Forts: Liars and Thieves

by Steven Novak

  Again the guard closest to him lifted his arms and yawned, this time turning his back to Roustaf’s hay pile hiding place. The moment the burly Ochan closed his eyes and opened his mouth, the tiny winged man fluttered his wings at incredible speeds and blasted into the air. Within the blink of an eye, he’d flown nearly twenty feet straight up. A moment later and he was closer to forty. Once high enough, Roustaf changed his direction, now zooming toward the enormous outer wall of Kragamel’s castle. After clearing the wall, he again shot toward the ground where he changed direction once more, this time heading for the black hole in the Ochan soil that was the doorway to Fillagrou. Of all the doorways in all the worlds Roustaf had visited, this was the largest. So massive was it, in fact, that he believed his entire home world might actually be capable of fitting inside. Without a doubt, the concept was terrifying. Maneuvering just inches above the ground, the little man was making incredible time. He’d closed the distance between himself and the doorway in a matter of minutes. Moments before descending into the darkened pit, he noticed something out of the corner of his eye, something that forced him to dig his heels into the hard dirt and come to a sliding stop amidst a cloud of uprooted soil.

  It was Tahnja, Donald and the rest of the group, less than two or three hundred yards away.

  Having exited the doorway, they seemed to be on a direct course for Kragamel’s fortress with weapons at the ready. What they didn’t see, however, and Roustaf could, was the fact that a rather large, nasty looking regiment of Ochan soldiers had spotted them from a lookout post near the north end of the pit. Unsheathing their weapons, the Ochan contingent began moving in the direction of the group. In a matter of minutes they would be on top of them.

  In a matter of minutes, even more of Roustaf’s friends would be dead.

  *

  *

  CHAPTER 51

  MISTAKES AND REGRETS

  *

  While Owen lay curled on his side in the tiny dwelling, asleep and snoring louder than one might imagine possible based on his diminutive size, Chris Jarvis stared with some regret at the boy from the opposite end of the room. He looked so young, so innocent. He imagined what the boy’s father must have been thinking at that moment, wondering where his son was, wondering if he was okay. He wished Owen hadn’t followed him into the stream. There was no reason he needed to be there. The absolute silence in this place was unlike anything Chris had ever experienced. There were no crickets down here or bugs or anything creaking, crawling or chirping, and there was no breeze. In this bizarre city below the ground, there was nothing except quiet stacked on top of quiet and lathered with a thick, gooey layer of even more quiet on top of that. Though the strange skinny thing calling herself Zanell suggested he try and get some sleep, and claimed repeatedly that she would take him to his children in the morning, Chris had found sleeping impossible. There was simply too much going on, too much to think about, worry about and fret over. In the matter of a day, he’d been transported to another world, met creatures so bizarre they shouldn’t have existed, and learned that those very same creatures believed Tommy and Nicky were the realization of an ancient, rather confusing prophecy. Replaying the day’s events in his head, Chris chuckled to himself at the absurdity of it all. It was the plot of a poorly written story, the synopsis of a “B” grade late night movie. It was nonsense, and yet it was real, every bit of it.

  From the other end of the room, little Owen settled into a snoring fit so violent that it knocked the thick glasses from his face and into the dirt. Realizing there was no possible way he was going to get to sleep, Chris stood and dusted the sand off the rear of his khakis. Careful not to wake Owen, he tiptoed through the awkwardly constructed doorway and into the tunnels of New Tipoloo. The air was a bit less stuffy out there, though only a bit. The doorways dug into the soil on either side of the street were silent and unmoving, entire families of odd monsters residing sleepily behind. The light was dim, lit sparsely by torches hanging from the high ceiling above. Near the end of the street, partially obscured in shadow, Chris noticed a fairly average sized creature with an appearance slightly reminiscent of an upright walking fish. His body was covered in fine scales of varying blue hues creating striped patterns across whatever wasn’t obscured by clothing. The fish man was sitting on a massive grey rock that looked noticeably out of place among the surprisingly smooth and level streets. No doubt at some point during the construction of the city, it was decided that the stone was much too large to move or break apart, therefore it was left alone. Turning his head toward Chris, the fish man nodded; his face was noticeably sad, distant and forlorn. It was the face of someone who had lost and would lose again. It was a face Chris could instantly relate to. Breathing deeply, Chris mustered up some courage and began walking in the creature’s direction.

