N'aww. You guys sure know how to flatter a girl, don't you? Look at me, all blushy. But still, now I know that using guilt is a great method. Yaaaaay. Still, that's probably going to be the last of my review mongering. If you review, you review, if you don't, you don't. But don't be shy about it. I'd love to hear your opinion. Chapter 10 has been edited some, by the way, just to iron out some repetition I found, as well as some typos. Feel free to look back on it if you didn't find it satisfying the first read. Anywho, now we're back into the hands of Zorna, who seemed a little iffy last time we saw her. What's going on inside that head of hers? You're about to find out! Normal disclaimers apply. Please sit back enjoy this new chapter.


Opening my eyes seemed like such an effort. Looking at the sparkling ceiling above me made me want to close my eyes once more. Shivers wracked my naked body, and all I wanted was to feel the over powering heat of lava flowing underneath me. The smell of cleanliness made me want to choke on the vile smell of sulphur.

I sat up wearily, clutching the thick fur blanket close to my chest. I didn't really remember much of how I got to be there. At first I had been puzzling over in my mind at why my father, the Red Sage had lied to me, and then somehow I was in the bed, somewhere completely different, naked.

I slid out of bed, trying to ignore the goose bumps that covered my arms and legs. There was no door to the room, but simply just an arch carved into the heavily packed snow walls. It was quite amazing how they had made the place, I had to admit, with all the snow and ice. I wouldn't have had the patience for it what so ever. I was like that; things had to be done quickly. Doing things slowly made this feeling build up inside of me, like I was going to burst. Actually, a lot of things were always building up inside of me, and so that's why I yelled a lot. I yelled at little things, and sometimes, for no reason at all.

I was unashamed to stand there bare with no privacy, as I could imagine many girls my age would be. In my opinion, a body was a body, and if animals could run around without clothes, I could quite easily do it myself. It was out of practicality that I wore my clothes, or so, at least I told myself. A lot of things were turning on its head at that moment, and I wasn't sure of a lot. I managed to catch my reflection in a bunch of icicles that were hanging from above, and I couldn't help but stare at myself for awhile. Even though the reflection was broken up into dozens of tiny mes, it was the first time I had ever seen my full body. What I saw didn't really scare me. It was all normal, from what I could tell. It just upset me how frail it looked. Like my limbs could be snapped off effortlessly. Like a sharp object could easily rip through my skin. All my life I tried to convince myself I was invincible, which was why I never cried; but now, things had changed. I had been betrayed by the closest person to me, which had made me vulnerable. I hated feeling that way. I felt that feeling rise up in me once more.

Without thinking about what I was doing, I swiped at the icicles, bringing them crashing to the ground, shattering on impact. At least over them I felt powerful. I noticed how my reflection in the icy shards was now scattered, random body parts appearing on different shards. I smiled grimly, taking note of how my head was now separate to my body. I supposed it was a sign; by brain had to work separately from my heart. No more trusting people just because they were supposedly close. My father had quite clearly shown me how even those of blood could lie to each other. The nicest, simplest person in the world could hide a dark secret agenda. A long story short: nobody could be trusted. I had to use my wits now, and keep my heart to myself.

I turned away from my broken reflection and went about getting dressed. How I had gotten naked in the first place was a complete mystery. The Lurkers didn't even seem to have the brains to be able to work out how to take off clothes without ripping them off, so it must have been I who had done the deed. As I pulled on my long sleeved red tunic, I felt sick for wearing the colours which represented him. It covered me, indicating that I was his spawn, of all people. I would have discarded it, but it was simply too cold down in that damn ice block full of flea bitten animals.

After I was fully clothed, and armed, I made my way out into the snowy corridor cautiously. I had no idea what time it really was, since no light seemed to make it down there, where ever the hell 'there' was. I didn't feel like meeting another one of the brutes who had dragged me down into the cold hell hole, and just thinking about the trip made my stomach feel bruised and sore. I soon came to a fork in the tunnel. One headed up somewhere to the right of me up ahead, the other headed just plain left. I opted for the left tunnel, and found myself wandering down a gently sloping path. I didn't actually have any plans as to where I was going; just moving kept my mind off of things.

