The prow of the airship cut through the thick clouds that gathered around its base like the hands of a hundred ghostly specters, grasping aimlessly but unable to do anything to hinder it. Standing at the base of the bowsprit, Edmund narrowed his eyes at the endless landscape of swirling grey, peering through the tiny tendrils that left condensation on his glasses with irritating persistence. A chill wind blew and slightly stirred his cropped salt and pepper hair, the scent in his nostrils somehow….stale, as though he had already breathed that same air many times. And I very well might have, he thought to himself in frustration; it seemed as though the airship had been going through this same patch of thick mist for a week.
For what seemed like the hundredth time, Edmund let the events of the past several days run through his mind, beginning from the moment the ship's crew had met with Hephaus, a towering metallic being that had told them that the end of their journey, along with the answers they were all seeking, were to be found in the Isle of Gambino. They had made all haste to prepare for the return journey, including a stop to repair, when they had unwillingly taken on two more passengers, both of which were held in makeshift brigs for attempting to kill Gino. Thanks to Crescento, he now knew that the ones that had sent the pair on their mission of assassination had been none other than the Kuro clan, though he wasn't buying into the reason given; the vast fortune that the young man was now destined to inherit once he returned to Gaia. The dark elves may have been outcasts, but they were certainly not destitute. Perhaps the position; Johnny Gambino had been the most powerful man in Gaia, and with his millions could also come his influence over everything. It would certainly be a good start if they wanted to reestablish themselves as people of the surface. Could it even have something to do with the Gambino's recently discovered ties to the vampires? It wouldn't be the first grudge match that the wealthy family had found themselves in the center of. All the more reason he felt that his next move had been a good one: getting onto the ship's old-fashioned communicator and sending a message to his friend and Gaia contact, Logan the fisherman; an official statement announcing the death of Gino Gambino, who was currently alive and well, if sullen and distraught, on the very airship he was traveling in. The powers behind the Kuro clan may or may not believe it, but it would do no harm to his party if they didn't and give them a better chance if they did; Edmund had faith in his ability to protect Gino, but he knew that he also had his limits.
He was certain that his message had gone through, but the last transmission that had been returned to the airship disturbed him. Logan had previously told him that Santa, Jack and the Easter Bunny had been found out in the frozen North, cowering in a makeshift cave and saying nothing between them except "He is coming." In the last transmission, Logan had told him that all of a sudden, the traumatized trio had all said simultaneously, "He is here." before falling completely silent and catatonic, none of them so much as blinking an eye or twitching a nose. That alone was disturbing enough, but what concerned Edmund even more was that last transmission had been THE last transmission; he had tried dozens of times since then, but he had been unable to reach Logan on the communicator. That had been five days ago, gauging by the phases of the moon.
Speaking of the moon….Edmund let that last thought hang in the air as his head turned slightly to the left, his eyes seeking out the pair a ways behind him on the ship's port side, leaning over the edge as though seeing the sights, which he knew were nothing but more gray mist. Of course he would expect nothing less from those two clowns; Sentinel and Overseer, or what was left of them now that they were no longer deities in their own right. The pair of them had really turned Gaia on its head once upon a Halloween, but Edmund was almost starting to prefer them as they had been; at least they had shown more sense when they were powerful and squabbling. Now they were just a pair of rambling fools who, as far as he was concerned, were just in the way. They had nearly gotten Gino killed, and thus far had shown only their glaring inability to do anything to aid their mission. He had caught them looking at the moon on several occasions since their departure and whispering frantically to each other, the Overseer waving his pale arms in frustration and Sentinel's voice rising to a screech before the pair of them hushed themselves and cast worried looks his way. He permitted himself a small huff; he was one of Gaia's most renowned figures, his exploits legendary, and yet there was always some fool that thought that they could keep things from him; when they shared the same transport, no less. He wouldn't have bothered thinking of them at all, except he couldn't help but wonder if they knew more than they were telling. It didn't seem conceivable, and yet they HAD been gods recently, and before they had set a course for home, they had witnessed attacks on other gods from none other than the vampires. They had already come in contact with one such vampire; the end result was Gino barely making it out alive and what was considered to be a powerful demigod lying beaten and bleeding on the floor among the shreds of his own home. Edmund reached up with a wince and rubbed his temple; between the vampires and the Kuro gang, it wasn't hard to imagine the state of Gaia if both groups were running rampant. Would there be anything left at all? He recalled the Halloween when the vampires had first made themselves known, when Gaians were driven mad with either the zeal of humanity or the bloodlust of the vampires, nearly tearing down skyscrapers in their frenzy to wipe out the other. He would never forget the events of that week from Hell; still just another crazy week in the world he called home. Gaia had endured so much in its tumultuous history; sometimes he wondered if there was anything at all out there that could bring about its end.
