Forts: Endings and Beginnings

by Steven Novak

  He needed to get out of this pit. He needed to get out there and help.

  Wedging his shoulder against the wood, the rededicated boy locked his jaw, pulled his muscles tight, and screamed to the unseen group of slaves below for help. “Push!”

  And push they did. Calling on every bit of strength their atrophied, malnourished limbs had to offer, the huddled mass of weary dead shoved against his backside with all their might. The sets of hands already pressed against him were joined by two more, every palm and finger and muscle shoving him upward with the limited reserves they had left.

  “Harder! Push harder!” Donald growled again, his shoulder burning and his fingers prickly-sore.

  Something brushed against him to the right. One of the slaves had scaled the wall beside him. It was heaving against the doorway as well. To his left there was another body, groaning and huffing and pounding against the aged wood. That’s when Donald heard it: a creak. The wood jostled just a centimeter and something squeaked. It hadn’t moved a lot, but it moved nonetheless. It was more than just a start; it was an opportunity. Two more sets of hands shoved against his legs from below. The slaves were almost entirely holding him upright. A pair of astonishingly thin fingers brushed against his shoulder, momentarily pinning his hair against the wood before ripping it from his head. Donald ignored the pain and pushed harder. Again the doorway above creaked. This time the creak was followed by a crack and then a shuffle. It was working. They were moving it.

  “Almost there!” Donald screamed, his fingers beginning to go numb, buckets of sweat spilling off the side of his face.

  With one last shove, the door above snapped, popped, and flipped open in a cloud of dust. An instant stream of sunlight smacked Donald in the face, and a few flakes of falling black snow evaporated against the heat of his skin. With a mighty heave, the creatures beneath Donald tossed him out of the hole and onto the ground above. Once there, the boy found himself surrounded by the shattered remains of the slave hut. In every direction planks of warped and dusty wood were piled upwards, creaking and groaning with every gust of wind. Just a few feet above him the remains of the roof teetered perilously atop shattered husks of debris. Though Donald was hardly an “engineer,” it took him only a moment to realize that the broken down shack could come crashing down on his head at any moment. He needed to get out from underneath it.

  Dropping to his stomach, Donald scooted across the broken boards and frozen dirt to the darkened pit. Leaning over the edge he stared downward and into the black that continued to disguise the creatures that lifted him to safety moments prior.

  He lowered his arms into the darkness and opened his hand. “One at a time! Give me your hands! Come with me!”

  From the pit of blackness a single hand emerged. Its light-green tinted fingers wrapped around his and held tight. When Donald tried to pull it up, it refused to move. The boy tugged backward again. The arm held steady.

  “What are you doing? Come on!”

  Another hand emerged from the shadows. This one was different than the first – more yellow than green, coated in a layer of thick purple bruises and covered in patches of wispy thin grayish hair. One of its fingers was missing and only a poorly stitched nub remained. No doubt the Ochans had, at some point, removed the digit. Despite the bizarre tuft of hair, there was something oddly feminine about the hand overall, something strangely familiar. The appendage gently laid itself over Donald’s, and its coarse fingers caressed his tenderly.

  “We can’t go with you.”

  The broken roof above Donald’s head squealed and wobbled. Something massive shook the ground off in the distance, threatening to collapse it once and for all. It wouldn’t last much longer.

  Donald reached into the darkness with both his hands, wrapped them around the other two and pulled back with a grunt. “We don’t have time for this! Come on!”

  Again the hands refused to budge.

  Again the shadows spoke. “We couldn’t go even if we wanted to. We’ve been here too long. We’ve wasted away.”

  A board behind Donald snapped and the remaining roof dropped five inches nosily. Through a hole in the top, Donald thought he saw a dragon pass overhead and caw angrily in the direction of the roaring clouds. Both hands holding Donald’s used the lapse in his concentration to pull free and slip away. Leaning further into the darkness Donald tried desperately to grab hold of them again. Unfortunately they were gone. They were gone and they weren’t coming back.

  The voice that emerged from the pit of shadows a moment later was steady. “Go, child. It is your destiny.”

