Checking the compass, Dawn stepped into the dark cave; cool relief from the island's heat. Smells of damp stone stirred frightening memories. She had been here before.

She felt her way along the rocks into the dark until suddenly ceiling dropped, forcing her to crawl. It was pitch black, and she began to feel the darkness pulling at her.  Total absence of light was anathema to her very nature, but light was forbidden here. She must find the treasure quickly; if she stayed too long her essence would be sucked away by the dark and more than she would perish in everlasting night.

The floor sloped suddenly and she began to slide. Desperately, she tried to slow her descent, but the slippery walls gave no purchase. She clenched her teeth to keep from screaming as she shot out of the tunnel and slammed into sand. She must not utter a sound.  While not forbidden, it would be unwise; no one survived waking an Elemental.

She stood and tried to get her bearings, which was difficult when the only input her senses registered was a cool, moist breeze slithering over her arms.  As she slowly moved forward, with her hands outstretched in front of her, light suddenly sparkled and was gone.  She waited, breath caught in her chest.  It came again, and then again, until at last a vast cavern of crystals sparkled in an ethereal light.

The cavern from her nightmares. She stood paralyzed for endless moments, reliving the memory which divided her family, sparked a cosmic war, and ended countless lives.  Her father's jealousy had started it all, and millennia later she had ended it. Ended him.

In the center of the cavern sat a golden chest perched atop a pedestal.  Her father's most precious treasure, stolen in the dark of night, hidden where he thought she would never have the courage to go, was guarded by Time herself. A gentle twinkling music danced across the crystalline cage, sweeping her up in a flurry of fear and desperation. The music was a sign; it was now or never. 

Stumbling across the sands, Dawn grabbed the key around her neck, and fitting it into the hole, she turned it as an unearthly breeze stirred. Chilling laughter filled the cavern as the chest's lid opened. The sands swirled around her in a torrent, rising to form a woman of terrible beauty.

In a voice that spoke of molten cores and frozen glaciers, speeding comets and the force of supernovas and she spoke,

"Who dares awaken me?"

Dawn resisted the urge to curl in on herself until she was the size of a grain of the sand on which she stood, and plunged her hands into the chest. As she exhaled in the blinding, burning light of her essence fully restored she calmly replied,

"Hello, Mother, I came for my heart."

***