Several hours later found Edmund in almost the exact same spot he had been in before: standing at the ship's bow, overlooking the progress the flying ship was making. Only this time, something had changed; whether it was due to the ominous warning given by the now-presumed dead Gaian (Edmund allowed himself a sad shake of the head at the thought), the fight with Zhivago that seemed to have been all too easily won, or the sudden new flood of information he now had on a foe that they all had yet to encounter other than doomed whispers of premonition, the fog now seemed to part before them as though heralding their inevitable return to Gaia. No longer clinging to the sides like desperate souls drowning in the misty sea, it had turned the proper consistency of mist and offered no resistance to the airship that now floated amidst the murk with ease.
Would that Edmund could sift through the thoughts that now swirled inside of his mind like his own brand of mist. The two hours he had spent with Overseer and Sentinel had been informative, but only really offered a vague possibility that this Nyx person was the he that had been spoken of with such fear and horror these past few weeks. He let remnants of the conversation float past him in a whirling, floating march. "So this…Nyx….was then banished by Gaia for all that he had done. But how could he have gotten out? Gaia is a powerful being, and not one to place a light, easily breakable spell of containment on someone like that." The image of Sentinel shrugging her shoulders floated past his vision. "We don't know what sort of spell it was to begin with, and it isn't as though she would just go around mentioning it; she was never one for boasting. But we agree, it surely wasn't any light-weight spell."
The Overseer's look of consternation soon followed. "It IS entirely possible that regardless of the strength of the spell, perhaps he was just clawing and chipping at it all this time, carving a niche as it were. Even the strongest wall can be breached with enough time, persistence and relentless force." Edmund had nodded thoughtfully. "If that were true, then perhaps he received some outside help to give him that last small push. Zhivago did say that I would not be so quick to come to the Gaians' rescue if I had known what they had done…..maybe someone released him for some malevolent purpose? It wouldn't be the first time someone in Gaia has been in over their head." Edmund hated to think that someone from his world would do such a thing, but remembering the countless disasters and unsavory characters that had plagued Gaia in the past, he could not fully dismiss the idea.
And that was another thing bothering him; the urgency of the late vampire Gaian. She, along with her countless other denizens had experienced so many bizarre things, from alien invasions to grombie viruses to Santa being replaced by a cow. Yet the warning given had been laced with more panic and fear than he had ever heard, fueling the disturbing thought that this was something far more serious and dangerous than anything that the world had experienced before; the death of Johnny Gambino should have been clue enough, but everything seemed to point to that being the beginning rather than the end. As though the forces behind whatever was going on was just getting started.
Edmund was so deep in thought that he only barely acknowledged the emergence of Gino on the deck, and when he appeared beside him, pointing out into the sky and saying, "Hey, what's that?" he only just broke out of his reverie enough to cast his eyes upward. His eyes bulged behind his glasses as seemingly out of nowhere, a gigantic towering structure of multi-colored lights filled his entire vision. "Ladyhands! Evasive action, NOW!" he barked out. The large man's voice boomed out in reply as he gripped the helm in his delicate hands. "We're too close! Brace for impact!" Edmund crouched slightly and readied his stance, looking for a possible opportunity to shield Gino from any debris that their crash would cause, the latter crouching even lower behind Edmund and squeezing his eyes shut.
The large ship contacted with the structure of light, and everyone waited for the resounding boom, the shudder and grind of a ship steered right into disaster. Only nothing happened; Edmund gasped as the entire ship seemed to pass through the obstacle as though it were merely water, the lights clinging to his front and leaving a rough cut-out of his form in the pattern as it continued to pass. "What the Devil-!?" he spoke loudly, brushing small specks of light from his clothes like fairy dust and turning around to see if Gino was alright. Gino's eyes widened as Edmund turned around, then the boy astonishingly bit his lip, looking for all the world as though he were trying not to laugh.
"Gino, what…?" Edmund started to ask, and then a small sparkle of light disengaged from somewhere above his head and floated absurdly past his nose. He had no way of knowing it, but the assembly of lights they had just passed through had left a pattern on top of his head that resembled a luxurious mane of bleached blond hair, much like what could be found in the Durem hair salon. Both Gino and Ladyhands received a stony glare from Edmund as he reached up to shoo the last offending particles from his person, and watched the large block of lights recede in the distance, somewhat mangled from the airship passing through it. It resembled more than anything some sort of billboard, roughly square in shape and twinkling as though lit with magic, the pulsating colors becoming harder to make out every second as it grew smaller.
