Echo XIII

I handed both the book and the scarf to Demitri. He set the book on the floor and calmly wrapped the golden scarf around his fist. He clasped his hands together through the scarf, held them to his bowed head, and closed his eyes. He stood like that for a while.

“What are you . . .” I didn’t get to finish my sentence. Suddenly, the scarf began to change colour. (I think Silver’s rubbing off on me. >.&lt) It went from the silky gold it was before to a deep onyx black, so dark it seemed to be adsorbing the light around it. There was a faint blood red glow around the edges. Before I could react, he launched downward, toward my shadow. He jabbed his fist right into it, really, into it, slowly at first, but soon the red glow reached all around my shadow.

<Echo! What’s going on?> There was a slight twinge of terror on his voice. I was too nervous myself to answer truthfully. It was times like this I wish we weren’t connected so closely. His terror flowed over me, like a violent current in the dark water that I just couldn’t get away from, no matter how hard I swam.

Demitri slowly raised his hand from my shadow. Only, it seemed as if he was grabbing it, dragging it along with him. The red glow flowed along the mass of shadow that was how free standing. Demitri backed up, looking satisfied. My eyes darted from his smug face, his scarfless hand, and the squirming mass of shadow that stood where my shadow once was. It was so frantic; I didn’t even realize my shadow was complexly gone for several minutes.

{Yian! Yian!}

<Yeah?> His voice was strained, but no longer terrified. Maybe even a little at peace. My eyes locked on Demitri.

“What happened? What did you do?” I demanded. If there were a table nearby I would have slammed my fist down on it, but since there wasn’t I settled for taking a menacing step forward. He almost laughed.

“Look behind you.” I turned around, slowly but steadily. In place of the giant blob of shadow, was Yian’s body. But instead of the small kitten like figure I remembered, he seemed full grown. His body was large and muscular, more like a lion than a kitten, the golden scarf around his neck. His fur was all black, and the wings sprouting from his head were wide and well defined. He looked like he had to struggle to keep from flying off the ground. His tail widened and then sharpened into a deadly red point, and his blood red eyes looked potent with wisdom. He was beautiful.

“Yian.” My voice was barely a whisper. He responded with a low rumbling in his chest, not really a growl, but it was still odd to hear it from the person I spent so long talking to in my head.

<It’s me.> He looked down, inspecting himself. Apparently he liked what he saw. The red anti-glow around him brightened with his excitement. I expected our mental link to weaken once he was free of me, but it actually seemed to get stronger. Slowly, I walked up to him and ran my hand through his fur. He purred softly, and inched closer to me. His body was so cold, but he remained content. The scarf around his neck held the same blood red anti-glow his body had.

“Are you going to explain?” Demitri grinned. It was hard to hold back my excitement. Yian looked big enough to ride!

<You’re not planning to actually ride me are you?>

{Of course not, don’t be silly.}

“What is there to explain? All I did was remove him from his prison. Looks like he grew a bit.” He inclined his head, obviously impressed.

I went to remove the scarf from Yian’s neck, and in an instant Demitri was next to me, restraining my hand. I half heartedly struggled against him.

“I thought you wanted me to show you how to use it.” I sighed and nodded, backing off.

“Do you mind?” He asked Yian. It was really a rhetorical question, but he answered anyway.

<Of course not.> The sound of his voice in my head sounded more like an echo than the clear melodic sound I was used to, most likely because he wasn’t talking to me directly. Demitri deftly unraveled the scarf from his neck. It looked like he had already been charging energy in his hands, because as soon as he touched it, it turned that same onyx black as before. Slowly, he ripped it in two, and the cloth fell slowly, engulfing his hands in black shadow.

“What did you do?” I screamed, barely able to contain my rage. Yian growled this time for real. The sound was kind of unnerving. He sighed.

“I really don’t like explaining things. Can’t we just move on to the lesson?”

“Hell no, answer me! What did you do?” He sighed again.

“Contrary to what you might think, this wasn’t just a scarf . . . well let me start at the beginning.” He paused waiting for a reaction. I didn’t give in, I kept my glare angry. He sighed. “Okay, I’m going to tell you what I know. The earth as you know it . . . it wasn’t the first one in existence.” I couldn’t help but be surprised.

“My teacher had a . . . theory. There is probably some protective spirit, which looks for the success of a world. In its quest for a perfect society, it created First Earth. That was the name my teacher used, but his previous . . . colleagues referred to it as the ‘Shadow Side.’ It created the first gods which were really physical extensions of different aspects of the spirt. First Earth was good, for a while, but there were several flaws. For one, their warriors were ridiculously strong; they easily overcame any physical obstacle they faced, excluding each other. This was also where the power of ‘Adeptness’ was first gifted to the humans by First Earth’s gods. But with the birth of the Adepts came war. The added power to each of their nation’s armies made them over confident. They made their adepts Generals who led long and fierce battles against other nations. It was then that their first problem became apparent. The humans there took ridiculously long to heal. One wound and a soldier would be out of commission for over a year, minimum. Since controlling he elements was extremely difficult on First Earth, mages were scarce, especially clerics. Even though those who mastered magic were the most intelligent child prodigies anyone has ever seen, there just weren’t enough of them to support everyone.

