Forts: Endings and Beginnings

by Steven Novak

  For miles in either direction much of the same was occurring. When the last of the initial digging beasts had made their way through the rapidly swelling opening, the remainder of the army began to pour through. In the end, the entire process took less than ten minutes; in just under fifteen, the Ochan army had already began its march up the hill and toward the sleepy, wholly unprepared town in the distance. Just thirty minutes in, and the full-scale invasion had begun.

  In many ways it was astounding, impressive even. The level of organization and the exactitude with which it was executed was mind-boggling. Every movement was measured, practiced and mechanical. This was what the Ochan race did best. It is here that they remained unmatched.

  From the back of a grunting Megalot, Artem watched as his digging creatures began to lay waste to the rather pathetic looking dwellings in the distance. Watching through a pair of triangle shaped binoculars, he smiled slightly as the hapless creatures living within ran for cover and were instantly struck down. The few that attempted to fight back fared no better. The young general was pleased. His maiden campaign was nothing short of a rousing success. The invasion was going perfectly.

  Unfortunately for Artem, like many things born of pride and fed on ego, perfection is often an illusion.

  Between the roars of the digging beasts, the voice of one of his lieutenants rose from behind. “General Artem! General Artem!”

  Peering over his shoulder, Artem spotted the soldier charging in his direction in full armor, the sword at his side flopping wildly.

  “I bring news from the other side, General.” The beefy lieutenant growled from under his coal black helmet. “We are facing resistance, sir: an attack from the rear, in the Fillagrou forest.”

  Artem’s smile disappeared. “What attack? From who? From where?”

  “Rebel forces. They emerged from the forest floor.”

  The general’s expression changed once again, this time to anger.

  *

  *

  CHAPTER 44

  THE THINGS WE DO

  *

  Upon opening his eyes, the sight that greeted Fellow Undergotten was a blurry Owen Little sitting on his chest and screaming at him just a few inches from his face. Fellow’s ears didn’t seem to be working, though. While the boy’s mouth was undoubtedly moving, no sounds emerged. Fellow’s head was throbbing. His arms were sore, and a searing pain unlike anything he’d ever felt was creeping up from his back and into his chest. The full weight of Owen’s body nestled heavily on his injured ribcage wasn’t helping matters. Though the world was still coming into focus, Fellow could vaguely make out something resembling a Sea Dragon behind the boy’s head. He watched as it swooped past with a group of screaming Ochan soldiers entangled in its talons and a few dozen arrows protruding from its underside. Far beyond the wailing Sea Dragon was a massive cloud of what he assumed was black smoke, though his vision was still too limited to really make sense of what he was seeing. Owen’s fingers wrapped around his chin and he proceeded to shake his face from side to side. Again the child screamed, and again the only thing Fellow could hear was a subtle, distant and incredibly obnoxious hum. He needed to get up. Owen was trying to tell him to get up. Even if he couldn’t hear the boy, that much at least was clear. When Fellow attempted to move his arm, though, nothing happened. When he tried to move his leg, again there was no response. His vision was slowly beginning to sharpen. As the blurry lines of Owen’s face and the even blurrier cacophony of violence behind twisted into something more easily recognized and understood, the awful steady buzzing in his ears began to drift into the background as well. The all too familiar wail of battle anxiously stepped in to take its place. Fellow watched as Owen slid from his chest. The boy wrapped his filthy arms around Fellow’s neck and attempted to pull him into a sitting position. Unfortunately he was too heavy a load for Owen to manage. Halfway into something sort of similar to a sitting position, the fish man’s upper body slipped from between Owen’s fingers and dropped limply to the frozen dirt. After repositioning himself, Owen tried again. The same as before, his battered friend was simply too much to handle.

  “Please get up!”

  The words slipped into Fellow’s ears like a whisper carried on a distant breeze. For a moment they existed, and a moment later they were gone. The tips of his fingers were tingling now. When he tried to move them, they fluttered slightly. Not too long after, he could faintly feel his fingernails dragging across the dirt. His senses were returning, slowly.

