Jay Eight-Legs: Leg the Second

Jay clung on and tried to relax. Their progress was both leisurely and larcenous and Jay approved of neither. He’d managed to get through to Gib that the task was urgent and Gib had agreed to look into it, but the pirate creature was still about his other purpose. Several pouches and bags were filling with priceless Idoneth treasures that did not belong… wherever Gib was going to take them.

At least it’s giving me time to recover.

So Gib plodded and pilfered along — Jay resting on his shoulders — until they reached the outskirts of the jungle. The sand ended and the tall, tropical trees began very suddenly, like the gods had built an invisible wall. Gib peered into it, then over his shoulder at Jay.

“Don’t look like much of a path, ye sure it be this way?”

Jay glowed pink.

“That be meaning yes, do it? Arr,”

Without a second thought, Gib started crashing and hacking through the trees. Jay slipped down Gib’s back, tentacles wrapped round his torso, so he wasn’t pummelled and whipped by the branches. At first it was all he could do to hold on, but gradually he got used to it, and the snapping and crunching, and could pay attention to the cacophony of noises among these strange land and air creatures.

How unlike home.

His thoughts began to drift, free-floating in his mind, and his skin began to glow a soft, soporific yellow. The unsteady, rolling thud of Gib’s progress was somehow relaxing.

After all, why not? Why shouldn’t I sleep for —

Something hurtled out of the trees in front of them, right behind the sound of shouts and running over the dense ground. It crashed into a trunk and fell back on itself. Gib’s body blocked it from view so Jay, now fully awake, clambered up to see.

“Well I’ll be — ” said Gib, but he never was. Jay managed to climb just far enough to make out that the thing was a person of some kind, small, green, scaly, and bleeding. It rolled over, chittering miserably.

Oh, it’s carrying something… cradling it…

There wasn’t even time for a closer look. A human, two humans, with many more behind them, burst through the undergrowth. This was never a clear area, now they were all on top of each other. Gib took a step back but hefted his blunderbuss as he did.

The humans were dressed in baggy shirts, ragged doublets, and tattered hats. Their skin was bad and their teeth worse, but they made up for lacking any qualities with the quantity of their weapons. They were fairly bedecked with pistols, knives, cutlasses, axes, picks, shovels…

Surely the same as the ones we fought. Better not to underestimate them.

“Who are you?”

The human levelled its pistol at Gib and began to tentatively step forward.

“Well now, is what the realms have come to? Here I be, minding me own business, not doing nobody any ‘arm, only to ‘ave pistols pointed in me belly!”

Gib aimed the blunderbuss from his hip. The human stopped taking a step.

“Look,” it said, “we’re just going to take this, and you’re going to let us, and nobody has to get hurt.”

“Seems to me somebody already be hurt.”

The human started to say something, but the another one, safe behind its fellows, chimed in.

“Hey, why have you got tentacles? Are you with them?”

Gib paused and Jay tensed, but to the credit of his strange new friend, it was not a long pause.

“It be me parrot.”

“What?”

“Every pirate has a parrot but they was sold out so I got me this octopus instead, savvy?”

They didn’t like that answer.

“The Idoneth stood in the way of our great work,” said the first human, “relinquish the ochtar and we will let you go on your way.”

Jay glowed a terrified blue, but he couldn’t help but think, could I blame him if he did?

Another pause. Everyone tried to look at everyone else simultaneously.

Gib sniffed. “Nah.”

The two humans were red paste against the trees before Jay realised he’d fired. Shocked, the other humans froze, which gave Gib more than enough time to pull two pistols, shoot them both, and charge forwards.

He caught one with his shoulder, crushing it into the undergrowth. Another collapsed with a cutlass cleft in the head. The other three, though, recovered their wits and charged in turn. One swung an axe that Gib caught with the cutlass and one’s pistol misfired, but the other dived under his guard with a dagger. His abdomen was completely open…

Or it would have been, were it not for a detexterous parrot. Jay pushed the human back with two tentacles and launched himself with the others. A brief, confusing tangle ensured, but Jay plunged the knife in. He wasn’t sure where, but when he disentangled, he saw it lodged in the throat.

He glowed bright red. That felt good.

Gib had already cut down the other two and was now leaning on a tree, catching his breath.

“Arr, me thanks for that, Jay. I’m sure ye’d be sayin’ thankee if ye could.”

Jay tried to nod, but in that moment they both simultaneously remembered the scaly person. One stomped and one floated over. He put a tentacle to its neck. It was still breathing, just, chittering very softly.

There was something very magical about the creature so he tried to reach out that way. It was there, but it would not respond.

Too far gone.

It still clasped its little object tightly. Gib stroked its shoulder in an attempt to get it to let go.

“Come on now, little fella, let me see ye wound, savvy?”

It lifted up its head slightly to look into Gib’s face with a big, yellow eye, chittered again, then fell back.

Now it’s dead.

Gib took off his hat and prized the relic from its hands. Holding it up to the light streaming through the canopy, they could both see it was real gold. Otherwise, it was hard to make head or fin or it. The thing was cylindrical, like a scroll holder, but without any kind of lid, and covered in incomprehensible straight-line patterns. Jay glowed green.

I should very much like to study this. Perhaps it has something to do with the ritual…

But Gib either didn’t see, didn’t understand, or ignored him. It was popped into the bags with everything else and the prodigious pirate stood up.

“Well, that were confusin’ an’ no mistake, but ye’s got a job ta do, haven’t ye Jay? There be no time like the present. Hop aboard.”