Danie Ware - Ecko Rising

The Monument, reborn and alight with fire and blazing at the very sky...

And that blaze brought death.

His vision cleared, and Roderick knew – he knew where Ecko had gone.

He also knew something else, the thing that he had feared from the beginning.

Did I not tell him? Did I not try and explain?

Under the Bard’s skin, horror crawled like panic. The knowledge was absolute, but he was completely helpless to do anything about it – he barely realised that he was hammering the wall until pain curled his hands into claws.

Everything was connected – and Ecko had left without the full information.

I tried to tell you..!

Ecko was wrong. His impulsive, chaotic nature had taken him too soon, and without the right information.

And he might just make everything worse.

23: AMETHEA

THE MONUMENT

They had incoming.

From the chamber that Ecko’d named the “lock-up”, the passageways had changed. As though the open caves were only the entrance hall, they’d become somehow more formal – tighter, twisted and narrow. A feeling of age and tension had grown here, it watched them pass, skulking behind the shoulder-to-shoulder stones that sternly walled them in. The air was breathlessly warm.

Redlock resisted the need to cough, dry mouthed, the urge to hunch his shoulders as though he were trespassing. He felt like this whole damned thing was so ancient it’d cave in at the touch of his boots.

Before him, Ecko was almost impossible to see – a figment that flickered from wall to wall, curve to corner to side passage, a grinning, black-eyed shade. He didn’t trust it, had no idea what it – he – was capable of. He could feel Tarvi’s nervousness, Triqueta’s rising sense of panic – worrying about other people slowed him down.

But Triq was strong: he knew her bravery and was glad to have her at his back.

The fading rocklight still showed char marks, faint dustings of scattered soot that lured them onwards. Hanging roots were scorched and shrivelled, smaller stones cracked clean through, or fallen in pieces to the floor. At points, there were old carvings in the walls, softened by time, their meanings long-lost.

The axeman had the peculiar certainty they were going in a circle.

Too many damned tavern-sagas.

Ecko’s eyes flashed as he turned. Instantly, the axeman was alert.

Ahead of them came the beat of heavy footsteps, swift and regular – distant, but quickly becoming louder. There was an almost-flicker of light.

Redlock whistled softly. The passageway was a long, narrow curve, silent stones walled them in.

Tarvi answered him, “Seems we’ve got a patrol.”

“Then we stop them,” he said. “We need to find a side turning. Whatever they are, they’re not catching us with our breeches down.”

“They’ll come at us single file,” Tarvi murmured. “If you can hold...”

“And if I can ambush the damned things, I won’t have to.” He gave her a brief grin, glad she was able to focus. “I don’t know what they taught you in Roviarath, but never be afraid to fight dirty.”

She chuckled wickedly, seemed to like his audacity.

He spared her an additional glance – she was cute, but the same age as his daughter – then noted Triqueta’s expression and set his face to grim certainty.

“Let’s go – we’ll have to move quick.”

With Ecko before them like a dark harbinger, they ran.

* * *

“You don’t need to do this, please...”

In the flicker of the brazier’s flame, she’d seen the image of the trade-road, the bustle of the little township. Dirty streets and wooden walls, traders and grifters, beggars and families – it was a swell of population on the water’s edge, as though the unrolling ribbon-town had been dammed by the shoreline. Carts moved, making ruts in the mud, chearl plodded, tails flicking, children ran underfoot, chasing and wide mouthed.

But their laughter was silent – she heard only the soft crackle of the fire.

Maugrim was behind her, his heat at her neck, his hand forcing her to watch.

And before her was a hollow, a broken basin – a twisted, jagged stump of stalactite like a cracked-off tooth. If he craned her head back, she could see its sibling, high above, also broken, as though a shattering hammer force had split the pillar asunder. Yet it yearned still – water and long returns of mouldering soil had renewed its growth, as if it writhed imperceptibly downwards, needing to be rejoined.

Now, flame-light teased it closer.

Maugrim’s voice, soft as a growl in her ear.

“You showed me the key, little priestess – how to unlock the secret. I would’ve given you everything I had, anything you asked for. I can change the world, thanks to you... and you repay me by bloody cowardice? By trying to run away – like some rebellious street kid?”

“Whatever you’ve awoken –”

“You’ve awoken.” She felt him grin, his breath warm. “We’ve awoken.” He stretched his hand past her and the firelights flashed on his white-metal rings. “Never forget, sweetheart, you started this with me.”

In the fire, wavering in the image, a tiny flame-angel with eyes white-hot. A Sical, he called it, an elemental, a creature of the Soul of Fire. It watched them, unblinking, the image of the township shimmering through its form as though through high-summer heat.

Hard against her back, Maugrim stretched his hand into the flame.

She expected his flesh to crisp and blacken, but he was unhurt, his rings glowing red and fierce blue heat playing at their edges. The Sical nuzzled him like a pet.

She heard it in her head. Feed, I. Hun-ger.

“Do you see it?’ he asked her. “Watch.”

The creature grew, hot against her face. It seemed to draw strength from his touch – somehow it was both in the fire and in the air over the trading post. It was a miniature sun, blazing with eagerness and fury.

She said, “No, Goddess, no...”

You did this with me.

As though the creature phased between one place and another, it drew the flame about itself.

Feed, I. Hun-ger.

She saw in the fire. She saw it through the fire, as though through an elemental window. She saw it rain death upon the town.

In silence, she watched the detonation, the ripple of heat and impact, tumbling buildings like charred parchment, wood exploding into fierce life and the blaze within reaching the sky. She saw the pouring forth of black smoke, the panic and the running and the dying and the terror.

She saw the Sical kill, lazily and perfectly, just because it could.

She covered her face with her hands.

“If you resist me again,” Maugrim said to her softly, drawing his hand from the flame. “It’ll dance on your burned remains.” He placed his hand on her arm and the heat of his rings made her scream.

* * *

Never be afraid to fight dirty.

Ahead of them, the flicker was rising to a red glow – a sullen gleam that swelled against the stone. An edge of pressure came before it, making sweat stand out on skin. The relentless pound of heavy stone feet grew louder, closer – soil trickled from the roof, from between the slabs in the wall.

Ecko pushed himself faster, his telescopics spinning to pick up the telltale light difference that would mean –

There!

A sliver of darkness, a straight flicker of highlight – a turning. He gave the others a flash of his LEDs and he ran, low and fast, his soft shoes light over sand-dry soil.

He heard them come after him. Approaching, Redlock gestured for him to get out of the way.

“Not this time.” Ecko grinned, black as a promise of death. In his hand was a small pottery container – a secret prize, something he’d liberated from Maugrim’s lock-up. He was bouncing it in his palm – and well aware he was way too eager to see what it did. “You wanna fight dirty? I say we fight fire –” in his other hand was Lugan’s lighter, now refilled “– with fire.”