Forts: Liars and Thieves

by Steven Novak

  Through a pair of still sleepily fluttering eyelids, Staci scanned the area around her. Wherever she was, it was dark. This much went without saying. The air was thick, heavy and so incredibly cold that her every breath came to life in smoky puffs from between her cracked lips. Though much of the strange new world remained foggy, Staci instantly recognized thick vertical strips of black less than ten feet away; they were iron, steel or some sort of metal. They were bars. Grunting deeply, she forced herself into something slightly resembling a sitting position. Scooting on her rear across the cold stone, she propped her body against the back wall and relaxed for a moment, attempting to let the pain in her torso subside a bit.

  Closing her eyes, she tried her best to recall the moments leading up to the moment she awoke in this foul smelling place. Though it should have been simple, the act proved remarkably difficult. Everything was fuzzy, out of focus and jumbled like puzzle pieces scattered in tall grass. She could vaguely recall Aquari, the Briar Patch, the explosions, and Tommy pressed to her chest, unconscious—wait. Where was Tommy? There was also something black - something ugly and dark. Though it was difficult to nail down the awful thing’s exact shape, she vaguely recalled an expanding void of some sort, something she noticed from miles above.

  What happened to Tommy? Where was Tommy? As her eyes began slowly adjusting to the low light, Staci took note of a familiar shape in the cell across from her. Sprawled on the floor of the dreary, ten-by-ten enclosure opposite her own was none other than Donald Rondage. The same hair, the same ugly green shirt; it had to be Donald. Crawling across the floor on her hands and knees, Staci pressed her head between the bars anxiously, happy to see a familiar face, even if it was Donald’s.

  Wary of her surroundings and who might be listening, her voice remained a cautious whisper. “Donald? Donald, is that you?”

  The Donald shape didn’t move. In fact, the boy’s face remained smashed against the freezing stone the entire time, offering no acknowledgement whatsoever of her frantic whispers.

  Reaching up, Staci wrapped her frozen hands around the ice cold steel and called to his motionless body once more. “Donald, wake up.”

  Though much of the boy was obscured by the shadows, she was sure it was him. It had to be him; who else could it be? It couldn’t be anyone else.

  “Donald, it’s Staci. Please, wake up, please!” The volume of her voice rose significantly, teetering perilously on the thin line separating a whisper from a full on scream.

  Still there was no movement. If, in fact, the prone figure locked behind the bars on the opposite end of the dark hallway was Donald Rondage, he was either unconscious or dead. Staci’s body shuddered at the possibility of the second option being true.

  From the shadows to her left, something chuckled. Startled, she immediately slid away from the bars to the rear of the cell until she was unable to move further. From the shadows of the darkened hallway stepped a pair of muscled Ochans holding bows nearly the length of their bodies. From the blackness to the right of them stepped two more. Wide, disgusting smiles were spread across each of the soldiers’ dark green faces as they cackled slyly in her direction. The previously motionless body of Donald Rondage wearily looked up and stared at her with a set of sad, defeated eyes. This was not the Donald Rondage she’d known all her life. This was someone else. They’d done something to him. They’d changed him. Seconds later, the boy lowered his head to the floor again with a breathy sigh. From somewhere further down the hall came the sound of a massive steel lock and the creak of a door swinging open. A pair of thunderous echoing footsteps followed immediately. Something large was coming her way.

  When at last the footsteps stopped, the shadows began to speak, the voice more frightening than anything Staci had heard over the course of her young life: “Escort the boy to his permanent cell.”

  After unlocking Donald’s cell, two of the Ochans lifted him into a standing position while the remaining two kept their weapons trained on his every subtle movement. The weapons, however, proved unnecessary. At no point did Donald fight, fuss, or even make a sound. His limbs had gone loose, wobbly, and ultimately useless. His head hung shamefully low as the massive creatures dragged him further down the hall and out of sight. At no point did he even glance in Staci’s direction. He acted as if she was already dead, and maybe it was the truth.

