Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

When Samos accepted the fact that he would have to leave his entire world behind to travel back Precursors only knew how long, he had done so with the understanding that he wasn’t completing a circle. The other Samos, the old man who called himself a sage, spoke in hushed tones to his younger time twin while Jak spoke to his own—this, Samos knew, was a secret that he didn’t want their young mutual acquaintance to know.

“It’s not a circle,” he explained quickly, obviously trying to impart as much meaning as he could in as few words as possible. “It’s doubling back on itself over and over, but it’s never the same twice. It wasn’t like this for me, it won’t be for you.”

“I’m guessing that means you can’t tell me what to do,” the younger of the two replied.

The sage shook his head in response. “It’s not going to be the same. This is…I think it’s the closest we’ve come to things going right. It’s close. He’s not—I don’t think he’s supposed to be like this.” He slanted his eyes on Jak as he lifted the little boy up into the rift rider. “But it’s close. I can feel it in the earth, the trees—it’s close. He’s close.”

Samos resisted the urge to grind his teeth and demand a clearer explanation. It was heartening to know, at least, that he wasn’t doomed to becoming the same cranky, ungrateful, arrogant stick in the mud that this old man was. And he was old, so much older than the ten years’ difference should have left him. What had his timeline been like? Assuming that they’d been the same at the beginning, more or less, what was it that the old man had seen that turned him into…this?

“What was the difference this time?”

The sage closed his eyes, shaking his head in clear frustration. “If I could tell you, I would. I have no way to be sure, but I think—at least, I’d like to think—that it’s because he had a sage watching over him. Someone to teach him what he would need to know to survive what they did to him.”

It seemed plausible enough, although Samos had no idea how he was supposed to impart knowledge that he absolutely didn’t have onto a little boy yet too young to understand much of anything. He had no way to grasp the concept that he was the last of his line, the best chance for the only safe haven left in the world to survive the terrors Praxis hammered into its walls of metal and stone and energy.

As he climbed into the rift rider and hollered something he hoped was optimistic enough to keep them from feeling the guilt already curling deep in the green muscle of his chest, Samos wondered if the old man even realized what he was demanding. Whatever happened in his timeline was different, obviously; he hadn’t raised up a little boy knowing that he was eventually going to send him off into years of torture.

How could he possibly take care of this boy with a clear conscience, knowing what he was likely to become? It was entirely possible that this was the perfected timeline, that this was how the Precursors and Mar and all the powers out there in the universe wanted it. Samos could be doomed to repeat the process over and over throughout time and history, to just stand back and let it happen. It would have been easy to think of it as a noble sacrifice on both their parts, that Samos had to become an accomplice in Praxis’ plot to create the perfect weapon, that Jak had to suffer in order to gain the powers he needed to end the metalhead threat once and for all, but how could that possibly be the old man’s choice to make?

The light swallowed them both up, and Samos tore himself away from thought to hold the boy—Jak, he supposed—close as they careened back through the ages. Jak clung to his tunic, eyes buried in his chest, body shaking. Samos held him tight with both oversized hands.

“How am I supposed to protect you?”

Chapter Text

The island was only a couple miles across from what Samos could see from his perch high atop a rough-hewn cliff. There were no trees, or at least none healthy enough to communicate, but the stone thrummed up through his sandals in an ultraviolet song that left an acrid taste in the back of his throat. It was so much noise, deciphering exactly what the world around him was trying to say, the distinct message of the life flowing through the earth, was difficult to say the least. Samos had only been at this for a couple months, after all, and while he’d had his older time twin to walk him through the rougher patches—the “sage mania,” he called it—that didn’t mean he was any sort of expert just yet.

Regardless, the one thing that was clear from signal running through those still unfamiliar senses was that this place felt eerily like Dead Town. There was no indication that it was currently inhabited, but the massive skeletal shapes in the distance, buried in the blackened earth, gave him little reason to question why.

Where in the world were they?

He slid back down the stone to meet the young boy waiting below, the trail of gravel and scrape of high wooden shoes interrupting the stillness and the low rhythm of the waves. The young, mute boy that would one day be Jak turned to watch, but otherwise stayed sitting with his legs splayed out in front of him, waiting where Samos had told him. At least he was obedient, if only for now.

“It looks like we’ll want to head that way,” he gestured with a nod of his head. “There’s an old Precursor structure that way, at least we can try to get you out of the sun.”

The child rolled his eyes slightly and made a short, metered gesture with one hand. Samos had seen him make similar movements before, always wondering if it was some form of signspeak, but Kor had insisted that they were just the self-defined gestures of a voiceless child. There was no way to be sure now. Still, the boy got to his feet without complaint and waited for Samos to take his hand before he started off away from the rift rider.

The gleaming copper structure came into view as they rounded the corner of a cliff, working their way down sharp inclines and a pit of mud before they reached the large flat steps and even larger half-open aperture of an entrance. The symbol emblazoned above the gap in the wall indicated that it could be opened with blue eco, but apparently it had been a while since it was operational. Someone or something had probably pried it open by force, at least partially, although there were no visible tool marks along the edges of the door itself.

Samos stepped through first, all but hauling the boy in behind him, and then immediately stopped.

The first thing he noticed was that the constant sound of life in the back of his head, ranging from a low hum to a sharp howl, cut off entirely when both feet came down on the metal surface of the structure’s interior floor. The silence was stunning, even disturbing, and left something in Samos aching at the loss. Before the assault on the holy district stripped him of his home and position, he had devoted the better part of his life to studying the Precursors and what they left behind. He hadn’t had the opportunity to revisit any of the ruins mentioned in his theses in years, much less in the short time since the other Samos arranged for him to “awaken” into the role of a proper sage. He had no idea they felt so horribly, utterly dead.

The interior of the structure was perfectly circular, with a round indentation in the center that was easily three times Samos’ diminutive height in width; judging by the interlocking plates that covered the seam in the middle of the indentation, meeting like crocadog’s teeth, it was probably some kind of massive container.

The pieces fell into place in a split second. The acrid eco song in the earth was familiar, like Dead Town—like dark eco, sickly sweet and heavy in the air. The surrounding area was still conscious, but relatively devoid of obvious flora and fauna.

Samos had only ever heard stories of the old dark eco silos, torn open one by one by metalheads after their arrival on this small incomplete planet, but he knew beyond any doubt that he and the kid stood on one at that very moment. Fully intact, fully contained.

They really had traveled back into ancient history, hadn’t they?

The kid gave Samos’ hand a sharp tug and pointed one chubby hand toward the upper level of the structure; series of oversized platforms led up to it, levitating perfectly still through some technology lost with its creators, and a number of wooden slats had been strung together to form a roof.

There was a man on the upper level, standing with his back to Samos and the kid, coiling up a length of heavy rope as he milled about, using one foot to slide a crate slowly across the floor.

“…Hello?” Samos said, trying not to startle the stranger too much.

The man whipped around, rope still in hand, and went completely still—impossibly still, the same way Samos had seen Jak freeze up when he was surprised. Like a wild animal caught in the hunt. It gave Samos a chance to take him in, from the long golden braid over his shoulder to his carefully groomed goatee, the gleaming coppery gauntlet covering his right forearm and the high glove on his left hand, stained a deep red-purple. His skin was undeniably tanned, but there was a sort of cool pallor to it, an almost ashen overlay that made him look just a little bit sick.

“Hello,” Samos repeated with noticeably more trepidation.

“You—how—” His skin paled further when his deep red eyes lit on the kid. “Sweet Precursors, is that a child?” The man’s accent was sharp but not entirely foreign, just slightly off from the one Samos heard in most of the nobility living in the holy district before the attack. More like the monk families, maybe? Either way, there was disbelief in his voice, but even more than that was a heavy, protective tone of disapproval.

Samos looked down at the kid—Jak, he reminded himself, this was Jak—then back up to the man on the upper level. “Well, yes.”

“Oh for the love of—bring him up here!” He held out both arms, as though intending to lift the boy up himself even from that distance. Samos could see then that the trigger finger on his gauntlet was different, the same tone as his skin, and lacked the metallic segmenting visible on the other digits. As he approached, motivated far more by the man’s tone than his appearance, he realized that it wasn’t a gauntlet at all. Instead, the man sported what appeared to be a primitive prosthetic, the first finger still flesh and bone while the rest had been replaced or encased in what was clearly Precursor metal.

Samos helped young Jak up the large steps to the platform where the man was waiting, hesitating on the last one when the large, roiling pool of gleaming electric violet and black came into view, the scent of dark eco further assaulting his senses. Jak had no such qualms with the stuff, making a small jump from the final step to the upper level, where the man was waiting.

He had knelt down beside the very box he’d been sliding over when Samos approached, stowing the rope while he fished about. By the time young Jak reached his side, the stranger had produced a rudimentary respirator from the box, similar to the one Torn had used since the attack on Dead Town scarred his esophagus.

“Here we go,” he said, voice much gentler as he held the mask to the boy’s face in spite of the fact that it was clearly too big. Little Jak reached up and held it on, blue eyes bright with a hidden smile. The stranger smiled back, reaching up to put his gloved good hand on the boy’s head. “Just breathe with that for a while, all right? You’ll be fine.”

