The 9th Fortress

by John Paul Jackson

  "A Cyclops!" declared Harmony, petrified. "It is!"

  The one eyed monster now reached into the crater and removed a pit headed stone club, resembling a miniature moon.

  "WHERE'S…ME…BODIES?!" he demanded, its spit coming down like rain.

  Worryingly, Kat shunned his katana at the reappearing masked soldiers, a dozen or more coming at us. Kat cut down the four closest, then, with weapons armed and soldiers pursuing, we moved along the edge of the devastated courtyard while the creature's eye adjusted to the new light.

  John Curtis stuck like a rucksack between my shoulder blades, screaming as I swung my sword at enemies on route. Ahead, more robots swarmed over our door and exit, leaving us no option but to fight through the lot. Harmony fired several arrows and frustratingly missed all her chosen targets.

  "Hateful thing!" she exclaimed at her bow.

  "Give me a weapon Fox!" Curtis begged. "Anything!"

  "BODIES! WHERE?"

  "You hear me Fox? A weapon! Any weapon!"

  "I am your weapon!" I howled back, slicing my sword cross the mouth of one foot-soldier.

  "He sees us!" yelled Eddinray. "He bloody sees us!"

  Adjusted now to his environment, a delighted Cyclops witnessed his many bodies rushing along the courtyard edges; and making no distinction between friend or foe, he demolished his club through a collection of hoods, bursting them to blots of blood and cloth.

  "SMASH BODIES!" he boomed. "SMASH! SMASH! SMASH YOU!"

  The freckle-cheeked giant was in ecstasy, like a child let loose on the parents ornaments, his club collided into the 9th Fortress to send chunks flying out of the structure. The eternal prison wobbled like a tower of jelly but remained steadfast under his barrage.

  Killing the last remaining soldiers, we reached our arched door under a shower of falling rocks. Kicking and cursing, Kat pulled and pushed at the locked door handle. "Over there!" cried Harmony, pointing beyond Cyclops to another arched doorway at the far end of the courtyard — this door open for all to see.

  Bringing us to a huddle of faces, Curtis included, I yelled at the top of my voice, "We stick tog — "

  "RAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHRRR!!"

  The monster's scream caused all living things in proximity to seal their ears shut, and I could well imagine prisoners in cells ducking for cover.

  "ME WANT…BODIES!" bellowed the insane, attention starved wild animal.

  Glancing again at the open door, to the returning multitude of sabre wielding soldiers and a stomping Cyclops, I took command. "Stick together!" I exclaimed. "Move fast! Faster than your legs can carry you!"

  "Where?!" asked Eddinray.

  "Through those legs!" I roared, pointing under the Cyclops.

  Before any answered back, I started running over the unstable courtyard toward the super-sized legs of the monster; Kat at my rear, Curtis beside, and others trailing.

  Seeing his fodder, the giant enthusiastically bashed his club several times into the dust, decimating soldiers and throwing us to scraping knees and palms.

  "GOT YOU BODIES! GOT YOU!"

  "Up!" Kat yelled, pulling Yuki closer. "Move!"

  We stumbled to run and run for those lofty legs.

  "Can't see where I'm going!" wailed Harmony. "Not a thing!" Immediately, Eddinray collected her wrist and guided her clear of the crater and directly under the giant.

  "MORE!" It demanded. "MORE BODIES!"

  The dust settled while we went like mice between those two blubbery skyscrapers. He was awesome, stink potent, and the power of his eye substantial.

  "SMASH YOU BODIES!"

  His club came down and struck a foot from Harmony's wings, throwing her and Eddinray ragged. They hit the dirt rolling, and a layer of thick sand covered their stunned bodies.

  The soldiers ran mindlessly and the moon like club obliterated them, batting out more great chunks of fortress in the process.

  "RAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHRRR!!"

  Harmony and Eddinray now stood from under the things legs, and blurry eyed, they scurried for the open door, leaving trails of dust behind them.

  Curtis and I were first to reach the doorway and the set of ascending steps inside it. Turning, I stretched my arm out for the incoming Kat and Yuki, only to witness them disappear behind a piece of fortress rock the size of a house, crashing and spewing debris everywhere. A mixture of smoke and stone consumed the doorway, and feeling my lungs filling up with dirt, I was surprised and delighted to see Kat and Yuki stumbling alive toward me, caked in soot and more than a little disorientated.