  When they had gone, the frightening voice rose from the shadows once more. “Fret not, little one. I have not forgotten about you.”

  Stepping into the light, the tyrant king of Ocha at last exposed himself to the shivering girl. He was a massive creature, larger than any of the Ochans Staci had the unpleasantness of meeting thus far. His beard was long and gray, his eyes containing the absence of anything calling itself color. Though the enormous creature had yet to formally introduce himself as the Ochan king, somehow Staci understood this was the case. In truth, he could have been no other.

  “There will be ample time for you and me to become better acquainted over the course of the next few weeks, little one. You see, there is something locked inside of you that I would very much like to have for myself, and I will have it, no matter what. Even if it requires me to slice you open and rip it out with my bare hands.”

  Staci’s body instantly froze.

  This had absolutely nothing to do with the temperature.

  *

  *

  CHAPTER 69

  CASTAWAY

  *

  Time passed, as time tends to do. When Tommy Jarvis at last opened his eyes, he found himself staring at a sky filled with clouds, stars, and the yellow-red glow of a sinking sun on the horizon. In this briefest of instants, both night and day were as one, harmoniously sharing the heavens and morphing into a glorious amalgamation of the two, which resulted in something unique, beautiful and astoundingly different. In a universe priding itself on repetition, different is often a welcome distraction from the norm.

  Every square inch of Tommy’s body felt drained and worthless, as if he’d been sliced open and emptied out. His stomach gurgled while his head throbbed, the sensations competing for his attention. The violent sounds of battle had faded away some time ago. All that remained were the waves, the breeze, and his uneven breath. Tommy enjoyed the familiarity of each sound individually, but appreciated them considerably more as a set. The silence was a welcome guest, and the hush of near-nothingness a comforting ally. Though every inch of his body ached to continue his simple slumber, he sensed the presence of the frustrating necessity to wake.

  Wearily flopping his head to the side, Tommy spotted only ocean: water, more water and still more after that, crystal blue for as far as he could see. Resting comfortably on the sea shelf in the distance was the Aquari sun. More crimson red than yellow in hue, it had only recently begun to dip below the horizon. Beyond it, the outlines of the pastel-colored moons had begun to fade into the purple-blue sky. Despite the obvious differences, for the most part the sky in this world was remarkably similar to the place he called home. Tommy found this fact oddly comforting in a strange, slightly unsettling sort of way.

  Allowing his loose head to flop to the left, he spotted yet more water. Over the tips of his dirty shoes, more still. Everything was gone. The Briar Patch, the Ochan vessels, Nestor, Captain Fluuffytail, his brother—gone without a trace, as if they never existed. Slowly Tommy’s fingers began to creep to life, lightly tracing the finely sculpted contours of the solid object on which he currently floated. The details felt familiar. He’d seen them before. They were letters, letters that once spelled the words Briar Patch.

  He was floating on what little remained of Fluuffytail’s ship.

  Unable to maneuver his extremities further than a few inches in any direction, Tommy dropped his head to the floating timber beneath him and sighed deeply. While he appreciated the fact that his memories were crystal clear, they were almost too crystal and too clear. It was as if he was seeing them through the eyes of another, observing rather than participating. He co
uld recall everything, every detail to its absolute fullest. Every excruciating second of every unbearable minute began replaying in his head.

  He knew exactly what he’d done.

  The instant Staci was captured, lifted into the air and taken away from him, something inside him tore in two. The concepts of rescuing and helping, or simply preserving, no longer mattered. Revenge instead became the priority. It suddenly wasn’t enough for the Ochans to go away or even just die. For the briefest of moments, Tommy wanted much more than that; he wanted to be the one to kill them. He wanted to see their faces and watch them scream, to bathe in the dusty cloud created by their charred corpses. As the awful blackness began pouring from his fingertips, he knew exactly what would happen, how it would happen, and what would likely be the end result. What he did, he did of sound mind and without a moment’s hesitation. What he did, he enjoyed doing. The realization of this sent an immediate, horrifying chill down his spine. The fact that he could not only entertain such ideas, but carry them out, was beyond words terrifying for the fourteen-year old boy.

