Echo

by H Waters

  The washroom door creaked open and Scarlet came walking out, her hair still dripping wet. “Feels good to finally shower,” Scarlet said as she stuffed her old clothes into her bag. She was now wearing pale green cargo pants and an old gray t-shirt that said Save water drink ale on it in black.

  “Those look much better than the dirty, bloody rags you had on before,” I laughed.

  “They left a bunch of outfits in the cupboard, so I just assumed we can help ourselves,” she replied with a smirk.

  I walked to the washroom, shutting the door behind me. The air was still steamy from Scarlet’s shower. I looked into the mirror and noticed a small cut on my face. My whole body ached, and once I was undressed I could finally see how damaging my fight with Grekal truly was. My rips were purple with bruises, painful to the touch. My arms had little cuts all over them, and some of my toes were still bleeding from tripping on that rock before I was almost killed by Seekers. “This will all be worth it in the end. I will find you, Jake,” I said out loud into the mirror. All at once memories of Dallas and the family we had came rushing back.

  I collapsed to the floor, crying uncontrollably. How could I have done this to him? We should have all stayed or left together. Why would we split up? Taking deep breaths trying to regain my sanity, I stood up and turned the shower as cold as it could go.

  I stood under the cold water for at least ten minutes, just staring into the tile, taking slow heavy breaths. Once I was calm enough and no longer having a panic attack, I finished showering and went to find clothes. The cupboard was already open, and there were some shirts hanging out. I slipped on a pair of jeans that surprisingly fit okay. Most of the shirts had Alaric Liquor & Ale branded on them, but at the bottom of the pile there was a shirt that had a picture of an old truck on it and read Will fix truck for beer. It was a little baggy, but Dallas would have thought it was funny, so I put it on.

  Once dressed I left the washroom, ready to pass out from exhaustion. Lucy and Scarlet were curled up and already fast asleep, in the bed I was going to take. I smiled, thinking to myself, I knew she liked the dog. I crashed down onto the second bed.

  Ding! Ding! A loud bell rang through the inn. Startled, I threw my covers off and fell out of the bed in a panic. “Get up, it’s breakfast,” Scarlet said.

  “Let me get up first,” I growled, getting to my feet. “That had to be at most five hours of sleep,” I complained to Scarlet as I took my bag and sword from her. We walked down the stairs and were welcomed by happy waitresses.

  “Ah, you’re awake, perfect timing!” Alaric happily said. He directed us to a table with enough room for us to sit. The rest of the table was occupied by a few of the loud, rough men we saw last night. Alaric slammed a large plate in front of Scarlet and then me, followed by two mugs of beer.

  “What is the beer for? The sun hasn’t even risen yet,” Scarlet scolded Alaric.

  “You just need to drink a bit, kills the hangover!” he laughed.

  The men were much quieter this morning then they were last night. One of them set his half-eaten plate on the floor for Lucy. “It’s actually pretty good,” Scarlet said, stuffing a spoonful into her mouth. The food was scrambled eggs, but with lots of different vegetables and some sort of meat mixed into it.

  After breakfast we grabbed our gear and headed for the door. “Start walking,” Alaric said. “I will catch up, I just have a few things to do first.”

  Once outside I stopped to tuck the far-too-baggy shirt into my jeans.

  “What way do we head?” I asked Scarlet.

  She pulled out the map Dante gave us. “Well, by the looks of it, Dante’s shortcut is southwest of here, but the mountains stretch for hundreds of kilometers. Finding his path might get a little tricky,” Scarlet said.

  “Well, we best get started then,” I said.

  Scarlet began walking. Well, here we go again, I thought to myself. I whistled for Lucy to come and followed. The trees continued shedding their leaves, which floated softly on the cool morning breeze, eventually finding their place on the ground amongst their fellow fallen leaves. The half-bare trees that stretched as far as the eye could see felt safer and more inviting in the morning sun, or maybe it was just because Alaric would be with us.