  "You made it!" I gasped, coughing violently. "Where…where's Harmony? Eddinray?"

  "MORE BODIES!"

  Yuki pointed through broken boulder pieces to the couple racing our way, and the darkness of Cyclops foot bearing down to crush them. The knight — seeing it coming — pushed his beloved angel aside then dived to safety a moment before being flattened underfoot.

  "CRUNCH BODIES!"

  Harmony, quick to her feet, pulled Eddinray up by the neck, only to shriek at the monster's hand, reaching down to collect Eddinray's foot between its thumb and index finger.

  "Urk!" baulked Eddinray, rising into the air "Heeeelp!"

  "Godwin!" cried Harmony, loading and firing an arrow at it. Her projectile swerved off to strike the 9th Fortress. She fired another, this time clanging off the armoured back of Eddinray.

  "Oh my!" she gasped. The giant put the sword-flailing knight under his nose for a cautious sniff, but the scent of Eddinray seemed to repulse the monster.

  "Too good for you, eh?" said Eddinray, the blood rushing to his head. "How dare you refuse me!"

  The ogre placed the Englishman into the middle of its immense palm, and squirming at the door, we expected our friend to be squished as those trunk-like fingers proceeded to close.

  "Fox!" growled Kat, suddenly pressing his wife's hand onto my chest. "Look after her!"

  "What you going to do?" I asked, but Kat was too busy doing it. He sprinted toward the giant, decapitating a straggling soldier on the way. He continued passed Harmony while she loaded yet another arrow into the longbow; and arriving at the monster's fat heel, Kat sliced through its Achilles tendon, causing congealed blood to burst from the wound and washed over him. The Cyclops instantly dropped Eddinray and wailed like a newborn baby.

  "Catch meeee!" the knight shrieked, clattering on top of Kat, whilst the Cyclops stumbled to head-butt another dent into the 9th Fortress. A blood painted samurai angrily threw Eddinray off his stomach as Harmony appeared over the two of them.

  "Time to go boys!" she said, returning the long sword to Eddinray.

  The three now hauled ass for me at the door; the Cyclops, meanwhile, pulled its face from the fortress, and then searched for those bodies responsible.

  "WHERE? WHERE?"

  Spotted by that pulsating eyeball, the monster smiled at the samurai, knight and angel rushing to my desperate arms.

  "Come on now!" I screamed. "It's coming!"

  "RAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHRRR!!"

  I pulled them into the doorway while a hobbling Cyclops drew back his bat.

  SMASH!

  The pitted club annihilated the arched door, and we six ran for our lives from a cave in behind us.

  ***

  The steps led us to the elevator doors on the ground floor, and Kat cold-bloodedly lacerated the guard there in half. I retraced our way down spiralling steps to arrive back at the popping moat of lava, and that thin path to the surrounding outer wall and iron gates. Almost home free, our hopes were dashed when we noticed more masked men gathering at those gates. "There must be fifty!" I said, exhausted. "Where are they coming from?"

  "Worry about the moat." growled Kat. "I'll take care of the masks!"

  Then, with his wife in one hand and his sword in the other, Kat charged and we followed over the narrow path. Eddinray and Harmony covered the rear with sword and arrows, whilst I joined Kat to take the army head on.

  "This is mad!" cried Curtis, contin
ually.

  The army watched us coming, some falling into the moat as they fought for space on the path.

  "Chop them up!" Kat roared.

  "Kill them all!" I spat back.

  The CLANG of meeting steel followed as the battle begun, a blurry array of arms and blades and moans. Kat received a slash down his katana arm, but the warrior was too immersed in protecting Yuki to care, so swiftly dismembered the mask responsible. I cut down three then kicked one to frazzle in the moat; even Curtis got in on the act, kicking one and punching another. Eddinray fought well too, with Harmony beside him, using her very last arrow as a makeshift sword, jabbing holes in any killer close by. Suddenly, as our minds were lost in the fury of battle, another tremendous earthquake hit us.

  THUD! THUD! THUD!

  Like an old episode of Star Trek, all standing bodies on the path shuddered sideways, left then right.

  THUD!

  The boiling moat made waves and the path jolted, sending dozens spilling into the lava and causing Harmony to briefly immerse her wings in it. She howled in agony.

  "You're okay!" Eddinray cried, bashing out the flames licking her back.

