Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

"Ow."

Damas snorted and jabbed his recruit in the ribs. "Told you to keep your guard up."

Jak swatted his hand away with a halfhearted grumble, but didn't argue. He'd gotten cocky during that spar and he knew it. Usually, he had Daxter on his shoulder to watch his back, but this time, he'd had to fight solo. Today, Sig had taken Daxter -- at the king's insistence, no less -- to get him fitted for an ottsel-sized gun. There was supposed to be a heavy thunderstorm moving in some time that week, and Sig wanted to get at least the gunbelt completed before he had to work on storm preparations. Daxter had been fine with that, but it left Jak maneuvering around the rocks in the throne room sans backup in a mostly futile attempt to land a hit on Damas.

Admittedly, both Jak and Daxter had been giddy with excitement about the prospect of Daxter getting a customized weapon. Not only would Daxter be able to join the fight more often, and from safer distances, he could snipe enemies sneaking up on Jak! More than that -- so much more valuable than that -- it was a declaration as loud as cannonfire that Daxter was a person , and that he mattered to the city. Sure, it was more of a "if you get killed that's one less person to protect Spargus" kind of thing, but outside of Tess, Jak didn't know anyone who had ever gone out of their way to provide adaptations and accommodations for his best friend, even before he was transformed. 

"Jak, are you listening to me?" Damas demanded.

The owl-eyed look Jak gave him in return answered his question. He sighed and rolled his eyes.

"Maybe I hit you in the head too hard."

Jak reached back and felt the back of his head. "Well there's no lumps, and I'm not bleeding so...probably not?"

As though beseeching the heavens for patience, Damas turned his eyes skyward and shook his head. He pushed Jak towards the stairs leading towards his throne and went to dig a health pack out of one of the boxes around the chamber.

"Sit. And take those goggles off."

He didn't really want to sit down, but Jak obliged with only a perfunctory eye roll. He let the warmth of the stones soothe his aching muscles and watched Damas move around the throne room. It wasn't every day Jak met someone who could beat him in hand-to-hand combat without difficulty. That was both nerve-wracking and inspiring at the same time. That combo move Damas had pulled at the end of the fight had laid Jak out flat when he’d been in full dark form! 

"When are you gonna teach me that pole vault thing you did with the staff?" Jak asked as Damas finally produced the health pack.

"When you can stay on your feet ten consecutive minutes in a spar without me braining you," Damas answered. And if he was a tiny bit smug, that was his business. 

Jak chuckled and accepted the health pack. "Wish I'd been able to do something like that in Mar's Tomb last year. Those stupid spike pillars took so much time!"
As he applied the green eco to his head and arms, he shook his head. “Who even designed those things? They literally have no point except to cause problems!”

"Mar's Tomb?" Damas asked, growing unusually quiet. "When were you in Mar's Tomb?"

Jak froze for a second.

He'd told the king about his time in Haven -- most of it -- and how he'd come to be abandoned in the desert as an exile. But he had studiously avoided saying anything about Mar, or the Precursor Oracles, or any kind of prophecy. For once, he wanted to be just another teenager. To be part of teams , and not the sole “hero”. Even if he didn’t always get along with the native Spargan teens in his “squad” during training, he liked not standing out from the crowd. He needed the freedom of not having the world dropped on his shoulders every other day.

"You told me before that you and your...past self…? Had been taken to Precursor ruins by the Underground."

"Um." Jak shifted his weight and picked at a scar uncomfortably. "It's a ruin now . The Baron made sure of that."

"Ah." Damas nodded, relaxing a fraction. "So he blasted the doors open. I should have expected that; it sounds exactly like something he'd do."

It did sound like something Praxis would have done, really. It just wasn't exactly what had happened. For a moment, Jak considered letting sleeping crocodogs lie and allowing Damas to believe that. But that seemed well, wrong , after he'd accepted Jak's story of time loops and alternate selves without calling him delusional or a liar.

"He actually blasted the back wall out. I was kind of pissed, to be honest," Jak admitted. "I busted my butt to put the golden Seal back together and get that door open, and he just wrecked the place anyway."

Damas went rigid beside him. A sideways glance revealed white knuckles against the stone, and fingers digging into the sand. "What do you mean you got the door open?" 

Crap. Too late to back out now, I guess. In for an orb, in for a power cell.
Jak gritted his teeth and hoped against hope that this admission wouldn’t get him treated differently. Or at least, not worse. 

"I…well, I mean. Dax and I hunted down the pieces of the Seal, I put them together, and then found this…light tower thing that opened the way to the tomb. I got the door open. Technically they wanted the kid -- little me -- to go in, not me," Jak said slowly. A nervous pang tugged at his lungs, and he found himself awkwardly looking for something to do with his hands. "Since he hadn't been pumped all full of dark eco, I guess Kor figured the Precursors would like him more than me."

The poor kid had been so scared. Well, Jak supposed it was more accurate to admit that he had been so scared. It was hard to pull childhood memories free from the murk of the last two years these days, but the terror of that moment? Jak remembered that.
He pulled the amulet from his pocket and let it just sit in his palm, slightly out of view of Damas. The warm metal eased some of his disquiet, as it often did. It was something familiar that anchored him to the past, no matter how messed up he got. A reminder on his darkest days that he used to be that innocent little kid.

"Where did you get that?" Damas suddenly demanded. He reached out as if he were going to take the amulet.

Startled, Jak yanked his hand away and held it out of reach. "I've kinda… always had it? I mean, except when Count Veger stole it the day I was exiled, but a friend gave it back to me at the oasis."

He wasn't sure how he felt about the way Damas was acting. Was he going to try to take his amulet too?

"You- you had that as a child?"

"Yes? My kid self never took it off until Samos took him to Sandover. He gave it to me." Jak huffed and watched the light play off the surface of the metal. "To "protect" me. That's what the kid wanted. Which...I guess it does, actually, since I can open eco vents with it."

He held it up for Damas to see and gave it a humorless little shake. “It’s not consistent though. Daxter can’t use it. The sage can’t either. It really only opens stuff when I use it.”

After a long, tense, silence, Damas breathlessly rasped, "And you...faced the Trial of Manhood, you said?" 

Jak grimaced. "Yeah...Little me would've died . I don't know what the Underground was thinking, but I wasn't going to let them...I mean, I didn't know it was me at the time, but I was still pissed. All that for the stupid Precursor Stone. It wasn't worth a kid's life."

He sighed and ran his thumb over the Seal. "Made it worse when people started acting like I was Mar's Heir or some crap after that." 

Damas made a strangled sound. 

"It's messed up, right?"

Jak cleared his throat sharply to dispel the ache in his throat. He hadn't cried since he was twelve, and he wasn't about to start now. 

"Calling me "Heir of Haven", "hero" or whatever, when a week ago I was only good for suicide missions nobody else wanted. Gushing about how "important" and "special" that little kid was, when the Metalhead leader tricked 'em into planning the whole time to throw him into the Trials and just cross their fingers that maybe he'd survive long enough to find their weapon for them. Maybe that’s the real reason the Council wanted me gone so bad: I was old enough to get through Mar’s stupid booby-traps and live . Doesn’t really look good if people are calling a mutant killing machine your city’s heir, I get it, honestly."

He avoided Damas's eyes. It didn't matter that the man had taken his story of Rift Gates at face value. When he heard the rest of this story he would stop believing Jak, surely. It sounded like delusions of grandeur: a tale that was, in and of itself, unbelievable. 

Jak stared down at the amulet as he turned it over and over in his hands, letting his eyes unfocus until the reddish metal became blurry. 

"And...and I know it's not even actually me they care about. It's the kid I used to be. Their ticket to a throne, if you believe that crap. It's better than being a puppet king, but I- I wish I could've stopped them from sending the kid back 300 years. You know? He's safe there, but… They're just going to start this mess all over again." 

He laughed, bitter and harsh. "No wonder the sage was always so distant. He didn't want to get attached when he knew he-"

His face went slack. "...he...he knew -" 

Jak felt like he was collapsing in on himself. He curled over the amulet and fought the ache in his face and throat with every bit of stubbornness he had. But in the face of what he'd just realized, he was fighting a losing battle. Every moment of his time in the Dark Warrior program, every detail of Errol's face rose to the forefront of his mind, bringing with them all the shame, all the terror and pain and rage of those two years.

Jak could feel Damas stirring next to him, but he couldn't look up. Couldn't even move, now. If he shifted even a little, he'd break, he knew it. 

"Precursors. He knew," he whispered numbly. "Samos knew what Praxis would do to me. He...he knew! He took me back to Sandover and pretended I belonged there, and the whole time-!" Now he felt the dark eco bubbling up, twisting his horror into a palpable rage that seemed to sprout like the horns pushing through his skin. "The whole time he knew I was going to be their expendable Dark Eco Freak. He knew I was going to go through hell again and again and again! For that freaking Precursor rock!"

"Stop." Damas's voice was strained, frayed at the edges. "No more, Jak." 

And there it was: Damas had reached the limits of his tolerance, just as he'd always known would happen. No matter that he'd tried so hard to convince himself that Damas really did believe him. He'd either pushed it too far, or the only leader he respected had finally realized what a monster he was. 

He tried to apologize. He tried to dredge up his usual closed-off front to protect himself. Wasn't his dark form supposed to help him do that? Why wasn't his rage shielding him from the pain?

Jak wouldn't remember until later that anger was not the only emotion dark eco gravitated towards; merely one of the most potent.

And anguish was just as strong. 

And now a fanged, clawed, beast of a boy with corpse-white skin curled into himself on the edge of the stair, unable to control the raw keening that poured out of him. 

He had never been more than a means to an end, had he? Nobody’s son, a convenient orphan with nobody who cared enough to say “you’re expecting too much from him”. Just a pawn, a handy tool to operate ancient technology since whatever unfortunate souls birthed him were probably killed by Praxis long ago. That was probably a mercy, in a way. Whoever his parents had been, they would never have to see what their child had been twisted into. 

Jak desperately hoped they hadn't been the early experiments that didn't survive the Dark Warrior Program. 

When the dark eco reserves in his body had exhausted themselves, Jak felt like he was going to throw up. He was weary, and worn down. Too bad he'd probably just won himself a free expulsion from the throne room: he would have liked to just lay down on the warm stone stairs and sleep. It took a moment to clear his vision enough to see his shaking hands still wrapped around his amulet.

The cynical side of him warned that now that Damas knew about that, he'd probably start telling Jak to unlock eco vents like the Havenites. 

Daxter couldn't get back from training with Sig soon enough. Maybe Jak needed to just go back to letting his best friend speak for him. Speaking for himself only led to trouble. 

Now mortification flooded in on the wings of exhaustion. Some Spargan he'd turned out to be, freaking out and spilling his guts like that. He didn’t even do that with Daxter! Even if by some miracle Damas believed a word he'd said, he'd probably never take him seriously again. 

"Sorry," he ground out as he hastily wiped his eyes. "I didn't mean to morph like- I mean, I wasn't planning to- Can we uh...pretend this didn't happen?" 

Damas rose stiffly. "No," he answered in a curiously flat tone, "We cannot."

He wasn't looking at Jak. 

Jak's heart sank.

In spite of his earlier resolve, he found himself on the verge of panic.

"I can control it, I swear, Damas. I don't just freak out like that when I'm not in battle! Look, I won't bring it up again." 

"Give me the amulet."

Damas still wasn't looking at him, but his hand was outstretched. 

Reflexively, Jak's fingers tightened on the Seal. "...what?" 

Damas finally looked at him, but his face was blank and unreadable. "The Seal , Jak. Give it to me." 

Jak pulled it close to his chest. "You won't be able to use it or anything, it only works for me. I don't know why." 

The king took a step closer and Jak fought the urge to scramble backwards. 

"That was not a request, boy. I need you to give me the amulet. Now ." 

Something had changed in the way Damas carried himself. The hidden affectionate side he'd been gradually revealing had vanished, leaving a cold and stern monarch in their wake. He was tense, like he was expecting a fight.

No, not cold.

Closer inspection revealed that he looked not cold, but…desperate. And desperate men were dangerous. 

Jak stumbled to his feet and backed away. "No. No, this is all I have. This is my only link to who I used to be. Nobody's taking that again!" He swallowed hard. "Not even you." 

Damas advanced a step, and Jak saw that his hands were shaking, barely noticeably. Why was he demanding the amulet? What did he know that Jak didn't? Why was everyone keeping secrets from him?

"You don't know how important this is, boy. What it may mean. You don't even know if it's real!" Damas insisted. Somehow, the fact that his voice was still low and level was more intimidating than if he'd shouted. 

"What do you mean 'if it's real' ?" Jak demanded, "You think Veger swapped it for a fake or a tracker or something? I opened a freaking dark eco vent with this thing. Of course it's real!" 

"Let me be the judge of that." Damas held out his hand again. "Don't...don't fight me, Jak. I need to know. I need proof." 

What was so important about the hell he'd lived through that Damas needed proof of it happening? Unless he was convinced that maybe Veger had bugged it, which would only sort of make sense.

"Why do you care?" Jak demanded. "Why does everyone but me know about this stuff?!"

Something wasn't adding up. 

His back hit the pillar, and for the first time Jak realized he'd been retreating. Maybe his instincts knew something he didn't, because Jak never backed down from a challenge. 

"Tell me who gave you the amulet, Jak."

It wasn't a question. It was a command. 

"I told you: the little kid version of myself," Jak snarled to cover how unsettled he was, "And yeah , I'm well aware of how impossible that sounds, trust me." 

Damas was becoming more agitated, which couldn't possibly be a good thing. "No. Not why you have it now . Where did you get the amulet. It did not spring into existence out of nothing. Who originally gave it to you? Where did you find it?" 

Oh. At least he didn't seem to think Jak was lying about the time loop, or something stupid like that. But he clearly knew more about the amulet than he was saying. 

Which meant that it was very possible that he knew more about the House of Mar than he was saying. Who had Damas been before his own exile from Haven? Had he-
Had he known something about Jak’s family before Praxis usurped the throne? (If the Underground had told the truth, at least, if Jak really was related to whoever had ruled the city before.)

Jak frowned and opened his hand to look at the amulet again. "I...I don't know. I was like, four . And I didn't even learn to speak out loud until a year ago, so it's not like I'd told anyone before." 

When he locked eyes with Damas this time, Jak saw a shadow haunting the king's face that he didn't remember. Maybe it had always been there, and Jak simply hadn't noticed it, or maybe he'd triggered it with his stupid, stupid, outburst. Either way, he couldn't help feeling that he didn't want to ask. It was something to do with his child self, with his past. He knew that. But what if the answer was more painful than not knowing? 

"You-" Damas looked away for a breath, almost as if he was trying to compose himself, then looked back. "You did not speak as a child?" 

"Uh, no. No, Daxter always translated for me." Jak shrugged. "I used to sign, kinda like this old seer in Haven, but nobody in Sandover did. Sorta fell out of practice."

He tried to feign indifference, and ignore the panic steadily building up in his lungs. 

He needed to find Daxter. He couldn't have this conversation alone. Whatever was coming, he couldn't handle it yet. 

Damas opened his mouth to speak again, but the shrill tone of a proximity alert interrupted them both. The king moved to the window and squinted out at the horizon before cursing softly. 

"Storm's inbound, ahead of schedule," he warned. "Precursors blood, that thing's moving fast! I need to alert the city before it makes landfall. Jak, make sure Kleiver locked down the turret and tell Merit he’s in charge of placing sandbags around the stables. If the waves come too far up the shore, we could have more than flooding to deal with." 

Relieved to have an excuse to escape the stifling atmosphere of the throne room, Jak only nodded and headed for the lift. He hadn't made it four steps before Damas cleared his throat. 

"The amulet, Jak." 

"It's mine." Jak stuffed it into his pocket defiantly. 

Damas strode down the steps. He wasn't moving near as carefully now. There was open desperation in his body language.

"I will return it to you after you've checked the turret," he said. When Jak didn't move, he sucked in a slow, steady breath. 

"I need you to trust me, Jak, as your king if nothing else," he said, almost gently. "I don't...I don't know how to explain it to you. Not yet. But it is very, very important." 

The thought of handing over the amulet went against every instinct Jak had. He tried to reason with himself that he'd been alright with Ashelin holding onto it, and he trusted Damas far more than he trusted Ashelin Praxis. But then, he knew that if he'd known Ashelin had his amulet, he wouldn't have been happy about it. The city always took from him, after all, and very rarely did it willingly return anything. 

He's lying. He won't give it back. And even if he does, he'll just want you to use it to his benefit-

No! Damas is different. Damas is nothing like the others!

Jak clenched his teeth and let the battle between hope and experience play out in his mind. Finally, he forced himself to take the amulet back out of his pocket. With an unsteady hand, he held it out. 

"Take it now before I change my mind," he said through gritted teeth, "and swear on your bones you'll return it." 

As if fearing he would retract the offer immediately, Damas snatched the Seal from Jak's hand. Immediately, Jak missed its comforting weight. He closed his eyes and inhaled, trying to steady his nerves. When he opened them, Damas was watching him. The look in his eyes was still haunted and indecipherable, but some of the tension had gone out of his body. 

"Thank you," Damas said quietly. "I swear on that which I hold most dear that I will return this...amulet to you."

The words seemed almost to stick in his throat, but he pushed through them nonetheless. "I...it may be nothing. I may be...mistaken. But if this device operates as you say it does, then I will need to speak to your sage immediately." 

There was an undercurrent in Damas's words that promised danger -- the same tone he'd had when he had confronted Ridge for insulting Jak in the market. Jak felt his eyebrows rise up, but couldn't muster up enough emotion to be concerned. 

"You gonna leave him in one piece?" he asked. 

"That," said Damas, "will depend very much on how he answers my questions."

Chapter Text

The storm siren was already blaring by the time Jak got to the street. All around him, Spargans were locking shutters in place over windows, and forming lines to move supplies indoors. They looked as though they were accustomed to severe weather like this.

Jak had experienced four major sandstorms and a few small thunderstorms in the months since he and Daxter had been rescued, but this was the first major squall from the coast he’d seen in Spargus. Even the kangarats were scurrying for shelter! Jak ducked under a heavy support beam being carried by a few older women and made for the West Quarter of the city. The closer he got to the market, the louder the sound of the waves became. It reminded him of Sandover, and hiding under his “uncle’s” bed with Daxter while the hut shook in the wind.

He'd always hated the stormy season. 

As he’d expected, the rest of the teens in his Arena Training group were already at the market, laying down stones to stop some of the water in case of flooding. Only one of them had earned his third battle amulet so far -- not so much granting him citizenship, as he had been born within the walls, but granting him permission to leave the city unaccompanied -- which made him the de facto leader of the group. Jak spotted him pulling down a stall awning and lashing it down over a stack of crates, and he hopped the barricade to call him.

“Hey! Merit!”

The scarred boy looked up, and his eyes briefly narrowed in annoyance. “ There you are! We got our orders twenty minutes ago, Jak. Even Daxter got here before you!”

With a shrug, Jak looked around for Daxter. “Damas needed me.”

Merit eased up immediately, irritation replaced by mild confusion. “But you’re not grounded anymore, right? What’d you do?”

“Nothing!” Man, Damas hadn’t been kidding about him earning a reputation for being rash around here. “I asked him to teach me to use polearms.”