An angry shout brought his thoughts away from his home and back to the airship, and he turned his body around with a twist of his heels, the crossed scar on the side of his forehead feeling like a throbbing blood vessel as he turned angry eyes upon the pair behind him, who were bickering once more. He had had enough of the pair of them and their incompetence! They had noticed his glare and had fallen silent, but it was too late; he strode toward them, his coat billowing behind him, weighed down with even more confounded mist. He watched their eyes widen like a pair of children caught in the act, and he heard Sentinel's harsh, overly loud whisper, "You idiot! You've made him angry!" His attention focused onto Overseer, who was already holding up his hands in a placating gesture; of the pair of them, Edmund found that it was easier to get what he needed out of Overseer, the ever peaceful one. Quelling the urge to grab the imbecile by the neck, Edmund stopped when he was so close to the other that he could see the glare from his glasses in the other's wide, scared eyes. "I've been listening to you two bickering for the past week, and it's trying my patience. Perhaps you'd care to enlighten me and ensure me that it's worth making my head hurt for five days straight." The Overseer opened his mouth and closed it a few times, looking like a fish gasping for air. Before Edmund lost his patience entirely and indulged his hand in reaching out to grasp the fool's collar, he heard the voice of Sentinel to his right. "We've been looking at the moon, because…." Edmund turned his head to look at the other former demigod, her arms crossed in front of her and her face showing a mixture of annoyance and guilt. "Well…..we think…we FEEL…..we're getting a bad feeling."
"A bad feeling." Edmund repeated, fighting to keep as much sarcasm out of his tone as possible and hold fast to his composure. "We're all having bad feelings. We should have arrived at the Isle of Gambino by now, but all we've seen is this damned fog for days." He remembered the lost connection between himself and Logan, and he couldn't suppress a shudder. "It's starting to feel as though we're not meant to return."
"We think so too." The voice of the Overseer sounded farther away, and Edmund turned his head back and noticed with almost amusement that the pale fool had used the distraction of his counterpart speaking to sneak out of grabbing range. "We know of a being, a malicious being, who uses the moon as his symbol. Of course, he was banished eons ago by Gaia herself, supposedly unreachable by any mortal means. But since we've left Hephaus, we've…..well it's hard to explain, but whenever we look at the moon, it almost feels as though….. as though it's heralding him. Which wouldn't happen unless he was here already."
"He is here….." Edmund spoke the words aloud as he felt his entire body grow cold. The last spoken words of the trio….. He felt his hands close into fists, his teeth clenched together. "And you two didn't see fit to mention this sooner?" "We weren't sure!" Sentinel's tone of annoyance was clear. "We thought our problem were these vampires and those two looking to kill off the little piglet; we were really just hoping we were wrong and we couldn't really sense it; after all, we're not gods anymore….." Her tone became lower, and she glared down at the deck. "We wanted to be wrong; that it was all what we had encountered already, and not a powerful, malicious force behind it all."
Edmund let most of his irritation rush from his body with a loud sigh, unclenching his hands and nodding once. "So you think that this being might be the reason we're having trouble reaching the Isle?" They both nodded in unison. "Can he do that?" Overseer shrugged his shoulders. "More than likely….if he's as powerful as he was before." "The thing is…." Sentinel turned her head and glanced up at the moon, oddly clear through all of the mist. "If he IS here, then who let him out?" And, Edmund added without speaking, did it have anything to do with the sudden ceasing of communications from his friends?
