Jay Eight-Legs: Leg the First

It was easier to drag himself along by the assorted body parts and other battlefield debris than try to swim up. He knew the ethersea was still there, that’s why he could breathe, it was just that nasty gash he’d received when the battle turned ill.

There are a lot of dead Idoneth here. It went even worse than I thought.

All he could do was put the despair out of his mind and try to drag himself onwards. Somewhere, the Soul Warden might still be alive and then… well, one thing at a time. He reached out another tentacle but it already felt heavy and weak. It also flashed blue in places, a sign of advancing despair he couldn’t control. He tensed in determination, latched onto the head of a thrall, and pulled himself that bit further.

But what is the point? Every face around him was unfamiliar. There were some thralls, a smattering of their human enemies, a grey heap that was once an Allopex. And the sun was so hot. He felt the despair creeping further in from his limbs. That’s when the idea came.

Calling up his last reserves of strength, he girded himself for one, big push. The effort felt like it would burst him to pieces but he had no choice. Minds over matter. With a least heave, he shot up nine, ten feet into the air — into to the ether sea.

Not enough.

The dead lay around him in every direction, spread from the edge of the sea, turning the white sands red, right up to the borders of the little jungle that surrounded the looming volcano at the centre of the island. There’s no way I will —

“‘Ere, what’s that, then?’

He spun round in the air to face the noise. A hulking, brutish figure was standing up from among the corpses, about twenty yards away. On its enormous, sway-bellied body it draped a black coat and on its head a black hat and eye-patch. It hefted a blunderbuss and he could make out a vicious blade at his belt too. Instincts told him to flee.

But not all of them. There was a friendly glint in the other eye, after all, and the hair on its face — on the cheeks and lip, but not the chin — gave the figure a kind of jaunty air. Besides, I may as well take my chances.

The figure approached while he lay in the air, bleeding gently. Once the thing was next to him, they were not far off eye-level.

“Well now,” said the thing. “Can ye talk?”

He tried to think of a way to express that he couldn’t but that he could understand, that he was dying, that there was a task of great importance to do, and all of them at once, and came up with nothing. Thankfully, the thing did it for him.

“Lift one of ye tentacles if ye be hearin’ me.”

Weakly, he obliged.

“Arr,” the thing rumbled, “ye be in a bad way, that’s no lie. Now, I’ll be taking that there wound and cleaning it up, ye hear me, but if ye so much as twinkle at me with that knife, I’ll blow ye t’ Davy Bones.”

The thing advanced without further ado and took the wound, at the joint between tentacle and body, in its roughly-textured but surprisingly gentle hands. It arr’d and hmm’d for a moment but was soon taking something out of its bag. The liquid in the flask stung like a zap from a fangmora. After that, it patched him up with a pad of cloth and a crude bandage.

It stood back to admire its handiwork. “It may hold, it may not, never done one of ye before. Speaking of, what be ye doin’ hereabouts? What’s ye name?’

Oh, I almost forget! With terrible urgency, he shot back down to the ground. He had little idea how to communicate. I must try.

The Soul Warden had told him that the site was on the other side of the volcano. Thick jungle and the remains of a human army were in the way, so they would have to go along the beach in the other direction, then loop round under the volcano, then up to the camp. With the haft of the stolen knife, he drew a short line going down, then curling up into a longer line. And a dot on the top to indicate their destination.

The thing nodded. His hearts leapt for joy, but then it spoke.

“J? Yer name be… Jay?”

He looked back at his map. Oh.

“Arr, well they call me Gib the Gibber. That’s me pirate name. Ye’ll be needing one too. ‘ow’s ‘eight-legs’? Lots of one legs, never ‘eard of an eight-legs.”

Please…

“Nice ta meet yer, Jay Eight-Legs.”