  IX

  After walking for a while I asked, “Why is Alaric not here yet? Should we not stop for a while and let him catch up?”

  “I guess it wouldn’t hurt to take a break,” Scarlet replied.

  Scarlet veered to the side of the path, taking a seat on a large rock. I sat next to her. While we were walking I had never really noticed the lack of trees, but sitting here I was really able to breathe in the landscape. The large trees and forest life had given way to ground that was almost completely made up of rocks. The only vegetation was a handful of hardy shrubs forcing their way through the thick crust.

  After a couple of minutes we saw Alaric happily bounding down the path towards us. He was wearing a gray long-sleeved shirt, brown pants, and his tunic bearing the large red cross of the Saints. Scarlet looked at him and laughed.

  “How long have you known Alaric for?” I tried to ask, but could barely speak the words.

  Scarlet looked at me, confused. “Are you okay?” she asked, sounding genuinely concerned.

  I tried to respond, but again nothing came out. I tried to take a breath, but even that was too hard. The air felt heavy.

  Scarlet began to say something else, but before she could, she disappeared. I looked down to my feet where Lucy had been sitting; she was also gone. The remaining rocks and shrubs began to twist and bend, making strange noises, turning a blue color much like that of Dante’s jungle. The rocky path reshaped itself into a fine cobblestone square, and all around wooden and brick buildings appeared. They looked far different from the buildings in Kata. Then the strange sounds and colors stopped, leaving behind a deafening silence.

  I spun around, examining the town square in confusion. Nothing was moving, the air was completely still, everything felt fake. “Aaaaah!” I screamed, jumping out of my skin, startled by the abrupt sound of trumpets. After the trumpets came a light breeze, followed by the sounds of eager people, lots of eager people. They poured into the square from every little side street and house door, running right past me to assemble in a large crowd facing a stone building. “Well, I might as well follow suit, maybe I will find the source of those godawful trumpets,” I said aloud to myself, trying to stay as calm as possible.

  I slowly made my way forward, keeping close to the buildings at the side of the square in order to avoid the ever-growing mob of people in strange rags. As I walked, the breeze brought smells of fresh breads, cheese and sweet wines. Once I got to the front of the crowd I could make out the source of the noise. On either side of the stone building stood two short men with bronze trumpets. They stood at attention like they were soldiers, but they were not what the crowd was so fixed on. They were all focused on what was in between the trumpeters: on their knees and bound by thick brown ropes were a man, a woman and three children. They stared into the crowd with so little emotion it made me feel uneasy. Their eyes were completely bloodshot, as if they had not slept in days.

  “What’s going on?” I asked the lady beside me, but she just stared blankly ahead. The trumpeters ceased their playing, and from an alleyway came four fancily-clad men with goatees and moustaches. They were armed with thin swords and strange pistols.

  “Good afternoon, people of France!” one of the men yelled out in a deep, booming voice. The man’s voice sounded younger and less worn, but it was still easily recognizable.

  “Alaric!” I yelled, but again no one acknowledged my existence.

  “As you are well aware, dark forces have been at work in your small village here on the coast,” Alaric continued. “You sent claims of creatures trying to lure your children in the night. The gracious king has responded to your pleas.”

  The three men next to Alaric lined up in front of the children, each pointing
a long rifle at the chest of one of the children.

  “Fire,” Alaric calmly ordered.

  “No!” I screamed, running through the crowd to where the gunmen stood, but it was too late. Two of the children were slumped against the wall, soaked in their own blood, while the third lay on the ground twitching and kicking like Grekal did when I killed her.

  “They were just children!” I screamed, spinning around to face the gunmen. I stepped closer to one of them. “You’re a monster!” I hollered, throwing a punch to the right side of his head. Where my fist should have made contact with his head it just kept going, continuing through his head like it was air. I muttered a curse word and took a step back.

  I stormed over to Alaric, looking him dead in the eyes; he looked younger and less weathered. “What is going on?” I demanded, but he just looked past me. With a wave of his hand the guards shot the parents several times. As the bullets ripped through them they did not cry or scream, they just laughed, a very unsettling laugh.