  “Get up! You have to get up!”

  Owen’s voice was louder, more crisp and real and filled with a terrified anxiousness. Again the boy wrapped his arms around Fellow’s back and tugged him into an upright position with a grunt. Fellow could feel Owen’s tears running down the crook of his neck. The boy’s mouth was close to his ear now, so close that the child’s next scream blasted the remnants of the annoying hum in his ears into oblivion.

  “We have to move! Get up now!”

  It was at this exact moment that Fellow’s blurred vision evaporated as well. The very instant it was gone, he gazed over Owen’s shoulder and spotted a soldier moving in their direction. The muscle bound creature was adorned in coal-black armor, a blood-coated sword at his side. His face was a war-hardened wall that did nothing to disguise his intentions. The arms that refused to work only a minute prior sprung to life, wrapped themselves around Owen’s back, and pulled the boy close. In a single, remarkably quick movement, Fellow’s previously unresponsive legs and his throbbing torso kicked into action. Tied together, the blood-soaked fish man and the boy with the tear-crusted face rolled to the side just as the broad sword of the Ochan swung in their direction. The blow nearly chopped them in half. Fellow was quick to his feet and even quicker to put himself between the Ochan soldier and red-haired boy. A flash of pain spread outward from his lower back as a gust of wind swept in from behind. He could feel loose bits of skin flapping in the breeze, slippery blood coating the back of his legs. He wondered if it looked as bad as it felt before reminding himself that he couldn’t afford to spend time dwelling on such things. He was standing. He was alive and relatively functional. This was all that mattered. Trivial aesthetics would have to wait.

  The soldier in front of him readjusted his grip on the blade while using his free hand to retrieve a smaller dagger from a belt strapped to his thigh. “Your recovery time is impressive, Chintaran,” the Ochan growled from behind his helmet. “I witnessed your landing. The fact that you survived at all is commendable.”

  Fellow’s legs felt like they were moments from giving way. His back was in worse shape than he initially thought, and it was rapidly spreading to his legs. With a grunt, he gritted his teeth and did his best to convince the monster standing across from him that he remained a threat. Despite his attempts to maintain an impression of strength, his body twitched. Though subtle, the gesture did not escape the slowly approaching soldier. From behind his helmet, the creature smiled. Barely able to stay erect and without a weapon of any kind, Fellow understood all too well that he had no chance against the muscular, ill-tempered soldier a mere ten feet away. Once the Ochan was in striking distance, he would be dead. He wouldn’t be able to move. He wouldn’t be able to fight back, and even if he did it would only last a moment. This was a battle he couldn’t win. It was as simple as that. The moment the Ochan soldier hoisted his sword into the air, Fellow felt a hand wrap around his leg. It was Owen’s.

  With his sword above his head the Ochan quite inexplicably paused. His smile disappeared and his mouth dropped open. Though he was staring right at Fellow, he seemed to be looking through him as well. After lowering his sword and sliding the dagger back into its holster, the confused creature removed his helmet, tossed it to the ground and scratched the top of his scaly green head. Glancing over his shoulder, Fellow looked in Owen’s direction and saw only a vague outline of the boy’s body in the snow. For all intents and purposes, he was gone.

  They were invisible.
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  Fellow realized that the Ochan was likely to put the pieces together and make sense of what was happening sooner than later. In fact, he was already noticing flashes of reason on the face of the creature as it stared into empty space where he and Owen had been only moments ago. Fellow couldn’t give him the chance to put it all together.

  He needed to act.

  Almost on instinct, the Chintaran builder turned self-appointed protector of the prophets lunged for the dagger on the soldier’s thigh, wrapped his invisible hand around it, and used the full weight of his body to drive it under the Ochan’s armor and into his belly. Owen’s hand slipped from his ankle and a screaming Fellow Undergotten popped into existence instantaneously. His body slammed into the soldier. The pair collided with the ground and the dagger sank deeper still into the creature’s stomach. Letting go of his weapon, the Ochan reached forward, wrapped his beefy hands around Fellow’s neck and began to squeeze.

