by Steven Novak
Slipping from his fingers, Zanell’s head flopped to the ground, the wispy thin, barely there lashes of her eyes dancing silently one last time before waving goodbye. When Pleebo’s lips parted, a scream emerged, a scream so loud even his deceased grandfather could hear, so world-shattering the universe shuddered.
The roaring Fillagrou immediately garnered the attention of the Ochan soldiers, and within seconds arrows were darting at Pleebo in rapid succession. Each one of them missed their mark. The injured Fillagrou bobbed and weaved with remarkable agility, avoiding every attempt to strike him down while never once allowing either of the soldiers to slip from his line of sight. They weren’t going to get away that easily. Pleebo closed the gap between himself and the Ochans quickly, his legs working with a sort of exactitude they hadn’t experienced in years. Ahead of him the soldiers came to a complete stop, reloaded and fired another volley. Again they missed. Pleebo locked his shattered jaw into place as best he could; his lips flared and exposed the few remaining teeth in his mouth. Frothing up from somewhere deep inside his stomach, another vicious snarl exploded from behind the grimaced orifice on his face. It connected with the chilly air and resulted in a cloud of steam. Utilizing every working muscle in his legs, the son of lifelong pacifists uncoiled his fists into something more closely resembling claws and took to the air.
The ferocity of his attack caught the soldiers by surprise. Reeling back, one of them accidentally fired his arrow toward the clouds above before tripping over his feet and landing stiffly on his rear. The second soldier reached for one of the daggers on his belt and threw his arms forward defensively. While his movement was quick, it was by no means whatsoever quick enough. The full weight of Pleebo’s body collided with the Ochan, dropping him to the dirt, flipping him over and smashing him into a nearby tree with such force that the rotted wood split down the middle. Before the snake-skinned creature could react, Pleebo’s arms began to pump. His fists smashed into the soldier’s face in rapid succession. One blow obliterated four of the creature’s teeth, ripping them violently from his gums and sending shards of jagged enamel spiraling down his throat. Another series of strikes tore open the flesh of the soldier’s forehead. Almost instantly a torrent of blood began to seep into the creature’s eyes. Less than a second after, the twelfth and thirteenth blows not only knocked the Ochan unconscious but crushed every remaining unbroken bone in Pleebo’s hands as well. Despite this new injury, the enraged Fillagrou did not relent. When he could no longer punch with his fists, he switched to his elbows. Wailing and screaming and frothing at the mouth, he bellowed his sister’s name at the gurgling pool of blood and flattened flesh that was once a sharply angled Ochan face. Caught in his rage, he barely noticed the sensation of a dagger piercing the flesh of his shoulder and narrowly missing his spine.
While this should have hurt, remarkably it did not. Nothing hurt anymore. Nothing would ever hurt again.
The second Ochan soldier behind him ripped his dagger from Pleebo’s flesh, wrapped his arm around the wiry neck of the flailing Fillagrou, and pulled him from atop his bloody comrade. Pleebo was moving too unpredictably for the Ochan to get a bead and far too erratically for him to formulate a plan of attack. He needed him close. He needed to slow him down.
Tied together, the pair stumbled backward, away from the dark trees and the three-foot high bed of fog, past the tree line and into the clearing once again. Bringing his arm around Pleebo’s body, the Ochan attempted to drive his dagger into his opponent’s chest. Moments before the blade sliced through his skin, Pleebo snagged the creature’s wrist with a hand of bones so broken it was remarkable they continued to function at all. Reacting on pure instinct, he dug his heels into the soil and used his powerful legs to push backward. The movement caused the duo to collapse to the dirt, Pleebo’s body landing atop the soldier’s chest and knocking the wind from his lungs. Arms and legs thrashed crazily as each struggled to gain control of the weapon. High overhead, the clouds roared. The lightly falling snow had transformed into a downpour. Grunting and dueling for position, Pleebo and the Ochan soldier rolled to the left and then back to the right. With each rotation, their hands continued to fight for space on the overcrowded handle of the dagger.