The door leading below decks flew open, and Sentinel and Overseer stepped out. "Hey, what's all the shouting about up here?" Sentinel demanded, but before anyone could answer, Overseer gasped and pointed past Edmund's shoulder. "Look out!" He called out, and everyone turned just in time to see another of the tall, square curtains of light bearing down upon them. Edmund relaxed slightly, knowing now that these images were merely made of light and nothing solid, and even managed to catch a glimpse of what the lights were displaying: blazingly bright text reading 'BUY NOW!' marching above a suggestive display of various costumes that left little to the imagination.
"Wait, that can't be right…" Edmund scratched his chin thoughtfully, ignoring the panicked sounds of the two bumbling fools behind him as they failed to notice the harmlessness of the apparition and were trying to shove each other aside in a dash back below decks. It ended with Sentinel grabbing Overseer by his arms and using him as a shield as the lights blew past them, and as she set him down and looked at him, the pattern clinging to the flustered former-demi resembled a remarkably skimpy pose of luscious purple skin with a few scraps of blackened ivy barely managing to cover up heaving breasts and more interesting business below a ridiculously-shaped hourglass figure. Looking down at himself, Overseer's face turned bright red as he brought his hands up, not to brush the sparkling lights away, but to actually cover up the purple-hued breasts that he did not possess. Sentinel watched him with one hand on her hip, her expression one of sheer mockery. "You… are SUCH an idiot."
Neither one paying any attention to the two behind them, Gino moved to stand beside Edmund. Looking up at the sky, the pair could see more of the towering masses of light appearing before their very eyes; literally dozens of them flashing and shimmering, like windows looking out of the world. "You know…." Gino ventured thoughtfully, "Those look like some sort of big….advertisements. Like billboards, you know?" Edmund frowned, but not at Gino, continuing to stare ahead of the ship. "They do, and I believe they are, but why are they here? We've never had any such things floating in the sky before, nor have we had reason to." He finally turned to look behind him, where a thoroughly abashed Overseer was brushing the last purple sparkle from his clothes. "This is definitely strange, but I have a feeling things will only get stranger the closer we get to home."
No sooner had Edmund finished speaking than Gino, who had been inching closer to the prow in order to look over and see if he could spot the Port of Gambino, suddenly squinted his eyes. "Hey Edmund….come look at this." When his friend had joined him, he reached out and pointed down at a gathering of lights below, in a pattern most familiar and welcoming. But it wasn't the port's lights that seemed odd, but as they drew closer, it became clear that something was very odd about the streets and paths between the buildings. The lights that gave the port it's friendly glow seemed to have lent some of their shimmer to the ground, and even the water itself, lapping up against the docks or making small ripples in the wide expanse of the lagoon, seemed to have a strange metallic tint, as though someone had dumped oil into the bay.
It was odd enough to cause Edmund, already unsettled as it was, to turn around and walk briskly toward the helm, where Ladyhands was still blissfully unaware that anything seemed off below. "Listen," Edmund spoke in a voice too low to carry much farther than where they stood. "We need to land the airship somewhere isolated and out of sight of the city; there is something very strange going on, and until I find out what it is, I want as few people as possible to know we have returned." With nothing more than a nod, the burly helmsman gave the wheel a smart turn, and as the ship responded, with the island and port of Gambino now in plain sight along the ship's side, even Sentinel and Overseer shuffled up for a better look, for once not offering any verbal contribution, which in turn gave Edmund a much appreciated moment of silence to plan their next move.
The place chosen was little more than a small stretch of sand peppered with palm trees, a few of which met their untimely end when the airship touched down. It was a safe enough distance from any of the island's busier sections, and the fronds of the trees they had broken would serve as camouflage for some of the unfriendly airborne eyes that were sure to be looking about. Edmund was happy to leave these preparations to Ladyhands, while at the same time reminding him to keep an eye on their two captives below; with all of the commotion and the sudden lack of movement, they would have realized that the ship had landed and would doubtless try even harder to escape. Another worry that gnawed at the back of Edmund's mind was the fate of Crescento should word of his betrayal come to light. Though there was no love lost between him and the airship captain, he had no desire to see him suffer the same fate as Meili. He just hoped the other had the good sense to stay put.