  Directly ahead of Donald, the remains of the hut began to collapse. There was no more time to waste. After one last look into the pit, he turned and crawled as quickly as he could in the opposite direction. Behind him the flimsy remains of the slave hut crumbled inward, splitting, snapping, and crashing into a cloud of dust just beyond his shuffling feet. With a single leap forward, Donald busted through a particularly warped section of timber and rolled into the courtyard as the uneasy structure completed its transformation into a pile of rubble.

  Coughing uncontrollably as the dust filled and coated his lungs, Donald closed his eyes and stumbled forward until the cloud began to peel away and he could again breath clearly. There was something warm in the distance. He could clearly feel it on his face, like the glow of the sun on a bright summers day. There was no sun in Ocha, though—at least not one he’d ever seen. After wiping the particles of sand from his eyes, Donald gazed with blurry-sore pupils in the direction of the uncommon warmth.

  A hundred or so yards away, hovering above the courtyard and encased in a sphere of light, was none other than Tommy Jarvis.

  Amassing directly below him was an army of Ochans.

  *

  *

  CHAPTER 46

  JUST A BOY

  *

  “Oh no, no, no, no, no, no. We can’t do this. This is a mistake. This is a gargantuan mistake of monumental proportions!”

  Standing beside Tommy Jarvis in the humming, crackling sphere of light as it passed over the castle wall and progressed slowly into the courtyard, the purple-skinned scientist known as Arthur Crumbee III mashed the tips of his fingers into his mouth and began to bite nervously. The army of Ochan soldiers below seemed to stretch forever, further than his eyes could see. The castle of the tyrant King was far larger than he’d imagined it would be and twice as opposing. Hidden behind the bones of his chest, Arthur’s tiny heart began to pound. Suddenly he wanted to go back to his quiet little cave in the middle of nowhere. Suddenly he wanted to be anywhere other than where he was. The Ochans within the black-stoned walls took notice of both him and young Tommy Jarvis the instant they floated into the courtyard encased in their glowing ball of light. How could they not? Even in a universe filled with creatures and landscapes that repeatedly gave new meaning to the words strange and bizarre, the incredible light pouring from the hands of the blonde-haired boy standing beside him was possibly the strangest and most bizarre thing of all. Arthur snagged a handful of Tommy’s filth-crusted shirt with his pudgy purple digits and tugged gently.

  “I can’t do this child. I mean, look at this; we can’t do this. We need to turn around. We need to turn around right now!”

  Tommy Jarvis didn’t respond. He didn’t have the time. Tommy was busy surveying the situation before them and trying desperately to calm his uneasy nerves. Though something inside him was telling him that they were doing the right thing—that this was exactly where he needed to be—when faced with the reality of the situation, Tommy was finding it a difficult concept to swallow. The castle was beyond-words massive. It was a city and a state. It was a charcoal colored universe filled with ugly things that wanted him dead. From the moment he and Arthur passed through the doorway and into the icy world of Ocha, Tommy began to feel different in a way he was finding difficult to fully explain. It wasn’t simply the inhabitants of this place that wanted him dead; it was the world itself. The grou
nd, and the trees, and the sky: they abhorred his presence. They snickered in his direction and shot him ugly glances. Ocha hated him. It was sickened by the fact that he breathed its air and disgusted by the aftertaste his breath left behind. He didn’t belong here, and it wanted him to go away.

  Again Arthur pulled at Tommy’s shirt, this tug noticeably more forceful than the last. “I know you think this is where you’re supposed to be and what you’re supposed to do, but it’s not. I guarantee you, it is not. It can’t be. It’s too much, boy, far too much. We need to turn around. We need to turn around right now!”

  When the boy still didn’t look in his direction, Arthur grabbed Tommy’s shirt with both hands and tugged with all his might. “Listen to me! We can’t do this! Not like this! We just can’t stroll into a battlefield like this! Do you hear me?”

  Tommy slowly craned his head and stared down at the little scientist.

  “We can’t do this, child! It’s too much! I don’t care what sort of powers you have! You do not stand a chance! That is an army down there! That’s an army, and you’re just a boy!”

