Steven sat down, "What went too far?" he asked, frowning.
"You've wrecked the river for the last time!" he said, "All that mud, boulders, even trees- it's wrecking everything! We can't drink from it, the pigs can't drink from it, we don't know where it'll even be going, day-to-day. Not to mention
entire field got flooded when you demons changed its direction!"
"Oh, I'm sorry." he said, "...I'm not sure what I can do to actually fix that, though."
"Fix it- you're causing it!"
"So you want us to stop?"
"Yes!"
"Well, I could probably do something about that!"
The other man seemed to be caught off guard by that, frowning, "What?"
"Look, just wait." Steven said, getting up, "I'll go talk to the Bismuths working at the top of these stairs, and see if I can get them to stop doing anything to the river." he frowned, "Actually, are you okay waiting for a few hours? I don't know how long something like this would take." he looked up at the stairs and winced, "Just the walk up will take a long time."
"I've made the journey before." he said, "I know."
"You have?"
"Me and the other men from the village have gone to battle the purple-skinned monsters before." the man said jabbing forwards with the spear, "But, well, they're strong. Some of the others have given up. Saying we should just move our village elsewhere. But not me!"
"Oh! Well, uh, could you not do that any more?"
"Why?"
"I'm under orders to make sure no one goes up the stairs." Steven explained, "If you head up while I'm talking with them, I'll get in trouble with my superiors."
"Superiors?" the man asked, frowning, "Stronger than you?"
Steven nodded, "But I promise I'll try to be as quick as I can!" he said.
"...I suppose I'll wait." the man said, "To be honest... I didn't actually think I'd be able to do anything." he looks at his spear, before holding it out to Steven, "Would this even puncture your skin?"
"Um..." he took the weapon in his hand, looking at the shaped stone tied into place on the wooden pole with thin belts of leather. He ran a finger along the stone part, pressing his skin into it, before wincing as a tiny chip of stone was broken off the edge. "...Probably not, sorry."
The man sighed, sinking to the mossy ground, "This was just as foolish as everyone said." he said, before looking up to Steven with a frown, "Why are you willing to help? I can't threaten you."
"Sure you can!" he said, "I'm not supposed to let humans up the stairs, so that you won't get in the way of the Bismuths building stuff- not that humans are bad! It's just kind of unsafe for people to be running around a construction site, and you aren't as tough as Gems." Steven explained, "The only reason you want to go up is to fix things with the river, right? So by helping you, I'm helping my people too."
"I... guess that makes sense." the human muttered.
"Sure! Well, I'll be right back! Hopefully. If I'm
not back in a couple of hours, I'll definitely try and get back here by this time tomorrow."
"I'll be here." the man said, frowning, "What do I call you, demon?"
"I'm not a demon. My name is Steven, and I'm a Gem." he pointed up the stairs, "The people up there aren't demons either, they're Gems too. What's your name?"
"Huang." he said.
***
If there was anything that he could really appreciate about a Gem body, opposed to his human one, was how much more it took to get
tired. It was still possible to become exhausted, but it took a lot more to reach that point. Some Gems have apparently gone thousands and thousands of years without sleeping even once! It was amazing.
Where he would have been huffing and puffing just ten minutes into the climb before, this time around he kept up his fast pace all the way until the steps started getting trickier.
At least nothing was falling apart, this time around. The bridges were made of stone, rather than wood. The steps were perfectly carved and almost polished clean, rather than crumbling under his feet the way it was when he was a child. Areas that had been eaten away by a stream when he was a child were pristine and dry now, six thousand years prior.
It still took him about an hour to climb the thing, but compared to the two or so hours the exhausting journey had been when he was younger and half-human, that was nothing.
The actual spire was still very much under construction, as he could see from the bottom of the mountain. Much of the mountain was still in its original place, only the framework of the building that had coiled around the floating stone in place.
He walked towards the construction site, and took notice of the Gems working there. Bismuths, of course. There were a dozen of them, working at various places along the building and on the mountain itself, their hands occasionally flashing as they shifted from fingers to tools, to different tools. But other than Bismuths, there were Amethysts as well, dozens of them, running from place to place and carting armfuls of rock from the top of the floating mountain, down the coiled building, and then off to the side of the cliff- and into the river flowing underneath it.
Steven inched closer, leaning over the edge of one of the smaller floating hills leading up to the floating mountain of the spire, and looked down at said river. Already, it was a mess. Mounds of stone and hills of dirt clogged it up, shifting the direction of river through the forest, rather than along the pre-existing riverbed, which had been rendered into a slow-moving stream of mud.
He could see the problem.
