Snippets: Spargus is Haunted (first epilogue)
Would've had this out last week, but our cat Mephistopheles decided that was the perfect time to give us all a free heart attack with a health scare that turned out to not be an emergency after all. Thanks, bud. Thanks for that. (Long chapter incoming)
Cleanup took months.
Mother Weaver...donated...a great many metalhead carcasses and skull gems for trading — how aware of their monetary value she was, no one was certain. Daxter was convinced that the colossal spider merely operated on the basis of hu'mens seeming to like vaguely shiny things — and some loose chitin for construction materials before deciding it was time to shepherd her Wastelanders back up to the mountains.
Mother Weaver preferred the close environment of the tunnels. Being exposed in open air was far from her ideal vacation.
She disliked being out of her cave and she disliked her Tiny Noisy Things being out of her cave.
The occasional party left the caverns on adventures, but never this many at once. It threw Mother Weaver's daily routines off and she Didn't Like It.
When she'd tired of the ruins of Main Town, the towering arachnid rose from her temporary web and plucked a strand. A deep, reverberating note rolled over the ruined district like the sound of a harp. And almost as one, every volunteer left from Foothills stopped what they were doing and turned to face the colossus. Almost as one, they hummed or whistled or sang the note back to her, bringing their feet down in a thunderous stomp.
Weaver raised a limb delicately and touched another thread, releasing a higher note.
Again, the mountain Wastelanders echoed it back to her.
"What are they doing?" Jak asked, unable to look away.
"Communicating," Damas answered aloud. Even his amplified voice was hushed.
"I'd heard stories about this. I never thought I'd actually witness it."
This time, the Foothills clan sang first, accompanying three notes with a chorus of feet against stone. The spider seemed to be responding to the vibrations of their feet more than their voices. But she repeated the low-high-low trio, and then settled into an intimidating crouch.
Jak had been just as concerned as Keira to see all eighty Foothills clan warriors hurry to the Inevitable's sides to just...clip carabiners to spider silk and hang onto massive, segmented legs. Seventeen younger warriors who didn't want to hang on actually scrambled up onto her back rather than go home on foot.
"Uh-? Should they be doing that?" Keira had nervously asked.
The only answer they ever got about it was a Longstump woman grimacing and saying, "Foothills rushes in where Precursors fear to tread."
No one was sure if the River-Elk's wrath had been satisfied, but thus far he hadn't left the water again. Nobody was eager to go check and see if he was still angry, or if he had a new corpse-light flickering miserably on his back. But it was enough for the lowland clan to resume business as usual, at least.
The occasional group from Longstump's outer villages came up now and then with food for the disaster relief efforts — run by Brutter, considering Tess's...predicament.
Being two feet tall and covered with fur wasn't the part that threw her off. Learning to balance with a tail was a bit tricky, but finding out she couldn't lift more than two of her beloved custom guns anymore?
The remaining two ottsels from the core narrowly avoided needing divine intervention to save them from the wrath of the gun-mod hobbyist.
Torn and Ashelin weren't much help, they had their hands full with explaining spirits to a city that had kept them out for generations. And Veger's plot. And the whole matter of the House of Mar still being active.
After the initial screams and panic upon seeing Damas’s transformed state — barely tempered when the man wearing feathers did...something that reduced the deposed king's height down to a respectable seven feet tall — there had been an effort by a few neighborhoods to restore him to the throne.
He'd politely but hastily turned them down.
Some ten years of training in diplomacy — of a non-Wastelander variety — allowed him to decline with grace. But everyone who really knew him could tell he was actively restraining himself from saying something like "you couldn't pay me to run this place again".
Instead, he'd cited existing responsibilities to family, city, and allies.
"I'm sorry, I am not the kind of leader you are looking for. I bear you no ill will, I know all too well how few of you had any say in the way I departed this city before. But I've built a life of my own, free from the constraints of bloodlines and inherited roles. I earned my place among my people. I encourage you to find a leader who can do the same."
