Not for the first time, Guybrush wished they'd had an orchestra along, just to play music appropriate for his daring exploits. Right now, as the Sea Cucumber, his ship, cut across the waves, she should have been running to the rich and harmonica-y strains of some joyous sea chanty. As it was, she had to make her own music.
Guybrush was in a better mood than he'd been in in months. He was out on the open sea once again, face to the wind, hands on the wheel. Wally was somewhere behind him, taking a few careful measurements and making sure that they were still on course. Haggis was down on the main deck, 'supervising,' which is to say that he was stretched out on a lawn chair dozing. Edward "Snugglecakes" van Helgen was swinging merrily from the rigging (Guybrush could hear the Whee-hee-hee! as he flew past), Bill was polishing the cannons (still the very best model, thanks to Chari's careful upgrades), and Murray was somewhere belowdecks. The actual sailing was being done largely by his sister's crew, but they seemed to be enjoying themselves. Even dour Horace, who looked like he had never smiled in his life, was standing on the port rail looking interested and alive if not happy. It had done everyone aboard good to get out onto the sea, Guybrush included.
Somehow, with an entire ship under his hands, Guybrush always felt like ordinary problems were quite small and easy to manage. No matter how sticky a situation seemed on dry land, at sea he was Captain Guybrush Threepwood, mighty pirate, capable of anything. But this time, the Sea Cucumber's strange optimism had spread to the entire crew, binding them together more tightly than he had ever seen in a crew. They were all behind him--his purpose was their purpose. It was probably because not one of them liked the fact that Big Whoop was threatening a baby, but even so, they were his crew. He'd never had a group of people loyal only to him before, and it was sobering. But he was glad with all his heart that they were there. Some deep-rooted pirate instinct told him that he would need all of their skills to finish this mission, even though it seemed straightforward from where he stood, hands on the wheel. Big Whoop's treachery and low cunning must never be underestimated.
Especially not when he held the soul of their daughter as a willing hostage.
They were approaching the fabled Myth Island, in search of the first item on the list to assemble a new Amulet. Somehow they would need to get the second of the blue jewels from the temple to Athena which stood just to one side of Myth's summit. This could be tricky, since the citizens had been reluctant to part with them without something in exchange last time--he and Chari had finally had to offer Murray, then a talking demonic skull, as a god to be worshiped in their place. Guybrush glanced down at the present Murray, now coming on deck, and concluded that they wouldn't be able to pull the same trick again. A tall human man with faded brown hair wasn't awe-inspiring enough to offer as a god.
Hurdle number 1: Get the people of Myth Island to hand over the only other holy object they have left.
Oh, heavens...am I going to need a toga again?
They pulled into harbor just at sundown. Wally and Murray, both up on the higher deck with Guybrush, reacted to the sight of New Athens with comically opposite reactions--Murray with ill-disguised horror, Wally with completely undisguised delight. The little redhead practically bounded off the ship, Guybrush, Murray, and the barber pirates in tow.
It had occurred to Guybrush, and to Murray as well, that it might be best to pay their visit to the temple in the middle of the night and simply pirate the blue gem. He wasn't entirely happy about the idea, but time was of the essence. Wally wanted to stay in the village and pack up his things up (he had been living in his sister Holly's shop but now was moving out), and the Barbery trio would no doubt stay and help (they had a real attachment to the little guy, and he to them). The rest of the crew would spend some time on shore but planned to sleep aboard the ship. Horace, who seemed pensive and wanting to be left alone, was staying aboard the entire time. Guybrush hoped he could talk Horace around, in time--the man, for his character flaws, had proved himself a rather skilled organizer, and he and Elaine needed a good secretary for the fortress paperwork.
That left only Murray and Guybrush free for a little secret venture to the other side of the island. With any luck they could be there and back without anyone the wiser. After all, no one except Guybrush knew the contents of the list--for all the crew was concerned, he could have stopped by to get Wally's things or maybe tour the local shops for something less arcane than a jewel with godlike powers.
Still, even when he and his partner in crime were coming around the mountain by the tiny cemetery in the north side of the island, he wished there was some other way. Stealing an ordinary object in a good cause was one thing, stealing a sacred object was quite another. Just thinking about Athena's possible reaction to temple robbers was enough to raise goosebumps on his arms.
"Murray," he asked to break the silence, keeping his voice low. "What would be the best way to get into the temple?"
"It depends how you mean," whispered the other man in reply. "Shortest, quietest, or safest?"
