Forts: Endings and Beginnings

by Steven Novak

  Staci’s body moved again, her fingers kneading at the flesh of her temples; crusted tears flaked in the corners of her eyes. She was only half aware of where she was and what had been done to her. Her head was throbbing and her chest felt empty and cold, as if something special was suddenly missing. It wasn’t until she tiredly opened her eyes and looked in his direction that Pleebo forced himself to rise from the dirt and rush to her aid. If he couldn’t help Tommy, he was going to at least help her.

  Tommy Jarvis felt as if he’d been swinging hammers for hours on end. With every pained blow he mashed the body of the Ochan king against the chalky red stone of the cavern wall and added to the already massive cloud of debris that encased both of them. Every blow decimated the muscles of Kragamel, burned his flesh, mashed his organs and transformed his bones to dust. A second later those very same muscles healed themselves and a second after that the bones returned as sturdy as ever. The instant they were healed, they were broken once again. Things continued this way for some time, Tommy grunting with every strike, his face covered in sweat and his teeth grinding together. Significantly worn out before the onslaught began, the boy doubted he could maintain his assault for much longer. His hands were getting heavier, and his breaths deeper. The muscles in his back were strained to their limits and he felt as if the bones in his hands were broken. Everything was fading away: his energy, his will, the surrounding world, everything. After a particularly draining punch, he attempted to pull his light-fist backward, only to realize it was stuck.

  He tugged again, this time with more force. Still nothing.

  From the cloud of sand and crumpled stone the tyrant king emerged unscathed, an expression of absolute rage etched into the multitude of wrinkles on his face. Gripped tightly between his hands was Tommy’s electric fist.

  “I’ve grown weary of this game, boy.”

  *

  *

  CHAPTER 58

  INVINCIBLE

  *

  Within his hands, the Ochan king held lightning. Every second he gripped the fist of energy pouring from the fingers of young Tommy Jarvis, he could feel his skin burn away. The muscles underneath melted to nothing and his bones turned to ash. Immediately afterward, it all came roaring back. The unending state of destruction and rebirth was an excruciating exercise in pain. Though he refused to allow the boy to become aware, never in his life had he experienced such agony. The powers of the blonde-haired child were formidable. They were only powers, however. When all was said and done, the child remained exactly that, a child. A boy was no match for a king. Like all children, he would falter. When he faltered he would be broken.

  As the skin on his hands peeled away once again, the Ochan king pressed forward and stepped from the hole in the cavern wall. Unwilling to afford the boy a chance to react to the sudden turn of events, Kragamel utilized his stolen strength, dug his boots into the dirt, and whipped the crackling hand of light to the side. The body of the child connected to the opposite end followed in tow.

  Tommy Jarvis’s feet lifted from the ground and suddenly he was airborne, upside down and soaring in the direction of the cavern wall. The beams of light extending form the tips of his fingers immediately faded away and the nearby stone rushed to meet him. His back collided with the wall at an incredible speed and a hollow thump. Something in his shoulder shattered, tore away, and bent. His head bounced off a protruding hunk of rock, which opened a three-inch long gash on the rear of his skull and nearly knocked him unconscious. For a moment, time passed like molasses through a sieve for Tommy Jarvis. The newly opened gash on the back of his head was throbbing. Warm blood began its slow cascade down the rear of his neck and into the collar of his shirt. He tried to move his legs.

  They refused.

  Though Tommy knew he needed to move, and despite the fact that he wanted to move, his body was unwilling to play along. A series of coughs rumbled from his chest and spewed like hot charcoal from his lips. His mouth was full of sand and his lungs worn raw. Lying face down in the dirt, Tommy twisted his head to the side and gazed through half-opened eyes in the direction of the Ochan king. Kragamel was moving toward him, the Ochan’s long gray beard blowing softly in the barely-there breeze, his charred fingers slowly reverting to their natural green. The instant they returned to normal, the King squeezed them into fists, and then into a claw. The sound of his cracking knuckles reverberated in Tommy’s ears, reminding him in no uncertain terms of the situation he faced.

  He had to get up. Kragamel was getting closer. He had to move.

