They emerged into bloody light.
The cavern was round, almost a perfect globe. Its curving walls were covered by creeping crystals, jutting out like teeth or cutting through the stone like veins. They bathed the room in an eerie red glow, pulsing slowly in time with a heartbeat Pretzel couldn't hear. A strange red-black goop coated any surface the crystals didn't, like some sort of alien moss or creepy mold. That was the source of the rot-smell. The horrible feeling of wrongness had increased tenfold, churning in Pretzel's stomach and pounding painfully in her head. It made her want to crawl out of her skin and flee this place.
"Creepy," Whip mumbled. For once, Pretzel agreed with his assessment.
Pretzel brushed his wing with hers, then led the way further into the cavern, studying it warily. She didn't see any sign of the creature Twist and Nova had spoken of. Was it hiding? Was it responsible for the rot-mold and red crystals, or was that a Gaia thing? Pretzel eyed the slowly pulsing crystals. They certainly weren't in time with her heartbeat.
Looking at the crystals too long made her vision fracture and intensified her headache, so she turned away from them and focused on the walls. She squinted, frowning. Was there something… under the mold? A hint of color amid the gray stone? Cautiously, she walked over to the wall and stood on two legs to get a better look at it.
"If this turns me evil or something, I'm counting on you to stop me from killing everyone," she called to Whip.
"What?" Whip asked, turning from where he'd been glaring at a crystal. His eyes widened. "Pretzel, I'm not sure that's—"
"I'm doing it," Pretzel said and, before he could make her second-guess herself more than she already was, plunged her hand into the mold.
Nothing happened.
Well, nothing except the extremely unpleasant feeling of touching the mold. It was slimy, but not in a pleasant muddy way. This was more of a half-rotted, maggot-infested carcass feel, or maybe a horribly-infected, probably-needs-to-be-amputated wound kind of vibe. And the smell was awful. Pretzel gagged, but against her better wishes she dug her hand further into the rot-stuff and started scraping it away from the wall. To her surprise, the mold actually recoiled at her touch, peeling back in a large circle around her hands. That was convenient.
In perhaps his bravest act yet, Whip joined her efforts (making his own gagging noises all the while), and together they cleared the rot off one wall of the cavern. After what felt like centuries but was probably more like a few minutes, Pretzel stepped back and shook her hand off, trying not to retch. Together she and Whip looked up at the fruits of their labor.
It was a massive mural, bigger than even the ones they'd seen on Angel Island. And unlike the Angel Island murals, this wasn't one image but rather a collage of different stories and even different artistic styles. Some looked like the echidnan art had, while others seemed to be from entirely different cultures and time periods. The entire cavern was decorated; Pretzel could see the edges of even more pictures poking out from under the remaining rot-stuff, even on the ceiling, which unfortunately meant they'd need to deal with the rest of it. Still, what they had cleared seemed to be the centerpiece.
Depictions of Light Gaia and Dark Gaia tangled around each other, some carved into the stone, some painted, some made of metal or glass. The interpretations of their forms varied; Pretzel wasn't sure if that was artistic interpretation or if they had actually changed appearances throughout the centuries. In some of the depictions they fought each other, while others showed them wreaking havoc on the mortal world. Both of them wreaking havoc. Here Light Gaia wasn't glorified the way he was in many of the Gaia temples. Pretzel supposed that made sense; the Gaia temples had been dedicated to Light Gaia, while this place was… what was this place? Who was this here for? Who had made it?
Something caught Pretzel's eye. Pieces of some kind of crystal were set into the center section of the wall in an array of red-purple, green, and blue. It looked like a mosaic, but she couldn't make sense of what it represented, and it didn't fit with any of the other pieces. She walked along the wall, frowning. Another array of crystals, similar in cut but all in white and gold, were set into the stone on the left side of the wall. She turned the other way and found a third set of crystals on the right side, these in black and pink. Were they all part of the same pattern?
"Pretzel?" Whip asked curiously as she backed up nearly to the entrance of the cave, eyes fixed on the far wall.
The crystals were a mosaic, a massive one spreading from ceiling to floor and sprawling across half the cavern. Before all the rot-stuff had covered everything it would have been the first thing they'd seen upon entering the cave. All the other art pieces were arranged around the mosaic, like it had been there first and the other artists had merely added on to it. She couldn't tell how old it was; all the art pieces were perfectly preserved in this place without sunshine or rain, with no sign of damage or wear other than the alien mold covering the walls.
"What'd you find?" Whip asked, fluttering over to join her. He squinted up at the mosaic and gasped.
Depicted in glittering crystal were three huge figures. On one side reared Light Gaia in white and gold, while on the other arched Dark Gaia in black and pink. In the center stood a figure bigger than them both. It was primarily a dark reddish purple, with markings in black, white, silver, and gold. Its bright green and blue wings—the colors of the planet itself—arched across the cavern, bridging the gap between Light and Dark.
"What is it?" Whip whispered, staring up at the mural in awe. "Was there a third Gaia?"
"I don't know," Pretzel said, shaking her head. "Wouldn't we know by now if there was?"
Whip hummed. "Whoever they are, they look nice. Green eyes like you, Pretzel."
"More yellow-y than mine, though," Pretzel said. She pointed up at the creature's chest, where a particularly large chunk of crystal sat. "And look, it's got that green gem-necklace thing like you do."
