Forts: Liars and Thieves

by Steven Novak

  Dangling somewhere between the conscious and unconscious world, Nicky whispered through jittery lips, “Tommy? Wh–where’s–where’s my bro-brother?”

  Though partially obscured by a thick layer of hazy madness, Nestor spotted a shape vaguely reminiscent of Tommy Jarvis near what little remained of the rear of the Briar Patch. The boy seemed woozy, not fully aware of where he was or what was happening. His body, however, was lit up like a candle in a darkened room. Flashes of blue lightning popped occasionally from his hunched shoulders and tightly closed fists. A familiar white light crackled and hummed off his skin, rising and falling in time with the boy’s rapidly increasing breaths. To Nestor’s surprise, he noticed that Staci was nowhere to be found. Smack dab in the middle of the thirty or so feet separating the Tycarian from Tommy’s glowing form, another cannonball collapsed the deck of the ship, ripping it into smoking cinders. In its wake, a mountain of smoke immediately billowed twenty feet into the air. The violent collision of steel and wood lifted the deck beneath Nestor’s feet and threw the Tycarian and Nicky backward through a wall of flames, over what remained of the ships railing and into the frothy drink. With the freezing water rushing up around him, Nicky Jarvis at last dropped fully into unconsciousness.

  Having already made his decision to leave the ship, witnessing Tommy’s Jarvis’s protective shield disappear succeeded only in furthering the resolve of Krystoph. The Rongstag could not be allowed to return to the hands of the king. Without it, Krystoph’s plan and his work meant nothing; without it, there would be no revenge. Less than a second after the boy’s bubble dropped away, the deck of the Briar Patch was bombarded by enemy fire. As cannonballs began to tear the ship to pieces, the deck beneath Krystoph’s feet snapped in two down the middle, and shattered, and broken boards flipped upward violently and smacked him in the face. A moment later, much of the ship was engulfed in flames. Monstrous plumes of black smoke and ash flashed into the sky and blocked out the clouds and the sun.

  With a hailstorm of arrows raining down around him, Krystoph grabbed the still flaming corpse of a crewmember and hoisted it high above his head. Using the creature’s body as a shield, he quickly made his way across the battered ship. Walls of black smoke and airborne debris had drastically reduced visibility, even for a pair of eyes as trained and capable as his. Darting through the smoke as another cannonball laid waste to the deck nearby, the former Ochan general gazed out across the Aquari sea. The Ochan fleet had momentarily halted its advance, choosing instead to pelt the suddenly helpless ship from afar. While it was a coward’s maneuver, it was also an intelligent maneuver. Smoking hunks of wood and steel had transformed the ocean into an awful, lumpy flaming stew. Frothing angrily, the waves lashed at the busted remains of the Briar Patch, aiding the Ochan vessels in their cause. It would seem the universe had grown weary of the scuffle. It too wanted the battle to end, and it wanted it to end now.

  Behind Krystoph, the familiar squawk of a Scarbeak managed to somehow slice through the crazed nastiness. Though obscured by a wall of flames, it was obvious by the sound that it was indeed close by; the creature was somewhere on the deck of the ship. After tossing the arrow-riddled corpse above his head into the water, Krystoph dropped to a crouched position and leapt through a wall of crackling orange-red fire. Sliding across the slippery deck on the other side, portions of his pants now ablaze, he looked up just in time to spot the enormous winged monster lift off the tattered remains of the deck and take to the sky. Gripped between its gangly toenails was the human female, Staci Alexander. Screaming at the top of her lungs, limbs flailing wildly as tears poured down her filthy soot-covered face, Staci was carried upward and into the billowing smoke, where she eventually disappeared from view.

  Remaining on the deck below, Tommy Jarvis screamed, pounding his clenched fists into the puddles beneath his knees, an ominous, familiar and exceptionally dangerous light beginning to rapidly spread across his body. Again the boy screamed, and again he slammed his fists into the broken husk beneath his knees. Instantly Krystoph recognized the expression on Tommy’s face. It was the look created when loss and frustration had become entirely too much to bear, the look created at the moment when an absolute, unending rage snagged whatever good might remain and strangled it from existence. Krystoph so easily recognized the expression because he had been wearing it himself for some time. Lurching forward, Tommy buried his head between his tightly drawn fists, breathing heavily as the light covering his body began to convulse and spew flashes of shaky, angry electricity.