"I need a way to get in and out without spending any more time in the temple than I absolutely have to."
"Why? The temple itself isn't guarded."
"I....it's because of Athena," Guybrush admitted, feeling a little foolish.
Murray reacted predictably. "Don't tell me you believe in that sort of thing."
Guybrush shrugged. "I've spent my entire life fighting a spirit, my sister's a ghost, my daughter is a disembodied soul.." Murray looked slightly uncomfortable--was he really in love with Chariset? "After all that, I could believe anything really exists."
"Good point." The former disembodied skull went silent for a minute, while they crept quietly closer to the white-blue bulk of the Greek temple. Then he said, as if just now hearing the question, "The best way, if you don't want to spend too much time inside, would be to go around to the other side and then just run straight through to where we are now. Grab the stone on the way by and you're out."
"You aren't coming?"
"No, I'll stay here and keep watch."
"But how will I know if you see anything?"
Murray smiled a half-smile (half-smiled a half-smile?) and reached into his coat. He touched something that whistled sleepily and drew a green ball of feathers with a tail out into the open. Polly blinked twice, then righted herself and climbed up his shoulder with an air of offended dignity.
"Ah."
"I'll send her over if I see anything...she's a very fast flier." Murray slipped into the bushes to keep watch, and Guybrush caught sight of a glint of metal under his jacket before he was entirely concealed...and not from a sword. Clearly Murray was equally as prepared to be a sniper as a watchdog.
At least he wasn't hostile to Guybrush anymore. The pirate shrugged again and began to carefully skirt around the back wall of the temple, disliking how well he must be silhouetted against the pale stone. Eventually, however, he ducked around the far corner and was safely concealed once more. A quick scan of the area revealed no movement whatsoever, and the hedges and bushes which surrounded the front of the building didn't reach this far. He paused, realizing he was breathing hard, and leaned on the cool marble, surprised at the strange feeling of life in the stone. It seemed to know he was there, and it recognized and welcomed him. Puzzled, he slipped inside the temple, through the double-row of columns, into darkness pierced by long beams of moonlight--odd-shaped shadows from the other end of the room. No one else was there, but the sense of I know and greet you increased.
Feeling exposed on all sides and vulnerable, he felt his way across the floor with his feet, fighting the impulse to run. At the same time, paradoxically, he knew he was safe from attack, as though some power rendered him invisible to the outside world.
He reached the center of the temple, eyes scanning the darkness for the statue-idol which stood in the place of honor against the back wall. It had been well over a year since he'd been here last, but he thought he remembered the layout....
Light!
A blue flare cut into his awareness--he froze in place, braced to dodge behind the nearest column, but the blue glow remained steady. Torchlight is yellow, he reminded himself, trying to slow his heart rate to something more normal. Lost cause. He was already so nervous that his mouth had gone dry. This was a bad idea...a very, very bad idea..
Still, the sapphire glow persisted, touching his hands shyly. It was gentle and strangely personal, meant for him alone. Slowly he realized that he was actually behind Athena, and the light was coming from somewhere in front of her.....from the jewel itself. He felt the hair rise on the back of his neck. Did the goddess herself want him to have this stone?
He swallowed hard and circled the Athena statue. She stood as always, hands cupped before her, holding a spear pinned between one arm and her side, illuminated chillingly from below by the soft light of the sacred gem.
Guybrusssssshhhhhhh..... The voice whispered in the sibilant echoes of cloth on cloth, or footsteps on stone, but he certainly wasn't moving, and no one else was there. Guybrush....you must hurry. You are in danger....danger..ger..ger..ger..ger... You must hurry, Guybrussssshhh....
"Who's there?" He backed up a step and nearly leaped into the air when his back touched something....the back wall of the statue alcove. His own breathing sounded very loud among the pillars.
It's me, Guybrush.. Every sibilant echoed on the walls. This is my home. Big Whoop is coming after you....take the stone and hurry..
Flinching away just a little, he touched the glowing stone. It was cool to his fingertips but immediately flooded his hand with gentle warmth. There was no doubt that it knew him.
At the same time, he felt gripped with a sense of urgency. Get out. Get out now.
He fled for the opposite end of the temple at a run. Behind him, a quiet crackling sound began.
Murray glanced up sharply as Guybrush fled past him. "Guybrush, what--?"
"No time!" he gasped. "Run to the village and tell everyone to get out! Big Whoop is coming to destroy the island!"
