by Steven Novak
Her voice turned flat and stern. “I won’t ask you why you did it, because I know you don’t have an answer—at least not one that makes any sense.”
Chris’ breathing halted, his jaw locking tight. Her words hit him in the chest like a baseball bat threatening to destroy what remained of the bandaged, partially healed heart hidden behind. There was no way she could know. There was no way she could possibly know, and yet he understood without an ounce of hesitation that she did. Even if he wanted to lift his head and look her in the eyes, he knew he couldn’t.
“Christopher…long ago my world became the epicenter of a war that continues to this day. I like to think that I know a little something about your people, and I am fully aware of the fact that you are a race well versed in the concepts of war. Still, I guarantee you, this is bigger than anything even you can imagine. This is genocide, genocide on a scale that puts all possible meanings of the word to shame. I have seen the face of each and every life extinguished by this atrocity, and counting them would be impossible.”
Standing, Zanell sighed deeply. “Your children—your children are very special, Christopher.”
Hesitantly, Chris lifted his head to look in her direction, his expression shameful and lost. This was the look of a man who had reached the absolute bottom. This was the look of a man who could sink no further. The faint light of the dual blue candles in the room flickered off of Zanell’s massive red pupils, turning them a color more akin to a smoky purple. The taut, tightly stretched skin on her face seemed so very fragile, like dried and crumbled paper, capable of transforming to dust with even the most gentle of touches. Her expression was somber, sad and remorseful, neither forgiving nor understanding, yet exactly the opposite all at once.
A few feet away from him, Zanell stopped; dropping to one knee, she put herself within inches of his face. “Your children—they can change all of this. They can erase all of this nonsense and make the wrong things right. They cannot, however, do it alone. They will need your help, Christopher. To you, time is linear, moving in a single, definable direction and never coming back around. To you, the past is the past, what’s done is done, and can’t be changed.”
Reaching forward, she placed her hand gently on Chris’ shoulder, her fingers so long that they extended halfway down his back. “I know better than that. Though I’ve only recently picked up the blue flame thing, I understand all too well that it’s never too late to start again.”
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CHAPTER 42
OF RAPSCALLIONS AND PIRATE CAPTAINS
*
The group consisting of Nicky, Staci, Tommy, Krystoph, Nestor and the Tycarian soldiers quickly made the transition from the small island to the deck of the Briar Patch, utilizing one of the long piers built into the shore by the Ochans. For a moment, Staci hesitated before stepping onto the ship, not only because she was terrified by the idea of being on the ocean, alone and surrounded by water, but also because the ship itself honestly didn’t look seaworthy. Up close, it seemed even older and more poorly made than it had from a distance. The massive wooden planks making up the deck were warped, twisting and bending in ways wood shouldn’t be capable of twisting or bending. The nails holding them together had long since rusted through, chips of crumpled steel scattered about like dandruff. Every inch of the huge, rickety structure was creaking and grinding, its joints worn to the nub like the bones of an old man suffering from severe arthritis. Looking up, Staci stared at the odd design etched onto the worn blue fabric of one of the sails. At first glance, it seemed to be a very normal, very predictable skull and crossbones. The only difference was a pair of boney rabbit ears protruding from the top. Glancing to her left, she noticed that Nicky was staring strangely at the design as well. Turning toward her, the boy shrugged his shoulders, equally confused as she. The various creatures roaming the deck and tending to ropes, chains and various tattered tarps looked nearly as grimy, old and filthy as the ship itself. Their clothes were ripped and torn, seeming like they hadn’t been washed in years and smelling much the same. A scruffy faced, four-foot tall pudgy gray thing, covered in roll-after-roll of excess skin, approached the children, sniffing the air in their general area with a moist black nose. Reaching up, he lifted a dangling flap of skin from over his eyes and smiled wide in Staci’s direction. His mouth contained a total of three, maybe four, yellow tinted teeth just barely holding onto the binds keeping them tied to his gums. She could only assume that the rest had fallen out years ago due to some sort of decay.
