Forts: Endings and Beginnings

by Steven Novak

  A single locked door.

  How very silly.

  *

  *

  CHAPTER 28

  IMMORTALITY

  *

  “Nooo!”

  It was stupid, screaming like she did. It was so incredibly stupid. However, in defense of Tahnja, her sudden burst of emotion was exactly that. She didn’t think so much as reacted. Unfortunately for her, the utter lack of common sense would end up costing her dearly.

  Only moments before with the limp body of Donald Rondage in her arms, Staci at her side, and Roustaf perched perilously on her shoulder, Tahnja managed to make the dangerous trip across the courtyard unnoticed. Following close behind the odd little mutilated creature leading the way, they stayed low, hid occasionally behind a barrel or Megalot harness carrier, and moved with surprising quickness, considering their various states of duress. With Brutus drawing the attention of the soldiers and interested onlookers, the ramshackle group scurried across the frozen dirt to the unguarded slave hut. The stench inside was indescribable: a revolting concoction of sweat and filth mixed with hunger and hopelessness. It was so foul Tahnja held her breath, squinted, and recoiled for a moment. From the corner of her eye she watched as the Ochan guards surrounded Brutus and began their attack. Bittersweetly, she grinned. He was holding his own. Despite the odds, she watched as Brutus dispatched the first Ochan to attack, and quickly thereafter another. A large part of her wanted to run to his aid and fight by his side. A smaller part forced her to look away. She needed to stick to the plan. She needed to get the children to safety. It’s what Brutus was fighting for.

  The slave hut was filled with creatures from a number of different races, their bodies terribly gaunt and worn, their flesh covered in filth. Beneath them were frozen piles of what Tahnja could only assume was feces. In the corner of the hut was a partially decomposed corpse. Instantly the eyes of the creatures locked inside moved from Tahnja and settled on Donald and Staci. Even trapped within the walls of Kragamel’s castle, deep in the heart of the Ochan nation, many among the slaves were familiar with the ancient prophecy of the Fillagrou elder, Nelvo. Even more had at some point overheard the story of the destruction of the young prince’s, castle just months ago. Though they had never laid eyes on Staci or Donald, they recognized them instantly. The physical appearance of the children was undeniable, and the color of the blood caked over their wounds was inescapable. The stories were true. All at once, the world-weary things gasped.

  Realizing time was short, Roustaf, still perched on Tahnja’s shoulder, broke the initial silence. “So do you guys have a hiding place in here or don’tcha?”

  Despite their varied injuries, or the fact that they barely had the will to continue on or the energy to do it with, the sea of tightly packed creatures leapt to their feet. All at once the crowd moved in unison toward the open door. Boney hands attached to boney arms, dangling loosely from even bonier torsos, reached forward and snatched the limp form of Donald Rondage from Tahnja’s arms. Hoisting him high above their bodies, the frail, half-dead aliens began passing the boy through the crowd. Donald’s body bounced and swayed above the mass of multicolored alien flesh and fur as if it was floating atop choppy waves. Some among the crowd fought their way to the middle of the pack, anxious to simply touch the boy, anxious to feel the vague concept of promise and experience the texture of hope. When Donald’s body reached the rear of the dank dwelling, the slaves lowered him to the floor, and through a doorway hidden beneath the filth and the excrement and all the things the Ochan guards rarely bothered to investigate. More hands emerged from the shadows below, taking hold of the boy and pulling him into the safety of the descending shadows.

  Once Donald had disappeared into the darkness, the little creature that lead Tahnja and the group from the dungeon to the slave hut quickly pushed past Staci and through the crowd in a hurried huff. Moments afterward he was sliding into the blackness of the pit that had been dug into the frozen Ochan soil.

  “Go sweetie; go now,” Tahnja stated urgently, poking Staci in the lower center of her back.