The remnants of the Grand Council did not receive anywhere near as gracious a farewell.
"I wash my hands of your foolishness. But if word should ever reach me that any of you had knowledge of what Praxis did to my son and did not intervene, you will see me again. And on that day, this city will be no haven for you, nor will you find shelter beyond its walls."
The Spargans left a small detachment to provide security for the relief efforts and the purification of the former "metal town". But after that first week, Jak was headed home. And he wasn't going alone.
"I'm never leaving home again," he groused as he settled into the air train.
Phaeng scoffed.
"Yeah, lets see how long that lasts."
"Didn't say I was never leaving the citadel again," Jak argued, "I said I wasn't leaving home! Plenty of places to explore on the island still."
"If your father lets you out of his sight for six minutes," Asa countered.
"If my father lets me out of his sight for six minutes," Jak acknowledged with cheerful signs.
Keira twisted her goggles into knots as she watched the easy back and forth between the two Wastelanders and Jak. He was open, lighter in a way she wasn't used to. She told herself it was because the war was finally over, and they'd all survived. But Keira suspected Jak had changed long before that.
"Bowl cut is Asa," Daxter whispered helpfully, "The guy with the prosthetic eye is Phaeng. They were part of Jak's...I guess training cadre out in the desert. Some of the only ones to survive a um. A wolf attack on a training mission. They ended up pretty close."
Keira didn't need to know about the Blood Wolf yet. She had enough on her plate just coming to terms with her decision to distance herself from her father, let alone the existence of spirits, good or evil.
"Anybody hear from Roth yet?" Jak asked.
"Last I heard, he was back home, getting Lara down to Ward Two under the Arena during the main invasion."
"Children's hospital?" Asa gave Phaeng an odd look that quickly morphed into shock. "Oh Frith! Is she in labor?! I thought D.J. wasn't due for two months!"
"No!" Phaeng waved his hands quickly. "Not in labor! Just avoiding stress and evacuating kids down into the shelter."
Jak made a face.
"Evacuating Spargan kids? That's like the opposite of avoiding stress."
Phaeng rolled his eyes — the LED light in his left eye making it all the more dramatic.
"How bad could it be? It's not like you're there."
"Y'know what-"
Jak started to get up, but Daxter yanked him back down to the bench — a testament to how tired he really was.
Keira snorted.
"So...Phaeng and Asa, right?"
The young men made perfunctory greetings, and she lifted her hand in return.
"I'm um. Keira."
Asa cracked a smile.
"We kinda guessed. Hey, it's gonna be chaos when we get home, so if I don't get the chance to say it before then, thanks."
Keira blinked.
"For what?"
"For what you did for Damas," the scout answered. There was a quiet sincerity in his eyes — something mirrored in the faces of several of the Wastelanders in the air train.
"They uh, some of the Longstump guys said you yanked his soul back into his body with an Inevitable class breathing down your neck."
"More or less true," Tess yawned, having woken up in time for the latter half of the statement.
Quetzaleh had waited until Damas’s first harsh gasp for air before partially revealing himself. That was, frankly, a mercy. Keira wouldn't have been able to concentrate on healing her friend's father if she'd known that was hovering over her head.
"Is he...going to come into the city?" Keira asked.
She didn't know if she hoped the answer was yes, or no.
"I hope so," Tess said nonchalantly, "I like him."
Jak looked down at her with very wide eyes.
"You saw him mostly unshielded."
Tess bared a newly sharpened canine in an unsettling grin.
"And I had just gotten turned into an ottsel and hit a deity with a stick. Your great-granddad was not the weirdest thing to happen that day."
Jak was suddenly very worried about what Tess might get up to on her first moonless night in Spargus. They needed to get some paw-sized gun parts to distract her with.
After two hours, Jak needed to stretch. He walked back and forth in the passenger hold a few times, then squeezed through the cramped passage to the head. Not that he had any particular need to use it, but there was a window across from the narrow door. Jak leaned against the hull and looked out into the cloudbank. He could barely make out a rippling shadow, a flash of azure now and then when a scale caught the light.
