Danie Ware - Ecko Rising

“So many years as other people’s confidence,” he said softly, “their crutch. And then I became obsolete, outmoded by a prescription. Now, here...” When he turned back, his smile was a welcoming campfire on a chill night. “Here, little priestess, I can do magic. Miracles. I can make this world anew!”

She watched him. He was compelling, exotic, his words alien. Transfixed, her response was a whisper, almost as if she feared what he’d say. “If you’re such a healer, why do you need me?”

“Finish dressing, and quick.” He grinned, predatory and savage as a Varchinde bweao, and his gaze flicked to her eyebrow. “I need you because I can’t heal flesh, sweetheart. And they keep dying .”

* * *

Dying.

Against Maugrim’s ardour, she couldn’t focus the thought.

As her last garment was laced, he caught her upper arm in a grip like red-hot metal and propelled her from the chamber. Fragments of rocklight threw random shadows over stone walls. When she stumbled over her skirts, he gripped her harder, marching her through a tight, twisted underground maze. In places, he had to stoop, hunching his heavy shoulders against the stone; she was small enough to walk upright – just – but stubbed her toes repeatedly on an uneven floor.

Dying.

“Stop, Maugrim, stop. Wait...”

He pushed forwards, took a corner, a side passage, another. His hold on her arm was merciless.

“Where are we going? Who – ?” Who keeps dying?

“No time for explanations, love. I needed a healer – need you to do something for me.”

“Do what?” She tried to halt, tried to tug her arm out of his grip. “What do you – ?”

He spun her against his strength, kissed her with a compelling brutality, then drew back to smile at her.

“You’ll do what you’re told, sweetheart.”

Her body surged in response – she couldn’t help it. When she kissed him back, curling against him in silent need, he loosened his grip, stroked her chin with the back of his knuckles. His rings were hot.

“Trust me,” he said softly. He was fervent, alight with belief. “Your culture’s stagnating, love, no challenge, no growth, no progress – and I know what that can do. I can change it, fix it. But you have to let me finish !”

“Finish what?”

He leaned his weight against the stone beside them and it swung inwards. Amethea felt a rush of air cooling her skin but not cold enough to be fresh. Beyond the door, she sensed, lay a large, dark chamber – a cavernous belly of potential.

A crystal-cold voice, oddly atonal, said, “Maugrim. You have brought an apothecary.”

“I can’t see shit.”

“I shall give you light.”

Amethea listened, but the chamber was silent. A moment later, white rocklight flooded the passageway.

She blinked, holding an arm to shield her eyes.

He thrust her through the doorway. Unable to see, she caught her foot in the hem of her skirt and tripped, fell hands-down to the floor.

He was over her, his strange, black boots surrounded by...

Metal. Tiny, round shapes of white-metal, a swath of them across a flat, stone floor. Instinctively, she realised this room was not part of the passageways – it was newer, larger, colder. As she blinked dazzle spots from her vision, she reached for one of the discs – flat, with a hole through the centre. It was one of dozens, hundreds, casually discarded across soil and stone.

Riches to make her head reel.

As if she had blundered through some saga and found his treasure hoard.

Maugrim leaned down, caught her arm and hauled her to her feet.

“This is for you, little priestess,” he said, gently. “As much wealth as the world has ever seen – as long as you help me.”

She looked up from the disc in her hand.

In the centre of the chamber stood a young man, rigid and silent. His back was to the door and the light reflected oddly from his skin. Scattered haphazardly about him were other, much larger, shapes of metal, utterly nonsensical. They were stained and dirty, some of them had powdery brown rot growing across their edges. The dark, liquid splotches had spread onto the floor, where she could see discarded cloths, oddly shaped tools, unfamiliar liquid containers. At the room’s far wall, one long, low shape was covered by a waxed calico sheet.

There was no sign of the owner of the voice.

The chamber smelled strange. Blood, metal – and a tongue-tang of something she didn’t recognise, something that tasted... wrong.

When Maugrim touched her shoulder, she lifted the hem of her skirts and picked her way across the floor.

The young man didn’t move.

As she came closer, she slowed, stopped, stared.

He had no skin, no hair. Rather than flesh, he was a sculpture of carefully shaped metal plates. Over his skull, across his face, down the strong lines of his body, he wore an exquisitely detailed carapace, intricate and beautiful, metal fused to him as if he were a saga golem.

The work was not the same as the metal on the floor. It was Kartian – crafted with only the extraordinary detail that the mountains’ artisans could create. Raised and trained in all but absolute darkness, they had a sense of touch no Grasslander could match.

“He can’t hurt you, love.” Maugrim’s reassurance let her step closer.

Closer still.

Then she stopped, horror crawling across her skin.

Under the plates, his skinless muscle was raw, red flesh blistering, bubbling through the cracks. She could see searing torment in every line of his being, feel a silent scream that came from his twisted stance, his fast, shallow breath. His eyes – eyelids plated like everywhere else – were closed, but behind them, he twitched visions of agony.

His lips were sealed with a large, single plate. The skinned muscle of his face was torn where he’d tried to scream.

Oh, Goddess...

Black scabs split like lava, never healing, leaking trickles of red and yellow suffering. There was a caked pool around his feet. Even as she watched, a fresh swell of blisters erupted, rippling across one cheekbone. They oozed, swelled, burst, subsided. The plates shifted. She heard him whimper between lips that would never move again.

And it spread, flowed down his face and throat in a caress of anguish. Under his plating, his flayed body boiled as if he were being cooked alive.

Hand over her mouth, denying tears of revulsion, she understood he was trying to scab and heal – and couldn’t. He was one, vast, conscious wound. Maugrim had replaced his skin with pure pain.

There was a smile engraved on the plate that sealed his mouth.

They keep dying.

“Nononononono...” Her denial was unconscious, she was shaking, backing away. Every healer’s instinct she had told her to do one thing.

A heavy, ringed hand landed on her shoulder.

“No time for cold feet, love, he needs you – and soon.” The hand was warm, it steadied her. “I get the empathy thing, you feel his pain and you want to help. I’m telling you, you can. He’s a prototype, strong; a fusing of flesh and metal into the perfect warrior, the perfect conductor. Amethea.” She turned to stare at him as he used her name. “I believe in what I’m doing, I believe in you. Heal him. Complete the fusion. If you do, we can make the world a new and better place.”

The world’s fine... isn’t she?

The thought was tiny, lost under the potence of Maugrim’s passion and vision. What was one soul in pain against his belief? She ached to please him, to win his approval and earn his touch. Almost without realising, she yearned towards him and he smiled at her, igniting her blood in a flash of pure, physical hunger...