Darkness still enveloped the Isle of Gambino when the small party embarked away from the hidden airship. In the lead was Edmund, shrouded in a thick cloak with his hand resting comfortably on his sword hilt. Following close behind was Gino, similarly cloaked and casting uneasy glances all around him as though he were back in Dref Dur instead of the island where he had grown up. Bringing up the rear were Sentinel and Overseer, the former still lamenting under her breath about wearing 'some ratty old blanket' when she should have returned to this realm triumphant, powers regained and ready to be showered with all of the adoration of the masses. The only reason Edmund found to continue putting up with such nonsense was at the very least the pair could serve as cover for Gino; at this point he could hardly imagine anyone NOT going for the annoyingly oblivious figure behind them first.
They had barely gone a hundred yards when he heard her grumbling punctuated by 'Hey look!' He turned around swiftly, Gino nearly crashing into him, and watched as Sentinel walked up with something cupped in her hand. His eyebrows knitted together in annoyance as the glint of gold caught his eye. "You stopped us because you found some gold on the beach?" Before she could reply, Overseer appeared at her elbow, his hands also cupped and full. "I found some too; there are piles of it around here." Edmund was just about to lose his temper when he felt Gino pulling at his sleeve. "Edmund….remember that glint we saw from the airship?" He turned back and followed where Gino was pointing with his other hand, and forgot about venting his spleen on the pair. Ahead of them, small piles of gold glinted among the sands, gathered like hermit crabs around the bases of the palm trees, and even gleamed from notches in the trunk's shaggy rings. It was as though the entire island was slowly turning to gold. But then…the gleam in the streets, the sheen in the port's waters…..it COULDN'T be….THAT much….
Edmund turned his gaze back to the pair, who were predictably trying to cram as much sand-encrusted gold into their pockets as they could. "Leave it!" he barked, and the two dropped their hands at once, gold thudding as it fell back onto the sand. Whirling around, Edmund set off at a brisk pace, Gino only just keeping up and leaving their less than spectacular rear guard with too little breath to complain of the speed they were going. Edmund could feel dread welling up inside him like a poison, and the desire to see what had become of his world burned his brain like a fever.
Not even an hour had passed before the group found themselves walking on the familiar paved roads of the Isle of Gambino, the port glinting eerily just to their left. Though the road was now only familiar from the recognizable buildings on either side of it, and paved it seemed not with the picturesque cobblestones they had remembered, but with literally thousands upon thousands of gold coins. What had caused the streets to glisten and gleam from the view of the airship had been none other than gold: it littered the streets like sand blown in from the beaches; it piled up against the buildings like refuse; it rested upon every available surface like King Midas' snowfall. Even as they walked up to one of the port's many docks and peered into the water, they could see piles of gold littering the bottom. Colorful fish darted about in consternation, attempting to swim around the piles that threatened to collapse and bury them, or nibbled balefully on the discs sprinkled among the seaweed, which reached upward from the glimmer like wavy, beseeching arms.
As they walked, the buildings gave way to the isle's towns, where Gaians made their homes. Edmund remembered a time when he had walked among these very buildings, going from door to door and asking for help against the rising threat of the vampires; how long ago that seemed now. The towns, he saw, only enhanced that feeling; cluster after cluster of houses lay empty and cold, as though no one had lived there for many years. The windows were dark and hollow like the eyes of skulls, the doors rotten and barely hanging on their hinges. One of the doors had 'Go to Hell, Gaia!' spray painted down the wood, and every mailbox was stuffed to bursting with faded, colorful scraps of paper that reminded them all of the strange billboards they had encountered in the sky. Gold pieces dotted every roof, and turned the steps to every house into piles of sheer wealth. It was all so puzzling and so utterly, shockingly sad. Edmund felt Gino clasping his arm, and through the thick fabric of the cloak he could feel the other trembling. He himself was clenching his fists so tightly that he could feel his nails cutting little crescents into his palms. "What….IS all of this? Where IS everyone?" he heard Overseer's shocked whisper, and for once, he had no idea how to answer.
