17 — THE SKULL ISLAND
They walked along the beach following Alice who had in her fist a compass that, according to her, pointed to the location of the Golden Urn. It didn't take long for them to reach a cave that went down a few meters deep into the beach. The path was obvious, so they entered.
They saw each other along a narrow path at first until the grotto slowly opened into a beautiful cavern. The sound of running water echoed off the stone walls and a few small waterfalls appeared farther along. The path lead to a beautiful lake inside the cave that, magically, was lit by a wonderful light phenomena within the waters.
Ahead of the cavernous lake was a huge entrance, high and wide, through which they guessed they should carry on. But as soon as they approached that entrance in the stone, the Nebula Chain moved by itself. The warning was clear: beware. Shun smoothed the chains with his cosmo to keep them from making any noise and they proceeded on their tiptoes.
It didn't take them long to see the impossible. A snoring giant lying on the stone of a huge cavernous room. His body covered in a rough and improvised metalic protection.
"What the hell." Xiaoling blurted out before Seiya could cover her mouth.
They all shoosh to silence, but it was of no use.
"If we wake the giant, we're dead."
"Be quiet, Xiaoling!"
"It wasn't me, Seiya." complained her, speaking in a low voice like him.
They shooshed for silence again, but again to no avail.
"He looks like one of those who wake up very hungry."
"Seiya!" Alice chided impatiently.
"But it wasn't me!" he replied shocked and accused. "It was Xiaoling."
"Be quiet, all of you." asked Shiryu.
But didn't worked again.
"Does he have one eye?"
They got worked up, but when Alice looked back to scold Seiya and Xiaoling, she realized there was someone else there among them. It was the Warrior from the boat with a smile on his face.
"Bye, bye."
He disappeared through a crack before the giant roared, waking up.
The big guy rolled to the side and his huge arm almost grabbed Shun by the chains. They crept against the cavern wall and broke into a run ahead. Seiya looked back and this is what he saw: a giant man easily ten feet tall, with a lot of weight evenly distributed and both eyes in his face, contrary to what the devilish voice said to them.
"Don't look back!" said Seiya and Xiaoling was already chirping in fear.
They ran; the giant leapt at them and shook the earth from the cave, causing them to stumble out of that corridor into a waterlogged crater surrounded by rock.
"That hurts." Xiaoling said, being pulled by Seiya.
The six friends placed themselves in front of the giant in armor. In fact, apart from fear, he wasn't much bigger than Docrates. But he was still huge.
"You're going to die!" he said and unleashed a cosmic blast that knocked the wall beside Xiaoling, almost burying her.
Shiryu hit the creature in the face, but all it did was make him even angrier.
Shun tried to contain him with his chains tying him to the torso, but with his huge legs free, he simply spun on his axis with force to hit a skillful flying kick at Seiya and Alice at the same time and with the same leg; Shun was thrown with the spin, attached to his chains.
"The legs!" shouted Cygnus. "We have to take him down!"
Upon hearing this, Shun ordered the chains to bind the giant's huge legs, but again he was thrown, because with his free hands, he simply grabbed the chains and threw Shun from one side of the cave to the other; Shiryu tried to land a ground kick, but had no success.
The giant was radiant and possessed of immense joy when he noticed a curious fallout in the air.
It was snowing in the crater.
He didn't quite understand, it was a clear sky above the crater; he reached out like a child to make sure it was snow and not some island trick. For it really was snow all around him. And much worse: the thin layer of water that bathed that crater solidified under his feet and nearly made him lose his balance on the ice.
"What is this?" asked his deep voice.
"This is Diamond Dust."
Cygnus jumped and glide across the ice, braking with both his arms around the giant's huge legs. They immediately started to freeze, from the feet up to the shins.
"Bastard!"
The huge man, with his arms free, of course, proceeded to throw punches on Cygnus, who was kneeling at his feet. Cygnus coughed up blood once, twice. But he didn't come out from under the giant at all.