  He was losing control of his powers. That much was obvious.

  Now more than ever, Krystoph knew he needed to get off the ship. Directly across from Tommy, the front of the Briar Patch was hammered with a series of violent cannon blasts. The heavy weapons ripped away a gargantuan chunk of Fluuffytail’s ship and sent it spiraling to the depths of the ocean below. Through the dusty insanity, Krystoph noticed a second Scarbeak circling the area of the dying ship much the way a vulture might its prey. The rear section of the Briar Patch lifted into the air, beginning its slow slide forward into the cool churning waters. The black waters were hungry, and they would not be denied their meal. At no point did Krystoph allow the airborne Scarbeak to leave his line of sight. Eyeing it carefully, he watched it circle the ship’s broken husk, a heavily armored Ochan soldier planted firmly at the center of its impressive wingspan. When the beast was moments from completing its rotation, Krystoph charged full speed toward the shattered, sinking front hull. Passing by Tommy Jarvis at full speed, he glanced momentarily in the child’s direction. The electric light encasing Tommy was growing darker with every passing second, morphing into frighteningly deep purples, blues and blacks. This was a very different kind of magic than Krystoph had seen before. This magic was ugly. This magic was angry. Tommy’s eyes went dark and empty, tears like scalding hot lava seeping from the black caverns where his pupils once rested. Though the sight was undeniably amazing, Krystoph could afford to stare at the boy no longer. The pink-skinned child’s fate was his own, and maybe it was better that way. Krystoph understood he had only one shot to make this work, one shot to escape. Fail, and he’d be forced to face the wrath of the Ochan armada, or whatever dark thing Tommy Jarvis was becoming.

  At the exact moment the Scarbeak completed its circle, Krystoph leapt through a cloud of black smoke from the sinking ship and in its direction, as arrows and cannonballs whizzed past his airborne form. His body slammed full force into the Ochan seated on the back of the beast. The strength of the blow knocked the soldier from his perch and set him spinning into the shadowy waters below. Hoisting himself into the Scarbeak’s saddle, Krystoph kicked the creature stiffly in the side and tugged back on its reins. Altering the angle of its wings slightly, the monster immediately swung upward, heading full speed into the clouds above. It took only an instant for the beast to adapt to its new master.

  Far below, Captain Fluuffytail’s ship was barely recognizable. What little remained of the Briar Patch was hammered by an onslaught of cannon fire that instantly reduced the ship to barely more than a plume of awful black soot and wild fiery debris. From this cloud of craziness, however, something stirred, something black, and ugly and uncontrolled, something hungry for vengeance in a way to which only Krystoph could fully relate. The former Ochan general pulled tighter on the Scarbeak’s reins, and the creature’s wings began to pump double time. Soon the thick cloud cover overhead would engulf the pair completely. Krystoph understood just how important it was to get as high and far away from the battle below as possible. That was the only way he’d survive what came next.

  *

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  CHAPTER 66

  BREAKING POINT

  *

  For Tommy Jarvis, in the beginning there were only sounds. No longer able to sustain the copious amounts of energy flowing from his fingertips, a foggy, out of focus darkness settled in and he dropped to the sloppy-wet deck of the Briar Patch with a thump. With unconsciousness beginnin
g to grab hold of his senses and tug him downward, his brain pleaded for his body to continue fighting. Tommy knew he shouldn’t stop, understood full well that he couldn’t stop and exactly what would happen if he did. In reality, though, none of this mattered. He was simply too weak, and fighting the inevitable proved to be a pointless endeavor. Though visually the world around had faded into something dark, blurry and unrecognizable, Tommy’s other senses remained mostly sharp. The sound of snapping wood and the pained, helpless yelps of the ship’s crew pounded an awful out-of-tune beat against the interior of his skull and the exterior of his screaming brain. Perhaps not so surprisingly, the soft, familiar sobs of Staci managed to float just above the madness of the dying ship and the awful battle. She was whimpering, squeaking his name through cracked lips and dripping tears. He could feel the softness of her skin and the warmth of her chest as she hoisted his limp body closer, running her fingers through his hair and rocking him back and forth like a baby. In his mind, Tommy told her that it would be okay, that he wouldn’t let anyone hurt her. In his head, he convinced her that he just needed a little rest, just a moment of silence before he saved her and everyone else on the ship. His body, however, didn’t believe a word of this and ignored his brain, choosing instead to remain thoroughly unresponsive. Though only fourteen years of age, Tommy Jarvis had spent the majority of those years attempting to save everyone else in his life, often at the expense of his own wellbeing. For Tommy, the idea of something resembling a childhood had become an abstract, a concept devoid of meaning, a flawed hypothesis that would never truly be realized. For Tommy, there had always been and would always be only fighting, lies and sadness. What he was left with, in the aftermath of his youth, was an ugly, unending repetition without hope of parole.

