Sai-ias

After the death of Explorer and Jak—in what I guessed would have been a massive explosion in space caused by Minos—I had returned to the interior world. Minos no longer spoke to me in my head.

I understood by now that from the moment he intercepted my first “radio” signal, Minos had deceived me utterly and flawlessly. I had lured Explorer onwards; and Minos allowed me to do so; time and again letting me roam “free” in the rooms of the exterior hull in order to make my radio calls. Then he destroyed the ship he called Nemesis, and Jak with it. It had been a plan carefully nurtured; Minos had allowed me to befriend Jak, so he could slay him.

I no longer had any hope left. My former friends hated me; and many of them like Fray had no memory of our good times together. They only ever knew me when I was masquerading as the evil bitch who freely served the Ka’un.

I knew that by this stage no one would ever believe that my actions had all been a pretence, in pursuit of my plan to overthrow the Ka’un. For that plan of course had now failed. The pretence had turned out to be the reality; I had simply been deceiving myself.

Thus I was left with nothing.

Then one day I felt a flutter of wings near my head, and saw Lirilla.

“Sai-ias,” she said.

“Yes?” I said. Lirilla no longer considered herself my friend, after witnessing me vanquish and humiliate the Krakzios; but she was at least speaking to me.

“Sharrock back, dead,” she said, and flew away.

I was consumed with fear at her words.

I began to lope with my tentacles; I saw crowds near the lake, and hurried towards them.

And I saw a muscular body lying there. It took me a moment, but then I recognised it as Sharrock. He was damp, possibly drowned, and had been flayed. His eyes stared blankly from his fleshless face.

Fray saw me and growled in her throat. But I ignored her, and pushed my way through. And I touched Sharrock with a tentacle tip and felt his pulse, and there was none.

So I thrust my tentacle tip down his throat until it was nearly in his gut, and then wrenched it out. He vomited water and he began to breathe once again.

I lifted him up, and carried him swiftly on my back to the well of the water of life and laid him down there. He slept there for an hour, and emerged spluttering.

The new-born Fray and my former friend Quipu gathered with me, as I looked down upon Sharrock.

“Will you take him back?” said Quipu One.

I stared at him blankly, not comprehending.

“He has escaped,” Quipu Two clarified. “Surely it is your job to betray us once more.”

I shuddered with shame at his words; though I did not blame him for uttering them.

“Who is he?” asked Fray, staring with puzzlement at the naked, flayed Maxolun.

“Oh Fray,” said Quipu One. “If only you knew! Your previous self followed this one to glorious defeat and death. Sharrock is—he was—”

“He tried to destroy the Ka’un; he failed,” I said.

“He’s awake,” said Quipu Four.

Sharrock was indeed awake; and looked up at us. And he spoke.

But his words were a babble; we could not understand him.

“How?” I cried. “Surely we should still understand him?”

“My guess is that the Ka’un have deleted his language from our paklas,” said Quipu One.

“Paklas?” asked Fray, baffled.

Sharrock whimpered with frustration at our inability to understand him. He pointed, to his head; then he stood up and touched the heads of Quipu.

We stared at him blankly.

Sharrock roared with rage. Never had I seen him so helpless, so frustrated; nor so wretchedly vulnerable, stripped as he was of all skin.

But then Sharrock paused, and was clearly lost in thought.

Then he stood up tall. And he no longer looked defeated; he looked like a warrior about to go into battle.

And what then followed was theatre, as Quipu later called it, of the magnificently absurd; a mime show that spoke louder than words.

We saw Sharrock, bound and tortured; we saw Sharrock fighting with his bonds; then Sharrock free; Sharrock running down a corridor; and finally, Sharrock destroying something, we knew not what.

At the end of it all, Sharrock took up a tree branch and he thrust it into my middle segment. Hard. And again. And again. I did not move or recoil, I was trying to fathom his meaning.

Finally my body spasmed and a deadly quill emerged from my middle segment; Sharrock had seen me do this in the battle against Cuzco.

Sharrock then touched my quill with his flayed hands and pointed to the heavens; then mimed a penetrating thrust.

Eventually, I understood.

Later that day I told my tale to Quipu and Fray; the story of my long and ultimately futile deception of Minos. I talked of Star-Seeker Jak and his failed attempt to destroy the Hell Ship.

“He tried for so many thousands of years to take revenge—and then died in just a moment,” I said.

“This story—” said Quipu One.

“—could just be another lie,” said Quipu Two.

“Trust me or not, I don’t care,” I said. “There is about to be a war; prepare yourself for it.”

And then I told them what Sharrock wanted me to do.

“Is it possible?” said Quipu One after I had finished my account.

“Sharrock knows my powers,” I said. “He knows the powers of all of you. He has studied us all and he has planned; and it is the best plan any of us have yet conceived.

“In short, we have a chance,” I said. “Minos is no longer in my head; and I know from this that the pakla-link has been broken, for that evil bastard loves to haunt me and to spy on me. He thinks I do not know he is there; but I can always tell.

