by Ross Turner
“Was almost a whole millennia ago now…” Ekra went on. “It was the one I told you of earlier: the one that carved this very canyon. It happened right here…”
Marcii swallowed nervously again and glanced around, her imagination running wild. She felt the cold sweat standing on her palms. Even though the air was warm, the hairs on the back of her neck stood straight on end.
“And were there Storm Borns in all of them?” The young Dougherty questioned.
Ekra looked at the young girl with a level expression. Her eyes were so heavy that Marcii felt dreadful for asking.
Clearly, the answer was not only burdensome, but painful beyond belief.
Ekra sighed deeply and her face contorted with pain as she opened her mouth to speak, filling the air with yet more agonising memories and dreadful truths.
Chapter Twenty-Four
The river roared louder than ever, as seemingly more and more water poured across the land and through the jagged rocks. The rushing stream, if it could even be described as such, thundered through the base of the canyon and the deafening sound of it drummed Marcii’s ears relentlessly.
Here and there, following Ekra, the young Dougherty crisscrossed the river, sometimes at what felt like surely the most perilous points.
Having just asked if each of the storms Ekra had told her of had produced a Storm Born, Marcii was still waiting for an answer.
She held on patiently however, for she could see that something about her question had yet again pained her curious guide.
Eventually Ekra spoke and her words were stalking and haunted.
“In the last one, as you well know, yes…” She began, the screaming of the furious water seeming still not to affect the sound of Ekra’s quiet words.
Immediately Marcii thought again of Alistair and his fierce, animalistic gaze.
She shuddered.
Ekra continued.
“The one before, on the south coast, fortunately not.” She recalled. “It is rare, like I said, but not unheard of. The coast stretches far and very little of it is cultivated by man.”
Nodding, Marcii sensed that the crux of Ekra’s explanation was approaching.
“The one before that…” She went on coldly, her eyes bare. “Yes…”
Marcii held her breath as the aged woman uttered her words.
“My son…”
Marcii gasped and her hand came involuntarily to her mouth.
Suddenly she understood exactly why the pain in Ekra’s eyes had flashed so strongly when she’d mentioned previous storms.
As if sensing her thoughts, the mysterious old woman spoke again, confirming Marcii’s notion.
“Unlike everyone else, it is not the storm I fear.” She explained. “It is the memories they bring me.”
The idea was unimaginable.
Having lived for so long, Marcii couldn’t bear the thought that Ekra had carried such sorrow with her for all those years.
Once more, though she had not uttered her words aloud, the aged woman responded in kind, nodding gravely as she spoke.
“I may be immortal…” She mused. “Even if for a short time. But if it were up to me, I would not endure for even one more day.”
Plummeting, the young Dougherty felt her heart sink, perhaps further than it ever had done.
Such a thought was simply dreadful.
They continued on in silence for a while, neither of them wanting to break the brooding hush that had fallen upon them.
Silence except for the furious river of course.
High above, though the sky was still an intense blue, there were no clouds to be seen. The day seemed not to have aged at all. For a while the only movement and passage of time was the slow, steady pace of their own steps and the wild, crashing water surging continuously by them.
Eventually though, not knowing quite why the need to ask such a thing had crept up on her, a question skulked past Marcii’s lips.
“Where are you taking me?” She asked suddenly.
Ekra’s pain filled eyes abruptly snapped into focus, eyeing Marcii speculatively.
All of a sudden, without giving the aged woman chance to respond, Marcii’s eyes grew wide again.
It was clear that she’d somehow answered her own question.
Thinking even still of Ekra’s son, the young Dougherty drew a sharp breath.
“No…” She breathed.
Her ancient host sensed that Marcii had detected the truth, as they crossed the surging river once again.
She nodded slowly and meaningfully.
The colour faded from Marcii’s cheeks and she turned white as a ghost.
“That’s where we’re going…” She breathed steadily, though her breaths were short and sharp and filled with shocked realisation. “That’s where you’re taking me…”
Chapter Twenty-Five
Ekra led Marcii yet further down the canyon. The river began to twist and turn and change, building suspense with its mere movement.
All of a sudden Ekra abruptly turned left and disappeared into the very rock itself.
Taken aback, Marcii drew yet another sharp breath.
When the aged woman did not reappear Marcii approached the rock into which she had seemingly vanished.
She peered through into what looked to be a low, narrow crevice, carved in a way that could only be natural into the stone wall. Beyond the light that filtered down from the still perfectly blue sky above, Marcii stared into pitch blackness.
Suddenly she jumped as Ekra’s voiced sounded from within the darkness.
“Come.” She called softly. Her beckoning reverberated several times in the gloom. “It’s safe.”
Obediently the young Dougherty followed the sound of Ekra’s echoing words.
Into the blackness she plunged, groping out into the air before her to feel the width of the walls and the height of the ceiling.
At the brush of her fingertips the rock was rough and coarse, cold and sharp, making Marcii’s fingers tingle. Her feet scuffed on the uneven floor here and there as it rose and dipped unexpectedly.