“Who’s teaching who polearms?”
Raza, the youngest in their squad, popped up over the highest edge of the wall with an armful of stones that Jak would’ve needed his dark form to lift.

“Gah!” Merit started and crossed his arms. “Raza, stop doing that!”

Jak snorted. For such a tall girl, Raza was surprisingly quiet when she wanted to be. “Damas is teaching me polearms.”

Raza squinted at him behind her glasses. She set her stones in place, then grinned. “You’re gonna get your butt whooped.”

“Already did, thanks,” Jak answered dryly. “Is Dax down there with you?”

“Yup.” Raza dropped back down behind the wall for a moment. There was an undignified screech, and then she launched Daxter over the wall with a loud, “Ta-da!”

Daxter landed on the top of the wall with all his fur puffed up. He grasped his chest as though staving off a heart attack and glared at Merit. “I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: You guys gotta put a bell on that kid!”

He stood up and very conspicuously adjusted a belt and holster that he hadn’t been wearing that morning. “Hey, Jak! You still have all your teeth, it’s a miracle!”

“Har har.” Jak grabbed the ottsel and deposited him on his shoulder. “Belt looks great, Dax. No gun yet?”

Daxter shrugged. “The Lil’ Lightning is done, but Sig’s gotta figure out forging real tiny ammo, apparently. Should be ready tomorrow, provided this storm doesn’t, y’know, wipe out everything we know and love.” 

“I’m surprised you didn’t name your gun after your Havenite girlfriend,” Merit teased, “considering you never shut up about her.”

The ottsel actually paused to consider this. “Nah,” he decided, “Tessie’s more of a smokin’ hot cannon, if y’know what I mean. All fireworks, baby!” He made a sound mimicking a rocket and an explosion while the other boys rolled their eyes.

Jak took the sandbags Merit offered him and started shoring up their side of the storm wall. “Hey, Damas said to tell you that you’re in charge of waterproofing the stables. I gotta tell Kleiver to lock down the turret.”

This time, they barely flinched when Raza popped her head up again. “Wait, Kleiver? I thought Flick said she saw him head east to check the garage?”

Well, that would complicate things slightly.

Jak scanned the area for the last member of their squad until he spotted blue hair up on one of the rooftops. “Flick!” he shouted over the wind, “Is Kleiver at the turret?”

Flick raised her goggles and peered over the roof’s edge. “Nope! He’s locking down the garage! Hey, you guys got any more rope down there? Cairn’s shop’s got another loose shutter.”

Merit rifled through a dwindling supply of storm prep and shook his head. “Sorry, Flick! All out!”

He turned back to Jak with an apologetic look. “I’m heading to the stables once we get the last sandbags placed. I think you’re going to have to check the turret yourself, Jak. Stay out of the water if you can, though. The squid likes to hide in the cove during bad storms, and I don’t think we have long before the storm makes landfall.”

Jak nodded, and without another word he hopped the lower wall and jogged toward the beach. Bouncing on his shoulder, Daxter squinted out at the greenish black wall of clouds gathering on the horizon. 

“So uh, remind me, Jak. Was there a particular reason we’re running TOWARD THE SCARY DEATH CLOUDS?!” 

“Gotta seal the hatches on the gun,” Jak replied tersely. “If the waves get high enough to swamp the mechanisms, we’ll be out of shore defense.”

“Buddy, I hate to break it to ya,” Daxter retorted in his ear, “But if the waves get high enough to swamp the mechanisms, we’re gonna have a lot more problems than a soggy gun!”

The weather hadn’t exactly been pleasant before, but by the time Jak and Daxter made it to the defense turret, it had turned nasty. The wind whipped sand and salt in stinging curtains, lashing out at anyone who came close to the water. Already, the waves were churning and foaming out beyond the cove, and it was only a matter of time before the cove got choppy as well. The rain fell in scattered droplets at first, but those quickly multiplied into a steady sheet of rain, drenching them before they even made it to the base of the turret.

“Oh yuck!” Daxter complained, “Now our bunk is gonna smell like wet ottsel!”

“Let’s just hurry up before this gets worse!” Jak shot back.

The ladder was slippery, but no worse than trying to climb buildings in Haven, by Jak’s calculations. If anything, it was more straightforward than trying to infiltrate the sewers or the palace. At least this time, the only thing trying to kill him was nature, and not some crazy metalhead or Krimzon Guard. 

Jak ducked into the covered turret and checked the power levels. There was enough battery for a few hours of a weak force field, but not much else. It would keep the mechanisms dry, at least.

Jak sucked on his teeth a moment in thought, then moved his hand across the panel, channeling some of the yellow eco from the next shell in the gun to supplement the battery. Mixing blue and yellow eco wasn’t the greatest idea, but it would keep the gun dry a little longer if the storm lasted the night.

Considering the sparring session and the unanticipated breakdown that had followed, Jak’s energy had already been flagging. He counted himself lucky that there was eco already in the turret he could redirect. Using his own supply likely would have left him struggling to get down the ladder without falling.

“Okay. That should hold it for now.” Jak squatted and crawled out of the turret. “Ready to go?”

Daxter reluctantly crawled out from under the contraption. “Ottsels do not swim, for your information, so if you slip off the rock bridge I’m haunting you forever.”

Jak privately thought that any animal with a rudder tail probably was capable of swimming, but he knew it had never been one of Daxter’s stronger skills. Any kind of swimming that wasn't purely for leisure was out of his wheelhouse. All the same, he didn’t want to end up swimming right now either. Every step down the ladder was slow and deliberate, and although his foot slipped a time or two, Jak made it down before the rain really picked up. The rock pillar afforded slight shelter against the storm, but only until they started picking their way across the natural bridge. There, the rock became slippery, and footing was difficult.

“Hurry up, Jak!” Daxter hollered in his ear as Jak struggled to stay upright, “Just jump and roll or something! I’m getting salt water in increasingly uncomfortable places!”

The somersault turned out to be a bad idea. Jak missed the landing by two centimeters and crashed face-first into the surf. The salt water stung his eyes and flooded his mouth and nose for an instant before he sat up, spitting and coughing. He really, really , hoped nobody had seen that. 

Jak waded to shore and found that the rain didn’t do much to wash the salt off his skin. At least he could fill his canteen when it opened up like this. And the city reservoir would benefit from the storm. But he would have liked to have been able to see where he was going without his goggles on.

Daxter huddled miserably against the side of his head, reeking of wet fur and brine. He shivered and gripped Jak’s shoulder. “L-l-l-let’s g-g-g-get out of here,” he suggested, teeth chattering. “B-boy, who’d have thought-t-t the d-d-desert could g-get c-c-c- cold?” 

“Y-yeah,” Jak agreed, ineffectually trying to shake some of the water off his limbs. “Let’s get back to the palace.”

He felt, rather than saw, Daxter’s incredulous look.

“Back to the p-p-palace? Now ain’t the t-time for more ch-chores!” The ottsel elbowed Jak’s head. “W-what’s D-Damas want n-n-now?”

How was he supposed to explain his “conversation” earlier? Jak didn’t want to worry Daxter. If his best friend knew he’d had a complete freak-out in front of Damas, he’d either blame Damas for triggering it, or he’d want to know why it happened. And at this point, there was enough bad blood between Daxter and Samos without Jak adding his own. What purpose would it serve beyond dredging up bad memories for Dax?

“He’s uh…holding onto something for me,” Jak said evasively.

Daxter glared suspiciously, but waited until they’d made it into the slightly more sheltered residential block before he confronted Jak.

“Alright pal, spit it out! What’s old Sandy got, and why are you being weird about it?”

Jak ducked into a doorway for a moment so that they could catch their breath before he sprinted the next couple of blocks to the palace. He didn’t really want to tell Daxter everything that had been said. It felt like a breach of privacy to expose the king's moment of emotion.

“I um, I left my amulet in the throne room,” Jak admitted.

“Oh.” Daxter’s eyes widened. “Oh boy. Er…you don’t suppose Sandy knows what that thing means , do ya?”

Almost bitterly, Jak muttered, “I’m not so sure I know what that thing means.”

After pondering this a moment, Daxter raised his fists. “Well, if he doesn’t cough it up, he’ll have to deal with Orange Lightning!” He winked. "Want me to shake water all over him?"

Jak felt a wash of relief that tugged a smile out of his apprehension. As long as he had Daxter with him, he could handle anything. Even an extremely agitated king. Probably.

The palace was well lit on the outside, a beacon for anyone caught outside who needed shelter. Once inside the lift, however, it was as if all light had been swallowed up by the storm. Jak leaned against the railing and let his eyes adjust to the gloom. Daxter probably would’ve said something poetic about the stony castle matching the moods of its master, but to Jak it was just dark. Dark and unsettling.

There was a part of him, albeit a small one, that didn’t want to face Damas again. That strange, intense, desperate man he’d seen in the throne room was worlds away from the leader he’d come to admire. It had to take something big to turn the King of the Arena into the sight he’d seen before the storm broke, and Jak didn’t like knowing that somehow, he’d set it off.

At the same time, the rest of him was desperate to get his amulet back. A lot of the time he sort of forgot it was in his belt pouch. But on the bad days -- on the days when the dark eco was a little too close to the surface, or the nightmares kept him up -- it was his lifeline.

The lift rose to the open hatch into the throne room, and the torches didn’t do much to illuminate the wide space. Jak stepped out cautiously and skirted the stones and pools of water, glancing around for the king. He spotted Sig on the steps, which didn’t really surprise him. Two of the veteran scouts, Tarmac and Eris, stood beside Sig with their arms folded. That was a little more surprising. Was Damas seriously planning a mission in this gale?

The king sat on his throne, hunched over, fingers laced together in thought. Despite the rain still glistening on his arms, he looked as though he hadn’t moved in hours. In fact, he wasn’t even really reacting to whatever Sig and Eris were discussing in low voices. It wasn’t until Jak approached the foot of the stairs somewhat gingerly that he looked up at all.

His eyes stared through them more than at them, blank and hollow.

Slowly, his gaze sharpened to focus, and there was a pain there that Jak couldn't begin to fathom. Pain, and something achingly hopeful. 

“...Jak.”

Sig and Eris paused their conversation to follow Damas’s eyes. Sig stifled a laugh as he took in the soaking wet pair.

“Oof, that shrinkage , cherry! Shoulda gone with something to lock those curls in, huh?”

Jak reached up and felt his sodden hair. Sure enough, the loose style he usually allowed Daxter to brush his hair into had snapped back into compacted coils against his scalp. They were sticky with salt and sand, and detangling them was going to be a pain without Daxter’s comb.

“Aw man ,” he groaned. 

Damas shifted on his throne and his eyes cleared slightly. He now watched Jak with the same wariness Jak himself felt, though he disguised it well. “Jak," he said again, slower, “You know of a way to get into Haven without being detected, do you not?”

Jak cringed and looked away. Considering the dim view most Spargans had of Haven, he'd really been hoping nobody would find out about that.

“Did that stupid birdbrain snitch on us?” Daxter demanded. “I betcha he didn’t tell you he’s the one who told us we had to go! And anyway we weren’t grounded yet, so what’s it to ya?”

His eyes darted to Jak constantly as he spoke, gauging his friend’s reaction for cues. Jak was tense, and that made Daxter tense.

“There are subrails in the catacombs under the monks’ temple,” Jak spoke up after a moment. “They go to the Haven strip mine. I don’t think the city’s figured out it’s even there. Why?"

Damas’s brows lowered in thought. “Subrails to Haven… that’s how they did it,” he murmured.

Sig, Tarmac, and Eris exchanged glances with Jak and Daxter. “Uh…you wanna run that one by me again, boss?” Sig asked.

“No.” Damas sat up abruptly, ramrod straight. “No matter. There is something I need you to do for me, Sig. You, Eris, Tarmac, and any other scouts you deem necessary, are to infiltrate the city the moment the storm passes. Jak, you will show them the way to the catacombs. Bring me the green eco sage, Samos Hagai.”

“The sage?” Eris asked. She scratched the skin under her eyepatch and frowned. “Who do we have that’s injured bad enough for a green eco sage?”

“That remains to be seen,” Damas said darkly. “I trust you will employ the utmost discretion.”

Sig nodded firmly. “They won’t question my presence after the work I did with the Underground.”

“Good.” Damas relaxed. “Start your preparations now. A transport ring will be activated here when you acquire the sage. I will keep you informed should any details change.”

Understanding this to be a dismissal, Sig and the scouts took their leave. Jak couldn’t help silently wishing they would stay, if only to delay the conversation he could sense hanging over their heads. But the lift creaked and dropped from sight far too soon, leaving a heavy, expectant silence in the throne room. Daxter hopped down from his shoulder and scrambled up onto the edge of one of the pillars to place himself in a spot where he could keep an eye on both Damas and Jak’s expressions. And where it would be a shorter distance to jump on the king’s head if required.

Damas opened his mouth, shut it again, and inhaled slowly before raising his eyes to meet Jak’s. He made a halfhearted gesture beckoning him closer before looking away.

“Come here.”

Jak was alright with admitting to himself that he was still feeling a little unnerved around Damas, and it showed just the slightest bit in the cautious way he approached. Any sudden movements, and he was stopping right where he was.
But Damas didn’t move. Not until Jak had ascended all the way to the dais, to the left of the throne itself. Then, Damas opened his hands to reveal Jak’s amulet, cradled in his palms.

Silently, Damas offered it back and Jak did not hesitate. He snatched it from the king’s open hand and gripped it tightly. The metal was warm, and seemed almost to hum against his skin soothingly. Almost immediately, much of his stress evaporated. It was far more reassuring than such a trinket probably had a right to be. 

Or perhaps it was the knowledge that Damas had kept his word that reassured him. Just one more sign that Jak had placed his trust in the right man.

“Did you…” Jak shifted from foot to foot awkwardly and searched for the right words. “Did you er, find what you were looking for?”

Damas tilted his head back and studied him as though he were trying to find something in Jak’s face that he’d misplaced. He barely nodded. 

“I may have. I will await confirmation from the sage but…I have been given much to consider that I would not have believed a year ago. Still, I would rather say nothing until I know that I am not wrong.”

Only Jak heard him whisper, almost too quietly to be heard, "Please, Precursors, don't let me be wrong."

“What do you want with Grandpa Green?” Daxter asked. He put on a lighthearted air, but it wasn’t as convincing as he thought. “Do you really have to bring him here? I guarantee he's gonna ruin the vibe.”

After another few heartbeats of silence, Damas finally drew in a sharp, shuddery breath. He slowly stood and reached up to grasp Jak’s arm. The haunted thing had returned to his eyes, and it demanded answers.

“How did Praxis know you were coming?” he asked.

Daxter and Jak glanced at each other, surprised. 

“When?” the ottsel asked, “The time I sneezed on the roof, or when we went in the creepy tomb?”

Damas shook his head. “When you fell from the sky. When the Rift Gate spat you out in Haven city three years ago. How did Errol know where and when you would land?” 

It wasn’t like the question had never occurred to Jak. But the more he’d searched for an answer, the less sense it all made. Errol shouldn’t have known, unless Kor had tipped him off. And even then, Kor’s calculations couldn’t have been more than guesswork, since the Rift Rider had broken apart halfway through. 

“I…I…” Jak’s jaw worked, without any real purpose behind the sounds. He squeezed the amulet until the design cut into his skin. “I don’t know.” 

Damas gave him a grim look. “I fear we have been betrayed,” he warned.

The wind howled against the walls of the palace, but it scarcely compared to the shrieking in Jak’s mind.

Betrayed. 

How? Who could have even known he was going to fall out of the sky in a flash of light like that?

The question so occupied his mind that he barely registered at first that Damas was speaking as though he believed every word Jak had told him. He spoke as if it were a simple fact, not some wild story that a half mad mercenary thought up. He believed Jak. He still believed Jak!

"Be- betrayed?" Jak managed, "Why? By who?"

Damas straightened his shoulders, and in that moment it was as if he'd never been anything but the unshakable king of Spargus. "That is what I intend to find out from Hagai. We will find out who informed Errol of your arrival, and there will be retribution."

"Whaddya mean we, pal?" Daxter asked, startled by his vehemence.

"You are Spargans," Damas answered simply. "Your battles are our battles, and our battles are yours. And by that same reasoning, a betrayal of one of us is a betrayal of all of us."

Daxter squinted. "But...uh, there have been a lot of betrayals, and all before we got chucked out into the desert."

"And?" Damas fixed the mutated teenager with a steady look. "You pretend it doesn't affect you, boy, but it is all too clear that the time before you both came to us left much for the city to repair."

Emphasizing his point, he nodded at Daxter's gun belt.

"If someone harmed you grievously before you arrived, then the community will repay them. If your village failed to raise you -- failed even to teach you to defend yourself and your home -- then it falls to the community to correct this. And it will be corrected."

Chapter Text

For once in his life, Daxter was dumbstruck. He'd always kept up his bragging and bravado like a neon light, pointing to him and screaming "I'm here! I'm a person! Just notice me! Remember me!" Though it did tend to have the opposite effect sometimes. When Sig entered them into the training squad as individuals rather than a unit, Daxter hadn't gotten his hopes up that anyone outside of Jak would see him as anything but an annoying animal sidekick. But they had. 

Daxter was used to people ignoring him in favor of Jak, or treating him as an extension of Jak. And he told himself he didn't mind, because they didn't really see Jak for who he was, either. Nobody had ever "raised" him to be anything. Well, his parents might have, but they'd been dead so long that the most Daxter could remember about them was what they looked like when they smiled. But now, Kleiver was the only one he regularly interacted with who still treated him like an animal.  Now sometimes their squad voluntarily hung out with him, even if Jak wasn't there!

Daxter had almost forgotten what it was like to be treated like a kid.

"I uh-" Daxter fidgeted, and then turned away quickly, feigning annoyance. "Y- you just had to go and get sappy!"

Jak's stoic mask slipped, and he bit his lip. Those words probably did more to heal the pair of them than light eco even could. Jak mouthed a heartfelt thank-you to the king before checking on his friend.

"Dax?" he asked.

"Don't look at me!" Dax sniffled, managing to sound offended while hastily drying his eyes on his arm.

Damas let go of Jak's arm to lay a hand on Daxter's back. Whatever storm had been brewing inside him looked as if it had passed, and that bizarre, gentler side didn't seem to be going away. 

"Go wash your face," he said, which conveniently gave the ottsel an excuse to hide any evidence that he'd cried, "Your fur is a wreck."

Daxter coughed and snickered despite himself. "A wreck?! My dashing charms supercede wetness!"

"You look like Hurricane Hairball, buddy," Jak interjected.

The ottsel gasped in outrage. "How very dare you!" He pointed at Jak. "You ain't no basket of fruit yourself, bigfoot!"

There was a very small smile on Damas's face as he watched the pair bicker. He still looked drawn and weary, but something about him had settled. Not quite contentment, but near enough to it. And if part of it was feigned, well, the rookies didn’t need to know that.

His pulse still hammered in his ears, and his gut twisted in knots. He was heartsick, but hopeful. Fearing the truth but needing it desperately. But even with this foreboding hovering over his mind, he could pretend all was as it should be until the storm had passed, could he not? 

He cleared his throat, catching the boys' attention. "You both need to wash up," he said. "I don't know what goes on in your brains, running around the desert as you do with your hair loose. And dashing out into a squall like this bareheaded, no less! It only makes more work for you later."

