Welcome to Gaia! ::

The inspector grunted an objection at the intrusion, unable to move or speak to interfere. His eyes rolled lazily as he drifted about the edge of consciousness. His hat slid off his seat-slicked hair with a sudden jerk of his neck. Underneath the plain cotton shirt and coat, five penetration wounds were found among numerous similar scars, each 11.45 millimeters in diameter. Some inches within, each wound held a deformed mass of lead. To one who knew ballistics and fashion conventions, this man's origins were easily deduced by his attire, wounds, and the dirty, bloody Colt 1911 still clenched tightly in his hand.

Quintus was, if nothing else, a rational man. No, this wasn't Hell. He slowly came to a simple conclusion: If he were dead, he could keep walking forever, right? The dead couldn't die twice. Maybe he'd said that already, but his mind was foggy. So, until he died, he would operate under the assumption he was still alive. That meant these fiercer hallucinations were the product of something else. Quintus had nearly died of thirst... three, four times, including this one? He knew what he saw and what he didn't, and this was nothing like any experience he'd had before. This was something entirely different, no question. Something bizarre. The wound perturbed him, but he felt no pain from it; only the sensation of blood spilling across a chest that wasn't his.

He didn't even slow; there was no point to it. Visions (for these were visions and not hallucinations, there was no question about that) were irrelevant to the goal at hand. A new goal, however, was stacked on this: Get out of the desert. However, whenever, wherever. Quintus was, as mentioned before, a rational man, but there was something clearly off about this place, and the sooner he could get away from it the better.

Sam's searching paid off, in a hollowed book titled "Eclessia Occulta" he found a key that seemed as though it could match the lock on the footlocker. He tossed the soggy thing aside and scooted back over to the trunk.

The scavenger rubbed his hands together in anticipation before unlocking it and packing away the key and lock. To his first dismay all that greeted him was the site of papers, maps in fact.

But for a waterlogged footlocker everything in remained dry, Mad Sam briefly considered lugging the thing with him, as water tight containers were hard to come by. Then something caught his eye out of the corner of the maps. It looked like leather.

Sam pushed away the maps (all of them written in a language that seemed separate from the hollowed book, each showing pieces of what looked like a large island, or several islands) to reveal another book, but this one, he felt, was different. For one, it was dry, and for two, upon Sam's browsing of it, it revealed sketches of ruins, creatures, and alchemical symbols. At least, the merchant assumed those were alchemical symbols. Sam decided to keep this book for looking through later and proceeded to search more through the footlocker.

Maps, papers,what looked to be a manifest, a sextant, and at the very bottom another wooden box, exquisitely smoothed. It reminded Sam of a cigar box and as he had a reason to celebrate (gathering things was one of his favourite things to do as a traveling merchant) he opened it, revealing inside a masterwork of a flintlock pistol, complete with 12 rounds of ammunition. Sam whistled. It was in perfect condition, never fired, but it wasn't magical, a collector's item at best.

Sam bagged that too.

That's when an altogether different feeling hit him, as though the world was somehow sinking away from beneath his feet. The merchant's breaths became short, and he heard them all too clearly in his ears. His vision blurred, and Aelzwyr swirled into a vortex of meaningless sights and sounds.

Then his feet hit solid ground, even though Sam never felt them leave, and Sam's vision hit blurry as his brain tried to cope with over-stimulation.

The first thing Sam heard was a voice, coming through what sounded like a hollow tube.

"Hello! I hope you are all right!" The voice was almost nauseatingly cheerful, "I don't know how you got aboard but I hope you enjoy your stay while I notify the captain!"

Sam grumbled a quiet reply of "what?" before opening his eyes and rubbing his temples, what he saw made him want to close his eyes again. His current location was bright and beige, with curves all over the place that reminded Sam of elvish architecture. He closed his eyes and felt his stomach churn.

"Yo ho!" another voice from a tube, this one different, still cheerful, but sounding more like a partier, "hey-ey, I didn't know when I hit the button I'd pick up hitchhikers! Hey man, where's your towel?"

Sam groaned before he threw up.

"Don't worry buddy it's always rough the first time" the voice laughed, "you know what I'm saying?" it chuckled.