  Wincing through the pain, Tommy rolled onto his back and propped himself against the cavern wall. The enraged Ochan king was nearly on top of him, snarling through yellowed teeth and stomping in his direction. Ignoring the pangs of pain coursing throughout his body and the fact that he was drained to the point of utter exhaustion, Tommy lifted his arms defensively and tucked his head behind. A cone of light emerged from his fingers; spreading outward, it encased the boy like a shield. When the king’s power-enhanced fist slammed into the exterior of the protective wall of energy, Tommy felt it. It smacked him in the chest and broke two of his ribs. It traveled down his torso, into his legs and continued to the tips of his toes. It knocked two fillings loose in his teeth and rattled his brain against the interior of his skull. The fact that Kragamel’s fiery green knuckles never actually came into contact with Tommy didn’t seem to make a difference. The light was a part of the boy. It flowed from within. It was connected to him. When it hurt, so did he. While one of his charred hands began to repair itself, Kragamel struck again with the other. Tommy grunted, groaned and eventually screamed. While he didn’t want to, he simply couldn’t help it. Another of his ribs shattered. Something inside squeezed his windpipe. His breath disappeared. The tyrant king’s blows continued without end. While one fist repaired itself, he punched with the other, huffing through the pain accompanying every strike, flashes of light exploding like lightning from the boy’s protective light-shield in every direction.

  “It was a lie!” Kragamel screamed, his fist on fire as he pulled it back and struck with the other. “All of it!”

  Tommy pulled his knees to his chest and tucked them behind his arms. His plan was to prevent more of his ribs from breaking. His plan was faulty. The next blow from the king bent the light shield inward like taffy and shattered not only a bone in forearm, but one in his left leg as well.

  “I know exactly what you are, boy!” Kragamel snarled, sweat glistening off his angled face, his right hand literally engulfed in flame. “I know what this all means, and I do not care!”

  Three teeth were knocked loose from Tommy’s mouth. His head whipped to the side and his eye-socket shattered.

  “It changes nothing!”

  Another blow dented Tommy’s gut inward and pushed a wad of sticky blood from between his lips. For a moment everything went black. Try as he might to keep his hands in front of his face and his protective shield over his body, it was simply too much. His forearms were shattered in numerous places and seven of his ten fingers were broken. His body had been twisted and mangled, and twisted again. Every inch of him hurt, every centimeter and millimeter awash in a flood of pain. It was too much for his brain to process, handle, or make sense of.

  Instead, it shut down.

  Tommy Jarvis wasn’t sure how long he was unconscious, but when he opened his eyes the King of Ocha was looming over him like a great black cloud, blocking out the light of the fires behind and bathing him in a pool of darkness. He watched the king’s chest heave, watched as his lips quivered and smoke poured from his nose. Tommy could feel something warm and metallic in his throat, slowly creeping its way upward and pooling in his mouth. It was blood. It was a lot of blood. Something inside was bleeding badly. It could have been anything. More than likely it was everything.

  “You are…resilient.” Kragamel growled between thundering huffs from above. “Far more than I could have hoped. If nothing else, for this and this alone, you are to b
e commended.”

  Behind the king the fires boiling from below exploded yet again. The eruptions were getting larger and more aggressive. Tommy’s head drifted wearily past the muscled midsection of the Ochan breathing down on him. He watched the orange-red droplets fall like rain, splashing into the sand and spreading out into pockets of searing liquid. This was an ugly place. Ocha was a destructive world, cold and distant on the outside, yet fuming with a hate a billion years old below. Tommy’s head sank forward until his chin rested on his chest. He knew Ocha well.

  Kragamel coiled his freshly healed hand into a fist once again. After taking a deep breath, he stated solemnly, “All things end, child. Even you, with all the gifts you’ve been afforded; even you are no exception.”

  Tommy barely heard his words. What wafted into his ears instead were whispers, latent remembrances of long forgotten phrases in which he no longer had interest. His body had been torn to shreds. He was broken, left silent and alone in his quiet little corner. It made sense for things to end this way.

  It made perfect sense and it was only a matter of time, he supposed to himself. The king was right. His mother was right. Everything ended.

  Tommy wondered if Pleebo had been able to get Staci. He must have. The boy imagined them retreating to the castle above, charging back through the doorway to Fillagrou and hopefully underground to safety. There were things Tommy wished he would have said to her. Like most reaching the end of the journey, he was not without regrets. It would have been nice to tell her how he felt. Even if she didn’t feel the same way for him, it would have been nice to do that, just once.

