by Steven Novak
To his right, a group of soldiers standing outside the slave hut with the supposed hiding place underneath, noticed the burly, fur-covered beast streaking across the courtyard and immediately bolted in his direction. Another pair followed a moment afterward, and two more after that. Within seconds, no less than fourteen Ochans were chasing Brutus toward the center of the courtyard. Like a well maintained and oiled war machine, the soldiers very quickly managed to create a sort of circle around him, boxing Brutus in and stopping him dead in his tracks. Planting his feet into the black snow, he came to a sliding stop. Brutus tightened his massive shoulders, lowered his stance, and pulled his hands into fists the size of turkeys. From the corner of his eye, he looked slyly in the direction of the window behind and watched as Tahnja stepped through and into the courtyard with Donald Rondage in her arms and Staci in tow. The guards surrounding him stopped running. They knew their prey had nowhere left to go. The chase had ended. Like a fly caught in a web, Brutus was trapped. One by one the muscled lizard men removed their weapons of choice, grinning menacingly through rows of jagged yellow-stained teeth. Slowly rotating in place, Brutus observed the snarling monsters carefully, taking a moment to study the eyes of each hidden behind their massive black helmets. He was searching for the weakest among the group, searching for an opportunity. The surrounding attackers not only had a bevy of weapons at their disposal, but were covered in sturdy Ochan steel to boot. In stark contrast, Brutus carried with him no weapons or armor of which to speak. There were fourteen of them and only one of him. In every conceivable way he was overmatched. This was a battle he would not win. No matter how well he fought, or how hard, or with how much determination, on this day he was going to die. This courtyard would be his resting place, the black snow the bed on which he fell into sleep. It was obvious, so obvious an idiot could see it. While Brutus undoubtedly understood this to be the truth, it was a truth he refused to accept or bend to. Admitting defeat would serve no purpose. The time for such thoughts had passed and the time to fight had arrived. From somewhere behind him and to his left, a single Ochan soldier pulled away from the group and charged forward. He was younger than the others, hotheaded and anxious and thirsty for battle.
It was exactly the opportunity Brutus had been waiting for.
The Ochan swung his sword wildly, growling and launching a wad of half-frozen spittle in Brutus’s direction. The overzealous nature of the young soldier proved his undoing. His stance was uneven and his legs not firmly planted. Brutus easily avoided the strike. Using the Ochan’s awkward weight distribution against him, Brutus knocked the soldier to the ground, swiped a dagger from his belt, and used it to slice open the unarmored area of the creature’s neck. After wiping the spray of Ochan blood from his face, Brutus retrieved the fallen soldier’s sword and turned to face the rest of his enemies.
Quite unexpectedly, he grinned.
Unlike their overzealous compatriot, the remaining soldiers moved as one, collapsing on their muscular foe like stars sucked into the epicenter of a black hole. They were organized, patient and prepared. They would surely test his mettle.
The clank of steel against steel reverberated throughout the courtyard. Brutus’s movements were precise and perfectly timed. He could afford nothing less. It was thirteen against one and there was no room for error. An Ochan sword sliced open the rear of his thigh, cutting through sinewy muscle and scraping the bone underneath. Brutus ignored the pain long enough to return the blow with one of his own, a killing blow. Another strike tore open his bicep and ripped his furry flesh to shreds. This too, Brutus ignored. Dropping his shoulder, he barreled forward and knocked two Ochans to the snow. The unexpected maneuver managed successfully to move him from within their circle. He now had more room with which to work. Ten seconds later his blade pierced the chest plate of another soldier, collapsed the creature’s lungs, stabbed its heart and killed it instantly.
The fact that it was now ten against one turned his grin into a smile.
Ignoring their dwindling numbers, the soldiers continued to press forward. For each one Brutus momentarily wounded, another rose to take its place. He could sense a crowd growing around him. The courtyard was suddenly alive and bustling with spectators. The commotion of battle had awakened the slumbering beasts. Soon his ten opponents would become twenty. In time the twenty would become thirty, and the thirty, forty. From somewhere behind a dagger stabbed him in the lower back. The pain was ungodly, almost too much to bear, and very nearly dropped him to his knees. The wielder of the weapon paid for the blow an instant later, paid with his life.
