It took Sobon about an hour to car­ry drag the boat con­tain­ing Ki'el's un­con­scious form back to the ship, and then steer the ship (de­spite its bro­ken wheel, which didn't ham­per his telekine­sis much) into what he be­lieved to be a con­ve­nient shal­lows near a neigh­bor­ing is­land, work the an­chor loose, and then tie up the sails. By the time he was done, all of his dy­namos were long since de­plet­ed, and his body's qi near­ly ex­haust­ed, but at least the ship was no longer go­ing to end up in some for­eign wa­ters be­fore Ki'el awoke, and be­fore he was able to fig­ure out who among the pas­sen­gers was trust­wor­thy.

He hes­i­tat­ed to slow down, be­cause he knew that his body, like Ki'el's, des­per­ate­ly want­ed to pass out, but it would be long enough be­fore ei­ther of them woke nat­u­ral­ly that every­one in the ship's hold would be in bad shape, and that's as­sum­ing none of the pi­rate sailors had a stealth pat­tern ac­tive and were wait­ing for a chance to re-board the ship and slit their throats. At the same time... he was a lit­tle anx­ious about sim­ply strolling down into the ship's jail as a squir­rel. There were a num­ber of things that could go wrong.

In­stead, he forced him­self into a wake­ful med­i­ta­tion and pressed his Right-spin and Out­ward-spin aether dy­namos into ser­vice. Nei­ther was an ad­e­quate sub­sti­tute for food or sleep, and his mood was al­ready grow­ing ir­ri­ta­ble, frag­ile al­most, but he con­tin­ued de­spite him­self, keep­ing the en­er­gy flow­ing around him in a loop. As a side ef­fect... Sobon could also tell that the fresh aether from his Out-spin core was wash­ing away just a lit­tle bit of the foul black qi soaked into the deck be­neath him, and the Right-hand aether move­ments that flowed through the air dragged bits of black pol­lu­tion around in their or­bit, un­touched by cor­rup­tion but also un­able to pu­ri­fy it.

It was prob­a­bly an­oth­er hour or so lat­er when Ki'el's body sud­den­ly leaped up­wards off the ship's deck from where she had been lay­ing. Sobon re­act­ed im­me­di­ate­ly, but it wasn't an en­e­my at­tack, and it wasn't her wak­ing, ex­act­ly; in­stead, it looked like her body was ad­vanc­ing from dark grey--iron--to sil­very grey. As his own body had done, her body re­act­ed to this by float­ing, and then sud­den­ly voilent­ly ex­pelling a thin lay­er of black goo be­fore drop­ping grace­less­ly to the deck. It was... as of­fen­sive to watch from the out­side as it had been when it hap­pened to him, al­though it had hap­pened to him in­side a fair­ly small an­i­mal den.

The only ben­e­fit was that Ki'el snapped awake a mo­ment af­ter, look­ing stunned. Her hand came up to her face, and Sobon not­ed that she looked dif­fer­ent... but didn't quite care ex­act­ly why or how.

[ It'd good that you're awake, ] he said, fi­nal­ly low­er­ing the pres­sure on his dy­namos. [ We should let the cap­tives out, now, be­fore things get any worse for them. ] He paused, hes­i­tat­ing.

Ki'el looked to him, and im­me­di­ate­ly spot­ted all the sludge around her, and on her clothes. "Ah..."

[ Yes, you should try to clean up, first. I will see if there are oth­er clothes. ]

Ki'el forced her­self to her feet, more grace­ful­ly than she would have be­fore. "Are we... close to the is­land? My is­land?" she cor­rect­ed, af­ter bare­ly a heart­beat.

[ I didn't try to turn us around, but I stopped us at the next is­land. ] He con­sid­ered the now ru­ined rags on her, and men­tal­ly com­pared them to the filthy rags of the pi­rates. [ ...per­haps I could run back, but... it would be... ]

"No, that's fine." Ki'el moved over to the edge of the deck, where the lad­der should be. "I'll just..." she let her voice trail off.

In­stead of com­ment­ing, Sobon be­gan search­ing the ship. He was no ex­pert on the lay­out of sail­ing ves­sels, even from Crest's his­to­ry, but he quick­ly found that there wasn't too much to know, at least as far as was rel­e­vant now: there were spaces for the crew, ser­vice ar­eas, ar­eas that ex­ist­ed to help ser­vice things when they broke, and stor­age. Stor­age, nat­u­ral­ly, took up a lot of space, and in par­tic­u­lar, the least-de­sir­able space fur­thest from the work­ing ar­eas--in short, the bot­tom.