“Realizing that it had failed, the spirit left First Earth to fend for itself. By then, the gods had become self sufficient. They desperately tried to settle the wars once and for all, at the cost of many lives. In some ways it was too late to make things the way they were before. However, they did try to rebuild, and redeem themselves in the eyes of the spirit.

“None the less, the spirit created a second Earth, Second Earth, in a whole separate plane. Second Earth is here, our earth.” I stifled a gasp. He continued, apparently not hearing me. “I’m sure you know the history of our earth pretty well. But . . . well let me put it this way. Second Earth isn’t really on a separate plane. Think of it this way. On an Z, Y, Z scatter plot, First Earth would be point (0,0,0), and Second Earth shares the same point of (0,0,0). The spirit couldn’t really move in the three dimensional plane, so it kind of . . . ignored First Earth and created Second Earth in the same place. Technically, First and Second Earth are . . . sharing the same space. But . . . It’s complicated. They’re in different places in the fifth dimension or something . . . Look it’s really complicated and I wasn’t really paying much attention. All I know is that occasionally, because of their extremely close proximity, material sometimes, passes between realms. Well, there are ways to pass between sides, portals if you will, but they are rare, I only know of one down in the dungeon . . . .” He paused, probably regretting telling me that last thing. Oh well, too late now. There’s a legend that there’s a Third Earth, but no one really believes it, there’s been no evidence so far . . .

“Well anyway, this is one of those things that passed through the borders.” The scarf had transformed back into its original state. He held it up for me to take it. Reluctantly I grabbed it and held it in my hands. It was cold, but oddly pleasant. “Here we call them Shadow Pieces. Mainly because they are just that, pieces of shadow. Well . . . not quite. Actually they are pure essence of shadow, but the difference is negligible. It’s not like you’re going to be tested on this. Anyway, these are especially powerful artifacts, which allow a user of shadow related techniques to concentrate their powers into one extremely powerful weapon.” He looked at me for a second. “In your case that will most likely be knuckles, unless of course you wanted to learn how to use other weapons.” He shrugged.

“That’s enough explanation. How bout I show you how to use it?” I could barely contain my excitement. I stood up rigid, ready for action. He obviously could tell what I was thinking due to my change in stance. He silently chuckled and gave me a convincing grin.

“It’s really not all that hard, especially since you have Yian. Controlling a Shadow Piece should be like cake for you, your mental link to a Shadow Side being gives you an advantage.” His face soured, and mine went pale.

“Shadow Side being?” He looked at me quizzically.

“You didn’t know? Yian is from the Shadow Side? I thought you could put two and two together, you know, with the whole melting into your shadow thing.” He rolled his eyes.

“But how – how could he get here on his own through the portals? When he came to me he was barely conscious.” He looked at me funny again. It was weird how he expected me to know everything.

“He’s not really from there . . . He’s more of a byproduct of the separation of First and Second earth. Some things managed to slip through . . .” He trailed off. “Whatever, it’s irrelevant.” Something shiny appeared underneath his sleeve. Suddenly, the door opened.

“Yian why don’t you go try out your flight for a while. I could use some alone time with Echo.”

<You do know it wouldn’t really be alone time don’t you?> Yian argued. But I could tell his heart wasn’t in it. He really wanted to go try out his new, fully developed wings.

{Wow, you’re a bad liar. Just go, have some fun.} He looked at me, his eyes happy.

<Thanks buddy.>

{No problem.} With that, he slowly flexed the new muscles in his wings and took off, soaring through the air and gracefully swooping through the relatively narrow door way. The door shut behind him. Demitri paused for a moment, casually eyeing the scarf.

“Okay, he’s far enough away now.” He walked over to me and sat on another makeshift shadow mat. “The explanation is rather simple really, but the practice is hard. All you really have to do is charge enough energy into the piece till you feel the seal break, then just mold it into whatever weapon you’re imagining. That scarf is really like a link to Yian’s power . . . but he hasn’t been exposed to it enough for it to be that connected yet. If you let him hold it for the night, that may be enough to permanently dissolve the seal . . .” I stopped him.

“Seal? What seal?” He looked at me blankly.