“Worthless mutt!” The Ochan spat through exposed teeth and an upturned lip, his breath hot against Pleebo’s skin. He moved his head closer to Pleebo. “While I admire your persistence, I assure you it is all for naught. You are overmatched. Your fate is sealed. You are as dead as your female companion. You simply aren’t aware of it.”
Momentarily removing one of his hands from the blade, Pleebo used the shattered mass of bones and twisted muscles in his fist to smash the Ochan in his face. It was a satisfying blow.
Again they rolled, again to the right, across the dirt, over a bed of painfully sharp rocks, and to the tree line once again. At some point during the wild spinning, the Ochan smashed his forehead into Pleebo’s chin and managed to wrangle the dagger from his hands. A second head-butt split open a partially healed scar between Pleebo’s eyes and knocked him unconscious for a fraction of a second. When the sudden burst of blackness subsided and the world folded in, Pleebo realized he was lying flat on his back. Above him, sitting sturdily on his chest with the dagger firmly in his grasp and a grin a mile wide stretched across his face, was his green-skinned opponent.
“I told you,” The creature huffed between labored breaths. “Your struggle was pointless. Your world is dead, Fillagrou, just as it should be, as it was destined.”
As quickly as it arrived, the sadistic smile on the soldier’s face disappeared. Inhaling deeply, he wrapped both hands around his weapon and lifted it high above his head.
“Your struggle has always been pointle—”
A moment later, the Ochan’s words were reduced to barely a gurgle as the tip of another dagger ripped through the muscles in the rear of his neck, emerged from the flesh of the front, and rained a thick coat of blood onto Pleebo. The dagger between his fingers dropped to the ground. His eyes went wide and his shaky hands grasped at the steel protruding from his gullet. His mouth opened wide. His eyes turned to glass. The soldier inhaled deeply one last time and toppled to his side. Standing behind him on wobbly legs was the female conjurer, arrows still protruding from various points on her body.
Her hands soaked in the blood of the soldier, the ancient creature smiled coyly at Pleebo and coughed. “Live as long as I, and you’ll come to realize that nothing is pointless, my young friend.”
Wearily her head tilted up and her neck went limp. The instant her strained legs gave way, her body crumpled to a heap in the snow below. Hurriedly wiping the blood from his face, Pleebo scurried to her side, wrapped his arms under her and pulled her into his lap the same way he held her only minutes before.
“No, no, no. Not you too. Not you too!”
His heart was pounding. Every part of his body hurt, and the parts that didn’t would hurt soon enough. His voice was ragged and garbled, his words more an expression of frustration and angst than anything remotely resembling coherent thought. He barely knew the paper-thin, wrinkle-covered creature wrapped in his arms. She was Ochan. She was the face of the enemy.
She was an Ochan and she had saved his life. It didn’t make any sense.
For a moment Pleebo’s eyes drifted away from her worn, blood-smeared face and her extraordinarily milky eyes to the body of Zanell just ten feet away. The black snow had nearly covered her entirely. Only one side of her face and a bit of her ear remained exposed. Already an icicle began to form and was hanging garishly from her discolored skin. She was gone. She was really gone, and she wasn’t coming back.
Unknowingly Pleebo’s head drifted again to the conjurer. She was alive, though just barely. Her breaths were soft and getting softer. Her eyes seemed to be focused on the darkened clouds above and the torrent of darker snow emerging from deep within their billowy folds. Despite her blindness, Pleebo half believed she could see the falling snow the same as he.<
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After a noticeably deeper breath, her cracked lips parted. “Now, do as your sister asked.” Her words were weightless and painless, as if dangling from the delicate tips of airborne feathers. “This is where my journey ends. Leave me be. You don’t belong here. I doubt you ever did.”
Using the back of his shattered hand, Pleebo wiped a slowly forming pile of snow from her ancient face. “I’m not leaving you. I’m not leaving anyone else. Not ever again.”
The conjurer chuckled through an uneven smile and a fit of coughs. “Don’t be foolish. You will do exactly that. As reprehensible a place as it might be, this world is my home.”