  Fellow Undergotten listened to the man’s every step as he approached from the other end of the dimly lit street. Like Chris, he too had found sleep to be an impossible dream. Though neither was aware as of yet, the reasons for their current case of insomnia were strikingly similar.

  “It’s a pleasure to finally meet you, Mr. Jarvis,” Fellow stated calmly, his voice just barely a notch above a whisper despite the fact that Chris was more than ten feet away. “I guess you’re having trouble sleeping too? You know, for the life of me, I’ll never figure out how everyone else around here manages to do it: sleep, I mean. Even with all this craziness going on around them, every night they drop their heads to the ground and drift away. It’s pretty remarkable when you think about it. Between you and me, though, it doesn’t make a whole heck of a lot of sense.”

  Coming to a stop a few feet from the fish man, Chris found himself unable come up with anything he considered appropriate from the wide variety of responses tumbling around in his head. In the end, he chose to not respond at all. Staring back at Fellow through a pair of unbelieving eyes, he was having problems dealing with the fact that a six foot tall fish was speaking to him as if there was absolutely nothing strange about the situation, as if this kind of thing happened every day.

  “The name’s Fellow Undergotten, by the way,” Fellow added with a half-hearted grin while extending his webbed hand in Chris’ direction.

  After another moment of hesitation, Chris reached forward, grasping the slightly slimy fish paw and shaking it gently.

  “I always wondered what you’d look like,” Fellow continued. “The kids and I never had much of an opportunity to talk about you, or their parents in general I guess.”

  Immediately Chris perked up. “The kids? Wait, you’ve met my boys?”

  “Sure. In fact, I wouldn’t be sitting here right now, working on only a few hours sleep, if it wasn’t for them.”

  Chris paused for a moment, his attention piqued. “What do you mean?”

  “Your kids saved my life, Mr. Jarvis, saved my life a couple of times in fact, along with the lives of a number of others around here.”

  His heart pounding and his legs wobbly, Chris suddenly found himself overcome with the need to sit on something solid, stable and familiar. Plopping himself into the dirt with his back against a nearby wall, he breathed deeply while trying to corral the chaos of emotions threatening to overtake him like an invading army.

  “Amazing children you’ve got there, very special …important too. You must have done something right to raise a couple boys like that.”

  The comment was like a dagger smashing through Chris’ ribcage and sinking into his heart. Whatever this six foot tall fish believed Tommy and Nicky were, whatever they’d accomplished, there was no doubt in Chris’ mind that it had very little to do with him. As far as fathers went, he was keenly aware that he had not been the best.

  Lowering his head, Chris sighed and briefly closed his eyes. “No, not me. Think maybe they got it from their mother.”

  “Well, where ever it came from,” Fellow responded politely, “They’re incredible creatures, your children. The things they can do. Well, they’re unbelie
vable.”

  The pair paused. From behind a nearby doorway wafted the soft hum of labored breathing, followed by a throaty garbled mumble. The creature passed out inside switched its position in mid-sleep, trying to get comfortable. When the breathing had disappeared, again came the silence.

  “I was a terrible father,” Chris stated plainly, staring at the fine grains of dirt beneath his feet. “When their mother passed—my wife—it hurt, hurt a lot. I was so damn caught up in myself that I didn’t stop to think about what they were going through. It was stupid, really damn stupid. I was …stupid.”

  The moment he finished the sentence, Chris wished he could take it back, wished he could wipe it from existence along with the last three or so years of his life. Why did he even say it? More importantly, why now? Of all the places and all the times, why did he choose this one to say the things it took him a month with a trained therapist to blurt out? A human sized fish in an underground tunnel filled with a bunch of characters from science-fiction comic books? It was idiotic. Suddenly he wanted to be somewhere else, anywhere other than there.

  Using the wall to brace himself, he rose to his feet while shaking his head. “You know what, I’m gonna get going. Getting tired. Need some sleep.”