When little Jak nodded and moved to sit on another crate, the man turned on Samos. Not to Samos, on Samos. There was anger in his expression, eyebrows cutting a line almost as sharp as his rather pronounced canines, as distinct as the angled slant of a healed break at the bridge of his long nose. “What were you thinking, bringing a child here?” His voice was a low hiss, hidden from the boy mere yards away. “Do you have any idea what kind of effect even moderate exposure to the air here could do to his skeletal development? And that’s not even discussing the risk of mental instability—if he has a history of channeling in his family it could stay dormant for years, cycling and concentrating and caving in on itself over and over until he hits outright saturate mania—”

Samos would have liked to defend himself, especially considering he had no clue where he was in the first place, but before he could even try to break down the man’s almost disarmingly educated tirade another voice broke echoed across the expanse of metal and sickly-sweet air.

This one was higher and noticeably more feminine, albeit still fairly deep, particularly for the petite frame of the woman now standing on the other end of the structure.

“Are you done packing up yet?”

“Maia!” the man all but barked, whipping around and gesturing sharply at Samos. “I’m afraid we have company, dearest, and he was so kind as to bring a small child with him!”

The woman, Maia, looked up and blinked, dark eyes flitting from Samos to the other man and back again. The strained flush in her tanned cheeks rose slightly. “He…what?” She arched an eyebrow, approaching in bewilderment. “What’s going on? Who are you?”

“My name is Samos,” he said at last. “This is Jak.”

“Oh, his name is Jak, that’s excellent, I’ll be sure to mention that in my next book when I talk about the physiological trauma he’s sure to suffer—”

“Gol,” Maia interjected, stern.

He cut off with a frustrated noise and turned away from Samos entirely, striding back over to Jak and kneeling beside him, asking after him in hushed tones even as Maia made her way up the steps and looked down at Samos. She was taller than her companion, Gol, and more heavily built as well. If Samos had to guess, he would say that this woman was definitely the more physically dangerous of the two.

“You’ll have to forgive Gol,” she said, although her tone didn’t make it sound like an apology. “All dramatics aside, what possessed you to bring a little boy out here with you? It’s not exactly an ideal family picnic location.”

Here, Samos realized, was where the real trouble began. This place was obviously known to be extremely dangerous, likely thanks to the massive amount of dark eco present, but Samos honestly had no clue where he was. He also had no way to explain how they had come to be here beyond the presence of the rift rider, which had stubbornly refused to do any more flying since they were summarily ejected from the concentrated flow of time into this unknown, nameless place and time.

He heaved a sigh, dark eyes drifting to little Jak. This was how it started, then? Was this his first exposure, was it being here that tainted him enough to survive what Praxis would and had done to him?

“Honestly, I don’t know where we are,” he explained. Simplicity was key. No details meant no need to lie—he was sure there would be quite enough of that in coming years as Jak eventually found his voice and started asking where he came from, what happened to his parents and how he’d come to be here.

Gol looked back over his shoulder, eyebrows raised and heavy-lidded eyes every bit as incredulous as his accented voice. “You don’t know where you are? You can’t possibly be serious.” He stood again, coming to stand alongside Maia and look down at Samos, somehow intimidating in spite of his relatively diminutive frame. He searched Samos’ face for a long moment, eyes narrowing even as the rest of his body fell back to that absolute utter stillness, the dead metal around them seeming more likely to move.

His voice dropped to a murmur. “You’re telling the truth. How?”

“We…it wasn’t safe where we were, not for him.”

“And it’s safer here?” This time it was Maia’s turn to sound incredulous.

Samos’ own voice was low, but confidence welled in his chest as he spoke. “Trust me, this is so much safer for him that you wouldn’t even know where to start.”

The two exchanged a look then, but before either could do or say anything to challenge what was obviously a very difficult claim to believe, a gust of wind tore across the platform. The acrid scent of dark eco ebbed for a moment, the spray from the pool below carried downwind; more importantly, the gust twisted and curled about just so, catching the young Jak’s leather cap and flinging it straight into the well of dark liquid.

The immediate distress on the child’s face was clear as he leapt down from the crate where he had been seated, shock of green-to-blond hair exposed fully to the sunlight. Really, it was a wonder that no one had ever even contemplated the possibility of a relation between him and Jak—the other Jak, the heroic dark warrior who had saved the world just the night before and yet somehow centuries in the future. The resemblance was uncanny, but somehow went unnoticed even to the Underground’s most observant agents.

Little Jak toddled to the edge of the pool with no clear intent of slowing down, stopped short only by the metallic right hand of the overprotective and stranger, Gol. He caught the boy easily by the back of his overalls, pulling him back in a movement that was far too quick. It was possible that his reflexes were enhanced somehow, but the motion seemed almost practiced, leading Samos to deduce that he had almost certainly dealt with small children before.

“Easy there,” he warned, moving to step between the child and the edge of the pool. “None of us wants you falling in, now.”

Jak’s blue eyes gleamed with unshed tears, his lower lip trembling slightly as he gestured feebly town into the eco, where his cap was just starting to sink into the thick, shimmery liquid.

“There’s nothing for it now,” Samos said with a sigh, at last stepping closer. “We’ll get you a new one once we’re settled, all right?” The sage’s words clearly didn’t reassure the boy in the slightest. Instead, Jak’s breaths started coming in short, sharp gasps, his mouth falling open as his little face flushed red with panic.

Although his grin showed canines that were much too sharp, Gol’s smile was nonetheless genuine and, somehow, more soothing to the boy than Samos’ attempt at placation. He dropped to one knee, placing his mismatched hands on Jak’s shoulders. “It’s all right,” he assured. “We’ll get it back for you, how’s that?” Somehow it didn’t sound like a platitude, but rather a promise.

Little Jak blinked his big blue eyes, comprehending the man’s words but clearly not understanding the gravity of his promise. While Samos understood immediately, he was just as confused about how the man intended to put his credits where his mouth was.

“Maia, the rope.”

She sighed. “We just packed the rope…” Nevertheless, the young woman turned and drew the heavy length of cord from the open crate while Gol coaxed Jak back to his perch on the other box, returning the oversized respirator to his flushed, chubby face.

While Maia fiddled with the rope, Gol pulled the glove on his left arm up clear to his bicep and tugged another—larger and fashioned with a number of drawstrings at multiple points—over his coppery prosthesis. Once that was done, strings drawn tight around the clunky wrist joint and the point just south of his elbow, where metal met flesh, he and Maia took a short moment to tie the rope off between them.

In the end, they expertly constructed a sort of makeshift harness over Gol’s torso while Maia looped it several times around her waist, holding the slack end tight in one hand. The end connecting her to Gol hung at her back, allowing her to plant her feet and tilt forward slightly as he took several steps forward and then, against all sense, tilted down to stand suspended inside the well, booted feet planted firmly on metal and body held parallel to the eco.

It was one of the most foolhardy, fascinating things Samos had ever seen.

“A little further, dearest,” Gol called, voice echoing up from the pool in a garbled, layered mess unique to the strange acoustic properties of Precursor metal. In response Maia took a careful half-step backward, leaning forward with all her weight to keep the rope taut and counterbalance her companion’s weight in the well. Gol took a slow step down the side in perfect time.

Samos almost cried out when, contrary to any concept of safety or self-preservation, Gol reached down into the dark eco itself. The green sage realized quickly enough that this was the reason for the gloves; the fumes alone could be mildly toxic, but chances were the man had at least some measure of tolerance to the stuff. Most people in Samos’ own time period had, after all, and they were exposed to far less and in a far less concentrated form.

“Just a bit—oop.” Gol slipped as Maia shifted back ever so slightly, dropping him closer to the surface of the well. The end of his braid slipped over his shoulder and splashed into the fluid, and the way his shoulders tensed made it clear even from above that he’d winced at the movement. “There!” He called out, triumphant. “I’ve got it, pull me up.”

With obvious relief, the woman took a long, firm stride forward, Gol stepping backward in tandem until he was once again safe on the platform. In his hand he held Jak’s cap, stained slightly violet by the short dip. In fact, the leather was almost the same deep maroon color as Gol’s arm-length gloves, making it suddenly distressingly clear that it wasn’t their original color.

Gol held the cap up for an undeniably delighted Jak to see. “Here we are. It will need to be rinsed and dried before you can wear it, just for safety’s sake—”

Jak nodded enthusiastically, apparently too thrilled to have it back out of the pool to care about the wait.

“—but we’d intended to stay in Sandover overnight anyway, so you can have it back before we head back up north tomorrow.”

Samos held a new appreciation for the strangers, but was taken off-guard at the name of the village. Sandover, like the old name for the holy district back in Haven. The first village taken by the metalheads and the first retaken by Mar in his fight to create a better world. Samos’ older time twin had lived there, said that Jak grew up there, safe and sound and separate from the danger of the future to which he was born. They really were exactly where—and when—they needed to be.

