer the same fate as his mother, over time, he could be consumed by the crystal if he merges for it.” The King clutches at his chest as if the thought had physically hurt his heart.
It is as though the King feels Death coming for him, for with his dying breath, he removes the crystal around his neck, placing it in Kyungsoo’s open palm, heaving, “Please, return the crystal and save her.”
And then he’s gone.
Kyungsoo watches the light leave The King’s eyes. Wordlessly rising to leave the room, the fury in his eyes warns everyone off, and though no one dares to ask him where he’s heading, they follow behind. Kyungsoo fits his feet into the grooves of an abandoned Atlantean vehicle by the foot of the stairs leading out from the palace, scaling his way upwards and setting himself down.
He repeats the same series of instructions he’d learnt from his adventure with Jongin, with the King’s crystal. The vehicle whirs to life and lifts itself off the ground.
Several Atlantean guards, having seen the condensed ball of fury that is Kyungsoo storm out, had followed, and upon seeing Kyungsoo achieve a feat that had been lost to them for centuries, excitedly ask for instructions. Which Kyungsoo repeats back at them, voice tense and tightly wound.
Once the guards have mounted the vehicles, the members of the crew do the same, making use of the crystals of some generous villagers
A lone figure stands in a dormant volcano, aiming an explosive upwards. An unheard countdown ends, and the lone figure squeezes the trigger, sending the explosive to the solidified magma above, running for safety as impact hits.
When the smoke clears, Luhan stares upward, pleased. As his subordinates run underfoot, scurrying this way and that, preparing for the launch of a hot air balloon intending to carry them to the surface, he wraps an arm around Minseok’s waist, pulling him close and sharing a passionate kiss.
The whoosh of vehicles heading towards them at high speeds interrupts their celebration of triumph.
Luhan orders the take-off of the hot air balloon as well as several fighter planes.
The ground troops of Luhan’s armies begin firing machine guns, focusing on catching the Atlanteans vehicles in a random spray of bullets. The crew is caught unawares, having been informed earlier by Sehun that Luhan possessed only hand held weapons.
The solution to their problems is introduced when Baekhyun, panicked, presses his shaking hand to the panel, sparking off a chain reaction leading to the mouthpiece of the fish vehicle dropping open and firing an icy cool beam in retaliation.
They all catch on quickly, evening out the battlefield, by targeting the ground forces to decrease the weapons firing at them. The ground forces go up in flames, and they’ve won half the battle.
Luhan’s air forces give pursuit to the Atlantean vehicles, and Kyungsoo has to execute a series of spins and hard curves to avoid the rapid firing aimed at him.
Kyungsoo regroups briefly with the crew, a battle strategy brewing. A strategist Kyungsoo may not be, but he had seen enough films to come up with one, however brief and simple it may have seemed.
“Baekhyun, you and I act as decoy, Jongdae, Sehun, you guys try to bring the hot air balloon down.”
Minseok spies Kyungsoo and Baekhyun making a beeline towards their getaway balloon, and fires wildly with his pistol, hoping to at least clip one of the vehicles. His plan backfires, and he’s put in a difficult position when his pistol runs out bullets, frustrated, he flings the pistol down. “Looks like someone’s working overtime,” Luhan points out to Minseok, Sehun balanced precariously on a swinging chunk of metal and Jongdae offering support atop his Atlantean vehicle by holding Sehun in place as he saws away at a pulley system that plays a pivotal role in keeping the balloon aloft.
Minseok leans over the side of the basket, and groans, before loosening the strings keeping a torpedo to the basket, sending the torpedo down, and clipping Sehun’s foothold.
Sehun’s arms pinwheel wildly, and Jongdae scrambles for Sehun’s flailing limbs, managing to grip a lanky arm and swing him onto the vehicle.
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Kyungsoo, seeing Jongdae and Sehun’s failed attempt, decides on a last-ditch attempt.
He crashes his vehicle into the hot air balloon, jumping the last second and is caught by an Atlantean guard.
Together, they zoom down, taking on the weight of Jongin’s tank at the back of their vehicle, and then advantage of the initial slow descent of the hot air balloon to transfer the tank holding Jongin, unhooking it from the balloon and winding it around their own vehicle.
The slow descent does not last long and before long, the remnants of the hot air balloon plunging down at an alarming rate. The Atlantean vehicles a safe distance away witness Luhan and Minseok embrace each other, staring death in the eye together.
The fates seem to decide that they haven’t suffered enough heart-stopping moments for the day, and the crash and explosion of the hot-air balloon causes the volcano to awaken, and the magma gives way to lava.
They book their way out of there, flying the short distance back to the island of Atlantis, filing off their vehicles. Kyungsoo borrows a spear from a guard, prying at the screws bolting the tank.
The six walls of the tank burst free of their screws, and suspend themselves around Jongin, who still glows an icy blue. The spiral symbol he is floating above lights up, and the runes rippling outward do the same, until the island, is lit up by runes covering its every surface. Jongin is lifted somewhere above the clouds and isn’t visible except for a single blue beam.
The triggering of the illumination of the island causes a series of reactions; the stone masks beneath the city re-levitate and begin their reorbit, and large stone giants rise from the waters at the edges of the city. They lumber a distance, and clap their palms in front of them, before spreading their arms.
From their spread arms, pulsing blue panels ripple outwards forming a portion of the shield, and where the panels met, they fused, forming a single large area of energy.
The boiling lava washes over the shield, and in its wake, is a hardened layer of magma.
That is, until the blue energy cracks through the magma, forming hairline cracks on every area of magma, and the magma falls away as if it were never there.
Jongin had been lifted to the clouds and the only thing that gives away his location is a single blue beam shining through the clouds.
The ending to Kyungsoo’s adventure is a happy one, for it is one where Jongin is returned by the clouds and Kyungsoo lives, learns more about languages and their roots in Atlantean by the day as he spends each one in Atlantis with Jongin.
The crew depart, their families all on the surface, and as a parting gift, Jongin sends some gold with them, (there’s no need for any of it here, he brushes off) and imparts a crystal to each of them, in the form of a necklace similar to the one worn by all Atlanteans. All except Sehun,(and of course, Kyungsoo who feels the new chapter of his life should begin with Jongin, the sap,) who clings to an Atlantis native, one of the guards: Tao, who turns out to be his new beau, and sends them back with a message for his family that he is found reason to start a new one.
Their goodbyes are said, and rather than a sad one, it’s happy, with hugs exchanged all around before they load onto a vehicle taking them to the surface.
THE END