  “Useless trickery,” The creature growled through a mouth rapidly filling with blood. “It…means…nothing.”

  The Ochan’s strength was immense, and Fellow’s breaths were barely breaths at all, more like gurgles, really, and even giving them that much credit was a bit of a stretch. The yellow tinted gills on the side of his face began to flap wildly, grasping for any nutrients they could pull from the chilly air. Something near the rear of his throat snapped, sending a blinding flash of pain across his already beaten back and down his legs. A part of him wondered if it was his spine. The Ochan beneath him craned his head forward and snapped at the side of Fellow’s face with powerful jaws slippery with blood. While the first bite missed completely, the second tore a patch of flesh the size of a quarter from Fellow’s cheek. Ignoring the fact that his vision was once again blurring and he was rapidly loosing the feeling in his arms, Fellow focused on the slippery-slick knife in his hands. He needed to fight back. He needed to be offensive. With a snarl and a grunt, he pressed inward and twisted. When the creature beneath him screamed, his grip tightened.

  Though he was trembling and his insides were pouring through a wound in his stomach, the soldier gritted his teeth and pulled Fellow closer. The smile that formed on his face was a crooked, jittery and terrifying thing. The words that emerged from behind it were worse still.

  “Y-you…can’t win. Foolish of you…to…even…think—”

  Fellow twisted the dagger once more before the lack of oxygen in his system and the shattering of his windpipe began to catch up with him. It was getting harder to hold the weapon. His hands weren’t working the way they should. It was getting harder to make a fist. Despite the knife in his belly, the soldier under him was refusing to die. It was getting harder to think and to focus, and to focus on focusing.

  A moment later, the dagger slipped from his fingers.

  He had failed. In this moment, this singular statement was the only thought he could fully formulate. Fellow’s arms went limp and his legs opted to do the same. He had failed Owen. He had failed Zanell, and Pleebo, and Walcott. He had failed all of Fillagrou and he had failed his brother.

  The world floated away the same as before, and the obscured blurriness set in. His eyes fluttered briefly, then closed. As the last bits of life began to drain from his body, Fellow reminded himself that he’d died before, and it wasn’t so bad. He’d died before and he could do it again.

  Leeko. It would be so good to see Leeko again.

  Something resembling a laugh rumbled to life from deep within the Ochan’s belly and splattered its way between his lips. Overcome with a sickening rush of pride, the soldier closed his eyes as well, squeezed as tightly as his muscular arms could manage, and shook the limp Body of Fellow Undergotten like a rag doll one last time before tossing it to the side. He’d done it. The Chintaran’s magic might have fooled him for a moment, but in the end it hadn’t made an ounce of difference. Strength had won the day. He was the superior warrior, and his, the superior race. It ended exactly as it should have, exactly as it always would.

  When he opened his eyes again and reached down to pull the knife from his stomach, his arrogance disappeared.

  Standing above the Ochan soldier, with a stone nearly half his weight hoisted unevenly above his head, was Owen Little. Owen’s eyes moved from the limp, bruise-covered body of Fellow Undergotten to the surprised Ochan lying beside him. For a moment neither moved. Owen’s arms were shaking. The stone above his head was massive, so massive he surprised himself when he managed to pick it up.

  Having observed many faces of many killers of the course of his years, the Ochan could sense the child’s hesitation. He could see it in the wobble of his legs and the moisture pouring from his eyes. Though the boy had the advantage, he wasn’t ready to kill; he might never be. The injured Ochan needed to take advantage of this. Reaching down, he grabbed hold of the dagger protruding from just beneath his breastplate and tore it from his flesh with a scream.