He suddenly became aware of a sound that was drawing steadily closer; footsteps mingled with the clink of coins being shoved aside with each footfall. Reaching his arm out in front of Gino, Edmund ushered him back with him into the shadow of one of the empty houses, the other two following suit without a sound. All eyes watched as a trio of ordinary Gaians rounded a corner, seemingly oblivious to the gold that showered down every time they stepped. Their faces were unsmiling, their gaits slightly slumped; not something you usually expected to see in a place like Gambino. They walked over to one of the houses, stepping up the stairs, one nearly losing his balance as his foot came down onto a pile of gold that shifted beneath it. "Shit!" he exclaimed, just as the door opened and a fourth Gaian peered out at the spectacle. "Come on in, guys," it said, opening the door wider and letting a meager light illuminate the guests. "Just don't track any of that gold shit in here, alright?" Mumbles of acquiescence sounded as the trio entered, the door closed, and once again silence engulfed the area.
Stepping back out from the shadows, none could comprehend what they had just witnessed. Golden streets, something seen only in people's wildest daydreams, coupled with abandoned houses and gloom-faced residents that didn't seem to care for it. It was like finding a starved corpse surrounded by food. This place should have been Heaven, but it seemed more like Hell. It was plain, however, that no answers to any of this would be found here. "Come on," Edmund said, his voice betraying little of the pain this scene was causing him, "We had best move on." He couldn't help but wonder if all of the other cities were like this, or if this strange affliction was exclusively nestled at Gambino.
As they reentered the city proper, things only became more puzzling and more repulsive. The group was passing by a wall lined with dozens of faded-looking flyers, and would have escaped their notice but for Gino stopping to get a closer look, and the rest of the group almost pressing on without him before realizing he was not among them. Edmund hurried to Gino's side, ready to pull him away, but the way he was staring caused him to take a good look himself. The flyers appeared to be some kind of survey, depicting ten bikini-clad bodies, the heads missing from each frame, with the words 'Which female body type do you find hottest?' Each had varying stages of shapeliness, but it was the labels for each that caused eyebrows and disbelief to rise. 'Kinda-fat'. 'Anorexic.' 'Whale.' 'Dude.' 'Chubby.' 'Porker.' 'Kid.' Obviously there had been some who had not appreciated such labels; many of the flyers had obscene words marked on them, and someone had circled the word anorexic and scrawled 'I'm glad you think my problem is FUNNY' as large as they could over several of the neighboring flyers. "The Hell is THIS?!" Sentinel blurted out as they all stared at the offending wall, and as Edmund gently clasped Gino's shoulder and steered him away, for once his thoughts echoed hers.
It didn't get much better the further in they went. One lavishly decorated shop had a gaudy display of what appeared to be different princess dresses, but upon closer inspection were really one dress painted with cheap paints to make it appear to have more variety. Some of the paint was already chipping off of the now-ruined fabric, and the bottom of the display was dotted with paint from where they had obviously placed the merchandise before letting them dry. The owner, a lady whose outfit mirrored that of her store hailed Sentinel as they walked by. "Look here, I bet these would look great on you! There used to be just Pretty Princess dresses; now we have Gorgeous Princess, Fabulous Princess, Slutty Princess-!" Sentinel was over to the shopkeeper in two strides, thrusting her angry face inches from the surprised shopkeeper's. "Do I look like I wanna be a PRINCESS to you?! Go bother someone else with your painted crap!" As Sentinel marched off and the others quickly followed stride, they could all hear the noise of the shopkeeper behind them. "The nerve of that bitch, talking about my items like that….hey, that gives me an idea! ANGRY Princess! Ooo, they'll just eat it up! Now where did I put my crimson paint…"
Shop after shop had display after display of such items; the same thing painted, sometimes delicately like a model car, sometimes looking as though the people had just flung a paint can at them, but not many people eagerly lining up to buy. The paint-smeared price tags had so many zeros that they had to print small AND use two lines to have enough room. Gino gagged at a display of a plain white barrette with a tag of 36 million gold; that same amount had recently paid for new clothes for himself, Sentinel and Overseer! Who in their right minds would pay so much for a single hair ornament? But that was it, they were all starting to realize. Gaia WASN'T in its right mind. Something was undeniably, indescribably wrong. Not just with the items, but with the Gaians themselves. Many of them seemed to have packed up and left, which explained the hundreds of empty houses in the towns, and those who remained did not care to walk the streets and be accosted by shopkeepers advertising items for an amount that they MIGHT reach if they cleaned out the Port of Gambino and harvested the gold. The place was so deserted that it almost seemed absurd for them to be walking about in their disguises, but Edmund had not survived this long in the world of Gaia from letting his guard down, and despite being the only people walking the streets in most places, the hoods and cloaks remained in place.
