Jak and Daxter: Legacy

Chapter 1: Promises

Healing had always been a tough job for him, even as a green sage's apprentice. The villagers of Sandover would often peek into the cliffside hut while he worked. He knew that, to them, what he did was magic; a hand wave, a burst of jade light, and then the flesh and blood of a wound braiding together with ease.

But Jak also knew the eco he channeled was not so simply explained or controlled. Like most things in their world, it had been created and placed there intentionally by their gods, then abandoned for reasons unknown and left for them to puzzle out. The villagers didn't bother asking questions about why these things worked or how they got there, seemingly content to live without answers.

Jak, who'd been starved of answers his entire life, would have traded his soul for just one.

"Careful," said the older man standing to his right. "This one's particularly nasty."

Jak bit his lip and continued to concentrate on the patient on the bamboo and reed cot before him.

When the man had stumbled into their hut earlier, his hand had been clamped over an ooze of red on his chest, the other clutching a dripping sickle. How he'd managed to cut himself with the thing, Jak wasn't sure, but neither he nor his teacher, Samos, had hesitated to drag him onto the cot and start their work. Samos typically handled bigger injuries like this, but today was the first day he'd stepped aside and let Jak take the reins completely.

Well, almost completely.

"Check your speed, boy. Go too fast and the wound seals sloppy. Go too slow, you'll fuse his rib to his nipple."

The patient widened his eyes.

Jak raised an eyebrow. "He's only joking, Nazo. But it'd sure be a lot easier if someone wasn't barking in my ear."

"Oh, and you afforded me the same luxury all these years? 'Why can't I go to Misty Island, Samos'? 'What are we having for dinner, Samos'?"

"Aren't apprentices supposed to ask questions?"

"No, apprentices are supposed to simply observe and keep quiet. Something you seem to have incredible difficulty with."

"Well, I learned from the best, now, didn't I?"

Nazo stopped glancing between the two of them, sighed, and let his head flop back to the straw pillow. "You done yet?"

"Soon," Jak said.

True to his word, Jak finished not long after with a final wave of his hand, then stepped back to admire his work. A scar had taken the cut's place, fine and silvery. Nazo sat up, patted his liver-spotted chest, and nodded.

"Looks pretty damn near new! Thank the Precursors you sages put up with us."

Even though he'd said 'sages', Nazo only looked at Samos when he'd spoken. A spiteful 'you're welcome' almost slipped past Jak's lips, but he forced them to form a painful smile instead.

"You can start 'thanking' us by not flaying yourself open again. We wouldn't want you in here for a fifth time this month, now, would we?" Samos said.

"Sorry, Samos," Nazo said as he rose from the creaky cot and lumbered out, snatching his sickle from where it rested against the doorframe on the way. "No promises from me. Crops need harvesting."

And with that, Nazo was gone.

"So," Jak turned to Samos, cracking a sly grin and crossing his arms. "How does someone cut themselves with a sickle, anyways?"

"I'm more impressed by the fact that he managed it four times in one month. Honestly, being this village's sage is like watching children play in a wolfadger's den. Every time one of them walks out that door, I think to myself: how long before they return?"

Jak shrugged. "I give him three days."

"That's awfully generous of you."

The two chuckled, but there was a lingering nervousness that plucked at Jak's gut and soon chased his good spirits away. It had begun the night before when he'd realized that he'd wake up to yet another birthday. Every year, there was only one thing he wanted. And every year, he chickened out. Not because it was too much to ask for, but because he knew that he'd get his wish all too easily, and nineteen years of theories might come true.

"So, I was thinking… there's-"

"-something I've been meaning to ask you."

They stared at each other, caught in the awkward wait for the other to continue. Jak's heartbeat drummed. Was Samos going to…?

"You first," Jak said.

Samos paused for a long while, not looking at Jak as he ambled to his desk across the circular room. At that moment, Samos' back appeared more bent than Jak remembered, and his hands seemed frailer than ever as he ran them through his scratchy white beard. True, he wore the same jade robe as always, and still managed to gather enough wisps of hair to wrap around his large wooden hairpiece and hold it in place. But Jak's smirk faded as he wondered, Has Samos always looked this old?