Unable to lift her hand from the snow, she instead pointed a single finger in the direction of the dark forest behind Pleebo. “I was born among those trees, less than a day’s hike from this very spot, in fact. This is where my journey began. It is only fitting that this is where it should end.”
Again her head fell backward. The icy folds in the skin of her neck wrapped themselves around Pleebo’s fingers. Again her eyes focused on the clouds above and again a painful smile snuck its way onto her face. “Go now.”
Looking past the conjurer, Pleebo stared in the direction of his sister. The charcoal colored snow had covered her completely. What remained was only a shape, a subtle, amorphous hint of what had once been, a shadowy nod to the past, and nothing more.
“Why?” Pleebo whispered, his eyes focused on the final resting place of his little sister. “Why did you help me?”
The conjurer breathed deeply, inhaling the chilly air and sighing as her eyelids fluttered and began to close. They suddenly felt so heavy, such a pain to keep open. She wanted to close them. She needed so badly to sleep. Cutting through the unmistakable noise of war in the distance, she focused one last time on the roaring clouds above and the feel of the falling snow on her skin.
Half between this world and whatever might come next, she mumbled: “Even in the darkest of darks, there is always light.”
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CHAPTER 41
THE LIGHT AND THE WARMTH
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Nestor Rockshell pulled Nicky Jarvis close to his chest and wrapped his arms around him. The boy was shivering. In the distance, an absolutely massive section of the outer wall surrounding the castle of the tyrant king had been utterly destroyed, reduced to bits of smoking rubble and cloudy debris. Though Nestor was well aware of the powers little Nicky Jarvis wielded, the sheer awesomeness of seeing them firsthand never ceased to amaze him. Already the Nasdi army on the ground was beginning to make its way through the newly-formed entrance and into the courtyard. From somewhere on high, a still amassing force of Aquari Sea Dragons dove in from above, grasping clumps of Ochan soldiers between their toes, crushing their chests and launching them into the air. The speed, organization and surprising ruthlessness of the creatures of Aquari were astonishing. Though they had been pacifists for generations, it would seem war was a skill they had never forgotten.
Turning in place atop the impatient creature between his legs, Nestor passed Nicky Jarvis to his father. Without hesitation, Chris reached out and grabbed hold of his trembling son. Before he pulled the boy to his chest, he stopped to look into Nicky’s eyes. What he’d just seen his child do—there were no words to describe it. It was incredible. It was horrifying. While the thing he held in his arms was very clearly his son, at the same time it wasn’t. It was something more. It was a funhouse image of Nicky, twisted and reversed and squeezed into something else. It was an updated version, a next-generation piece of technology with the kinks not quite sorted out. It was something capable of mind-blowing destruction and so much more.
His teeth chattering, Nicky looked up at this father and smiled. The boy’s words were simple and his question childlike. “Did you see that, dad?”
Chris responded to the smile of his youngest with one of his own. “I sure did.”
With the whole of his body quivering, Nicky half chuckled. “Pretty cool, huh?”
It was powerful, this thing Christopher Jarvis held in his arms, powerful in ways that gave new meaning to the word, powerful in ways that worried him. Behind it all, though, undeniably this dangerous thing with the innocent smile remained his son.
Chris pulled his boy close and wrapped his arms around him in an attempt to generate some warmth. Through tight lips he whispered into Nicky’s ear: “Yeah, pretty cool.”
Nestor flicked loose an icicle of sweat hanging from his brow and stifled a grin threatening to stretch across his lips. It was too early to celebrate and far too soon to even consider smiling. Though he couldn’t see what was happening beyond the cloud of debris and what remained of the castle wall, the sound of war was unmistakable. While they might have caught the Ochans off guard, the battle had only just begun. Even with a portion of the dark army stationed elsewhere, the castle was heavily guarded, fortified and secure. The forces of King Kragamel hadn’t conquered ninety-nine worlds because they were unprepared buffoons. Even with their numbers split, they remained the most dangerous army in the known universe. They would not quit and they would not roll over. They would fight until there was none of them left, and beyond that if capable. Many would die this day, on both sides.