Nine to one.
In the mass of swinging weapons and hurried angry grunts, Brutus was unable to see the window behind him. He was unsure if Tahnja had succeeded in getting the children to safety.
Eight to one.
A strike from a broad sword cracked him in the shoulder, nearly tearing his arm from his torso and dropping a gallon of his blood in a revolting splash onto black snow. A gloved fist knocked three teeth from his mouth. A steel plated boot kicked him in the ribs.
Despite the blows and the accompanying pain, a second later the odds had changed again. Seven to one.
“Stay your weapons!”
Over the sound of battle, Brutus could just barely make out the voice.
It came again though, this time louder and more insistent. “Stay your weapons, you mutts!”
All at once the seven remaining Ochan soldiers surrounding him halted their attack. Breathing heavily, they grunted in disapproval and slowly backed away. Covered in blood, his limbs jittery as he struggled to maintain the grip on his weapon, Brutus turned in the direction of the gravelly, bellowing voice. Though his vision had begun to blur, walking in his direction from a doorway off in the distance he could clearly make out none other than the king of Ocha himself, Kragamel. In his hands the massive king held no weapons of any sort. His long, neatly manicured beard flapped in the early morning breeze and slapped against his beefy chest like the tail of an angry predator anxious for the hunt. Despite his lack of weapon, and ignoring the seven Ochan corpses at Brutus’s feet, Kragamel moved without hesitation in his direction.
Less than twenty feet away and still moving forward, the king spoke with just a hint of sarcasm. “You have acquitted yourself well, creature.”
Brutus steadied his shaking hands, ignoring the gaping wound in his shoulder and the blood seeping from the various punctures across his body. Defiantly he lifted his weapon and puffed his chest.
Kragamel was now teen feet away, his stride as sure as ever. “I am sorry to say that this is unfortunately where your journey ends.”
Gritting his teeth, Brutus swallowed the blood pooled in his mouth and tightened his muscles. This was his moment, the moment he’d dreamt of for years. This was his opportunity to kill the tyrant king of Ocha. This was why he fought and why he was willing to die.
The instant Kragamel was within the range of his sword, Brutus lunged forward and swung. The aged king proved far quicker than his bulky appearance suggested. Ducking low, Kragamel easily avoided the blow and in a single, remarkably fluid movement, slammed his fist into Brutus’ chest. It was a significant blow from the powerful Ochan. The incredible force of the strike. though, was quite unexpected. With strength not of this world, the king’s fist shattered the bones in Brutus’ chest and flattened the vital organs beneath before snapping his spine in two. With a single punch, Brutus was dead. So powerful was the force of Kragamel’s fist that it tossed Brutus’ gargantuan body a hundred feet backward before slamming it into a slave hut and reducing the poorly constructed building to rubble. The show of strength was incredible. The show of strength was quite literally impossible.
The show of strength was almost magical.
Unsure of what to make of what they’d just seen, the Ochan soldiers standing nearby dropped their weapons and held their breath. Slowly raising his fist to his face, the tyrant king stared at it with noticeable wonder and smiled gleefully.
The power was his now.
*
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CHAPTER 25
WHAT THEY DID TO DONALD
*
Donald’s legs refused to work. No matter how badly he might have wanted them to, they simply would not. The pair of soldiers dragging him though the chilly darkened hallways of the tyrant king’s castle could not have cared less. In fact, they preferred him this way. It made their job easier. The images of Walcott being split open, of his greenish liquid insides spilling across the cement altar before pooling into a mushy puddle at his knees as the hordes of humanoid lizards cheered, were the things that had been burned into this brain. Try as he might, he couldn’t shake them loose. Watching Walcott die had reduced Donald Rondage to a whimpering mass of uselessness, to something he didn’t want to be and something he was thoroughly ashamed he’d become. Underneath the leg of his filthy jeans, his knees were scraped and ripped, torn and bloody. The guards lugging him like a sack of potatoes through the castle had been doing so for nearly ten minutes. This place was enormous. The hallways seemed almost without end, a labyrinth of frosty gray stone, each indistinguishable from the next, solid and unforgiving. Though it was night, occasionally an Ochan would pop its head from one of the doorways lining the walls. They would remain only long enough to laugh and point in his direction. With every cackle and chuckle and crooked grin, Donald lowered his head further. He was crying and he didn’t want them to see.