Samos turned around and caught Jak in his green, bespectacled stare. Just a minute ago, they were poking fun at each other. Now he was gazing at Jak so sternly that it gnawed the young man's stomach to anxious shreds. Now was the time. Now he'd finally get an answer-

"I've watched over this village for centuries, Jak. And in all those years, I've taught many an apprentice. But there comes a time when one tree must let another take root."

"Oh."

Jak began to tidy up their medicine shelves, hoping the clinking bottles, pungent herbs, and his turned back would hide and distract from his disappointment. As he did so, he stared out the window. Sunlight glimmered on the beach, the waves, and the brassy ruins that peeked from the forest. This discussion was only making them seem more distant.

"I'm serious, Jak."

"Samos, you know it would never work out."

"What are you talking about? You've trained with me for almost eleven years now, and you had talent before that. Precursors, Nazo's wound was probably one of the worst we've had in here, and you healed it just fine. No, I'm certain you're ready." Samos walked up to Jak and put his hand on the young man's tense shoulder. "And I'm certain you're the one I want to take my place."

A warmth flooded Jak's chest, but it soon faded. "It's not that I don't want to, but…"

"Whatever do you mean?"

"Samos."

Samos continued with a softer voice, "Jak, if there's something you wish to say, now is the time to say it."

"You know exactly what I'm about to say."

Samos' answer was silence.

Jak turned around, fingers tightening on an empty vial he had picked up from the shelf. "They don't like me."

"That's not true. And even if it was, what does that have to do with taking over my duties?"

"Are you serious, Samos? It has everything to do with it. Have you heard what they've-" Jak gestured to the window by the doorway, through which the village could be seen. "-said about me? Did you see how Nazo acted?"

"Stupid, like always?"

"He wouldn't even look me in the eye when he was thanking you-"

"Thanking us."

"No, thanking you."

Samos struck the bottom of his staff against the floor. "That doesn't mean that everyone dislikes you. Keira and I like you just fine, and that's all that matters."

Jak stared at Samos, not believing a single word, then shook his head and leaned against the window.

"The worst part is? All their rumors might be right. And even if they're not, the others never accepted me anyways. They never will."

Samos' silence was the answer Jak knew he'd receive. It was the answer he'd always received.

There was a perceived peculiarity to him that the villagers had always made sure to comment on. Yes, he had hair as gold as sand, but its roots were an angry red; the complete opposite of the others, who all had olive or lime hair. Yes, he had gentle blue eyes, but they were not the color a green sage's apprentice "should" have. And yes, his skin was a warm tan, but the villagers considered it lesser than their ideal of ghostly pale.

Yes this, but that, stuck on endless repeat for nineteen years as they'd reminded him time and time again that he didn't look like them, and he'd never be welcomed as one of them. But that wasn't the whole story. It was his origin - or lack of one - that underscored their rumors and suspicious stares.

Demon child. Cursed child. Other child.

The vial Jak had been holding in his hand shattered. Samos stepped forward, palm already glowing with green eco, but Jak jerked his arm away before Samos could heal him. Glass shards and blood intermingled in his closed fist, warm and sharp.

The two stood without speaking for a long while, the room locked in a shadowed, silent embrace as sunlight, soft wind, and cheering gulls encircled their hut outside. Jak stared long at the shore, and gripped the salt-stained sill with his unbloodied hand as he turned his head towards the copper ruins just peeking above the forest.

"You've never asked before, you know. I'd expected a lot more questions from you when you were younger. Why now?"

Jak turned around but still didn't meet Samos' eye. He wasn't exactly sure. It was his birthday, yes, though they didn't place much importance on it in their village. But every year, in the last muggy breath of the wet season, every nervous glance the villagers cast at him seemed to hurt more. He'd often lay awake at night, hand picking at the straw of his mattress, entranced by the ruins in the jungle as they glowed under the moonlight through his window. What were they here for? What was he here for?