  As a trickle of blood seeped from between his lips and his head rolled back, Tommy looked one last time at the green-scaled fist of the creature standing over him, and couldn’t help but grin. He’d seen it so many times in his young life. Strangely, it reminded him of home. Through the blood pooled in his mouth, he gagged just a bit and chuckled.

  This reaction took the king by surprise. “Laughter?”

  The Ochan’s brow lifted questioningly, his words thick with annoyance and confusion. “Explain yourself.”

  Only half aware of what was happening, Tommy coaxed the mostly useless muscles in his neck into action, and rolled his head in the king’s direction. Through a mouth of broken teeth, he smiled wide.

  “You can’t hurt me.”

  The Ochan king’s confusion turned instantly to anger. “What?”

  “You can’t hurt me.” Tommy repeated before swallowing a wad of his own metallic flavored insides and spitting a loose tooth from his mouth. “Doesn’t make a difference. Doesn’t matter what you do. You can’t hurt me.”

  The upper lip of the king lifted. His eyes narrowed and his teeth mashed against each other. “It would seem my praise was premature. You’re far more stupid than I originally thought. You’re a silly, imprudent little thing, unworthy of the gifts you have been given. I shall show the universe its mistake. I will display your corpse to the heavens and prove they chose wrong. Your death shall be m—”

  “I know what you are.”

  The king’s heart stopped. His mouth dropped closed. An irrational, unexplainable fear punched him in the stomach and stole his breath. When he spoke, for the first time in his life, he stammered. “Y-you know nothi—“

  “I know what you are,” Tommy interrupted, blood pouring from his mouth and down his chin. “You think I don’t know, but I know. I know what you’re doing here.”

  Though the bones in his arms were nearly useless and the movement resulted in a significant amount of pain, Tommy achingly lifted his hand into the air. One after another, he bent his fingers into a position similar to how they might have looked if he were holding a pencil.

  “You can’t hurt me,” Tommy mumbled once more, chuckling underneath his breath.

  His jittery hand moved as if he were drawing, tracing the contours of Kragamel’s face in the air before punctuating the gesture with two big dots for his deep red eyes.

  Tommy’s hand dropped to his side. His expression turned apologetic. “I’m sorry I put you here.”

  The king’s visage of calm imploded. His shaky lips parted and his mouth opened wide. When he growled, he growled in the boy’s direction, his teeth barred, spittle flinging from his cracked lips. It was a primeval response, animalistic and unworthy of a king.

  Though he couldn’t explain it, the puddle of fear in Kragamel’s belly had expanded. It was suddenly an ocean. More than ever he wanted the cocky little child gone. He wanted to punch his way through the boy’s skull and pull back brain. He wanted to pound his face to mush and bits of ground up bone. He wanted him dead. He wanted him to die twice, and a third time after that. He wanted him to go away. He needed him to go away.

  Now.

  *

  *

  CHAPTER 59

  ACTS OF REDEMPTION

  *

  The tyrant king pulled his fist backward and growled again in Tommy’s direction. Before he could deliver the final, fatal blow, three distinctly different bodies collided with his and tackled him to the dirt. Chris Jarvis shot in low, wrapped his arms around the Ochan’s legs, and barreled forward with every remaining ounce of strength in his body. It was an awkward movement, odd looking and entirely uncoordinated. As is often the case, his dedicated resolve made up for any technical shortcomings, and the clumsy tackle proved successful. At the very same time, the rail-thin bodies of both Asop and Pleebo crashed into the king from higher up. Their wiry limbs wrapped around Kragamel’s torso, held tight, pressed forward and refused to let go. The combination of the three very different creatures managed to catch the king off guard.

  The moment he was on his back, they swarmed him.

  Their six fists began punching at anything and everything exposed. Their weapons stabbed his flesh, clanking against his armor and sliding underneath where they began tearing and slicing, and carving him up. As a group, the three were relentless. It was feral; it was nasty and uncoordinated. It was exactly what the moment called for and it would have undoubtedly worked on a lesser foe.

  Unfortunately every wound they opened healed just as quick. They were fighting a losing battle, attempting to kill what simply could not be killed. The attack was doomed from the start. The instant the king found his bearings, he began to strike back. A straight left smashed Asop in the upper portion of his head. The cracking of his paper-thin skull was clearly visible through his transparent skin, and the fact that the king’s knuckles mashed into his brain even more so. For Asop, everything went black. His muscles fell loose and his lanky body flipped into the air. It spun horizontally and landed with a thud seven feet away.