  As Staci stepped hesitantly into the crowded and ultra-foul smelling quarters, the sea of wide-eyed slaves moved themselves closer together and further toward the outer walls. They were attempting to create a proper pathway. Their mouths were hanging low. Their war-weary eyes locked on her every gesture. Her body shivering, Staci shuffled forward timidly. Near the rear of the room, she spotted the hole in the floor that Donald had disappeared into. Despite the dryness of her throat and the fact that it hurt a noticeable amount to do so, she swallowed hard. To her immediate right, a doe-eyed creature with muddy green flesh grinned at her with a mouthful of rotted, pea-stained teeth. The creature’s stringy black hair was pulled into two tightly wound and grossly stiff pigtails. It was at this exact moment that Staci realized the awful smelling, yellow-toothed thing standing before her and grinning hopefully was just a little girl. The realization proved too much to process and absorb, too much to handle, especially with everything else going on around her.

  Lowering her head, she forced herself to look away.

  This was around the time Tahnja heard the punch. Unlike the clang of swords or the smacking of flesh previously emanating from the courtyard behind, this was something else entirely. Though it was obviously a punch, it sounded more like an explosion comingled with collapsing tissue and bones being reduced to dust. Hidden underneath it all was the unmistakable death grunt of her friend. The moment Tahnja turned her head, her muscles froze. With unspeakable horror, she watched as Brutus’s body soared through the air and slammed into a distant slave hut.

  Her legs gave way. Her body stumbled forward into the dirt.

  Falling off her shoulder, Roustaf bounced off the solid ground painfully before rolling a few times, and eventually coming to a sliding stop five feet away. Angry and weary and confused, Tahnja’s eyes moved from the dusty debris her friend’s flying corpse had created to the muscled form of King Kragamel in the center of the courtyard. Suddenly she was shivering the same as the little girl still dragging her feet cautiously through the slave hut behind. She wasn’t cold, but she was shaking. She was shaking and she couldn’t stop. Her jaw locked tight. Her teeth clenched together, grinding back and forth against each other. The nails on her callused, pink-skinned fingers dug into the dirt below, furiously clawing at this appalling place and all the unpleasant things residing within its walls. She couldn’t take any more and suddenly had no desire to try. From her belly frothed an anger that could no longer be contained. A moment afterward that very same anger spewed wildly from between her lips.

  “Nooo!”

  Standing stoically in the courtyard staring at his fist, the king of Ocha turned in the direction of the scream. His eyes settled on the richly pink-skinned female on her hands and knees, pounding her fists in the dirt and growling in his direction. His attention was then drawn to the slave hut behind, to the timid looking child partially obscured by the pack of malnourished slaves residing inside. It was here that his gaze remained. Turing briefly from the interior of the hut, the eyes of the little girl met his. For some inexplicable reason, this brought a smile to his face.

  Surrounded by the walking dead and the progressively dying, Staci stared blankly in the direction of the massive Ochan king and shuddered.

  After tapping a single soldier from the growing mass gathered around him on the shoulder, the tyrant king stated simply. “Remove that child from the filth. Bring her to me.”

  Instantly the beefy Ochan began moving in the direction of the slave hut. Following closely behind him were fifteen others, and behind them, fifteen more. The early morning commotion began to rouse the previously quiet castle. From every nook, cranny and crevasse emerged groups of green-skinned goliaths. The sleeping giant had indeed wakened. The damage had been done.

  With upwards of forty Ochans charging in her direction, Tahnja glanced briefly at little Roustaf, who was rubbing a welt on his head while kneeling
in the dirt a few feet away. His mustache was covered in grainy Ochan sand, the normally curly ends drooping further than she’d ever seen them droop. After shaking the cobwebs loose from his brain, Roustaf glanced briefly toward the charging mass of muscled scales and armor and turned again to her. Collectively, they sighed. Shaking his head and rolling his eyes, Tahnja watched as the tiny man she had come to love so very much rose again to his feet and wiped the filth from the seat of his faded blue overalls. She cringed when she saw the massive scars running the length of his back where his wonderfully delicate wings previously resided. After brushing the sand from his mustache, Roustaf twirled the droopy corners as best he could and cracked his knuckles.

  “Alrighty then. If this is how it has ta be, then I guess this is how it has ta be.” Grinning in the direction of the advancing horde, he raised his miniscule fists and added with a sigh: “Let’s do this.”

  After wiping the sprouting wetness from the corner of her eye, Tahnja smiled through jittery lips in the direction of her teeny significant other.

  Where it mattered most, he was the biggest man she’d ever met.