"Hey!" one of the Amethysts turned away from her line, walking over with her armful of rocks, and let them drop at the edge, sending them into the pile below, "You here to help out?"
"Um, kind of!" Steven shouted back, "I'm here to guard the stairs and make sure no more humans come up here."
"Aw well. It was kind of fun getting breaks from carrying rocks to chase them down the mountain." the Amethyst said, frowning,
"Thanks for that!" she turned around, to head back up the mountain and grab more rock, when Steven caught her attention again.
"Wait, before you go, why are you just dropping the stones straight down?"
"Where else would we drop them?" the Amethyst asked, annoyed.
"It's just that the rocks are messing up the river, that's why the humans keep coming up."
"Oh." the Amethyst said, her expression not really shifting, "Neat. I'll be sure to keep doing that, then. Bye!"
He sighed, watching her march off, before walking the rest of the way up the path, until he was among the other Gems working on building the spire as well. He stepped aside out of the way of lines of Amethyst marching up and down the rooms, heading up with their arms free, and going back down with their arms full of earth.
When he came under a spot of the building that was filled with a pounding sound, he leaned over and looked out the window to see the Bismuth working on roof.
"Hey there!"
The Bismuth wasn't the one he knew from the Crystal Gems. She was somehow even taller, to the point of being lanky. Where his Bismuth's Gem was an innie, this one was an outie, with her Gem sticking out of the top of her head like a rainbow-colored pyramid, a mop of long, curly rainbow colored hair spilling out in every direction from it.
She looked his way, and gave a bright grin, "Hey there!" she shot right back, "What do you need?"
"Ah, I was just kind of wondering who was in charge here."
"Hm... well, that'd be Serpentinite Facet-FL38 Cabochon-11SA." the Bismuth replied, "But she ain't planet-side at the moment."
"Oh. Well, my Agate put me at the bottom of the stairs here, to make sure that no native lifeforms come up here and interfere."
She nodded, "Good thing too! They were coming every few days, making noise, waving their sticks around, getting underfoot."
"Did you kill any of them?"
"Well, I didn't of course!" the Bismuth said, "I'm just a builder. Not a soldier. The Amethysts got rowdy, though. I don't know if any of the organics died." she blew some of the hair out of her eyes to show Steven she was rolling them, "Probably not, though, the Amethysts all
loved it when it happened. It gave them a chance to play around, yell, move a little. You know, stop marching up and down carrying rock. And they milked it. Every time a human made it up here, chaos would break out, Amethysts just dropping their loads right on the steps, spin-dashing across fresh scaffolding, setting us back by
hours every single time."
"About that... aren't they soldiers?" Steven asked, "Why are they
carrying rocks up and down?"
"Yeah, ideally, we'd have a few Titanite around for that, or a Desert Glass, if this were a
real big project." the Bismuth said, before walking over to the edge of the roof , and swinging herself inside the window to stand next to him, "But this colony ain't even a century old yet. More than that, it's our Diamond's
first colony. The earliest injectors we put in the ground have only really started popping out Gems a few months ago. Without other colonies to supply Gems to help in the start-up, all we have is what few of us have already emerged, and a skeleton crew of upper-crust Gems donated by the other three Diamonds. Well, mainly from Blue and Yellow Diamond's Courts. For now, anything that needs muscle, Pink Diamond's been sending Amethysts to do it until we start getting more specialized Gems being made here."
"Were
you made here?" Steven asked, interested.
She nodded, "Bismuth Facet-5 Cut-2PY, nice to meet you." she laughed.
"You can call me Steven." Steven said, holding out his hand. The taller Gem took it, shaking, before raising an eyebrow, "Oh, um, Rose Quartz, Facet-5 Cut-7DT. Steven is like, 'seven' but with a 'T' in it."
"Fun. Ooh! Do me."
Steven considered her for a moment, looking her up and down, and settling on her head, "Pyramid."
"I like it." she said, tapping the little prism on her head, "Well, it was nice to meet you, Steven, but I should get back to work."
"Wait!" he said suddenly, "Um, I emerged early, so my Agate just put me here temporarily."
"Okay?"
"So, I want to figure out a way to get the humans to stop arriving and, uh, 'causing' all that chaos, so that they won't come up even after I get sent somewhere else."
Pyramid went a little pale, "Well, uh, if you mean getting together a gang of Amethysts and just... destroying their nest, I'm... not really interested in the details."
"No, no, not violently!" Steven said, "I talked to one of them, and he said the reason they were coming up in the first place was that the river got messed up."
"The river?"
Steven leaned out the window, pointing straight down, "You've been dumping all the rock you break off the mountain down there, right?" Pyramid nodded, and Steven continued, "Well, they use that river to clean themselves in, and they drink from it, and they use the water to help their plants grow."