“Oh . . . well, the piece will work differently for you than it will for me. Having Yian complicates things. The piece has a kind of seal, which activated when I manually connected the scarf to Yian. I didn’t mean to, but I didn’t have enough energy to get him out of your shadow myself. Anyway, if that seal breaks, it would instantly try and fill your body with his energy, to balance it out. I don’t think you can hold that kind of energy yet. So, if you let Yian naturally donate energy to the piece, the seal will dissolve and there will be enough energy inside of the scarf to trick it that there is equilibrium on both sides, of course Yian’s energy will naturally flow in to your body, because the seal is still broken. But the flow rate will be slow. Your body wont start to show visible changes for at least a year, but after about two years your physical transformation will be complete.”

I gasped.

“Don’t worry; you’re not going to sprout wings or anything like that. You’ll see eventually. Anyway, you can see how using the piece this early could be dangerous. It might be better if you use your eyes . . .”

Although I was still in shock I knew what he meant. I called upon the Adept’s eye, something I had become oddly familiar with, and began to pour energy into the Shadow Piece. Eventually, I could feel some of my energy pushing back into my body. The only reason that would be happening is because of resistance fro . . .

“Now!” I cut off the energy flow. The piece was back in its onyx black state.

“Impressive. On your first try too. I though I was going to have to explain a dead student and a melted training room.” He laughed. “Good think you didn’t die, I don’t think any of the ones I had in mind would have gotten me off the hook.”

It was hard to be in good humor when he was referring to a death that nearly occurred.

“What are you waiting for, make some knuckles. We don’t have all day.”

Grudgingly, I imagined two fairly simply glove like contraptions in my mind. When I opened up my eyes, they were surrounding my fists. Before I could fully finish admiring my work, a fist came plummeting at me from the side of my peripheral vision. Reflexively, I threw up my arm to block the blow. The force spun me around, so my back was facing the direction the punch had come from. Instantly, there was another equally powerful blow on my back, which sent me sprawling forward. I could barely keep on my feet. I turned around to glare at Demitri, whose fists were covered in a thick layer of shadow. It was then that I actually looked down and looked at my own fists. They were of course covered in shadow, but the red glow that I was expecting was no longer just a glow. They were emanating a red electric looking charge, which made a low humming noise in my ears. They looked awfully powerful.

“What was that for?” He was laughing. I was furious, but still slightly in awe over my sexy looking gloves.

“You didn’t think I teach you something combat related without making you test it out did you?”

“You’re not going to explain the book first?” Most of my anger was gone. He was kind of right. His expression turned somber.

“I – That you’re going to have to find out on your own. Honesty, I don’t understand it myself. I can tell you that it’s called the ‘Great Book.’ I don’t know if that helps or not, but it’s supposed to be sacred.” That was upsetting, but I couldn’t expect him to answer all my questions. It was also kind of weird to have a supposedly sacred book in my possession. Of course he didn’t give me a chance to finish pondering. He lunged at me, and I quickly had to dodge out of the way.

“Don’t dodge, block. If you’re going to learn to fight you’re going to have to take a hit, or at least deflect one.”

The rest of the period remained like that. He’d attack and he’d force me to block. By the end I was completely covered in bruises, quick healing ones, but they were still sore.

I trudged slowly to Scrolling. The teacher was delighted to see me, or at least I could tell by the gasp. As I raised my head to see who it was, I slowly stopped half way. She was wearing a black mini skirt.

{No please no.}

<Did you say something?> I almost forgot Yian wasn’t with me. Id grown so used to his constant attention.

{Nothing, forget it. Where are you?}

<Flying above the school. This is incredible!> I wasn’t used to feeling all of his emotions. It was hard to resist his joy that bubbled over into me. I was smiling when, unfortunately, I looked up into the face of the teacher from second period. I shuddered at her returning grin, and quickly rushed to a seat in the back of the room before she touched me.

Scrolling was fairly simple. All you had to do was introduce energy into the scroll, just enough to slightly puncture a seal on its dormant energy. If done successfully, the scroll will release a small orb of power, its colour varying based on the percent scroll indicated. Then you just take the item you’re scrolling, and introduce the power of the scroll at a certain rate, the rate indicated by the colour of the orb. For example, if you have a 70 percent scroll, introduce 70 percent of the orb’s energy per second. Seventy and thirty percent scrolls are the most volatile, and have the potential to destroy your item. There are three other types, 10, 60, and 100 percent scrolls. 100 percent’s are fool proof. The others are more difficult to control.

Also, certain items have a different capacity for holding energy from scrolls. Capes, gloves, earrings, and shoes can all hold 5 scrolls. Shirts, hats, and pants can hold seven. Overalls can hold 10. There are certain exceptions to the average, such as Yellow Adventures Capes, and Brown Work Gloves.