  It made no sense, and yet it made perfect sense.

  What had he done? Nicky, Staci and Nestor: they were all gone and it was his fault. They were all gone and they weren’t coming back. In the end, it wasn’t the muscle-bound lizards with the teeth for days, and weapons larger than the whole of his young body that did them in; it was he and he alone. Coaxing his aching, useless muscles to life, Tommy managed to awkwardly prop himself onto his elbows with a pained grunt. His skin felt salty and damp, sticky with the dew of the ocean breeze. Gazing over the waters surrounding him, he could see nothing but an endless sea seeming to stretch on forever. How long had he been out here? How long had he been unconscious? How long had he been at the mercy of the tides? His clothes were shredded and filthy, his hair a sticky-stiff mess of dirty blond fibers. His mouth felt as dry as his stomach did empty. When was the last time he ate? He couldn’t remember. Save for the single piece of wood he was currently lying on, there were no other signs of the battle that raged atop these waters: no fabric, or steel, or flesh, not even a splinter of wood. Everything was gone. He and the ocean had taken it all.

  Dropping his head to the lumber, Tommy buried his face in his hands. It didn’t make any sense. Nothing made any sense. His chest felt heavy and his ribs sore. In spite of the incredibly open space in which he found himself, the world felt as if it was closing in. Lifting his legs to his chest, he coiled into the fetal position as his body began to shake uncontrollably, the shattered wood beneath wobbling atop the uneven waves. Tommy Jarvis was alone with nowhere to go and no one to turn to, alone again. He’d lost everything he cared about, everyone who meant anything at all to him. He’d lost them all and they weren’t coming back. He’d lost them and it was his fault.

  Shivering atop the thick, slippery wood and the gently rolling waves, something quite uncommon happened to young Tommy Jarvis. For the first time in a very long time, he began to cry. Eventually the crying transformed into a lingering sob, drenching his face in tears, eyes suddenly afire with molten lava. In time, the sobs stretched angrily into frustrated, shamed screams. It had been so long since he’d cried, screamed or allowed himself to feel anything at all—so very long, much too long. Despite the pain and the sadness, it felt good.

  Tommy cried for hours, emptying himself of everything he’d built up inside and cursing himself for the things he’d done. When there were no more tears left to shed, he fell back into sleep. It was here he planned to spend what remained of his life. He would just go to sleep and stay asleep. Like an insect, hunger would pick away at him in small bites until there was nothing left. He was content to die here, to pass willingly into the unconscious world, never wake up, and eventually draw to a close. This was where it would end for him, alone among the waves of this faraway place. A part of him doubted he deserved even this, after all he’d done. He was worse than his father ever was. He was worse than Krystoph or the king of Ocha or all of them combined. He had become a killer. A quiet end among the gentle waters was far more than he deserved. Due to a lack of options, however, it would have to do. Inhaling deeply, Tommy closed his eyes and rested his heavy head roughly on the tear-stained wood. In the end, he believed dying would be easy, much easier than living ever was.

  Tommy’s sleep proved to be a deeper, more relaxing sleep than he’d had in years, the kind of sleep that could only come when one finds themselves having reached the end, where nothing was left and nothing mattered. A dreamless sleep in which there was only silence and darkness, and the all too quick passing of time.

  His sleep did not last forever, no matter how much he wished it could. When Tommy next opened his weary eyes, the sky above was black, punctuated by a vast array of stars and ghostly space gasses thinly connecting them somewhere deep in the void. It was an incredible sight, a fantasy almost too beautiful to exist in the real world. He’d never seen anything like it.

  Never had he wanted to see anything less.