  Exactly as the horizontal Ochan was watching him, Owen was watching it back. The whole time he was standing there with the rock over his head and his friend sprawled out in the dirt a few feet away, Owen was waiting for something. He was waiting for a reason to do what he understood needed to be done, but was incapable of doing. He was waiting for a moment, or maybe an excuse. He was waiting for what he needed, for the monster in the dark armor to force his hand. The instant the soldier plucked the blade from his belly, Owen stepped backward, closed his eyes, screamed at the top of his lungs and slammed the stone into its head. What happened next happened quickly and happened without an ounce of fanfare. Stone collided with flesh and crunched bone. The weight of the rock and the force with which it was dropped cracked the Ochan’s skull and crushed his head. With a whimper and a crunch, it was over.

  Noticeably shaken, Owen stumbled backward. His legs gave way, and he flopped to the dirt. The boy pulled his legs to his chest, wrapped his arms around them, and buried his head in the crook of his knees. Something roared behind him. Something collapsed and crumbled. Someone screamed. To his left, steel clanked against steel and the sound reverberated in his ears. To his right, something else exploded. It was all beginning to sound the same. One awful thing folded effortlessly into another. Everything was milky and mixed and gray. He wanted it all to go away. It was so loud. It was too much. He couldn’t stop shaking, or believe how much he was crying. The tears were pouring from him, soaking the denim of his jeans and dropping through his legs into the dirt below. He couldn’t stop.

  For maybe the first time in his young life, absolutely no part of him wanted to.

  *

  *

  CHAPTER 45

  ANOTHER CLIMB

  *

  Donald Rondage dug his fingers into the dirt behind him and attempted to pull himself up. He’d always been a terrible climber, and the fact that the pit below the slave hut was pitch black wasn’t likely to improve his skills. Bad climber or not, climbing was exactly what he needed to do. He knew that now. Maybe he always had. He understood that he didn’t have his powers anymore, and yet this fact didn’t seem to matter. Hiding in a pit wasn’t going to solve anything. He’d wallowed long enough. He made the choice to come here. It was his and his alone. Now he had to live with it. Staci was still up there, and Roustaf and Tahnja. Though he would never say it to any of their faces, in their own weird way, they were his friends. He owed it to them to at least try. He owed it to himself.

  The dirt beneath his fingers was freezing. It felt like he was digging into a wall of shaved ice, so cold it hurt. Donald half expected them to go numb. To make matters worse, the longer he remained attached to the wall, the worse the pain became. A pair of hands with just three fingers, and a thumb that was barely a nub, wedged themselves into the seat of his jeans and began to press upward. Another set of hands joined them a moment later. Even more joined the group soon after that.

  “Good luck, child,” A breathy, faraway voice whispered from the darkness.

  “Be careful,” An entirely different one
added.

  A far more gravelly voice moaned, “Give ‘em hell, kid.”

  With the aid of the near-dead creatures hidden below, Donald managed to reach the doorway to the slave hut high above. Unfortunately for him, it was wedged shut. Realizing he needed a bit of leverage, the boy dug his shoes as deep into the slick mud-ice as he could get them. Perilously clinging to the wall, the boy drove the full weight of his body into the wooden plank above. It didn’t move. After readjusting himself in an attempt to generate a bit more force, Donald tilted his head sideways and rammed his shoulder into the wood once again. While the movement succeeded in badly bruising his shoulder, that’s all it succeeded in doing. Weary from holding the child’s weight, a set of hands dropped from his buttocks.

  Another immediately slid in to take their place.

  With a huff and a grimace, Donald smashed his shoulder into the wood again. When it refused to budge even an inch, he punched it angrily with his fist and cursed underneath his breath. Why wouldn’t the damn thing move!

  Shaking his head, Donald breathed deeply and tried to steady his emotions. He began to wonder if this whole situation was his fault, if everything occurring was because of him. If he would have helped Roustaf and the others escape instead of going comatose, they might have all been able to get away. He should have been stronger. He could have punched the king so hard in the face that his head would have popped off and gone spinning into the clouds. He hadn’t, though. Instead he did absolutely nothing. Shaking his head again, Donald reminded himself how foolish it was, thinking things like this; it was pointless. It wouldn’t accomplish anything.