On the next level, the walls are still the same teal color, but now they’re glowing, as if phosphorescent. Good to know that the sewage being flushed down here on the regular is probably radioactive. Alex is really glad he’s doing this. As if to reward him for the extra arm he’s going to sprout later–he can hold his Red Dragon Shield with it!–another chest on this level simply has 2500 silver in it. I haven’t been questioning the existence of chests in this place so far, but one having money in it, for some reason, really underscores how stupid it is that there’s any treasure here at all. Is this another donation box? Is Alex robbing a church?

I’m pretty sure the Wind Spirit’s song is just a Pink Floyd record.

On this bottom level, Alex is quickly able to ascend some stairs on the other side of the cracks that rendered the first two levels impassable from east to west. Eventually, after fighting way too many Lisa Frank Brain Dickers, he returns to the top where, unlike anywhere else in the shrine, including on the east side of this same level, he can hear the horrible Lyton town theme again. Near the source of the music, there are no monsters, which really puts the lie to this whole “monsters are wrecking our perfect pitch” shit all the villagers were saying. It turns out, there are four glory holes in the wall of the cave, and wind is blowing through them and producing the sound. Two conspicuous boulders are up against the wall between each pair of holes, practically screaming “MOVE US” at Alex. Nash makes this implication explicit, as he usually does. Squeak frets about doing it wrong, when the worst-case scenario is creating the shitty song that they’re already listening to, but Jess rightly says, “Why don’t we just push some rocks and see what happens?” Indeed.

All Alex has to do is push the boulder on the left to the left-most hole and the one on the right to the right-most hole, and suddenly the song is…less awful. It’s certainly more pleasant and is, again, coming out of a properly tuned instrument, but it’s still not an impressive piece of music, which only backs up my theory about no one in Lyton having any musical talent. Besides, Alex and I demand more from our naturally occurring musical themes! Squeak and Jessica both proclaim it to be “beautiful” and “lovely,” so we know who’s really tone deaf around here. And because Jess is never going to let this go, she adds, “When the music’s this pretty I bet it makes Kyle want to get all prettied up for himself!” Kyle could get her to shut up if he told her at least knows how to look his best, unlike some ladies, but instead he gets all defensive and growls at her, “It was a RUSE. R…U…S…E! I was trying to trap [Xeboobia], not get my jollies!” Can we all agree that it’s totally fine if he was getting his jollies? Squeak tells him, “Now, now, Kyle! You were kind of…exotic dressed as a woman.” I don’t even know what to say to that.

The teens warp back to the entrance, where the guard duty trio congratulates them on saving Lyton from music that was horribly bad and not just boring. Of course, all the Lyton residents are also thrilled and have reverted back to singing instead of talking, which probably brings this town back up to the annoyance level it had before the music was fixed. They also note that they are already making ready for a festival to celebrate their return to being a town of attention hog divas–I mean, to commune with the Blue Dragon. Right. Sure. The identical twin of Purple Odango Girl does take the time to note, now that they’ve already fixed the problem, why it was such a problem in the first place: “Each boy or girl of Lyton listens to the Wind Spirit’s melody, and is soon singing along with it. By the time they become adults, regular speech is almost painful to their sensitive ears.” And I didn’t think I could find this town more annoyingly precious. Their ears are so sensitive and delicate! They get terrible migraines and have to sleep on 20 feather mattresses, stacked one atop the next, so they don’t feel the vibrations in the ground from other, less musically gifted villages! SHUT UP.

At least she’s honest.

So, these self-obsessed songsters and songstresses are going to wake up the Blue Dragon and reveal the path to his cave, right? Not so fast! A few other villagers allude to this as well, but the town elder, now that his troubles are over, wastes no time disabusing Alex of the notion that they were actually going to help him. Everyone, including the elder’s wife, still insists that their song will in fact “draw out” the Blue Dragon, but the elder issues the catch: “Walk north to Lyton Lake, Alex. The Blue Dragon Shrine rests beneath its placid surface. But it won’t rise up unless a song is sung by two people who are deeply in love with each other…” Jessica says this is all kinds of romantic, Nash says it’s all kinds of impractical, and nobody says, “I thought that’s what your stupid fucking song was supposed to do.” This town blows.

Ghaleon.

