lowfantasy prompt: Deep within your soul resides an insatiable desire, craving to possess the very essence of a mythical stone revealed in your slumber. Will you dare to seize it and the extraordinary power it holds?
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A few months after the Atlantic, Evangeline found herself panting as she dodged scattered logs and protruding rocks of the very dense rainforest of Xishuangbanna.
"It'll be fun you said," Malik heaved as he ran beside her, pausing to fire a couple of aimless shots behind him in an attempt to scare and slow their chasers. "It's easy, you promised."
"And you believed her?" Jackson gritted out, tugging the cloth tighter around his wounded arm as he leaned against a tree for a brief moment of respite. "We never learn."
"This is actually good news!"
Incredulous, Jack blinked at her as they bolted again. "What?"
"Them attacking us," Evangeline panted, "means we're on the right path. We're posing as a threat to them because they're looking for it. That also means," she grinned, "the stone is more important than I originally–"
Evangeline yelped when the ground beneath them dipped into a camouflaged, steep slope. All three of them tumbled down, grunting and groaning in their descent until they lay sprawled in a mess of aching limbs and heavy breaths.
Her eyes fluttered shut, her vision hazy and black until a beacon of light cut through the darkness, filling her soul with warmth and her bones with tremors.
The stone gleamed with an otherworldly luminescence. Its multifaceted surface reflected a spectrum of hues, shifting from fiery reds to deep, azure blues. Every time Evangeline reached to touch it, she could feel a faint thrum of energy coursing through it, a shield of power and protection encasing it in an ethereal radiance.
Ever since the Atlantic expedition, Evangeline had been plagued by incessant, consuming dreams of a gem so beautiful it stole her breath away even in the lands of slumber.
However, as soon as her fingertips graze the gem, flickering lights would burst so bright they'd leave her momentarily blind before bathing her surroundings in jade green and golden specks.
Then, she'd wake up heaving and soaked with sweat. This time, though, Evangeline awakened with a newfound determination to seek out this legendary artifact, to possess it and unlock the extraordinary power it promises.
Something deep within her obsessively called to it, filling her with an insatiable desire to get her hands on it.
She sat up, her gaze sweeping around their dim surroundings. Carvings stretched endlessly across walls damaged only by time. Staggering to their feet, the two men watched Evangeline run from one wall to another, her eyes sparkling and her teeth showing.