Like a myth, the whole tale differed depending on where it was told (or in Sandover, who it was told by), but there were shared threads of truth. For his story, the ruins were the only one. But why now? Why the sudden bravery to ask? Why had he woken up that morning and, instead of deciding against it like he did every year before, he vowed to go through with it this time? He tightened his fist again, the glass cutting into his palm further.

Because it hurt, he decided. It was a wound he'd never been able to heal; a thorn that, with each passing year, with every next breath, dug in more and more. Perhaps now it had finally reached his heart and he was ready to pull it out?

Another thought soon followed: what if the truth only pushed the thorn further in?

"Well, let's get started, then," Samos said at last.

Jak's heart jolted and started to drum. He was about to thank him, but Samos interrupted with a 'come here' flick of his wrist. Jak followed Samos through the hut, winding around the central column that supported the rooms upstairs, ducking under the clustering vines that grew from pots on the ceiling beams, hurrying towards a room near the back. Samos' room.

Jak paused at the threshold. Samos pulled a tattered woven sheet from some furniture at the far end. Beneath it sat a large wooden box.

"I suppose those idiots already mentioned the ruins, yes?" Samos said as he struggled with its silver clasps.

Jak nodded, his heart skipping a beat at the mention of the ruins. "A little bit about them, yeah."

The clasps sprung open at last. Jak tried to peer around Samos as they clicked and flipped, but the sage kept his hand held firmly on the box's dull top.

"Now Jak, before I even think of opening this for you and telling you what I know, you have to make me three promises. One, that you'll accept that everything I'm about to say as the honest truth. Two, that you'll be content with the answer and understand that the best place for you is here, with Keira and I."

"What does that mean?"

"And three..." Samos gave Jak a look so sharp it could have split iron. "You must promise me that you will not, under any circumstances, go out and try to investigate the ruins in the forest. Have I made myself clear?"

"The ruins? What's there?"

"Promise?"

Jak furrowed his brows. He already wasn't liking where this was going. But for years, he'd thrashed about aimlessly in a sea of unknowns, the only thing keeping him afloat being the occasional rumor spoken with spite and disdain. He knew he wasn't from Sandover Village, that was for certain, but the rest of the villagers' claims were fearful superstitions, at best.

Now, he could finally cast all doubt and lies away. Now, he could finally discover the truth he'd sought all this time. All he had to do was nod. The mystery would dissipate, and he'd be free to stand on the solid shore of knowing. But what if the truth was something he didn't want to hear?

Jak stared down at his hand and waited for his chest to stop pounding. A little blood still flowed from the glass cuts, pooled in its creases. His mouth furled into a smile at long last, and he healed it with a burst of green eco, then nodded at Samos.

"Promise."

Keira returned to the hut at sunset. She was usually greeted with the sound of Samos and Jak - who she'd moved in with a few years back after her parents had died - bickering over something, their voices entwined with the buttery smell of a rice and yakow meat dinner stewing over the fire.

But something was off when she began to ascend the creaking steps to the main room, where the two did their healing work. There was no sound or smell besides the chimes ringing from the eaves with hollow, dissonant tones.

Keira leaned over the railing. Are they not home?

She fidgeted with the tail of her green braid and headed inside. All things were in their proper place, save for a broken vial on the floor by the window, and an open chest she'd never seen before in Samos' room.

I swear, if I find those two went to Jadecrest again without me… she thought, then went to the ladder attached to the hut's central pillar.

"I'm back from the fields, guys!" she called up, thinking she could hear a fire murmuring in the hearth up there. "I know you're home."

No answer.

"Hello!?"

"Yes, yes, Keira, we're here!" came Samos' voice from farther up. "By the Precursors, that girl's voice is loud."

Keira grinned and climbed up with trained ease, the various tools on her belt clanking against the rungs as she did so. The first level above the infirmary passed quickly, nothing more than a blur of plants, bookshelves, and the doors to both hers and Jak's rooms.

"Man, you guys wouldn't believe how many of the villagers' brassbeetles had broken in that storm! I thought I'd never get done fixing them…"

She stopped on the last rung. The kitchen looked normal in every way, but the people in it didn't. Samos' usual scowl had softened to a genuine frown, though he tried to hide it as he turned away to stoke the hearth. And Jak…

Keira had never seen him like this. True, he was the quiet sort, and liked to keep to himself when deep in thought, but he usually did so with a smile.