So after all that, the kids have no choice but to head to the lake themselves and make this happen. At the shore, a section of stone bridge juts out into the water, no doubt indicating where the Blue Dragon Shrine would be if the citizens of Lyton weren’t a bunch of useless jackoffs. While Alex and Squeak stare at the dead end, the others pair off into their approved hetero couplings and sit down on the grass, waiting for the guy with no girlfriend and no zombie Dragonmaster sugar daddy to sing a duet with his lover. So Alex stands there for a moment, feeling sad and lonely, and almost considers doing some karaoke with Squeak, but eventually realizes it would be better to make these fuckers sitting around staring at him do some work for a change.

‘Alex, does Prince live here?’

When they arrived, Kyle and Jessica both mansplained to Alex about how the singing needs to be done, so he makes them try first. Now, this whole exercise is a lot like what the gang went through in Damon’s Spire, in that it is not so much about actually moving forward with Alex’s quest as it is about raking our heroes and their throbbing teenage feelings over the coals in a series of team exercises. So Kyle and Jess get up in front of the others to sing to each other, and boy, is it really awkward. Jess seems incredibly nervous about it, since dogs know these two don’t have the most loving partnership, but Kyle seems to think it’s no big.

And so they sing. Everyone chooses to sing Gams’s old “La la la” song, and I know I made fun of Gams for not being all that amazing, but I appreciate her more now. Neither Kyle nor Jessica can sing to save their lives (or Gams’s, for that matter!) and their harmonies are not solid at all. It’s an embarrassing effort, and I wish Alex would interrupt them with a sarcastic slow clap. But before he can tell them to “Go jump back up your mother,” the two of them start in on each other. It would be so like Jess to rush through singing the song just to get to yelling at Kyle faster. “What was THAT, Kyle?!” she demands. “Did you suddenly forget you’re supposed to be singing, not gargling?! That was not your best effort!” Kyle, in turn, slams Jess’s ability to harmonize, leading Jess to retort, “Harmony? You call your grunts and moans ‘harmony’?! More like excruciating pain!” I am drawing some major conclusions from this argument about how these two would be in bed together.

They sit down again, and now Kyle is the one upset about how it didn’t work, and Jess, like she wasn’t screaming in frustration for the same reason two seconds ago, wants to know why he thinks it’s a big deal all of a sudden. “Because, Jess,” he says, “the Shrine is supposed to appear when two lovers…sing…uh…” He gets even more upset when Jess mocks him for his insecurity about her feelings for him. This from the girl who threw a fit when the well of compliments for her IUD necklace dried up. She also tells Alex now that Kyle can’t express his feelings in song, or at any time except when he’s drunk. I have a good feeling about these two! It’s gonna work!

Things are looking bad now–Kyle and Jessica may be a trainwreck of a couple and Kyle may be as gay as the day is long, but at least they openly acknowledge that they’re an item. How are Mia and Nash going to do if they can’t even get that far? Nash stands up next at Alex’s prompting and asks, I assume tremulously, “S…so, uh, Mia…why don’t we, ah, try singing together?” Nice job, Romeo. Mia is basically like, “Oh, will the Shrine appear if two VERY GOOD FRIENDS sing? Okay, but I’ m not a good singer!” Ouch. Without further ado, they go up to the front and have their turn.

It’s not as bad as Kyle and Jess’s effort, but Nash’s voice cracks several times and otherwise it sounds like two six year olds singing to each other as they hold hands for the first time by the see-saw. Needless to say, the Blue Dragon is not like, “DANG, these two have a love as deep as the ocean, I need to get me some of that,” and the shrine does not appear. Squeak attributes this underwhelming display to nerves on Nash’s part, and Nash just looks forlorn and sprays ellipses in response, because, SUPER SHOCKING SPOILER, he’s nervous for unrelated reasons. Mia, of course, blames herself and her horrible voice, and Nash will not abide that kind of slander. It’s the polar opposite of the fight Kyle and Jess just had, with Mia and Nash taking turns abusing themselves and complimenting each other. The solution is obvious: Kyle and Nash need to fuck, like, yesterday.