After being lugged up a massive set of winding stairs, the boy was pulled through a doorway so large it took three Ochans to open it. Soon after, Donald was dropped roughly onto an elaborately decorated rug in the center of an enormous room. Everything was big in this place, big and ugly. The fibers of the rug felt pokey, as if constructed of billions upon billions of tiny needles. It hurt his exposed skin just to be lying on it.
Everything was painful in this place.
Despite the discomfort, Donald never once lifted his head. Lying face down, he remained motionless, breathing in the bizarre odor of the prickly fabric and letting his tears soak into its abrasive fibers. For the briefest of moments he considered rising up, screaming, and punching the castle to oblivion. As far as he knew, he still had his incredible strength, and as wild an idea as it seemed, it was also a plausible one. He could punch through the stone holding this terrible place together. He could tear through it like tearing through a sheet of paper. He could dig into its foundations and shatter them to bits with his bare hands. He was capable of this. He had the strength.
There was Walcott’s image though, staring back at him with a pair of glassy-dead eyes. Those eyes wouldn’t go away.
A single set of Ochan arms lifted him into the air once again and tossed him limply over a heavily muscled shoulder. Though Donald was unaware on account of his mostly comatose state, he was now in the company of the King of Ocha himself, Kragamel. Utilizing a secret entrance near the rear of his personal quarters, the king carried the boy with ease down a dusty staircase descending deep into the earth below even the dungeons of his castle. Here, there was no light of which to speak. The black and the cold enveloped Donald Rondage entirely, seeping into the pores of his skin before spreading outward like a cancer and infecting his insides. The king was not the least bit gentle with the boy. Every step knocked the wind from Donald’s lungs. Breathing had become impossible, and crying far simpler. The blood in his upper torso was rushing to his head, bringing with it a pounding headache and a frustrating state of disorientation. Unsure of just how much time had passed, Donald was eventually lifted off Kragamel’s shoulder and dropped to the stone below. His head bounced off the rock, which opened a cut nearly an inch long under his hair and sent a flash of pain across the whole of his skull. Immediately the boy rolled to his side, pulled his legs to his chest and coiled himself into the fetal position.
He could still see Walcott’s blood, nothing but Walcott’s blood. There was so much blood.
The area around him was black. Even if he had any interest in examining his surroundings, the examinations would have revealed little. Somewhere off in the distance he could hear the crackle of a flame. Occasionally it would spit and pop, a sound not too dissimilar from the cackling hordes of Ochans that watched with delight as Walcott was tortured and killed. Reaching up, Donald placed his hands over his ears and pressed inward. A part of him wished he could crush his skull and be done with it.
“Can you do it?” The voice belonged to the king himself. With his hands covering his ears, Donald was able to just barely make it out.
A bony hand brushed against the side of Donald’s face. Five impossibly thin digits traced the contours of his cheek, crackly-sharp nails leaving the faintest of cuts across his tender flesh. Intertwining with his crusty, unwashed hair, the hand stopped and the connected fingers stretched across the whole of his scalp where they stayed. Donald wanted to open his eyes. He wanted to rip his hands from his ears. He wanted to smack the skeletal appendage from his head and punch wildly at the surrounding blackness and the infernal popping of the distant flame. He wanted to make them pay for what they’d done, every last one of them, every single slimy, green thing living within the walls of this castle. Instead, he did nothing. Walcott, and the river of blood, and the archers, and the screaming Ochans with their taunts and their rocks—it was all too much. He couldn’t play tough anymore. He’d been doing it for so long. He was tired of pretending the world around him had no effect on his mental state. He was tired of lying to everyone, and tired of lying to himself.
