Zacchaeus reluctantly lets the Needy take over. He had enjoyed his fight with Astaroth, and maybe the ferocity of the Guardians had rubbed off on him, because he wants to finish the winged Daemon who moves faster than sound. But Astaroth retreated behind Minyak whose oily form has consumed the enormous whale that he had taken as his thrall from the ocean and floated up into the sky high over Bludon.
Zacchaeus can’t see what happens after the Needy leaks from his every pore and orifice to form a black humanoid figure that floats in front of the oily figure of Minyak. Zacchaeus can’t see it with his eyes, but he can see what the Needy sees in his mind’s eye.
The Needy extends an arm of his black form that stretches long until his big fist connects with Minyak. Instead of a punch, though, the fist of the Needy sticks to the form of Minyak and Zacchaeus can feel the inundation of Minyak’s consciousness on his own.
Minyak is a black form, small and childlike in a land of clouds and shadows. He stands in dark clouds before the glorious figure of an angel; a strong man in robes that drapes one shoulder. He has a large head with thick, golden yellow hair.
“Is this your body or are you doing this?” the angel asks, sounding angry but trying to suppress it. “Are you using powers? Show me your Aerphim form.”
Minyak is stunned by the fear of disappointing the angel. He doesn’t know what an Aerphim form is. He can only be himself, his body pools as it does and he can manage a form with two legs and arms. He tries to force wings at his back, but they do not form as nice feathered wings that the angel has. He cannot make his black skin look pale tan like the angel’s, and he cannot make hair on his head as thick and luxurious as the angel’s. But he tries and his oily form quakes all over with strain, and soon he has to fall to a puddle because of the exhaustion.
“No,” the angel says, shaking its large, handsome head. “This won’t do. I’m sorry, son, but this will not do. Not after what you did to your mother.”
Minyak does not know this, but when he was born, his oily black form leaked from every orifice of his mother, and when his oily form was completely expelled, blood and vital organs also leaked from the pathways that his form had created to escape her womb. She was a deflated husk of a jeris after Minyak’s birth.
He’d been born in quarantine. Metratron’s helpers thought Minyak’s mother suffered from a plague and that Minyak was the death that her body had expelled when she expired. But the oil of Minyak’s being formed into a black infant that cried loudly until Metratron picked him up against the advice of his helpers.
Minyak is made to grow up in solitude, and Metatron visits him and tries to force him to adopt the look of the Aerphim, but Minyak always disappoints him.
“You have powerful magic,” Metatron says to the adolescent Minjak. “I can feel it in you. You are just not using it right. You can take Aerphim form, but you have to try.”
And Minyak does. He has plenty of time alone on the underside of Endla to try to look like his father but he always fails. So he sneaks topside, secretly exploring with the hopes of watching the Aerphim that he had heard so much about but never laid eyes on, maybe that would help him look like his father. But this only makes him bitter. The Aerphim are beautiful and happy together, they have a nice life in paradise on vistas that look however they chose.
Minyak lashes out at an Aerphim in his anger and he discovers that covering another in his oily form allows him to control them. He retreats to the underside before Metratron knows that he has left, and he realizes that he can still see through the eyes of the Aerphim that has his oil on it. He watches the lives of the Aerphim through this one’s eyes.
None of this helps Minyak take Aerphim form, and eventually, Metatron introduces him to others like himself who cannot fit into Aerphim society. Minyak is filled with resentment and he spreads it to the others that Metratron has deemed unworthy of the life of an Aerphim.
Then Zacchaeus is back to himself deep inside of the large form of the Needy.
“He is very angry,” Zacchaeus says inside of the Needy.
“He is surprisingly weak,” the Needy says. He has wrapped the form of Minyak completely. “His form is now mine. Do you think he wanted this? He is not putting up any resistance.”
“It don’t feel like he trying to take over,” Zacchaeus says. “He your food now. This isn’t an infiltration. It could be a distraction.”
Eventually, the large humanoid form of the Needy consumes Minyak and the Needy recedes inside of Zacchaeus.
“That was anticlimactic,” Zacchaeus admits, and then he hears the Queen Rowen in his head.
“There is a large ship approaching. Issac is heading to you now, and you should meet us on the asteroid.”
“Are things going bad?” Zacchaeus asks as he looks around for Issac.
“The Mmoatia have arrived. They are bringing us onto their ship and I assume that they will explain themselves when we have arrived onboard. Hurry, I have no idea how to access the inside of the ship, so you will both need to be here when they take on the asteroid.”
Soon, Issac joins him and they fly to the asteroid as a large planet-sized ship approaches Bludon.
Deep inside of Zacchaeus’s psyche there is a smokey gray door. Zacchaeus is not exactly aware of the door, but he knows that a mechanism like it exists inside of himself even if he can’t exactly pinpoint it. This door is usually open, and through it, one would find the bulk of the Needy’s metaphysical form and access to its psyche. Zacchaeus doesn’t enter this door when the Needy takes control, but he is still able to access the memories of the Needy through their telepathic connection. The Needy doesn’t hide this door from Zacchaeus, but they have never discussed it directly.
The door is currently closed to Zacchaeus as he and Issac land on the Daemon asteroid just as it is taken onboard the planet-sized ship that approaches Bludon. Zacchaeus is not aware that on the other side of the smokey gray door, the Needy and Minyak are standing in a psychic space created by the Needy that is a recreation of the prehistoric lake on Earth where he became the Needy. They stand in a destroyed landscape where the sand has been turned to scorched glass next to a lake that seems to boil. They are both the same size, almost a mirror reflection of one another, until the Needy changes his form to what it had been before he became the Needy. He is a humanoid giant named Jit with one eye and a handsome face, and the black form of Minyak towers over him.
“I thought that we were brothers of a sort,” Minyak’s form says down to the giant. “But you must have had a Metatron of your own who told you your original form is unacceptable.”
“No,” Jit says with a smile on his face. ”I lost this form due to my own shortcoming, but I have never desired to return to it. I am this form by default, you are in the essence of me. No one dictates the appearance of the Needy but the Needy. I am aware of your upbringing and it is unfortunate that you were made to be ashamed of what you are. You should not be, you are a powerful being.”
“Is that why you have brought me here?” Minyak asks in his wet voice. “You will teach me to value myself so that I can be on the side of the angels?”
“I brought you here so that we could talk privately. I know that you are not defeated and only allowed me to consume you so that you could spring from Zacchaeus once we are onboard the planet-sized ship. We are not identical Minyak, but I see myself in you. We could be allies, not for good, whatever that means, but to further our own aims. I can show you the glory of the Fonlands that I have discovered…”
Minyak chuckles and it grows to all out laughter as Jit talks.
“You think that I will give myself to you forever?” Minyak asks.
“You are already trapped inside of me, most of your body decomposed. You will not spring from Zacchaeus on the planet-sized ship.”
“Jit,” Minyak says, “you are not enough to contain me. You may have been before, now I am spreading among the blues on Bludon, gaining strength as they pledge loyalty to me. And I have a much stronger benefactor than even the Needy. You offer me nothing but access to the ship and when I rip my way out of Zacchaeus’s body, I will be sure to kill him. Then, you are free to join the Daemon. But time is short, we are almost on the ship.”
Jit does not believe what Minyak says, he feels very much in control and doesn’t fear for the life of Zacchaeus. But he is curious how this all will play out.
“I guess I will have no choice but to watch Zacchaeus die,” Jit says confidently, hoping that Minyak doesn’t have the power to make him regret his words.
PRL Serials 