"Come on! Attack him!" he roared from under him.
"Cygnus!" shouted Shun.
"Do it!" shouted him at last, after taking a hundred blows at close range from his huge tormentor.
He slowly took the strength to try to lift the body of the giant who already had half his leg attached to his frozen hands, but his size and weight were enormous; weakened, Cygnus dropped to his knees again only to be beaten again. They all feared for the life of Cygnus and prepare to attack
Finally, the Cygnus Saint ascended his clear cosmos, soft and cold, a beautiful energy around his body. With great effort, he lifted the huge giant from its roots and left it vulnerable in midair, holding it with all his strength and with both legs frozen to his waist.
Shun threw his chains violently on one side, Seiya unleashed his mighty Meteors on the other, Xiaoling launched her starballs, Shiryu with her huge Dragon and Alice's sharp waters converged on the giant's huge body.
He had his protections all destroyed and his body crossed by their fists.
The ice broke and his huge body fell defeated in the middle of the crater. Exhausted, Cygnus fell on the other side. The Bronze Saints called to him when they saw his injury. Shun went to him and noticed that the wound from the attack before was again gushing blood.
"This is nothing." said the boy, leaning against the crater wall, struggling for breath.
"You're crazy, what do you think you were doing?" Shiryu asked seriously.
"Sometimes an enemy's weak spot is where he's strongest."
Seiya remembered his fight in the Galaxian War.
"What matters is that it's done." he said. "But I feel like I'm going to slow you down like this."
"Don't say that." said Alice, and for the first time they saw the mysterious boy letting out a brief smile.
"Cut it out. You need to keep going. Go and bring the Gold Cloth. I will soon be after you."
They hesitated among themselves; Shun asked him to keep pressing on his wound that they would be back soon.
And so they left.
Cygnus watched them disappear at the exit of the crater and, without anyone watching, shook his head not really believing in that group and smiled because he didn't believe in his own story.
They finally left the cave complex and out into the open. Alice's compass indicated that the Urn of the Gold Cloth was just ahead of them, descending through the opening valley.
They walked away worried about Cygnus, but convinced that they would return with the Gold Cloth. And as soon as they began to descend through the valley, they noticed how the walls on either side reflected the sunlight in many minuscule points, so that the valley seemed to have a glow of its own.
It was a curious and beautiful sight to behold, as if magical.
"It's a Valley of Diamonds." Alice said when she saw the entire group stopped to look at the glows on the rocks.
A valley of diamonds that, as they walked, grew brighter and brighter. A light show the likes of which they had never seen, to the point where their own Cloth flashed different lighting as the crystals reflected sunlight in refractory beams.
The spectacle was soon cut off by a very characteristic hissing sound that got louder and louder.
"Oh no. Not snakes." Seiya said.
But when they climbed over a fallen rock to see down into the valley, it was much worse than that.
"Oh no. Not giant snakes" he muttered.
"Is everything on this island huge?" Xiaoling asked.
The bottom of the valley, exactly where the compass indicated the Golden Urn was, was full of snakes of the most varied colors, but very consistent in size: giants. There was no sparkle in this valley that was not the pure white of the diamonds scattered on the cliffs, but also on the scales of the snakes.
They searched with their eyes for any remnant of gold in that sea of light and found nothing. Maybe they were too dazzled by the spectacle of the valley.
A sharp, raw scream reverberated off the wall. The same eagle, the giant bird that had attacked them at sea, flew over the valley. And like a bullet, it came down and snatched up a huge snake, which in its sharp beak looked like an ordinary snake, such was the size of that creature flying over the valley.
"The Urn must be in the middle of the nest." said Alice.
"Of course it is." said Seiya, discouraged.
"Well, I'm not afraid of snakes." Xiaoling said, going down the ravine to grind the snakes with her fist.