If ever there was a time to smile, this was indeed not it.
With his arms wrapped around his father and his head buried into the older man’s neck, Nicky sighed. The shared body heat between the two was already warming him up. Though his eyes were closed, he could hear the fighting across the battlefield, past the gargantuan castle wall and well in the courtyard behind. To his left and right, creatures of all shapes and sizes continued to emerge from the darkened pit that doubled as the doorway to Fillagrou. As if spring-loaded, one after another the beasts spit from the shadowy drink and onto the frozen Ocha tundra. Nicky could hear their feet crashing to the ground and immediately charging in the direction of the castle ahead. Each brought with them a bellowing roar distinctly his own. Though they had stopped momentarily after he blasted away chunks of the castle wall, arrows were once again zipping by. The arrows, and the monsters and the madness within the castle walls, would have horrified Nicky just a week ago. Things were different now. He was different now. Nicky Jarvis felt bigger, larger and more capable. He felt ready.
Suddenly, without warning, something warm caressed the delicate fibers on the skin of his face. It was almost like the heat from a campfire. The sensation cascaded over the top of his head and down the curvature of his cheek. It was out of place among the chilly Ochan winds. It didn’t belong.
A few seconds later, the rumble of charging beasts came to a sudden halt. The angered battle cries disappeared. The noise of war evaporated. As if someone had flipped a switch and turned it off, it simply went away.
It was with some confusion that Nicky opened his eyes, unwrapped his hands from around his father’s neck, and looked in the direction of the strange heat emanating from behind. A hundred or so yards from the edge of the blackened chasm, something was emerging. A ball of light so bright it forced Nicky to squint his eyes was lifting slowly from the darkness. As it rose, inexplicably the shadows clung momentarily to its exterior like bubblegum. They rolled down its sides like watery syrup. The sphere of light seemed to be crackling, fizzing, and popping like sparking electricity. Nicky could sense his father turning in its direction as well. In front of Chris, the unexpected heat garnered the attention of Nestor too. The turtle man lifted one of his paws to his face to shield his eyes and stared in the direction of the incredible glow. High overhead, the soaring arrows stopped. One after another the Nasdi dismounted from the monsters underneath them. Their mouths agape and their tiny eyes wide, they stepped lightly in the direction of the humming sphere emerging from the doorway to Fillagrou. One among them lifted his hand in its direction, letting the glow pass through his bony fingers and warm the folds of his transparent palm. Peeling himself loose from his father, Nicky slid off the side of the fish monster and dropped to the har
dened ground below.
Chris Jarvis attempted to snag hold of his youngest son’s arm, but he was unable to hold on. “Nicky! No! What’re you doing?”
Nicky ignored his father. The moment he hit the ground, he sprinted in the direction of the ascending sphere. He believed he knew what it was the moment he felt it, and his suspicions were confirmed the instant his eyes caught a glimpse. Slipping off the beast the same as his son, Chris landed with a thud and took off after the boy. When Nicky reached the edge of the doorway, he stopped. The ball of light was still some distance away. Having emerged from the blackness completely, it continued its movement upward. Ten feet, twenty feet and then thirty; in no time at all it was hovering just below the heavy clouds with bursts of lightning exploding around it. Nicky craned his head upwards, following its progress with wide-eyed fascination. The smile on his face was growing. When Chris Jarvis caught up to his son, he dropped to one knee and wrapped his arms around Nicky while struggling to catch his breath. Believing his child safe, Chris turned his attention to the ball of light overhead. Though it was some distance above his head, he could still feel its warmth on his face. Unable to close his mouth or wipe the mixture of awe and confusion from his face, he simply stared the same as everyone else. Nearly a hundred feet in the air, the sphere stopped for a moment before moving forward, in the direction of the castle.
As it passed directly overhead Nicky raised his hands into the air and screamed. “Tommy!”
Chris grabbed hold of his son and spun him around. “What did you say? Nicky, what did you just say?”
Nicky Jarvis was smiling, the grin on his face a mile wide, sweat created by the heat from the floating sphere dripping from his face. “Tommy! I said, Tommy!”