  With the sound of the last bullet leaving the soldiers’ guns, everything started to change again. The houses began to disintegrate back into rocks, followed by the cobblestone road blowing away to reveal the dirt path. Lastly the people began to disappear in swirls of blue, the last of them being Alaric. Once the chaos was over and the spinning was done, all I could see was blue.

  “Echo! Echo, are you alive?” Scarlet screamed, right next to me.

  “I think so, but all I can see is blue!”

  I heard her sigh, then felt her hand on my back. Then, with a shove, I was sitting up, looking at Alaric jogging down the trail toward me.

  “You were on your back, the blue was the sky,” Scarlet laughed.

  “Oh,” I said, through my confusion and headache, feeling stupid.

  “Are you okay?” Alaric yelled through heavy breaths, still a little ways away.

  I got to my feet, my legs shaky and my head spinning. I began walking over to Alaric. He was smiling when I got to him, probably happy that I could walk and stand. With all of my strength I punched him square in the chin. “Ow!” I yelled, holding my now incredibly sore hand. I felt like I had punched a wall, but he did not even flinch or budge at all.

  “That family!” I said. “Those kids! How could you have killed them without hesitation?”

  “Um, alright. I think I need some context here. What kids?” he playfully asked, rubbing the back of his neck.

  “I do not know exactly where, but there were trumpets, stone roads, people in rags filling the street. Then there was you in fancy blue clothes and younger, much younger, soldiers with weird guns and a helpless family on their knees. That you executed,” I yelled through tears. “I’m so confused,” I sobbed, falling to my knees.

  “France,” Alaric muttered. “Scarlet!” he yelled in a frantic voice. Alaric got down on a knee and tipped my chin up so he could look me in the eyes. “Those people I had killed, did you by any chance get a look at their eyes?” he asked. His voice was calm now, it was almost comforting.

  “Yeah, they looked tired, and emotionless, very bloodshot,” I replied through sobs.

  “What is going on?” Scarlet cut in.

  Alaric stood. “She knows things. Things about my past, in better detail then I can recall, things that happened well before her time,” Alaric informed Scarlet.

  She began to pace around, looking deep in thought. She then walked over to our bags and began rummaging through them.

  “As I was saying,” Alaric said, holding out his large scarred hand to help me up. “Those people you saw were not people, they were already dead. One of the Devil’s Legion has a thing for reanimating corpses — she learned it from that old dirtbag the Necromancer. The corpses then do her bidding; in that case they were trying to take a cup we had just found. Pretty creepy stuff if you ask me.”

  “You were in a place called France, fighting zombies, for a cup?” I asked, dumbfounded.

  “It was a special cup,” he answered with a smile, then pulled me up from the ground with no effort at all. “We should get moving,” Alaric declared.

  We walked over to Scarlet, who by now had our bags torn completely apart, the contents scattered everywhere. “Are you okay?” I asked her, very confused.

  “I’m fine,” she frantically replied, going through the small side pockets on my bag. “I’m just trying to figure out what the hell could have given you such intense visions of the past.”

  “Did you pick anything up or eat anything funny? Fill us in, young Keybearer,” Alaric asked, trying to sound helpful.

  Scarlet turned to look at Alaric. “You big beautiful idiot,” she said, smiling and patting him on the face. “The key!” she said, pulling the little box out of my jean pocket.

  “How could a key do this?” I asked.

  “Maybe the machine it belongs to could be emitting something?” Scarlet suggested.

  “But, that would mean it is being used,” Alaric said. “Even then, why would it emit my memory, or give Echo visions?”

  “Maybe they aren’t your memories. Maybe it’s because she had the key in her pocket. I’m not sure, but if it is being used we have to stop it. Nothing good can come from that thing,” Scarlet said angrily. She grabbed her bag and staff and began to head quickly down the path.

  “If you feel something like that happening again, let me know,” Alaric said to me. “I do not want you falling off a cliff or something.”