It was almost a relief to them all when they found themselves finally close to their destination; the shrine of Gaia. After seeing all of the strange, disheartening and just plain awful things that had befallen the once light-hearted and thriving Isle de Gambino, they were all ready for some soothing comfort from a lush garden surrounding a graceful, well-looked after shrine dedicated to the very lifeblood of their world; a small altar with what was said to be the most beautiful statue in existence, carved lovingly by a long-dead artisan so that it looked down with smiling eyes and open arms to anyone who visited the gardens, answering their questions and communing with the whisper of trees and the chatter of sparkling fountains. Gino had only been there once, and then he had been too young to remember; he was looking forward to seeing it again.
As they approached the entrance to the garden, however, Edmund found himself inwardly berating himself for thinking that such a malignant force that would do this to the entire isle would see fit to leave this place alone. The bushes had broken branches and mangled leaves when they were not ripped out altogether, and every last rose appeared to have been pulled out and maliciously ground beneath a boot. Dirt and mud caked the decorative paving stones leading visitors to various places in the garden. Overseer looked as though he was going to be sick, and even Sentinel looked uneasy at all of the wanton destruction.
As they walked further into the garden, the damage only grew more savage and widespread. Trees were withered and blighted, or scratched with deep gauges that looked like they had been done by a bear. The grass was brown and brittle, and spots of dirt showed where there doubtless had once been beautiful clusters of flowers. Further in, the paving stones were now pulled out and thrown wherever, making the path they were walking on look like a long mouth of broken and missing teeth. Fountains and ponds that once housed glittering tile designs and playful fish were now foul-smelling and choked with weeds, with the white belly of a dead koi poking out here and there. Even the lowly earthworms had been trampled and squashed in their attempt to escape the madness; their flattened bodies dotting the cracked and broken stones. It seemed as though nothing had escaped the malicious destruction of the garden of Gaia.
Edmund turned his head this way and that, taking the scene in and also noting the horror on the faces of his companions. Gino had gone white as a sheet and was clasping his hands up to his mouth. Overseer was weeping, head down and shoulders shaking with barely audible sobs, and even Sentinel was reaching her arm up to angrily rub her eyes with a rough sleeve. Who could have done this? He thought to himself, even as his mind provided the answer. Naturally a newly released being with a grudge against the goddess who imprisoned him would seek out her link to the world and destroy it however he could. Even the city, with its mountains of worthless gold and dead, empty houses was preferable to a scene like this.
Already anticipating the worst as they approached the shrine, they were all nevertheless shocked by what they found. Once a statue had stood there, pristine and carved with features so real that you could reach out, grasp the delicately carved hand, and fancy the warmth of the sun to be coming from soft, warm skin instead of smooth, polished stone. Now not even a pair of sandal-clad feet or an outline of a long skirt brushing the ground remained to watch over the altar, which itself seemed the most vandalized of all. Offerings of fruit and flowers were now maggot-ridden and weeping with slime; chunks of granite had been hewn from the even surface, and new offerings of dead rats and dainty birds' feet lay in pools of dark, sticky blood. The statue itself lay scattered in a thousand pieces, almost not recognizable but for the few bits that had survived the complete and utter demolition; a finger here, a wave of carefully carved locks there. But what was the most disturbing, yet the least surprising, was that the goddess herself was nowhere to be found. Her presence, which used to be felt as one walked through this small sample of her true domain, could not be felt here, among the dead plants and desecration. Overseer and Sentinel could feel the absence immediately, and the enormity of it settled upon the group like a smothering shroud; their mission was at an end. They had been charged to find Gaia, and Gaia was gone. "What do we do now?" Sentinel's voice seemed small and lost, and for the third time in little more than an hour, Edmund once again found himself without answers.