Ecko Rising

there was no way this building was just gonna vanish.

Come on then, I dare ya, I double dare ya –

And then – whoosh – it all went horribly wrong.

That first, soft light was suddenly slewing sideways, smudging abruptly out of focus – it was smearing across his vision into a sparkling grey blur –

Shit!

He barely had time for the thought. Suddenly, his adrenals were fired and he was clinging to the chimney stack, his heart pounding.

What the hell...?

The light convulsed, heaved. It knotted about itself; it swallowed its own tail and spiralled away down the plughole. There was a nanosecond of scrabbling, of wild-eyed panic, as the chimney and the roof were both gone and he was sucked helplessly back into...

Nothing.

No bricks under his fingers, no sky, no sunrise, no biting chill of air. He was not alone, nor afraid – he was just gone.

He’d never been.

Then there was ripping, like flesh; a thin, harsh scream. Falling, he tumbled through the tear. He was breathing, moving. He was Ecko.

There was slate, scraping beneath his fingers, dawn light on his skin. Dimly, he became aware that the thin scream was his own.

“Holy fucking mother of god...” He controlled his vocals with an effort. “What the...?”

Incredible, impossible, it’d all happened way too fast – he was there and he was gone and he was back and now he was trembling, skidding down the roofside and clinging to the tiles like a half-dead rat. He reached for breath, shaking. Around him, the world spun gently, winding down – the building was still, the jump, transition, whatever, was over.

The world slowed, sighed and stopped.

So what the hell was that? A bad trip? Fucking hyperspace...?

He skidded to a tangled halt by the guttering. He lay there for a moment, breathing hard and blinking as his sight and mind cleared. Around him, the air was pale and cool, a faint breeze tightened his chest and made him cough. He curled over the noise, smothering it. His hands at his mouth tasted of blood where they’d scraped on the roof tiles.

...Translocation? FTL travel?

How the fuck did it just do that?

He’d been half expecting to be free. To come out facing Lugan, or a cryo tank, or a nest of otaku wiring and Eliza in a lab coat. Maybe he’d find himself in one of Grey’s shit-holes – or in some other champion-needing world. Hey, howdja fancy Ecko as High King of Narnia? Part of him had even expected to not come out at all – but no, the quantum roller coaster had dumped him at the station and the sissy bar was rising on cue.

Carefully, his heart rate slowing, Ecko raised his gaze to look round.

The stone streets, the narrow buildings, the crepuscular light – all gone. Instead, the sky was high and clear and pale. Ahead of him, there was the metallic sheen of sunlight on water and on its far side, some sort of town, still misty with the early hour.

Teleporting, for chrissakes. What next – magic fucking wands?

Twinging with unease, he untangled himself from the mass of fabric, rubbed his bloodied palms on his thighs.

This can’t be good...

As his anti-daz filtered the brightness, he could see the tavern itself was intact – garden and sign and all – and that it was now on the grassy edge of a river. On the far bank there was a tessellation of roofs, rising to a tower that didn’t quite look like a church. The breeze flickered the many ends of his cloak, taunting him.

The air was wild, somehow, sparkling like old-school fizzy pop. He’d never had a lungful like it.

And there was movement. A harbour that wrapped the townside, larger that he might’ve expected, rowing boats out with the morning.

Ecko untangled himself fully and sat up. His adrenaline had washed out of him, down towards the guttering, he found he was hunching his shoulders against the vastness of the sky. The ride had kicked him into high gear – towards hopes and fantasies that this really had all been only a joke...

But this was the same roof, the same chimney, the same front yard.

And something in him said: That’s it, then.

The teleport had been his last gasp – he felt as though he’d lost his final grab at freedom. Watching the rising dawn, the shining water, he found the certainty closing over him, once and for all – this was it and he was drowning in it and he was stuck, and there was fuck all he could do.

Oh, you bastards.

As if in answer, a water-rat thing scampered across the front path and he bridled at the symbolism.

You just wait.

The rat critter turned sharply, long tail twitching, and vanished. Ecko shifted into the shadow on the other side of the chimney and spun his oculars to watch the town.

Okay then, bring on the pointy-eared bastards with the bows...

But the town was not some ethereal, crystalline dream, some screensaver vision, it was stone and wood and solid and functional. It was also absolutely miniscule – hell, he’d got no idea how big these things were supposed to be. With no high rise, it maybe held six thousand people, seven? It had no defensive wall, only the harbour, and the tower seemed to hold some mega version of the rocklight in his room. It was hardly gonna be a lighthouse for the water.

To one side, following the direction of the river, the plains stretched away into the morning, a fantastical swath of colour under the sky. To the other, to the south and west, there was a slope of misted forest that rose into...

Jesus.

Rose into mountains.

Even in the bright dawn light, they were harsh, dark headed and remote, high and jagged as though they cut into the very sky. They made him shiver with some odd sense of anticipation, though he’d no fucking clue why.

He’d never seen mountains, not this close, and they towered over his presence and silenced his jittering brain. For a moment, he was lost for a sarcastic thought, and he stared with something approaching awe.

Then his attention was pulled back by a shout that carried clear across the water.

“The Wanderer! The Wanderer’s here!”

One of the fisherboats had seen the tavern, manifest on the bank like some insomniac’s hallucination. In a moment, the rest had taken up the cry and the boats were being rowed hard back towards the town.

Great. For today’s therapy-session role play, I get to be a barmaid.

He was measuring his chances of staying the fuck on the roof when the skylight below him creaked open.

“Ecko. Good morning – surprised to see you still here.” Hair loose and bare shouldered, the Bard glanced at their surroundings and grinned. “Well, this could be a great deal worse. Enjoy the trip?”

“Yeah, like a laugh a minute.” Ecko’s cloak and skin had shifted with the colours of the dawn, but his eyes stayed black as pits. He indicated the riverside city. “Ain’t exactly Minas fucking Tirith is it?”

“This is Vanksraat. We’ve come south-west, Roviarath is directly downriver.” Lifting the skylight further, Roderick peered over the roof’s edge. “Good place for us, there’ll be gossip and trade. We’ll have a busy day, I think.”

“They’ve spotted us already.” Ecko returned to studying the town.

“They do that.” The Bard grinned, his ridiculous goth hair rising loose in the breeze. “We’re a breath of life. We don’t only bring ale – we bring tales of the Varchinde, news of the terhnwood crop, trade-goods and information. In some ways, we bring the world.”

Okay, not a barmaid, a mailman. Hell, maybe I get a hat.