  Chris managed to get only a few feet before he again heard the voice of Fellow Undergotten waft up behind him. “You remind me of Leeko.”

  Despite a mountain-sized lump of judgment telling him to ignore the comment and keep walking, Chris stopped. Not only did he stop, but he chose to speak, knowing full well that it would serve only to drag the uncomfortable conversation on longer. “Who’s Leeko?”

  “My brother—or at least he was my brother. Leeko was killed within a few days of the Ochan’s invasion of my world. I loved him. He was my best friend. You know, in that weird way only brothers can ever really understand.”

  Standing motionless a few feet away from Fellow, Chris now found himself listening as intently to the fish man as he’d ever listened to anyone in his life. Maybe it was the silence of the strange underground city, maybe it was the fact that the fish man seemed so incredibly bizarre he barely seemed real, or maybe it was simply that this was the exact opportunity Chris had been waiting for. Before him now, in a form he could never have imagined, was the chance to confess the things he’d done. This was an opportunity to free himself of burden.

  Fellow’s head drooped, his wide mouth coiling into a frown as he spoke. “Leeko never felt he was a very good father. He could be a little too harsh sometimes, a little too honest, distant and quiet, sometimes hard to read, and even harder to get a reaction from. It was just his way, though. He never really opened up to anyone but me and on the rare occasion he did, even then he was always guarded with his feelings. Everyone always thought he was rude and standoffish. I knew better though. He was as confused and insecure as any of us, he just expressed it differently. I remember one evening though; Nell and the children were asleep and we were sitting on his porch looking out over the lake. He was a little tipsy on Secardin Vino and he started to open up. He told me how much he wished things could have been different, how he had never been able relate to his children or to get close to them, and how much it bothered him. I could tell by the look on his face that he was ashamed. He tried to hide it, but we could never hide anything from each other, not since we were kids. He hated the way things turned out.”

  Sighing deeply, Chris lowered his head. The already stuffy air around him suddenly felt stuffier, thick and chunky. His lungs seemed to be having trouble making proper use of it. Still seated on the rock a few feet away, Fellow Undergotten looked up at him with a pair of large moist blue eyes, his expression remaining introspective and somber.

  “I’ll tell you what though, in the end, when the Ochans broke down the door to his house and grabbed his wife and kids, none of that mattered. The quiet, subdued Leeko I grew up with and watched grow into an adult was wiped from existence. My brother fought with everything he had to save his family. He loved his children more than anything in the world, and he wasn’t going to let those damn Ochan bastards hurt them. The soldiers cut my brother open at least a hundred times. They stabbed him, ripped him and tore him to shreds, hacked him to bits on the floor of his own home, and he never stopped fighting. After twenty minutes of working him over, there wasn’t any blood left in his body. He should have died ten times, and still he kept on swinging. He had to. They were his children. He loved them and he owed them.”

  Realizing that his mouth was hanging open, Chris quickly closed it. Realizing he hadn’t blinked in over two minutes, he decided to do that as well. The knot in his stomach had swelled to epic proportions and was now pressing against his interior lining painfully. Across from him, Fellow Undergotten wiped a barely noticeable stream of tears from the side of his face before reaching up with his webbed fingers to rub a pesky knot in the muscles of his neck. Chris noticed that the creature’s lower lip was quivering ever so slightly. He then realized his was doing the same. The once merely interesting silence of New Tipoloo had transformed into something dangerous, deafening and uncomfortable. Chris’ skin felt a size too small, as if he’d outgrown it somehow. More than ever, he wanted to get away. More than ever, he knew he couldn’t.

  Before either of the pair was given the opportunity to speak, the ground beneath their feet began to rumble violently, shattering the quiet veneer of the city into a million tiny jagged pieces. Fellow’s muscles stiffened, his body going rigid and straight. Again the ground shook, roaring angrily. Clumps of dirt tumbled from the ceiling, creating brownish puffs of supremely fine sand that had begun blanketing the tunnels of New Tipoloo. Rising from his rock, Fellow moved to Chris’ side. Reaching forward, he helped the man remain upright as another jolt nearly tossed the duo to the floor. From the doors lining the city streets, creatures of every shape and size emerged with a weapon in hand, expressions of confusion and anger sprawled upon their radically different faces. The rumbling was a sound most had heard before, caused by the gargantuan feet of Ochan digging beasts trouncing through the forest above. Immediately those calling New Tipoloo home assumed that like its predecessor, its location had been discovered. Gripping their weapons, they prepared for the inevitable battle. The steady rumbling knocked loose the candles dangling from the ceiling. Falling to the ground, they were snuffed out by the soil, bathing the entire city in the unknown of a terrifying blackness.