Damas had a sudden, sinking suspicion that was swiftly confirmed by the confused looks passing between his- the boys.

"You don't...know how to do anything with your hair, do you?"

Embarrassed, Jak squeezed his amulet. "No, no, I know stuff! I just...can't make it look right."

"Because I can't braid for crap!" Daxter announced unapologetically. 

Muscling down the bittersweet pang in his chest -- it's too soon, too soon to get your hopes up. Take the moments as they come but do not read too much into what may only be coincidence -- Damas shook his head and sighed. He took hold of Jak's collar with one hand, and picked up Daxter by the scruff of the neck with the other. They were Spargans now, they might as well start looking like proper citizens.

Ignoring their sputtered protests, Damas marched them down the stairs to the pools of water. "Wash your hair," he said firmly, depositing them unceremoniously in the nearest pool. "I'll be back."

"Hey!" Jak spluttered and scrambled back out of the water. "Are you crazy?!"

Damas merely gave him a look , and stepped out of the chamber.

Daxter cackled and splashed him. "I wasn't gonna say anything pal, but you're ripe."
He made a show of pinching his nose between two fingers and fanning the air in front of him. “Phew! You smell like the ghost of Krewe!”

"Okay, that's it-!" 

Jak yanked off his headgear, boots, and tunic, then jumped back into the pool to chase down Daxter.

Daxter, sensing the imminent danger, shrieked and all but slithered into the next pool. "No! I'm too young to die!"

"Whatssamatter, Dax?" Jak taunted as he waded in deeper, "Scared of a little water?"

"Scared of your B.O., more like!"

"Oh you're so dead."

Damas returned to a little more chaos than he'd initially anticipated. Torn between appreciating a distraction from his thoughts and dismay at the mess, he wordlessly set down the box he'd been carrying and observed the pair.

Jak had held the upper hand for a while by way of size and strength, but Daxter was slippery when wet, and had gotten the drop on Jak. 

"SAY GOODNIGHT, JAK!" Daxter whooped, and promptly shoved his friend's head under the water.

Jak, in turn, flailed like the colossal squid that guarded their cove until he'd managed to grab Daxter's arm. He flipped into a death-roll, plunging Daxter back into the pool, and popped up with a triumphant laugh.

Damas almost didn't want to disturb them. It was rare enough to see the pair actually behaving like other Spargans their age. They'd had to grow up much too quickly, just as Damas had.

Still, they were making a mess.

"I believe the point was to remove the sand from your bodies, not remove the water from the pools," he remarked.

Neither of them looked particularly sorry. Jak shook water from his face and waded to the edge of the pool.

"What's the box for?" he asked.

With a raised eyebrow, Damas withdrew a small bottle and an ornate comb from the rough iron box and sat down on one of the larger stones. He tilted his chin towards the rock below it in a gesture that clearly meant sit down.

Jak eyed the comb incredulously. "Wait, are you serious? You’re going to do my hair?"

Damas lifted a hand toward the windows, where the rain slammed against the glass as the storm moved inland. "I don't see why not. Nobody is going anywhere until the storm passes, so you may as well wait it out here. And while you’re here, you might as well learn a few life skills that don’t involve shooting moving targets or climbing recklessly on the nearest dangerous object."

Clearly, Damas wasn't going to let him get out of doing some hair maintenance. Jak begrudgingly took a seat in front of the king.

"Is this gonna take long?"

Damas raised the comb and eyed Jak's scalp critically. "No more than two or three hours, I should think, provided you sit still. You’ll want to get comfortable now."

Daxter swam closer with mischief sparkling in his eyes. "Iii’m free-ee and you-uu're stu-uck!" he chanted in a sing-song voice.

Without looking up, Damas pointed the comb at the ottsel. "You're next."

"Eep!" Daxter submerged quickly, as though that would save him. 

Jak craned his neck to try to identify the contents of the bottle, but just as quickly, Damas turned his head back to face the lift. 

“Oh come on! What’s in the flask?”

“Oil.” Damas poured a fragrant liquid out onto his hands and rubbed them together before taking hold of Jak’s hair. He sighed in a distinctly un-kingly fashion. “I can’t tell if your antics damaged this hair more, or whatever excuse for conditioning you used in Haven city.”

Daxter resurfaced and shuddered. “Haven soap? Brrrr. It got the sewer stink off ya, but lemme tell you about the split ends-!”

“We pretty much just stole bar soap from Krewe's bathrooms at the saloon,” Jak admitted. “The Underground doesn’t have much of a budget.”

Damas clicked his tongue disapprovingly. “Well, I can’t say I’m surprised. What did they do with your, er, your younger self’s hair?”

“Chopped it short and shoved it under a cap, mostly, to keep anyone from recognizing him.” Jak tried to shrug, and received a light tug on his hair in return, warning him to sit still. “Samos mostly just used plant extracts to straighten it after we moved to Sandover, since I was always getting it tangled.”

“Keep in mind, that guy literally has a bird’s nest in his hair,” Daxter piped up, “So Hair Day involved a lot of shrugging and him quitting halfway through.”

Jak attempted to subtly roll his shoulders to work out a small muscle cramp, but other than that, he was surprised that this bizarre moment wasn’t more uncomfortable. He’d thought that having someone who wasn’t Daxter touch his hair would have had him on the defensive. It was such a vulnerable position to be in, sitting unarmed while someone’s hands were dangerously close to delicate vertebrae and arteries. At the very least, he’d expected the knots and scalp-pulling he and Daxter went through every time they combed it out.

But Damas certainly seemed to know what he was doing, and he didn’t seem to mind taking the time to fix one of his subjects’ bad hair. It actually felt… nice , having the oil worked through his curls. Without realizing it, Jak began to relax, a little at a time. 

Maybe this wouldn’t be so bad.

“Does the oil actually help?” he asked after a few moments of silence.

He heard Damas sigh again.

“Ye gods and little fishes,” Damas muttered, “Was he raised by wolves? That sage is an idiot.”

“A man after my own heart,” Daxter joked as he hauled himself out of the water to warm up on the stones. “Jak, we’re keeping him, right?”

Damas swept a large portion of Jak’s hair to the side and tapped it against his scalp. “Hold that down for me.”

As Jak complied, he added more oil to the part left behind and began working the comb through it. “A cream would have been better for some of these tangles, but the oil will suffice to soften and moisturize your hair. As it stands now, many of these strands are damaged or broken. At the very least, the coconut oil will keep out bacteria and prevent worse damage.”

Jak made a face. “What does that even mean? There's bacteria? People put cream on their hair?! This is…not the kind of discussion I was expecting to have in Spargus, no offense.”

“Bah.” Damas nudged Jak’s head back into place. “Because it sounds “soft” to discuss the details of your hair, is that it? Or is it because you were not taught to care for yourself? Put that out of your mind. A good warrior knows to maintain their body as they would their best rifle.” With a gentle tug, he added, “Your hair is part of that body.”

Jak felt an unpleasant emotion squirm around in his stomach. When was the last time an adult had told him to put any kind of work into taking care of himself? He was the guy that was always supposed to make the big sacrifices for everybody else, or he was the hired gun who was supposed to go in and do the dirty work so nobody else had to. Why put the effort in when the next mission was just going to wreck it all again?

Come to think of it, when was the last time someone had told him to be careful, or not to get injured on a mission? It had been Damas or Sig, hadn’t it?

Had anyone in Haven ever expressed worry for his personal health? Jak found that he couldn’t remember anymore.

“So…is your hair like mine? Is that why you know how to do this?” Jak asked. He needed to steer his mind away from thinking about Haven, or he’d tilt towards another spiral.

“Mm.” Damas separated out the hair again and moved Jak’s hand to pin down another section. “It’s a very common hair type. I’m surprised no one ever taught you how to take care of it.”

His tone was carefully neutral. Don’t dive too deep. If you’re wrong, it’ll just hurt more. “Who cut your hair as a child?”

“Uh…” Jak closed his eyes and resigned himself to remembering Haven again. “Torn, I think. He’s the ex-KG guy I mentioned. Actually-” Jak opened his eyes. “He wears his hair kinda like you, too! So I guess he just didn’t want to be bothered with my kid self’s hair. He ah, he doesn’t like me all that much.”

He winced as the comb dragged across his scalp, sectioning his hair into yet another division.

“What are you doing?”

He could feel hair being tugged this way and that behind his left ear, but couldn’t quite catch anything in his peripheral vision.

“Hey Daxter, what’s he doing?”

“Your hair, by the look of it,” Daxter teased.

"Dax, c'mon."

Daxter relented. “Some kinda fancy twirly thing.”

“Two-strand twist,” Damas corrected. “It should protect your hair from some of the heat out here, as long as you don’t mess with it.”

“Oh.” Jak settled and leaned back a little. His back brushed against Damas's shins, and he made a face. “That’s cool, I guess.”

For a time, they lapsed into silence and let the sounds of the storm fill up the spaces between them. Metal creaked and popped sullenly against stone as the wind shook and shoved the palace. Lights flickered within, but the tower had been built to last. The wind howled all the louder, like a predator robbed of its prey, and beat against the windows.

"We used to call these Dragon Squalls when I was a boy," Damas murmured after a particularly loud crack of thunder.

Jak's eyes fluttered open. Though he would never admit it, he had begun to fall asleep. He straightened his spine and pretended he hadn't just been using Damas's knee for an arm rest.

Damas could've warned him that he was dozing off!

"Why'd you call it that?" He yawned. "We just called 'em hurricanes when I was little."

"You don't know the story of the Precursor and the Sea Dragon?" Damas asked.

He didn't sound surprised. But if Jak hadn't known better, he'd have almost thought there was a hint of sadness in his voice.

"Never heard it."

"Do you wish to hear it?"

The ruthlessly efficient king of the desert was casually offering to tell him a story while doing his hair, like he was a little kid. Jak started to wonder if maybe he'd hit his head during the morning spar harder than he'd thought. Damas was friendly with most of his subjects, and even warm towards young recruits, but not like this. This was -- and always had been -- something different. Something Jak didn't have a name for, but had seen between Keira and Samos when he was a child.

He hadn't wanted to acknowledge it when Damas had first taken them under his wing. He'd never really belonged anywhere -- or with anyone -- before. Acknowledging in his mind that Damas cared about him felt too much like jinxing something a little too good to be true.

And yet here they were, even after how strangely Damas had acted that morning.

"Whatcha think, Dax?" Jak called across the throne room.

Daxter had wandered off while Jak had been dozing, and now perched on the arm of Damas's throne, watching the storm.

"Sure is blowing out there," he observed, slightly subdued, "Hey, you think the leapers are gonna be okay?"

"It is not their first squall, Daxter." Damas sounded faintly amused. "They will fare better than we would in their place."

"Huh." Daxter kicked his feet idly and squinted out at the rain as if he could actually see the stables. "Well, they better, because I ain't going out there to save 'em! Smelly lizards."

Despite their rather poor first impression, the gangly creatures were starting to grow on Daxter, no matter how strenuously he denied it. 

Damas finished twisting two strands of hair together and leaned back to check his work. The back of Jak's head was now neatly divided into rows of green-gold twists. The sun bleached gold didn't extend all the way to the roots -- those were still the same vibrant green they'd been when-

Oh Damas, you old fool. You're already accepting it? Let Jak be Jak. Don't put this on him without proof.

With a hard blink to dispel unwelcome moisture, Damas cleared his throat and pushed at Jak's shoulders. "Turn that way."

Jak yawned again and shifted to the left so that Damas could start on his left temple. "So what's with the sea dragon?"

It was a story most children in Haven heard at least once in their lives. If not from a parent, then at school. Book reports, cartoons, even school plays often focused on or alluded to the old folktale in some way. That Jak had never heard of it was just one more piece of evidence that his story was true. Morosely, Damas found himself wondering if anyone had told the boys stories as they grew up.

Damas poured more coconut oil into his hands, and began to tell the tale from memory -- abbreviating as he went out of habit. Mar never sat still long enough to hear the whole-

Ah.

Was this acceptance, then? Or a painful delusion, projected onto a boy who deserved to be seen as his own person? Damas bit his tongue and forced himself to keep speaking. 

"Long ago, humans and Precursors lived together in harmony. From their shining fortresses, the Precursors watched over humanity, and taught them the use of machines. In turn, the humans honored and revered them, and vowed to safeguard the planet's supply of eco. They became the very first sages. 

One day, a terrible storm swept across the land, destroying villages and forests. The Precursors sent their Oracle to investigate, and found mysterious footprints wherever the ruin was worst. So the Oracle went to the humans who had survived by hiding in a cave, and asked, 

"What is this thing that has happened to the land? Who is responsible for this destruction?" 

"Oh great Oracle," the people replied, "A terrible dragon has come up out of the sea! His wings are the foam of the waves, his claws are the teeth of Lurker Sharks, and he can change himself into a mighty storm with a magic word!" 

"Where has this dragon gone?" asked the Oracle, but no one could tell her with any certainty."

At this, Daxter snorted and hopped down from the throne. "Oh yeah. 'Well he's either a giant dragon or a giant storm, but we don't know where he is because we never learned how to look up!' Jak, I think these guys are related to ol' Meathead the Warrior back in Rock Village."

Jak snickered. "Sounds about right."

Damas glared at Daxter, but with no real heat behind it. "Are you telling this story, or am I?"

Daxter shot an insolent grin at him and slid back into the water. "What's a story without a little commentary?"

"Uninterrupted," Damas retorted. 

Daxter found this more amusing than he did.

He finished the left temple and stretched his fingers, then moved on to the crown of Jak's head. 

"I see that if I'm to make it to the end of this tale, I'll have to shorten it a bit."

Jak listened contently as he sat. Damas had a good voice for storytelling: low and warm and even. Between the sounds of the storm, the rhythmic tugging of the braids against his scalp, and the dim flickering of the torches, Jak had already been hard-pressed not to drift off before the story began. Now his eyelids drooped as Damas spoke of the Oracle arguing with the Precursor elders about the best way to handle the dragon. Before he could even register that time had passed at all, the story seemed to have leaped forward. Now the Oracle seemed to be in battle with the storm dragon.

"The battle raged until each was exhausted. The dragon bared his teeth and lay down upon the sand. "You fight well, Precursor. But you have forgotten that I am the storm, and you shall die here." And so saying, his body became a mass of clouds and rain. Wind ripped the trees from the earth, and the sea surged up and filled the beach, to the very hilltops."

"Yeesh. Hope Precursors can swim," Daxter mumbled from somewhere near Jak.

Jak looked down at his friend with a fuzzy sort of confusion. When had Daxter come out of the water? His fur was still damp, it couldn't have been long ago.

Damas shifted his weight on the rock above Jak and dropped a hand over his skull. "You're almost done. Turn around."

Jak grumbled under his breath and inched his way around to face the king -- or his torso, at least. When he tilted his head back, Damas looked more relaxed than he'd ever seen. The king raised his brows and smirked. 

"You look tired."

"M'not," Jak grumbled. "You c'n keep going."

"Hm." Damas's eyes crinkled at the corners. "As you wish."

He could guess that Jak would doze off again, but there was no harm in it. Heaven knew he’d fallen asleep while having his hair done a time or two when he was growing up. And admittedly, it had been an… eventful day.

“As the waters rose, the dragon laughed, for he believed the Oracle to have been blown away or drowned. But the Oracle gathered eco from the trees, and the rocks, and the water itself, and she transformed herself into an ottsel.”

Jak blinked. “An ottsel?”

Damas cast a knowing smile at Daxter, who was now listening more intently than before. “Aye. As orange as the metal of the Precursor cities. She swam through the waves, into the very heart of the storm. The dragon had not expected the Oracle to change into such a small creature, and his heart was exposed before the Precursor. Though her paws were small, and her teeth were blunt, the Oracle tore at the dragon’s heart. With every slash, the storm grew weaker, and the water began to recede.”

“What a woman!” Daxter whistled. “Now if she could just be Tess-!” 

“Sap.” Jak lifted a lazy hand to poke the ottsel in the side.

“Barbarian.” Daxter poked him back.

Before they could rile each other up further, Damas cleared his throat. “Don’t move, Jak.”

Jak snorted. “Sorry.”

He wasn’t.

“The story usually ends with the defeat of the dragon,” Damas said as he began to twist the next few strands of hair. It was amusing to watch Jak going cross-eyed in his attempts to watch the twisting. “Some people tell it with the place of the dragon’s defeat becoming the ancient Precursor Basin. Sometimes there’s a side note saying that the Precursors honored the Oracle by giving all ottsels orange coats, but there’s no empirical evidence that ancient ottsels were any color other than orange.”

Daxter’s face twisted in an odd expression. “ Empirical evidence? What am I, extinct?”

“To date, you’re the only ottsel I’ve ever seen outside of a few sketches in the corner of a three-hundred-year-old traveler’s diary,” Damas answered. “That’s probably why so many people assume you’re some kind of rat.”

Daxter crossed his arms and pouted. “Well that sucks. I probably was the guy in the drawing, too, if it’s that old!”

At last, Damas pulled back and clapped Jak on the shoulders.
“You’re done. Get up, I need to stretch.”

After sitting for so long, there were pins and needles in Jak’s feet, and his knees protested slightly when he stood. After trying to work out the kinks in his spine, Jak bent over the water to try to get a look at his hair. He couldn’t see much more than a shadow on the water, but the silhouette looked interesting. The twists hung around his face, and when he shook his head, they swirled outward for half a second before gravity caught up. A mischievous grin crept over Jak’s face, and he shook his head again, faster this time. The braids whipped into his face, and he laughed.

“Oh, this feels weird.” He ran a finger down one of the thicker twists, appreciating the shape. “I didn’t think my hair was this long!”

Damas stretched and rolled his shoulders. He stepped from rock to rock, pacing a little to get the circulation moving in his legs again. “Just imagine what they would’ve looked like if we hadn’t cut your hair when we found you,” he smirked.

Jak tried to picture this, and then shook his head again. “I don’t know anybody with hair that long.”

After a moment, he rather gruffly added, “Uh, thanks. For the braids, I mean. You didn’t have to.”

“ Somebody had to,” the king teased, “But you are welcome to come to me if you need help with this again.”

“I…probably will need help,” Jak admitted. “I didn’t see what you did, exactly. Can it just stay like this for a while? Or like...how long before I have to take it out?”

He’d never really seen Damas with his hair loose, or even Torn when he stopped to think about it. Their hairstyles weren’t quite the same as Jak’s, but he still wondered if they took the same amount of time to put together, and if they ever unbraided them. There was so much he’d never been taught about taking care of himself -- he and Daxter had more or less raised themselves with minimal supervision, after all -- and in hindsight it wasn’t that surprising that he’d been handling his hair incorrectly. It wasn’t like self-care had really been high on his list of priorities for the last couple of years.

“They should last for a good couple weeks, if you take care of them,” Damas offered. He raised an eyebrow sternly. “And yes , that means washing it every few weeks.”

“He still has to bathe regularly, right?” Daxter piped up, “Because if I gotta share a room with him when he’s only bathing once every couple of weeks, I’m moving out.”

“Hey!” Jak looked offended. “I do bathe! Just not during missions!”

“Convenient how often we’re on missions, huh?” Daxter hopped up onto a rock, fully prepared to pick on his best friend a little more, when he was abruptly lifted into the air.

