Jay Eight-Legs: Leg the Last

A boom rolled in, resounding off the great, bare flank of the volcano into a clap of thunder, then dissipated, lost in the endless sea and sky.

I don’t know what that was, but I know what it means: the signal.

The cultists shot into tumult. Drawing weapons, running feet, a thousand shouts of alarm, command, or puzzlement. Some ran off the crude wooden platform that stood just a little way into the camp, no more than thirty feet from Jay’s hiding place. Others in nearby tents scrambled to their feet and began running down toward the noise.

Good luck against all that, Gib.

When Jay started moving, the Warlock was already in amongst the little tents, shooting him an impatient look. They advanced swift and low, keeping the tents between themselves and prying eyes. With the camp in uproar, there was no challenge and soon they were right by the platform. The Warlock slipped into a larger tent and gestured to Jay to follow. By the time he had swum inside, the elf had already cut a loop hole in the back of the canvass and was peering through. Jay joined him.

Two pirates still stood on the edge of the platform. One sported a shaggy grey beard and a mockery of a priest’s robes. The other was tall, lithe, and absolutely covered in armaments. It had a bandolier of pistols, two cutlasses, a knife in the boot, and two more pistols tucked into its belt. Her belt? Jay was still getting used to human anatomy.

The Warlock put his words into Jay’s head.

“I propose we take them out simultaneously. We will move directly beneath them, I will pull the captain down, you pull the old man, then we slit their throats before they can scream. Agreed?”

It’s very useful that we can speak silently like this, even if he does feel unnatural.

“I will try,” Jay replied.

Without waiting for more confidence, the Warlock lengthened the loophole to ground level with a quick swish of his sword. They slipped through and under the platform.

Jay tried to calm himself. He could feel blue rising to his sky.

Focus. This is the crucial moment.

They positioned themselves under their respective quarries. The one the Warlock called the captain was ordering another pirate to prepare something or other. Whatever it is, it won’t be good for Gib. Jay and the Warlock had to wait for the new arrival to leave. They followed its footsteps across the platform until they saw its legs scurrying away down the hill.

“Now,” said the Warlock, out loud and impassive. The two of them sprang.

Jay had barely crested the edge of the platform when the captain was already dead, her head rolling off into the scrub. He himself was lashing out with his tentacles to grapple the feet of the priest… but it was empty air.

The runt!

It had moved forward onto the platform, toward a mound of something in the centre, and now spun round to face them, mouth agog. The Warlock rushed forwards first, of course, but even he hadn’t got a step before the priest raised its staff. Jay felt a faint pulse of Chamon. In the same instant, the Warlock’s sword blade had melted into nothing.

“Interlopers!” it cried.

“Pox,” said the Warlock, stopping in his tracks.

Then the elf dived. A fiery blast of Aqshy passed over him, barely an inch above, but now he was defenceless and the priest, still shouting, was drawing a knife. Jay reached for a gun on the captain’s corpse, drew it, and fired.

It missed, but it distracted the priest just long enough for the Warlock to regain his feet and, kicking his legs in a wide circle, grappled his opponent’s head. Flying, he took himself and the priest down, but the human’s neck snapped as he did.

Phew.

“By all means, take your time,” growled the Warlock, picking himself up again. “It’s not like anyone could possibly have heard that.”

Be easier if you just shut up, thought Jay, but he said nothing. The Warlock was, after all, correct.

Before them was a mound of bones held in a wide, squat shape with treated bandages. The shape seemed, at first, to be meaningless, yet something about it told Jay there was a method here.

Perhaps those are eyes and that is a skull… seated legs… oh.

Jay and the Warlock looked at each other in horror, panic, and excitement.

He had only heard of the Seraphon in the tales of the Wardens. That’s why he didn’t recognise the lizard creature earlier. But those old stories had lingered on the power and majesty of the Starmasters, more ancient than the elves, more even than the Realms themselves. Here the remains of one such, the last imprint of a prince among wizards.

But there’s something still within, isn’t there?

The Warlock took a step forward.

Around them, the pirates had taken up a hue and cry. One in a tricorn hat was pointing directly at them. A group was heading up the hill, only a little way down. Six of them, Now seven. A stray shot rang out.

“Come on,” Jay put into the Warlock’s head, “let’s get down!”

His erstwhile ally ignored him and stretched out a hand. Jay could feel what he was feeling. Inside, somehow bound up in that body of bleached bone and bandage, there was a soul. They could only touch its rim but it gave the impression that it was the edge of a precipice. Here was something vast, something towering, something eternal…

Those pirates were still coming. Jay summoned up what eloquence he had.

“You don’t have a name, but you could.”

The Warlock stopped caressing the bone for a moment.

“I know your fate is bleak. That doesn’t mean you can’t find joy along the way. That doesn’t mean you have to give in.”