“But now Minos has gone; my mind is truly my own again; and this Sharrock has achieved.

“Now, the rest is up to us.”

I made my way down to the cargo bay, where the hull-hatch was located. Many times we had toppled stone corpses out through this gateway to the stars. But today we had another purpose in mind.

I squeezed myself into the hatchway, and Quipu manipulated the controls. An outer door opened, and I squeezed through; an inner door then closed, protecting the air in the cargo hold from the emptiness of space.

Then the outer door opened too and I fell out and was among stars.

Below me the Hell Ship floated, huge and beautiful and black-sailed. It was a cylinder of a vessel, elegantly curved, culminating in a triangle tip, and dazzlingly illuminated with lights buried in the metal. But the hull looked old now, and was coated with strange growths, like living beasts; save for a large patch of clear metal which I recognised as the spot where Explorer 410: Property of the Olaran Trader Fleet had sent a missile into the hull.

I unfurled my cape to its fullest extent, and hurled an ear frond at the ship until it touched metal and connected; and so I was now being pulled along with the Hell Ship on its effortlessly swift course through space.

I thought about Minos, and all that he had told me of himself. How much of it was true? I wondered. I knew of course that he had lied to me about many things. But had there been any honesty at all in his words? Did he ever actually have qualms about what he and his evil crew had done?

I doubted it. Whatever he had once been, Minos was now simply malign: beyond remorse and compassion, hate incarnate. I longed to kill him.

And so I would.

I fired air from my gills, and flew closer to the Hell Ship.

Then I clung to the hull with my body, gripping with my claws, embracing it like a bird smothering its prey.

And with a powerful jolt, I buried my centre quill in the hull.

It dug in deep—I felt pain rip through my body—then I pulled myself off, leaving a broad circular hole in the hull. The strange creatures that dwelled on the hull were clinging to my body now, gnawing me painfully, but I ignored them. My quill had become torn in the penetration; and blood dripped from my stomach.

I crawled, in pain, further along the hull.

Behind me, I knew, a small slow leak would have sprung up in the hull of the Hell Ship. Air from the outer world where the Ka’un dwelled was billowing out into space. I had ruptured the hull, and the inner seal, and the secondary inner seal; and, or so I hoped, it would take time for the hull’s self-heal mechanisms to repair the breach.

I did the same thing on another patch of hull. And again, and again. I performed the act one hundred times or more; and all the holes in the hill hissed out air silently.

Eventually the effort of it ripped my quill from my body, and blood gushed from my middle segment; but I thrust another quill into the hull. I had twenty in all.

After all twenty quills had ruptured, I was done.

I crawled back along the hull towards the hatch, as blood slowly spilled from my body to form a long scarlet slick in the midst of empty space.

I lay on the green plain; the rate of flow had slowed, but the blood that was emerging from my body now was mixed with black bile and entrails. The sheer power needed to thrust organic quill through hard metal had torn my insides apart.

Lirilla flew above my head, fanning me with her wings, whispering words of comfort wrapped within a song of tender beauty:

“Brave

Sai-ias

Joy

Pleasure

Hope

Do

Not

Die.”

I blacked out and woke; and when I woke I realised I was surrounded by an army of my fellow captives. Thousands of them had gathered, in silence, to comfort me in my pain, and perhaps to see me die.

Fray ceaselessly poured healing water of the well of life from a bucket over my bloodied stomach segment—sparing me her healing piss, for which I was grateful. A long chain of my fellow captives on this interior world brought fresh supplies of well-water ceaselessly.

And for a while I wondered if these healing waters were going to work upon me; might I survive this ordeal, and enjoy future days with Sharrock and the others as my friends once more?

But the pain was getting worse not better. My guts and womb and heart and other internal organs had been crushed and ripped in my huge effort; I was little more than a carcass of flesh surrounding a mess of damaged organs.

It was becoming undeniable to me that my injures were too serious to be healed; the only salvation for me was resurrection.

And that, I desperately hoped, would never happen; not if Sharrock and the others triumphed in this last terrible battle. For to be reborn as my twelve-year-old self, thrust back into this appalling world again! I could think of no greater horror.

Sharrock was kneeling by my head, stroking me with his hand. He looked worse than I felt; but I was pleased to see the look in his eyes. It was a look of rage, and a yearning for vengeance.

I whispered to him, but he could not comprehend.

So I opened my mouth; baring my huge jaws, and my sharp teeth. He reached inside with his hand, seeing the spark of ruby light there. And when his hand emerged, he was holding the Jewel of the Seventh Sun. His gift to me, returned.

“I kept it safe,” I said, but he did not comprehend.

“How goes the war?” I asked of Quipu.

“Soon they will come,” said Quipu One. “Soon.”

“Then you must kill,” I said, “those evil souls.”

“We shall,” said the Quipus.

“We shall,” said Fray.

“Don’t go,” said Lirilla.