A voice from closer by spoke up, sounding depressed, opening with a sigh, "I wish you hadn't done that, but then, what do you care what I wish? We're all selfish why should you be any different?"

"Alright!" said the party voice again, "I'm going to hit the button again," an interjection from the cheerful voice "Sir, we haven't reached full normality yet, but if you're positive..."

"Damn straight I'm positive, let's go go go!"

The depressed voice, "Let me get a towel."

Sam passed out.

***

When the merchant awoke he felt a light breeze and heard waves slowly lapping at a faraway shore. Sam was laying down, he knew that much, and something was on his face, it was soft, kinda fuzzy, and when he lifted it from his face, Sam saw that it was a towel. White, with a golden "ZB" stitched in the corner.

Sam guessed that it was his now but he didn't know where his pack had gone until we spread his left arm out and found it. He thanked unseen forces it had not opened and tumbled things out into the void. The weary traveler scrambled to his feet and over to his bag to pack the towel when a strange noise started coming up from the ocean, it was then Sam observed his surroundings.

He stood atop a white cliff during what looked to be twilight leading to night, down below was a rocky shore that went down the coast along the cliffs for as long as Sam could see. The shore itself was only a few hundred feet wide, but upon were close to 50 figures moving, a bonfire, and a few boats that were being set aflame as they were pushed out to sea.

The strange noise he heard sounded like females wailing. It was met with the sadder sounds of a few stringed instruments.

Sam was witnessing a funeral.

"It is our villagers, and my father, the leader of our clan, they are wailing for, tell me traveler, what business do you have here?"

Sam knew that language so well the babel stone did not have to translate it (in fact it couldn't). It was Sagus.

Sam turned to face the one who had spoken. It was a short male, about 5'3" with a tapered head and scaly skin, orange, with stunted reddish feathers growing atop and behind his head. He looked like a lizard, he looked like Gingoth.

The lizard looked over the merchant and both regarded each other silently in the orange glow of twilight. Sam spoke first.

"You know not of me, but can you tell me if you have heard of Gingoth?"

"No, but the name comes from the Era of the Sundwellers, which has long past. Tell me, stranger, from where do you hail, are you with the Aspian?"

The lizard went for a short-handled dirk calmly, not so much a threat as a precaution. His black robes fluttered in the breeze.

"I am not, I hail from..." Sam could think of no better way to describe it, "Elsewhere."

The lizard looked at least a bit relieved, "I hope things are peaceful in your Elsewhere, we have fallen on hard times here. While our women keen for their losses, and our warriors feel the Lifegiver's flame, I came up here to think."

The lizard stepped beside Sam and looked to the funeral below.

"The Aspian outnumber us. These are the lost from the battle yesterday, we cannot fight back without causing more casualty and death than we can afford, I am afraid we must find the strength to give in."

Sam felt a bit depressed as the berobed mulled over his clan, but Sam remembered many stories from his travels with Gingoth. He began to tell one.

It was the story of a hero who stood valiant with his city when invaders befell them. The city began to fall because the enemies numbers were far to great, so the hero evacuated his people out into the forests while he and a small band of men stayed behind. His people would go on to rally a nation to their aid and push back the invaders, but the hero died to protect them in their city. When the city was retaken they found the enemy built him a tomb, for his bravery and honor were so great that even the enemy respected him.

His sword and shield lay upon his coffin, blessed, they said, by the God of the Sun.

The lizard looked up to Sam after the merchant finished his story. "Do you think I could get them out alive over the Sea of Ash?"

Sam nodded sagely and removed his backpack from his shoulders, placing it upon the ground and retrieving from it the two jeweled swords, discarding the shirts he wrapped around them back into the bag, and the smoothed box which held the pistol.

"With these swords you fight valiantly against the tide. And with this," the merchant motioned towards the box, "you give to your best man that you send away with your clan, that they may learn from it."

The lizard stared in wonder at Sam and his bag.

"You are sent from the Gods!" The lizard knelt before Sam.

"No, from a friend, remember the name Gingoth, tell all to remember the name Gingoth, for he brings you his blessing this day with that of the sun god." Sam's ego was rising, his chest puffed, he felt like he was doing such a great deed for Gingoth that when Sam told him Gingoth would swell with pride and finally let Sam into his "secret" inventory.

