Forts: Endings and Beginnings

by Steven Novak

  Nearly swallowed by the smoldering radiance, his glowing mother’s head tilted to the side subtly. After gently kissing her palm, she pouted her lighted lips and blew it in Tommy’s direction. “I love you, my beautiful boy. I love you so much. Go find them. Go find them and do what must be done.”

  Unable to breathe, or speak, or formulate a cohesive thought, Tommy dropped to his knees, arms dangling at his side, defeated. “Please don’t leave me, not again…” Barely a whisper, his heartfelt plea fell on deaf ears.

  Almost an afterthought, his mother’s voice rose from the crisp white one last time. “Follow the little scientist, Tommy. Let him lead the way.”

  A moment later, she was gone.

  Having evaporated into the endless glowing chasm, the variations in tone making up the entirety of her body turned bright and white, and empty, before disappearing completely. Moments afterward the vast whiteness began to morph into something gray, and the gray transformed into a shade more closely resembling black. From somewhere behind Tommy’s crumpled silhouette a cold breeze settled in, traveled up his shirt and caused the hairs on the back of his neck to stand at attention. Wherever he was, whatever the thing so painfully resembling his mother might have been was gone. Suddenly he could feel the cold wet stone underneath him once again. The familiar sounds of gently flowing tides and falling droplets of water from above materialized from the chilly darkness. He was back in the cave. He was back among the living and the real, and all the miserable things his life had become. He was back in a world where his mother didn’t exist, awakened suddenly from his dream, when all he wanted was sleep, and to keep sleeping until time ceased to have meaning. Lowering himself to the stone, Tommy curled into a ball and tucked his knees beneath his chin. Why did she have to go? Why did she have to leave him again?

  Sobbing into the edges of his stiff kneecaps, he could faintly hear something moving in the distance. The sound of a pebble breaking loose and rolling across the stone echoed throughout the cavern. This was followed almost immediately by footsteps. At this point though, Tommy simply didn’t care. Nothing mattered. Not any more. Ignoring the fact that the footsteps were getting progressively louder, he didn’t move a muscle. There was no point. Even when it became obvious that whoever created them was likely standing over him, he still refused to move. If it were a monster come to tear him into tiny, easily swallowed slices, so what? He hoped it enjoyed the meal. He hoped it choked on his bones.

  Something small and stiff poked him in the shoulder. “Excuse me.”

  After a brief pause came another poke, this time more insistent. “Pardon me, child. I mean, I don’t mean to pry, but how—how did you do that?”

  Grumbling, Tommy pulled his legs tighter to his chest and rolled away from the annoying pokes and the whiny, slightly high-pitched voice. “Leave me alone.”

  “I’m sorry. I wish I could, I really do, but I can’t. I mean, I’d be happy to and I assure you I have no intentions of starting any trouble. I just can’t, not until I know how you managed to do what it is you’ve just done. I don’t understand why it would react to you in that way. It’s never done that before. It’s never done anything like that as a matter fact. It—it doesn’t make any sense.”

  His face pressed against the damp rock, Tommy reiterated his stance, hoping beyond hope that the annoying, poke-happy thing would go away and leave him with his sadness. “Leave me alone.”

  “I’m sorry child, but as a scientist I simply cannot do that, not after what you’ve just done.”

  Scientist? Did it say scientist?

  Uncoiling himself from the fetal position, Tommy rolled onto his back and looked in the direction of the insistent voice and the poking fingers. Standing above him with a dimly lit torch extended high above its head was a barely four-foot tall, round-bodied creature with deep purple skin and a monocle wedged underneath a flap of skin covering nearly half of one of its droopy eyes.

  “Did you say scientist?”

  The pudgy little creature took a single step backward, noticeably frightened by the sudden movements of the previously motionless boy. Swallowing deep, it adjusted the filthy, torn and frayed necktie dangling from his neck.

  “I did indeed, child. The name is Crumbee, Arthur Crumbee the Third. I have a feeling we have a great deal to discuss.”