Suddenly, Overseer, who had been joining Sentinel in more moon gazing, widened his eyes and pointed upwards. "Look out!" he shouted, and Sentinel reacted in an instant by throwing herself to the deck, arms flung over her head, her legs tucked beneath her and causing her rear end to rise rather comically. Edmund reached for the sword at his side, whirling around in the direction Overseer was pointing. Looking up at the sky, he could just make out a figure through the upper part of the mist, winging toward them in a rather haphazard way, like a scrap of dark paper being blown by a gale. Drawn by Overseer's shout, the door leading below decks burst open, and Ladyhands appeared wielding a huge wrench like a greatsword, followed by Gino, almost swallowed up by the bulk of the former. They were just in time to witness the figure landing hard onto the deck, where it lay gasping and panting, as though it had been flying for days on end. "A vampire!" Ladyhands bellowed, spotting the pale countenance and the fangs protruding from the gasping mouth, and he stepped forward, ready to cave the creature's head in with his wrench. "W-wait!" the creature managed to gasp as it rolled quickly away, just barely missing the swing of the wrench, jarred by the splintering boom as it hit the wood. Ladyhands was already bringing his arms up for another swing when Edmund, suddenly spotting something, dashed forward and thrust his sword down, not at the figure on the deck, but over it, in the trajectory of the next upcoming swing. "Hold!" he said loudly, and in surprise, the large man did as he said, holding his wrench up over his head with a look of complete surprise. "Look." Edmund said, pointing down at the vampire with his free hand. Everyone's eyes were upon the figure as she, for now all could tell that it was a female, shakily sat up and held out what looked like a crumpled purple scrap of paper in a clawed hand. Overseer, Sentinel and Ladyhands looked completely nonplussed, but Gino, who by now had squeezed his way past the behemoth to observe the vampire for himself, gasped aloud. "Hey, isn't that one of your….?" Edmund nodded and reached down to take the object, which he could see was a purple orchid. The token brought back memories that he had only just revisited minutes ago, of the vampire war that had split Gaia in two all those years before. He had been recruiting humans to stand against the vampires, who at that time were at a less than peaceful existence with the rest of Gaia, and those who had pledged themselves to fight with him had gathered these orchids, wearing them as a symbol of their loyalty. He knew of a certain vampire whom he had startled into dropping her journal when the war had just come to a close, and upon reading it had managed to see the war through a unique pair of eyes, of one who had pledged herself and then turned away, and her guilt at doing so. This was not one of the vampires that had been pursuing them so relentlessly. This before him was a Gaian, and one he had actually met before.
Sheathing his sword, he reached his now-free hand out to help the girl to her feet, ignoring the protests of the three who were still in the dark about the orchid, and he focused his gaze intently on her. "What are you doing here?" Having apparently regained some of her breath, the girl used most of it to bring all of her words out in a rush. "I got here as quickly as I could…I've been looking for you for days, not stopping unless I really had to…you've got to come back to Gaia right now!"
"What's happened?" Edmund felt his hands balling into fists again, the frail orchid crumpling and leaking a few drops of sticky juice in his hand. "Is it the vampires? Or the dark elves?"
The girl shook her head hard, her blood-red hair swishing back and forth. "No, no, listen! It's not either of them! Gaia's dying, you understand? If you don't come back right now, he-!" Before she could get the rest out, a sudden bright light seemed to explode from the vampire's side, and with an inhuman screech of agony, she was blown sideways, slamming hard into the railing and crumpling to the deck, her left side smoldering, her right staining the planks crimson beneath her. Edmund's sword was back out in an instant as he looked in the direction the bolt of electricity had come from. Standing on the railing on the port side was a figure that he was all too familiar with. Tattered black clothes, more rags than anything at this point, covered a lanky frame, crowned by a nest of stark white hair, while two glowing eyes, alight with insanity, peeked out from behind a few stray locks. The smile the figure carried matched the gleaming eyes, and it held one gloved hand out before it in a pointing gesture, the fingertips still smoldering from the bolt, a glowing white crescent moon just visible on the glove's top. He reached up and blew the last wisp from his finger as he would a smoking gun barrel, and Edmund spat the figure's name out like a curse. "Zhivago!"