As far as the pi­rates were con­cerned, their jail also was stor­age space, al­though it was a lev­el up. Sobon saw them as he searched, but while the cap­tives might have seen him scam­per­ing around, they didn't re­act at all to a squir­rel scam­per­ing around on deck. Some­how, that still sur­prised him, if only a lit­tle. There seemed to be noth­ing to the jail area aside from sev­er­al wood­en cages re­in­forced by iron cross­bars, cur­rent­ly with far more peo­ple in it than Sobon was com­fort­able walk­ing away from. And yet... with Ki'el need­ing new clothes, he put it out of his mind for the mo­ment.

Be­low, in the very base of the craft, were a great many bar­rels and box­es, and it didn't take too much work to find an open bar­rel in which a lot of clothes had been dumped--some great fin­ery, some work­ing out­fits, and some torn rags mixed in, but none of them bloody, at least. Sobon made a men­tal judge of Ki'el's size, and found a work­ing out­fit in a sim­i­lar style to her own, and car­ried it back to the deck as quick­ly as he could.

He didn't need to rush. Ki'el had made it to the near­est shore and was stand­ing in the shal­lows, try­ing to scrub her hair of the black goo that had emerged from her pores. He used his dyan­mos to pow­er his lev­i­ta­tion again, glad to be us­ing a bare min­i­mum of pow­er from his own strained core, and brought the clothes over to her.

Ki'el didn't star­tle when she no­ticed him ar­rive, and he gra­cious­ly ig­nored how she seemed to be star­ing dag­gers at him. In­stead, he just laid the clothes out on the shore, and then fled back to the ship with­out com­ment. Al­though he had no urges re­gard­ing her...

Sobon let his mind stop churn­ing about what she might be think­ing of him and his in­tru­sion a mo­ment as his thoughts got caught in an old flow, one he hadn't con­sid­ered in a while. Ig­nor­ing Ki'el, who was a child... how long had it been since he had a real re­la­tion­ship? It would have to have been be­fore he joined the Marines. When he first be­came a cy­borg, there was his fit­ness in­struc­tor, but she... they'd both known that wasn't go­ing to go any­where. There was an­oth­er re­cruit when he was go­ing into of­fi­cer train­ing, but she made it and he didn't. He might have chased af­ter her, tried to stay at­tached to her unit, but... some­thing in her eyes, as they had their last talk, told him that would have been un­wise.

There were flings while in the Ser­vice, but he didn't like how so many of them were just us­ing him for a plea­sure ma­chine. Cy­borgs cer­tain­ly had a rep­u­ta­tion, there, but it didn't do near­ly as much for him as it did for them. And... many of those flings only end­ed up get­ting him in­ter­est­ed in a per­son who would soon die, or be trans­ferred.

"Mas­ter." Sobon reg­is­tered Ki'el's voice more than her ar­rival, and turned to find her dressed and stand­ing there, some­how dry. "We should let them out now. I'm sor­ry I took so long."

[ We will both need to apol­o­gize to them, ] Sobon replied, dis­tract­ed­ly, as he leaped to her shoul­der. [ I chose this way of han­dling things, not you. ]

Ki'el didn't com­ment more, and with only a few mi­nor nudges from Sobon, found her way straight to the jail cells. Un­like with Sobon's tiny body, the cap­tives heard her ap­proach and were all stand­ing there anx­ious­ly, look­ing right at her as she came down the stairs above.

When the girl was qui­et for a long mo­ment, Sobon men­tal­ly nudged her. [ You should talk, at least at first. ]

She bare­ly need­ed to pause and col­lect her thoughts. "They're dead," she said. "I'm sor­ry. I should have let you out soon­er, but I..."

"He's dead? Cap­tain Blacksaber?" A young man lean­ing against the bars of the in­ter­rupt­ed, push­ing for­ward like he want­ed to squeeze out of the cage all on his own, al­though the gaps were far too small for that.

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"Yes. My mas­ter killed him." Ki'el moved for­ward, heis­tant­ly, and ex­am­ined the near­est door­way. Sobon eyed the lock, a heavy steel key­lock that he sensed was fair­ly com­plex, com­pared to much of the rest of the tech­nol­o­gy he'd seen. Even so, when he flexed his telekine­sis, he was able to very quick­ly sense the mech­a­nisms in­side and by­pass the puz­zle part of the lock, mere­ly mov­ing pieces out of the way so that the shack­le would slip open.

Every­one ex­cept Ki'el jumped when the lock seemed to fall open of its own ac­cord. Ki'el just reached out and took it off the door, then moved to­wards the next. The heavy wood door swung on its hinges be­hind them, but Sobon was al­ready let­ting his thoughts touch the next lock, search­ing out the same flaw. With­in min­utes, the rest of the cages were opened, and the for­mer pris­on­ers were im­pa­tient­ly push­ing their way out.