  Propping herself onto one knee, she stood and moved beside her beau. Across from them the forty Ochan guards had swelled to fifty, and more still continued to pour from the castle’s many doors.

  “Looks like it’s just you and me, toots.” Roustaf added from the dirt beside her, the top of his head not even reaching her knee.

  “Looks that way,” Tahnja responded with a breathy huff.

  “They don’t look that tough.”

  “No, they don’t.”

  “Wimps, the lot of them.”

  “Bunch of wimps.”

  “This’ll be a breeze.”

  “No problem at all.”

  The tornado of attacking Ochans was only moments away, their weapons at the ready, anxious, bloodthirsty snarls spread across their cavernous faces.

  Turning from the inevitable, Roustaf gazed into the sky and toward the lovely pink face he’d come to hold so very dear. “Words’ve never exactly been my thing, darlin’. I know I never said it enough, and I realize this might not be the most opportune of occasions, but, well, I’m…I just wanted to say that, well, that I’m pretty fond of you, girlie.”

  Despite the mountain of snarling flesh moments from trampling them to dust, Tahnja laughed so loudly she snorted.

  She was awfully fond of him as well.

  Tahnja and Roustaf stood with their muscles tensed, ready to face a situation they had no chance of surviving, and as it sometimes does in occasions such as this, the unexpected occurred. A single frail slave stepped beside Tahnja on wobbly uneven legs. To the right of the thin-armed, dusty orange-furred creature came another slave on uneven legs, and from behind the pair approached fifteen more. Though their muscles were nearly useless, and despite the fact that years of torture and random beatings had transformed them into mere shadows of their former selves, slaves from every unguarded hut in the courtyard emerged into the early-morning light and pulled their generally useless appendages into fists. Those with the strength to do so ripped loose boards from their shanty huts to use as makeshift weapons. Very quickly their numbers swelled into triple digits. It was an inspiring sight: a foolhardy, ill-conceived, awesomely inspiring sight to behold.

  “Protect the children!” The creature beside Tahnja bellowed to the growing mass of weary defenders with a voice so gravelly it sounded as if he was chewing rocks. “Protect the children at any cost!”

  In the center of the courtyard, the sudden twist brought yet another toothy grin to the face of the tyrant king. On some level he admired the sudden burst of courage the slaves were displaying. It was commendable. It was unexpected, and so laughably foolish. A six-inch bug, a female and a hundred or so slaves would ultimately prove little more than a distraction for his forces. The girl would be his soon enough, and when she was, so would immortality. His smile disappeared, however, when the massive battle bell stationed in the highest tower of the castle began to ring. Even more than the gutsy display of the slaves, this caught the king off guard. In all his years as the sovereign leader of Ocha, it had never rung. The bell was only to be used to signal an attack on the castle which, at that point in the war, was a moronic concept. In fact, Kragamel often questioned why he hadn’t had it removed years ago. The bell was a holdover from the reign of his father, the unfortunate scar from a bygone era. It no longer served a purpose. And yet it was ringing. It was actually ringing.

  This was disturbing.

  Suddenly the courtyard was awash in a flurry of excitement. All around the tyrant king, Ochan soldiers and citizens alike rushed to their appointed battle stations. Kragamel snatched a nearby soldier by the edge of his breastplate and pulled the young Ochan close. “What is happening?”

  “From the north, my king! From the doorway!” the startled, battle-anxious Ochan boy screamed. “An army approaches from the north!”

  Kragamel tightened his grip on the dark colored armor and grumbled. “Army? What army?”

  *

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  CHAPTER 29

  FROM THE TREE LINE

  *

  “Tell me again why we’re heading back to the castle? Seriously, sis, I mean, I get the whole elder knows all there is to know thing. Believe me, I do. This just seems like a stupid idea.”

  Walking three feet in front of her brother and parallel to the wrinkled, ghostly form of the female conjurer, Zanell grinned subtly.

  “Oh…so you’re not even going to answer me now? I’m just talking to myself back here?”

