Poseidon

-

Jack was a good kid, Drachma thought, sitting on the edge of the wall. He might have done a few things wrong, but he was always a good kid. Not a damned thing wrong with the boy.

Drachma flexed his metal arm, and then moved the normal hand. It was lonely here, with no one around. This was a world of ice, he had found himself thrown into, an ancient world of stone and ice where everything was unnaturally preserved, as if it had been stuffed into an old treasure box and tucked away for a quiet night. Drachma had been here a while, here with his old 'friend', but he couldn't remember for how long. All he could really remember with any clarity was further back still.

"Heh. Figures," Drachma said aloud, possibly to Rhaknam and no one else. "Guess I'm gettin' old."

Drachma rose and walked slowly over to the massive arcwhale, the living, bellowing relic from a painful past: His.

"So this is what it came to, hrm?" Drachma said, standing with his hands on his hips watching the whale. A quiet, sundered anger flowed through his bones. "This is all that Harpoon Cannon could do? What a shame. After all that happened…to Jack, and the boys…this is all I could do. And now we're stuck here together."

He shook his head. It had happened again. Twice now, and both times he had lost a crew to the whale. It was the kind of thing that drove even the best men to madness, living out their lives having sold their souls and their two arms to vengeance.

'Least I've still got a good head on my shoulders. That's all I got.

Nearby, unbelievably, there was a small bit of water (thoroughly frozen over, of course), and underneath, through the thick sheet of glassy ice, there swam a group of fish the likes of which the old man had never seen before. And he had been a fisherman!

His instinct for survival told him to bore through the ice. What few rations he kept for emergencies, after all, were little good after they were gone, and he was down to his last portion. Stored away in an old chest on the Little Jack was an attachment for his arm, a drill most often used for drilling through things, appropriately enough. He reckoned he had probably found it while wandering around with those kids through some crazy man's dungeon or something.

Them kids…wonder what they're doin' right about now. Hrmph…wonder if they're all right. After what happened…no, no, don't worry about that.

Drachma had attached the old arm (a bit dusty and looking horribly underused—had it really been that long since he used it, or did dust just gather quicker after Jack died?), started it whirring, and chipped through the ice. After some time of work he had finally drilled a decent sized hole and began to fish using an old rod he once used when fishin' the skies, converted only slightly for fishing in water.

The first fish Drachma had caught was almost the size of his head, but skinnier and a bit longer. It was unlike any fish he had ever seen, a object almost like a flattened, scaly tube, with an odd little face slanting inwards to a little cone, and at the front were two black eyes like tiny marbles trying to crane around to stare ashamedly at him.

"Funny lookin' thing, aren't ya? Sorry about this," Drachma said. He tried to grab the fish with his free hand but it desperately tried to flop away, slipping and sliding in an attempt to return to his home. At last, Drachma dropped the fish on a clear patch of ice, swapped the drill on his arm for his trusted claw, and clamped around the fish tightly. The fish ceased what little flopping it once mustered through the man's iron grip. He went to retrieve his old flaying knife and thought of preparing his meal.

"Sorry about this, hrhm? But I got a good reason." Drachma said, looking ahead always as he returned to the storeroom of his ship, never setting eyes on the little victim tucked away in his claw. "An old man's gotta eat."

The first fish, Drachma found, was surprisingly edible, either raw and fileted or cooked over a small flame. Each fish he caught was progressively more difficult to watch helpless struggle for freedom in his hands, and more difficult to behead and eat. It wasn't always that way.

Maybe I'm…gettin' soft.

-

One day, a week or three into his isolation, Drachma thought something strange about the night the Little Jack plummeted. That night the fog had rolled in, following Rhaknam like a doppelganger, protecting him, and the Jack had burst through the fog like a bat soars from hell, and the Harpoon Cannon had buried itself into the mighty arcwhale's side. It was then the Valuan ships had come, hunting those who themselves hunted others. There, that night, if the Jack had turned tail and flitted away from the trail of fog, they would have slipped through the jaws of their pursuers. But when the telltale mist settled over the skies above the Maw and the low, soulful bellows of the great whale started rising, there could have been no other course than to follow it.

It was his fault. It was his fault, and until that moment an overwhelming part of Drachma, the part of him that still begrudged the purple giant even as it lay immobile, still didn't understand what that meant. It was his fault. If those kids were dead, it was because their lifeboats sank, it was because the Valuan armada had shot them, it was because the Jack was a rickety wooden bulls-eye grafted to the side of a huge purple wall, and that was because he had chased that wall and tried to knock it down. If those kids were dead, it was his fault, and no one else's.

But he was alive. He was alive! Why?