  "The Cyclops!" moaned Kat, stretching his hand toward the trembling 9th Fortress. And there, crackled lines appeared randomly over the structures immense belly.

  THUD!

  THUD!

  CRACK!

  A gigantic piece of the 9th Fortress blew out, and the egg shaped head of the Cyclops peered out from its smouldering hole.

  "BODIES!!"

  Fortress boulders splashed into the moat, spitting up the great dollops of bright yellow lava. Kat and I cowered from landing magma, before focusing our energies back to the slaughter of foot soldiers.

  This new hole in the face of the Fortress spanned thirty feet, but was still minute compared to the prison itself, and the Cyclops made that gap wider when forcing its body through.

  Their overriding priority to protect the 9th Fortress, the masked few thankfully passed us and started toward giant. They slashed at its fat toes — and no more than a nuisance — the robotic lot were swept into the moat.

  "BURN…BODIES!" he chuckled.

  "Come on!" I yelled back at a dawdling Harmony and Eddinray. "Move your asses over here!"

  Cyclops reached its hand back into the hole, searched a moment then pulled its pitted moon from the debris. Its eye hungrily scanning the path for more miniatures, for more bodies — ours!

  Kat, Yuki, Curtis and I made it to the iron gates, and gasping, we looked back to the broken 9th Fortress, the scatterings of foot-soldier parts, the towering Cyclops and our tiny friends: Harmony and Eddinray before him. We yelled and screamed, but Harmony stood strangely still, even while a scared Eddinray tugged on her hand. "My dear!" he begged. "My love we must move! We must!"

  "What is she doing?!" I cried, forcing against Kat's arm, restraining me against the gate.

  "You cannot save everyone!" he said. "You understand?"

  In no time, the Cyclops caught the metallic glint of Eddinray's armor, and his resulting smile formed creased crowfeet at the sides of its un-blinking eye.

  "Godwin?" announced Harmony, composed. "Tear off a piece off my gown."

  "My darling," he said, swallowing; "this is hardly the time nor the place — "

  "TWO BODIES! MY BODIES!"

  "Now!" she complained. "Be quick about it!"

  Eddinray bungled to his knees and briskly tore a strip from the bottom of Harmony's gown. He placed the cloth into her hand and watched her wrap it tightly around her last arrowhead.

  Searching back at us, I knew Eddinray wanted to scramble as far as possible from the giant, but also knew he would never leave Harmony alone with it. Itchy and frustrated at the gates, we left them to their fates as Harmony placed the arrow into her bow.

  "Stand back Godwin!" she grimaced, dousing the cloth covered arrowhead into the moat. "This will take someone's eye out."

  The arrow burst into flames when she removed it, scorching the fine hairs of her fingers. The Cyclops roared a final time before raising his club to smash their skulls. Quickly and precisely, Harmony crouched to one knee and drew back the arrow with a scrunching ache on her face. Then, and with no time to spare, she released the bowstring with a snap, and watched the arrow fly…

  "BYE BOD — "

  Squish!

  We gawked at the gates as that fiery arrow pierced like glass through the centre of the monster's eyeball, bursting pupil puss everywhere.

  "Yes!" exclaimed Harmony, leaping. "Yes!"

  Cyclops bounced backward in abject misery, crushing more of its fat onto the fractured 9th Fortress.

  "RAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHRRR!!"

  Harmony threw down her longbow and quiver, and then ran with her love over the cracked path and body-parts. More Fortress rock fell as the blinded beast manically battered and smashed anything in range of its fists. He punched out Fortress windows and prisoners in their hundreds blew out of their cells. During its pain, its mad disorientation and attempts to dislodge an arrow from its eye, the thing set one clumsy foot into the moat, and that was the end of it. The substantial pink flesh of that leg fried from the bone in an instant, and the rest of him sank — splashing, wailing, and melting to a squeamish liquid on the molten moat. Watching, I felt sorry for that childlike beast as it turned to soup. Gone without a trace.

  A flushed Harmony and Eddinray finally arrived at the gates, so we hastily moved outside and away from this godforsaken place. Before taking another step however, a white-faced Yuki jerked in fear at a presence to her right: the benevolent Italian poet. Coursing full of adrenaline again, I approached him.

  If Virgil's heart was broken by the loss of Napoleon Bonaparte, his eloquent demeanour and placid expression did not suggest it. "Are you…in charge now?" I asked. "Of the 9th Fortress?"