  “Will do,” I reassured him, forcing a smile.

  I slung my bag over my shoulders. Alaric motioned for Lucy and we followed Scarlet down the path.

  “What’s this machine?” I asked, not very long after we started to walk.

  “Do you want the short or long version?” Alaric replied.

  “Which one has less death?”

  “Short it is,” Alaric laughed. “A guy created a machine before even the Saints were around. The machine could take a person or creature, suck its life force or soul out, and install it in another person. But then, over time he became annoyed with the task of draining one soul at a time. His thirst for immortality and power overcame him, leading him to create a key that let the machine run wide open. Then the machine was able to take in hundreds of souls at once. Guy became too powerful and just kind of vanished. So, over the centuries we have fought to get this machine and lock it away, but never succeeded.”

  “You could have stopped for a breath,” I laughed.

  “You said short,” he shrugged.

  “Why not break this machine?”

  “As far as we know the only way to do so is to overload it, but there is no creature powerful enough or willing to sacrifice their own life to destroy it,” Alaric answered.

  “So, this game of cat and mouse destroyed the world. Awesome,” I muttered. Alaric did not say another word.

  As we walked the scenery became duller and duller till eventually there was only rocks and shrubs as far as the eye could see.

  “If the dog breaks its foot I am not carrying it,” Scarlet warned. Lucy was struggling as she slowly traversed the rocky path, her feet just small enough to fit in between the rocks.

  “Do not worry, I have plenty of shoulder space,” Alaric laughed.

  Alaric had slowly fallen behind. Between sips of ale and petting Lucy, he was having trouble keeping up.

  “So, you and Alaric?” I questioned Scarlet, once I knew Alaric was out of earshot.

  “What about Alaric and I?” she snipped back.

  “Well, sometimes it seems like you are going to cut off his head, then other times you’re all ‘you big beautiful idiot.’ Did you know him from before the inn? Perhaps romantically?” I asked with a wink.

  “Well for starters this ‘whole thing,’ and your whole life, is like a week for beings like him and I,” she barked.

  “Well, for starters you’re a mortal now, and for seconds thanks for completely ignoring my question,” I sassily replied.

  “I’m not ignoring it, I’m just ch
oosing not to answer stupid questions,” Scarlet huffed as she began to walk faster.

  “Yeah, real mature! Run away from your problems!” I yelled.

  Alaric was now pretty far behind, still walking and talking with Lucy, and now Scarlet was way up ahead, ignoring me. “Oh, Dallas I miss you so much,” I said aloud to myself.

  “What was that?” Alaric’s voice boomed from behind me.

  “Nothing, just talking to myself like a crazy person,” I laughed, discreetly wiping tears from my cheeks.

  A few moments later Alaric was walking beside me, carrying a very pleased Lucy. “So what exactly are you getting out of all this?” I asked Alaric.

  He thought for a moment. “Well, I am going to help you find your son. Then we shall find my brothers, preferably Arthur, and figure out what to do about this key,” he confidently responded.

  “So, is Arthur like your cult leader or something?” I asked.

  “No, he just has a little less bronze and a few more brains than I do,” Alaric laughed. “And it is not a cult,” he quickly added.

  “Don’t put yourself down! You are a pretty smart little cultist,” I reassured him, patting him on the back.

  “Look, the sun is starting to set,” Scarlet declared from up ahead. “We should find a place to rest for the night.”

  We continued on our path, Scarlet leading the way. As the sun kept sinking, so did my hope for finding shelter before nightfall. Getting stuck out here in the darkness was the last thing I wanted to do. Scarlet suddenly stopped, throwing her arm out across my chest and forcing me to stop walking as well.

  “What’s the matter?” Alaric asked.

  “I think there is a shirtless old man picking up rocks on the trail up ahead,” she said, sounding very confused.

  “Well, maybe he knows where we could find shelter?” I said, very much not wanting to get eaten by whatever was lurking in these rocks deep in the night.