"Okaaaay?" Pyramid asked, not following.
"But all the rock has changed the flow of the river, and made it dirty." Steven said, "If you can find somewhere else to put the dirt, the humans won't have a reason to come up again!"
"But isn't the river already changed?" Pyramid asked.
"Well, I was thinking I could clear the pile that's already there."
"...All by yourself?" Pyramid asked.
"Well, everyone else already has a job. I'm probably already making things complicated by asking you to find somewhere else to dump the rock." he said, "So... yeah, I was gonna clear the stuff already there myself."
Pyramid frowned, thinking, "...Nah."
"No?"
She shook her head, "Come on, follow me to the top." she began walking up the hall, dodging the next group of Amethysts heading down, and Steven followed at her heels.
As they came out at the top, Pyramid lifted her hand to her mouth, and transformed it into a huge whistle. She blew into it harshly, letting out a sound that was ear-splitting, and caused all activity everywhere on the floating mountain to halt.
"Everybody!" Pyramid shouted into the sudden silence, "This Rose Quartz here found out how to get the organic attacks to stop!"
Suddenly, there were a lot of eyes on him. He grinned, "Sorry to interrupt your work, but I think it'll probably save time in the long-run!" he promised, "So, this is my plan:"
***
Huang tapped his foot nervously as he waited. The sun had gotten a bit lower in the sky, but it hadn't been... too long. If he had gone up by himself, he would have only just reached the top. But the friendly demon- the Gem, was stronger, taller, and faster. He was sure that the Gem could have reached the top much quicker than he had.
He looked again at his spear, and the chip the Gem had made in the blade with his fingers.
Was this foolish? None of the other men had even agreed to come with him, today.
The last time had been a disaster, a terrifying one. They had spent hours climbing the treacherous heights of the stairway- although only portions of it could be called that. Other parts were practically just walls with grooves in them, and others were long and flat paths, all of it made of otherworldly flat stone.
He walked up to the gate to the stairway, and reached out to touch it, only holding back remembering his promise with Steven. The Gem had told him not to go up, and he would solve their problems. Stop the destruction of the river. Potentially save their village.
He supposed that was the power of Demons. Or Gems.
He touched the stone.
It wasn't like what he used for his spear. This was something like he had never touched before, a blue-gray smooth stone that wasn't found anywhere in these mountains.
As he heard the sounds of movement and speaking from above him, further along the stairwell, Huang quickly backed up from the gateway. He gripped his spear, wary of betrayal. It wasn't a word he was used to considering in relations to the Demons. When they had gone up, the purple-skinned monsters had behaved like beasts, whooping and laughing, tossing men back and forth between them like children passing a toy between them.
They fled, hurrying back down the treacherous steps, as they had each time before.
And each time they worked up the fury to try again, less men were with them, until it was only Huang.
He stood his ground as the Gems descended, led by Steven, the first Gem to actually show themselves capable of speech. Behind him were the purple-skinned demons, laughing and chattering, shoving each other and generally behaving like cocky young teenagers. But among the group were the rainbow-haired ones that had not deigned to joining in the fun of the purple ones.
He looked nervously at the small army that assembled itself at the bottom of the steps. There was at least one Gem for every human in the village, if not more. And it would probably only take one Gem to destroy his village in its entirety.
"Hey! Sorry for the long wait!" Steven said cheerfully, "Everyone, this is Huang, one of the humans from the village!"
"Oh! Oh! Dibs!" one of the purple-skins shouted, reaching to the crystal embedded in her chin and pulling free a jagged knife made of a similar purple crystal.
Huang lifted his spear, only for Steven to put his hand over the knife and force the smaller purple Gem to lower the weapon, "We're not here to fight. Remember?"
"Ugh." the purple-skin dropped the knife, and it turned to light, vanishing.
More magic.
"We're here to help!" he said, "Could you lead us to the village?"
"...Why?"
"We're going to clear up the damage!" he said, smiling, "You said some of it had drifted downstream and got in the way. Even if we clear up the big piles under the Spire, it won't help you if your part of the river is still blocked. So we'll work our way up to it!"
Lead them to his home?
He looked over the army of inhuman things, all of them almost twice his height or more. All of them with skin hard enough to deflect stone spears and axes, all of them strong enough to toss aside a man with one hand.
He eyed Steven, distrusting, and Steven's smile became a bit more understanding, "No, no, I get it. It's probably a lot to take in all at once, considering everything that happened, huh?"
"A... bit."