Some time passed by. There were more fish in Drachma's little fishing hole, each of them a different size with a different wistful look in their eyes. It had become easier and easier to catch them until finally he could say he was truly comfortable casting the line through the hole in the ice and pulling the fish through. He lorded over the little sea just as he had once mastered the sky, waiting, watching patiently, sometimes gritting his teeth to bite back hunger while he summoned the fish to him.

The biggest catch of all, though, was the great purple beast who had been laying there the entire time, his bellows slowly growing quieter and more melancholy.

One night Drachma fell asleep to the sound of the arcwhale's lessening cries and dreamt about the night the Jack plummeted. After the kids had launched away in their lifeboats, he and Rhaknam had fallen down, surrounded by flames and smoke, which replaced the thick fog. Some time passed, Drachma was thrown against one of the walls of the ship after a violent surge, and he fell unconscious. As the dream had it he was a barnacle held fast to the side of the great whale who refused to let go as it sank, sailing awkwardly downward through the sky as dream Drachma watched through eyes of fog and glass. At one point, the earth shook and the world turned black, and when the dream sight returned, a sea of crystal ice had replaced the cold, shaking earth. The Jack had suffered quite a beating, with boards and splinters of wood everywhere, the mast partially tattered, the rudders scratched and beaten. Drachma had awoke from his dream and remembered the end of the story: He had regained consciousness, bruised and battered but alive, and his ship had suffered the same but was still intact and lying near the whale's body.

That morning, after Drachma had caught and eaten his morning meal, he walked up to the great whale and put his normal hand against its skin. It was motionless, still bearing on its tremendous blubber a lifeless feeling, but there was a strange sensation of almost-warmth. The old sailor pressed his palm against the whale.

This, Drachma understood, was the killer. This arcwhale, lying immobile and groaning pitifully, was the scourge that had taken the lives of his son and crew. This great purple skin, Drachma thought, walking towards the head of the beast, running his hand along, this purple skin was the last thing the former crew of the Jack saw before falling to the deepest skies. The eye, plaintive and watchful, was the same as before, but now it was stuck looking at the same darned thing. This was all that was left of Rhaknam, the great whale, and the only one left to stand witness was—

Because…it was because of ye I survived, wasn't it? I—the Jack would have been blown to bits if ye hadn't pulled us along. It was because ye took the brunt of the hit.

Drachma flexed his claw, and then his hand, and reminded him of who he was and why he was here. Rhaknam was the killer, but he was also the savior.

"Rhaknam," Drachma looked up at the arcwhale. "That day…that day so many years ago. What were…what were ye thinking? Jack…the crew…but ye…ye didn't mean…"

Drachma stepped back. The kings of the sky, he reckoned. In the old world, Rhaknam and all of his friends owned the skies. He remembered back to his own childhood, when his father had told him and his long-gone friends the stories of the great arcwhales that swam through the sky, the great cloud-shakers, as they were so reverently called in myths. He knew how they sundered the islands in the sky, and how the eldest ones might have moss and trees growing on their ripened backs, or stray clods of island that stuck on when they brushed by a big enough landmass. Those were the stories Drachma remembered vividly above all others, the stories he would have told Jack completely were he still around to listen, the stories the sight of the great purple giant lying weak and helpless reminded him of. In reality, the arcwhales had all disappeared, and Rhaknam was the last to hang on.

"Ye were just being yerself, weren't ye?" Drachma said, again putting his hand against the whale. "Ye were just doin' as ye always did. That's all ye knew how to do."

What would Jack say if he knew what I had done? He'd never…he'd never want his pop to kill an innocent—would ye, Jack? What was I thinkin' would happen if I killed ye, Rhaknam? That ain't bringin' Jack home.

Drachma sat down with his back against the beast's flesh and put his head in his one human hand.

"Because ye took everything away from me," Drachma said, his eyes shut. He swallowed hard. To say what he was saying was the most difficult thing in his entire life. "Because ye did, I thought I had the right to do the same to you. I didn't even have a reason—it' s like why I fish, because that's all I am. My whole life I spent chasin'. That's all I know. This's all I know."

What a blind fool I've been! Just a blind old fool.

The old sailor rested his head against the whale's side. It didn't notice, but it continued to bellow deeply, gently, like a sublime lullaby, like something that might have lulled little Jack to sleep. When he first arrived here, Drachma believed the sounds would keep him awake, but instead they were the only things that helped him sleep peacefully at night.

Rhaknam was a good kid, Drachma thought to himself. He might have done a few things wrong, but he was always a good kid. Drachma put a hand on the great beast's purple skin. As if it could hear, he apologized to the great whale, who bellowed again, lonely and faraway like the skies.

"Yer—yer a good fellow, Rhaknam. Yer a good…"

Drachma closed his eyes and cried.