  Stepping lightly through the thick cloud of mist below, Zanell stared into the foggy Ochan forest ahead. As quickly as it arrived, her grin faded. She never wanted to come to this place, and she hated that she was there. Ocha was proving to be far worse in reality than in the endless barrage of visions constantly popping into her head. Everything was dead and dying, and seeming almost to relish this fact. Ocha was a world of nightmares and pain. It was a place where all things awful and sad came to flourish, where the most hidden of shameful secrets transformed into full on screams.

  It was exactly what its creator intended it to be.

  Though it was brief, Zanell suddenly regretted her half-smile. Smiling seemed wrong here. It seemed almost shameful. She knew exactly what they would find when the fog at last gave way and the trees opened up. She knew exactly what lay ahead. Despite this knowledge, Zanell remained utterly horrified at the prospect of what was about to occur. If she’d learned anything at all during her time spent wading in the confusing waters of the sight beyond sight, it was that awful felt far softer in her dreams.

  Frustrated with his sister’s apparent disinterest, Pleebo slammed his fist angrily against a nearby tree. He’d just about had enough. “What the hell are we doing, Zanell? What are we supposed to accomplish by going back to that castle? The three of us against an army? I don’t care what sort of visions you’re having or what you think you know, that doesn’t make an any sense!”

  Four feet ahead, Zanell and the female conjurer came to a sudden stop before turning to face her enraged brother.

  “We need to go back to New Tipoloo!” Pleebo growled while moving closer to his sister. “Look, I promised Walcott I would come back for him. No offense, but the three of us aren’t going to accomplish a damn thing against an army of Ochans. If we want to help Walcott we need some backup, and if we want backup we need to go to Tipoloo! I don’t know everything going on in the universe at every given moment, but in this case I don’t think I need to; this is obvious!”

  Zanell sighed, her eyes drifting to the side wearily. She didn’t have the heart to tell him. Not about Walcott. Not yet. It would only hurt him more, and he’d already been hurt so much. No, she couldn’t tell him, even if she was supposed to.

  Instead, she turned and continued moving forward through the dense fog and the ever so dim light of early morning. “We can’t go back to Tipoloo, big brother.”

  �
�Why the hell not?” Pleebo screamed so loudly that it echoed for miles throughout the spaces between the crinkly-dead trees.

  Every bone in his body hurt, every joint and muscle was burning and freezing simultaneously. He promised Walcott that he would come back for him. He made a promise to his friend and he was doing exactly the opposite, not to mention doing it for reasons he couldn’t even begin to understand. He was frustrated with his sister. He was weary of her double-speak and annoyed with the fact that she seemed to exist only in the shadows. He wanted Zanell back, the old Zanell, the one who knew how to cry and looked at him like he was the only person in the world who could make things better. He missed the Zanell who knew how to feel. He was sick of the cold and the fog, and he was ashamed of himself.

  Getting further away from her brother with every step, Zanell stated plainly from six-feet ahead, “We can’t go back to New Tipoloo because there isn’t any New Tipoloo to go back to.”

  Pleebo’s stomach dropped into his feet.

  His little sister’s statement hit him like the fist of an Ochan interrogator, knocked loose what few teeth he had remaining, and very nearly kicked his legs from underneath him. At first he didn’t believe her. He understood her powers all too well and knew exactly what she was capable of; still he refused to believe her words. He wouldn’t allow himself too.

  With both Zanell and the conjurer getting further away, Pleebo awoke from the aftermath of his surprise and hurried to catch up. “Wait a minute, wait a minute, wait just a minute. What do you mean there’s no Tipoloo?” Though every heightened step sent a whirlwind of pain throughout his lower half, he managed to not only catch up to the pair but pass them entirely. Moving directly into their path, Pleebo came to a stop and pressed his hands into his sister’s chest.

  “You can’t just say something like that and walk away, Zanell. You can’t do that.”

  Again Zanell sighed deeply. She’d seen this exact conversation before, a number of times, in fact, and from various angles and viewpoints. She’d observed it from a distance much the way an astronomer might observe the stars. She knew exactly what she was going to say next and exactly what her brother’s response would be. She knew everything. Still, the reality of the situation disturbed her. The process of unwillingly bringing her visions to life continued to be a struggle. Despite all the beauty and knowledge her grandfather had passed on to her, there remained moments when she wished he hadn’t.