Barely able to hear Ekra’s footsteps ahead of her, Marcii pushed on through the darkness, following the occasional sound of a light breath or a scuffed boot.
The air had been warm outside and filled with the sound of the river. But as they delved further into the side of the rock, venturing deeper and deeper underground, the temperature dropped. Constant and cool, the air was still and soundless, filling the endless, pitch black passages with a calming, peaceful aura.
However, quite on the contrary, the purpose of their visit down here was most sorrowful and sinister.
Alongside the calmness something else slowly ebbed into the air around Marcii. It was quite some time before she realised that she could just about make out the shape of Ekra ahead of her. From somewhere up ahead a faint light threw out dim shadows, marking their destination eerily.
The aged woman pressed on and the young Dougherty followed, no longer needing to grope out into the blackness ahead of her to ensure that she didn’t walk into anything.
After what felt like many hours, though likely it was barely even one, they reached the source of the strange light.
Marcii saw a small wooden bowl set upon a stone shelf, etched into the very rock itself. Within the bowl there was a strange paste. It looked thick and viscous and it glowed a meagre green, giving off just enough light to see by.
After the pitch black of the rocky passages Marcii was grateful for any light whatsoever and she relished the dim, green glow as they paused beside it. There was a sharp turn in the passage up ahead and Marcii looked at Ekra questioningly, wondering why they had stopped.
“We’re here.” The aged woman announced in a whisper.
In the deep silence all around it sounded as if she was shouting. Her voice echoed endlessly off in both directions and reached Marcii’s ears at least a dozen times before the sound of it faded away completely.
Only able to nod in reply, Marcii moved
to follow Ekra as she made for the turn ahead of them.
Even by the dim light the young Dougherty could see the haunted, anguished look in Ekra’s eyes. She wondered what in the world could have happened that was so dreadful for the aged woman to torment herself to such an extent.
She found out soon enough though, as her questions were undeniably answered.
Looming up ahead of them, materialising out of the darkness, a strange shape appeared and seemed to block the tunnel.
It took Marcii a few moments to realise exactly what it was, for it looked so out of place amidst the rock all around that she struggled at first to identify it.
Her eyes widened in horror as she eventually managed to make out exactly what she was looking at, as the old woman Ekra led her closer and closer.
The passage ended abruptly, turning out to be a dead end.
But, half a dozen feet or so before it did, thick, metal bars jutted across the passageway, both horizontally and vertically. The bars were buried into the very rock itself, on both sides and in the ceiling and floor, creating an inescapable prison cell.
Marcii was horrified to note that there was no door.
Clearly, had anyone ever been put in that cell, she thought, it would have been with the intention of never releasing them.
Nonetheless, it must have been built for someone.
The feeling of revulsion spread and soon engulfed Marcii’s entire body, as she realised that there was indeed a body behind the bars. Her stomach turned awfully as her eyes saw all that she could not possibly imagine.
Ekra was unable to turn her gaze away, but her eyes were not filled with dismay like Marcii’s were. In fact, her eyes weren’t filled with anything. They were dead: staring coldly on at the sight laid out before them.
She had seen it a thousand times before, and likely a thousand more.
Behind the bars lay the corpse of a man, rotted all the way down to just bones. His hands and feet had been shackled in great iron manacles. Chains led from the cuffs to thick metal plates that were bolted to the walls and the floor, ensuring without a shadow of a doubt that he would never again walk freely.
On the floor beside the body were a handful of small, wooden bowls. Their contents had long since been ravaged by maggots and now they simply lay as a reminder of the terrible things that had happened here.
The rock of the floor and of the walls were covered in scratch marks. Had the chains been long enough for him to reach Marcii was somehow painfully certain that there would have been scratch and bite marks on the bars too.
A cold, cruel chill danced up and down the young Dougherty’s spine, sending her imagination into overdrive.
She could not help but stare into the skeleton’s empty eye sockets, so bare and lifeless.
The sight of it filled her with endless dread.
Ekra had not moved since they’d arrived.
Awful memories cascaded through her thoughts and, as she often did, she wished that she had not been burdened with all these long years that plagued her. After everything that she’d done, and all that she’d been forced to endure, her seemingly endless decades filled her with anything but joy.
Marcii cursed under her breath. Though the word was but a mere whisper, in the passages surrounded by such vast amounts of rock the syllable echoed endlessly in her ears.
It was only as the sound of her shock faded, finally ebbing away into the distance, that Ekra eventually spoke.
Her words were filled with an emotion that Marcii prayed with all her heart she would never feel, for truly there were no words to describe it.
“My son…” Ekra whispered, haunted by her own voice. “He was my son…”
Chapter Twenty-Six
Marcii could barely believe what she was hearing, as Ekra recounted for her the tale of how she’d tried so desperately to save her son, for she had loved him dearly, as any mother should.
Her words told Marcii of how the storm had come, nearly a thousand years ago now. It had been fierce and relentless, as they always were. At the time Ekra had been young, though even still she had lived much of the life of that of a normal person: almost fifty years in fact.