Some­one tried to ap­proach Ki'el, to talk, but now peo­ple were all start­ing to talk and yell, and so Ki'el shook her head and point­ed up, and made her way back to the stairs.

Sobon let her han­dle things, but kept an eye on the for­mer cap­tives as best he could. When it be­came clear to the oth­ers that Ki'el was head­ed back on deck, many be­gan spread­ing out to can­vas the whole ship, and Sobon was sure he heard them in the gal­ley, hunt­ing for food and wa­ter, al­most im­me­di­ate­ly. Oth­ers no doubt went down, but while he could sense them clear­ly enough, he split his in­ten­tion be­tween those clos­est to Ki'el and those who seemed to find or be look­ing for weapons.

Those that fol­lowed Ki'el up to the deck seemed to be lead­ers and war­riors them­selves, al­though none of them had pow­er­ful qi. At the very least, though, they all had the very be­gin­nings of it, while most of the rest had al­most no spark. Those that did... were also the ones that were hunt­ing for weapons, which Sobon made note of and kept track of.

"The cap­tain's body is not here," Ki'el said when they reached deck, "but I saw him die, his head..." she gri­maced, and Sobon not­ed that the el­ders and war­riors that were fol­low­ing her all not­ed her re­ac­tion. She shook slight­ly, but turned and ges­tured to the dead bod­ies that re­mained on the deck. "But you can see that my mas­ter's pow­er is quite real."

"And where is your mas­ter?" asked one of the el­ders, though by the way he was star­ing straight at Sobon, he thought that the man al­ready knew.

"He is..." she turned to look at Sobon, still perched on her shoul­der.

Sobon chose to pull him­self away and lev­i­tate in the air in front of them. [ I must apol­o­gize. If I thought you could have han­dled this form bet­ter... I could have let every­one out much ear­li­er. But be­ing in this body makes things com­pli­cat­ed. ]

As ex­pect­ed, there were a wide range of re­ac­tions, but he was pleased to see that the el­ders seemed to most­ly not be sur­prised, and most of the rest who had some kind of qi pre­sent with­in them had only a sub­dued re­ac­tion, as though they'd sensed it, but not be­lieved it.

Those few who had fol­lowed on deck but had no sense of qi in them at all were, pre­dictably, ter­ri­fied.

"Star­beast!" Many of them mur­mured or shout­ed, and most of them backed well away. But when the el­ders and war­riors didn't re­act, there was a long mo­ment, a con­fused si­lence as they ex­pect­ed every­one to ral­ly in pan­ic.

Sobon con­cen­trat­ed, push­ing gen­tly on his Out-spin dyan­mo and re­leas­ing a touch of that pow­er into the air, even as he felt that it was a waste of the re­source. Al­ready, af­ter be­ing on this plan­et bare­ly... what, a week? Not count­ing the time I was dead... al­ready, I can only think of aether as a crude re­source to be thrown at prob­lems. The Cy­borg Corps of En­gi­neers would be in­sult­ed. He set the thoughts aside, though, and tried to pro­ject a sense of peace along with the gen­er­al­ly sooth­ing feel­ing that would come from the en­er­gy. [ Peace, ] he pro­ject­ed into all of their minds. [ I am not a Star­beast, and not a mon­ster. I am only... trapped in this form. That is all. ]

At the very least, those with­out qi didn't flinch back like he'd hurt them or any­thing, though he wasn't sure any of them ap­pre­ci­at­ed the ca­su­al use of pow­er. When no­body ac­tive­ly fled or at­tacked, though, Sobon float­ed back to Ki'el's shoul­der, and fo­cused his thoughts more on the group clos­est to him. [ Un­for­tu­nate­ly I am quite tired out by the fight. You will need to work out with Ki'el what you are go­ing to do, how you will get back home and what to do about this ship. I... can­not keep go­ing much longer with­out rest. ]

Sev­er­al of the el­ders just nod­ded, know­ing­ly, and Sobon had the im­pres­sion that they were look­ing at his core. Which, once he had that thought him­self...

Of course it was full to burst­ing, hav­ing reached nine sil­very lobes but be­ing un­able to sta­bi­lize at ten. Just look­ing at his core made his mind hurt; it want­ed to do some­thing to him, and it was in­creas­ing­ly un­clear ex­act­ly what that was, but he could tell it would be an ag­gres­sive change to his body... and maybe his mind.

Still, Sobon not­ed that while those on deck seemed to be re­gard­ing him qui­et­ly, sev­er­al of the ones be­low who had been get­ting weapons were also look­ing back at him with their own spir­i­tu­al sens­es. He pressed his head against Ki'el's for a mo­ment, pass­ing her a qui­et thought, then fled into the Cap­tain's quar­ters.