  *

  CHAPTER 3

  ALIVE AND WELL

  *

  The air smelled sterile, like a hospital or a freshly scrubbed bathroom. It was far too clean for its own good. Nicky Jarvis’s eyes began to flutter as he struggled to open them, and the world slithered slowly into focus. Above him floated a hodgepodge of swirling blues and pale greens set against a backdrop of ungodly bright white. Though it seemed impossible, the ceiling was moving. The ceiling was alive. Where was he, and how did he get here?

  The last thing he could remember was being held tightly against Nestor’s cold, stiff shell while the enormous turtle man ran him from one end of the Briar Patch to the other. Kneeling near the center of the ship, his older brother was weakening, the protective bubble sprouting magically from his hands fading along with him.

  Lifting his tired arm, Nicky gently massaged the muscles in his throat. They felt raw and gravelly. He grimaced while attempting to swallow the lump lodged halfway down his neck.

  What happened to Tommy? Where was his brother?

  Propping onto his elbows he noticed that the ground beneath was uneven and spongy. Like gelatin, it pressed inward as he put weight on it, and bounced back into place when he changed position. After unsuccessfully attempting to rub the soreness from his eyes, he spotted Nestor’s massive body sprawled across the odd rubbery floor twenty feet away. Not far behind him the gnarly-haired Captain Fluuffytail and some of his crew were stacked into a haphazard, rather uncomfortable looking pile nearly seven feet tall. Were it not for the subtle movements of their chests and the wheezy-snore slipping past Fluuffytail’s furry lips, Nicky might have assumed them dead. Awkwardly managing to stand on the uneven ground, he began scanning the room around him. The bizarre snaking and weaving colors of the ceiling and the floor carried over onto the walls as well. There seemed to be no corners of which to speak. Everything was rounded and curvy, pulled slightly more taut where the edges should meet, like the surface of an inflated balloon. Most importantly, he didn’t see anything even remotely resembling a door. He didn’t like this place, not one bit. Even with its strangely beautiful swirling colors.

  A room without a door is never a good thing.

  Nicky was rapidly growing sick of places he couldn’t get out of. He was tired of being held against his will. Moving as quickly as he could on the awkward, bouncy floor he made his way over to Nestor and the others. In his excited state he was moving too quickly. Less than three feet from the enormous turtle, his lack of coordination, coupled with the difficult to navigate floor, quite predictably got the better of him. Seconds later his face was where his feet should be, and vice-versa. Allowing his outstretched forearms to take the brunt of the fall, he slammed into Nestor’s shell and rolled to the side before at last coming to a stop on top of the Tycarian’s unconscious face. The weight of the child, not to mention the fact that his nasal passages were suddenly blocked, instantly roused Nestor from his slumber.

  Unsure of his whereabouts or what exactly what was happening, the muscled Tycarian soldier shoved Nicky off his head while propping himself into a sitting position and pulling his paws into tight fists. His warrior instincts kicked in and took hold. “I shall not go down without a fight, you scoundrels!”

  Though at first energized and ready to brawl, Nestor quickly regained a firm grasp on his surroundings, realized there was no immediate danger, and relaxed. After briefly scanning the swirling enclosure, his gaze settled at last on young Nicky Jarvis less then five feet away. The frightened boy was staring back at him with wide, worried eyes.

  Nestor quickly regained his composure. “My apologies, Nicholas. Are you unharmed?”

&
nbsp; Shaking his head, Nicky attempted to stand once more, but stumbled on the rubbery floor and fell flat on his face.

  Using one of his enormous flat fingers, Nestor poked the odd substance underneath him thoughtfully and grumbled below his breath with noticeable wonderment. “How truly bizarre…”

  In all his years and all his varied travels he’d never seen anything even remotely similar to this. Quickly his brain replayed the moments leading to his waking with the pink-skinned child slouched over his face. He remembered lugging Nicky from one end of the Briar Patch to the other as the boy spewed incredible blasts of power from his mouth, obliterating Ochan warships by the tens. He recalled with extreme detail the protective bubble created by Tommy Jarvis giving way and evaporating into nothing. After that his memories were little more than scattered bits of nonsensical chaos. Captain Fluuffytail’s ship had been torn to shreds by the Ochan attack – reduced to airborne pockets of fire and wild, jagged debris. He and the boy were tossed into the waters of Aquari – but then what? Once submerged in the chilly drink, there was only darkness. Everything after this moment remained a mystery, an endless black wall of ambiguity providing no hint whatsoever of his current whereabouts. As a soldier, Nestor prided himself on knowledge as much as skill. A warrior without both was no warrior at all. A warrior without both might as well be dead. This frustrating lack of information bothered him to no end.