Dropping the skin flap back over his eyes, he gave her an awkward salute. “Welcome to the Briar Patch, m’lady.” His voice was like gravel and smelled like a garbage bag full of dirty diapers. Staci returned the smile awkwardly, slowly backing away until she bumped into Tommy’s chest and could go no further.
At that exact moment, the door to an outhouse-sized box rising from the center of the deck swung suddenly open, and a plume of accumulated gray dust took to the air in the aftermath. “Get a move on, ya useless scallywags! If we aren’t back to sea in five minutes, I’ll start tossing yer filthy hides overboard one atta time!”
From the darkened doorway stepped what seemed, at first glance, to be a three-foot tall bunny rabbit. His fur was gray and crusty, matted together in thick clumps that were in desperate need of a thorough combing. His whiskers were bent at strange, almost painful looking angles. Like every other creature on the ship, his clothes were a disgusting, dirty-stained mess of mismatched fabrics scavenged and pieced together without rhyme or reason. On his head he wore a comically oversized pirate hat with two holes cut into it that allowed his equally filthy ears to poke through.
Near the bow of the ship, the scruffy bunny took note of the fact that one of the deckhands seemed a bit lost. Covered in dark brown fur, the creature was walking back and forth aimlessly, unsure of where he should be and what he should be doing. Rearing back, the rabbit captain tossed the empty bottle in his left paw at the confused deckhand’s head, connecting with a deep echoing clank. “Get a move on, ya lousy rapscallion, or I promise you’ll be swimmin’ wit’ the sea dragons quicker than you can say ‘Please, oh please, don’t make me swim wit’ the sea dragons, Cap’n!’”
Afterward, the captain scanned the remainder of his ship, seeming eternally upset and occasionally grunting in dissatisfaction. Shaking his head, he turned his attention to his ship’s newest passengers. His small round eyes came to an immediate stop on Krystoph, and it was there they lingered while he drank in every single solitary inch of the massive, stone-faced Ochan. For years he’d avoided Ochans whenever possible. For years he’d seen them as enemies and nothing more. To see one standing on the deck of his ship felt odd, just plain wrong.
Moving on, the captain glanced briefly at the children, his expression one of mild disgust coupled with a fair amount of confusion. It was when his eyes at last settled on Nestor that his appearance changed dramatically, and a wide smile instantly stretched out from under his puffy, fur-covered cheeks.
“Nestor Rockshell, ya ol’ bottomfeeder! It’s good to see ya again!” Anxiously closing the distance between the two, the captain smacked Nestor on the back of his shell playfully. “Sorry ‘bout makin’ ya sweat a bit, but these days ya can’t sail more than an hour without running into one of those damn scalefaces! The seas are infested with ‘em, I tell ya …infested!”
Nestor smiled back in the half-smile, half-growl sort of way he often did. “It is of no worry, old friend. Most important is that you arrived in one piece.”
“Course I did, course I did. I’da never let ya down, pally! I still owe ya and the Fightin’ Fifth for savin’ my puffy gray keyster in Scarburough two years ago. Always do right by yer friends, I say; it’s the pirate way.”
With a long drawn out creak followed by a series of smaller clanks, grinds and thumps, the Briar Patch began to slowly pull away from the pier, swaying gently back and forth momentarily as it prepared to move to open sea. Losing her balance, Sta
ci stumbled forward. Wrapping his arms around her, Tommy saved her once again from falling flat on her face.
He was making a habit of this.
The dirty bunny captain leaned in close to Nestor and whispered with a sigh, “Argh, that one’s not whatcha might consider sea worthy, is she?”
Before Nestor could respond, the voice of Krystoph tore its way into the conversation. “Set your bearing north. Do not deviate from the heading.”
The former Ochan general had grown weary of idle conversation and tired of pointless small talk. His focus remained on recovering the Rongstag, and the incredible distance they had yet to travel before reaching it. Everything else was a waste of time. Everything else was meaningless.
