Forts: Endings and Beginnings Read online

  “I believe I can be of service, Christopher Jarvis.”

  The voice came from behind Chris and his heart jumped. Spinning in place, the man turned in its direction and extended his weapon forward defensively. Towering above him and staring down through a pair of tiny eyes, the faintest trickle of blood seeping from between his almost nonexistent lips was Asop.

  Chris lowered his weapon and wiped a layer of sweat from his forehead. “What’re you? I mean, you…y-you know where my son is?”

  Asop’s transparent head tilted upward, his eyes drifting slowly north. “Indeed. I can see the child at this very moment.” His slim mouth opened just a smidge and hung there, his eyes impossibly far away. “He is so very bright.”

  *

  *

  CHAPTER 55

  NINE LIVES

  *

  The roar of war was deafening. Owen could hear it everywhere: attacking his ears from every corner, digging inside and making itself at home. He couldn’t stop crying. The liquid pouring from his eyes was without end, a waterfall of emotions from a stream that had been dammed for far too many years. Digging his palms into his eye sockets, the boy pressed inward until it hurt, until it felt like the reverse side was touching brain. Something was on fire nearby. He could hear the crackle of the flames and smell the awful black smoke. There was another scent, clinging to the familiar odor of fiery wood like the aftertaste of rotten food. It was the smell of cooking flesh. He hated that he knew that smell, that he could discern it from the others. It didn’t seem right. Owen pressed harder against his pupils. He wanted it all to go away. He wanted it to disappear and never come back. The specifics of how and why this would occur no longer mattered. He simply wanted it gone. When a pair of hands wedged themselves under his armpits and began to lift him into the air, Owen didn’t struggle. He didn’t care who it was or what they planned on doing to him. He was done fighting and done trying to be something that he wasn’t. When those very same arms forced him to stand upright and turned him in their direction, he didn’t even bother to open his eyes or pull the hands from his face. A part of him expected to feel a knife in his belly while another part wondered how badly it would hurt. Another part simply hoped it would end quickly.

  “You’ve got to help me out here, buddy!”

  The voice was familiar. Owen didn’t care.

  “I know you’re hurt and I know it’s hard, but we don’t have time for this, Owen!”

  The hands wrapped themselves around his wrists, attempting to wrench his palms from his face.

  “Come on! Give me something to work with! We need to get moving! If we stay here we’re dead!”

  Still Owen remained firm, physically unable to do anything other than nothing at all.

  “I’ve been dead enough times already. I’m not all that anxious to do it again!”

  Forcefully the hands tugged Owen’s arms from his face and the boy briefly opened his tear-soaked eyes. Standing in front of him, covered in dirt, coated in bruises and struggling to maintain a steady breath, was the one-time Chintaran builder, Fellow Undergotten.

  Fellow steadied himself, ignored the waves of pain coursing through his body and focused on the defeated child sobbing before him. Reaching forward he placed his chilly hand against Owen’s face. “Look at me, kiddo.”

  Owen’s head sank low, his watery eyes focusing on his shoes and the frozen dirt underneath. What was his father going to say when he saw how filthy his shoes were? He wouldn’t be happy.

  “Owen, I need you to look at me,” Fellow stated calmly, blood pouring from various abrasions across the whole of his body, his insides twisted, coiled and straining.

  Owen Little responded with a stutter and a snort, his breaths ragged and uneven.

  Fellow reached up and placed his hand against the chilly, red-tinted flesh of the boy’s cheek. “Come on pal, you can do it. You’re strong enough.”

  When Owen swallowed, it hurt. His throat was as worn and raw as the rest of him. He was tired, he was hungry, and no part of him had any interest whatsoever in acknowledging Fellow Undergotten. However, for reasons he wasn’t entirely sure of, his body betrayed his mind and his head slowly tilted upward. Through salty eyes, the boy stared into the massive blue pupils of his Chintaran friend. Fellow looked as beaten as he felt, and maybe not so strangely, Owen found some solace in this fact.

  Fellow Undergotten sighed, shook his head, and grinned. “You saved my butt back there. You kids are beginning to make a habit of it.”

  Though Owen didn’t smile, he breathed deeply, nodded, then reached up and wiped the partially frozen stream of tears from his face. Fellow smeared away the remainder with his palm.