  On the brink of tears once again, Tommy glanced in the direction of his feet. Though everything around him was dark, there was something oddly darker protruding from the waters ahead, something his floating piece of debris was gradually moving toward. The closer he got to the ominous black shape, the more it came into focus. Land. He was floating toward land. Barely more than a hundred yards across, this bit of solid ground among the vast Aquari ocean looked at first glance to be little more than a massive grayish-black stone. At its apex, the dark rock came to a terrifyingly pointed tip rising at least fifty yards above sea level. Dark, slimy, and covered sporadically in a disgusting green-blue moss, the patch of land looked lifeless and dead.

  Drifting ever closer to the jagged stones, Tommy’s floating debris was pulled toward a cave cut into the side that vaguely resembled the mouth of an enormous, toothy beast anxious to gobble him up. The dead rock was swallowing him whole. Still incredibly weak, he managed to prop himself onto his elbows once again. The act left him surprisingly winded and sore. From there, he gritted his teeth, winced, and found the energy to crawl to his knees. The moment he drifted into the cave, the stars disappeared and everything went black. Unable to see beyond a few inches, the cave’s interior offered nothing, and yet somehow even less than that. This was the absence of nothing; this was a void and the absence of a void.

  The breezy sea air suddenly turned sharp, stiff and cold, as the winds disappeared completely. Intent on devouring everything in its path, the darkness took even the sounds of the waves and replaced them with the whispers and echoes of what they once were. Careful not to lose his balance, Tommy’s muscles tightened as he leaned forward into the nothingness. Squinting his eyes, he tried his best to locate something solid, anything at all that might give him a sense of where he was and what was around him. The void offered nothing in return. With his breath becoming more ragged, Tommy realized that even it sounded noticeably different now, lagging and distant, the wheeze of a tired old man who had lost the ability to properly breathe, and the willingness to try. With a sudden jerk, the floating wood beneath Tommy’s knees came to an abrupt stop that tossed him violently forward. Rolling head-over-heels, he somersaulted onto something slippery, solid, and cold as ice. The movement sent a shock of pain across the whole of his already sore back. Arms outstretched, breathing heavily while trying to ignore this new twinge of pain, Tommy cautiously attempted to stand. The ground felt as if it had been greased, which forced him to be extra careful so that his feet didn’t slide out from underneath him. The air was different here than it had been a moment ago, colder and clingier. It latched to his skin and drenched him in a slimy, sticky, entirely uncomfortable wetness.

  Quite suddenly, from the darkness came a sound: footsteps. Immediately following the footsteps, a whisper floated in from all directions at once, bouncing back and forth off the hidden cave walls. The sound caught Tommy off guard; both his heart and his body jumped. As he took a step backward, he lost his balance and crashed to his rear
on the slippery stiffness beneath. Again came the whisper, only this time it was not one, but two. The words were garbled, too dreamy and distant for him to make sense of.

  Before Tommy’s brain could convince him otherwise, his mouth muttered the word, “Hello?”

  He didn’t know why he said it. In fact, it seemed quite a stupid thing to do. If there was something hidden among the shadows and whispering from the void, informing it of his location was probably not the wisest decision. In the end, however, what difference did it make? If the whispers ultimately led to a monster and resulted in his being gobbled up, so be it. This was what he wanted anyway. It was what he deserved. He had screwed up, he had failed, and he was done. He was tired, and he didn’t want to play anymore. Enough was enough.

  A part of him hoped the end would be painless, while another still wished for the exact opposite.

  Closing his eyes, Tommy took a deep breath and dug his nails into the slippery cold ground before stating sternly to the shadows, “I’m over here.”

  At first his voice was barely above a whisper. The volume, however, rose in conjunction with his growing anxiousness and fear. “I’m over here! I’m right here!”

  Again came the whispers, this time in closer succession, a million tiny voices from a million tiny people calling to him from throughout the endless black.

  Taking less care than before, Tommy stood once again, his frozen hands pulled into icy fists, his face contorting into a jumble of sharp angles. “I’m right here! Come and get me!”

  The sound of his voice echoed across the dark expanse, mixing with the whispers rapidly turning into something better described as chatter. Surrounded entirely by the bizarre sounds, Tommy took a step forward angrily, anxious to put an end to this nonsense, anxious to put an end to himself.