An instant scowl appeared on the face of the Briar Patch’s captain. “Don’t ya be thinkin’ that ya got a right to tell me which direction my ship sails, ya limey green-skinned cancer.” From his side he pulled a dagger about five inches long before using the dangerous looking tip to lift the brim of his hat from his marble-sized eyes. “If it weren’t for ol’ Nestor here, one the likes of you wouldn’t be allowed to set foot on me ship. I’da slit yer throat the moment I caught a glimpse of yer green hide.”
In direct response to the little captain’s comment, Krystoph slowly removed one of his many blades from its sheath as well. Cold, black and dangerous, his eyes settled directly on the somewhat diminutive form of the dusty rabbit. Briefly his upper lip quivered, exposing the jagged teeth underneath. The hands of both creatures tightened the grip on their respective weapons, preparing themselves for what now seemed inevitable.
Sensing the situation was a moment away from getting out of hand, Nestor stepped between the snarling, posturing pair. “Enough of this nonsense; it solves nothing. We share the same goal and fighting amongst ourselves succeeds only in making the attainment of it less likely.”
Both Krystoph and the captain reluctantly returned their weapons to their holsters. Not before shooting each other glances so sharply telling they could cut glass, of course.
Angrily Krystoph moved away from the group. Mumbling under his breath, he headed to the side of the ship, opting to calm his fiery temper by gazing over the endlessness of the water world known as Aquari. It had been so long since he was there. As a general rule, the Ochan race had never much cared for the ocean; in fact, most of them hated it with a passion. This was partly the reason Krystoph opted to hide the Rongstag beneath the tumultuous Aquari waves in the first place. Though Krystoph couldn’t honestly say that he was “fond” of this world, he did not hate it either. There was cleanliness about it, a simplicity that he found not entirely unappealing. For a moment he allowed the salty-cool odor of the ocean fill his head, wipe his brain clean and remind him of why he was here, of why he made the decision to allow these useless creatures to join him in his cause in the first place. Partially frozen images of his wife and his family flashed like bizarre solar flares behind his eyes. He would never forget their faces. For as long as he breathed, he would never forget their faces. Nor did he harbor any desire to.
Having calmed himself somewhat, the raggedy rabbit captain turned again to face the children. Momentarily frozen in place, none had moved. Taking two steps forward, the scruffy captain came within inches of Tommy’s face, sniffing at the air around the boy, then grimacing as if the child smelled awful.
“I ain’t much for prophecies,” The furry little creature stated plainly, poking Tommy’s chest with a single stubby finger on his fat padded paw. “It all seems like a load of gobbeldy-gook if’n yer askin’ me. I’ve learned over the years that ya can only believe what ya can see, and I ain’t seein’ much from you at the moment, mate.”
Tommy chose not to respond, mostly because he couldn’t think of a single thing to say.
“I owe that mound of shelled goop over there my life, though,” the captain continued, now pointing toward Nestor. “For that reason alone, I’m willin’ to take ya where it is yer headin’.” Shaking his head again, he began moving away from the children and up a set of stairs to a slightly more elevated section of the ship.
Crossing his arms, he turned again to survey the entire group. “In case I didn’t mention it, the name’s Captain Jacques Fluuffytail. It’d be in yer best interest to keep in mind that it’s pronounced Floo-fee-tall and not fluffy-tail. See that you get it right, cause friendship or not, you flub me name and I’ll toss yer caboose right over the side! Welcome to the Briar Patch, kiddies. She’s a dirty ol’ bird, ‘n she’s got a wild temper, but she’ll get ya where ya wanna go in one piece, if’n lady luck sees fit to shine a little bit of her goodness on us, of course. We got a long journey ahead of us, so I suggest ya settle in!”
Behind Staci another tattered dark blue sail dropped from high above, instantly catching the wind and ballooning. Caught off guard by the noise, her heart did a double-take and her body jumped slightly. Over the side of the creaky ship, thick waves smashed against the wood angrily. Cascades of water sprayed onto the deck in haphazard intervals, pooling under the soles of her shoes, instantly making her feel queasy and tying her mostly empty stomach into knots. Behind her, the beach seemed far away, getting further by the second. Ahead there lay only the ocean and its bizarre, untold dangers. To her left, she watched as the reddish colored sun began its long descent into night. It would be dark soon. From here on out, there would be only darkness and waves and the unknown.
