Behind them, in the great beast’s mouth and through into his stomach, the lights of Jackburg twinkled. Then his great jaws opened, water rushing in, and a fleet of ships rushed out, flags flying in the wind, ships of every type and nation, flying alongside the cetacean flag of Jackburg: galleons and triremes and whirring submarines, corpseships from Erubescence, dolphin-drawn chariots, puffing steamships, hovercraft from Verdigris, living boat-things from Teratopolis, amorphous amoeba-vessels from beyond the Entropic Wastes, chitin barqentines from across the Blushing Sea. A great burst of spray erupted from his blowhole, touching off more cheers and applause. Eyes the size of cathedral domes gazed out at the stupefied onlookers to either side.
Arc insidia skin#
A mountain of flesh clad in a second skin of gleaming metal and stone, the submersible city he carried on his back. He was like something scaled differently than the rest of the world. Fortunately, Jack’s beneficence was legendary.
Were he to have plowed into Hex, to beach upon the city, he would l have leveled most of it in an instant, killing countless thousands. Though the friendliness and benevolence and tremendous care of Genial Jack was central to his mythic identity and vital to his interaction with his many ports of call, there was still terror mixed in with the awe, delight, and wonder his bulk inspired. His approach was slow and gentle, so as not to drown the city in a tidal wave, but even so the riverbanks and bridges were buffeted by spray as he surfaced, and a great cheer went up as he appeared, first a rising shadow, and then a breaching enormity, a thing bigger than the mind should hold. He is ancient, inhuman… but kind, impossibly kind.”Ĭonversation dwindled as a vast murmur spread throughout the city, turning to excited cheers as Jack, at last, came into view. Their minds are trained from birth to make contact with his. His Navigators channel his power as surely as I channel that of the Mother of Spiders. “So they worship him? Like a god?” Comet continued, glancing at the Elder Trees he worshipped – the living tree in Ambery, and the dead trees in the Boil, Stumpridge, and Suckletown. The more who’ve come to dwell in Jack, the more he grows, fed on their faith.” The inner city is made up of flotsam and jetsam, cobbled together into a makeshift town. “Outer Jackburg can be sealed when he submerges. “Is it true the city’s actually inside him?” Comet asked. “We will sell the items acquired at Delirium Castle in one of the auction-houses in Jackburg.” “I thought only the Navigators had that privilege.” Twenty years ago,” Sister said, a slightly wistful look entering her several eyes. “Sister, you’ve met Jack before, isn’t that right?” Garvin asked. The Variegated Company – flush from their recent exploits – viewed the giant whale’s arrival from one such airship. The richest had hired hot air balloons or magically floating platforms to gaze upon him, or watched from the balconies of Fanghill. Thousands more had camped along the banks of Sawtooth Sound, or clambered to Stumpridge, Cobweb Cliffs, or even the forever-torrential Downpour Heights, hoping to spy his arrival using looking glasses.
The city had turned out to see him in vast numbers, flocking to Croakmarsh and the Isle of Entrails and the docklands of the Swelter. She wears bulky ecclesiastical garments covering an uncertain number of limbs and goes by “Sister.”
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