Maia made a high noise somewhere between disappointment and distress as Gol peeled his gloves off, revealing a burst of icy violet dyed into the uppermost portion of his left arm in a distinct splash pattern.

“Oh, not again.”

Gol groaned in frustration, reaching up to rub at the discolored patch with his prosthesis. “Must have splashed up under the hem while I was fishing about,” he grumbled. “Ugh, now I’m going to be purple for a week.”

Maia sighed, holding out a bag for him to deposit the gloves and cap into. “To be fair, you’ll be completely purple eventually,” she said, a little sardonic.

“I know, I know.” He frowned, turning his head to survey the contaminated tissue once more. “It’s the patchiness that gets to me.”

“Are you all right?” Samos blurted, stepping closer. Two pairs of red eyes, slightly mismatched in hue and shade, turned on him, Gol’s narrowing slightly in apparent confusion even as one coppery eyebrow reached toward the sharp widow’s peak of his hairline. “Direct exposure to dark eco,” Samos continued. “It’s caustic at the best of times, but usually outright fatal. If you don’t get it treated—”

Gol started laughing. It was a rich, heady and entirely arrogant sound that set Samos completely on edge. He grinned as he trailed off, shaking his head slightly and perching his living hand on one hip. “Do you have any idea who I am?”

The way Samos blinked at him must have been answer enough.

“Gol Acheron,” he said, as though it was supposed to mean something. When Samos remained unmoved he scoffed. “Dear Precursors, where are you from? I know my work is only just gaining real traction at the Brink, but even academics at the edge of the planet know me by name.” His brow creased, confused and a little offended. “Where did you come from, Samos, that you’ve never heard of the first Sage of Dark Eco?”

The green sage went rigid, eyes widening slightly. The first—no, that wasn’t possible. There were children’s stories about a dark sage that went mad and had to be put down by a channeler blessed by the Precursors themselves, but there was only one to actually make historical record. An unnamed genius from less than a century before Mar’s time, whose carefully notated research journals had been integral to the establishment and maintenance of Haven’s eco grid, who left tome after tome to be closely protected through the ages. First it had been the monks in the holy district, then a scattering of noble families, educational institutions and even Samos himself with the odd volume in their possession after the district fell.

It had also certainly been that research that led to the creation and eventual success of the Dark Warrior Program, although which notes led Praxis and his butchers to the conclusion that became Jak was a mystery. Samos may have written a doctoral thesis in eco studies, but dark had never been his field of expertise.

Regardless, Samos was shaken, staring up at this relatively young—if not youthful—man, with his platinum-blond-to-copper hair and his ever so slightly ashen skin. His accent, his bearing, his behavior…it all made sense.

Gol all but smirked, voice dropping to a deep murmur. “Oh,” he breathed, “I see you have heard of me.”

Chapter Text

Misty Island wasn’t very large, thankfully, and was much easier to navigate when one knew where they were going, which the Acherons absolutely did. Gol, ego thoroughly stroked by the stunned look on Samos’ face when recognition dawned at last, had become significantly more amenable to helping the strange old man and his ward after a bit more of the story had been disclosed.

Currently Gol was carrying the boy—who Samos called Jak, although he’d just shrugged when asked if that was his name—on his back, arms looped around his chubby little legs and keeping his bare feet off the contaminated earth of the island. The majority of the eco in the soil of Misty Island was inert, of course, but it wasn’t worth the risk. The last thing the poor boy needed was to end up as small in stature as Gol because someone let him run around barefoot in one of the most dangerous areas in the known world. The respirator, too bulky to carry around, had been replaced with a length of cloth that Maia had doused in a transparent liquid that glowed faintly, probably a low level of green eco suspended in water or a saline solution.

“The construction is…interesting,” Maia said, turning a slow circle around the strange machine Samos claimed had carried them across the sea. She poked and picked at various points on the machine, running her hand down the barely-glowing back end of the thing, tugging at spots where the metal plating seemed loose.

In this lighting, Gol found that the strange old man looked a little less green than he had before. It was difficult to tell if he was actually green or just eerily pale and the glint of the Precursor metal around the silo had given him an odd sort of pallor; now it was the glow of what was probably the engine of his strange transport lending to the odd coloration. Probably.

“Did you build this?” Maia asked at last, looking over her shoulder. When Samos shook his head, she sighed in obvious disappointment and went back to fiddling with the engine. “I suppose that would be too much to ask, if you’d built it you’d know what was wrong with it.” She frowned, reaching down to pull a tool off her belt and give the side of the craft a light tap, listening to the reverberation with obvious curiosity.

Samos watched her work with equal interest. “It was constructed by a…good friend,” he explained. “For the express purpose of carrying the boy to safety.” He frowned, adjusting his odd spectacles with downcast eyes. “I suppose it served well enough.”

Maia shrugged, using another, more delicate tool from one of her pockets to bend back a piece of metal from the front console. “It brought you here, at least.”

“To people who can help,” Samos added, voice low and almost uncertain. Like he was trying to convince himself as much as anything else. “Maybe the only ones on this side who can.”

Now it was Gol’s turn to frown, but he was once again interrupted before he was able to ask for elaboration, this time when the back portion of the craft flared brighter, flickering like firelight through seawater. Maia leapt from the device when it rattled slightly and lifted, just a bit, from the ground. Then, with what could only be described as a low sigh, the engine went out entirely.

“Oh for the love of—” Maia heaved her own sigh, significantly more frustrated, and gave the console a hard slap just to one side of the gleaming ruby set into the metal.

The engine, once again, flickered to life.

“Thank the Precursors,” she mumbled. “It won’t take you anywhere else—” She placed a hand against the front console and gave a hard push, to which the craft responded by shifting forward by inches. It was enough. “—but this should be enough to get it to the other side of the island.” The young woman looked back at Samos with a smile. “Honestly, I’m shocked it carried you clear across the sea. I didn’t know anyone had worked out the functionality of an existing a-grav unit enough to make it last that long.”

“It’s…complicated. But we weren’t in the air very long.”

Gol frowned, shifting little Jak on his shoulders. The boy was growing increasingly heavy, as though falling asleep on his back, but he didn’t really mind. He’d dealt with worse, after all, Dax’s weight seemed to double when he fell asleep. “I’ve done expeditions through the Far Sea,” he insisted. “I was out on the water for a month without seeing land. There’s nothing out there.”

Samos just shook his head. “I couldn’t explain it if I tried.”

Gol exchanged a charged look with Maia, and together they came to the same decision: Samos was absolutely lying about something. They just couldn’t tell what. He told the truth before, about the danger the boy had been in; he was telling the truth here, about the length of their trip. He was omitting key details, for some reason or another.

The thump of Jak’s cheek against Gol’s back when he finally fell asleep was enough to break the tension. If it really was for the safety of a child, were the details really that important? Whatever these two were running from, it was bad enough that they had crossed an impassable ocean to get away from it. The minutiae would come to light eventually.

Maia just shrugged slightly to dismiss the concern for the moment before bracing her feet on the ground and giving the craft a heave, pushing it forward a good foot or so. This would take a while.

The problem with a-grav engines, from what Gol understood of Maia’s explanations, was that they didn’t actually negate the weight of the device to which they were attached: even the best antigravity core still required one hell of a propulsion system to push it through the air once it was there. The term “a-grav” itself was a misnomer, in fact, as the few functional engines today—reverse-engineered from ancient Precursor tech, of course—simply suspended the craft on a bed of particles several inches to several feet off the ground. While the intangible surface created by the engine was unfortunately anything but frictionless, it was perfectly level and quite smooth, which was what allowed Maia to push Samos’ craft by hand in spite of its weight.

Gol had once asked her if a-grav engines rode energy currents the same way a fully awakened sage could fly on the ambient particles of eco in the air, and Maia had responded that there was no way to tell until either of them learned how to fly. She had then kicked him out of the workshop because, according to her, he wasn’t going to figure out how to fly by standing around.

She was right, of course. Maia was usually right.

“Should we help?” Samos asked, moving forward slightly as Maia pushed the craft down the hill toward the silo.

Gol chuckled. “No, no, she takes these things very personally.”

“And I don’t trust him to touch anything, honestly,” she quipped, just on the cusp between exasperation and teasing. Gol frowned slightly; he wasn’t that bad, especially since his nervous system finally synchronized with the prosthetic exoskeleton on his otherwise useless right arm. It had only been a couple years, however, and his track record up until that point was hardly encouraging.

He didn’t argue the point, allowing Samos to track along between himself and Maia, short quips of conversation passing between them as they worked his craft slowly across Misty Island. Overall the old man seemed…distracted was the best term for it, Gol supposed. His mind was clearly elsewhere, dark eyes occasionally flitting back not to Gol, but to the very much alive weight that was Jak held on his back.

It wasn’t until they made it through the other end of the old silo amphitheater that Samos really seemed to pull back out of his thoughts, when he stopped on the stairs and blinked at the fossil field spread out before them.

“Precursors,” he murmured, eyes wide. “There…I saw one of them from the hill, but there’s so many.”