  Tommy looked away from Arthur and over the battlefield below. Packs of soldiers not already engaged in combat were moving in their direction. Far in the distance he could see even more, entire regiments; hundreds of thousands of battle-ready Ochans were plowing through the city, emerging from behind closed doors and darkened alleyways with blood-coated weapons at the ready. There were so many of them. Like ants appearing from a hill of sand, their numbers seemed endless.

  He closed his eyes and inhaled deeply. He didn’t like the smell of Ocha. It reminded him of his father’s breath, of the way the old man would smell when he stumbled through the front door at two in the morning. It was a terrible scent, the worst scent. Though it was so faint he barely noticed it at first, Tommy could taste his own blood on his lips. How many times had he tasted it over the years? So many that the slightly metallic tang nearly passed without so much as a second thought. He hated being so familiar with the taste. He hated knowing exactly what it was. Ocha was just like his father. Ocha didn’t want him there because it was scared.

  No, he was right where he was supposed to be. He wasn’t going anywhere.

  Opening his eyes, Tommy glanced down at the floppy-skinned scientist standing beside him within the glowing sphere of light, wrangled his scurrying emotions, and corralled his wild thoughts. When he next spoke his voice was as assured and confident as it had ever been.

  “Trust me. We’re going to be fine.”

  After wiping a nervous sheen of sweat from his face, Arthur was a moment from continuing his protest when a volley of arrows slammed against the exterior of the sphere and evaporated from existence in puffs of grayish smoke. The sound of disintegrating weapons caught Crumbee off guard. The little man yelped, dropped onto his tush and wrapped his arms around the hovering legs of Tommy Jarvis. When the first volley of arrows proved unsuccessful, a second was fired. When those evaporated as well, a third was sent sailing in their direction. Half a dozen cawing Scarbeaks with stern-faced Ochans on their backs passed by and unloaded their weapons from close range. Just as before, upon coming into contact with the crackling sphere, the arrows transformed to puffs of smoke. Another Scarbeak soared in from behind. The soldier on its back was wielding a seven-foot long weapon similar to a jousting stick. The instant the weapon connected with Tommy’s glowing ball of light, it too turned to dust. As if punched in the chest by a great-unseen fist, the soldier was thrown violently from the back of his winged monster and tossed fifty feet through the air. As more and more weapons began to slam into the hovering sphere, Tommy Jarvis realized that simply exploding with a burst of power as he had in the past wasn’t really an option. While undoubtedly destructive and undeniably effective, every time the act had left him tired and defenseless. On the seas of Aquari it knocked him unconscious. It took too much out of him and was too unpredictable. There were too many Ochans, and the castle covered far too much ground. No matter what, he wouldn’t be able to get them all. This wasn’t a sprint. This was a marathon. It wasn’t a club he wielded, but a surgical knife. He needed to treat it as such.

  This was going to take some time.

  High overhead, the black clouds from which even blacker snow poured, growled, and belched. A flash of lightning bolted downward, connected with the sphere and caused it to bob awkwardly for a moment above the castle courtyard. Inside the circle of light Tommy Jarvis grimaced. He could feel the lightning strike in his bones. All at once, every tiny hair covering his body stood at attention. His muscles tightened and his teeth locked tight. A second bolt of lightning shot down from above. For a moment the sphere seemed to explode, popping like a firework in the sky and tossing tiny dots of light in every direction. The fillings in Tommy’s teeth rattled and fibers of muscle under his skin stretched to their limits. It felt like a thousand needles pricked his flesh simultaneously. All at once the connections in his brain fired. His head felt hot. His body was engulfed in molten awfulness. A particularly nasty twang of pain spread through his arms, into his torso and across the remainder of his body. His toes curled and his hands began to shake.

  Outside, another onslaught of weapons collided with the sphere. Suddenly it was bobbing erratically, tilting back and forth and spinning topsy-turvy. Quite unexpectedly it zoomed to a position barely three feet off the ground and then shot upward nearly a hundred feet in a heartbeat.