  With a grunt, the Chintaran rose to his feet. The muscles in his body had long since reached their limit. He was running on fumes. This wasn’t his second wind so much as it was his ninth. More blood had seeped from his wounds than was left inside. Fellow inhaled deeply and held it in his lungs for a moment before his punctured lungs were forced to relent.

  Though it was a decidedly difficult thing to admit, he doubted he had many breaths left.

  Glancing over Owen’s head, the fish man scanned the battle raging across the courtyard. It was a terrifying sight. Though he’d seen variations of the scene numerous times over the course of the war, he’d never allowed himself to become at home with it. He couldn’t and he wouldn’t. Still, even the Chintaran was forced to admit that he hadn’t seen destruction on this level in quite some time; not since the Ochans invaded his world, not since they took his family and changed his life forever. No matter what happened to him, he needed to protect the boy. This was his cause and this was his excuse for continuing to press forward. This was the reason he could ignore the inevitability of what lay ahead. He needed to protect the boy. The prophecy would take care of the rest.

  “We have to find someplace to hide,” Fellow mumbled as he grabbed hold of Owen’s wrist and tugged the shivering child onto his feet.

  A second later the pair was moving further into the castle, heading toward a half collapsed slave hut off in the distance. Occasionally they would duck alongside a wagon, into a doorway, or behind a bit of collapsed wall to keep from being spotted. Fellow considered asking Owen to simply work his magic and make them invisible, but honestly doubted the boy was in any sort of mental state to pull it off. While Owen was following along, Fellow had to pull him the entire way. Though his eyes were open, there was nothing going on behind. When a pack of Scarbeaks passed overhead in hot pursuit of a Sea Dragon with two Aquari solders on its back, Fellow wrapped his arms around the boy and dropped face first to the ground. A nearly blinding rush of pain moved from the wound in his stomach and across the whole of his body. His limbs fell loose and his vision blurred. A liquid, partly mucus and mostly blood, drooled from between his lips as he settled into a particularly fierce fit of coughs. The pain caught him off guard. He wasn’t expecting it or prepared to deal with it.

  A switch had been flipped.

  When the danger passed and Fellow tried to stand, his muscles refused to play along. They’d had enough. They were done fighting. Against his will, Fellow’s head lowered to the dirt. He couldn’t breathe. His legs would simply not move. Something in his back popped and cracked. When he finally exhaled, it was deep and long. Of all the breaths he’d taken and forgotten, or never bothered to notice in the first place, this was the most memorable. It was the sort of breath he’d waited years to release, the sort of breath in which everything was at last let go.

  It was the sort of breath you can only take once.

  The blood soaked gurgle of Fellow Undergotten yanked Owen back to reality. Realizing that the fish man had gone limp, he wrapped his arms around Fellow and lifted his body with a huff and a scowl. Scooting across the dirt, he managed to prop the Chintaran’s limp form against a nearby piece of shattered wall.

  Fellow was far away now. One world blurred into the next, then back again briefly. Lazily his eyes drifted upward. For him
the landscape of the universe was changing: a puddle spreading outward and becoming a lake, a lake expanding into an ocean.

  The obvious distance in Fellow’s eyes spurred Owen’s lips back to life. “No! No, wait a minute, no!”

  The boy’s hands slid across the fish man’s face, shaking his head in a desperate attempt to bring him back from wherever it was he was headed.

  For a moment it worked. Fellow’s eyes drifted from the blurring shapes above to the terrified face of Owen Little just inches away. His bloody lips cracked, straining to smile yet for some reason wanting badly to do exactly that.

  The swelling emotions in Owen’s chest blasted upward and erupted from the corner of his eyes once again. He wrapped his arms around Fellow and buried his head into the neck of his friend. “Please-no. You can’t go. Please don’t go.”

  Though in reality his arms were no longer able to move, Fellow Undergotten could sense them lift from his sides and wrap around the boy. Without touching Owen, he could feel him. He inhaled softly through his cracked mouth, tasting the scent of the child on his lips. For the moment the familiar flavor was an anchor: the massive weight at the end of a rusty chain pulled to its limits and threatening to shatter. It was the only thing holding him in place. It was the only thing keeping him among the living. Blurry remembrances of his youth floated past Fellow’s eyes as his gaze shifted slowly to the expanding universe above once again.