  Pleebo ignored his airborne Nasdi companion, dodged the swinging arm of the Ochan beneath him, and drove a dagger into his side. From the corner of his eye he noticed Arthur Crumbee and Staci Alexander. The little man had his arms wrapped around the girl’s waist, struggling to get her onto her feet. He needed to give them time to get away. He needed to keep fighting.

  From below, the king snapped at Pleebo’s ear, locked on with his pointy teeth, and tore a wad of flesh and cartilage from the bottom. Pleebo screamed in pain and recoiled. Unfortunately, the movement put him directly in line with Kragamel’s flailing fists. The back of the Ochan’s hand collided with Pleebo’s jaw, knocked it loose from his face and tossed the Fillagrou into the air. Pleebo’s body slid across the dirt like a sled before grinding to a stop mere inches from the edge of the fiery ravine.

  Chris Jarvis ignored the fact that his fellow attackers had been swatted away with such ease. He had to. Focusing too much on the bizarre situation in which he found himself would have accomplished nothing. Thinking about it would only make things worse and certainly wouldn’t help his son. Thinking would only get him killed.

  He and Asop arrived in the fire caves moments after the meat of the battle between Tommy and the king. From the rocky entranceway to the cavern, Chris spotted his son propped against the rocky outer wall like a
bloody rag doll. The massive gray-bearded Ochan was lurching over him like a great black shadow, his body silhouetted by the immense fires raging behind. The image boiled Chris’s blood and reenergized his aching muscles. Suddenly the pain in his head or his broken arm didn’t matter. Suddenly it didn’t exist, despite the fact that he’d seen his son in such a state before—many times in fact. He promised himself that he wouldn’t allow it to happen again. He promised Megan. His son was broken, coiled up and unable to defend himself. Tommy was hurt and he needed his help. Tommy was suffering. For the first time in a very long time, his son was all that mattered.

  For the first time in years, Christopher Jarvis was a father.

  With a scream and a grunt, Chris pulled his dagger from the king’s leg, quickly scurried up the Ochan’s body, and deposited the very same weapon into the lizard man’s jugular. A thick spray of blood shot from the wound, so much that it coated his face and burned his eyes. Like slicing into a turkey, Chris attempted to saw his way through the thick muscles of the king’s neck, but as copious amounts of slimy liquid pooled below, the knife became more slippery and difficult to hold with every passing second. The watery gurgles of the Ochan king filled the red-stoned cavern and the fires from below exploded in stereo. Coated in sticky-slick blood, his eyes closed and his jaw locked tight, Chris Jarvis tried not to think about what he was doing. He was murdering. He was murdering because there was no other choice. He was murdering to save his son. He needed to cut and continue cutting. It was the only way.

  Unexpectedly, something grabbed him by the neck and began to squeeze. Pointy nails dug into the flesh of his throat, opened puncture wounds and drew blood. Chris’s voice box shattered. Stars popped into existence before his eyes, emerging like flashlights in the dark. Something warm coated the interior of his throat. His windpipe collapsed and his ability to breathe no longer existed. The pain was astonishing, far more than he’d felt at any point over the course of his life and more than he believed himself capable of absorbing. The torrent of blood spewing from the king’s neck halted and the frayed skin repaired itself once again. The knife wrapped between Chris’ fingers disappeared and his hand twisted into an ugly, uneven claw. For an instant he was clutching at air, reaching for it as if it had form, as if it were something he could grab hold of. When his hands located the far more solid flesh of Kragamel’s forearm they began to scrape helplessly at the Ochan’s thick green scales. Chris’s eyes were watering, the salty liquid pouring down his cheeks. It was too much pain, all at once and all over. As Kragamel’s grip grew tighter, still more exploded from within. A part of Christopher Jarvis wished he would pass out, prayed things would go black and float away. It hurt so much. He wanted the pain to disappear and he didn’t care how. His wide eyes drifted to the body of his son, still propped against the cavern wall across the way. With every squeeze of the king’s hand, the image blurred. With every wrench and twist, the tears filling his eyes washed the image of his boy away like tears in the rain. What he found himself left with was something eerily similar to a reflection behind moisture-soaked glass. It wasn’t real.