“Your turn.” Damas unceremoniously plopped the ottsel down next to him. “I am not certain if one can actually braid fur , but we’ll find out shortly.”

Jak pulled a childish face at Daxter, who looked vaguely like a man going to his execution. He hopped down from his rock and headed back towards the stairs, tossing a half yawned “good luck” at Daxter before settling into a more comfortable position to wait out the rest of the storm. He vaguely remembered hearing Daxter complaining and Damas arguing back before the storm lulled him back into sleep once more.

Chapter Text

When the storm had finally passed, it was the silence that woke Jak. That, and the beginnings of a twinge in his neck. His eyes were sticky with sleep, begging him to doze off again and ignore the slightly protesting muscles. He almost gave in, but the more aware of his surroundings he became, the more he realized that something wasn't quite right. He heard water. This wasn't his room, was it?

With a soft groan, Jak forced one eye open a crack and came to the swift realization that, no, he was not in the room he and Daxter shared in the East Quarter. He was stretched out on the stairs carved into the dais in Damas's throne room.

What the-?!

With a jolt, Jak scrambled into a sitting position and looked around wildly. The absolute mortification of potentially being caught snoring on steps of the throne kept him disoriented enough that it took almost a full two minutes before he remembered why he was in the king's chamber. The clouds had not yet passed, casting the throne room in the same dim torchlight as before, but the rain no longer slashed against the windows. What wind Jak could still hear was low and soft, far softer than most winds in the desert were. When he turned his head to look up at what little sky he could see, a braid bounced up and struck him in the forehead.

Tentatively, he reached up and felt the rows of twists covering his scalp. They were all tightly, carefully woven, and not one had come undone.

So. That had really happened, then. In a way, Jak was strangely relieved. Part of him had been a little afraid the entire thing had been some kind of dream. The most respected warrior in Spargus, just casually telling stories and combing out Mad Jak’s hair? Wishful thinking at best, if not outright presumptuous. And yet, the bounce of the twists against his head was proof that Damas really had made an attempt at making Jak look just that little bit more like a Wastelander.

Jak ran his fingers through the twists and a tiny smile tugged at his lips. Maybe once he grew it out again, he would have enough hair to wear it like Damas’s. He bet that would look pretty cool.

Something hit him in the face with a pathetic flapping sound, cutting off his view. Jak yelped and flailed at the thing, only to come away with his tunic in hand. He yanked it down and scanned the room before catching sight of Daxter tapping an impatient paw.

“Well it’s about time you woke up, Sleepin’ Beauty!” Daxter snorted. “C’mon. Old Man Desert is on his way up here.”

Jak yawned and rubbed his face. “How long was I out?” he groaned.

Daxter kicked Jak’s boots over to him and started hunting around for the rest of his armor. The ottsel made a noncommittal sound and waved a hand. “Beats me. Yours truly was busy having a spa day with a sandy sadist , without his sidekick to come rescue him!”

“Oh come on, it couldn’t have been that bad,” Jak laughed.

Now that he was actually paying attention, Jak could see that three tight braids had been woven into the fur along the back of Daxter’s head, just barely poking out from under his goggles. 

“Wait, he actually did braid your hair?” Jak tugged his shirt on and leaned forward to get a closer look. “I didn’t think you had enough fur for that!”

“I’m pretty sure I don’t!” Daxter answered indignantly. 

Despite his complaining, however, he periodically reached back to feel the braids with something almost like a smirk in the corner of his mouth.

“Anyway, I think he’s done checking to see if the world got blown away out there, which means meetings . I uh, figured you’d want your stuff back on before anybody got here.”

The look Jak fixed him with was full of silent gratitude. There were very very few places -- around even fewer people -- where Jak felt safe enough to remove his armor, let alone his shirt. Outside of Daxter, the number of people who had seen the full extent of his scars could be counted on one hand, and even then, at least one of them had been simply out of necessity. Somehow, in a matter of months, Damas’s throne room had become one of those precious few spaces where he didn’t feel quite so much like hiding. Even so, that didn’t mean he was ready for everyone in Spargus to see what life in Haven had done to him.

The elevator was already creaking its way up the shaft by the time Jak had strapped his channeling ring back to his chest and tightened his bracers. Damas and Kleiver stepped out of the lift as Jak hopped, just a little awkwardly, off the stairs while tugging on his boots. He only hoped that it wouldn’t be immediately obvious that he’d been sleeping. Of course, Damas probably already knew he’d fallen asleep. The question was why he’d chosen not to wake him.

Kleiver gave him an odd look. “Whaddya wanna get all scrubbed up in the middle of a storm for? Someone hold a gun to yer head and make ya bathe?”

Naturally, the rough mechanic couldn’t conceive of anyone willingly bathing. 

“How did-?” Jak wrinkled his nose, then realized that it was probably obvious, given his usual state of windswept, sweat-soaked presentation. “Y’know what, nevermind. How’d the garages hold up?”

“Better than the market, that’s for sure,” Kleiver grunted. For once, there was no sarcasm dripping from his words.

Damas acknowledged the statement with a grunt as he passed Kleiver and headed for a closed door on the left side of the chamber. Usually, the door was half obscured by a light curtain, and Jak had never had a good excuse to get close enough to see where it led. From where he stood now, he could make out a short stone corridor into some kind of antechamber, but he couldn’t see much beyond that.

“The water wheels kept the power on through the storm, lordship,” Kleiver huffed as he hastened to catch up, “But we lost eight solar panels on the south side alone.”

Damas shook his head with a grimace. “Those things weren’t cheap,” he sighed.

They would have to reopen the trade route with Kras City if they wanted more, most likely. The vehicle-obsessed, crime-ridden city was far, far from Spargus’s favorite trading partner. But it wasn’t like Haven was an option, and the Marauder homelands of the northern mountains were completely out of the question.

Well, there was no sense making plans yet until he’d seen the full extent of the squall’s damage. Damas glanced over his shoulder and waved Jak and Daxter over.

“It’s time you learned how to use the map room,” he said.

Calling it the map room was a bit too generous of a description. There was a round projector table against the back wall in the antechamber, and that was about it. The sides of the room were taken up by an enormous water filtration system. Water pulled in from pipes to the ocean was run through the pumps before flowing between the throne room and a series of water-powered generators throughout the tower. The tower had been one of the first parts of the city built, and in the early days of Spargus there hadn’t been enough room for the map table to be given a designated chamber of its own.

Kleiver kicked the old model into life, and a fuzzy hologram of the city rose from its surface. After a few minutes of tweaking and programming, the hologram began to generate flashing yellow lights in multiple places. Most of them were in the western part of the city, near the coast, with a few near the gates.

Damas leaned over the table and studied the map. “No trees down this time, but the clifftop crops could be a total loss.”

Jak and Daxter glanced at each other. Mostly, Spargus relied on fishing, hunting, and the date palms that grew along the oases. The verdant patches on the cliffs surrounding the cove usually held melon patches, sorghum, and the odd flower dropped by a passing bird. Anything else came from individual hydroponic gardens, or from trades. Foraging was going to be a little sparse for a while if the storm had damaged the cliff crops.

“How bad is it?” Jak asked.

“Hard to say without going out to every individual patch,” Damas sighed, “But the southern watchtower garden lost a quarter of the grains planted there. If the other crops look the same, we may need to ration bread for a while.”

Kleiver looked a little disappointed by this, but didn’t argue. “Stables came through just fine, but we lost a gun station here , and here .” He pointed at the map. “I’ll get my boys on it.”

Damas nodded, and zoomed in on the center of the city, surprisingly close to the palace. “Jak, I’ll need your help here. It looks like we have some debris on one of the core vents.”

“There’s an eco vent near the palace?” Daxter blurted out, surprised. “You guys couldn’t have told us that before?” 

“Not with the scrapes you two get up to,” the king retorted. “It’s for authorized uses only . There may be some plaster and stone covering it up that we'll need moved.”

That sounded too much like his childhood chores. Jak wrinkled his nose. “How much junk got in the vent?”

Damas fixed a strange, meaningful look on him and answered somewhat evasively. “Would have been worse if I hadn’t closed it. I’ll need a second pair of hands if we want to get it open again.”

Damas had closed the vent? Jak wondered if he just meant that he'd capped it somehow. But then, it would have been when he had Jak's amulet, wouldn't it? Jak tried to focus on the damage reports, but the same question kept circling back to the forefront of his mind: had Damas been able to use his amulet? Was Damas a channeler? 

It was a nice thought, if a somewhat unlikely one. Channelers out here were pretty much all monks from childhood, and the only channelers he'd ever met in Haven had been fellow prisoners of the Dark Warrior Program. 

Focus, Jak, focus! Jak blinked and leaned over the map. Most of the damage seemed to be localized to the market and residential areas so far, but at least the gun turret had made it through unscathed. He wasn't sure, but it sort of looked like there was something wrong with one of the housing rows just before the market.

"Is that broken?" he asked, pointing to a holographic house that looked a little more lopsided than usual. He was pretty sure there had been a wind turbine attached to it before.

Damas leaned in and examined the image. "Hm. I’d wager several dwellings suffered damage to their structures. We’ll be making bricks and stucco for a few weeks.”

Jak’s eyes lit up. “I can help! We used to do that in Sandover. Where do you get the clay?” He couldn’t help a warm spark of satisfaction at the king’s approving nod. 

“You know that little island just about in the middle of the cove?” Damas asked. “There’s a dried creekbed there. That’s our usual source -- although getting to it is not without risks.”

Kleiver sucked on his teeth thoughtfully and rubbed his chin. "Betcha the Marauders will be out in force today, lookin' to scavenge bits the storm took off us. Might want to put the shrimps on lookout duty in case the squid ain't come back up yet."

"Good idea. Even if the squid has left the cove, I don’t want it getting any ideas when we send people out for loam." Damas nodded to Jak. "You're on the guns when we send people out to the island."

"Yessir." Jak folded his arms and nodded back sharply. “You don’t want me to kill it, right?”

Scoffing, Kleiver narrowed his eyes at Jak. “Don’t even think about it, pup. Just a couple warning shots across a tentacle is enough to send it a message.”

"After we clear the vents," the king interrupted. "I want that done before anything else. Nobody has reported injuries yet, but I do not intend to take chances.”

He straightened and clapped Kleiver on the arm. “Watch the map while we reopen the vent. If there are any more damage reports, let me know.”

The large Spargan dipped his head slightly. “Will do, lordship.”

The sun was beginning to reappear when they made it down to the street, filtering through the clouds in uneven splotches of light. Despite the debris and palm fronds cluttering the road, most of the Spargans outside were in a good mood. Several children wielding rakes had already set to work clearing everything into wet, sandy heaps along the sides of the road, stopping occasionally to fling handfuls of damp sand at each other. Adults were engaged in cheerful conversation even while digging splinters of wood out of walls and unshuttering windows. A few paused to acknowledge their king as he passed, but for the most part they carried on with their tasks uninterrupted.

Daxter climbed up to the top of Jak’s head and peered out at the buildings. “Huh,” he said, “It’s a little soggy, but the sandbox doesn’t look too bad!”

“This place is built to survive,” Jak agreed.

He missed the way Damas smiled at the open admiration in his voice.

The vent was surprisingly obvious in hindsight. Jak was actually shocked he'd never sensed it before, considering how sharply dark eco contrasted with light eco. But maybe that was a good thing. If he no longer felt the clashing eco shrieking in his chest and fighting through his veins, maybe the darkness was starting to balance enough that a light vent didn't stand out anymore. Of course, he could feel it now, as he stood over it. That muted, giddy pull on his body felt almost -- almost -- the way it did before the dark eco. Before Praxis. 

Daxter hopped off of Jak's head and strolled up to the covered vent. He rubbed his furry chin and examined a heavy beam that had fallen directly over the cap.

"Eeyep, that'd do it," Daxter drawled, putting on the air of a man with experience. "Whatcha got here, chief, is one of them blocked vents."

Jak muffled a snicker behind his hand. Nobody else would understand the ottsel's performance, but he did. It was a near uncanny imitation of the traveling handyman who used to fix the windmills on Sentinel Beach, years ago. Somehow, he'd always managed to make things worse by "repairing" them.

Clearing his throat, Jak looked to Damas. "Where do you want the beam?"

In answer, Damas stooped down and, with a quiet grunt of exertion, lifted the beam onto his own shoulders. He smirked at the boys' flabbergasted expressions. Call it vanity, but it couldn't hurt to remind them that being the king was no idle job.

"I have the beam," he said archly, "Now my hands are quite full. I’m afraid you’ll have to open the vent."

Jak’s eyes widened. “What?”

Damas nodded to the seal etched into the metal. “I trust this will be no different from the dark eco vent you told me you opened.”

He delayed setting the beam down for a few moments as he watched Jak slowly move to crouch next to the vent. It was easier to feign nonchalance when he had to focus on not hitting anyone or anything with the beam. Once he put it down, he wouldn't be able to hide his nervous energy, or keep himself from watching the boy like a hawk. 

Precursors, please. For once, give back something you took from me.

Jak swallowed hard and took his amulet from his belt. He made eye contact with Daxter, silently questioning if this was the best idea. Daxter winked at him in a show of support. If there was to be fallout from this, Daxter would be there to cause a distraction from it, as always.

He was aware of Damas watching him intently. It made everything feel like a test somehow, and Jak didn't like it. With Samos, everything had always been some kind of test or lecture. Spargus was supposed to be the place where he was free from all that! 

But even so, Spargus needed the vent, and if nobody else was available to get it open then it was only right that he pick up the slack and help take care of his home. Jak sighed and held his amulet over the sealed vent.

Immediately, the eco within responded, flaring up out of the vent with a rush of warm air. It caught Jak full in the face, and he fell back with a spluttered squawk. As it always did, the light eco sank into his skin and smoothed over the sharp, fractured parts of himself. The dark eco left in him from the day before was barely enough to transform one of his hands, but it still put up a bit of a fight before the light cheerfully smothered it. 

Jak sighed again, more relaxed this time, and sat back on his heels. He looked to Damas for approval and that terrible, painful expression of hope lay open on his face again.

Why? What was Damas hoping for, someone who could channel without being a monk? Why couldn't he just tell Jak what he needed from him?

As if realizing that his emotions lay bare before the world, Damas cleared his throat and quickly schooled his features to something more neutral again.

"Well done, Jak," he said, and set down the beam to rest his hand on the boy's shoulder. "Now, go find Sig. He should be at the hangars within the hour. Once you've taken the scouts to the subrails, you two can rejoin your squad." 

"Ah yes," Daxter snorted. "Time to go undo everything we spent yesterday setting up."

"What? You don't want to clear seaweed encrusted weights out of the market?" Jak slung Daxter up onto his shoulder and poked him in the ribs.

Daxter smacked him in the forehead, and rolled to look at Damas. "Alright, alright, we're goin'. Just don't expect us to come back and say hi to Old Wrinkly!"

"I don't," Damas said shortly, and his grip tightened into a light squeeze. "You'll be busy until I or Sig call you back."

There was a lot left unspoken there, lurking under his words. He might as well have shouted "you're not allowed to be part of this meeting". 

There was a time when that would have infuriated Jak. When he would have assumed that he was being kept out of the loop for personal reasons. But Spargus had structure . The rules made sense to him, and he was mostly okay with following most of them. If the king told you not to walk in without a summons, you took the hint and found something else to do. There was always something else to do in Spargus, but rarely with the same life-or-death urgency of Haven.

"Understood." Jak stood up and brushed down his knees. "C'mon, Dax. We'll meet the scouts at the garages."

Daxter was not especially looking forward to more of Jak's insane driving. But maybe if Sig was in the vehicle, he'd slow down?

Nah, probably not.

"I call shotgun!" Daxter announced.

Behind them, Damas cleared his throat. "Boys, one more thing."

They turned expectantly, clearly anticipating another order. The surprise on their faces was somewhat gratifying when Damas winked and said, "Take the Slam Dozer. Kleiver will be too busy to notice."

Jak pumped a fist into the air with a muted hiss of excitement, then reached over to high-five Daxter. Both looked like children who had just been given the day off from school.

"Thanks, Damas!" Jak tipped a playful salute and started jogging towards the garages.

"Hey!" Daxter, in a much better mood, waved to Damas as they left. "Hey boss! Give ol' Loghead an earful for me!"

Damas couldn't help the snort of amusement that burst out of him. "I will, Daxter," he promised. 

No doubt it would be an… interesting conversation. 

There was a nervous energy in Damas as he made his way from one end of the city to the other. Assessing the storm damage and organizing repairs gave him something to do , to keep his mind centered on what was before him and not what lay ahead. But eco hummed just beneath his skin, turning every idle moment into restless impatience. His power as a channeler had never been exceptional -- the really strong ones tended to skip a generation, and Damas had taken more after his tactically-minded mother than after his somewhat distracted father. But since the arrival of Jak to the city, Damas had found that his attunement to the eco in the desert had been amplified. In hindsight, he could guess that this was why the monks tended to stick to their own company. 

It had been so long since there had been another true channeler in Spargus.

And Jak was more than merely another channeler; Damas was certain of that now.

It was impossible for the amulets to be used by those not descended from the royal family. Each seal carried a unique bio-lock within that corresponded to the bloodline’s genetic signature. The Great Mar had been thinking several steps ahead when he’d begun that tradition. He couldn’t have known there would be a coup some fifteen or sixteen generations later, but until Praxis, the coding of the amulets had prevented many an ambitious council member from stealing a seal to gain power. 

Jak could not have activated the sealed vent if he was not a descendant of the House of Mar.

And, provided everything Jak had been told about his past was true, there was only one descendant of the House of Mar who would have been four years old the year before Jak came to Spargus.

Damas knew it was far too late to tell himself not to get his hopes up. He had long since accepted who Jak was to him, he just wasn’t ready to let himself acknowledge who Jak had been to him. Not until he confronted the sage.

“When the shoreline has been cleared, start putting together crews to gather clay,” Damas ordered the nearest Spargan, “I’m lighting the kiln in four hours.”

“Aye, lordship.”

Stay focused. What does your city need? 

Damas strode from street to street, noting which houses were damaged, who had been most affected by the gale, and what supplies would need replacing. They’d lost six crates of ammunition, which was a bit of a blow. They could supplement with ammunition taken from raids on Marauder camps, but that was dangerous work when there was a shortage. 

As the map had suggested, the worst of the damage was in the West market. Half the stalls were full of debris the storm had blown in, and at least two had had shutters ripped off. The North Quarter’s market fared much better, with the reservoir tanks, artifact trade, smithy,  and butcher stalls being virtually untouched. 

Damas stopped beside Cairn’s shop to help the young man untangle the ropes holding down his remaining shutters. “Did you lose any stock?” he asked.

Cairn wasn’t much older than Jak, but he was no warrior. He had never fought in the Arenas, but as a textile maker, he was exempt. He provided for his city in ways other than the scouts and soldiers did. 

That was probably for the best. Cairn’s asthma made going out into the sandstorms an unappealing prospect for him.

Cairn shoved his shop’s awning back into place and wiped his forehead. “Yeah,” he sighed, “Two pots of dye got smashed. If the sorghum plots made it through okay, I can replace them, but it’s going to be a little while before I have enough to trade for that much sorghum.”

“Let me worry about the price,” Damas reassured him. “The storm came sooner than I anticipated. I should have put the city on alert when I received the first forecast.”