  As one might imagine, he was tired of it.

  Sobbing wildly, Staci pulled her friend closer to her chest and dug her nose into the soft fibers of his sweat-soaked blond hair. Around her, the ship continued to be torn to pieces. Her world had quickly morphed into a jumbled mess of smoke, shrapnel and all the awful sounds accompanying them. The shabby, beaten remains of the Briar Patch squealed in agony as they were reduced to little more than flaming piles of waste. Closing her eyes, Staci’s body began to settle into a gentle sway, almost as if she were rocking her injured friend to sleep, yet praying beyond all hope that this didn’t happen. Most alarming to the young girl was the fact that in this single instant, quite possibly moments from her death, her mind had not wandered to her childhood or her friends or even her parents. Instead she could think of only one thing: Tommy Jarvis. More than anything in the universe, Staci didn’t want him to go and couldn’t imagine a world without him in it. Though she was uncertain at exactly which point over the last six months Tommy came to mean so much to her, the fact that he did was not only astounding, but terrifying.

  Squeezing his limp body tighter, she pulled him to her chest and buried her face in the crook of his neck while mumbling, “Please Tommy, please, not like this. Wake up, please, wake up.” His skin was cold and wet, sweating profusely like a chilly drink on a warm summer day.

  From somewhere behind, a cloud of soot rolled in like fog, engulfing the pair of sopping children. It was in this moment that Staci’s heart began to warm once again, and she smiled. The familiar feeling was a welcome one. She’d experienced it enough already to know what would come next. A wonderfully sweet tingling sensation spread quickly across her chest, into her shoulder, down her arms and into her hands. From there it squeezed through the tips of her fingers and into the flesh of Tommy’s back. Where moments before there was only emptiness, there was now fullness. Where there had only been sadness, now there were smiles. Staci was repairing him, filing his aching muscles with a renewed vigor the same as she’d done before. Breathing into Tommy’s neck, she bit her lower lip and closed her eyes and smiled.

  Everything would be better now. It had to be.

  Before the tingly glow could move outside of Tommy and to the remainder of Fluuffytail’s crew, however, thick leathery claws grabbed hold of Staci’s shoulders and lifted her into the air. As a set of horribly bent, painfully sharp fingernails dug nearly a quarter inch into her tender flesh, Staci screamed out loud and lurched her body forward, reaching for assistance from her sleepy-eyed friend. Unfortunately for her, Tommy was only partially aware of what was occurring, and unable to offer any assistance. The light from Staci’s heart tapered away, folded back into her hands, shot up her arms, across her shoulders, and returned at last to her chest. The wonderful, life-giving warmth had vanished entirely. As yet another cloud of smoke swallowed both she and the massive beast hauling her upward, she made one final bit of eye contact with the partially awake Tommy Jarvis before he and the ship and the madness of the battle were gone. Within a matter of seconds, she found herself high above, looking down on what little of the ship remained intact below. It was from this vantage point that she would witness the end game. It was from here she would watch her friend die.

  Not fully aware of what was happening, Tommy opened his eyes just in time to see Staci engulfed by a cloud of grayish smoke with tears pouring from her eyes as she reached for him. It was in this singular moment that everything changed.

  This was the precise instant that young Tommy Jarvis snapped.