  Carefully balancing himself on the wobbly floor, Nicky finally arrived at Nestor’s side and immediately used the humongous shell of the turtle man as a brace.

  “Where are we?”

  Unfortunately Nestor had no answer for the child. “I am unsure, lad. Nothing of this place seems familiar.”

  This was not the response Nicky was hoping for.

  “Get offa me, ya useless piles of megalot plop!” Emerging from the bottom of the pile of creatures near the opposite end of the room, the voice of Captain Jaques Fluuffytail instantly drew the attention of both Nicky and Nestor.

  Managing to worm his way from beneath the sleepy, filthy and rather pungent smelling flesh of his crew, the frustrated captain leapt to his feet angrily. After brushing a layer of filth from his clothes, he took note of the fact that his gnarly old whiskers were significantly more bent than usual — though no one beside himself would have noticed the difference. There also seemed to be more than a few missing.

  Grabbing a handful of them between his furry fingers he began carefully counting. “One, two, three, four fi–yargh!” His head lowered, his expression turning dejected and forlorn, “Only four remain? Four measly whiskers? Damn green-skinned bastards have left me with the whiskers of a year old pup!”

  His sadness quickly transformed to anger, an emotion he understood far better.

  Spinning in place, Fluuffytail turned to his still slumbering crew and began kicking them with his oversized foot. “Wake up! Ya sleepy-eyed lame brains! We ain’t dead yet, and we gots a heap a’work to do!”

  Slowly the eleven surviving members of the confused crew began to stir, wake, roll off one another, and absorb their odd new surroundings. At the very bottom of the pile Nestor noticed a familiar face: one of his fellow soldiers, Reginald Stoneback. After shaking the proverbial cobwebs from his head and briefly taking in his new surroundings, Reginald made his way to Nestor and Nicky.

  Now on his feet, Nestor moved to Reginald’s side and patted his comrade stiffly on the shoulder. “It is good to see you alive and well, my friend.”

  Reginald smiled back. “Indeed. I assure you the feeling is quite mutual, sir.”

  Moving away from the group, Nicky tiptoed to the far end of the delicately curved room and started timidly poking at the incredible swirling sponge wall. Using it as a brace, he walked along the exterior, feeling for anything that could possibly be used as an exit.

  Taking note of the inquisitive child over his shoulder, Nestor called out to him. “Careful, lad. We know nothing of this place. I would advise we proceed with extreme caution.”

  As if on cue, the moment Nestor finished his sentence, a low hum began emanating from somewhere beyond the peculiar swirling walls.

  “I–I–I didn’t do anything!” Nicky yelped with noticeable fear in his cracking voice He stepped away from the walls with his hands in the air.

  Nestor quickly bounced to the boy’s side and pulled him close. All at once the twisting colors making up the entirety of the room began spinning at a much faster rate. The eccentric hues were smashing into each other — bending, folding, evaporating, and doing things that simply shouldn’t be possible. All the while, the steady hum outside continued to rise in volume. While reaching for his trusty dagger, Captain Fluuffytail realized it was no longer in its holster. In fact, the weapons of his entire crew, not to mention Nestor and Reginald, seemed to have mysteriously disappeared. In one incredibly quick movement, the random twisting colors blasted across the walls and converged on a single point near the rear of the enclosure. Looping and weaving into each other, they rearranged themselves into a single, solitary hue that then morphed into a shape vaguely resembling a doorway. Rounded at the edges, it was reminiscent of something a child might draw, an idea of a door rather than anything existing in reality. Nestor, Nicky, Reginald, plus Jacques and his crew grouped together in a single, tightly packed lump near the center of the room, cautiously taking in the incredible sight. As quickly as the outer hum began, it disappeared. When it was gone, the amorphous, quivering doorway began to slowly open.