The weaver shook his head. “ Nobody anticipated the storm coming that fast!” he said earnestly. “Gar thinks that wonky purple star-comet-thing might be messing with the weather. But we are almost to the rainy season, so who knows, right?”

The Day Star was becoming harder to ignore. The monks had warned Damas several times about the phenomenon, but he had never been one to accept doomsday prophecies. Still, if it was something that could have real, tangible, effects on nature, he needed to look into it.

“If there have been any other losses of equipment or products, speak to the requisition officer,” Damas told Cairn, “She’s set up shop in the palm row.”

“Ah!” Cairn offered a small, heartfelt salute. “Thank you, sir. I think most of the fabric will be alright, once it dries out.”

“Good.” Damas nodded and began to make his way back toward the tower. 

He couldn’t stay still any longer. He needed to get that transport ring activated now, before he did something rash, like accompany Sig to Haven.

Nothing good could come of returning to Haven.

Chapter Text

Sig let out a cheery whistle when he spotted Jak and Daxter. 

"Well don't you boys look sharp!"

Jak resisted the urge to pull his scarf up over his face. "Shut up, Sig," he grumbled, pretending that he wasn't at least a little pleased.

It seemed like a small thing on the outside, but just knowing that he looked more like his fellow warriors made him feel just that little bit more at home. It was amazing how just changing a part of his appearance felt like removing himself from Haven and everything he’d been through there. 

It made him feel like he really was Spargan.

He glanced around the hangar, counting four veteran Wastelanders in total. "Is this everyone?"

"You think we need more?" Tarmac asked with a raised eyebrow.

Daxter made a dismissive sound. "We're surprised Sig's taking this many!"

The fourth member of the party, a spitfire of an old woman, reached out and rapped Daxter on the skull. "Eh, what about it? Some of us are bored, you know!"

"Good point," Daxter allowed, rubbing his smarting head.

Tarmac loaded a box of supplies into one of the Dune Hoppers and swung into the back. "So tell me why the runt knows how to sneak into Haven again?"

Sig slid into the driver's seat and shrugged. "Kid's a born scout. If there’s some kinda hidden chamber, artifact, or enemy in a five mile radius, he’s gonna find it whether you want him to or not. You should've seen the stuff he used to drag in while I was on assignment. Ancient Precursor artifact one day, a whole-ass Lurker Shark the next. We never figured out where he was finding half of it."

"And I'm not telling!" Jak called over smugly.

He ducked into the part of the hangar reserved for Damas's favored vehicle, the Slam Dozer. The massive armored buggy had not been built for someone of Jak’s height, but that didn’t matter much to him. Running two fingers along the car’s dusty blue plating, he almost wished some Marauders would try their luck on the way to the temple, just so he and Daxter could try out the heavy machine gun turret.

"Whoa whoa whoa, cherry!" Sig called out sternly, "Just what do you think you're doing over there?"

Jak settled into the driver's seat and adjusted it to his height. He shot a cocky grin at Sig and leaned on the steering wheel.

"Damas said I could drive the Dozer. We can switch to the Hopper when we get to the islets."

The other four Wastelanders stared at him for a moment with a variety of expressions ranging from surprised to thoughtful. Then the old scout, Priya, shook her head and rolled her eyes.

"What'd I tell ya? He's gonna spoil em."

"Hey." Sig shrugged. "If it makes him happy, I say let him."

The other three grumbled good-natured agreements, but settled into their own vehicle.

The Slam Dozer was not built for speed. That was a bit of a disappointment to Jak, but he quickly decided that what the Dozer lacked in speed, it more than made up for in sheer brute strength. He could deal with Sig outpacing him -- this time -- when he could just smash through sand dunes with the trigodon horn mounted on the front of the vehicle.

When Veger had first exiled Jak to the desert, the Wastelands had seemed impossibly vast. Jak had wondered then how the coast outside of what had once been Sandover could have been so destroyed, and how it could have become a desert in just a few hundred years. It wasn’t until his first few driving lessons that he learned that the Wastelands wasn’t even part of the Haven mainland. It was an island, six hundred miles away from what used to be Misty Island. 

It took maybe two hours on a windy day to get from one coast to the next, not counting time spent fighting off Marauders who had come out from the mountains north of Haven. On a clear day like this, with the weather still surprisingly calm after the storm, getting down to the series of islets that led to the ancient monastery barely took an hour.

“Y’know, I’d kill for a good sunroof on one of these puppies,” Daxter groused. He had wedged himself under Jak’s seat in an attempt to escape the mid-afternoon heat.

“Well then how are you going to see an aerial attack incoming?” Jak argued.

“Where’s an aerial attack going to come from? The buzzards?!” Daxter fired back. “The worst they can do is poop on you -- even more reason for a sunroof!”

Jak rolled his eyes and plowed through another dune. “We’ve driven through worse, remember?”

Daxter’s head poked out from under the seats with a sour expression. “Actually, I was trying to repress those memories. Thanks a bunch, pal.”

At the islets, the Dune Hopper pulled up beside the Slam Dozer. Sig rubbed his chin thoughtfully.

“Alright, boys. I don’t like the idea of leaving the Dozer alone out here for too long. Let’s get this over with.”

Priya grimaced. “Pesky Marauders. We oughta just take their fortress, that’s what we oughta do.”

Eris snorted loudly. “Right on the edge of the rainy season, with a possible apocalypse looming. Sure, Auntie, sounds like a great idea.”

“Oh hush, girl,” the old scout harrumphed, and swatted at Eris. “When you get to be my age, you’ll take any fun you can get!”

She proceeded to demonstrate her point by blithely standing in the Dune Hopper to make room for Jak and Daxter. Even the bone-jarring leaps from islet to islet didn’t seem to bother her, and she even let go of the roll cage to uncork a flask and take a swig of water.

“Well, we know what Jak’s gonna be when he grows up,” Daxter sighed, taking note of Jak’s impressed look.

The temple was quiet, which suggested the monks had either traveled to Spargus, or were in the upper levels. That was probably for the best, all things considered. Jak realized that he was going to have to use his seal again, but hoped the scouts wouldn’t know the significance of it.

“Uh. Okay, so.” He turned to face the rest of the party and flexed his fingers. “This is. Probably going to be a little weird. You might see or hear some weird stuff while we’re down there. Um, so…”

“So don’t ask,” Daxter cut in bluntly. “Just keep those grapplin’ hooks ready, because the monks skimped on the home improvement down there.”

Once inside, Daxter scuttled across Jak’s shoulders to settle next to his ear. “So uh, what’s the plan for getting everybody past the spinny blades and stuff? They can’t go all Precursor like you, buddy.”

Jak grimaced. “I know. I’m gonna have to carry them over, one at a time.”

Daxter gave him a look , and he held up his hands placatingly. “I know, I know. But there’s enough vents in here to get me through it. I’m pretty sure I can channel that much eco without too many side effects.”

Daxter did not look completely convinced. “You know ol’ Sandy will flip out if you overdo it and drop us down a chasm, right?”

“I know, Dax.”

“He’ll get the monks to resurrect us, just so he can re-kill us with a seven hour lecture on being rash.”

“I know , Dax.”

“Look pal, I don’t wanna end up on the other end of a toddler leash, do you?” Daxter poked Jak in the cheek. “Because that’s where we’re gonna end up if we keep giving Boss-man new gray hairs.”

Jak groaned. “Let’s stop talking now. Can we stop talking now?”

They stopped at the door marked with the Seal of Mar, and Jak felt his stomach churning. It was one thing to show Damas how his amulet worked. But to show others?

Jak took the amulet from his belt and held it low in front of his torso, shielding it from the scouts’ eyes. Thankfully, that seemed just as effective as holding it up high, and the doors slid open.

“You guys can swim, right?” he asked suddenly.

Tarmac rolled his eyes. “Kid, we’re on an island . We know how to swim.”

“Oh good.” Jak pocketed his amulet and moved forward. “Because there’s a lot of water down here. I left the door unlocked though.”

Sig eased up beside Jak and studied the corridor ahead of them. “How much further, Jak?”

Jak pointed to a place near the end of the hall where the torches stopped. “Once we’re through the water, there’s about two turns that are gonna dead-end at a Precursor Oracle. From there, I have to take you one at a time.”

He broke into a light jog. “Let’s go. The sooner we get there, the more strength I’ll have to spare.”

The scouts stared at each other. 

“So are we just not going to talk about there being an Oracle down here?!” Eris hissed.

“You heard the man,” Sig retorted, “Get a move on.”

The swim wasn’t long, but it was cold and unpleasant. Seeing the massive Precursor statue curtailed any complaints, however, as did the sight of the rapidly spinning platforms. Jak glanced back at the others, just a little nervously.

“You’ve seen me when I…y’know, go Dark.” He met their eyes and just as quickly looked away. “This is kind of different. Just…don’t freak out, okay?”

Then he stepped into the light.

As the scouts watched, his skin darkened, warm brown cooling into the color of the midnight sky. Sig could have sworn he even saw stars shining faintly on the boy’s arms. The light eco shaded his hair and clothing the same deep indigo, and his eyes burned , white and deep and more peaceful than any of them had ever seen Jak look before.

But what shook them more than this were the wings .

Jak stepped down from the vent and held out a hand to the awestruck scouts. 

“I am ready,” he said softly.

Sig was the first to move. He stepped forward and took Jak’s hand, looking him in the eyes. “Alright, cherry. I trust you.”

He hoped Damas knew what he was doing, sending the kid to guide them like this. And whatever he wanted Samos for, he hoped the sage would have the answers Damas was looking for.

________________________

Samos Hagai had not anticipated his day ending with being kidnapped.

He’d barely made it through another inane meeting with the Council with his temper and sanity intact as it was, and upon reflection, he hadn’t been on his guard. 

Sig was a familiar face, after all. Tess’s friend -- one of Jak’s friends too, wasn’t he? -- from the bar. 

“Samos! Oh good, there you are!” Sig strolled up to him with a jaunty step. “Just the sage I needed to see.”

“Whatever Torn wants, I’m busy,” Samos snapped.

“Well I’m afraid you’re gonna have to clear your schedule a little.” Sig’s smile stayed firmly in place, but Samos had finally realized that it didn’t reach his eyes. “There’s somebody else who really needs a little sage advice , if you know what I mean.”

He looked up at someone behind Samos and made a quick jerk of his head. 

“Fellas.”

A piece of cloth was suddenly wound around Samos’s face, pressing his glasses uncomfortably into his skin, and strong hands hustled him away. His muffled cursing did little to nothing, and someone even had the gall to drop him! He heard the hum of a transport ring, and then a familiar sounding rush of water. 

Ah. Someone probably wanted him to fix something in the forest, since Jak wasn’t there to do it for them.

When the blindfold came off, Samos realized that he’d been wrong. The sound of water hadn’t been coming from the Haven Forest waterfalls at all. He stood now in a wide, dark chamber that seemed to have been carved from stone. If not for the windows, he’d have mistaken it for an underground ruin. Water flowed through the room in carefully maintained artificial streams, trickling to and from hidden spaces that creaked with the sounds of water wheels.

Not the worst place to put a sage of green eco, if it weren’t for that blasted heat . Samos shuffled around to give Sig a piece of his mind; to demand an explanation-

And the words died on his tongue.

He had been left at the foot of a set of broad steps, between ornate pillars, leading to a raised dais. The torchlight did not fully illuminate the throne, nor the shadowed figure that waited there. 

This could not be Haven.

The person on the throne lounged with a practiced ease, one fist idly propping up his head. But Samos had been around long enough to know a front when he saw one. Whoever this man was, that feigned nonchalance was barely covering a readiness to spring. Samos couldn’t shake the image of a Sand Wyrm, coiled and ready to strike.

“Samos Hagai,” the man said slowly, drawing out each syllable. “The years have not been kind to you.”

Samos knew that voice. He liked to think that after his round-trip through time, he’d seen it all. Nothing surprised him anymore, all that was left were annoyances. But hearing a dead man speaking to him from a throne was undoubtedly a bit disquieting.

“King Damas?” the sage gasped, “You live?” 

Precursors forbid- was he alive all this time? And he never tried to retake the city?!

“Disappointed?” Damas asked dryly. He did not move from his position, nor did he indicate that Samos was welcome to do anything but remain where he stood. 

“There’s a rumor floating around, sage, that you’ve been meddling in the affairs of time and space.”

The color drained from Samos’s face. He was no fool. If Damas lived, and he believed in time travel, then he likely knew something about Jak. He was unlikely to understand the necessity of the Rift Gate, but when he’d been the king of Haven, at least he’d been open to correction and learning. Although, a good look at him now showed a much harder man than the one who had been set out among the dunes to die.

“My- my lord, that is an absurd claim,” Samos protested, a little weakly, “No mortal can control the flow of time!”

The brazier to the left of the throne popped and sparked, and for an instant the king’s eyes were caught in the flare of light. They glittered, as hard as granite.

“That’s interesting. Would you care, then, to explain how a child left to die in the desert came by an amulet of Mar? He had quite the story to tell, you’d be amazed. But then, I suspect you’ve heard it before.”

All at once, Samos felt the weight of all his years closing in on him. He leaned heavily on his staff and sighed. “At the time, I did what I believed was necessary. I was not yet a father then, I admit I did not understand the gravity of my choices. If I had known then, my lord, that you lived, I would have sent word to you.”

Damas stiffened. Both hands came down to clutch the arms of his throne so tightly that his shoulders were rigid. His jaw worked in silence for several seconds before he managed to speak in a voice as harsh and low as Jak’s Dark form.

“You…do not deny that the child the Underground found became Jak. You do not deny that the child was…was Mar.”

“Mar?” Samos raised his head a fraction. “That was his name? We…never knew what he was called then, my lord. He could not speak.”

“He could speak!” Damas snarled, “You just didn’t know how to listen.” 

There wasn’t much that Samos could say to that. He’d never learned the sign language Jak had once employed. It was a different dialect than the kind Onin used, and he’d found it incomprehensible. Young as he’d been at the time, and impatient as he was, he’d never bothered to learn it. Daxter was an adequate translator, for all his other faults.

“Where is Jak now?” Samos asked, utterly failing to read the conflicting emotions in Damas’s body language.  “Is he here? I must speak to him about-”

The king held up a hand imperiously, and wisely, Samos quieted. It seemed that in his exile, Damas had shed the softness and inexperience he’d often been criticized for in Haven.

“You will not speak to either of them unless they wish to speak to you. I did not have you brought here to fill my…my son’s head with more nonsense.”

“ Nonsense?!” Samos bristled.

Damas raised his arm to point at the sage. “This foolish “hero” business, teaching a child to shoulder every burden of the adults around him as though there was no such thing as community. Telling him that his destiny was to be used as a weapon, and then rejecting him when he fulfilled that self-made prophecy. I suppose the fact that you meant to send him to the Trials of Manhood as a toddler ought to have been the first red flag. Do you even realize how much damage you’ve done to him?”

Samos gaped. “Sire, I assure you, his childhood was happy! Why, he never listened to me at all if that is what concerns you. He and that sidekick of his always-”

“Ah yes, Daxter.” Damas’s voice was cold enough to be felt . “I would caution you now, sage, to be careful of how you speak about my people. The boy has earned his place here. If you go meddling with his self-confidence just when we’ve started to get through that false bravado of his, I will not be pleased with you.”

As if he was in any way pleased now. Samos really couldn’t fathom someone besides Jak actually putting up with Daxter, let alone welcoming the little rodent. It seemed to be a sore spot for the king, inexplicably. Perhaps it was because Daxter was a friend of his son’s. Yes, that must have been it.

The sage had never been one to consider the feelings of others. He rationalized it to himself as being unwilling to coddle them. But considering Damas seemed to know about his younger self’s crack-brained idea to send little Jak -- or rather, Mar -- into the Tomb of Mar, the wisest course of action now was likely to smooth things over a little.

He made himself bow his head, unused to any form of deference though he was. “Knowing now that you survived banishment, I wish that there had been another way to save Jak from Kor, besides going back in time. Or that there had been a way for you to go with him. If there is anything you wish to know about his time in Sandover, anything at all, I am at your service.”

“Are you now?” Damas tried to force himself to relax back into the throne.

It was taking every ounce of his willpower not to summon Jak immediately . To pull him close and never let go again. But not while the sage was here. Not until he had answers. 

“Tell me, sage, if you are so knowledgeable about the past, tell me how it was that Praxis knew where to find my son the moment he exited the Rift?”

He couldn’t sit still any longer. Damas rose and stalked to the edge of the dais in slow, controlled movements. “Tell me why you never prepared my son for what the Baron would do to him. Tell me how you can raise a child knowing full well he will be tortured and used as an expendable asset, without thinking to warn him. Tell me why my son was a pawn!” 

Samos flinched back at the raw shout. He managed to hide the shaking of his hands, but the bird that lived in his hair flew away with a panicked trill, settling in some far corner of the room. 

“Sire,” he stammered, “I too was arrested by the Baron’s men upon landing. I did not see Jak for two years, and my younger self did not meet him until after he had already escaped the prison! I didn’t know what the Baron did, he barely talks about it!”

“If you are lying to me-”

It was a bad idea to interrupt a king, especially one as angry as Damas, but Samos couldn’t help yelping, “I swear by the Precursors, I speak the truth!”

“Then how did Praxis know?!” Damas thundered. Eco flickered and snapped at his fingertips, which seemed to surprise him for an instant. Just as quickly, he recovered and clenched his fists. “Who betrayed my House to the usurper, sage?”

There weren’t many people who could have done it. And while Samos was deeply offended to find himself on the list of suspects, his self-preservation instincts helpfully pointed out that it was a completely reasonable assumption in context. Even after everything I’ve done for his kingdom-!

But once he was ruled out, the pool of suspects shrank to about two. 

And if it was who he suspected, then the whole organization of the Underground had to be reevaluated.

“Sire,” Samos began wearily, “There are only two people that I can imagine could have known. One of them was the metalhead leader, Kor. He was part of the time loop, the reason we had to flee to the past in the first place. But he is dead now, by your own son’s hand.”

“And the other?” Damas asked through clenched teeth.

Taking a steadying breath, Samos answered, “Onin the Soothsayer, my lord. Only she can see all timelines, past, present, parallel and future. I cannot imagine why she would tell the Baron we were coming -- unless that blabbermouth moncaw of hers let something slip by mistake -- but she must have felt it was vital to the preservation of our world.”

“A “sacrifice” of war?” The king’s tone was ironic, almost mocking. 

“It’s not pretty,” Samos agreed, “Though without his dark eco powers we would not have survived the metalhead invasion, it was not a kind fate.”

“Fate.” 

Damas turned his back on the sage sharply.

“Fate is an excuse used by men who do not want to reckon with the consequences of their own choices.”

He could stand to hear no more. With a gesture of his hand, Damas signaled to Sig, who had listened silently from behind the dais. Sig could control his rage, but it was a near thing. He stepped up to the right of the king and raised an eyebrow in a silent question.

“Send for the boys,” Damas said in a low voice.

Sig nodded. “And what about the old man?”

Damas’s lips twisted into a harsh scowl. “If they wish to see him, his dismissal will wait. If not, Eris will escort him back to the city. We will discuss the soothsayer at the next war council.”

“Understood.” Sig paused, as if he wanted to say something else. His face was as stoic as ever, but there was a wealth of pain in his single eye that Damas understood too well. “Damas-”

The king cut him off with a subtle shake of his head. “Not now. Just…stay with him.”