"Oh yeah," Whip said, cocking his head. He considered a moment. "I want to touch it."
"You want to touch it?"
Whip shrugged. "Why not?"
"Because it's ancient? This could be an important piece of history. Touching it would get your fingerprints all over it."
"But I thought you said this place wasn't real," Whip said, grinning.
Pretzel frowned, looking from him to the giant gem. On the one hand, touching it seemed stupid and reckless on multiple levels. It would certainly be an obvious place to put a booby trap. On the other hand… She really wanted to touch it.
"Alright," Pretzel agreed. "We'll fly up together. And if this triggers the end of the world or whatever, it was your idea, got it?"
"Got it," Whip grinned.
Being the faster flier, he reached the gem first and waited for Pretzel, bobbing up and down in the air with excitement. Pretzel rolled her eyes, though her own heart was thrumming with anticipation.
"It probably won't even do anything," Pretzel grumbled.
"Then why are you excited?" Whip challenged.
Pretzel stuck her tongue out at him. Whip just giggled.
"On three," Pretzel said, raising her hand. Whip did the same.
"One… two… three!"
They touched the gem.
Nothing.
Nothing, and then suddenly something, the world alive with colors and life, exhilarating, energizing life. They flew through stormy skies, dove into the ocean depths, swam in lakes of lava and danced on platforms of ice, and they belonged to all of it. They watched the myriad forms of life that populated this world, their world, and laughed with the joy of it all. So many creatures, breathing and eating and sleeping and being.
Best of all were the people-creatures, the ones whose minds hummed with activity. They were clever, these people-creatures. They did not simply exist in the world, but shaped it, harvesting rocks from the earth and making of them something beautiful. All creatures knew the one watching them, but these people-creatures seemed to take this knowledge further. They called the watcher a Gaia, and they tuned their crystals to the Gaia song, making them sing with the energy of life. They made forms for the Gaia, and the Gaia tried them all in secret, delighting in this new way of being.
Some part of the Gaia told them to be cautious, but they had never feared the other creatures, so why be wary of these little siblings? Still, they were careful, appearing first to the small people-creatures who had not yet learned to make the crystals sing. The little people-creatures were friendly, welcoming, and soon the Gaia was visiting with all the people-creatures regularly. Not too regularly; they had a whole world to care for, after all. But they liked to visit the people-creatures every few generations, to see what new names and forms they'd come up with. And the people-creatures seemed to get more and more clever by the day, finding ways to use the Gaia energy that the Gaia had never even thought of. Partnership, the people-creatures said, and the Gaia liked the word very much. The Gaia hadn't thought of themselves as lonely, but the task of cultivating this world… well, suddenly it seemed far more pleasant with these new partners by their side.
And then the visitors came.
The Gaia and their world were still young when death streaked the sky. The Gaia recoiled from the death thing, this thing of rot and wrongness. Even after the death thing left, a piece of it remained, a piece of rot in the Gaia's world just waiting to spread. But there was no time to get rid of the infection; something else was coming, something entirely other. Not rotten, no, but dangerous. The people-creatures had gotten clever, very clever, and they tried to stop the coming things, to save their world from destruction. The Gaia tried to help, but the infection was distracting them, weakening them, making them dizzy and confused. And then there was collision, pieces of infinity colliding into each other, and a horrible tearing sensation, and then—
and then—
Pretzel opened her eyes.
Beside her Whip gasped, clutching his chest as if in pain. The same pain echoed in Pretzel, lingering from the memory. Memory. Had that been a memory? Hers, or his?
The answer was obvious.
"What—what was that?" Whip gasped. He stared up at the creature in the mural, looking down at them with a gaze that now seemed… sad. "Did we see that creature's memory?"
"Yes," Pretzel said softly, pieces clicking into place. "We did."
"Who… who were they?"
"Ixis," Pretzel said, the name surfacing from somewhere deep within her. "Earth's Gaia."
Whip blinked at her. "But we're Earth's Gaias."
"We're pieces of Earth's Gaia." Pretzel gestured to the mural. Light Gaia, Dark Gaia, and in the center, Ixis. Dark and light. A mixture of them both. No; they were pieces of it. "Originally, it was just Ixis. But then… something happened. Something powerful."
The red crystals pulsed, and Pretzel's mind went to an entirely different set of gemstones. Gemstones of infinite power. What would happen if the Chaos Emeralds collided with a Gaia?
"We were split in half. And then… something went wrong."
"Ixis was supposed to protect the world," Whip murmured. "But we…" he looked down at the other pieces of the collage, the images of the destruction they caused. "We just tried to destroy each other."
"An infection," Pretzel said, remembering the vision. All of the visions. The infection Ixis had been so frightened of, the strange redness that had spread over Dark Gaia and Light Gaia's vision as they fought, blinding them to the destruction they wreaked. A thing of death, streaking across the sky like a comet, leaving a piece of its corruption behind. "Something corrupted us, turned us against each other."
"Turned us into monsters. Is that why the cave looks all gross? Because of the infection?"
"I think so," Pretzel agreed, looking around. "A part of it must still be here."
"But if that's true," Whip said slowly. "Then… where's that part now?"
What waits at the core won't be defeated by a couple of pretty words.
The rage of a few stray fragments are nothing compared to that creature.
Put an end to this, Pretzel.
"It's here," Pretzel realized. "It's still here. Waiting for us."
On the floor of the cavern, something moved.