  His voice was a whisper now, so subtle it barely found its way to Owen’s ear. “It’s okay. We’ll be safe here. They’ll…never…find us here.”

  He had no idea what he was saying. His words were simply words and nothing more. In this case it was the inflection that mattered. It was the act of speaking them that was important.

  Owen peeled himself from Fellow’s chest and stared at the blue-skinned man, his eyes red and puffy and his nose leaking a salty discharge into the crest of his lips. He watched as Fellow’s eyelids began to droop, as his head tilted further backward and the already miniscule puffs of smoke from between his lips tapered off and faded away.

  Fellow was dying.

  The fish man’s mouth barely moved when he next spoke: “I did good. We’ll be safe here. I promise; they…won’t…find us…here.”

  Owen dropped his head and placed his hand gently on Fellow’s chest. His skin was cold and getting colder. His breaths evaporated. Behind him, Owen could hear the unmistakable sounds of battle rising in volume as the fighting spread further into the castle and closer to the spot where he and Fellow sat. His friend was confused. They weren’t hidden at all. If they remained exactly where they were, an Ochan soldier would eventually discover them. With his free hand, Owen wiped the tears from his face, steadied his jittery jaw and stared again into the faraway eyes of his friend. He watched as Fellow Undergotten took his final breath, as his eyes slipped backward and the muscles in his neck fell limp. His blue head dipped to the side, and it was over.

  His hand still pressed against Fellow’s chest, Owen whispered. “You’re right. We’ll be safe here.”

  The bodies of them both disappeared.

  *

  *

  CHAPTER 56

  A PLAN COMES TOGETHER

  *

  With Tommy Jarvis, Pleebo, and Arthur Crumbee following close behind, Krystoph led the group through the musty-dark corridors of Kragamel’s castle and into the dungeons hidden below. The former Ochan general knew of many entrances to the fire caves scattered throughout the castle. The one he settled on was chosen for its proximity to their previous location, and nothing more. As fate would have it, this point of access was the exact one utilized by the king himself not long before. When Krystoph approached the massive steel door leading to the fiery underground, he stopped, paused and glared downward angrily. In the dust at the base of door, he noticed a set of footprints. They were fresh. They were also familiar.

  “What is it?” Pleebo whispered from behind, his bony fingers tapping nervously on the shoulders of young Tommy Jarvis.

  The muscles in the Ochan’s neck tightened. His upper lip curled sharply, exposing the discolored fangs underneath.

  His response was essentially a growl. “Hurm. Nothing.”

  A moment later, the group was moving forward again. After making their way through the ancient steel door, they began their descent. The further they progressed, the more anxious Tommy began to feel. His skin was tingling, his fingers drumming at the denim of his filth-crusted jeans. Though he had no idea exactly why, he felt as if he was getting close to something important with every step.

  As he touched the boy’s shoulders, Pleebo felt almost as if he were holding back a bolt of lightning, like he was the only thing keeping it at bay. When the hairs on his head began to stand at attention, he thought it wise to remove his hands from Tommy’s shoulders.

  When they reached the base of the dusty stairwell, the foursome began to move slowly into the massive cavern where the very soul of Ocha boiled and spit from deep below. Krystoph stepped into the open first, the heat from the fiery crevasse across from him warming the flesh of his face to uncomfortable, almost painful levels. It was at this very moment that he heard the voice—or rather, the voices. The bizarre combination of seven simultaneous sounds melted into one. It was the unforgettable one-speak of the conjurer council.

  “It is done, my lord.”

  Though he felt no different physically, Kragamel grinned upon hearing the words of his faithful seven. Across from him, the decrepit old creatures peeled their hands from the motionless body of Staci Alexander and stared in the direction of their king while attempting to catch their breath. The extraction of the young child’s powers had left them tired and weary. She’d proved far stronger than they imagined, and she’d fought until the very end. The conjurers were brutal, however, dedicated to their king and determined to retrieve what he sought so dearly. In the end, the screams of the girl accomplished little. The weary eyes of the ancient seven moved from their king to the group of four standing some distance behind him and near the entrance to the caves. One after another the seven mystics lowered their heads, retreating to the shadowy safety of their dusty cloaks. The moment had arrived: the one Nelvo the Fillagrou prophesized and the one they’d been waiting for. This was the beginning of the end.