  “What the hell’s going on?” Chris Jarvis screamed, his breathing speedy and uneven as sweat poured down his face.

  Fellow’s response was steady calm. “I don’t know.”

  Moving toward the crowd while pulling Chris along with him, Fellow began shoving his way through the mass of anxious creatures, vibrations bouncing off the city walls.

  His head moving back and forth in small, quick jerks, the Chintaran raised his hand to the worried mass of alien flesh as their fear continued to mount. “Hold on a minute! Settle down! If they knew we were down here, we’d have digger heads crashing through the ceiling already!”

  Understanding that Fellow’s statement was most likely correct, the worried yelps of the group slowly reduced to mumbles and then eventually whispers.

  Rising from within the voices came a single recognizable question: “If they aren’t looking for us, what are they doing out here?”

  Almost instantly, Fellow knew the answer. To shake New Tipoloo the way it was currently shaking, the Ochans would have had to amass an absolutely massive group of soldiers, workers and slaves. Groups of this magnitude were generally assembled for one reason and one reason only: to invade. Turning his head slowly, Fellow stared at the frightened face of Chris Jarvis alongside him. Gazing up at the shaking ceiling, clouds of loose dirt dropping onto his head, the man seemed to have progressed beyond mere confusion and was now petrified with fear. The news that the Ochan convoy above was most likely headed in the direction of the last world left undiscovered—Chris’ world—wasn’t going to ease his worry.

 
; “I don’t know,” Fellow answered to the faceless voice among the crowd, though his gaze never moved from Chris. “I don’t know.”

  Though Fellow Undergotten had never much cared for lies, in this moment the lie made sense. In this instant the lie was the only choice.

  *

  *

  CHAPTER 52

  ONE MUST ESCAPE

  *

  Lifting one of the flat, oversized fingers on his paw to the crest of his lips, Walcott whispered, “Keep quiet and stay low, my friend.”

  Crouched beside him just outside the massive steel doorway leading to the work yard, and barely able to walk under his own power, was Pleebo. Scattered throughout the frozen area around them, creatures of every shape and size hammered mindlessly at the solid Ochan soil. Lit only by what remained of the descending sun and the luminescent moonlight only now beginning to take its place in the sky, the slaves were soulless husks of their former selves, barely there things tortured so badly they were no longer aware of their own existence. To these poor souls the world had long since faded away, replaced by pain: endless, unyielding pain, and nothing more. Strewn among the mass of zombies, Walcott spotted a few Tycarians, and his blood began to boil. Swallowing an overflowing of emotion, he fought the urge to charge to their aid, knowing full well that such an act would ultimately prove pointless. The things hacking mindlessly at the Ochan earth bore resemblance to no Tycarians he had ever encountered. Normally proud muscular legs had been reduced to gaunt, ghastly sticks, barely able to support the weight of their chipped and worn shells. The expressions hidden beneath the mass of scars and welts were blank, their faces a mass of wrinkles, drawn and crumpled like dirty-burnt paper. Though it pained him to the point of tears to admit it, at this point there was nothing he could do to save them. These hapless souls were no longer Tycarians; they hadn’t been for some time. The same as they had everything else, the Ochans had stolen this too. For him and Pleebo, however, there remained at the very least a glimmer of hope, a nugget of possibility vaguely reminiscent of a future. Beside him, his Fillagrou friend stumbled forward on wobbly uneven legs, his muscles struggling to remain in a partially crouched position. Walcott knew he needed to remain focused on Pleebo. There was hope for Pleebo. He would return for his brethren when the opportunity presented itself. He would not leave them to rot in this place.