But again, the world changed. Sam's stomach dropped and lurched and his body followed suit. He felt like his was being dragged by his spine backwards into oblivion.

Sam hit the ground with an "oomph," and a few tumbles, his bag mimicked him. Both stirred the sand of a windswept desert, and Sam again had to puke.

Traveler tilted his head at the sound but didn't really look up from whatever he was doing to the injured man's wounds. The girl had certainly never seen medical practices like that before. It looked more like witchcraft than medicine but, somehow, she also saw the bullets rise in little pools of blood from the wounds. Traveler brushed them away with a wrapped hand as he slowly shook his head.

"Stay out of the shadows, Alana," he spoke calmly as he held one hand over the man's wounded chest and ducked the other under his cloak to pull out a roll of cloth wrapping, like that which covered his hands. "Darkness here is more dangerous than it is on earth."

Even if the landmark was something he didn't want to see, it was a landmark nonetheless, something separate from the unending dunes, something to base movement off of. It might even provide the tiniest bit of shelter, somewhere to rest for a bit. Not that resting was a good idea, if he went down he probably wouldn't get backup. Still, he'd tried, and this was the inevitable outcome.

And then there was something, a flash of light and some kind of... otherworldly feeling. Then the noise of something hitting the sand behind him, then the noise of something wet hitting the sand as well. Quintus spun awkwardly, drawing his Colt and taking up a proper Weaver stance, finger off the trigger (still well enough to exercise trigger discipline, he noted - not badly off, even if he couldn't properly focus on the sights), trying to figure out what had dropped behind him. His vision was blurry and it was dark, but whatever it was was humanoid, and evidently too ill to attack, for now anyway.

Quintus opened his mouth to speak and found it harder than expected. His throat was dry, of course it would be hard. Finally he managed to rasp out a few words: "Who are you?" Not a good introduction, but the best he could manage under the circumstances. He could afford politeness later.

The private eye groaned in agony as the bullets pulled themselves from his flesh, left grasping at the bare wall as if to find a handle to pull himself up by, but no handle was to be found. The pain was incredible, more than anything he had felt in life-after all, he was most certainly dead. It was a familiar pain, however, and he knew that it meant that a reprieve was near. Finally, the bullets were out, the wounds cauterized. He was pale and weak from blood loss, but he found the strength to speak again.

"Is this what they call- hell?" He inquired with a weak, self-mocking chuckle.
"I was expecting- something- more- thematic," he observed. The place he was in, he could tell, was strange and alien, but not unlike New York in that it was a melting pot of cultures, ideologies, and dreams.

The strange hodded man didn't push the girl to step farther out of the dark, too busy with tending the injured inspector's wounds. The fire in them continued to burn dully but they felt much improved - more so than simply cauterized. The odd healer had finished wrapping the inspector's chest by the time he found the strength to speak, seeming almost as if the cool, slightly tingly wrappings had given him that strength.

The healer's reaction to the question though was perhaps a little troubling. A dark, almost ironic smile spread across the pale lips under the hood at mention of hell. There was a brief pause as if for consideration before the hooded head shook only slightly. "No, not hell. Though I've heard more than one call it such. But you aren't dead and won't be dying soon unless you do something foolish."

The hooded man glanced up to the girl still half in shadows as if to imply she might be on her way to that. The inspector saw in that glance an odd thing under the healer's hood. More wrappings, bandages over the man's face, covering his eyes so he should not have been able to see the girl's foolishness.

Quintus had heard thicker accents, but he was having a hard time placing this one. He at least did the man the favor of lowering his pistol. His question hadn't really been answered, but he'd give that a break. The man was obviously a touch confused, so at least they shared that. He didn't holster it yet, though; paranoia had served him well the last few years.

"You okay?" Quintus rasped, then coughed, swallowed, and managed to get some liquid into his throat. "Need a hand?" he added, relaxing his stance, letting his Colt swing downward, and stepping forward to the supine figure, moving in between Sam and parts of the sky. The guy had managed to write, so he wasn't grievously wounded or anything like that, but still, he just didn't look so hot.