Gol came even with him again, looking out and wondering what this must look like to new eyes. He’d been coming to Misty Island since he was six or seven, thanks to his parents, and couldn’t even remember the first time he’d lain eyes on the leviathan skeletons. What must it be like for Samos, looking out at these massive teeth and ribs and horns jutting up from the charred soil of the contaminated island?

Samos looked up at him—which was an odd experience, while the old man obviously suffered from some sort of fairly severe skeletal growth disorder Gol was still entirely unused to adults having to cast their eyes upward to meet his own. “What happened to them?”

He shrugged slightly in response, careful not to rouse Jak. “No one knows, really. There are the theories that the silo here has something to do with it, but I doubt it.” The facility was locked tight, after all, and only the Precursors knew how to part the gaping maw and expose the energy within. “It must have happened all at once for them to be strewn about like this, all at around the same level in the soil, the same state of fossilization…”

“Could it have something to do with what tore open the Brink?”

Maia stopped and whipped around, the surprise as obvious on her face as it was on Gol’s as they stared at the strange man standing on the steps. She straightened up, reaching up to tuck a lock of gold-to-red hair back under the green-lensed goggles set high on her forehead. “What happened on the…” She exchanged a look with Gol before turning her full attention to Samos. “What do you mean?”

Samos didn’t balk at the sudden attention. If anything, he stood a little taller, looking significantly more confident. “I know most theories insist that the Brink is the place the Precursors stopped building, but geological studies indicate that the stone around the subrail—” He stopped then, taking a deep breath and giving his head a slight shake, long ears swaying slightly in the movement. “The stone around the ruins out there shows signs of eruption, as if it was torn upward off the metal used to structure the planet in the first place.” He gestured slightly with his hands, back and forth. “There are also signs of great damage the further down into the ruins one descends, implying that whatever occurred did so deep in the planet. It’s entirely possible that the force of the cataclysm traveled through the tunnels and eco lines and pushed the fallout well beyond the Brink itself. It might explain a sudden extinction event like the skeletons here seem to indicate.”

To say this was a surprise would have been an understatement. Gol found himself speechless for a long moment after Samos’ short educational lecture, stunned. Had he been some sort of academic back home?

“You’re well educated,” Maia said at last. “Most people, even other academics, subscribe to the incomplete world theory. It’s…nice to hear someone else who doesn’t.”

Now Samos blinked for a moment, then smiled. “Oh. Well, I’ve done a lot of studying, considering—I suppose it’s my turn to introduce myself properly, then!” He puffed himself up slightly, adjusting his tunic. “I prefer people just call me Samos, but my proper title is Samos Hagai, sage of green eco.” His smile broadened slightly. “It’s a pleasure to make your acquaintance.”

Gol found himself reeling. There was so sage of green eco, as far as he knew there never had been. As with any eco, the side effects of early life overexposure could be devastating, leading to everything from growth disorders to cancer. And yet…the tint of his skin and hair, the almost eerie black hue of his eyes and the obviously faulty growth pattern in his bones and muscle structure could easily be indications of overexposure to green eco quite early in his life. Most sages had to be exposed to their patron energy at a very young age if they wanted to reach the level of understanding necessary to take the title before they were too old to utilize it, the practice usually arising in families with natural affinities but occasionally—as was the case with Gol himself—the result of irresponsible parents and terrible accidents. Which one applied here?

Aloud, all he could manage in response was to blurt out, “So that’s why you’re green.”

Maia held a hand to her face, but wasn’t entirely able to stifle the laugh that burst from her throat. Samos, to his benefit, just gave Gol a deadpan look and waited for him to redeem himself.

“…Precursors, that’s not—ugh.” He sighed and lowered his head, shifting the weight of Jak on his back.

“You’ll have to forgive Gol,” Maia said, yet again not seeming sorry at all. If anything, the twinkle in her eyes betrayed amusement at Gol’s faux pas rather than any sort of remorse. “He’s not used to being caught off-guard in his own field.” She smiled down at Samos. “But I will say that it’s a pleasure to meet you.”

“We’ll introduce you to the others.” It wasn’t a suggestion, but Gol didn’t see why it should have been. There was suddenly even more here that they didn’t know, and the other sages would be the first step in putting the puzzle that was this small green man together. “They’ll want to know you’re around, regardless of the circumstance or where you plan to settle.”

Properly introduced at last, Samos couldn’t help his immediate response. “Sandover. I’ll be…I’ll settle in Sandover.” The other Samos had, after all, and whether this timeline was a tilted loop that would never quite match up with the world he remembered or a perfect circle setting little Jak on the path to his doom and salvation in a single stroke, it was best to follow the history he knew.

Gol frowned, setting his jaw slightly. His voice dipped closer to a murmur, some unknown experience darkening his tone. “I would…take some time to think about that. Sandover isn’t particularly fond of sages.”

In contrast, Maia’s voice was gentle. “No, dearest. They just don’t like us.”

“Me,” Gol corrected with a sigh, straightening slightly, hefting Jak a little higher on his shoulders. The boy yawned and turned his head the other direction, but didn’t wake. “Perhaps they’ll be more forgiving of your color palette than mine. I suppose we’ll have to see.” He turned and moved off down the stairs and across the field. “Maia, if you please.”

For a moment she just watched him go, allowing him to take the lead with regret clear on her face, then she let out a long breath and gave her head a shake. “Come along, Samos.” She returned to the rift rider and braced herself against the console once more, giving a heave.

It was clear that they had struck a chord in the young sage, and not a pleasant one. As with so many things—from the disappearance of the Precursors to the mystery of the giant fossils rearing up from the ground—Samos found himself with just one question: what happened? In his time, the very concept of a sage was revered, albeit against the wishes and ordinances of Praxis’ rule. The idea that a place like Sandover, the place that would become the heart of learning and spirituality in Haven, could look on any sage with distaste was beyond foreign, it was bizarre.

Samos supposed that, if nothing else, he had plenty of time to figure it out. It was one thing that his older self had been able to promise, the one thing that the girl who would one day be his daughter had given him. He had nothing, here, but time.

The beach smelled of the familiar eco-tinted salt spray of Samos’ younger days in the holy district. The energetic reek was much weaker here, the sand a lighter, warmer shade of grey; thin, barren trees and dry shoots of grass dotted the landscape, fighting their way toward the sunlight through the haze of lilac mist that parted over the water. The sights and smells were encouraging enough to take the edge off the concern that Gol had—intentionally or otherwise—seeded in the forefront of the green sage’s mind.

If the people of Sandover were truly as distrustful of sages as Gol’s statement implied, then Samos would just have to prove himself to be a sage worth keeping around. He’d done it for the entire underground movement, building support from a huge swath of Haven City through action and ideal more than any attempt at words; he could do the same here. Green eco was very different than even the other base variants, anyway, never mind dark eco—if the people of Sandover were distrustful of sages in general because of Gol, he could only assume it was the undeniable destructive power of his patron energy that fueled the flame. Green could be dangerous, of course, and highly destructive when used incorrectly, but unlike the others it wasn’t destructive at its core.

Maia’s voice tore Samos from his reverie, riddled with concern. “Well, this won’t all fit,” she said, hands on her wide hips. “We can all head back for now and then come back for the craft after we’ve set up in Sandover for the night?”

Samos frowned. The relatively small wooden speedboat—the engine surprisingly advanced for the time period—was absolutely incapable of transporting the four of them and the rift rider, that much was clear. He supposed they could lash the futuristic hovercraft to the back of the boat and hope that the a-grav unit didn’t sputter on the way and send them sinking into the deep…

He really didn’t want to leave the rift rider here. It would need to be stored somewhere, obviously, but it just seemed so unsafe to leave it sitting on the coast. Saltwater, the mist of eco in the air, even the heat of the sun overhead could damage the device in a very short period of time, rendering its future use impossible.

“Alternatively,” Maia supplied after a moment, clearly able to pick up on Samos’ reluctance, “I could load up the craft and take it into town, unload and then come back to pick you all up?”

“That…would be preferred,” Samos admitted.

She turned. “Gol?”

He nodded, heaving a sigh and leaning forward as he sunk to sit cross-legged in the sand, Jak still bundled up on his back fast asleep. He held the position, holding the boy up off the sand. “We’ll be fine.”

A little more pushing and a couple quick words of confirmation and Maia was off, leaving the two sages and the charge they presently shared alone on the beach. The younger of the two energetic academics shifted, carefully pulling Jak forward to perch the sleeping lump of a boy on his lap in order to cast his eyes upward, toward the sky. The way they flicked away from the smudge of green visible on the horizon spoke volumes toward his relationship with the village.

Perhaps it was just the stigma of his chosen eco that made the villagers treat him with disdain? Or maybe they didn’t, and he just happened to be every bit as sensitive as he was dramatic.

“You’ll like it here,” Gol said at last. Samos looked at him, but the younger man’s eyes were still cast high into the expanse of cloud-dappled blue above. “It’s a nice place, Sandover. Good people, if slow to forgive.”

