Ecko Rising

Beside it, Redlock and Maugrim fought back and forth, savage and desperate.

Amethea had denied the elemental the last of its fuel. She was weak, battered, burned and bloodless – but she was on her feet, and the stone resolution in her heart was at last set. No more fear.

Beside her, the Banned woman was arrow nocked, guarding her charge, but watching Redlock for an opening, watching the shadow thing – whatever it was – spinning like a daemon in the midst of the incoming shamblers.

Stone splintered and shattered as it struck. It had a grace and fighting style she’d never seen – its feet slammed like weapons and the shamblers exploded into dust.

She had dreamed about it – black eyed and fierce.

“Thank you,” she said, belatedly. Stupid, unnecessary, inadequate. “Feren, did he – ?”

“He died – but he found us first. He was braver than I’ve ever seen. I’m Triqueta.” She gave a weary grin. “I’m no apothecary, but I did nab this off the girl that was.”

Died. Amethea was numb: there was an odd hollow where her grief should have been.

She stared at the pouch, scattering contents across the blood-spiral stone.

And in it, at last, after everything: the taer. The pollen they’d left Xenok to find.

Something in her heart found it funny, bitter, outrageous. She was laughing, hurting, crying – Feren was dead, but Redlock was here. The nightmare was over.

Relief choked her. It was so long unlooked for – and it fought like a daemon almost within her reach.

Triqueta thumped her shoulder gently, awkwardly affectionate. Amethea smiled, striving for control – but then her eyes were drawn to the dark length of the stalactite, slithering still towards the fire, striving to complete the conduit.

She had started this. Her inability to resist Maugrim’s charm had ended in this madness, in this rising promise of destruction.

“We have to stop this,” she said. Redlock and Maugrim were fighting, fighting. The Sical’s blaze was roasting hot. “I have to stop it.”

I started it.

Triqueta rubbed the stone in her cheek against her shoulder – easing an itch.

“Then you’re going to need a really big bucket of water.”

* * *

Maugrim danced his chain, battering Redlock backwards as the warrior tried to regain the control of the fight.

Keeping track of the chain-ends was pure instinct: he didn’t see them, just reacted. Redlock was dodging, dancing and lunging, the call of his blood pounding in his ears, his focus as sharp as a knife. He was backing, aware of the hollows of the sarcophagi behind him, but making Maugrim move in the hope of tearing his wound. A dark stain spread down the Elementalist’s odd garments.

Redlock saw his opportunity. He dropped the axes, dove between the chain-ends, seized its centre and pushed Maugrim backwards. A foot around the back of his ankle, and he fell, cracking his head on the stone.

* * *

Redlock was on top of him, the taut stretch of the chain across his throat. The warrior’s shattered face was gruesome, his brown eyes held no mercy. He was as much stone as the cathedral’s walls around him, as the stalagmite pillar that held the blaze of the Sical’s prison.

Maugrim fought to breathe as his vision blackened. He fought to call aloud, to his mentor and protector, his teacher and rescuer.

Vahl! Vahl! Help me!

He had known all along that the daemon wouldn’t tolerate failure.

* * *

Ecko was being swamped.

Stone hands tore at his cloak, his flesh, his face. They pressed into him, grabbing for his limbs, cadaverous stone faces and eyes of the Sical’s fire. He dropped a circular, sweeping kick, took two of them off their feet, but the press came on, stamping the fallen into fragments and dust.

They were too close packed, he couldn’t breakroll through them to change position. He lashed a low kick, broke the base of another and sent it toppling backwards – but the press behind it was too close, it didn’t fall. It teetered, rocked, and then smashed downwards towards him.

He slammed himself sideways – it missed, crashed into pieces.

But he was too close now. Hands reached for his shoulders and gripped him, grinding into his reinforced skin, into his collarbone. Fingers wound round his upper arms, cutting off the bloodflow, crushing muscle painfully against bone.

He still had his feet – in front of him, the creatures broke like pottery, but there were too many of them.

And they were pulling him down.

* * *

Redlock pushed down on the chain with a strength born of anger and exhaustion, focus and fury, pushed until Maugrim stopped struggling, pushed until his face blackened, until his tongue swelled from his lips and his eyes bulged with horror. Then he let go and stood, the adrenaline still pounding, his chest heaving, his sight dazed and scarlet. There were tears of anger running down his face, sweat sheeting his body, but he did not care. He picked up the axes and the chain, and looked up at the huge might of the Sical.

It didn’t care that Maugrim lay twisted. It was reaching for the cavern roof, for the twist of dark rock that stretched down towards it. Beside it, shadows against its flame, Triqueta defended the injured teacher. The elemental paid them no attention – perhaps they were all too small for it to notice.

He had no way to face that thing, no weapons to touch it.

Slinging both axes and spinning the chain for momentum, he ran the stone tightrope between the open sarcophagi and raced for the stone wall that was closing round Ecko.

* * *

They were clawing at him now, sharp stone fingers ripping his skin. Their silence was eerie. He kicked and thrashed, but he was held down like a scrawny street kid by a bunch of gangland bullies. He was yowling abuse, had no idea what he was saying – could Eliza see this? Was this how this fucking fiasco would end – shredded by a bunch of animate fucking statues?

Then there was a ripple of impact, a harsh ringing of metal on stone. He could hear Redlock swearing vengeance and warfare. Behind him, the claws slackened.

Again. They swayed at the blow, their attention turning from him.

With a twist and a shove, a furious flailing of feet, he was free. Shreds of his flesh clung to their fingers, blood slid over his skin.

Fuckers.

For a moment, he was on his back on the stone, doing the fucking dying fly, then he flipped himself to his feet and lashed a kick at the closest shambler.

The hard jang of metal rang again. The things staggered at the impact.

He heard the axeman shout, “Ecko!”

“Still breathing!” He spun back. One kick, another, repeated and savage, against the press of stone that separated him from Redlock’s vicious, slamming, chain onslaught.

He saw the axeman spin the chain over his head – once, twice – then crash it into them full force.

They shattered like glass under the impact, pulverised, fucking dust.

There was a gap – his targeters didn’t need to tell him. He was through it like a rat.

And they were still coming, ranks of them.

“I won’t stop them all!” Redlock was shouting. “We have to get out of here!”

Amethea shouted back at him, “We have to stop the Sical!”

“With what?” Ecko was shaking now, the comedown was hitting him and he felt sick, weak. The shamblers were still coming, there seemed no end to their silent, stone determination.

“We stop them now,” Triqueta said. “Or they’ll tear Roviarath to the ground. Everything dies!”

Maugrim lay sprawled, eyes bulbous and grotesque. He stared sightless up at the Sical as though shocked by