“I won’t let him out of my sight,” Sig vowed.

For the first time, the anger receded from Damas’s face, and he placed a hand on his friend’s shoulder. “You never did,” he said softly, “I owe you a great debt, brother. Thank you for watching over him.”

Sig’s breath caught, and he barely managed a salute. Then he turned on his heel and marched past Samos and into the lift without a backwards glance.

________________________

“On three, okay?” Jak set his shoulders against the stone, took a deep breath, and summoned the dark eco in his veins. “One, two, three.” 

With Dark Jak and Raza pushing on one side, and Merit and Flick on the ropes on the other side, the boulder began to budge. Just a hint at first, slowly gaining ground as the teens dug their heels into the iron scaffolding.

Sweat dripped into Raza’s glasses, causing the girl to shake her head in frustration. “Ugh, I can’t see!” 

“You don’t need to see. Just move,” Jak grunted.

Flick blew a bang out of her face on the other side of the boulder. “Hey Jak, come to think of it, can you see when you’re all white like that? You know, since your eyes go all-” she made a strange sound that was evidently meant to illustrate the darkening of Jak’s sclera.

“Flick, you’re making it weird again,” Merit sighed, but was ignored.

Jak gained another inch in the sand and continued to push. “Harder when it’s bright,” he huffed, “At night, I see everything.” 

“Freakin awesome , man,” Flick said under her breath.

They all heard it anyway.

“How’s it coming, Daxter?” Raza called to the top of the boulder, where the ottsel was acting as their spotter, “How much further?”

Daxter peered down at the track they’d left behind them. The boulder was nearly to the edge of the wall now. “You’re good, you’re good, you’re gooooo- okay stop! I mean, unless Flick wants to go bungee jumping again.”

“I might,” Flick allowed.

“That’s because you’re crazy,” Merit said, affectionately punching the older girl’s shoulder. He let go of the rope and eased around to the other side of the boulder that had fallen onto the west wall during the storm. “Alright, now we have to figure out how to get this thing over the wall.”

Jak shrank back down into his normal form and suddenly smacked himself in the forehead. “Oh my- we’re idiots, guys.”

“Huh?” Merit blinked. “Why?”

Tapping the boulder with a fist, Jak groaned. “We could’ve just smashed this thing and thrown the smaller rocks over.”

For a moment, none of the Arena Trainees said anything. Then Raza let out a loud “ Ugh!” 

“You mean we did all that work for nothing?!” 

Flick’s ears drooped. “We tell no one.”

“Agreed.”

Their attempt at disposing of the evidence was, unfortunately, caught midway through when Sig came marching up the ladder with a face that heralded trouble. He didn’t look that serious unless they were under attack, and that made the squad nervous.

“Sig? What’s wrong?” Even Daxter noticed the shift in atmosphere.

Sig didn’t trust himself to speak for long without getting emotional. “Jak, Daxter, throne room: now.”

The boys’ eyes widened. 

“Whatever it was, we didn’t do it,” Daxter gulped.

“Yeah, they’ve been here with us ever since they got back!” Flick agreed.

The second-in-command of Spargus shook his head. “Damas needs you. I- it’s- Just get moving, cherries. I don’t have time to explain.”

Jak swallowed hard. There was a feeling of dread starting to weave in between his ribs like ivy, choking off his breath. Whatever Samos had said, he had a feeling it hadn’t made Damas very happy. And he had a feeling that it was going to be something he wasn’t going to be able to un-hear.

Chapter Text

Sig didn’t like keeping secrets from Jak. Not when he’d worked undercover in Haven, and not now. Jak’s trust was almost as hard to earn as Daxter’s, and the idea of withholding vital information from them just didn’t sit right with the big Spargan. But at the same time, as shaken as he was, he understood that it wasn’t his story to tell. So when Jak probed him for answers on the way to the palace, he kept his mouth shut. He didn’t say a word until they’d stepped into the elevator to the throne room.

“Listen cherries,” Sig said in a low, urgent, voice. He had their attention instantly. “When you go in there, you need to show a unified front with me and Damas. You two are Spargans. The sage isn’t. Get me?”

The boys glanced at each other.

“Not…really?” Jak offered.

Sig gritted his teeth. “I mean, none of the usual snark. Damas lets you goof off and talk back to him all you want when it’s just you. He doesn’t do that with anybody else, except maybe me. You can’t do that in front of an outsider. It makes a king look like he can’t control his people.”

Jak relaxed. “Oh. Makes sense, I guess.” He attempted a grin. “Don’t worry, we’ll behave.”

Sig didn’t smile back. He just looked more troubled, somehow. Placing a hand on Jak’s empty shoulder, he made eye contact with first Jak, then Daxter.

“You don’t have to talk to Samos. I just want you to know that. I know he was kind of a yakkow turd to you two, even if I don’t have the details.”

He didn’t miss the wash of relief on Daxter’s face.

“All we gotta do is go in there, stand wherever Damas wants us to stand, and wait until the sage leaves. If you want to say anything to him, you’re allowed, but if he tries to talk back, don’t answer him.”

“Don’t answer him?” Jak narrowed his eyes. “Why not?”

“Damas forbade him from speaking to you without permission,” Sig answered shortly.

He gave no further explanation.

Samos was still standing exactly where Sig had left him. Well, floating, to be precise. The old man jumped slightly when the elevator locked into place, and he turned to see who had stepped out. 

"Jak!" he burst out. 

Jak froze. He hadn't anticipated the old habits surfacing, telling him that he was going to have to fix everything for the sage. Because that's what heroes did. But Jak hadn't been a hero for a long time. He glanced up at the dais and locked eyes with Damas.

Eyes on me, the king mouthed.

So that was how it was going to be. He let some of the tension out of his shoulders. Jak could play that game. 

And maybe, just maybe, there was a smidgen of satisfaction in watching the old sage so caught off his guard by "insubordinate", "uncontrollable", Jak choosing to take orders from the king of the exiles. By his unusually calm posture on his shoulder, Jak guessed that Daxter felt similarly. 

He'd meant to stop at the foot of the dais, as visitors to the throne room usually did. But a subtle push from Sig kept him climbing. 

Jak's chest tightened with sudden nerves. Wait. This wasn't part of the game. He wasn't supposed to go all the way to the throne without asking -- Damas had explained that as both a sign of respect and allowing him his personal space, and Jak had agreed that it was reasonable enough. Damas gave Jak his space when he needed it, and Jak returned the favor. That's how it worked. What was Sig doing?

Sig kept his focus on Damas, and only Daxter caught them subtly signing to each other in motions small enough to constitute a whisper.

"Right or left?" Sig fingerspelled.

"My left," Damas answered, "Your right."

What did that mean? Daxter tilted his head questioningly at Damas, but all he got for an answer was a barely noticeable gesture to the left of the throne. Then the king's eyes were on Samos again, leaving the newcomers to find their place without his direction.

Sig gave Jak a tiny push towards the left side of the dais. Unified front, he mouthed, then strode confidently to stand at Damas's right hand.

The realization hit both boys like a Scatter Round to the face an instant later, and Jak found himself simultaneously trying to control two very different emotions. 

On the one hand, Damas asking him to take a place beside him was a gesture of trust and acceptance he wasn't sure he'd earned yet and that knowledge filled his chest with a rush that reminded him of light eco. Not adrenaline. Just a sensation of rightness, and belonging. But he understood, at the same time, the significance of where he was standing, and that was a little more on the "panic" side of overwhelming. 

Jak swallowed down his nerves to the best of his abilities, and stopped at the left of the throne. Damas’s inner circle was intensely private, and Jak hadn’t yet earned the right to attend war councils with those who had all three battle amulets. He wasn't exactly sure what formal Spargan protocol was (if there even was a formal protocol), but he figured he couldn't go too far wrong briefly touching a hand to his heart. Damas acknowledged the salute with a grave nod, and darted a quick glance between Daxter and the arm of the throne. It wasn't hard to guess what he meant. Daxter hopped down with eyes as big as saucers, and he and Jak both attempted to mimic Sig's self-assured parade rest as they shifted to face Samos.

Damas didn't look up at him when he finally spoke, keeping his eyes on Samos.

"Warriors of Spargus, do you have anything you wish to say to the sage before he is dismissed?"

Daxter spoke first. "Nothin' I can say in polite company."

The faintest hint of a smile tugged at the corner of Damas's eyes. "Am I polite company, son?"

The ottsel shrugged, forgetting his more formal attitude. "Well, you're better than most people I know, excluding Jak and Sig."

"Hm." Damas sounded faintly amused. "I don't think you need worry about shocking me. Sig maybe, but I'm sure I've heard worse. But if you do not wish to speak, I will not make you."

Daxter's rigid posture relaxed visibly. He considered any number of his usual nicknames for Samos, then discarded them. Samos never paid him any mind before unless he was ordering him around, what good were old insults now?

"Y'know what? I got nothing to say to you," he said firmly. 

Samos barely acknowledged this. His eyes were on Jak, and he practically vibrated with the force of all the words he was holding back. Clearly he expected Jak to ask him a question, or for advice, or where he needed to go next. 

Jak struggled with whether or not to speak. If he did , would Samos poke and prod at his guilt again to draw him back to Haven? But if he didn't, would he regret leaving things unsaid?

Would he remind Jak that his bloodline made him responsible for saving Haven and its thousands of lives from the Dark Makers?

He was just one person! How was he supposed to know all of Mar's secrets?

It was too much. Jak's voice seemed to stop at the base of his throat, trapped there. He couldn't make himself direct the question to Samos. It hurt too much.

Damas watched him for a few seconds and seemed to take note of his struggle. With a flutter of his fingers, the king beckoned for him to lean down, closer to him. When Jak bent down, Damas pulled him a little closer and whispered in his ear, "It's alright. I understand. Tell me what he needs to hear and I will say it for you."

"Thank you."  

It wasn't something Jak said often unless he truly meant it.

Damas's hand tightened reassuringly on his bicep in answer. Jak took comfort from this, and relayed his question to his mentor.

"Jak says that until you can acknowledge his brother as his equal, he also has nothing to say to you,  only this question: did you have any prior knowledge of the…" Damas listened and took notice of the gesture to where his horns usually grew. "...the dark eco experiments."

Samos shook his head. "You didn't tell me until my time-twin had already gone through the Rift, Jak! You haven't even told Keira the truth about what happened to you!"

Jak gritted his teeth. Bringing Keira into the conversation had just made it worse. He still considered her his friend -- perhaps more out of a need to cling to his life before Praxis than anything else -- but when he had needed her support most, she had defended Errol. That kind of thing left a scar.

 Frowning, he turned back to Damas, who nodded and released Jak's arm to let him straighten back up. 

"Samos Hagai," he said sternly, "You will return to Haven, and you will use your ties to ascertain exactly what Onin has been telling our enemies, if anything. From there, you will await my orders."

Jak stiffened beside him, and Daxter's fur bristled like a bottle brush. It seemed they had not anticipated the old soothsayer being a suspect. Damas briefly touched Daxter's head, silently warning them to hold their peace. They could not speak freely, not yet. 

"Your- your orders?!" Samos spluttered, and dropped from his hover to land unsteadily on the rocks. 

"Of course," Damas replied with a humorless smile, "As you said, you are "at my service" , yes?"

The old man's mouth opened and closed like a fish. He hadn't meant his conciliatory statement to be interpreted in that way, and he suspected the king knew it. This felt, Samos thought, an awful lot like some kind of petty vengeance. Perhaps he was resentful that his son had been raised by the sage, so far away from him. 

But this wasn't the time for childish revenge! The Dark Makers were getting closer by the day, and Jak was needed to get that weapon online!

He knew Damas didn't want him speaking to Jak -- which seemed highly ungrateful of him to Samos after all he'd endured while raising the man's child -- but he couldn't help one last attempt as Sig summoned the other ruffians.

"If the planetary defense system is to be utilized-"

"-then any related requests will be addressed to me, " Damas interrupted, "Not to Jak. That is not his burden to bear."

Samos shut his mouth with a snap. He hadn't thought of that.

Could Damas save them?

He had always relied solely on Jak, primarily because everyone thought Baron Praxis had wiped out the rest of the House of Mar. And until an hour or two ago, the idea of sharing the load between multiple Heirs hadn't even been on the table! Jak was younger, faster, more adaptable, it was true. But King Damas would have amassed a wealth of experience that Jak yet lacked. Perhaps he could still return to save the city he had lost!

Bolstered by this thought, Samos managed to regain most of his composure and bowed. "As you wish, my lord."

Daxter almost choked on his spit.

Samos? Bowing?

Since when did His Holiness bow to anyone?! And what was with that "my lord" business? Damas had to be pretty hardcore if he could scare Samos into kissing up to him that fast. And while Daxter didn't doubt in the slightest that Damas could accomplish that, there was something bothering him about the gesture. Samos acted like he was somewhat familiar with Damas. But that couldn't be! Spargus was the city of the forgotten. And when they'd visited Haven, he and Jak had kept their mouths shut about where they'd been. 

Samos shouldn't have had any idea who Damas was.

The man in question leaned back into his throne and flicked a tense hand in the direction of the transport ring. "Tarmac. Eris. Priya. Take him back to the city. Scramble the transport ring as soon as you're through."

The scouts each saluted gravely and, foregoing niceties, Priya opted to simply lift Samos bodily off the ground. His protests were ignored, and he was summarily tucked under one wrinkled arm and toted out like a piece of luggage.

Kicking, cursing, luggage. 

Daxter turned solemnly to face Jak.

"I am gonna treasure that memory for the rest of my life."

Slowly, Jak began to ease into a more natural posture, although his shoulders held their stiffness. "Heh." He scrubbed a hand through his braids. "He did look pretty ridiculous."

His attempt at levity didn't last long. He shifted to watch Damas, almost afraid that he would be kicked off the dais now that the outsider had gone. 

Damas gazed steadily back. But under his calm front, he seemed deeply troubled. 

"Do you-" Jak wet his lips and tried again. "Do you really think Onin was the one who betrayed me? Why? Why would she do that?"

All at once, Damas seemed older and wearier than they had ever seen him. He sagged into the throne and massaged his temples. 

"It is a possibility we can't afford to overlook. What her motive might have been -- if she was the traitor -- I don't know."

Sig curled his lip. “You want my guess? I bet she saw something in her “timelines” that made her think the Underground might need dark eco to beat Kor.”

With a grunt, Damas smacked a hand onto one of his arm rests. "This is why humans shouldn't play with the flow of time! It's too easy for those with knowledge of the future to get the idea that they're entitled to dictate the futures of others."

Jak flinched. Was Damas talking about Onin, Samos, or him? He wouldn't deny that his decision to send his child-self back in time haunted him at night. It kept him awake with "what-if"s and existential questions he didn't have answers to. Would he have ceased to exist if the child had stayed? Could he have sort of raised himself in a city still at war? Would that have meant another Daxter and another Keira who never knew him? And more recently, his midnight ponderings found him wondering if Little Jak would have liked Spargus. If they could have pretended to be brothers, and let the kid grow up in peace. Logically, Jak knew it was unlikely that Damas had aimed his comment about time towards him , but he felt it nonetheless. 

Damas pinched the bridge of his nose as if he were staving off a massive headache. If he'd been talking to Samos for over an hour, he probably did have a headache. Nobody could lecture quite like Samos Hagai.

Removing his hand, Damas looked up and sighed. "I'm sorry that you had to deal with that as children. I suppose a childhood here wouldn't have been easy either, but at least-"

He cut himself off sharply, bisecting the sentence with a click of his teeth.

At least you would have been properly cared for. At least you would have been loved.

"Well." Daxter sat down and swung his legs back and forth off the other arm rest. "For the most part, if you just pretended Old Wrinkly didn't exist, it wasn't the worst childhood. Not like he could actually catch us when we decided to go exploring."

He snorted and tipped his head back. "He tried once, I think. Hey Jak, remember that one time? When he tried to catch us on Sentinel Beach?"

Jak did sort of remember that. Having to channel green eco in and out of a single plant for four hours as punishment had been deadly boring, but so worth it.

Actually remembering something happy after the years in prison made it stick out a bit, even if it hadn't been a particularly significant event. 

"I think I do , actually. Was that the day the dog bit him in the butt?"

"Which he blamed me for, of course," Daxter grumbled, "As usual."

Jak grimaced sympathetically. "Well, at least the dog liked you."

The old crocodog had been fiercely protective of Jak, and barely tolerated the adults of Sandover. The only other person Chopper had shown any kind of affection to was Daxter, and more than once someone had been “persuaded” by a show of fangs to give Daxter shelter for the night.

Daxter actually brightened up a bit at that. "Oh yeah, he did! Chopper hated Old Wrinkly til the day he died though. Must've had good taste."

"Animals know who they can trust and who they can’t," Sig mused. 

Damas hummed thoughtfully. "True. I am not surprised that your dog disliked him. He had his faults when I knew him before, but the passing of time seems to have made them worse."

"Wait." Jak frowned. "You used to know Samos? How?"

The question seemed to hang in the air above them like the clouds still covering the sky. This was the moment that Damas had waited for: the chance to tell Jak at last where he had come from. But now that he was at the precipice, he found he could barely force his tongue to move. How strange that the exile who had clawed his way from the Arena to the throne should be so undone by a simple truth. What was this fear that gripped his lungs and dragged cold fingers down his ribs? Why should he fear?

"I knew him in Haven." Damas pushed the words out before he could overthink them. "Only briefly. It was customary then for the sages to attend coronations and introduce themselves to the new king or queen."

Out of the corner of his eye he saw Jak go rigid and he knew that the boy had to have picked up on the implication. Would he put the pieces together himself? Likely. Jak was an observant warrior. Even so, Damas needed to speak while he was still able. He feared that if he did not, he would crumble under the weight of the secret. 

"I didn't- I wasn't sure he survived the coup later." He stood, cursing the slight tremble in his limbs. "Praxis wouldn’t have wanted to take the risk of leaving channelers alive who might still be loyal to me. Some of them probably ended up in the same prison you did, I’d guess."

Daxter's mouth fell open. Blindly, he fumbled behind him until his hand found Jak's waist. He smacked it rapidly, hissing, "Jak!"

Jak reached out and took hold of the back of the throne to steady himself. His mind was screaming, but his body felt numb. 

This wasn't really happening. It was another dream, right? Damas wasn't saying what it sounded like he was saying.

Because if he was , then it meant Jak had-

No. No! Don’t think about it!

"When you-" Damas rubbed his face and shifted his weight awkwardly. "When you showed me the amulet yesterday, I know my reaction must have been…You were unsettled. I didn’t know how to explain- I wasn't sure what to think. Because- The last time I- I s-"

He gave up. Words couldn't save him here, he was a man of action, and his actions would have to speak for him until he found the words he needed. He looked to Sig, who nodded once in solidarity. Returning the nod, Damas carefully reached into his belt to withdraw the one piece of his past that never left him, even in exile. He heard the sharp intake of breath when Jak saw the amulet in his hand, but couldn't quite bring himself to tear his eyes away from the seal.

Would Jak accept him for what he was? He didn’t have some stable, upper class home in the city. Spargus was a far cry from the palace in Haven. And he wasn’t exactly a doting father hanging around the house with a brilliant wife to offer their son advice.

Gods, he didn’t even know for sure if Jak’s mother was still alive , with how little she contacted him.