For once, he had reason to be glad Murray was a man of action--he wasted no breath in answering. He bolted past Guybrush and up over the hill as though he'd been fired from a cannon.
Guybrush himself, unfortunately, was in real need of air at this point and faltered down to a walk. Polly whistled past his head, crying in distress. "Polly! Go tell Horace to get the ship and the spell ready to go. Tell him to wake up the crew and get ready for extra passengers. Hurry!"
The green parrot fled away as fast as thought, while Guybrush struggled along behind at a somewhat slower pace. He had never quite understood how a person who could survive on a full breath of air for ten minutes could get winded on a sprint of fifty yards, but speculation was the last thing on his mind at the second. Right now he had to get back to the Cucumber and get away before the island fell apart underneath him.
At the very crest of the hill now, looking over--the town of New Athens looked like a disturbed ant-hill. People crowded the streets, clutching belongings, almost running over one another in the darkness to get to the ships. Only the Sea Cucumber had its lanterns lit, and half the town fled towards the yellow light instinctively. Among the stream of panicking people, Guybrush thought he saw Haggis, head and shoulders above the mass, directing traffic. Polly swooped uneasily above all.
Behind him rose a tidal wave of sound--the temple. Gunshot cracks of noise punctuated a dull rumbling undertone--the Song of Myth Island was playing behind him. He felt a strange and terrible obligation to turn and look...
The temple to Athena was shivering and shaking, almost vibrating in waves of force sweeping across the ground. The earth was swept by waves identical to those on the sea--he would have run as they marched up the hill towards him, but his feet were rooted to the spot....he stood fastened to the hillside as one, two, three waves struck him. The first felt like someone had struck the soles of both his boots with a sledgehammer, the second jolted him into the air briefly...he landed off-balance just in time for the third wave, which actually sent him briefly into flight. He landed hard, rolled off his shoulder, and wound up on his seat, propped up by two locked arms, facing the temple side of Myth Island. Behind him, he heard tearing sounds and screams as the less-sturdy buildings of the Island fell to pieces under the pounding.
Then the marble temple itself collapsed, crumbling into huge blocks of column, roof, peristyle--small pieces flew outward in all directions. 'Small' relatively--a brick the size of his head just missed his fingers and he had to throw himself out of the way of two more. A third clipped him on the point of his shoulder before he could get out of the way, sending a white-hot streak of pain down his right arm. He gasped and clutched the joint, trying to ward off small darts of flying stone with his forearm at the same time. Clouds of dust rose, covering the valley below, and he just kept his sleeve pressed to his tightly-shut eyes, waiting out the destruction and dreading more flying rocks.
The earth was by no means still when he looked up again, but the once-proud temple was in ruins and most of the surrounding trees were flattened in a wide radius. Guybrush drew a shakily deep breath and took stock of himself. He was alive and more or less well--his shoulder didn't feel broken, but it was already starting to swell, and he was losing sensation in his right hand. Eyes watering a little from pain, he started to struggle back up to a standing position.
And then, again, without any warning, something catastrophic happened right under his feet--the island split in two. Tumbling and rolling, jarred on the rough and rocky ground, landing hard on his injured shoulder at least twice, Guybrush made a painful and undignified descent to the bottom of the hill until he came to a halt against something considerably less yielding than he was, bruised and disoriented, ears ringing
Above him, to add insult to injury, someone was laughing.
No one laughs at Guybrush Threepwood, mighty pirate.
He clenched his teeth, partly in anger, partly in pain, and struggled up to something closer to standing, leaning heavily on a tree. Only then did he finally got a look at the laugher.
Big Whoop.
The lava creature who had made his life living Hell for months was right here, looming over him out of a gaping rift in Myth Island, a rift filled with molten lava. Guybrush backed up a step, seeing his death in those yellow eyes, and knowing that there was no possible way to get past him to the Sea Cucumber. He was trapped.
The monster laughed again, and his expression boded ill for the injured pirate.
In New Athens, it was chaos. Haggis shouldered his way through the crowd, clearing a path for the rest of the party through the panic-stricken citizens. Horace and the sailors were already on board, trying to move traffic onto the Sea Cucumber as quickly as possible. The ship was riding dangerously low in the water--if they'd been sailing any distance, Haggis would never have taken the chance of going out carrying this much weight, but Guybrush had assured him that they could travel instantly to any part of the Caribbean magically. He never claimed to understand magic himself, but if Guybrush said this would work, Haggis would trust him.