More than ever, she wished she could go home.
*
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CHAPTER 43
HOLLOW SHELL
*
His wife was an exquisite creature. Sensual, defined, yet effortless, she had been gifted with features the vast majority of Ochan females would quite literally kill for. Stepping through the front door of the modest dwelling he called home, located within the safety of his king’s castle, he was immediately greeted by her sly smile. Her sturdy form melted into his arms, resulting in a familiar oneness that felt comfortable, safe and warm. He had been away too long and he had missed this. While no doubt rewarding in ways that could not be matched, leading a war on so many fronts had proven superbly taxing, requiring him to dig deeper into the reserves of his strength than he had ever dug before. The fortitude of his enemies had surprised him. The Tycarians in particular fought with intelligence and fever neither he nor the king anticipated. The Tycarian leader was blessed with a warrior’s spirit, crafty and flexible; when shoved, he often shoved back. Eventually though, he would misstep, as they all did. This Tycarian would succumb to the might of the Ochan race the same as the rest.
Gently, his wife touched her lips to his. The feeling was electric, instantly doing away with thoughts of bothersome Tycarian kings and wars that had not gone exactly as planned. Wrapping her arms around him, she unlatched his breastplate, lifting the weighty armor from his shoulders and allowing his tense muscles to at last relax. The familiar chill of her flesh was intoxicating, drawing him closer still as she wrapped herself again in his arms. This was the moment he longed for, the moment he dreamt of so often while wading in the throes of conquest. Were it physically possible, he would have bottled this exact instant, corked it and carried it around his neck, saving it for those instances when he needed it most.
This moment was beautiful and right and perfect; it was also, unfortunately, no longer real.
Now little more than a memory, the moment was fading, as all memories do. The reality of what was now and what was real collapsed inward, unceremoniously swallowing all things good and beautiful and simple. When the hungry beast at last had its fill, what remained was dark and frightening and confused. Engulfed in a smoky haze of agony, his body racked with such pain that pain had become the norm, his limp form was dragged miles below the surface of Ocha. Here his throat was slit and he was left to rot within the sweltering heat of the fire caves. This was the punishment for failing to satisfy the every desire of his king; this was the punishment for a lifetime of unwavering service. His wife was gone, as was his
family, their tattered and torn bodies left on display in the king’s courtyard, turned from living things into trophies and warning signs. What remained of his body now teetered on the edge of a massive chasm extending to the center of Ocha. At the bottom, there was only fire, fire and a heat so ungodly it could easily reduce his body to little more than ashes in a fraction of a second. Already the incredible heat from below had begun to sear his bruised and battered exterior, slowly cooking and charring his dark green skin a dirty, grayish brown. From a crack in the rock underneath him came a trail of combustion beetles. No bigger than a single fingernail, the hungry creatures could sense his presence from miles away. It had been months since they’d dined on tender, delicious Ochan flesh. Forced to live off much smaller, far less satisfying creatures, they were hungry and anxious to gorge themselves. Numbering in the thousands, the tiny coal black insects with their oversized jaws began pouring from various cracks in the stone cavern around him, their nimble legs hungrily propelling them forward. Though he could sense their presence, he was unable to move from their path or defend himself in any way. Too many beatings had been suffered, too many bones left broken and useless, too much blood lost to the sand underneath. He was helpless. He was worthless. He was food. Like a living black blanket, all at once the beetles converged on his fallen form, digging their way hungrily into his open sores, tearing at his flesh and peeling it from his body, eating him alive. Like the world in which they resided, the beetles were capable of producing small yet dangerous flames from an appendage attached to their heads. Much in the way one might utilize a blowtorch, the tiny creatures used this incredible burst of interior fire to slice into his flesh, opening wounds further and making it easier for them to crawl inside.