They all followed her and soon they were all in the middle of the giant snakes. They took advantage of the eagle's lunge, as she left the valley so as not to have to fight two enormities. Seiya wasn't entirely sure about himself, it's true, but the five kids very skillfully dodged the lunges left and right until Xiaoling, tired, sounded her special technique:
"The Northern Glow!"
A white light materialized around her and spread across the valley floor reaching all the huge snakes, seeking them wherever they tried to escape. Once hit, the snakes simply disappeared without leaving any trace. The entire valley, which was once populated with snakes, suddenly had only them walled up in the valley.
"Illusions…" Alice muttered.
Without the snakes, the huge bird's only prey was now the five kids. And the eagle again screamed in the heavens; Alice yelled at Xiaoling to take care of herself, but it was too late, as the bird landed even more furiously in a fulminant swoop and hit the little girl full on.
"Xiao!" shouted Shun.
The little one hit the valley wall and fell to the ground in pain. The huge bird flapped its wings, gained height above them, vanished from sight, still screaming, and reappeared to rip another one open again with a low flight. The chosen one this time was Seiya, but the attack failed when the giant bird found itself captured by the Nebula Chains.
The huge bird dematerialized and, in its place, the slender warrior with a beaked helmet was revealed. He disentangled himself through the gaps in the chain and landed in the middle of them, for he was nowhere near the size that his animalistic figure appeared. He was as tall as Seiya.
"I knew it was you." Shiryu accused, remembering the warrior who was on the ship.
"Well, you're gonna get more of the same." Seiya said, but the man laughed in derision.
"We couldn't risk blowing up the ship." he said. "I can use all my power here and will finish you all."
"Not a chance!" Xiaoling shouted, panting in the background. "You're going to fight me, you half-baked bird."
"Humpf. Someone should take care of that child." he said.
Xiaoling ascended her cosmos and pushed towards to the bird that dodged and landed a kick in her face. She tried five more times to lunge at him from different directions, but all with the same result.
"Xiaoling. Stop this!" Seiya asked, but she was adamant.
"She's very stubborn." said Alice.
"We need to do something." Shiryu said, worried.
"No!" Alice interrupted again. "We'd just get in the way."
Confused, they watched as Xiaoling, panting, stood guard halfway between her, the Bird, and the wall she had landed on in the first attack.
"How about dying here in front of your friends?" he asked.
"Come at me!" called Xiaoling.
"My wings will finish you off."
She smiled.
He jumped and his cosmos propelled him to a swoop like that of the huge Bird that had hit Xiaoling for the first time. She made her cosmos ascend and in the seven places she had been hit before, huge orbs of light appeared, as she had scattered them while being hit by his previous attacks.
"What are those?" Shun asked.
"They are the Stars of the Ursa Minor." Alice replied.
"The Seven Shining Stars!" Xiaoling yelled and her girlish voice reverberated in the valley along with her cosmos.
When the Bird entered the area of the white orbs, they reacted to Xiaoling's cosmos and a cosmic blast shot from the Seven Stars to converge on the bird's flying body. A great white glow blinded everyone in the valley.
And the Bird fell to his knees and lay behind Xiaoling.
Alice smiled.
But Xiaoling also fell to her knees, wounded by the Bird's onslaught.
"Ouch, I guess I miscalculated a lil' bit." she said with a smile on her face, but a wound to her Cloth's chest.
Shiryu ran beside her and supported her to get up.
"What a stupid idea to fight alone." the Dragon complained.
"I did win didn't I?"
"I told you she was stubborn." said Alice.
ABOUT THE CHAPTER: I love this chapter and I also really like the Anime episode. The atmosphere of adventure, mysteries on an island full of illusions was a lot of fun to create. The original episode has some curious quotes from Roc Bird, a monster from Sinbad's adventures, so I tried to recreate other situations that take place in Sinbad's adventures inside the Island. It was super fun.
NEXT CHAPTER: THE CASTLE OF ILLUSIONS
Seiya and his friends move forward on this strange island until they find the person responsible for this entire plan.