  Nestor tightened his grip on Nicky’s shoulder, maneuvering the child protectively behind him and Reginald and muttering through tight lips. “Stay close, lad.”

  When the doorway had opened completely, an amazingly tall, impossibly skinny creature lowered its head and stepped gracefully into the room. Its skin seemed almost translucent, cool blue and dark red veins clearly visible just underneath the slimy surface. Below the layer of veins, there looked to be an ever-so-subtle hint of something resembling bone. Thought its head seemed almost too massive for its slim shoulders to bear, the creature moved as if it was floating on air and slowly approached the confused group of survivors. A pair of tiny eyes sprang to life from the nothingness of its shiny, expressionless face. Shortly thereafter, a mouth slithered into existence as well.

  In a voice so light it hung in the air like a leaf in the breeze, the ten foot tall translucent thing softly whispered: “Welcome to Nasdi. It is with some regret that I must now ask you to leave.”

  *

  CHAPTER 4

  A TYCARIAN RAIN

  *

  Since the murder of the Tycarian King, Walcott Shellamennes, it had rained nonstop. In a world unaccustomed to such, the sudden change in weather proved both worrisome and frustrating to the tyrant king of Ocha. Word of the massive losses his armada of warships suffered in the Aquari Sea did little to improve his state of mind. Hundreds of ships and thousands of soldiers were lost, including his most recently appointed General, Thrax. To clarify however, it was not so much the losses themselves that bothered him. In fact, losing soldiers, ships, and weapons of war was something he’d become quite accustomed to. The idea that they were lost to a single broken down ferry and its weary crew of outcasts and half-breeds was beyond words, and quite annoying. Making matters worse, the Rongstag remained undiscovered, and it would likely take months before the search could begin anew.

  Despite all of this, King Kragamel refused to view the mission as a complete failure. After all, it had brought to him the female child. His personal circle of conjurer mystics had informed him numerous times that the girl and the girl alone would ultimately prove the key to the survival of the Ochan race. Ships could be rebuilt, and there was no shortage of soldiers in Ocha willing to die in the name of their king. To lose both the girl and the Rongstag would have been disastrous. He had one, and for the moment one would have to be enough. His conjurers had never steered him wrong. If it was it not for their dedicated counsel, he might not have found himself holding sway over ninety-
nine worlds. The seven creatures assured him they could unlock the powers of both the female and her pudgy, pink-skinned compatriot. Once unlocked, they could be understood. Once understood, they could be controlled. Once controlled, the Ochan mystics would bestow unto their king strength the likes of which the world had never known. With the incredible magic of these children at his fingertips, there would be no stopping him. Be it man, beast, or god, no force in this world or the next would dare challenge his rule. The power of the universe in the palm of his hand — the prospect of such a thing was, quite simply, intoxicating.

  Hearing a particularly sturdy rap on his chamber door, the king moved away from the window in front of which he was standing. He was sick of the disgusting moisture tumbling from the clouds anyway. It was mocking him. He would no longer provide it an audience. A distraction was needed.

  With a heavy sigh, the massive-bodied Ochan reclined into the elaborately decorated throne near the end of the chamber and solemnly stated, “Enter.”

  The nearly twenty foot tall doors on the opposite end of the room slowly swung inward, pushed open by a pair of burly guards just outside. Once the enormous doors had opened completely, the guards lowered their heads and quietly returned to the shadows of the darkened hallway. A third Ochan soldier made his way into the king’s darkened chamber. Noticeably taller and thinner than his peers, yet no less sturdy or capable, the muscular, stoic-faced soldier briskly made his way across the room, coming to a stop at the feet of the king.

  Removing his charcoal-colored helmet he dropped assuredly to one knee and bowed his head. “Sire, I am at your service.”