"This was my father's, long ago.” Damas’s voice was rough, but he managed to keep it steady through stubbornness alone. “A symbol of the House of Mar; every royal heir is given one at birth. I kept his when he died on the battlefield, and after I was exiled, I gave mine to my son, Mar."

"Mar?" Jak's voice shook.

Damas finally looked up. "Yes," he whispered, "That was your name before you were stolen from us. I named you Mar."

"Oh no." Jak covered his mouth with a shaking hand. "No, no no no-" 

"Jak?" Damas didn't approach. He looked unsure, afraid to know why Jak was reacting with horror. 

"I'm sorry!" Jak burst out desperately, "I'm so sorry, Damas!" 

Damas flinched as if he'd been struck. "Why are you sorry?" he asked, shocked. 

When Jak looked up, there were tears in his eyes. "I'm the wrong one. I knew I shouldn't have let them send him back, but I- He should be here, not me! I'm not...I'm not him ." 

He wasn't the tiny, frightened child that had been stolen from Damas. He wasn't even the reckless kid who had left Sandover. Precursors, and here he'd thought his life was already tragic. Damas's child got stolen and all he had now was a messed-up hired gun with the same blood. That had to have been a devastating blow. Would he feel obligated to let Jak stay? Would he grow to resent him for this?

"If I'd known I- he- if I'd known I wouldn't have let him go, I swear , Damas," Jak choked out, almost pleading. "I swear I would've protected him. I'm sorry!"

He didn't sound like the brash warrior anymore. 

This wasn't a conversation between Jak and a friend, or even between Jak and a mentor. He was just a Spargan, begging his king to forgive him, and not expecting an answer in his favor. 

He squeezed his eyes shut the instant he saw the horror in Damas's eyes. He couldn't face that, not from him. Not from the one leader who actually saw him. Damas was going to understand the true depths of the calamity that had befallen him -- the depths to which what was left of his son had fallen. And when he realized what he had been left with, Jak would lose the only home he had. And that would be what finally broke him. 

He didn't see the king close the distance between them in two swift steps. He didn't see him reaching out. 

Jak's eyes flew open when two calloused hands gripped the sides of his face. Damas's face was haggard, and pained. 

"No-" he clenched his teeth and brought their foreheads together. "Jak, no. You did nothing wrong. Listen to me: you did nothing wrong. I know you are no longer the child you once were, but that does not make you any less my son!" 

His heart ached with the weight of unshed tears, but he could not let himself weep. Not yet. Jak needed someone to hold him now, to let him know it was alright. To remind him that he was so much more than just the sum of everything that had happened to him and everything he could do for others. He might have grown up entirely too fast, but he still seemed so very young to Damas.

"It was never your fault. Never . Do you understand me?" 

Through hitched, broken, gasps, Jak whispered, "I'm not- I'm not the one you were looking for! I can never be him -- M- Mar -- again, not after what they did- what I did! I'm the wrong-" 

Damas squeezed his face a little tighter. "No! You are not! You are not the wrong Mar. You are Jak . You have made your life your own , as I had always hoped you would. Whoever made you believe that you would not be wanted as you are- whoever made you think I would value one age over another-"

At last, his voice broke.

"How can you think I would not be proud to have such a son?" 

He drew back an inch to look at his son. His son had come home! Damas swiped away Jak's tears with a thumb and fought to control his own emotions. "Son, I went to the Arena for you. And I'd do it again. How can you think you are not wanted?" 

He looked like he thought he knew the answer to the question, eyes searching Jak's soul. Jak wanted to shy away from that violet stare, but it held him in place. He knew, in a way, that he was accepted here, by both Spargans and their king. But Haven had been so quick to turn on him, regardless of whoever he’d been to them before. And why wouldn’t they? He could become a monster, quite literally, at the drop of a hat. Thanks to orders from the Underground, he’d made a name for himself as Krewe’s hired muscle! Nobody in their right mind would trade a four year old with his whole life in front of him for a teenage gangster with a propensity for growing fangs when angry.

But Damas wasn’t letting him go.

If anything, he was holding on more tightly than before.

"It is not wrong to mourn the time that was stolen from us, but you must understand-!” Damas said, cradling Jak’s face, “The son I thought lost and the son I chose are one and the same, Jak. How can I grieve?" 

The boy tried and failed several times to speak. Fingers curled into a question, he finally signed, "Chose?" 

For the first time that evening, Damas smiled. Truly smiled. It was a trembling, watery thing, but there was a genuine joy in it.

"Yes. Chose . I didn't know you had once been Mar, not until you tested the amulet for me. But I would be lying if I said I had not begun thinking of you both as my own not long after you both came to the city." 

He laughed then, cracked at the edges, but still full, and looked to Sig. "You’re never going to let me live this down, are you? Damas son of Arez: the oblivious idiot who didn't realize he was adopting his own son!" 

Daxter had remained as silent as Sig the entire time, unwilling to interrupt and uncomfortable with the emotions he was witnessing. This scene wasn't for him, he knew that. He hadn't been born for grand destinies and tearful reunions. Samos always said he was lucky to even be comic relief. Which made Damas's statement just shocking enough for the ottsel to finally speak. 

"Wait, both of us?!" He hopped down from the throne and tried to put up his usual shield of playful bragging. "Hey boss, I know we're both devastatingly handsome, but you do know me and Wonder Boy here aren't actually twins, right?" 

Damas laughed hoarsely again and hastily wiped his own eyes. "So what? You're a mouthy, impudent brat, Daxter. But so was Sig, when we were your age. You are Jak's chosen brother, as Sig is mine. History repeats itself." 

Daxter's eyes bulged. "Oh. O- okay, that wasn't where I thought that sentence was going. Gee. I uh…"

He sat down with a thump, lost for words. In order to keep some semblance of control over himself, he latched onto the last part of the statement. "You and Sig, our age? I can't picture that at all."  

Sig ground the heel of his palm into his organic eye and laughed wetly. “Oh chili pepper, you wouldn’t believe half of what Damas and I used to get into.”

"I   might," Jak said with shaking hands. He tried to put on a calmer front the way Daxter could, but he risked a glance up at Damas and it all came crashing down again. 

Nothing made sense. Damas should have been heartbroken. Probably angry. Jak wasn't Mar, or a pure True Channeler anymore. He wasn't a hero anymore, either. He was tainted with dark eco, everyone knew it, and when his control over it slipped he was dangerous . The standards he'd been held to for his entire life loomed damningly over his head like a monument to his failures. What parent would ever want that?  

The answer, apparently, was Damas, son of Arez, King of Spargus.

Jak's breath hitched, and a small, strangled sob finally broke free. 

Damas held Jak's face in his hands and shushed him as though he were still that same small child. "It's alright," he whispered, "You can let go, Jak. Whatever they told you in the past, what they said about you, you can let it go. You-" he cleared his throat, "You have been so, so strong, son. And I couldn't be prouder. But you don't have to be the hero right now. I'm- I'm here now, for as much or as little as you may need me." 

Jak felt like a puppet whose strings had just been cut. Without meaning to, he collapsed against Damas's chest. It felt as if every tear he'd pushed down since he was twelve years old was forcing its way back up now. If he hadn't soaked in so much light eco that morning, he probably would have already been sprouting horns by now. It was hard to breathe, and harder still to see. Jak gasped for air and clung to Damas's arms like a lifeline as the king lowered them both to the ground. 

"You are not a monster, Jak," Damas croaked. 

He moved one hand to press his son's head to his shoulder. "You are not a monster. You are Spargan , and you belong here." 

With a glance down, he added, "You both belong here."

Daxter swallowed hard and slipped up Jak’s arm to lean against his head. 

“H-hey, easy buddy, easy. If you keep cryin’, I’m gonna cry, and ruin my manly reputation!”

He barely stifled a jolt when Damas rested a palm over his head affectionately.

“No, Daxter. Let him cry. Not all tears are an evil.”

Sig wiped his eye again and cleared his throat. “You stealin’ words from my mama again, Damas?”

Damas made a face that might have been a smirk if not for the tears. “She’s a wise and terrible woman.”

Then he jerked his head to the side. “Stop standing there like a kicked crocodog and get over here.”

Before Jak or Daxter could muster up enough awareness to ask what he was talking about, Sig was kneeling beside them, wrapping all three in a crushing hug.

“If you tell anyone about this, I’m gonna deny it, cherries,” he said, trying and failing to sound stern before his resolve cracked. “Ah, who am I kidding. I’m just…I’m just glad to know I didn’t fail after all.”

Jak barely heard a word Sig said. He could barely concentrate on anything other then the fact that he had-

He had a father. 

His father was holding him. 

Damas was his father! 

Maybe there would be weird lines on his face later from where Damas’s armor pressed into it. And he was probably going to have a headache from crying so much. But he didn’t feel as raw as he did when dark eco tore through his emotions this time. He could still feel light eco trickling along his nerves like a half-whispered lullaby. This was a catharsis, and one he had needed for a very long time.

Jak couldn’t quite bring himself to move. The people he trusted most in the world surrounded him on all sides, on purpose . 

He was home.

Chapter Text

Things were a little weird between them all for a few days after Samos had left.

Sig was a little more overprotective than usual, trailing along on missions with one excuse after another. It was like he needed to reassure himself that Jak was still there. Damas, to a degree, hadn’t changed his behavior nearly as much -- which did a lot to convince Jak that Damas really had been thinking of him as a son before learning about the amulet. For his own part, Jak wasn’t sure what to call Damas, or if he was even supposed to change his behavior at all. He had no idea what being a son was supposed to be like!

And Daxter was still processing the fact that he’d just been more or less adopted by one of the only adults he actually liked. He wasn’t really comfortable joking about it yet, just in case the king changed his mind. But for now , it was kind of a nice thought.

“Focus, Daxter! Eye on the target!” Sig barked.

“Yahh! Stop sneakin’ up on me!” Daxter squealed. He fumbled with his gun and hastily clicked the safety back on.

Sig looked unimpressed. “I’ve been standing here the whole time, kid.”

The ottsel teen pouted and Sig crouched next to him.

"Look, you're overthinking this. Target practice ain't life or death. It's okay if you mess up the first couple times."

Daxter didn't agree.

"But when Jak drives, I'm a crack shot!" he complained.

Sig nodded easily. "Yep. One of our best, I'd say. Trouble is, those guns are anchored to the vehicle. You aren't accustomed to recoil yet. So let's go through this again."

He stood back up and waited until Daxter copied his stance.

"Feet shoulder-width apart. One arm straight, bend the other one slightly. Where's your gun pointed?"

"Always down range," Daxter answered dutifully. 

"Good. Find your target, and let me know when you've got it."

Squinting one eye, Daxter lined up the sight against the center of the target. "Okay."

"Safety off. Put your finger on the trigger, but do not squeeze."

Daxter hated the pressure. Why not just shoot now and get it over with? As it turned out, being allowed to carry your weapon with you in Spargus meant that you had to prove you knew how to use it responsibly, so as not to put others at risk. Daxter had skipped before when Jak got put through the safety course, thinking it wouldn't apply to him. He was regretting that now.

"When you feel ready, take the shot," Sig said.

Daxter tensed and fired. The shell ejected and bounced off his nose with a hollow clunk, and the shot went wide. It didn't even graze the target. Daxter's ears drooped. Some Wastelander he was!

Sig laughed. "Ah! You anticipated the recoil, kid! That'll get you every time. Try it again."

The next shot went much the same as the first. The third shot managed to strike the target, but barely. Daxter stared at the singed mark on the outer edge of the paper, disappointed. He’d really thought marksmanship was something he was good at! This appeared to be a wealth of evidence to the contrary.

Should’ve known. 

Sig took note of the way Daxter’s ears lay flat against his skull. The kid’s pride was wounded, for sure. But it looked like his self-confidence was taking a hit as well. Sig had walked rookies through that many times before. He wasn’t overly concerned.

“Try holding your breath, and letting it out slow when you pull the trigger,” he suggested. “Doesn’t give your arm as much time to shake that way.”

With a half smile, he gestured along the length of the range, where a handful of other Spargans were practicing. “It takes a while to settle into the feel of a new weapon. Jak blew it on the Haven range a lot before he learned to stop treating the Blaster like the Scatter Gun. Remember?”

He reached out and maneuvered Daxter’s arms into a modified weaver stance. “Here. You aim, I’ll hold you steady til you get the feel of it.”

Daxter groaned. “This is seriously gonna tank my street cred,” he grumbled, but it was for show. He preferred Sig’s method of teaching to, say, Kleiver’s. Arena Training in the squad was a bit dodgy whenever the crabby mechanic was in charge.

Dread filled his small body when, from the corner of his eye, he glimpsed Jak entering the range with Flick and Raza. By their slightly haggard faces, he guessed Kleiver had run them ragged on the Arena course. Despite their clear fatigue, the three were having some kind of animated discussion that, blessedly, kept them from noticing how poorly Daxter was doing at target practice.

“Hey, eyes on the target, cherry,” Sig admonished him, “If that was a metalhead, you’d have been dead by now.”

“If that was a metalhead,” Daxter argued, “I coulda just set it on fire by now!”

“Oh yeah? With what fuel?” 

Frustrated, Daxter eyed the target and fired twice.

Dead center.

Huh, Sig really hadn’t been kidding about recoil throwing off his aim.

“ There you go!” Sig let go of his arms to ruffle his ears proudly. “Just had to get your mind off it.”

“Huh. Guess I did…” Daxter grinned. “You made a decent shock absorber though. And I’m serious about the flamethrower!”

Sig rolled his eyes. “Kid, where are you even going to get a flamethrower out here?”

Daxter planted his feet and aimed at the target again. This time, he kept up a steady stream of chatter. It was harder to overthink his actions when his mind was on other things.

“All I need is a bug spray gun. No really, I mean it! You know that green eco based junk they use in Haven on Metal Bugs? Just pop a lighter on the end of that bad boy and wham! It’s an insect inferno!” 

He punctuated the sentence with two more shots. They didn’t quite make it where he was aiming without Sig to brace him for the recoil, but they hit the main mass of the target, which was an improvement.

Sig stroked his chin. “Huh. Wouldn’t have thought of that. I’ll have a word with one of the weapons shops in the North Market tomorrow and see if we have any of that stuff. Now, we only have four minutes left of range time, so make it count. I want you to empty the magazine. No pauses.”

Jak, Raza, and Flick had gotten close enough to watch by now, leaning on the safety barriers behind the shooting lanes. It wasn’t like Daxter didn’t know they were there; it was much harder for Raza or Jak to sneak up on people when Flick was there to balance them out. But he hadn’t expected commentary.

“Oh nice! Is that your new gun, Dax?”

Flick leaned over the railing and whistled. “She packs a wallop, doesn’t she?”

“What ammo you using?” Jak asked, tiptoeing a little as if he could see the boxes from his angle, “Red?”

The teenagers scattered with muffled laughter as Sig chased them away from the barrier. “Hey hey! Scram! Range is hot and Daxter is supposed to be focusing. No peanut gallery allowed!”

Jak popped back up. “Yeah, but-”
Sig made a grab for him, which he dodged.

“Yeah, but Flick’s on this lane next anyway!”

“Am-scray,” Sig said flatly. “Go wash up before you go home. You reek, kid.”

Jak brightened. “Oh yeah, I forgot, dinner.”

“How do you forget dinner?!” Raza wondered, aghast.

“Oh, he does that,” Daxter snorted. “Jak’s so bad at remembering to eat that Damas has to remind him.”

Raza wrinkled her nose at the older teen. “ Sir. That’s outrageous.” 

“I get preoccupied!” Jak defended himself halfheartedly, “Leave me alone!”

But he wouldn’t deny that having the king -- having his father -- frequently remind him to take care of himself was something he was coming to enjoy. 

On most days,  it came in the form of a protein bar tossed to him before he left for missions, or a raised eyebrow on the way through the market. But since Samos’s visit, Damas had been making a conscious effort to actually sit down and eat with Jak -- and Daxter, if they could catch him. He tended to frame it as discussing the Haven situation to avoid the appearance of favoritism, but by this point Jak knew well and good it was just an excuse to have a family meal. It was a little weird, and a little awkward, but they were starting to get used to it.

Daxter almost missed the target entirely once he started thinking about food -- which he gamely blamed on Jak -- but he managed to finish his allotted time on the shooting lane with a few more good hits to the target. Sig pressed a button to reel the paper back in, and took it down to show Daxter.

“Not bad for your first real session, rookie. I expect you to come out here without me in the future to work on that recoil anticipation, understand?” He rolled up the target and handed it to Daxter. “Go clean up, I’ll catch up with you later.”

Daxter climbed the barrier and hopped up to Jak’s shoulder. “Come on, bigfoot. I smell like burnt eco and you smell like something died.” 

“No, that’s you, bud.” Jak leaned his head away with a grimace. “Did you singe your fur?”

The ottsel lifted an arm to sniff experimentally and gagged. “Yep, yep, it’s me. I can’t be seen like this! To the baths!”

Jak rolled his eyes, but pushed off the railing. “Bye Flick, Raza, see you tomorrow.”

“I’m on farming rotation tomorrow with Mum and Dad,” Raza reminded him.

“Oh. See you when you get back, then.” Jak waved and headed for the palace. 

If they were quick, they could just rinse off in the throne room before Damas got there. They’d only eaten together a few times so far, and he still had to guide them to his personal quarters. The Wasteland Palace was more complex on the inside than its sole noticeable entrance would lead one to believe, and Jak had definitely gotten lost more than once.

As luck would have it, the throne room was empty, save for a small table beside the throne that meant Damas must have been doing paperwork that afternoon. Jak did not envy him that. He hastily stepped into the water, not bothering to remove his clothing. It stank of sweat as much as he did, why not give it a rinse? The heat would dry them out soon enough.

“So didja see my target?” Daxter carefully set the paper out of the way of the water and laid the strip of cloth he used as a makeshift kilt over it before slipping in.

“I did.” Jak wrung water out of his scarf and used it to wipe the back of his neck. “You did good, Dax. You gonna show it to Damas?”

He made a face as he said the name. It didn’t quite feel right anymore.

“You, uh, you think he’d wanna see it?” Daxter asked, sounding just a little unsure of himself. 

“You should definitely show him.” Jak stepped out of the water and shook himself off. “He likes us, Dax. We can show him cool stuff.”

Daxter climbed out of the pool, fluffed out his fur, and tied his kilt back around his waist with his belt and holster. “Well…It is pretty cool…”

The elevator creaked and rumbled, and Jak did his best to wring any excess water out of his clothing before it locked into place. Sig stepped out, took one look at the pair, and sighed.

“One of these days, you’re gonna have to stop avoiding the public baths,” he warned.

“Today is not that day,” Daxter snorted.

“Clearly.” Sig shook his head. “Alright, come on. I’m betting you forgot which hallway to go down. Again.”

On the opposite side of the throne room from the map chamber, a smaller door led to a spiral staircase going down several floors. Pipes ran along the walls, carrying water to and from the reservoir, making the stairwell a little cooler than it might have otherwise been. Sig led them two flights down, then took a right turn into a short, wide corridor with a sealed door at the end. The chamber inside had once been full of trophies, silks, and other luxuries the former king Atys had hoarded. After killing him in the Arena, Damas had thrown the majority of it into the street to be divided among the people, keeping only a set of linen curtains and a few blankets. Sig had a hunch he’d used those blankets for Mar when he was born.