“I’ll keep that in mind,” he replied. “Thankfully, it’s difficult to cause too much harm with green eco unless you’re really trying for it.” He had meant for the statement to be a reassurance, perhaps a confirmation of his own comfort in his position as a sage, but he saw the way Gol’s sharp jaw tensed when he spoke.

“Yes, thankfully.” Gol’s tone wasn’t precisely harsh, but it was clear that Samos had put his foot in his mouth. The last thing he wanted was to alienate himself from the sages here, but Gol seemed…well, if nothing else, the man was obviously difficult to please.

Samos plopped down on the sand beside him, the grit sharp against his skin, and sat in silence for a long moment. He looked at Jak, curled up and nestled close to Gol’s chest, the man’s mismatched hands carefully keeping him up off the surface of the ground. The contamination here had to be minimal at best, but without the respirator Samos supposed he could understand limiting contact as much as possible.

“You’re good with kids,” Samos said at last.

That, of everything, made Gol blink and look down, meeting his eyes at last. “Pardon?”

“Kids. At least this one, and that’s saying something. He’s…a good judge of character, but where we come from that means he’s not very trusting.”

Of course, little Jak had also trusted Kor, but that was hardly something that they could blame on the boy. The metalhead leader had fooled them all, pulling one over on both versions of Jak and the entire underground; they trusted him because he was old, one of the oldest people anyone in the underground had ever seen outside the noble districts. So few people survived to old age, and fewer still had the level of knowledge that Kor had. Everyone assumed he was a survivor of the holy district, that he’d been evacuated before Praxis brought the wall down and locked Samos and the rest out there to die.

Regardless, the likelihood that Gol posed anywhere near the danger that Kor had hidden right in front of them was slim to say the least.

The younger sage actually smiled slightly, just barely flashing his too-sharp teeth, and glanced down at the little boy. “Maia and I have one back home, up north. They’re probably about the same age, Dax just turned five.”

Samos froze. Dax? As in Daxter, the ottsel? That couldn’t be a coincidence, and yet…

Talking beasts were hardly what one could call common, but Samos had been under the impression that Daxter was just that, an animal that had somehow picked up the capacity to speak somewhere along Jak’s adventures. Was it possible that he started those adventures as a person?

“We should introduce them,” Samos said with a smile that wasn’t entirely sincere. The pieces were falling into place here, far more quickly than he had anticipated and pointing in a direction that he definitely hadn’t expected. The implication here was that Jak’s best friend, possibly the only thing that kept him stable through the fight for the city and the days after the Dark Warrior Program, was the son of the world’s first sage of dark eco; it would explain his unerring capacity to handle Jak’s transformations with no ill effects if the affinity ran in his family. That seemed like something that they would have mentioned, something the other Samos would have added to the little bit of guidance he had given his younger self before sending him back in time.

If Daxter was the son of Gol Acheron, that meant that he absolutely did not live in Sandover. But there was no doubt, from bits and snatches of conversation Samos had heard, that the two of them grew up together.

The older Samos had said that Jak’s ability to survive the tortures Praxis put him through were thanks to his being watched over by a sage. Looking at Gol, holding the boy close, already working to protect him from exposure to the very energy that would ruin him later in life, Samos realized that his time twin had never said which one.

Chapter Text

Sandover Village wasn’t at all what Samos expected. History said, of course, that it had been on the far edge of civilization, the last stop south before one went careening off into the sea that separated the mainland from the microcontinent known only as the wasteland, which didn’t exactly behoove the formation of a bustling metropolis. However, the added knowledge that it had been a spiritual hub during the time of Mar had led him to the assumption that it would be a bit…bigger. Busier, at least. Instead, what greeted Samos when he hopped off the Acherons’ boat was a quiet beach, a small cluster of huts and a series of grassy cliffs leading up to a creaking windmill, turning slowly and all but spattered with off-color patches of wood and paint that indicated a hasty ongoing repair job.

The earth beneath his feet sang of recent upheaval, of a great rocking force that split the cliffs and tore ancient root systems apart, but Samos couldn’t decipher much more. A natural disaster? Haven had never been prone to quakes, but there was no telling how far back in the timeline he now stood—could the structure of the planet have shifted in that time? It seemed unlikely.

“We’ll be staying with Weir,” Gol said, passing little Jak over the side of the boat to Maia, already standing on shore. To Samos, he added, “We’ll introduce you.”

Maia allowed the sleepy boy to ride high on her shoulders, holding onto the coppery frames of her goggles for balance as he blearily took in the scenery. Gol hauled the boat up onto the beach with practiced ease, tying it off on a metal spike driven into the sand.

The rift rider sat higher up the beach, tucked away under the edge of a cliff and out of the sand. Samos supposed he would have to find a place to store it in the long-term; while designed to interact with a Precursor artifact, the metal of the craft was anything but Precurian in nature and therefore almost certainly susceptible to rust. The salt and sea would wear it down to reddened dust long before he had a chance to use it again if he wasn’t careful.

“What a time for the teleporter to go out.” Gol dusted himself off before covering up the boat with what appeared to be a canvas tarp. Probably waxed to keep the moisture out of their equipment.

Maia shrugged, bouncing little Jak enough to make the boy grin as she spoke. “There’s nothing for it, unfortunately. It’s going to keep happening until they reinstall it indoors.” His only response this time was a distinctly frustrated sigh, after which he followed Maia up the beach toward the village proper, gesturing for Samos to follow. “It’s not so bad,” the young woman insisted. “Boating from here to Rock Village is quiet, and we’ll get to stop in and see Mazior.”

 “Honestly,” Samos added, “I’d rather take a boat than a teleporter myself.” He shook his head with a slight shudder. “I always feel like I’m going to come out missing a limb or two.”

The quiet giggle Maia gave in response to that was enough to put a smile on the green sage’s face; even Gol looked moderately amused, although it was apparently for other reasons. He turned to Maia with a slight smirk. “He sounds like your parents.”

She huffed, but the smile was still firmly planted on her face. “They’re your parents too,” she insisted.

“Only since I was twelve,” Gol replied without missing a beat. This argument, such as it was, seemed almost rehearsed, an exchange clearly repeated several times during the course of their lives. It was comfortable, companionable. “It hardly counts.” He pointed at her with the one living finger at the end of his coppery prosthetic. “That would make our relationship a little more disturbing, otherwise.”

“Still technically your parents. Twice, even.”

“In-law and by law,” Gol recited.

The short conversation built a much clearer picture for Samos, allowing him to put at least a few pieces together. Gol had lost his parents around age twelve, apparently, and Maia’s parents had taken him in for whatever reason. If he was the same sage of dark eco that left all those nameless books and research journals behind, it would explain why his affinity with the stuff was never seen again. He was the last of his line, his family dead and his son—if indeed the ottsel Daxter had once been the four- or five-year-old Dax currently awaiting his parents’ return in the north—permanently displaced in time. Just like there was no green sage line for Samos to take up because in his timeline the progenitor was lost when the metalheads struck from the void and overtook Sandover.

Rock Village had been the initial point of rebellion against the metalhead threat, just far enough north to be highly defensible, although Samos had never found the text explaining how the sages successfully held off the beasts for however many decades it took for Mar to appear and establish Haven City, starting in the blue-aligned settlement and slowly but surely taking back the land around it. It hadn’t been his focus of study, but Samos had always wondered what the sages of old were capable of that they had successfully bundled the species into a safety net that lasted long enough for the greatest hero in history to arrive and save them.

He realized that now, in this time, he would have the chance to see for himself. The emotion that welled up in his chest was more than enough to overshadow to lingering apprehension born of his temporal displacement.

“…And up you go.” Maia’s voice cut through Samos’ reverie when she passed little Jak up to Gol before taking the ladder up onto the grassy surface of the cliffs on which Sandover had been constructed. The younger sage scooped up the boy with a bit of strain, swinging him up with more momentum than was necessary, but was just enough to make the boy shake with silent giggles when he finally stood back on his own feet.

He took hold of the belting at Gol’s knee with one little fist and stood close, waiting for Maia and Samos to catch up, far less sleepy now. Samos couldn’t help but smile as well.

Everything was going to be all right.

Weir, the friend with whom Gol and Maia had intended to stay that evening, was a short, clear-spoken man with pale blond hair and grey eyes just on the cusp of beady. The thick sideburns and mustache made him look significantly older than he probably was, although he still had a good decade or more on the Acherons.

“Samos, is it? A pleasure, good sir, a pleasure.” His voice was surprisingly deep for his stature, which set him even shorter than Gol. “I hope our boy here hasn’t given you too much trouble? He’s not much to look at, I know, but he does his best to be welcoming.”

Gol rolled his eyes, but the obvious insult didn’t seem to bother him at all. That was said in jest, then? Samos couldn’t tell, and the man’s tone and expression hadn’t really changed to indicate any such thing. “It’s been fine,” the younger sage insisted. “The problem is that Samos and his ward need a place to stay the night and there isn’t room enough for them here.”