Well, I forgot to talk to Mia and Nash after their performance, though I’m sure it would just be more of Mia being naïve and Nash dropping foreshadowing, so let’s just get on with it. Squeak sighs that they are now out of options, since the Blue Dragon cannot fathom the office of Dragonmaster being filled by a wretched single person. Mia says, like nobody had thought of this, “If [Gams] were here to sing with you, Alex, the Shrine would surely appear.” Yeah, well, she isn’t, and Alex is keeping his options open, thanks. Alex looks all sad, but Squeak goes, “Alex, I have an idea! Why don’t you play your ocarina? I know [Gams] will hear it…and feel it!” And now I have the unfortunate mental image of Gams sitting on top of the washing machine because it feels like Alex’s ocarina. Thanks, Squeak!

Alex can choose to deem this a waste of time, but that would only in turn waste my time because he has to play his goddamn ocarina to move forward, and so he does. Never mind that the people in Lyton specifically said two people have to sing. Like, if Kyle and Jess had kazoos instead of their shitty voices, would that have made a difference? Maybe!

So this is where shit gets really dumb. Really dumb. Alex begins tooting out their song on his ocarina while the others watch in awe, envious of his and Gams’s true love. Barf. We cut to a mysterious room full of metal pipes and grates in some kind of mechanical structure, where Gams and the other kidnapped singers are being kept. We don’t know this yet, but this room is really fucking far away from Lyton. Nonetheless, Gams immediately hears Alex’s song–it’s magic, fuck you!–and starts to sing along. Lily takes note of this and tells the other girls, “Let’s all sing with [Gams]! If we sing, we won’t be afraid, and we won’t cry!” So have they been crying this whole time? That’s kind of awful. The songstresses circle up and join Gams on the third verse, giving her a set of human backup singers to go with the angelic choir she already has. It’s not visible on her sprite but there is undoubtedly a perfect crystalline tear rolling down Gams’s cheek.

As soon as the other girls start singing, Xeboobia teleports in to tell them, “Quiet, all of you! I demand it! Stop this insurrection at once!” Xeboobia hates their pure, virtuous voices, because she is evil and slutty! Print it! Royce and Fellatio soon join her to stare at their prisoners. Royce thinks the song sounds pretty but that it’s ultimately pointless and “a pathetic attempt to control their fears,” putting me in the uncomfortable position of having Royce as my in-game mouthpiece. I don’t like wearing pasties, honest. But only Fellatio–who is by virtue of her hair color and extra clothing the Nice One–truly appreciates what they’re witnessing. “Pity them, Royce?” she asks. “You should be in awe of them… Don’t you feel the power of this song? Don’t you feel it stirring your very soul?” She goes on with such sanctimony that I kind of want to punch her, “If this song doesn’t warm your heart, Royce, it’s because yours is already dead.” I mean, really? I guess I’m keeping Royce company in the Dead Black Slutty Lonely Hearts Club.

SOON.

If this has an erupting fountain on top, I don’t know what I’ll do.

Somehow, this scene has room to become more nauseating. I know, I don’t believe it, either. The screen goes black except for a bright blue spotlight on Gams, still singing her little heart out with her backup kidnappees harmonizing along in the darkness. In the background, Magic Emperor Ghaleon is watching her with naked lust, since listening to Mary Sue singalongs is his idea of pornography. If he could use Gams’s voice as the soundtrack for a video of Dyne disrobing at Althena’s Shrine, he’d never have to leave the house. Anyway, he’s actually saying stuff. “Yes, [Gams]. Yes…” he creeps. “With each note you sing…and with every breath you take…your awakening grows closer. And on that glorious day, your voice will mark the beginning of my eternal dominion.” That sounds like nonsense, but it’ll turn out to be pretty literal.

Ghaleon fades away as Gams continues to sing, and some hollow banging noises bring us back to Alex at the lake. Squeak begs him to stop playing, because, “It reminds me too much of [Gams].” Yeah, Alex, stop doing that thing that is your last desperate hope of opening the shrine and therefore saving her! Dick! Alex ignores him and keeps playing, and that’s probably a good thing, because a beat later they hear a stronger rumbling and Squeak shouts, with his awful voice-acting, “Alex, look! Something’s happening!” And they all watch as, in one of the game’s more gratuitous and pointless anime sequences, the towering Blue Dragon Shrine rises out of a blue-green whirlpool in the lake. It’s a phallus with a mouth, so again with the metaphor confusion, but it’s also covered top to bottom in long phallic snakes. So overall it’s a penis.