  Arthur Crumbee was being tossed from one end of the humming ball to the other, slamming stiffly into the interior walls and leaving bruises across his body. Beside him Tommy Jarvis was huffing, struggling to breathe and finding it nearly impossible to deal with the pain coursing throughout his body. Another bolt of lightning connected with the airborne ball of light. Immediately it shot downward and into the courtyard. Once there, it was met with yet another onslaught of weapon fire. Adding to the problems of the little scientist was the fact that the sphere seemed to be rapidly heating. The temperature was rising to unbearable levels. It was so hot the soles of his shoes had begun to melt. When one of the tatters of his shirt came into contact with the popping wall of light, it immediately lit on fire. Leaping in Tommy’s direction, Arthur wrapped his arms around the boy’s neck, coiled his legs around his waist, and held on for dear life. With sweat pouring down his face, Arthur noticed a pair of snarling Megalots charging in their direction with their heads down. The massive creatures were picking up speed, their sinewy muscles heaving and their feet leaving a cloud of black snow in their wake. The position of their heads and the three-foot long horns pointed in their direction left little confusion concerning their intentions.

  They were going to ram them.

  Arthur climbed to Tommy’s neck and screamed in his ear. “Move, child! We have to move!”

  Still dealing with the awful sensations coursing through his body, Tommy Jarvis couldn’t have moved even if he wanted to. He barely heard Arthur scream into his ear. In fact, he was only partially aware that the pudgy little man was hanging from his back at all.

  It hurt so bad. He tried to ignore the pain and let it pass the way he’d done for so many years. It hurt so bad, though.

  The great beasts collided with the sphere and were immediately engulfed in an explosion of light. The collision tossed their enormously heavy bodies into the air and spun them like tops. At the same time, however, it knocked the hovering sphere backward, causing it to drag along the ground and dig itself at least a foot into the previously frozen soil. A cloud of dust and superheated mud lifted from the ground and encased the sphere, obscuring the outside world from Arthur’s view. Arrows were still firing in their direction; he could hear them colliding with the outer wall before evaporating and adding to their tomb of smoke and debris.

  Arthur grabbed Tommy’s chin with his pudgy fingers, trying his damndest to crawl onto the shoulder of the shaky boy that was barely holding on. The lightning strikes were doing things to his insides Arthur could scarcely imagine. Like wet l
aundry, his guts felt as if they were being ringed out and smacked dry against a rock.

  “Please child. Please.” Arthur stuttered into the boy’s ear, struggling to keep his floppy-rolled body attached to Tommy’s back as the temperature within the sphere continued to rise. “We have to move! You have to move, child! I know it hurts, but you have to move!”

  Through the cloud of smoke outside, Arthur heard something growl. The growl was so enormous it shook the surrounding ground and nearly knocked Arthur from his uneven perch. It was a sound he’d heard before, quite often, in fact, during the initial invasion of his world years ago. It was a sound he was all too familiar with. When the cloud of dirt and smoke began to peel away, Arthur gazed upward and spotted an enormous digging creature standing above them. One of the monster’s gargantuan feet lifted into the air as it growled yet again and snapped at a few attacking Sea Dragons nearly a mile into the clouds. A moment later the massive gray-skinned foot was rushing in their direction.

  Arthur Crumbee swallowed deep and closed his eyes. Tommy Jarvis had settled into a fit of long, wild coughs. Flecks of blood spit from between his lips and sprayed against the interior of the sphere. The boy’s clothes were soaked in sweat, his skin slippery-slick.

  The foot above was moments away from squashing them into oblivion.

  This was going to hurt.

  *

  *

  CHAPTER 47

  FOR ZANELL

  *

  It was one of the hardest things he’d ever had to do: walking away from the body of his sister and leaving it to the cold and the snow. In the end, though, this is exactly what Pleebo did. It had to be done. Zanell was gone. She was gone, and nothing was going to bring her back. This was the reality of the situation. This was the truth. Before the arrow punctured her chest and ended her life, Zanell told him to head to the castle of the tyrant King Kragamel. She claimed he needed to find Tommy Jarvis and lead the boy to something called the fire caves. This was the very last thing she muttered to him. In essence, it was her dying wish. It was a wish he had every intention of fulfilling.