“Clearly not,” Weir declared, arms folded as he looked around the interior of his small hut. “Should I talk to the neighbors about it, then? See if they’ll be a bit more forthcoming for a strange green man and a toddler than for one of their own, lost to the slings and arrows of science?”

“…Yes, Weir. I would appreciate that.”

Weir smiled, the expression changing his entire face. “Any time, my boy!” He slapped Gol on the back hard enough to make the young man wince slightly. “Just have a seat, I’ll be back.”

Samos was silent as the man headed out, only turning to Gol after he was completely sure Weir was gone. “So. That’s Weir.”

The man’s undeniable bluntness was interesting to say the least, and again helped to clarify just what he was dealing with when interacting with Gol. Weir believed that the villagers would be more willing to help an absolute stranger than Gol, which alone proved that the younger man hadn’t just been dramatic back on the island. The phrasing, though, “one of their own, lost to the slings and arrows of science,” left little to question with regard to their reasoning. It had to be the dark eco that had turned the villagers against him.

“That’s Weir,” Gol echoed in confirmation.

“He’s…interesting.”

Maia, already making herself at home with Jak in the nest of pillows covering the bed on the far side of the room, piped up. “You’ll get used to him. You’ll have to, if you really want to settle here.”

Whether Samos wanted to settle in Sandover was a moot point, considering history already said he had. At this point, his job wasn’t to work according to his own whims and preferences—it was to piece together historical events as they occurred and knit them into a future that, hopefully, would be as close to “perfect” as the one he’d come from.

“He’s sort of everyone’s uncle,” Maia continued. “He used to babysit Gol when my parents weren’t available.” She brightened, sitting up slightly in her nest with Jak. “He would probably be more than willing to help watch Jak here while you’re settling, assuming he doesn’t have anywhere to be any time soon.”

“He talked about heading out for the summer last time we were in the area,” Gol reminded her.

“Right, right…” She circled the boy’s midsection with her hands, pulling him up a bit further on her lap with a look of concern. The expression softened when she looked at Samos again, but it took several seconds of thought before she did so. “I suppose you’ll figure something out.”

Truth be told, Samos hadn’t really put much thought into how difficult it would be to establish his place here with a small child underfoot. He knew that Jak was prone to getting into trouble—a trait he didn’t appear to ever lose, if his older self was any indication—and knew equally well that he wouldn’t have the time to dedicate to his constant supervision. Since finding him, he’d always been able to pass him off to someone else when he had to: Torn and Tess did a fine job keeping an eye on him, Kor was eerily dedicated to his safety, even Jak and Daxter stepped up when there were no other hands and eyes available to tend to the child.

Now it was just Samos, all alone in days before the metalheads and Mar, before Haven City and the holy district, before the formation of the Golden Order and the slow degradation of the sage families into nobility that wheeled between utter powerlessness and complete tyranny.

Gol’s voice, with its almost-familiar accent, cut through the heavy silence weighing on Samos’ shoulders. “Or we could handle him for you.”

Samos turned to him, blinking. The concept would have been considerably more concerning if Samos hadn’t already thought about it himself. The last thing he wanted was to pass the boy off to someone who was likely to hurt him, and the Acherons seemed like terrible candidates when he considered Jak’s upcoming history with dark eco, but at the same time…

Hadn’t the older Samos said that Jak had been cared for by someone who knew what to protect him from, who could teach him to protect himself before his world went to hell? Samos certainly had no idea how to prime someone for a future of torture, regardless of the eco involved. Gol and Maia, on the other hand, seemed to be a fairly neutral party with the added benefit of knowledge that Samos lacked. They understood dark eco enough to go repelling down into the stuff, to respond to tactile exposure with frustration over staining rather than any sort of genuine distress. They had a boy of their own, who may or may not have been Jak’s future best friend, and were clearly experienced in tending to children.

“…it’s because he had a sage watching over him. Someone to teach him what he would need to know to survive what they did to him.”

Samos’s brow furrowed in thought, dark eyes flitting from Gol to Maia and then to the kid.

“Just until you’re settled,” Gol added. “We have plenty of room and more than enough staff to handle another child at the Citadel.”

“I may take you up on that.”

Maia chimed in, reassuring. “We can store your craft there, as well. Just until you have a place to keep it yourself.”

That would probably cinch it, really, as Samos was at a complete loss over what to do with the rift rider, but the last thing he wanted was to make a split second decision that could literally ruin the timeline and destroy history.

“I think…” He looked at Jak one more time, the boy looking tired again but eager, as though he wanted Samos to send him off with these relative strangers right now. And Maia looked completely prepared to scoop him up and abscond into the night. Troublemakers, the lot of them. “I think I’d like to sleep on it.”

After everything else that had happened to Samos and Jak today, there wasn’t a force in the universe that could fault him for that—not even Gol.

“We’ll discuss it tomorrow, then.”

Sandover and Rock Village were very different, but Maia had learned long ago that the sounds of the ocean didn’t change. The water here may have been bluer and brighter than in her childhood home, but the hum of the waves, echoing back and forth off the cliffs as she carefully picked her way down the path toward the beach, remained as familiar as sunrise over the Precursor Basin. With the majority of lights out the village was dark, the water a rich blue-black that glittered with moonlight and little else, the familiar silhouette of Misty Island blotting out the stars on the horizon.

Dispensing with the ladder, Maia sat on the edge of the cliff and eased herself off, landing on the beach in near silence, the quiet trickle of water flowing into the rice paddies and low breathing of yakkows in the nearby pen more than enough to drown out the low crunch of her bare feet on the sand.

She righted herself and looked up the beach, then stopped dead. Although she hadn’t perfected stillness the way Gol had, the sudden motionless would have been more than enough to hide her in the dark—if that was the goal. This time, however, she had stopped in confusion at the small figure standing just above the edge of the water, not quite close enough to wet his feet. He seemed oblivious to her presence.

“Jak?” She intoned gently, trying not to startle him as she came closer. He didn’t respond, large eyes cast out across the water. She wondered what he was looking for. At his age there was no doubt that he would remember whatever led him and his green guardian here, although the recollection would surely fade as he grew older. Right now the wound was still fresh—and it was definitely a wound, the little bit of information Samos had given proved that beyond a doubt.

She came even with him at last, placing one hand on the top of his head. He jumped slightly, whipping around to look up at her, but relaxed when he met her eyes. The little boy smiled slightly, reaching up to take Maia’s hand on both of his, pulling it from his head so he could look back out across the water.

He was so quiet. Maia remembered when Gol had been brought to Rock Village after the accident, burned and broken but mercifully alive; he hadn’t spoken for some time afterward, some combination of trauma and injury rendering him silent for a full month after he’d recovered enough to get around on his own. She couldn’t imagine that whatever sent Jak and Samos careening across the sea was any less traumatic.

“You shouldn’t be out here all alone, you know,” she said, sinking down to sit beside him. He just shrugged in response and, trauma or no, that couldn’t be allowed to stand. “Samos would have been worried,” she continued. “What if a wave came up and carried you out to sea? No one would know until morning, even after Samos worked so hard to protect you.”

At that Jak frowned, head dipping slightly. He sighed—still all but silent—and then turned and firmly planted himself in Maia’s lap. She just wrapped an arm around him and shifted to be more comfortable, allowing him to settle in.

They sat there in silence for a long moment. Eventually Jak raised his head and looked out at the water again, the tension in his little body easing as he gazed off at…what? Home, maybe? Were his eyes seeking a familiar skyline, a friendly constellation?

“Was there a beach where you came from?”

He started to nod, then seemed to catch himself and frowned, squinting in thought before looking back at Maia with a shrug. It seemed odd that he wasn’t sure, but without knowing what the world across the ocean was like Maia couldn’t exactly say what was and wasn’t normal.

She gave him a little squeeze, holding him tighter against her chest. “I came from a place that was mostly water,” she explained. “My parents’ house was set into the side of a cliff—all the houses in Rock Village are, actually, except Mazior’s. They’re all suspended up over the water, so I would get up in the morning and step out to see nothing but ocean spread out underneath me.”

Jak was looking at her with wide eyes, absolutely enthralled. Hopefully it was enough to take his mind off whatever drew him out here in the middle of the night in the first place.

“When I got older,” she continued, “I moved somewhere else. I had to, because of what Gol and I do, you see; there’s a lot of research to be done, but it’s not safe to do it too close to other people. Gol’s first parents did that and it hurt a lot of people here.” She forced a little more cheer into her voice, straightening up slightly. “So we moved into this big Precursor ruin, everyone calls it the Citadel—which sounds a little scary, I’ll admit, but it’s just lovely. There’s forest all around, and from the topmost level you can see the whole world spread out below.” The wonder in her voice was anything but forced now, the imagery dancing behind her eyes.

The Citadel had been intimidating and cold when they first relocated, enough that it took a couple weeks before they really set to exploring the entire ruin. Now the familiar gleam of Precursor metal walls and random whirring and thrumming of ancient machinery lurching back to life was comfortable, even welcome.