  Kragamel didn’t need to see the movement of his conjurers’ eyes, or register the subtle change in their body language, to understand they were no longer alone. He heard the scuffling of approaching feet thirty seconds ago. Like static electricity, he could feel the presence of the intruders on his skin. While his conjurers chose to recoil at the approaching storm, to hide their heads and scurry for cover, the tyrant King would do no such thing. He was prepared. The muscles in his shoulders tightened. His lips quivered with anticipation. He twisted his head and popped the bones in his neck. The sound echoed across the orange colored cavern. This was the moment he’d waited for. This was his opportunity to stand defiant in the face of fate, to laugh at the foolishness of the universe.

  Tommy pressed past Krystoph and his gaze moved instantly to the pack of cloaked creatures huddled in a circle near the edge of the molten ravine. Poking out from the center of the group was a single foot with an oddly familiar shoe. He knew that shoe. Krystoph reached out and snagged hold of the boy’s arm. Tommy growled, wiggled free and strode forward. The closer he got to the group, the more he could make out. The foot became a leg, and the leg led to a torso. Resting loosely atop the torso was head. It was Staci’s. The pace of Tommy’s legs kicked into gear and his hurried breath followed suit. She was unconscious, sprawled on her back in the dirt with clumpy strands of brown hair cascading across her shiny-wet face. She wasn’t breathing. Tommy’s hands coiled into fists, and every millimeter of every muscle in his body lurched. Something below the flesh of his fingers popped to life. His already warm flesh began to heat rapidly; bits of sparkling electricity popped off his skin and shot from between the cracks in his tightly pursed lips. His eyes moved from St
aci and the conjurers to the massive Ochan standing beside them. The creature hadn’t turned around. Why wouldn’t he turn around? Somewhere behind him the boy heard Krystoph shout. He couldn’t make out a single word. Honestly, he didn’t much care.

  Kragamel, however, very clearly heard the child approaching. His smile stretched wider than ever. Even before he turned, the Ochan king knew exactly who was behind him. It didn’t matter that he’d never met the boy or even seen his face. He could hear the wonderful crackling energy dancing off his skin and feel the reverberations of that very energy in his joints and muscles. It was feverishly pouring across him, sliding through the microscopic pores in his flesh and coating the bones underneath. It was alive and it was angry.

  He wanted it.

  When he turned, the tyrant king was bathed in a wall of light. It rolled over him like a tsunami. It coated his flesh like glue and instantly began to feast on all things organic and tasty. Less than a second after feeling its initial sting, Kragamel’s skin began to peel away from his body and evaporate. A fire as blistering as the awfulness swelling up from the center of Ocha ripped at him from the inside out. At the very same time, an unseen force smacked him in the chest, shattered his ribs and reduced his spine to little more than bits of jagged, unconnected bone and floating cartilage. Deep within the charred husk of his body, his overheated organs swelled, popped and spewed their acidy liquid across his insides. Inside the shell of his skull, the king’s brain exploded.

  Tommy’s hands extended forward as a mountain of white-hot light poured like liquid from his fingertips. He screamed from behind an enraged grimace, his mouth opened wide and a beam of destructive energy bursting from within. Behind him and off in the distance he could he could still hear Pleebo shouting, the familiar voice of Arthur Crumbee sprinkled into the mix. Tommy was doing exactly what he told himself he shouldn’t. Just as he’d done on Fluuffytail’s ship, he was exploding. Though he was aware of this fact, he couldn’t bring himself to stop. The image of Staci had wedged itself between the folds of his brain and refused to be pushed aside or reasoned with. The initial detonation of time slowed to a crawl and soon after began to fade into sleep. To his left, a mountain of fire erupted from the over-swelled belly of Ocha. The nastiness shot forty feet into the air, where it collided with the rocky ceiling overhead and immediately spread outward. Bits of molten fire trickled down like rain and evaporated off the layer of crackling energy encasing the boy’s body. In this instance Tommy could see only Staci, spread out in the dirt with her mouth hanging open and her eyes closed shut. Nothing else mattered.