He leaned against the wall, hands toiling over a red silk blanket she'd never seen before.

Keira jumped from the ladder, thinking the thud of her boots might stir his attention, but Jak didn't even flinch at her arrival. Or step forward to ruffle her hair, as he usually liked to do whenever she came home.

He just stood there, far from Samos, alone in the hazy shadows.

"So… how are you two?"

"Fine," Samos answered after a long wait.

Keira raised a brow but said nothing. She walked over to Samos and started to help with dinner, occasionally glancing over at Jak between stirring and cutting to make sure he was still there. Samos typically liked to chatter away with her about both of their days when they made dinner together, but tonight the sage toiled without a word.

If dinner had been a hell made of silence, the hours afterward were even worse. After a while, she gave up on asking them about how many patients they'd had that day, or what kind of herbs they wanted her to collect in the morning, for her answers were only nods, mutters, and Jak wordlessly fidgeting with the blanket.

Whatever… Keira thought as she sauntered to her room, lit a candle on her bedstand, cracked open a worn tome, and flopped onto her straw bed. I suppose a book will have to keep me company, then.

Keira awoke to something sharp hitting the roof. She flung herself up in bed, patting drool from her cheek, flinching as her book flopped onto the floor. She scrambled to pick it up, then waited to see if whatever was on the roof would stir again.

Minutes crawled by. When she heard nothing more but waves crashing on the shore below the cliff, she settled back into the covers, closed her eyes, and started to drift off to numb, comfortable sleep-

Clank!

Keira shot up again. The sound was louder this time, followed by the pitter-patter of repeated impacts. If she didn't know any better, she would have assumed someone was walking on the roof. But to do so would be suicidal, what with its steep gables and slick, mossy tiles. Still, she found herself grabbing the nearest weapon-like item - a long plain staff she used on her many escapades into the forest - and crept out into the main room.

The roof noises sounded muffled when she waited and listened in the central room, though she still could pick them out between the crackle of the dying hearth and wind as she climbed the main ladder, their volume increasing as she ascended. Up above the kitchen, the ladder led to a warm, straw-filled attic. Above the straw loomed a great crow's nest and starry sky.

She poked her head out. In the dim moonlight, she couldn't pick out more than cliffside ivy fluttering in the breeze, the slow, creaking spin of the windmill just outside their hut, and the flicker of lanterns in the village beyond.

"Must have been a bird," she muttered, and started heading back down.

A small sigh of relief whispered above as soon as she disappeared beneath the straw.

She froze. Keira tightened her grip on her staff as she waited in the darkness of the humid attic, tapping it on the rungs below her in descending order to make it seem as if she were continuing her retreat. The footsteps began again not long after.

Closer. Closer. Just as a shadow passed the opening, she lunged up the ladder and grabbed the trespasser's foot. They fell with a loud thump onto the tiles, and tried to crawl away, but Keira pulled on their ankle tighter as she heaved herself onto the roof. She twisted around, raised the staff high-

"Keira, wait!"

She stopped mid-swing. That light hair, those blue eyes…

"Jak!?"

"Wait." He scrambled to his feet, wiping moss from his cheek and goatee as he did so. "Just hear me out. And keep quiet, while you're at it. You're gonna wake up Samos."

She felt her eye twitch, but soon lowered the staff. Jak was wearing his normal day clothes, though his white trousers and jade tunic were now patchy with dirt from his fall. In his hand swayed the same strange red blanket from earlier.

"Look, I know what you're going to say-"

"I don't even know what to begin to say. What are you doing up here? And what's with that weird thing you've been dragging around all day? I've never seen it before."

"It's a long story."

Keira crossed her arms. "Start talking."

He helped her climb the crow's nest with him, and they settled next to each other, bare feet dangling over the edge. Keira didn't go up there much during the day, never mind at night. Sitting there now, though, she regretted never having tried. Countless stars speckled the sky above over a sea of glossy palm fronds. The village resembled a sprinkling of tiny boxes at this height, a strand of dirt road tying them together before ribboning off into the jungle that hugged the rice fields.