The grip of the boney hand on his head tightened just a bit, squeezing ever so gently, prodding and searching as if his head was a fruit, and testing the ripeness. A second hand moved to his shoulder, and a third on his arm. A moment later four more joined the trio. With seven hands pulling at his flesh, Donald pressed his palms tighter still against his ears. His body started to shake. His teeth began to chatter. It was getting colder from the inside out.
Seven voices came all at once, the seven voices of the conjurer counsel. “Yes, my Lord. It can be done.”
Nearby in the darkness, the tyrant king grinned.
“The gift is not his. It was never his,” the seven mystics continued. “It will take some time to perfect a proper method of retrieval, but what was given to the child can be taken away. What was not his to begin with can indeed become yours.”
The terrible thing in Donald’s chest continued to spread, growing larger and thicker and colder with every inch. The muscles in his body tightened, his joints freezing solid and straight. Moving from the palms of the creatures pawing at his shivering form, a twinge of pain poured over him like warm syrup over pancakes. Within moments, the twinge morphed into something far worse. Though he wanted to scream, he couldn’t. His jaw was frozen shut, the hands over his ears locked into place. Against his will his eyes opened briefly, rolling backward into his head and back again wildly. In the distance Donald caught an ever-so-brief glimpse of the blue-tinted fire crackling in the distance and tossing terrifying shadows across the cloaked figures huddled over him. All at once the creatures began to hum. It was a low and rumbling noise that emerged from the tiny slit between their almost nonexistent lips. The monotonous tone never deviated in pitch, not for a moment. Donald could almost feel it against his skin, as if it were a living thing, warm and prickly like the rug in the room upstairs.
Again came the voice of the king from the enveloping darkness. “Do whatever is necessary to retrieve the child’s powers. Whatever. Is. Necessary.”
Instead of responding, the conjurers simply continued their awful hum.
His vision was beginning to blur as the pain continued to grow. Donald’s eyes were again drawn to the subtle blue glow emerging from the surrounding black off in the distance. In the mocking crackle of the flames, for a moment he swore he could see Walcott’s face telling him everything would be all right, trying to convince him to be strong, despite the was
h of agony overtaking him. Though half-frozen lips, chapped and bleeding, Donald swore to his friend that he would try his best, that he wouldn’t give up, that he would make him proud.
A moment later his insides screamed.
*
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CHAPTER 26
PRELUDE TO MADNESS
*
For the majority of the trip across the water world known as Aquari, Tommy Jarvis was silent. Standing directly behind him in the ball of light blasting across the top of the choppy waters, Arthur Crumbee continued to bite nervously at the tea-colored fingernails he’d worn to the nub. The little scientist spent the first hour recalling everything that had happened up until that point, replaying it in his head and trying his damndest to put the scattered bits of information into an order that might somehow make sense of it all. When that failed, he tried again. There were simply no answers to be had, at least none that rested solely on the laurels of all things logical and scientific. Instead Arthur discovered only more questions. This was proving frustrating.
After passing through the muddy Aquari doorway, the hovering ball of light emerged again in the clearing of Fillagrou. Never missing a beat, it quickly darted into the densely covered forest. Arthur stared back at the hidden entrance to the world in which he’d been marooned for so many years and had strangely come to call home. Though no sound escaped his chubby lips, he breathily mouthed the name of his wife before lowering his head and whispering, “Goodbye.”
Around him the trees of the surrounding forest swooped in, engulfing the ball of light and enveloping it in the darkness of the Fillagrou night. Moving like a hummingbird through the grayish red foliage, the sphere pouring from the fingertips of Tommy Jarvis did not slow for even an instant. Its every movement was precise and calculated, as if it had a mind of its own, as if it had existed in this forest for years and understood the landscape to the smallest detail. It was astounding.