"Snugglecakes!" he yelled over the din. "Have ya seen Cap'n Threepwood?"
"I think he's back in the house with Wally." Edward van Helgen seemed puzzled by the question. "Why? Don't you know where he is?"
"E's not with me--Oi haven't seem im anywhere!" piped a high British voice--Wally himself. He was walking directly behind Haggis, which was probably why the crowd hadn't trampled him. "Oi thought he was with Murray!"
"He was," yelled Murray from somewhere behind Cutthroat Bill, carrying a heavy bundle of luggage for Wally. "I lost track of him on the other side of the island!"
Just then the first of the shock waves hit. Haggis stumbled, Wally actually fell over, with Murray doing his best not to land on top of him. Several buildings nearby went down with a horrible, splintering crash. Dust rose everywhere. Infants wailed, and screams rose from all around the crowd.
"What if e was in the house?" cried Wally, eyes round. "Oiv'e got to go find im!"
"Wally-lad, wait!" But it was too late...the little redhead was lost in the crowd.
"Get to the ship," Haggis ordered, shoving Murray and van Helgen ahead of him. "I've got ta go get Wally."
Horace saw the large man turn and head back into the mob, while the rest of the party, sans Guybrush and Wally, was seeking shelter on the Cucumber.
His eyes narrowed. Something's wrong.
"Polly! Where are you?"
The green parrot with her blue and yellow primaries was perched just out of reach on the lowest yardarm. "Bwaaaack?" she called.
"Polly, go back to Cap'n Threepwood. Make sure he's all right."
She blinked, or he thought she did. "Bwaaack?"
"I know..I know..it's not like me. Just do it!"
She ruffled up her feathers and flapped away, headed for the far side of the island. Haggis was looking for Guybrush in the wrong place, Horace realized.
Just then, the rest of the crew came aboard. "Where's the Captain?" Murray demanded.
"On the other side of the island! I've just sent Polly to find him!"
"Then we've got to go tell Haggis," said van Helgen. He turned around and tried to get off the ship, but Murray blocked his way.
"Haggis can take care of himself," he began--
--but just then the entire island buckled and shook in a stronger tremor than ever before. Even the Sea Cucumber shuddered in the shock waves before righting herself, while the sounds of the mob around them reached greater frenzy. Buildings trembled and broke like so many balloons all along the main boulevard....and out of the very center of the island rolled a tide of molten rock. Elbowing and shoving, the last of the citizens crowded onto ships and pulled away just as fast as possible. Still no Guybrush, Haggis, or Wally.
Horace whipped out his map, the one Guybrush had told him to have ready--a drawing of all the islands, next to each one a string of syllables. He chose the one farthest out of the area and concentrated fiercely on the letters, while their ship groaned under the weight of all her passengers. More tremors and waves shook the worthy vessel, as the island itself began to break into pieces--and still no Haggis or Wally.
While Horace studied the map, the sailors were doing all they could to keep order among the jostle of the mob, the Barbery Coast pirates among them. And so it was only Murray who looked up in time to see Big Whoop standing in the broken heart of Myth Island, laughing, glowing red-hot, larger than he remembered him. The creature was focused on something in front of him, firing off bolts of lava at an apparently moving target.
Half a heartbeat later, the crowd saw this, and, of course, and went insane with fear. Controlling them was suddenly four times as hard, and the ship rocked crazily. Murray began to fear for his life. Where was everyone? They had to go.
Just then, Polly came winging in, landing with a screech of claws on the railing. "Bwaack! Just go...tell them to use the spell and go without me. Don't worry about me, I'll be all right. Bwaaack!"
Another bolt of fire from Big Whoop. "Ah HA! I've got you now, Threepwood!" boomed the monster, loudly and distinctly.
"Horace!" Murray grabbed the other man by the arm. "We don't have any more time to waste. We've got to just leave them here."
"Are you kidding? We can't leave them here to die! And besides, if we leave now, we'll lose everything we came here for!"
"Just do it! If we don't leave before that monster sees us, a whole lot of people are going to get hurt!"
Horace started to protest again, but Murray cut him off. "Do it! I have a feeling things will work out, but you've got to do it!"
There were times when Murray was every inch the would-be mighty demonic force, and this was one of them. The other man sighed, lifted the map, and began to recite "Atema gardu gei..."