“In fact, if you stand on the silo in the early afternoon on a clear day, you can see this ocean here,” she nodded toward the dark waves, “and the one on the other side, past the woods beyond the sentinels.” She gestured back behind her, toward the other beach on the far side of the village. “You can see the temple in the jungle, you can see Misty Island. It’s beautiful.”

Jak’s expression was one of wonderment and surprise—whether he truly understood the view that her description implied was a mystery, but he seemed to be old enough and intelligent enough to grasp the concept.

And still he remained silent.

She smiled gently, reaching up to ruffle his green hair. “Maybe your guardian will let you see it tomorrow.” He beamed, hopeful, and then looked out at the water once more before squirming his way off her lap. Maia rose back to her feet, easing him down onto the sand. “Easy. Make sure you let that old friend of yours get some sleep, all right? You should sleep, too.”

He nodded and, without another glance, turned and darted back toward Zeb’s hut, close to the yakow pen. Maia waited until he was safely inside and the detached door panel slid back into place behind him before heaving a sigh and dusting herself off. She looked back out at the water, the moon, the blot of black island in the distance, and hoped that someone would be able to give that poor boy at least some of the sense of familiarity and home that the sound of open water brought her.

There was noise blaring from inside the house, if the strange multilevel structure perched high on a narrow platform of land overlooking both the sea and the village set into the stone above could even be called that. Samos was surprised as they came closer and the noise slowly resolved itself into music—loud, almost electric music, full of warbling birdlike noises and what might have been a sort of digitally slowed vocal track—he was under the impression that sound recording was a more recent invention even in his own time, particularly considering there were no recording devices ever discovered from Mar’s era, much less before, and they were so inordinately expensive to utilize even in his own time.

This, however, was clearly some kind of recording. Just how advanced was civilization before the metalheads first attacked? Had it thrown them into a technological dark age? Was that how Keira was so good with machines, not just innate talent but a childhood in a world where technology was able to progress in leaps and bounds instead of war-torn inches?

Gol reached the structure first, leaning in the door as Samos came up to look in behind him. “Mazior?”

The man that had been milling about inside gave a high yelp and successfully flailed his arms out and pulled them inward close to his body in a single sharp movement, leaving him perched on one overly long leg with his limbs awkwardly positioned close to his trunk. His wild white hair and bright blue eyes were almost achingly familiar, as if his body language and staggered response to the greeting weren’t enough.

“Gol!” He squawked, righting himself by stomping one foot on the floor hard enough to make the wood creak, hands curling into fists and expression shifting from traumatized shock to frustration. “Why are you so quiet? You can’t even fly yet, how is it when you’re covered in leather and metal and drama that you move without making any noise?!” He spoke in what seemed at first like a single sentence, too quick to immediately understand, and a pang of grief spiked in Samos’ chest.

If there had ever been any doubt that Vin had been the last of the once-proud Asul line, the final heir to the blue sage, it died as Samos stared at this strange man with skin the color of a winter sky, wiry muscle corded over a frame that grew too quickly for soft tissues to quite keep up.

Love of Mar, even his voice was almost the same.

It was only as papers fluttered down from above, obscuring his view of the other sage, that Samos realized he must have been gathering notes together when they approached; his flailing sent them up high enough to ricochet off the ceiling high overhead.

“Practice,” Gol responded, not missing a beat as he came in, helping to gather up the papers that had already reached the floor while the older sage set about snatching the remaining notes from the air before they could finish their descent. Blue eco had its perks, definitely. Gol straightened and passed Mazior back his literature, gesturing over his shoulder. “Maia and I need to use your teleport gate, if we could, and we brought someone for you to meet.”

Looking past Gol was easy enough for a man of the blue sage’s stature, and he blinked down at Samos in clear surprise. “Oh. Oh! Oh, hello, you’re green! Obviously you’re green—we can all see how green you are—but I mean are you green ?”

Little Mar, perched on Maia’s hip, trembled with near-silent giggles, probably at Samos’ expense. He couldn’t expect differently.

The man took a step—too fast, all his movements were too fast —around Gol, leaning down closer to Samos. “I mean like I’m blue, are you green? That would be fantastic, albeit highly unfortunate for your physiological development!” He extended one long-fingered hand, the broad line of his clean-shaven jaw sharpening slightly as he grinned. “I’m Mazior! Pleasure to meet you!”

If not for his own experience with Vin, Samos had a feeling that he would be absolutely reeling right now. As it was, he was just…very homesick. He took Mazior’s hand in his own and gave it a shake. “I am, yes. My name is Samos. It’s an honor to make your acquaintance.”

“Manners, manners, I like it!” Mazior’s smile broadened as he straightened, large blue eyes flicking to Gol. “Where did you find him? Weren’t you going to Sandover? Their teleport gate is out again, you know, it got struck by lightning last week! And the one on Geyser Rock is still flooded out after the tide shifted last spring after the starshower; I guess Thale hasn’t had a chance to get out there to pull the rock back up out of the drink. Weir told me, before the communicator went out too. Of course, I’m sure they’re fine, I haven’t picked up anything off-kilter and your lurkers—right, right, not yours, not lurkers, don’t be mad— the local babaks haven’t come into the village to let us know any—”

“ Mazior ,” Gol interjected, cutting him off. There was no frustration in his voice, however, only a sort of understanding, maybe even patience. He very deliberately took a deep breath and exhaled slowly, eyes locked with the other sage’s. The man blinked, comprehension dawning only when Gol repeated the action, even more slowly this time.

“Oh! Oh, right. Yes. Sorry.” Mazior closed his eyes, inhaled deeply and very, very slowly exhaled.

Samos felt a tension he hadn’t even noticed immediately leave the room. Too late he realized that it had been like lightning about to strike, a familiar electric tension that was now entirely gone. Had he just pushed the ambient blue eco particles from the air around them? Samos knew he had a lot to learn, but that was singularly impressive in a way he couldn’t even describe.

When Mazior opened his eyes again his movements were slower; he turned and gestured at one of the metal panels set against the wall, the lights dimming and the music fading down to a low background murmur before he looked back to Samos. His voice was slightly lower in pitch when he spoke. “Sorry about that. I get swept up easily when I’m spooked, and I know for a fact that this one,” he jerked a thumb over his shoulder at Gol, “likes spooking me.”

Gol just shrugged, noncommittal.

Mazior gave Samos a nod that was almost a bow, the movement a greeting that Samos had seen from the monks countless times before their banishment. “It really is nice to meet you. We’ve been missing green for a long time.”

“Forever, to my knowledge,” Gol elaborated.

“Well, yes,” Mazior confirmed. “It’s a dangerous thing, life. Too much of it can be bad news, you know.” He chuckled down at Samos. “Of course you know! It’s your job to know.”

Samos nodded in agreement, feeling very small in ways he wasn’t remotely used to. After the holy district fell to the metalheads, taking the city’s primary education centers and university with it, there had been no question that he was one of the most educated people left in Haven. He had been the first in an age to step forward on the path of a sage, driven to revive the lost econetic art, and after King Damas had been deposed he was more determined than ever to bring back even an iota of what they’d lost in the war with the metalheads. He had gotten used to being the smartest man in the room a long time ago—except when Vin was there, maybe—and these people, this place, everything left him off-balance.

Wrapped up in his thoughts, it wasn’t until little Jak took hold of his hand and tugged that Samos realized Maia had set the boy down. “I’m…rather new to it all,” he admitted, putting a hand around Jak’s shoulders. “But the place we came from wasn’t exactly the best place to work on it.”

One white eyebrow arched toward the wide brown headband wrapped through Mazior’s wild white hair, his eerily blue eyes darting to Maia.

“He’s…from a long way out,” she explained. Mazior looked more confused, at which point Maia gestured for him to come closer and dropped her voice slightly, doubtless to keep the details of the discussion from reaching Jak’s innocent ears. Samos could appreciate that, the less trauma the boy had to deal with, the better, and he welcomed a little time to compose himself.

In the meantime, Gol had crossed the room to fiddle with the control panel set to one side of the teleport gate hanging on one wall. Samos realized that it was probably one of the same gates that would be used in Haven, centuries later. There were a limited number that were still operational in his time period, with enough time he could probably figure out which ones ended up where.

Looking at Mazior, thinking about the distance relative to Sandover, he felt like this one definitely ended up in the power room. That may have just been the homesickness.

The copper ring sparked and flashed, energy spiraling in from the inner edge down into the center, where it flared in a puff of bright white. For a split second the smell of rain and seawater that seemed to permeate Rock Village parted, replaced with the sharp tang of citrus and sugar, like flavored cotton candy. It was familiar, just on the edge of Samos’ memory of the Golden Order and tied strongly to the careful, metered movements of Onin’s hands when she spoke.

Were teleport gates originally run off light eco ? That…couldn’t be possible. The very existence of the stuff hadn’t even been confirmed until Mar’s day, when the hero himself drew it up through the eco veins running through the body of the planet by pure force of will, creating the old vents that had long since been sealed beneath the blacktop of Haven’s more affluent districts. It had been to keep the metalheads out, supposedly, but Samos still remembered the taste it set through the air when he was young.