"Then we'll just have to work on the pile under the mountain first!" he said, "Come on everyone!" he continued down the hill, towards the village, but rather than pushing through the forest, he instead began descending in the other direction, towards the closest bit of river.
Huang watched as the procession of monsters followed the pink-haired one, grumbling, down the hill.
As they passed, some of them watched him with interest, some with giggles, some with curiosity, a few with looks of anger.
And then they were gone, the entire procession making its way to the river.
He followed.
***
The work wasn't too much worse than what the Amethysts had been doing before, Pyramid thought.
Although, it was a bit different now that she and some of the other Bismuths were working too. Not all of them had agreed- in fact, a good half stayed behind to work on the Spire, thinking that this was all a waste of time. They weren't built for moving rubble. They were built for
producing rubble, if anything. Turning mountains into towers, chipping away at everything but what they wanted, and then building around that core.
But Steven has asked for help, from her, specifically, and anyone else she could get to help. Not just Amethysts. Anyone.
Her hands became shovels, and she began to hack away at the giant hills of mud that they had produced.
The Amethysts around her helped with their bare hands, mostly, although a few with sort-of suitable weapons turned them to new uses. Axes and wide-headed spears weren't
too different from shovels. And even clubs and whips could be used to break rock and pull away chunks.
But all the same, this was a novel experience.
She looked over to the side, at the strange Gem that had started it all, and grinned to see her- no, 'him', Steven had corrected her, -clearing rubble away alongside the other Quartzes. Using her shield as a multipurpose tool, jamming it into the piles to dislodge mud, and then flipping it over and using it as a giant bowl to carry away a huge amount of mud at once, rather than going by armfuls like the Amethysts.
Looking away from Steven as he carried the bowl of mud away, she instead focused her attention on the human, watching them from above.
He was sitting on a boulder, looking over the valley the river had been carving for millennia before Gems arrived on Earth, and observing their work.
She couldn't exactly read the expression on his face, but she could tell he was thinking hard about something. And wasn't that a surprise. She had never really thought of organics as things that could 'think' before. It was almost bizarre how many similarities between humans and Gems there were. Bipedal forms, vision spheres and scent sponges embedded in their faces, hair on the top of their heads, four limbs, five touch-stumps on the end of each. Butts. Practically a mirror image, for the majority of Gems. Not as much variation in size or color, though.
As she watched, she frowned when Huang got up from his perch and began climbing back up the hill, no longer watching them.
Guess he got bored.
She continued to work for another few hours, when a few Gems stopped working and started pointing towards the entrance to the valley.
She turned and stared, as more humans began to make their way towards them, carrying sticks and baskets and boards and rocks.
Pyramid stopped her work and headed over to Steven, "I thought you said doing this was going to make them
stop attacking us." she asked, putting her hands on her hips.
Steven was smiling, "No, no, look at what they're carrying! They're here to help."
"Help?"
"Yeah!" he said, dispersing his shield and hurrying down to meet the group, chattering greetings as he went. Pyramid watched, bemused, as Steven made conversation for a few minutes, before pointing out various areas. Humans peeled off from the group, and began wading through the river, and then climbing the hills where the Gems were working, and began to act as support. They drove rocks into the piles, breaking them apart. Jammed sticks into the holes they made, and put leverage on it.
Entire slabs slid off, and were caught by Amethysts to cart off all at once.
The humans really were helping.
Eventually, some of the humans began to sing, the others, all familiar with the tune, began to sing along. It took only until the first refrain for Steven to begin singing along as well, and a few more for the Amethysts to start joining in.
***
Work continued into the night, and into the next morning, and while many of the humans had gone off to rest, their feeble organic bodies requiring rest and sustenance after such hard labor, some pushed on, continuing to work until the job was done.
Steven began to wander around the riverbanks- calling together humans and Gems alike, to gather on one side, where most of the humans were resting.
Pyramid went over to join them, sitting down on a boulder to look over their handiwork. The river was running strong and clear, now, and the water that had been diverted to the sides seemed to drain back into the riverbed proper.
It wasn't like anything she had ever built before.
But it was still kinda beautiful, in a weird way. It wasn't like Gems couldn't appreciate the inherent beauty of flowing water, but a snakelike, utterly unplanned, somewhat unpredictable river like this shouldn't have appealed to her senses the way it did. The moss and trees growing alongside it should have felt like nuisances that had to be cleared away. They weren't clean. They would change in appearance and size year by year. The fish that swam along it should have been considered an infestation that broke the lovely monotony of the flowing water.
But instead, they all looked like they fit.
"It's beautiful, isn't it?" Steven asked, coming over and voicing her unsaid thoughts.