Haggis shoved through the last of the mob and ducked his head inside the tiny coop which was Wally's house. "Wally! Are ye in here?"
"Haggis...help!" The call was coming from somewhere inside the tiny bedroom. Sounds of creaking beams and sliding plaster followed.
With some effort, the barber pirate managed to work his massive shoulders through the narrow door. "Hold still, lad. I'm coming."
"Haggis, he's not here...I looked and I looked, and then everything started shaking and a wall fell on me and I can't feel my legs Haggis..." Wally was clearly babbling in shock and fear.
"Don' move, lad." The front room, where Wally's sister Hollander had set up shop, was an obstacle course through which Haggis plowed with all the delicacy of a bull, crashing around through the overturned debris to reach the equally small side-door which led to the Feed siblings' living area.
It was worse than he'd feared. Half the room had collapsed into the other half, trapping poor Wally in the center. Haggis shoved his way through the doorframe, and knelt down next to the diminutive cartographer, carefully lifting bricks, plaster, and small pieces of wood out of the way. Only then could he see exactly how bad the situation was.
Haggis bit his lip, trying to hide his reaction from Wally. The cartographer was pinned face-down under two heavy beams, one across his back, the other just above his knees. But both beams were braced against the only remaining intact wall, which was obviously on the verge of collapse. If he shifted those beams even an inch, it might bring the entire structure down on their heads.
"Can you move at all, lad?"
Wally tried to lift himself with his arms, but the beams refused to give, and he fell back down, spent. Haggis asked again. "If I lift the beams, do you think you could pull yerself out?"
"Oi....Oi could try," Wally said bravely. Haggis put himself between the wall and the trapped boy, bent down and grasped the beam across Wally's legs. He lifted with all his might, bracing his back against the wall, hoping he could keep it upright. The cartographer struggled out from under the raised beam, fingers scrabbling in the dust for any kind of grip, gamely fighting his way free--but he was exhausted and Haggis was giving all he had to keeping the log off the ground--he couldn't help him. The pirate's arms began to tremble under the strain, and he finally had to let the raised beam drop. It landed with a heavy thunk--Wally was clear of it, thank heaven, but still pinned just as fast under the first rafter. Haggis straightened back up with a sigh, while the wall behind him trembled warningly.
"One more, lad," he panted. More shock waves were coming in, making everything vibrate--small pieces of rocks, self-animated, skipped madly across the floor. "I'll stand here and lift up...grab my foot and I'll try to pull ya out." This method would surely bring the wall down on top of them--he would just have to be fast enough to get the boy out of the way. "Are ya ready, lad?"
Wally was panting. "Just...give me a second..."
Haggis felt the earth heave violently under his shoes. The stones vibrated in sympathy with the quake "We haven't got a second, lad."
"Okay...go!" Wally wrapped both arms around Haggis' ankle, hugging it with all his strength, while Haggis leaned over again to heave the beam away.
He was never quite sure, afterward, what happened--but something went horribly wrong. He lost his grip on the beam, or Wally lost his grip on him, because he yanked with all his might and met no resistance at all. He fell over backwards into the wall, staggered back-and recovered just in time to see the entire structure spill over into the room. Acting purely on instinct, he threw himself on top of the boy and covered his own head with his arms as every brick in that wall showered down onto them.
He felt the impact of only two or three bricks before a strange tingling sensation ran through every nerve of his body--and then the world went dark.
Guybrush ran into the forest, stumbling over air molecules, trying not to hit any more trees. Behind him, the small clump of brush he'd just vacated burst into flames, while more firebombs exploded just ahead of him. His only saving grace was that Big Whoop couldn't see him through the heavy jungle canopy and could only guess at his location. Of course, Guybrush couldn't precisely see where he was going, either, but at this point time was all that mattered. If he could buy enough time for the Sea Cucumber to get away, maybe the crew could come back for him later. If he survived.
The island was slowly tearing itself to pieces--fissures erupted in front of him and to the side, forcing him to veer wildly around them. Lava ran away from him, downhill to where the sea must have been--steam rose up above the jungle to his left. The sea water must be superheated where the streams flowed in--that cut his chances of escape by water down considerably. Could he even swim now? His shoulder throbbed with pain in time to his heartbeat, and the fingers of his right hand had gone numb, except for a point in the center of his palm which stung.
"You can't hide in there forever, Threepwood!" bellowed an enraged voice above him. "I can burn down the entire jungle to find you!"