It was a little difficult to comprehend Grandfather's true size. Just as he couldn't really grasp how big King Owl truly was after having only seen two of his claws. The only Inevitable Class he'd seen in her entirety was Mother Weaver, and she was massive already.
Even the River-Elk had been shrouded by the fog when he came for Veger. Jak didn't know what his body looked like, and he suspected he didn't want to know.
How could beings so massive exist on this planet? Even Metalkor would only have been the size of Grandfather's skull and first two vertebrae!
A bright light erupted in the clouds like a fireball, and for a moment, Jak tensed. Were they under fire?
Then the light vanished, only to appear again.
I sssee you.
The Wind-Serpent's whisper in his mind carried a playful amusement.
Getting bored, sssnakelet? Or jussst sssaying hello?
...yes?
The fireball curved into a half-moon shape that was pretty easily interpreted as a smiling eye.
Hello to you, too, sssnakelet, Quetzaleh chuckled — an incredibly bizarre sensation in Jak’s brain.
Baba ssssaysss hello, too.
Jak couldn't see Damas through the clouds. He knew his father was somewhere on the Wind-Serpent, his back or his skull or something, but he wouldn't have had the slightest idea where to start looking.
What are you going to do when we get home?
Sssunbathe, probably. While ssssmaller. It would be rude to crusssh any houssssesss.
That hadn't been what Jak meant, but he supposed he couldn't fault him for it. He wasn't sure Quetzaleh actually qualified as a reptile in the traditional sense, what with all the shapeshifting. But snakes did like to sun themselves, didn't they? And he'd been trapped underground for fifty years! If anyone deserved some time to just soak in the sun, it was Grandfather.
Jak frowned. Something about that thought was nagging at him. Something about the old stories-
Grandfather, is Frith real?
Primarily dormant, but yesss. Grandfather'ssss father isss real.
Oh F-
Wait.
Jak stumbled back a step, back hitting the bathroom door with a thud.
"Sonnovacob," he whispered, "You've got to be kidding me."
There was a dormant...entity...in the sun?! What was that thing's internal temperature if that was his preferred habitat?!
Something else occurred to him, tempering bewildered shock with something more somber.
You...haven't seen your father in fifty years?
Quetzaleh didn't answer at first. The fireball vanished, and for a terrible moment, Jak was afraid he'd offended him.
Then turquoise feathers brushed past the window, scraping along the hull. An eye the size of a tire appeared on the other side of the glass; Quetzaleh had compressed himself again. Jak knew it was for his sake that the colossal spirit was doing it. He almost felt a little guilty.
No. I have...missssed him. He ssssleepsss, but we ssensssed each other.
A translucent membrane slid over the eyeball for an instant.
I did not want you to know the ssssame pain, sssnakelet. I am...sssorry that I did not recognize you at firssst.
Jak shrugged and managed a bittersweet smile.
I didn't even recognize me when I saw the kid.
His smile fell into more of a cringe.
So I'm...guessing I need to stop saying...uh, use- using your dad as a cuss.
The slit pupil narrowed playfully.
No, go ahead. It wakesss him up and hisss griping amusssesss me.
....ah.
Jak really had no response for that. No fireballs had rained down from solar flares, so presumably Frith wasn't too upset about it — or maybe he was like Mother Weaver and just preferred not to bother. But it was incredibly unnerving to think about a life form that old still existing.
Of course, in that vein, how old was Grandfather?
Jak...needed to sit down.
What was he supposed to tell Daxter about this? "Bad news, sun-god's real. Good news, he's apparently retired"?
Oh blistering rot, that was the Wind-Serpent's father. Which meant he was Jak’s great-great-grandfather. What the rot.
He found himself hoping that the next iteration of him lived in a world where Damas got to be a farmer or something. Where maybe their ancestor moved out to the Wastelands to raise a sprawling family across the archipelago. Sure, they'd still have certified Weird Blood, but it had to be less complicated than this.
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