"It really
shouldn't be, but... yeah." Pyramid admitted.
"Earth is a beautiful planet, isn't it?" Steven said wistfully, before handing her something.
"Hm? What's this?"
"Try it. the villagers are handing them out, to thank everybody."
"Thank us for what?" Pyramid asked, "We caused the problem."
"But you could have just ignored them." Steven said, "Instead, you decided to do better, go out of your way to help them. You worked hard, right by their sides." he pressed the strange thing into her hand, "So they're saying thank you."
She turned it around in her hands, confused as to the purpose of it. "Is this ceremonial, or something?"
"No, no, you-" he rolled his eyes, "Never mind, just watch." he took a bite down on the object, the hard millet bread splintering and breaking off in crumbs as he chewed.
"What are you doing?" Pyramid asked.
"Eating." Steven said between mouthfuls, "It's not much for taste, but it's the first meal I've had since emerging, and I can appreciate the love that went into it."
"But, you're a Gem."
"Mmhmm."
"We don't need to eat."
"Nobody says we can't."
He swallowed.
"...Did you shapeshift a stomach?" she asked, incredulous.
"Yep."
She shook her head, amused. So much effort with no purpose.
She nibbled on her own.
***
This had gone better than he expected, but he didn't really know why he was surprised. In his experience, any Gem that really tried to understand humans, actually gave them a chance, any Gem that actually sees them in action and doesn't look down at them but actually
at them... they realize that humans aren't animals. That they aren't pests, or monsters, or simply part of the background.
They're people.
Just like Gems.
Some Gems he had never really gotten through to, despite all the time he spent trying. The Diamonds, for all they loved him after they accepted that he wasn't his Mom, still weren't there yet.
Honestly, they were still having trouble considering other Gems people when he left. But they were trying.
But here, he knew he had gotten through to the Gems working on the Sky Spire.
As the party wound down, tired humans began making their way up the hill, and Steven went with them, carrying a few people who had fallen asleep right there on the riverbank.
Pyramid and a few other Gems went with him to the village, and Huang, the brave human that had kicked all this off, tiredly began bragging about their humble village.
It didn't have houses so much as permanent tents. Canvas made out of hides draped across wooden supports and walls. There was a somewhat soggy field where the millet for the crunchy bread had been grown, and further up the hill, he could see sleeping goats.
There were only a dozen dwellings or so, the village having less than a hundred people.
He really was in the past, wasn't he? With the Kindergarten- it hardly looked any different, six thousand years from now. Just full of more holes. With the Sky Spire, it was so different he couldn't really feel the dissonance. Without the nature taking over everything, without the wear and tear, only half-finished, it looks like a completely different place, only recognizable by the distinctiveness of being a floating mountain, and by the context of the mountains behind it.
But this place was such a far cry from any piece of human civilization he had ever seen. No plastic, no glass, no furniture. Wood, animal hides, bone, clay, and rock, or some combination of it, made up
everything they owned.
They didn't even have metal. Humans hadn't really discovered it yet.
They wore minimal clothing. Their arms were thick and strong from constant work, and their hands and feet were covered in thousands of tiny scars. Their hair had never touched shampoo, their teeth had never touched toothpaste.
The oldest person in the village looked like he was forty, maybe, at the latest.
It was a far, far, cry from what they would become. He could practically feel the sheer potential of the human species radiating off of them.
A small part of him realized that he would watch it happen. He was immortal, or close to it, now. Just like the Crystal Gems. That thought radiated through him as he walked and talked with the prehistoric people. He would be able to see it all, and learn, and help, and get to know them through the next six thousand years. He would be able to watch as they went from using millet-crushing rocks to make flavorless bread, to using metal machines to make ice cream.
If he wasn't shattered or bubbled before then, for going against the Diamonds. If he survived or stopped the Gem War. If he avoided or stopped the Corruption from happening. If humanity wasn't rendered extinct by the colony.
Huang seemed to notice his change in moods, from filled with cheerful energy to being somewhat somber, and excused himself for the night, to go and sleep.
Steven returned with the other Gems to the Sky Spire, where, not needing and not expected to sleep, they returned to their old jobs.
The Amethysts were excited, at least. Rather than lugging the rocks to the edge and dropping them, they were now expected to throw the rocks towards one of the nearby mountain peaks. A deserted mountain out of the way of the river. It was more interesting, and could be turned into a competition, which made it into an instant improvement for the Amethysts.
Steven waved goodbye to Pyramid and the others as they ascended upwards, and he was left at the entryway to the stairs, to go back to standing guard.
He had his time to think now, not that he minded the distraction of the river. There was
always time to help.
But he still had a lot to think about.