Now the wide room was as frugally decorated as any other house in Spargus. A low bed set into one corner, a desk and crates for weapons maintenance, and several colorful rugs took up one half of the room. The other half held a small cooking stove and water tap, three cabinets, and a low table on another carpet. This was where they found Damas, pouring water from an old metal pitcher into several battered cups.

“No shoes in my chambers.” Damas didn’t even look up from what he was doing.

Jak made a face, but dutifully went back to the doorway and pried off his boots to set them in the hall. Daxter ambled past him, smacking him in the leg as he passed with his rolled up target. 

“I’m not wearing shoes.”

Damas raised a single eyebrow at him. “Sandals are shoes, Daxter.”

“But they’re open toed!” Daxter tried to argue.

Damas merely pointed at the door. “Nice try. Put them with your brother’s.”

Jak and Daxter flashed brief grins at each other, boyish and wild. Brothers. Being acknowledged equally -- having someone verbally confirm what they had always been to each other -- was something they could get used to. Maybe someday it would catch on in Haven.

Sig moved to the corner and passed Damas three wide, shallow bowls from the small cooking set. Damas, in turn, set them out on the low table between the cups and a small plate of flatbread. There wasn’t much of it; until the crops fully recovered from the storm, they would have to be careful with how much bread they used. And the closer the Day Star got, the more unsettled the weather became, making it difficult for the farming plots to recoup. Most of the “family meals” Sig and Damas had instituted thus far had consisted of soups, or different fruits or vegetables. Bread was more of an “every other week” thing at the moment.

None of them really had much experience with taking a meal as a family, but it wasn’t as awkward as Damas had initially feared it might be. As he had long suspected, both Jak and Daxter were starved for positive interactions with adults and authority figures. Being welcomed to the table and allowed to ramble on about everything and nothing was a novelty to them, and it was clear that they were both enjoying it. They got a little out of hand sometimes, to be sure, but Damas welcomed the chance to learn more about what his sons were like behind closed doors. He had missed so much. 

“Awww, look!”

Jak held up a piece of fruit from one of the wide dishes.

“The only kind of date Dax will ever get in Spargus!”

"Excuse you!" Daxter gasped dramatically, "See if I invite you when Tessie proposes to me!" 

"This Tess person has to meet me before anyone does any sort of proposing," Damas interrupted. He raised an eyebrow in a partially feigned sternness and pointed a piece of flatbread at them as he took his seat. "As does anyone else interested in my sons." 

Sig muffled a snort in his water. "Well I might be able to vouch for Tess. But only if you've got the stomach for the way those kids flirt. Jak, on the other hand, I think is in the clear, temporarily ."

Jak popped the date into his mouth and grinned. "Yep. Unless they're "interested" in me for jobs, you probably won't have anyone coming by for a while." 

Sig set the cup down. "Don't sell yourself short, Jak. You have been catching eyes in town, they just don’t have the guts to come forward yet."

Between his wild, eco-charged nature, and being very obviously in favor with the king, Jak made for a slightly intimidating person to ask out for young Spargans.

Jak made a face. "I already told Torque I'm flattered but I don't like him like that."

“You thought it was just Torque?” Sig asked archly.

There was an expression of mild panic on Jak’s face. “....Yes…? Who else…?”

"Darra," Daxter piped up. 

“She's been mooning over you at the range for weeks. How you haven’t noticed is beyond me. And Kes from the racetrack says you’re hot. Maybe one of the monks, too. I think their name was Tweet or something."

"Keat," Damas corrected him absentmindedly. 

"Considering I don't know any of those names," Jak answered dryly, "It's safe to say none of that is happening."

"What about that mechanic in Haven?" Damas asked, genuinely curious.

Cringing, Jak shook his head. "We uh, no. No, we're not currently…the childhood crush didn't survive Praxis, I don’t think."

Damas winced and regretted asking. "Ah. Sorry. No Havenites, then."

"Not even Madam Governor of Haven?" Daxter teased. 

"Hey. No. Okay, no. No!" Jak mimed gagging. "There is way too much family baggage for that to work." 

"And she's terrifying?" 

"She's not terrifying, Dax." 

"She's a little terrifying." 

Jak rolled his eyes. "You catcalled her within seconds of meeting her. She doesn't have to be nice to you." 

"Daxter!" Damas frowned at the ottsel, who gave a guilty twitch. "Catcalling is not endearing. It is both disrespectful, and, in your case, liable to end in bodily harm for you." 

Daxter's ears drooped a little, and he sulked, but he didn't protest. Tess had given him the same talk the last time they visited Haven, and he was still processing it. 

The only women he'd known while growing up were Keira and the Bird Lady in Sandover, and it wasn't as if he got to see Samos giving any pointers about being a gentleman. Or how to be an adult at all, in hindsight. Any indication of how to interact with women had mostly been garnered from hanging around the seedier parts of Haven during the two years he'd been separated from Jak. It had worked, sort of. Even negative attention was still attention, right? 

Turned out that Tess did not feel the same way. 

Having the girl he adored flatly tell him that the way he talked about Ashelin wasn't that different from when people called him "rat" and treated him like an animal had been incredibly hard to accept. Frankly, he was still feeling defensive about it.

But...he and Tess never fought! So if Tess was angry at him, it had to be for real, right? 

"Hey, uh...d'ya think she'd let me apologize for that without blowing my head off?" Daxter asked meekly. 

Jak leaned back and rested his weight on the palms of his hands. He pursed his lips and pretended to think it over for a moment before grinning wickedly. 

"I'd worry more about the rest of your body." 

Daxter whimpered and slumped. At his height, this put him almost below the table entirely. 

"I'm doomed!" 

"I'll say something real teary at the funeral," Jak joked. 

"Why you-!" 

With a sigh, Damas resigned himself to teenage theatrics for the remainder of the meal. There had been a time when he had been accustomed to taking his meals in silence, either alone or with his advisors, each keeping to themselves. Words weren’t wasted in the desert, not that he’d had much inclination to seek conversation with his advisors in the first place. Adding two barely-eighteen whirlwinds to the equation meant a great deal more chatter at mealtimes -- and a few arguments to defuse now and then. 

Never in his fondest imaginings had Damas ever anticipated the difficulty in getting one son to sit and eat instead of running off to search for artifacts, let alone two of them! 

At least once they were actually sitting down, the "Demolition Duo" didn't have to be encouraged to eat. With the amount of energy they had, it wasn't surprising that they could make short work of the average lunch. Sig had theorized that maybe they had become accustomed to skipping meals in Haven, as he only ever saw them eat when they were at the saloon.

Damas didn't like to think about their time in Haven. 

"You need to have these tajine things at the Naughty Ottsel," Jak said suddenly.

It appeared that while Damas had been distracted by his own thoughts, Jak had already eaten four squares of the tajine and was reaching for a fifth. He'd almost grabbed it before Sig smacked his hand and pushed the plate out of his reach.

"Save some of those for the rest of us, ya little bandit!" Sig scolded.

Jak shook out his stinging hand. "But they're good!"

Daxter made a face. "Nah, not really my thing. Not nearly enough yakkow or pine-pear for me." 

"Yeah...you do like pine-pear." Jak wiped his fingers on his tunic. "Man, it's been ages since I've seen a pine-pear. I don't even remember how to cut them!" 

"You never did," Daxter fired back, "We just dropped 'em from the top of ol' Green Stuff's hut and broke the shell on the dock."

He chuckled. "Good times." 

An amused look passed between Damas and Sig. They were both in agreement that it was probably for the best that neither of the boys knew that it was not uncommon for unsupervised Spargan children to do something very similar with mintmelons. That runt from the East Quarter they sometimes got complaints about -- Quill? Quin? Something like that -- and his little gang of hooligans could not be allowed to drag Jak into their shenanigans. The fallout would be disastrous. 

For a few more minutes, the boys reminisced about the trouble they used to get into as children. Some days, Damas could listen to those stories for hours. They were all he had of Mar's childhood now: secondhand stories. But that was also the reason that there were days when he couldn't bear to hear about it. Days when the knowledge of how much he’d missed was just too much to bear. Those were the days when he could only focus on what he had now . 

He had Mar back, older, with a new name, but home where he belonged. 

He had Mar's chosen brother, who had abandoned friends and success to follow Jak into exile. That was a kind of loyalty you didn't see every day.

For a man who had once lost everything -- city, throne, lover, and child -- Damas had gained so much . 

Truly, if he could only find out where Phobos had gone searching this time, if he could tell her that their son had finally found his way home, then at last he would count himself at peace. 

"Hey, uh..." 

Damas looked up, instinctively understanding that Jak was addressing him. He was still hesitant and unsure about what name he was meant to use for Damas. It made sense, unfortunately. As far as Jak remembered, he'd never had a father before. And they hadn’t discussed whether he wanted Damas to publicly claim him yet. Jak still needed time to figure out what he was most comfortable with. 

"You know, you can still call me Damas if it is easier for you," Damas assured him. 

Jak made a face. "Calling you by your actual name feels weird now though. I'll get used to it, I just-" Embarrassed, his voice dropped to a mutter. "...have to practice, first." 

Damas smiled. "Take all the time you need." 

"Okay." Jak tensed slightly as if he were bracing himself for something, then squeezed out a slightly awkward, "I um, D- Damas? -- ugh, see? It's weird now. It feels weird." 

It took Damas a little effort not to chuckle at the boy's frustration. Daxter did not seem quite as sympathetic. Or else, it was a peculiar sympathy that only the two of them understood. 

"You're making it harder than ya need to, pal," Daxter said around a mouthful of dates. He didn't bother swallowing before talking. Instead, he just fell back on the Spargan Sign the boys had slowly been relearning.

"Just talk like normal." 

That seemed to click with Jak. His shoulders relaxed, although he still seemed like he wasn't completely sure of himself yet. He nodded, took a breath, and raised his hands. This time, he only hesitated briefly before asking. 

"Father, I have a question." 

Damas carefully stifled his reaction. He stood and moved to sit on the rug beside Jak. He let his shoulder bump against Jak's in silent support. This could also have been to make it a little harder for the boy to see that the question had made him more than just a little emotional, but he would never admit to that. Sig quirked a smile at him across the table, but didn't comment.

"Well, I can't guarantee I'll have an answer, but I'll do my best." 

Jak shifted a fraction to ensure that Damas could read his expressions as easily as his hands. "Flick said something weird in training. Asked why doesn't Daxter..." he hunted for a way to phrase it, "Undo his transformation." 

"She wanted to know why I don't just go back to being human and capable of fitting pants," Daxter clarified. 

Damas rubbed his chin thoughtfully. "I won't deny that I've wondered the same, but I just assumed that you had your reasons." 

“I don’t,” Daxter said cheerfully, “I’m stuck like this.”

"Flick said there's another light eco vent in the city?" Jak asked before Damas had time to really process that revelation. 

"There is." 

Jak and Daxter exchanged shocked looks. 

"But light eco vents are so rare!" 

"They are." Damas cracked a rather sharp grin. "Did you think the first Wastelanders picked Spargus's location solely for its charming seaside view of the colossal squid?"

The meaning under their questions hit him a moment later.

"Oh. You...never had a chance to see how much light eco would be required to transform, did you?" 

"Nnnnope. No we didn't." Daxter tapped his fingers nervously on the table. "We don't even know if it would work . I might just go Poof , like metalheads do!" 

"Considering your reaction to complete submersion in dark eco was to transform and retain your faculties, I don't think you have quite as much to worry about as metalheads," Damas pointed out. 

Jak and Daxter straightened, and each had the same determined gleam in their eyes that heralded some kind of hare-brained experiment. Logically, the thing to do was get out ahead of the impending incident and try to mitigate any ensuing property damage. It had nothing to do with Damas's own curiosity, of course. Not in the slightest. 

Besides. He was king. He was allowed to experiment with eco if he wanted.

He was just furthering the pursuit of knowledge in Spargus. 

Oh Precursors, he couldn't fool himself for long. Damas knew he had the same look in his eye as the boys did. 

"Noooo nonono." Sig narrowed his eye at Jak and Damas. "I know that look. If you're gonna mess around with eco, you should have a monk on standby."

"We don't need a monk!" Jak argued, "If anything goes wrong, I can fix it!"

"Finish the salad, and I'll show you where the other vent is," Damas decided. 

"I don’t get why you call this salad. How is this a salad? It’s basically salsa!" Jak protested. 

Daxter threw an olive at him.

"Hey, it's food, it's free, and it isn't trying to kill us. Shut up and eat."

Sig pinched the bridge of his nose. "Damas-"

"They'll be fine," Damas waved off his concerns just a little too eagerly. "I'll be supervising them myself!"

"Yeah, that's what I'm afraid of," Sig retorted. 

But he couldn’t stop them, and he knew it as well as they did. The most he could do was damage control.

After a few more chiding remarks, Jak was cajoled or threatened into eating the rest of the cooked salad on his flatbread. It wasn’t that he disliked the taste, he just couldn’t wrap his head around the idea that salads could be cooked at all. He was used to just eating vegetables raw, with little to no prep, or horrendously overcooked like at the Hip-Hog Heaven saloon. 

When Damas deemed that he had eaten enough, he stood up and crossed the chamber to his bed. Without so much as a word of explanation, the king dragged the frame across the floor with several cringe-inducing shrieks of metal against stone. He waved the boys over and pulled up the corner of the rug to reveal the familiar orange of a sealed vent.

“King Atys -- may he rot -- was no channeler, but he knew how valuable eco was.” Damas tapped the vent cap meaningfully. “If he couldn’t personally make use of it, nobody could.”

Jak looked affronted. “He just hoarded eco?”

“And anything else he could get his hands on,” Sig muttered bitterly.

Damas nodded. “Selfish piece of work. That’s why I started a rebellion and killed him.”

He paused and shrugged. “Part of why, anyway.”

“You’re gonna tell me that story later, right?” Jak all but demanded. “You have to tell me how that went down.”

Showoff, Sig mouthed at Damas, who smirked in response. He was allowed to show off a little bit! How could he refuse if his son wanted a story?

With a soft grunt, he unlocked the vent and shuffled back.

“Alright, let’s start small. Try sticking a hand in, Daxter.”

“And you wonder why I already have gray hair,” Sig grumbled under his breath.

Sticking a hand in didn’t get Daxter much more than a couple of sore fingers. He shook his hand with a hiss and glared at the offending eco. The fur there was shorter, at least he thought it was, but it hadn’t been enough.

 “Might have to use a little more,” he said tentatively, “I mean, the first time around I went all the way under. It was in my hair , and in my nose , and in my mouth- ”

Jak hummed thoughtfully. “Full immersion, maybe?”

“That’s a lot for a non-channeler. Let’s work our way up to-” Damas started to say, but Daxter had already shrugged, unbuckled his belt, and hopped fully into the vent. “Oh.”

For a moment, the light flared, and Daxter became little more than a silhouette. Concern flooded Damas, and he reached out to pull the ottsel from the vent.

With a squawk of “Ack! It’s in my mouth!” Daxter suddenly seemed to stretch, as though made of rubber. There was a faint snap , and he lost his balance entirely. He toppled over with a screech and landed in a tangle of limbs between Damas and Jak.

He was shaken, and oversaturated with eco, and very very obviously not an ottsel. Damas stared down at a lanky boy with elbows sharp enough to kill a man. The goggles he’d habitually worn now dangled off of one downturned ear, while the other stood upright out of a mess of ginger hair. Somehow, he hadn’t expected quite so much hair. Damas found his voice after a second and frowned.

“Are you alright? I told you to work your way up!”

Daxter groaned and dragged his fingernails across his arms. “Why is everything so itchy?” he complained. His hands slowed, and then stopped completely when he realized that there was only an average amount of body hair under his fingertips. His eyes widened, and he took a quick inventory of himself. Sure enough, no tail, no paws, and nothing that could qualify as a waterproof fur coat.

Jak was elated. “Daxter!” He leaped up and pulled the other boy to his feet. “You’re-!” 

He paused. “...You’re completely naked.”

Daxter looked back down at himself, flexing tanned, freckled hands, then looked back up at Jak.

“I don’t know what else you were expecting.”

His hair was longer than the last time Jak had seen it -- with three small braids still woven into the center of his scalp -- and considerably wilder. And, frustratingly, he was taller than Jak now. It wasn’t by much, but Jak already knew it was enough that he wouldn’t hear the end of it. But that didn’t matter now. Finally, finally , his mistake from all those years ago had been reversed. Daxter could choose now.

Jak laughed and threw his arms around his brother. “I missed being able to do this.”

Daxter blinked back tears and hugged him back. “You’ve put yourself at a very convenient noogie height, I hope you know that.”

Damas cleared his throat and handed Daxter one of the sheets from the bed. “Here. We’ll have to figure out the clothing situation later.”

“With real pants, right?” Daxter asked, “Please say I get real pants. Maybe you can rock the skirt look, but I can’t go see my girlfriend wearing a bedsheet.”

There was a clear and visible fight going on between Damas and his urge to laugh. “We’ll…work something out. Do you think changing back into an ottsel would require more dark eco, or can you do that at will like your brother?”

Daxter wound the sheet around his middle twice and tried to knot it in place somewhat in the fashion that Damas wore his…whatever that long skirt-y bit was called. It was decidedly less impressive.

“I dunno,” he said, realizing he hadn’t the faintest idea how to transform again -- or if he even wanted to, “Why?”

Damas looked at Sig and raised his brows. Sig had an equally interested look on his face. He stood and came over to examine Daxter. 

“If you can shrink at will, it would give you an advantage to stealth,” he pointed out. “Could be useful if we need a spy in Haven again.”

“Which we might, if that Havenite nobleman really has been poking around in the temple catacombs,” Damas agreed, “I don’t like the idea of anyone from Praxis’s inner circle knowing about our city.”

He cleared his throat. “But we can discuss that later. For now, I think you may want to readjust to that height. And get some clothes. Perhaps test your reflexes if you feel the need.”

Jak squinted at him. “Are you just telling us to go play?” he asked flatly.

Damas grinned sharply at him. “Well I am now,” he said.

He placed a hand on either boy’s shoulder. That was much easier when his hand no longer covered Daxter’s entire torso. “I sent a message demanding the sage report on any happenings in the city. You usually prefer not to be involved in those calls, do you not?”

“Go play it is,” Daxter said hastily, “Good luck with that, Pops.”

He barely winced when Jak smacked him up the back of the head.

The king snorted at the impertinence and let them go. “Alright, get out of here. Do something useful with your time. And Daxter?”

The newly enlarged redhead fidgeted. “Ye-es?”

“It’s good to meet your other form.”

Daxter ducked his head bashfully and muttered something nobody could quite make out. Jak beamed and elbowed him.

“How the tables turn,” he teased before turning to his father. “Daxter says thanks.”

Damas watched the boys go with a small smile, but behind his eyes, thoughts were racing at breakneck speed. This, he decided, could be very useful to Spargus. One son who could use dark and light eco to become an absolute juggernaut , and one son who could use it to disappear in a crowd at a moment’s notice. They balanced each other well.

Damas had a feeling that they would need that balance in the coming days. Something about the timing of Veger in the temple and that purple star in the atmosphere just didn't sit right with him. He didn't want to say anything to his people yet, but there was something very dangerous coming. He felt it in his bones.