Maybe I had hoped to find myself somewhere new, because when I appeared at the main hall once more, I felt my heart sink. The place just seemed too chiselled for a nest of Snow Lurkers, but I supposed I had no right to judge. I must have been just as an odd, stupid animal to them, what with my skinny white body, with these odd lumps on my chest, and yellow fur sprouting only on the top of my head. I couldn't help myself but laugh as I strolled out into the middle of the huge hall, imagining them all wandering if I had caught some sort of disease which had made all my fur fall out.

"You should come in," whispered a hollow voice in my head, hollow as the echoes of my laughter. It was that weird Snow Lurker Queen thing again. The one who had revealed the stuff which had made me the way I was then. I sort of resented her for telling me all of that. If she hadn't, I would have been blissfully aware. But since I was now trying to use my brain for everything, I supposed I had a lot to thank her for.

I walked over to the two large doors that lead to her chambers. Thankfully, they were open a crack, so I could slide on in without trying to push it myself, or asking for help. The armoured animal Queen still sat perched on her throne, motionless, emotionless. Did she really care about what we had to go through? I had been dwelling on the things that had affected me personally, when really, there was a whole lot more that was going on that just being screwed with by family. A whole bunch of responsibilities were riding on my shoulders, and the suddenly became so heavy I felt like I was going to face plant on the furry carpet I was standing on.

"Come closer. I don't bite," she whispered quietly in my head, as if she had spoken normally she would have been disturbing someone. I couldn't help but smirk at the little joke in my head; you would if you didn't have to wear the muzzle. None-the-less I did as I was told and walked up till I was at the very foot of the stairs which lead up to the throne itself. I wondered why they bothered with such fancy stuff. Weren't they just bloody thirsty animals, after all?

"How are you feeling from last night?" the Queen asked politely. I could have sworn she tilted her head down to look at me, instead of staring aimlessly off into space.

"Oh, you know. Pretty crap," I answered honestly, sitting myself down on the thick rug under me. I was in the sort of mood where I was beyond caring what my language was like.

"I take it you didn't take yesterday's information well, then."

"Just some bits of it are harder than others to swallow. That whole 'being lied to your whole life' thing probably topped the list. The fact that it was my father sweetens the deal somewhat. I suppose finding out I'm supposed to save the world is sort of a big deal too."

"Lies are always nice to hear, but hard to come to terms with when they are exposed for what they truly are. But surely you understand it was a lie of necessity, do you not?" the Queen Lurker asked, not in the condescending 'I know better than you do' tone adults had a habit of adopting, but instead curiosity. She was trying to figure out how I worked. What my opinions were. Luckily for her, I had had plenty of opinions to pass around.

"Well actually, I don't think it was. What was he protecting me from by lying? If anything, I was put in further danger by not knowing what was going on. It wouldn't be so hard to just say, 'Oh hey Zorna, these bad guys are going to do some bad stuff as bad guys have a habit of doing, and I'm going to send you out to go kill 'em', would it? It would have saved a whole heap of time, instead of going on about all these life lessons that you apparently need to know to become apprentice. You know what? If he had just told me the truth from the start, I wouldn't have never worried about whose apprentice I was going to be, and if I was going to become a Sage of some crappy eco for the rest of my life, and do the same crappy things each and every day, and become boring and have all these responsibilities. That's the weird thing, actually. I hate things being boring and slow, and doing the same thing everyday, but at the same time I hate the thought of going out of my comfort zone and having to prove myself to everyone by becoming someone great. I just want to exist in some little non-existent pocket of reality where everything is just fine for me," I ranted, falling back down onto the woolly rug where I buried my fingers, writhing every now and again with each subject change, each new line of thinking. I found it odd that I could just tell this all to someone without real prompting, but I didn't really feel like questioning why I was doing it. All I knew was that it felt good to be escaping my body, like I didn't have to think over it any more.

"Oh, Zorna…there are many things we must question in the world, and so many contradictory things for us to feel. You seem to have taken it all the hardest out of the five," she murmured, leaving me confused. Sure, maybe I had taken to being lied to pretty harshly, but how would she know about any of the others? The others probably don't even know what's going on, I thought.

