John Jackson - The 9th Fortress

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…

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 we 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.

"Remarkable!" he gasped.

"Only the virtuous can see the road!" said Harmony, pleased with herself. "No wonder Kat could never find the gauntlet."

Yuki extended her arm out for her confounded husband, for only she could tempt him.

***

No need to create a fire that evening, the sea of sin underneath burned more energy than we could ever produce or need. We rested in pairs, and not particularly tired, I'd ask some personal questions for my prisoner, who lay with his back against mine.

"What do you see in your nightmares?" I said, sensing his busy mind ticking over.

I had to repeat myself before he exhaled, then replied with bloodshot eyes. "I see the sins I am supposed to be sorry for. I see your daughter Fox, and all the others on that school bus. They smile at me you know, then share their memories and favourite things over and over, and over again. Those demons forgive me, and pity me. How dare they."