  Something cold, dark and nasty, something hidden away, churning and bubbling and suppressed for years, began to boil to life deep within the core of the boy’s stomach. Like a bizarre eight-legged cancer advancing across the delicate filaments of a spider web, the awfulness spread across the interior of his body and into his fists. Slamming his knuckles into the charred remains of wood beneath his knees, Tommy screamed aloud as the crackling electricity from within began to spread into every hidden crevice of his body. Clouding his brain, the disgusting thing advanced into the spaces behind his eyes and pressed forward, instantly transforming them into something entirely different, a pit without a bottom, a hole with no end. To his left, Tommy watched blankly as the Ochan Krystoph ran past at full speed before disappearing into a cloud of smoke. He was running away. He was a coward. Behind Tommy, the remains of the Briar Patch lifted into the air as chilly sea water began to rush onto the utterly demolished deck. They had lost. The Ochans had won. They’d lost and the ship was sinking. Despite the victory, the Ochan armada continued its relentless assault on the defenseless vessel. Arrows and cannon fire pounded violently into the rotted and broken timbers beneath Tommy’s knees. They were breaking what had already been broken and beating what had been thoroughly beaten. This was an insult added to injury, the overkill of war at its absolute most pointless and ugly. Watching as the hungry water slowly swallowed the Briar Patch, Tommy understood its frustration and related to its pain. Not only did the Ochan vessels intend on sinking the ship, they hoped to wipe it from existence and erase it from memory. They’d won, and still they refused to relent. No one ever stopped. Nothing ever stopped. He wanted it to stop. He’d had enough of this and he wanted it to stop now.

  He wanted it to stop and he would make it stop.

  Rising slowly to his feet, Tommy suddenly realized that nothing mattered anymore. He had long forgotten about his brother, Staci, Pleebo and Walcott, the war and even his father. He simply wanted it all to end, to go away and never come back. He was tired of lying, tired of keeping things inside, and sick of being the sounding rod for the emotions of the emotionally unstable. He was sick of everything.

  As the last of the Briar Patch sank into the abyss, Tommy Jarvis and his awful black glow remained atop the water. Standing effortlessly on the surface, the boy bobbed in tune with the waves. Surrounding him were hundreds of ships as dark and foreboding as the nasty electricity crackling and popping off his salty-soaked flesh. For the first time in his life, Tommy understood without a shadow of a doubt what needed to be done, what he believed should have been done long ago. He had reached the point of no return. Not only had he crossed the line in the sand, he’d wiped it from existence. From this
point on, there would be no excuses and no forgiveness. From here on out, there would be no coming back. Life offered no second chances and neither would he.

  This was his breaking point.

  *

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  CHAPTER 67

  ANOTHER DEAD GENERAL

  *

  From his vessel miles away, General Thrax watched expressionless as a monstrous black void spread from the alien child’s body and began moving forward at a blistering pace while swallowing hundreds upon hundreds of his ships and wiping them from existence with horrifying ease.

  He had been lucky enough to survive this magic once. His luck, however, had run out.

  *

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  CHAPTER 68

  FAMILIAR FEELING

  *

  At some point, the pain of the Scarbeak’s claws digging into her flesh, not to mention the fact that she was sailing hundreds of feet above a vast endless ocean, became too much for Staci to bear, and she passed out. Time passed, though there was no way of telling exactly how much. Eventually, as all things did, Staci’s hibernation came to an end. The darkness began to patiently twist, mold and pop, like a lump of sparkly modeling clay in a darkened room. Empty cavernous blacks were given form, depth, and weight as the world sharpened slightly and stumbled awkwardly into focus.

  The muscles in her back and legs were sore. Having gone untreated, the wounds on her shoulder were throbbing significantly, caked in a crusty layer of dried blood. She was lying on something that felt like ice, though as hard as stone and equally uncomfortable. Her lower back ached, and her legs were tingling as if the blood had been drained from them. Her head seemed to weigh a thousand pounds, and when she attempted to lift it, her skull throbbed painfully. Every joint in her body felt stiff, as if they hadn’t moved in decades; ancient, delicate and brittle, they felt in danger of crumbling to dust at any given moment.