  He shook his vaporous head. "I offer my endorsement to the successor." he returned. "I take no charge. Another — Gaius Octavius — will shortly take up the position."

  "But you also assist souls in Hell," inquired Harmony. "True?"

  "Those who seek my help."

  "Then we seek it." I said. "Virgil we want the Gauntlet. Where is it?"

  Without hesitation, Virgil bowed then replied. "The Gauntlet awaits you west of the 9th Fortress. There, souls face their toughest challenge. Mental and physical endurance will be tested to their limits. Be warned, only the virtuous can see the road, and none have ever passed the test."

  Grave expressions went round our party at the mention of another challenge, the toughest test, and the great poet did not alleviate our concerns. "Say your goodbyes now, for not all, if any here will survive the Gauntlet."

  "Your advice?" I asked him, failing to mask my desperation.

  "No advice." he answered, simply. "I have none to give."

  Virgil then passed through the iron gates and floated serenely toward the 9th Fortress, awaiting the arrival of its new warden…

  40. The Way Home

  Westward we trekked, Kat scrutinizing the miles over shifting plates of crust with magma rivers in-between. This volcanic landscape felt like the beginnings of everything, or the end — an apocalyptic cooking pot where all ingredients converge, melt, mix and evolve into one thing or another.

  Far above, a glowing globe, blue and homely, turned on its axis. The Distinct Earth or old Earth itself? We had no idea. We only knew how far it floated out of reach.

  John Curtis swore every time my rope tugged. I pulled on him hard, just as Kat pulled me up the Macros. I wanted to feel his hate burn through the back of my skull; I wanted to break him that little bit more. Typically trailing, Harmony appeared to be deep inside herself; meanwhile Eddinray jabbered on as if his earlier fraud had never been exposed. He told of the horrid sights he had witnessed in the bowels of the 9th Fortress and boasted of his victorious joust against Napoleon Bonaparte. Kat, like Harmony, remained quiet, wearing familiar concentration as he stressed over Yuki's care. He would not hurry, and w
e would not ask him too.

  During this hike, I attempted to untie the knots of my story. I stuck to the conclusion that there was a reason for it all, more than meets the eye, complex answers beyond my feeble thinking. I grasped tightly onto that one thought, and then hopped over a stream of congealed incineration.

  ***

  The scorched land led us six to the edge of a head-spinning cliff. Here, all the flaming streams cascaded to a far off ocean of fire, a blurry vista of magma crashing against the cliff face.

  "No way down," said Harmony, weary. "No route across."

  The red sea wafted up a burnt stench. It was no sea at all, but a compact bed of living men, women, and indiscernible beings writhing on their backs or fronts, all of them radiating in the fury. The smell of burning flesh is difficult to describe — it is the summer barbecue with overcooked meat on the grill, the meat no tongue should water for. Thankfully, we couldn't hear their woe from this height, only a collective mantra like distant sirens. I looked again at that familiar planet overhead, asking her to lower us a ladder. Unfortunately, she remained obliviously beautiful in a red haze.

  Deeply frustrated, Kat childishly stamped his foot on ash. Then, like flicking some invisible switch, Yuki's hand on his back calmed him at once.

  "Wait!" announced Eddinray, pointing out an object ahead. "What…is that?"

  We examined a far away smudge of nothing in particular — a growing spot, approaching, transforming.

  "Our way!" cried Harmony, overjoyed. That object was a bridge, extending out of nowhere to meet us.

  "I see nothing!" said Kat, straining his eyes. "Where?"

  "It's there!" insisted Harmony. "Right there!"

  An elementary bridge of stone, no more than five feet in width connected with a crack to our cliff face — yet still — a flummoxed Kat claimed to see nothing.

  "Do you see it?" Eddinray asked me.

  Smiling, I nodded back. Yuki saw it too, the bridge floating like a magic carpet over the unique ocean.

  "I don't see it!" exclaimed Curtis. "You're all mad!"

  Harmony positioned herself before the magical crossway, and Kat stammered as she stepped — through his eyes — off the cliff edge and onto thin air. She hovered there like a spirit, and Kat scrubbed his face harder when I, Eddinray and Yuki joined her over nothingness. I pulled my reluctant prisoner along. He screamed at first but did not fall; and as soon as his unworthy foot of his touched the bridge, the entire structure became apparent to his astonished eyes.