Guybrush glanced back and saw Big Whoop making good on his threat--the forest was on fire. A steady wave of fire, throwing up a towering wall of black smoke, rolled over the trees, directly towards him, as fast as a horse can run. He turned and fled, knowing he was being herded and hating it, but to rebel against that inferno would certainly cost him his life. His lungs ached as he tried to drag more smoky air into them, vision blurring a little. Twice his tired ankles twisted, and twice he had to endure the pain, plant his feet, and force himself on.
In that split-second, it felt like he had never done anything but run for dear existence through a thick forest with a crackling, blazing enemy trying to kill him. He stumbled again and nearly fell, then broke out into sunlight. Before him was an arm of coastline, behind him was a wall of fire....and rising out of the flames was Big Whoop. And, of course, the island ended in a cliff looking over jagged rocks. He had nowhere left to run, no breath to swim, and no real hope of rescue.
"Ah, there you are." Big Whoop gloated in the shelter of the fire. "I don't know how you escaped from that island, but you won't get the chance to try again."
"And why is that?" Guybrush said (well, panted, really) with bravado. I hope the Sea Cucumber made it away, he thought. "Out of gas?"
The monster blinked. "Out of what?"
Guybrush was a bit confused himself. "Admit it! The Songs don't work anymore...you don't really have that much power. Not off of Monkey Island."
"Ha!" The towering, lava-built creature smirked. "I destroy a whole island and he says I don't have any power."
"Oh, you have the power of the lava.." Guybrush wondered what possessed him to keep baiting this guy. "But you can only kill me here. So I'm dead...so what? You can't do any of the kinds of things here that really hurt."
Big Whoop snorted. "So you're saying this won't hurt?" He flicked his 'wrist' in an odd way, sending an odd-shaped fireball in Guybrush's direction--a fire ring. It dropped to the grass around him, thus making him the exact center of a circle of flames.
Immediately the fire blazed up, just as immediately, the flames began to creep inward. In a couple of minutes, Guybrush would be pirate flambee.
"This won't hurt?" taunted Big Whoop? "Not at all?"
Tired, lost, alone, still out of breath and aching in a dozen places, Guybrush nonetheless felt strangely calm. "No, you overstuffed sofa. You just don't seem to get it." He regarded the creature with real scorn. "You can't hurt me, even if you kill me, because I don't care about you. None of my family cares about you. And that is what's going to kill you, in the end."
"But you'll be dead." The flames crept a little closer.
Guybrush closed his eyes for half a second and thought about Odia. "Even if you kill me, I'll still win. You've killed a lot of people I care about... But it won't last. You'll die too, someday--I hope I'm there when it happens." He felt a great surge of contempt sweep over him for this creature who had spent years playing with his life, and he wished he had something to throw at that smug face.
His right hand still ached...and suddenly he realized why. His fingers were white-knuckle-closed on the blue gem...the jewel from the now-destroyed temple of Athena.
It had to be mixed with the living matter of Big Whoop.....what could be more mixed than hurling it into the odious lava of the monster himself?
The flames crept closer, oddly smokeless...he could feel their heat on his face and his shirtsleeves...but the fire might as well not have existed. Big Whoop could never really touch him...he knew that now. But now Big Whoop would never touch anyone, not ever again.
"Take this, monster," he told the creature, so quietly that Big Whoop leaned forward to catch the words. Then he drew back his arm and threw with all his might--
-and a strange tingling sensation froze him in mid-throw. The world went entirely gray, then black, his mind floating suspended and wondering exactly what had happened to the rest of him.
And then even that minor awareness faded, leaving him alone in the darkness waiting to know what he was again.
"..arefi tu!" finished Horace. Go here, he told the magic...and take us there with you.
But when he thought us he thought of the ship, the entire crew, the people in their boats around them...Guybrush and Wally and Haggis..
And a strange feeling swept over everyone..a near-painful prickling. Horace gasped as everything faded out, blurred, went flat and monotone...
...and then they were out on a coast, off the shore of a beautiful island with white sand beaches. All around the burdened Sea Cucumber floated the boats and dinghies of a hundred disoriented passengers.
Something smacked into the side of his head with surprising force, bounced, and landed in his hands...a beautiful blue jewel. He whirled--and there was a disheveled, scorched, and generally-abused-looking Guybrush, leaning hard on the railing. He blinked twice at Horace, fumbled out a "Sorry," and then slid bonelessly down into a neat pile on the deck, unmoving.