Never before had she witnessed such a storm, or indeed even heard of the Storm Born.
She had not been birthed into this unnaturally long life after all. She had merely grown into it out of circumstance.
And as she wove for the young Dougherty the pulling tale of that circumstance, the cool, dark air all around grew heavy and laden with sorrows of time gone by. By the steady, bioluminescent glow that just about lighted the rocky passageway, Marcii’s eyes continually searched the cage that Ekra’s son, Natus, had spent his last days in.
She didn’t know what she was looking for exactly. She knew the scene before her wouldn’t alter or change the more she stared at it.
Nonetheless, she couldn’t help but try.
Natus had been a loving, caring son, Ekra told her. He had been happy, spirited, selfless: everything a mother could possibly hope for. He had seen evil, as we all have, for it thrives in abundance in this world.
But when the storm came, wild and ravaging in all it’s terrifying might, though naturally they all suffered, it was Natus who bore the greatest woe.
His body fought to survive, just the same as everybody else’s. However, it was not his body that was under attack so.
It was his mind.
Besieged by fear, his thoughts turned from love and care and happiness and sunk instead down into the depths of depravity and despair.
In that moment he became a Storm Born, fuelled by the very rage and ferocity of the storm itself, to live forevermore within his veins.
Ekra sighed heavily as she explained to Marcii how she had tried so desperately to save her son.
With help from many others, even after Natus had killed over two dozen people, they managed to restrain him. They brought him here into the heart of the earth itself, to keep him away from people so that he could no longer harm them.
Bound to the walls and to the floor, even as he still remained, they had chained him up, and Ekra had cared for him.
She recalled the many long months, years even, that she had spent here, beside his cage. She brought him food and water. She sat with him, keeping him company throughout long days and nights. Even as he’d thrown threats and insults and hatred through the dim light at her, all the while her love did not once falter.
Though of course it would have been impossible for her to, had Ekra known of the Storm Born, and indeed too that her only son was beyond saving, she would perhaps at least have realised sooner that her efforts were futile.
Nonetheless, it wouldn’t have stopped her from trying.
She cared too much to just give up.
Eventually though time took its toll on Natus and on his body. He was so filled with anger and hatred and rage that without a release for his fury he finally withered away and died.
Ekra watched him fade away, day by day, until the last breath he would ever take escaped his lungs. And then, even once he had passed, she waited with his body. Though she was unsure exactly what she was waiting for, she remained nonetheless, waist deep in blackness and in mourning.
Marcii breathed heavily in the darkness and felt her heart racing as if she’d just run a gauntlet. Her hands were shaking and every now and then she felt her chest flutter and her head spin.
She thought for a moment perhaps that she was slipping back out of her vision. It was the longest one she’d ever had and she was certain that at any moment it would wrench away from her. After a while though the feeling passed and she was left with nothing but an awful pit in her stomach, filling her endlessly with dread.
“Since then…” Ekra pressed on heavily, the words like stones in her heart. “I have learned much about the Storm Born. It has become my duty to prepare myself, learning from my elders, for there any many here who had weathered countless more storms than I have…”
Marcii couldn’
t imagine exactly how old some of Ekra’s elders might be, though judging by the way she spoke she guessed their years numbered in the many millennia’s.
“Prepare for what?” The young Dougherty asked, though the words barely felt like her own.
“For when a Storm Born can’t be contained.” Ekra replied, sighing again. “I contained my son. I cared for him, and in the process I kept him from harming anybody else. Because of that, I did not require a Guardian.”
“So…” Marcii started, her thoughts and words both racing at different speeds. “You’re my Guardian…?”
Ekra nodded.
“In a manner of speaking.” She confirmed. “I am not alone in the task. It would be far too much for one person to take on singlehandedly. But when a Storm Born cannot be contained, steps have to be taken.”
“Alistair…” Marcii breathed.
“Indeed.” Ekra replied, nodding slowly again. “I am here to help you understand.” She continued. “That knowledge alone will help you prepare for what lies ahead.”
Truly, Marcii had learned a great deal already from this mysterious, aged woman. But now that she had some answers, one worry had surged its way above the rest, forcing itself to the surface.
“Does that mean I’m supposed to stop Alistair…?” She asked. “Alone…?”
Her skin turned cold at the mere thought and her heart skipped more than a few beats.
Ekra smiled warmly, as she did so well, even after all these years of torment and suffering.
Suddenly Marcii felt a profound and unmatched respect for this woman. She was so strong and so unyielding, regardless of all that had been thrown at her to wear her down, it really was most inspiring.
“But you’re not alone, dear.” Ekra assured her gently. “You never have been.”
Marcii opened her mouth to reply, but after a moment stopped herself.
There were simply too many aspects to that statement for her to voice them all in a single response. Instead, retracting her thoughts, she remained silent and lost in deep thought, churning over a thousand and more notions and questions in her jumbled, chaotic mind.