Jak seemed unconcerned with the spectacle. He instead focused on his blanket; a swathe of bottomless shadow beneath his restless fingers in the dim light.

"So… you were going to explain that?"

His lips moved to respond, but nothing came out. Keira narrowed her eyes. "Does this have anything to do with why you and Samos were so quiet today?"

"Oh, you noticed?"

Keira failed to hold back a laugh. "How could I not?"

His cheeks flushed red. Her curiosity burning stronger than her desire to continue teasing him, Keira apologized and pretended to not mind the following silence. Whatever he was about to say, she would have waited years to hear it. The two may have acted like quarreling siblings much of the time, but she'd be lying if she claimed Jak wasn't her best friend. Since they could walk, they'd spent hours every day playing or talking or just sitting together in silence when one needed the other's quiet support. They had practically lived at one another's houses while growing up, at least whenever they weren't out exploring beyond the village.

That is, until her parents died a few years back in a storm, too far out at sea to return to shore and safety in time. She'd only been fifteen, and could have remained in their family hut, but it had been so lonely the first few days she'd tried. Then Samos had offered for her to come and stay with him and Jak next door. To be able to live with her best friend was a small comfort, especially in those days, when most comforts had been violently ripped from her life.

She got along with the other villagers well enough, but they couldn't understand her on the level Jak could. He knew what it was like to not have any parents, to be taken in by a sage, to feel so close to the others yet so far at the same time. Sometimes, though, his distancing spanned miles farther than hers. Right now was one of those times, and even she struggled to reach him across it.

She followed his gaze to the ruins just outside the village. They were little white mountain peaks in the moonlight, ghostly and alien compared to the dark, warm greens surrounding.

"I found out where I came from today."

Keira's stomach felt like it'd dropped to the planet's core. She'd expected some bombshell, but not the secret of Jak's life.

"What? Samos actually…?"

"I know, right?"

"And what did he say? What tribe?"

"Well, that's the thing." Jak chuckled, but it was tinged with a nervous edge. "None of them."

"None of them?"

"I'm not from anywhere."

"What!?"

The word's echoes clattered across the roof. Keira covered her mouth. Thankfully, their hut and village remained silent, though it was a while before she felt she was ready to remove her hand without blurting out again.

Keira lowered her voice to a whisper, "That's not right, Jak. Are you sure Samos didn't lie to you?"

"He was dead serious, Keira. And there was this chest in his room. He'd had it for I don't know how many years. Probably as long as I've been around. This was in it."

She took the blanket from him as he offered it.

No wonder he's been gawking at it all day, Keira thought as she rubbed her hands over it. I've never seen material like this before.

Patterns adorned what by her best guess must have been some form of soft silk. They had no discernible shape, instead swirling across the folds like endless crimson smoke. As she tried to gather them all into one clear picture, Jak continued, "That's all I had when he found me. He said he'd been searching in the woods one morning for some herb. He'd heard some crying, followed it to the mouth of the ruins, and… there I was. Just lying there, wrapped in this blanket."

"So the rumors were true?"

Jak flinched at the question.

Keira smacked her forehead. "I'm sorry, I didn't mean… just the part about the ruins, is all. Not the other things."

"Do you…?"

She cocked her head. "Do I what?"

"Well, what do you think? Any theories? You're smart. And you know better than anyone that those places aren't-"

"Demon dens? Haunted? Cursed?"

They chuckled, but the gravity of what Jak was implying was a heavy weight only they shared. To admit in public that Keira knew anything about Precursor ruins was to invite suspicion, if not accusations.

She tinkered with a few devices she'd found, so what? It wasn't like they didn't use some already anyways; the scratches she had on her palms from working with the brassbeetles earlier that day proved it. Why discriminate between tech that helped them clear trees for farms and harvest crops, and tech that could clean salt from ocean water, heat rooms, and light their homes? It wasn't like she was reawakening any weapons of mass destruction. And she never went deep in the ruins, just scrounged around outside them or not far in.