In another part of the deck, amidst a bewildered crowd of people, Haggis got slowly to his feet, looking like a man who had run for a hundred miles straight..holding the limp form of Wally in his arms. He made his way through the crowd without a word, laid the boy gently on the window seat of the Captain's cabin, then fell onto the bed and didn't move. Murray and van Helgen followed, carrying Guybrush, whom they laid out on the bed next to Haggis.
The mob had gone silent, but the quiet was rustling with confused questions. "Where are we?" one of the women near-wailed, holding one infant with a toddler clinging to her other hand.
Horace searched his brain desperately for something to say. Words weren't his specialty. "You're on..." he examined the scribbled notations on the map "..Two-Tone Island. This is your home, if you want it to be."
"What happened to Myth Island?" About a dozen people repeated the question, adding volume to a quickly-rising din of despairing voices.
Horace was utterly out of his depth and looked around for help--van Helgen closed the door to the Captain's cabin and was up on the poop deck in two giant steps. "Myth Island has been destroyed by the monster you saw just before we left," he announced. Every head swivelled towards the sound of the pirate's refined tones. "We have brought you here to rebuild your homes. Had you stayed on Myth Island, you would be dead now."
Horace looked over the despairing faces. What were they to do now? They had just lost almost everything they owned.
"He's right!" said a dry and raspy voice from somewhere in the crowd. "We can start over here. This island is just the right place for a trading town."
They'll never listen to him, thought Horace as the white-bearded man went on, telling the crowd how this island was at the farthest edge of the Caribbean and would be a fine place to tax ships entering and leaving the area. What was more, it was isolated enough to make a good spiritual retreat--they could make a new New Athens here and be better off than before.
Sure enough, a large man pushed his way to the front of the hushed crowd--Horace tensed, waiting for the rebuttal.
"Herman is right!" the man declared. "These people have saved our lives and brought us to a new home. Athena must have sent them here in time to save us from the monster. We should be grateful to them." More murmurs followed, but most of them were punctuated with nods of agreement.
And so the citizens of Myth Island accepted their new home with a quiet courage which made Horace feel more than a little ashamed of himself.
"Well, I'll be!" said a voice at his elbow. "He got it after all."
Murray was looking closely at the blue gem Horace was still holding, smiling faintly. "I really underestimated that guy."
"How is everyone?" Horace asked, remembering how pale Haggis had looked.
"Fine, as far as I can tell. Just bruised up and probably sore."
"What do we do now?"
"First, we get everyone off the boat. Then we go after the next item on the list."
"Which is..?"
"I dunno...Guybrush has the list." Murray held out a hand for the gem, which Horace surrendered, glad to give it to someone else. There was a strange feel to that stone. "I'll take this in and see if I can find it."
He departed into the cabin, leaving Horace to try to stay out of the way of the sailors, who were loading citizens into boats and rowing them across. "We have to go to Sable Island for the next item--the Necromancer's staff," remarked the man upon his return.
"Then as soon as everyone's off the ship, we can go."
"Just like that, without telling anyone?" Murray looked intrigued nonetheless.
"Why not? I've got the map."
Murray opened the door again and looked in. None of the three had moved, though Guybrush was now holding the gem. "I'd like to wait until tomorrow just be sure....but after that..."
Edward van Helgen, who had been listening, joined in. "As soon as it's clear none of our companions need medical attention, I have no problem with leaving prematurely."
"We won't," said a voice from the doorway. Guybrush was leaning heavily on the frame, looking half-dead but determined. "And the sooner we leave, the better."
"Are you sure you're up to this?" Murray's expression could have defined 'doubtful.'
"Heh...no. I feel terrible." Guybrush looked amused all the same. "As soon as I send a note to Elaine, I'm going to bed. Where's Polly?"
Horace whistled to the green parrot, who seemed to think he was hers. Guybrush scribbled a note down, handed it to Murray, who gave it to Polly. "Take it to Elijah, Polly," he told the bird, who whistled and looked intelligent. She took off, flew a short distance out, and vanished--drawn instantly to the companion stone Elaine wore. Only then did Guybrush let them steer him back inside.
Elaine unfolded the note and scanned her husband's untidy scrawl. "They've got the first part. Now we can go in."
She tucked the scrap
of paper into her pocket and signaled to Lemonhead. He raised his
map of the area. "Harrbi narmsi addifec su.." he recited, and the
ship vanished from sight.