Maybe this was how it started. Maybe the people of this era just didn’t question the energies left behind by the Precursors, the technology ancient and familiar instead of newly rediscovered. Maybe the damage done by the metalheads was more extensive than Samos had thought, rending their very culture and understanding of the planet to pieces instead of just the settlements consumed in the eternal assault against all living things on the planet.

Maia was now discussing something that sounded uncomfortably technical in normal tones with Mazior while Gol continued tuning the gate—using his left hand only, the prosthetic loose at his side. The swirling film of light shifted color slightly in time with his tuning, perhaps responding as he homed in on a specific location.

Samos looked at Mazior, at Maia and Gol, not at all what he pictured when he’d learned about the sages in his youth but somehow the very image of history nonetheless. There was no question that these relative strangers were the wisest people of their age, taught and trained and practiced in their chosen arts in a way that hadn’t been legal in Haven for decades and hadn’t been practiced for centuries before that.

He had so much left to learn.

“All right, I have it,” Gol said, stepping back from the control panel and looking at the teleporter, seeming satisfied with the lack of flickering and flaring in the glow. Even Samos could tell that meant the energy field was stable, although that didn’t mean he was dreading the teleportation process any less.

Mazior checked the gate himself, reaching out and delicately brushing his fingers over the cloud of energy in the center of the field, giving an approving nod before looking back at his colleagues. “I’ll make sure the transporter pad near the Basin is activated for you, but I still think you’d be better off taking it up the coast by boat and having your lurkers—” He cut off and recoiled slightly, holding up both hands in supplication at a sudden shift in Maia’s expression to deep, even aggressive frustration. “The babaks! I meant the babaks. Your friends. Very nice people when they’re not biting things in half, yes. They could bring it up through the woods for you.”

“This is why they don’t like you, you know,” Gol sighed, coming back to Maia’s side.

“Yes, yes, I know, I’m working on it.” For his benefit, Mazior looked genuinely sorry for the slip, the effort to correct himself sincere.

Even a week ago Samos couldn’t say he would have felt the same; lurkers had been the lifeblood of Haven’s low-class labor for decades, first seen in noble families lacking ties to sage lines and the royal family, eventually spreading out to the majority of so-called “dirty jobs” in the city. It had wreaked havoc on the job market when Praxis took power and had the majority of grunt palace staff replaced with unpaid lurkers, but Samos hadn’t been certain until recently just how intelligent the creatures could be.

Brutter’s assistance in getting the rift rider to the nest, his dedication to protecting them and unwavering appreciation for Jak and Daxter had proven that they were much more people than Samos had thought. It was unfortunate to see that even the educated ancients were in debate about the sentience of what should have been considered a brave resourceful race.

The more things changed, the more they stayed the same.

“It’s whelping season,” Maia stated. “Even the ones living in the Citadel have had to have their duties dialed back quite a bit while they prepare for a couple dozen new babies.”

Mazior’s face curled up in displeasure. “A couple dozen . I can’t even handle Zira on my own, I don’t know how your furry friends do it.”

“Social rearing,” was Gol’s only response, the tone indicating an end to the line of conversation. He looked up at Maia. “We should get going. Nursie was expecting us back hours ago.”

The blue sage stepped aside. “I’ll make sure the trans-pad gets turned on for you, but it might be a bit. See you tonight?” Maia nodded in response, after which Mazior turned to shoot a smile to Samos. “And I’ll let the others know you’re around! We’ll have to meet up once you’re settled. Enjoy touring the Citadel! It’s huge. Gol uses it to compensate for his height.”

The immediate attempt from Gol to smack Mazior in the chest was met with a perfectly timed hop backward from the blue sage, whose grin matched Maia’s giggling. “You’re all children,” Gol spat, but it lacked any true vitriol. The blue sage waved a goodbye as the other man leapt easily into the light of the teleporter, disappearing in a flash.

Little Jak gave Samos’ hand a hard tug. Looking down, the sage found him smiling broadly, blue eyes bright as he pulled in an attempt to lead him through the teleporter. Had he ever seen the child use one before? He had no point of reference for whether this was normal, but he certainly seemed eager.

He let go of the little boy’s hand. “Go on, then,” he said with an encouraging gesture.

Jak’s already bright features lit up further and he darted toward the gate, tearing between both Mazior and Maia, the former of whom yelped in surprise as the tiny figure careened past. Without hesitation, young Jak took a flying leap—almost a dive, a practiced movement that indicated a sort of familiarity for which Samos had no way of ascertaining a source—into the glowing portal.

Mar loved teleporters. He knew that a lot of people didn’t, he remembered it very clearly being an issue for someone he couldn’t remember at all, but he never understood the problem. He’d always thought it might be because they didn’t like what they saw when it happened—the way rainbows bloomed behind his eyes was probably normal—or didn’t like the way everything spun around for a split second, but since he’d never had a problem with either himself it was hard to understand.

Of course, he’d been using teleporters since he was a baby. They were all over the temple, and he was sure he’d toddled through them more than once when he was—wait, what temple? There was no temple in Haven City. Just the palace, tall and scary; the dark place, which may or may not have been a bad dream; the bright blue metal room where Uncavin lived and the hole in the wall where Torn was always hiding. There was no temple in Haven. Where was he remembering a temple? Was there a temple anywhere?

There was a temple at home.

Home, like the dark place, was just another dream he’d had before he was big enough to remember things. He was smart enough to know that by now. And yet, leaping into the light and remembering the temple that didn’t exist filled Mar with a nameless sense of familiarity and loss.

He wished he knew how to write. If he could write down this feeling then he wouldn’t forget; later, when he was a grown-up—or at least a big kid, like Jak—he could figure out what it meant. He was so used to living with nothing but questions that he constantly wanted answers, to the point that it had gotten him into trouble more than once. Back home, the place before Haven that didn’t exist, he was pretty sure he’d gotten into trouble a lot.

And there was definitely a temple there. Torchlight under the moon, cool stone and gleaming copper metal—why did he always remember when he tasted that sugar-sweet energy in the back of his throat? There was so little of it in Haven, he felt it under his feet sometimes and he could remember for just a minute and then it was gone, leaving the aftertaste of candy he hadn’t eaten and a void of recollection behind.

He wished he could write, he wished home was a real place, he wished the teleporting lasted long enough to remember everything.

As if on cue, Mar came out of the other side of the gate into a place that was dark and hot and absolutely amazing . The metal under his bare feet made a loud, hollow sound when he landed, like the hang drums the monks used during ceremonies at—where? What monks?

What was he even thinking about?

Shaking his head as the flavor of light eco faded from his mouth, Mar looked around. He couldn’t understand the structure in which he stood, but Gol was already here so he wasn’t worried. He liked Gol; with his long braided hair and curl of facial hair at his chin, he reminded Mar so much of Jak that it almost made his chest hurt, but couldn’t for the life of him figure out why. He wanted to trust him. He’d decided to trust him.

Gol wasn’t alone anymore, though, a small figure all but attached to him with skinny, pale arms tight around his waist. Mar had never really gotten to play with other children before, at least not in Haven. There were so few, and nobody wanted to interact with the weird quiet boy with the seal of the House of Mar around his neck.

The little boy currently babbling to Gol about how late it was and how long he’d been gone, couldn’t have been any older than Mar himself. He was pale, dressed in carefully crafted and almost impeccably clean clothes in rich shades of purple and gold, with a shock of gold-to-red hair that stood wildly from the leather band wrapped at his brow.

Gol intoned something gentle that Mar couldn’t hear over the screaming hiss of whatever the metal grates overhead were doing. The little boy whipped around to look at him, blinking big blue eyes and slowly detaching from Gol to tilt his head to one side.

Placing a hand on the little boy’s shoulder, Gol led him over to Mar. “Dax, this is Jak. He just got here from somewhere very far away, and he might be staying with us for a little while.”

His name wasn’t Jak, of course, but he couldn’t really tell anyone that. Jak was cool, anyway, so maybe if everyone kept calling him Jak he’d grow up to be like the big kid that saved him from the metalheads.

“Jak,” Gol continued, “this is my son, Dax. He’ll show you around while you’re here.”

“Hi!” Dax beamed, showing his teeth. Mar was immediately reminded of Jak’s friend, Daxter, the fluffy orange boy with the tiny goggles who told the best stories when Mar was having trouble getting to sleep. They were a pair, Jak and Daxter. And now, here, they we calling Mar by Jak’s name, and now he met a little boy named Dax. How cool was that?

Mar thrust out one hand with a broad smile of his own. Dax took it without hesitation, squeezing tight. “You’re kinda quiet, huh?”

“You talk enough,” Gol chuckled, giving Dax’s wild hair a pat. He smiled at Mar. “I hope you two will get along. Bring him into the Citadel, Dax, I’ll wait out here for your mother.”

“Okay!” Dax immediately broke toward a huge round doorway to the right, all but dragging Mar along with him. “C’mon, I’ve gotta get back in before Nursie knows I’m gone anyway!” He smiled over his shoulder. “You’re gonna like it here, I promise!”

Mar believed him.