Ecko Rising

could smell metal, the faint tang of fuel. He inhaled it, filled his lungs and his soul with it. He could picture the Bike Lodge in his head, Lugan’s battered desk, the fridge for the endless beers, the frames and the tanks and the engines scattered across the floor...

...the rain, silver on black windows.

It was so real – so real – that if he held onto it hard enough everything else would be gone, a total-immersion game that was just playing on the headset in his hands. He could see it, that tiny screen – on it, distant now, grass and moons and air and cities of white and endless unrolling fucking roads...

He could drop it.

And he could stand on it. Feel it shatter. Gone.

But the maddened, broken searchlights of the crystal hanging were lurching through the chamber, passing over his skin and leaving tiny twists of colour in their wake.

In amongst the smells of his home, there was another scent, equally familiar, but not one that belonged in the ferrocrete walls of the Bike Lodge.

He could smell death – the sickly sweet stench of rotting flesh.

The real world cracked, crisped and was gone in a flash of flame, burned by the exiting critters, by the Monument’s fire. The fiction rose to swallow him, back into the caverns of the Varchinde plains.

There was no escape from his own head.

You fucking wuss. Get a grip. Deal with it.

He dried his oculars on a corner of his cloak. Took Lugan’s lighter out of a pouch and crushed it until his fingers hurt.

And he was angry: sick of being taunted, of being jerked around while she laughed at him. Of being led by the fucking nose. Of understanding one minute – and being at a total fucking loss the next. Of hearing voices, of having dreams. Of Tarvi’s...

Don’t think about it!

He was walking into a trap – she’d laid out a trail he couldn’t help but follow... and everything he passed told him Maugrim was waiting for him. For them.

Yeah? Well bring it on.

Wherever she was, he made her a promise – a promise of what he’d fucking do to her when he got out of here.

“You hear me? ELI-ZAH! You hear me?”

And the crystal detonated.

* * *

“Shit!”

Triqueta was weapons on the floor, hands over her ears.

Around her, the cave exploded in a single, terrible scream. The sound was impossible, multilayered, discordant and crystalline. It smashed into her like shards of broken stone. It was the death shriek of a thousand thin, wild voices that slammed back from every rockface, lashed from every leering tooth.

Redlock’s boots spat dirt as he broke into a run.

Tarvi was after him, calling Ecko’s name.

Retrieving her bow – and relieved that Syke hadn’t seen that lapse – Triq moved more slowly, watching the cave around them.

The sound ended in a single, Gods-almighty smash.

Disharmonic echoes reverberated, jangling her teeth, but the scream had gone.

And the quiet was deafening.

Nothing moved. The crazed lights had died. The water drip-drip-dripped as though it hadn’t even noticed.

She heard Redlock call her, his voice a crack of precision through lingering layers of resonance. He didn’t sound like he was fighting.

He sounded...

The last of the crash flowed back from the walls and was gone, a dying wave of sound.

In it, she could hear Ecko laughing.

* * *

Ecko said, “You motherfucker.”

In her hands, Tarvi held the rocklight. It lit her face to ardour and wonder.

And it lit the chamber – rock walls more regular, a lower ceiling. This one looked like it’d been hewn, indiscriminately pickaxed out of the stone. In places, the semi-regular brickwork showed again – but that wasn’t what Ecko was looking at.

Around him, an oil-stained stone floor, rags and old papers, scatters of nuts and washers, fuel cans, spray cans, demijohns. The tarp in one corner covered the bike – he hadn’t yet gone that way. He was cackling like his mind had finally fucking snapped.

I broke your doorbell, Maugie. Come and get me why don’tcha?

Around him, the spiralling fairground lights had gone. Occasional, now-stilled refractions lit the walls, colours surreal. The smell was still there – the smell of home, the smell of death – but he was looking for something.

He unclamped his fingers. Lugan’s lighter was still in his hand.

Fuel.

Refilling his tanks would be ten kinds of fucking awkward – but if he’d just woken up every major cave- dwelling nasty from here to the doors of Hell, well, he kinda needed a weapon.

He searched.

Behind him, Redlock was picking up washers like they were the gold coins of some fucking dragonhorde... letting the steel tumble through his fingers, jingle as it hit the floor. His expression was wary. He kept one axe in his hand and one eye on the entranceway.

Tarvi held the light high and looked wider. She picked things up and stared at them as if they would hiss into steam and be gone. She moved gracefully, light on her feet and her hair...

Stop it.

Triqueta appeared in the doorway, patches of light on her skin, her mouth gaped round speechless shock. Chuckling, Redlock threw a handful of washers at her and she caught a couple, opened her hand to stare at them.

“White-metal? How...?”

“How much luxury d’you want?” He laughed at her. She stopped to pick up another handful, stared at them – then lunged to stuff them down the front of his shirt. While he swore, laughing, she ran for it, feet skidding on rusting metal. Grinning, he picked up a random gear and spun it at her like a discus. It didn’t fly very well.

Kinda freaked that’d found the treasure before they’d actually mashed the bad guy, Ecko picked up another can, shaking it to hear the sloshing of –

Tarvi screamed.

His boosting lurched – now, which was verging on annoying. It spluttered, coughed into life like an old engine, carried him to her side even as he wondered where the bad guy was at.

He couldn’t keep fucking doing this – his endocrine system wasn’t getting time to reboot for chrissakes. Was she trying to wear him out?

But she was backing out of a corner of the chamber, clinging to the rocklight as if to draw its warmth.

She said something, cleared her throat and said it again, “I know this man.” Redlock had stopped fooling. He stood by the chamber wall – by the soot marks that told where the beasties had blundered through. Stuffing a handful of washers in a pouch, Triq crouched by entrance to the broken crystal, the light glittering from the stone in her cheek.

Tarvi backed into Ecko, small, soft frame, hair – again – in his nose. He half expected her to turn round, bury her face in his shoulder – was wanting it and dreading it and working out how he could push her away – but she was staring, transfixed, at the source of the reek.

Ecko said softly, “Fuck.” He’d found where the death smell was coming from.

Three corpses, twisted and broken. He’d seen such things before.

But they were metal.