“The contrary, this is not giving — ”

“It is! It is! Don’t you see? The Eater of Souls has driven these cultists through their greed. They have become so consumed by the pursuit of power that they are willing to deliver it, and themselves, to the evil gods. To copy them will not save you from your foe. It will not even delay your passage to Her. What power it gives you will only corrupt you yet further and your passage to Her lap will be complete. But you have a different power, a stronger power, one that will resist her..”

The Warlock slouched his shoulders. All in a moment, he seemed old, weary, defeated.

But Jay didn’t have time for this. Another gun fired, much closer this time, and there were boots on the wooden stairs up to the platform. He wrapped his tentacles around the Warlock’s cold skin and dragged them both back across the platform until they plummeted back down to the ground.

“Pox!” The Warlock threw off Jay’s tentacles. “Now how will we possibly stop them?”

He had a point. There was no way of scattering those bones without opening themselves up to target practice.

But perhaps we could do it just in time. Fight through the swords and smash the Slann to pieces. Then they can shoot us all they want.

Jay elongated one tentacle and drew one of the captain’s swords. He proffered it.

“Fancy some pirate souls?”

The Warlock grinned a vicious grin.

“They never stood a chance.”

Arms outstretched, one clasping a cutlass, he sprung straight up in the air on one foot. It lasted the barest slither of a moment, but the image stopped the gaggle of pirates instantly. The Warlock had come as an avenging angel.

Jay wasted no time. He slipped up over the edge and grabbed as many pistols as he could.

The three nearest cultists rushed the Warlock but he cut them down in one swoop. More were coming. Many more. One aimed a musket and fell with Jay’s pistol shot in its head. Some were coming up the steps. Jay fired four pistols at once into them. Those who he hit fell back onto the others.

Where has this been all my life?

Others came climbing up the side. The Warlock plunged a sword straight through a skull. Next a gut. An axe swung at his head. He parried easily, but the axe split the cutlass in half. Then the axe pirate fell to a shot in the back. Jay went for the boot knife and threw it to the Warlock, who caught it without looking. Still there were more.

Time to go.

Jay shot forwards to the bones, grappled them with all his tentacles at once, and heaved. Behind, the Warlock ducked and swerved between two more enemies. Jay could feel give…

Not enough.

A violent pain burst into his body. On instinct, he shot ink and wriggled into the closest hole — between the bones. Only then did he look at the wound. A sword had shorn one of his tentacles clean off and he was bleeding freely from a stump.

Now or never.

He lashed wildly with the others, trying to scatter the bones. A couple ripped away.

Not enough.

His skin went bright blue as a terrible panic arose in him. A lightheadedness, too.

Just… a bit…

Through the skeleton, he saw the Warlock go down to a knee. Something, probably a shot, had wounded him in the leg. Jay felt a hand grab at him, but he was already too weak to resist.

If we all just —

Something roared. Something big. The hand released its grip just as the wood beneath him collapsed away.

He looked up to see a gigantic, three-horned lizard monster crashing into the platform. Its pillar legs stomped the wood to pieces, taking bones and pirates with it. It lowered its head to swing those mighty horns and Jay saw its rider.

Gib! Gib has come to save us!

Jay tried to rise, but he found he couldn’t… he couldn’t even keep his eyes open. His thoughts swam this way and that. Before he fell unconscious, they alighted on one thing.

When the ghoul saw the giant horse, it was probably that.

Epilogue

“Well,” said the Warlock, testing pressure on his injured leg, “I have but one more proposition to make.”

The ghoul gurgled something around the bone it was gnawing.

“I shall take that as your undivided attention. Well, friends, for surely those who had bled so copiously for one another must be called friends, it is time for us to part. The Ochtarr must return to the Idoneth, or at the very least the sea. I must search for my purpose beyond the consumption of souls. And you…”

“Arr, I must be movin’ on, aye. The seas be large but they don’t be infinite, an’ word will spread of a wanderin’ Ogor from the survivors what sailed away. I’ll keep travellin’ ’til I find a place I can call me home.”

The Warlock bowed his head. “There we are. The only one for whom we cannot speak is the ghoul, yet I think we may assume it has some quest of great moment ahead of it. Which leads me to my proposal: let us always save a weather eye for one another. We all have great travels to undertake, and they will bring us to places far from here, and even stranger than this, but I am certain that we shall meet again, should we but wish it.”

“Aye, I’d drink ta that, had I any rum left.”

I will miss all of you, especially Gib, Jay thought, but he said nothing. The farewell could last the rest of the day, and he had a long way to swim. He just turned around and left. Behind him, he heard the others do the same.

Jay had changed the island, though the singing birds and humming insects would never know it, just as it had changed him. Here he had found a lifelong injury, unlikely friendship, and, most of all, a name. The imprint of his tentacles on the sand would soon be washed away and his own memories of it fade and blur. But he would never forget the name that Gib had given him and to which the Prince of Pleasure had made one minor edit.

Jay Seven-Legs.