----------------------------------------

Ki'el found her­self very quick­ly, and very po­lite­ly, re­placed as the cen­ter of com­mand by a par­tic­u­lar el­der named Jalor. It only took a few min­utes of work, with her ad­mit­ting to be­ing lit­tle more than a reclu­sive rem­nant of her vil­lage, for every­one to ac­cept that while she was not the one to look to for lead­er­ship. As such, Jalor quick­ly del­e­gat­ed sev­er­al tasks, in­clud­ing get­ting peo­ple food and sur­vey­ing who had what skills.

It wasn't long be­fore they found two among them that had some un­der­stand­ing of wood­work­ing and ships, and who could at the very least undo the dam­age Sobon had done to the wheel, but no­body looked ea­ger to stay on the ship all the way back to their own vil­lages, and there was no con­fu­sion as to why. Even with the cap­tain gone, the whole ship stank of dark­ness, death, and tor­ture. It was dif­fer­ent now, cer­tain­ly, and not only be­cause the cap­tain and crew were dead; when­ev­er Ki'el came near the scar that Sobon's blast had left on the ship, she had in­vol­un­tary flash­backs and glimpses of that blind­ing ray of light, and those stung her in much the same way the rest of the ship un­nerved her. Sobon, she sus­pect­ed, could have ex­plained... but even she didn't re­al­ly need it spelled out for her. Pow­er­ful qi, or per­haps aether, left a mark that was slow to fade.

"And there are no ships on these isles?" asked one of the tired cap­tives, this one firm­ly with­out qi. It wasn't the first time he had asked, and he was not the first to ask, ei­ther.

"My fish­ing skiff, an­oth­er that's wrecked. Noth­ing that will sur­vive the seas." Ki'el was get­ting ner­vous about hav­ing to an­swer the same ques­tion again. She hadn't talked this much... in a long time, but she was feel­ing more clear-head­ed, ever since she awoke af­ter the bat­tle, cov­ered in ichor. She itched to ask Sobon, or the oth­ers, but... she sim­ply re­mained qui­et on the mat­ter.

"No trad­ing ves­sel?"

"Not since the vil­lage was de­stroyed."

The man clicked his tongue and tapped his teeth, then turned and marched off to a rail­ing, where he ei­ther sulked or thought for a time, Ki'el didn't care which. Jalor was off con­sult­ing with oth­ers, still, and Sobon... well, they were all try­ing to ig­nore what was hap­pen­ing in the Cap­tain's cab­in. It was... dif­fi­cult. Sobon's body was hov­er­ing, a sil­very light seep­ing out from be­neath his fur, and there was an un­heard hum when­ev­er any­one got close. And close wasn't even close. It was there be­fore you opened the door, and when you were on the deck above or be­low. It could be ig­nored, but... it set peo­ple on edge.

Sobon... was strange. She had no idea who or what he re­al­ly was, but he shared en­light­ment with her while stuck in the body of a squir­rel, and turned a peb­ble into the most dan­ger­ous weapon she had ever heard of. He--far more than her--had over­come and en­tire crew of pi­rates, slaugh­ter­ing them with peb­ble-based weapon­ry and mak­ing a mock­ery of every­thing they had ever stood for or been. In less than a month, he had changed her whole world, and all of these peo­ple's lives would nev­er be the same.

It was a grand sur­prise to her, and to every­one, then, when in the mid­dle of his med­i­ta­tion, he lost con­trol of his qi, and his body ex­plod­ed into flame and gore, the en­tire cap­tain's cab­in at first char­ring in­stant­ly into black, and then every sur­face ripped apart by an im­plo­sion that only by sheer ac­ci­dent didn't kill any­one else. It wrecked the floor above and be­low, blew holes in the sides and rear of the ship, dam­aged the rud­der again, and in gen­er­al, made the ship all but un­suit­able for an ocean voy­age.

None of that mat­tered near­ly so much to Ki'el as the fact that, no mat­ter how she searched with her eyes or spir­it, she could find no trace of him.

"Mas­ter!" She screamed and ran at the room, but she knew he wasn't there. "Mas­ter! Mas­ter! MAS­TER!" She reck­less­ly jumped into the hole, look­ing for any signs of him, even any burnt re­mains. Any­thing that could be buried, even, or any­thing she could use to hon­or him. Her thoughts be­came more and more pan­icked when she couldn't even be­gin to tell one bit of burned de­bris from the next.

Af­ter a time, she sat down in the char, ig­nor­ing the peo­ple who had come up to look at the mess along with her, her mind stuck in a loop. He had said all along he didn't know enough, that he didn't know every­thing. That he was from far away, and that he might still make mis­takes.

He had made one. He had made a great mis­take, and now she was alone, again.

Ki'el buried her face in her hands, but she couldn't make the tears come. There was noth­ing left in­side of her. Noth­ing at all.