In response to his name, Zhivago lowered his hand and gracefully jumped down from the railing, slowly and casually striding towards them as though he had all the time in the world to kill the lot of them. Edmund stepped forward, placing himself in the path of the assassin. "Gino!" he barked, "Get below, now!" Ladyhands stepped forward, wrench at the ready, while Overseer and Sentinel stood rooted to the spot, realizing that this was the being who had destroyed their friend back in Dref Dur, and that they were powerless to defend themselves should he turn his sights on them. But Zhivago gazed only fleetingly at Gino as he backed slowly toward the door leading below, and then focused back to Edmund. "You should just let me have him; save yourself the trouble."
Edmund's face was furious as he brought his sword up in a fighting stance. "You just killed a Gaian! Are you out of your mind?!"
The thin and jagged shoulders moved in the barest shrug. "Pawns that won't play the game are served better as casualties." The pinprick eyes locked on Edmund, and the feral smile broadened. "Besides, I can't help but wonder, would you be so quick to protest if you knew that at this very moment, it was the Gaians themselves bringing your precious world down into the dust and filth?"
Edmund's eyes narrowed. "What the devil are you talking about?" But Zhivago's eyes had darkened, and his scowl showed that he had already said more than he had cared to. "It hardly matters, because you can't stop it now, none of you can. And I'm here to make sure you never get the chance!" The last word ending in the notes of a snarl, Zhivago held his spiked hand up like a knife and with lightning quickness bridged the gap between himself and Edmund. The latter had his sword up and ready, and with a jolt that seemed to shake the nails from the deck planks, the pair collided. The onlookers gasped as the gloved hand collided with the blade, expecting the fingers to be shorn off from the impact. But that of course would have just been too easy. The glove held fast, as though made of steel itself, and with an agile leap backwards, Zhivago landed lightly on the deck a few feet away, this time allowing Edmund to close in for a strike. Edmund obliged, his sword hilt pulled tight against his waist for stability as he charged forward, boots thudding across the deck as the gap between them closed. Zhivago leaped into the air above where he had been, waiting for Edmund to charge below him. But instead, Edmund brought the sword upwards in a twist, the blade hungrily seeking the flesh of its foe. With a snarl, Zhivago had to alter his descent to avoid the attack, the result landing him a bit clumsily on the deck, further away from his quarry than ever. Zhivago barely had time for a glance at the prize, currently cowering like the little worm that he was behind the giant with the wrench, before Edmund bore down upon him like a hurricane, time and again the sword coming much too close to scoring a hit, while his own frustration mounted as strike after strike was parried or dodged aside, and as Edmund continued to keep close, the use of another bolt from the glove would have mortally wounded them both, and he had no intention of counting himself out of the game just yet.
It seemed like days before the pair finally slowed, and then stopped: one staring with eyes that stung with sweat that did nothing to diminish the feral hatred in them, the other glaring stonily from behind glasses flecked with more sweat. Finally, Zhivago straightened himself and managed a savage smile. "Well no matter; I'll get him sooner or later, and when I do, there won't be anything left for you to do except curl up and die of despair in the ruins of all you have failed to protect!" Edmund crouched down for another rush, but it was too late; with a whirl, Zhivago turned and leaped into the air and away from the fight, his feet barely touching the railing before springing once more upward and vanishing into the mist.
Sentinel was the first to break the shocked silence. "What the Hell…..just happened?!" Edmund turned around, sword lowered, just as Gino gasped and pointed to the opposite side of the ship. "Edmund! The vampire; she's gone!" Edmund's eyes flew to the spot where he had seen her fall, and sure enough, all that remained was an ominous red stain that was already soaking into the wood. He couldn't help but wonder for a fleeting moment if she had fallen from the ship during the fight, but he forced himself to focus on the more important lingering reminder than the stain on the deck; her warning message. Gaia's dying…..if you don't come back now, he…..he…HE. Edmund's eyes widened. HE is coming. HE is here. If you don't come back now, HE….. It couldn't possibly be a coincidence.
His intense gaze turned onto Sentinel and Overseer, who visibly winced at the sudden attention, and all but quailed as he walked toward them, not stopping until he was nearly nose-to-nose with the pair. Without moving his eyes, Edmund barked out his orders. "Gino, Ladyhands, get below immediately before anyone else comes along. YOU TWO will accompany me to my quarters, where you will tell me EVERYTHING you know about this being of yours. Don't you leave ANYTHING out."