But if anyone ever found the little projects she hid under the floorboards in her workshop or the hundreds of diagrams she'd drawn over years of secret study, she'd be ridiculed, if not tossed out of the village, no matter what Samos and Jak might do to protect her.

It was the reason she often dreamed about going to the northern cities. Up there, technology was never inhibited. Traveling caravans to their village spoke of eco-powered homes, robots, and even flying machines. Here in Sandover, such things were blasphemy. Such things angered the Precursor gods, whose spirits watched over them from the cursed yet glorious, hallowed yet dangerous brass skeletons of what was once Nadoa's greatest civilization.

Or so was claimed.

"I mean, you know their tech better than anybody."

Keira shook her head. "Jak, if you're asking me whether or not the Precursors had machines that could spit out human babies, I don't know, and I doubt it. They usually made weapons or tools, Jak."

"They made all the races, didn't they?" Jak waited for Keira to nod, but she didn't. No one knew that for sure. "Where else could I have come from, then? Samos said I was right there, at the mouth of the ruins in the woods. You've been in them, right? What's in them?"

"Never those ones, specifically. And never far in. The Precursors are long dead, anyways. No one could have been there to keep a machine like that running. Jak," Keira paused, not sure how to say her next words without feeling like she was digging a knife into his heart. "You were probably left there by your mother."

"Keira, look at me."

She did. "And?"

"Do I look anything like any of you?"

"Maybe there was a passing caravan?" she said with a shrug. "Maybe your parents were of different tribes? You look a little red, maybe some yellow...?"

"So two people of two different tribes extremely far from here that hate each other's guts got together, produced a kid that not only looks like some freaky mixture of both, but has blue eyes like the blue peoples, and can channel green eco like the green tribe?"

"Maybe your parents were mixed, too? And like I said: caravan. They travel all over. Or maybe they were from the northern cities? People there are mingled together, just like you."

Jak let out a long sigh. Keira had to admit: it was farfetched, but it was the only rational explanation she could think of. Jak returned his attention to the blanket, twisting it to and fro as if that might wring out some answers.

"I'm sorry, Jak. No one can give you the truth."

"No." Jak's hands ceased fidgeting. He stood up and faced the woods outside the village, face set with grim determination. "But the ruins can."

"Jak, you aren't seriously thinking-"

"Why do you think I was up here on the roof in the first place, Keira?" He headed towards the crow's nest's ladder. "I need to see what's in those ruins. And I can't just sneak out the normal way. You know how light of a sleeper Samos is."

Keira sprung to her feet and pulled on his arm. "I am not letting you go. There are wolfadgers in the woods at night, not to mention whatever's down inside."

"You're the one that's always poking around places like that."

"Around, Jak. Not in." She followed as he kept walking, grabbing onto the blanket in his hand this time. "Jak, please!"

He stopped. Then he turned around, pushed the blanket into her hands, grabbed her by her shoulders, and met her stare. There was something about his eyes that sent a pang of pity through her gut as she met them: desperation and hunger and a fear of daring to hope, like that of a battered hound being offered a meal after a life of meager scraps.

"I need to know, Keira."

Keira grimaced. What to do? When Jak was dead set on something, there was no stopping him. But what if Samos found out? What would he do to her, since she'd knowingly let Jak go? Even worse, what would he do to Jak?

Of course, that didn't matter if Jak never came back at all.

"Promise me you won't tell Samos?"

There was a long silence. She then sighed and nodded. "Only if you promise me you won't get yourself killed."

Jak grinned and drew her into a tight hug. She hid a reluctant smile in the folds of his shirt as she hugged back, then mumbled a muffled "you idiot" into his chest.

"I know." He let go and ruffled her hair, a gesture she had sorely missed. It meant he was normal Jak again. Hope had returned to his eyes, shining bright in the blue. "We can't all be geniuses like you."

She laughed and pushed him away. His grin didn't budge as he descended the nest's ladder to the roof, then climbed to the ground by a rope that hung from one of the hut's eaves. Keira wanted to keep up a smile on her end, but as she stood there watching his form shrink into the distance, it faded.

He disappeared into the woods, leaving her alone with the blanket under the moon's cold light.