Some kid in the front row was fervently scrolling things, trying to win the teacher’s approval. She barely paid any attention to him. By the end of class I had successfully scrolled a Sauna Robe with 10, 30 percent scrolls for something, I wasn’t paying that much attention. My practice with Demitri when my life depended on it made this seem extremely dull. Apparently that was some great accomplishment, because people were begging to buy it from me. I politely turned them down and carried it out of the room to Dinner. I sat with Fye and his friends, Roy sat with us, and we chatted about random nonsense I didn’t care about. I was distracted, thinking about the end of the week. I used my free period to practice making things with my Shadow Piece, and then trained my defense with Demitri for the rest of the day. Wearily I returned back to the room, and Yian was waiting for me on my bed. Well, not really waiting for me, the whole guild was crowded around him, murmuring in excitement and wonder. A few stayed back, obviously disturbed by the strange new creature.

Fye hopped over to me excitedly. He started talking a mile a minute. “When you told me about him I didn’t know what to think and – he’s yours right? What am I saying of course he is. And I didn’t know he was so big, especially since you only got him a few days ago, and now he has those win – have you flown with him yet? That must be exhilarating, flying above everything like that. Of course, I know, I have my hawk, but flying like that is painful. I wonder how it is so carefree and just soaring, enjoying the sights and all that. Man one day I wish I . . .” He babbled on like that for a while. All of his questions weren’t really questions, just introductions to his next comment. I listened, happy to talk to him. I would be missing him after my departure.

The last few days went on without much excitement. Yian let me ride him to class. That was awesome. He was so strong and fast, but also so quick, I could barely feel his footsteps pounding against the floor. It was like flying really close to the ground. My classes went on as schedule. We practiced flying in Piloting class and scroll use in Scrolling like usual. Like I said, nothing unusual. I spent my free periods forming things with my Shadow Piece. Demitri insisted I mastered my defense before I moved on to offence. I wasn’t too happy with that, but I complied, not wanting to start a fight. By the end of the week I was pretty proficient at it, but there were still some clear holes in it that I needed to work on.

Saturday came sooner than I thought. Yian woke me up early the next morning. At least I though it was Yian. In my mind, I could tell Yian was still unconscious with sleep. Then who –

“Echo.” It was Fye’s hushed voice. I sat up slowly in my hammock.

“Fye?”

“Yeah, it’s me.” His voice was quiet, even for a whisper.

“What is it?” I rethought my question. “What’s wrong?”

“I – are you leaving? Today I mean?” I considered lying to him. I really did. But something about his face, so distraught, made me think better of it.

“Yeah. Demitri is taking me away, for training.” His face cringed in pain.

“Oh. Are you coming back?”

“I honestly don’t know.” This time my face cringed. I didn’t like to think about leaving. I would really miss him.

“Oh.” He paused. “Well here, I wanted to give this to you.” He stopped and rustled something out of his pocket. “Before you left I mean.” He added.

He pulled out an exquisite looking necklace. The chain was composed of thin links of silver. At the end, was a long blood red crystal, cut into a hexagonal shape lengthwise, sharpened to a point at the end. It gave me an odd feeling to hold it in my hands. It sent a small tingle down my arm.

“It was my grandfathers . . .” He paused. “I didn’t want you to forget me you know?”

I felt a sudden wave of emotion. I paused, choked up.

“What, you don’t like it?” He sounded hurt.

“No, no, it’s just. . .” I stopped. “This is just the nicest thing – Thank you.” He smiled.

“Now go get some rest. You have school in the morning.” He laughed.

“Okay. I’ll miss you man.”

“I’ll miss you too.”

Yian and I were up at 6:00 exactly. He pounded through the hallways with me on his back, rushing outside to the docks. He knew the school inside and out now, after having nothing to do but wander for the past week. We pushed outside the final door and out into daybreak. Demitri should be waiting for us at the docks.

He was there as we expected. A small flying boat like the ones from piloting class was waiting for us. He was sitting in the boat waiting for me.

“Ready to go Echo?” He smiled.

“Yeah. Sure.” I dumped my change of clothes and the Great Book into the back of the ship. The Shadow Piece was resting calmly around my neck. I gripped Fye’s necklace in my hand as we took off into the sunrise. Hopefully I would be back, someday. Someday . . .

Okay everyone. Thank you sooo much to all of my readers who devotedly read all of the chapters of my first decent fanfic. I hope you’ll stay tuned for Part Two, which hopefully will have the first chapter done sometime next week. I’m so excited. Anyway, please leave a comment or something. I like hearing positive and negative feed back. Even though positive is much much better. =P Oh, and just so you know, there is only a small window of opportunity left if you still want to be in the story. PM me for an application if you want to be in it. Part two should be filled with a lot more action that Part 1. Okay, now I can leave. Cya peoplez!

-Hands out cookies-