They're probably just wandering around the world blissfully, thinking that by the end of it all, they would be taken in by another Sage and learn about the secrets of a certain eco, and find their little niche in life as a future Sage. Raine is probably all proud of himself for figuring out some puzzle they faced, and ranting about how eco was so important, and how we have to learn about Dark Eco to get anywhere. Precursors…what did he know about Dark Eco? I heard there's hardly any of the stuff down South. Heh…he really is going to get a surprise when Gol and Maia try and vaporise him instead of 'bestow unto him the knowledge of the world'. Psh…stupid guy.

I sat up slowly after there was a long silence in the room. I wondered if the large Lurker had fallen asleep. It was hard to tell, since she never moved, and a large helmet covered her face completely. By suspicions were proven wrong when she spoke up.

"Zorna, I know where you must go to find your next set of answers. The answers won't be particularly nice, but it will explain a lot. In fact, it is the source of my own knowledge, and that of the four Sages. Ah…here comes Egeus now."

I turned around to find a figure dressed in yellow squeeze through the large double doors at the end of the chamber. Egeus jogged up towards up, and I noticed how wild his hair looked, how his clothes looked even more crumpled than usual, and the dark circles under his eyes. It was kinda cute. He stifled a yawn as he came to stand beside me, his cheeks going red as he found my eyes on him. "I-I'm sorry if I look a little scruffy. I didn't get a good sleep last night, and then I realised that I was the only one still in bed, so yeah…" he mumbled, casting his eyes to the ground.

"Lots of questions buzzing around in your head?" I asked casually, turning my gaze upwards towards the Queen once more. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Egeus grow even redder; his hair looking like it was standing up on end. "Yeah, something like that. And than I got really restless, and I was worried about you, so I went and checked up on you-"

"You…did…what?" I asked in a dangerously slow voice, standing up to face him properly. It wasn't that I was worried about him seeing me naked, it was just his worry about me that got me worried. It struck me as odd and different.

"I-I'm s-sorry! I won't do it again!" He blurted out, squeezing his eyes shut as if it was going to block me out. "I was just worried since we got separated and you seemed upset and I didn't want you to still be upset and alone!" I think he looked more shocked than me at his confession. That was the thing about Egeus; he was truthful to a fault. I hadn't had to spend more than a day with him to figure that out. I could have gotten angry at him for pinning me as the weak type, as he made it sound, but I supposed to reject his kindness was a pretty stupid idea, since sooner or later we were going to have to team up and apparently do some pretty important stuff.

I guess I hadn't really thought about how things were going for him, either. Finding out his old mentors weren't such saints wouldn't be so easy, I supposed. In a way, he had it worse than everyone; his dad had lied to him, and his teachers turned out to be the type to kill people for fun. But he still had thought of me first.

"…well, thanks then," I muttered, nodding my head to him. He looked surprised at the way I had just accepted what he had said, and seemed to relax, nodding back at me, still with a little blush in his cheeks.

"Now that you two have sorted that out, I can now point you in the direction of your next goal, if neither of you have any objections to this." I thought of objecting for the sake of it, but it was going to be pretty pointless if I did.

"I'm sure both of you realise that in your current state you would not be able to defeat Gol and Maia. You have too little experience, and don't know enough about yourselves, let alone them. If you were to face them as you are now, you would surely perish. This is why I suggest you travel to Rock Village, through the Mountain Pass. In the Rock Village you must find a way to enter an old Precursor city, which is located deep beneath the waves. I'm sure you won't have too much trouble with this. In this city, you must search for an old artefact. You will find it within an Oracle, the likes of which I'm sure you're familiar with."

Egeus scratched his head looking confused, whilst I nodded, thinking of the strange statue that resided on a rocky platform beside the lava's edge. It was a weird old thing, which would randomly begin rambling on about strange things if you managed to get close enough to it. Trying to obtain something from one of those loons was going to be hard. But why hide it all the way down there? Why not keep it on hand, if it was so important?

"Well, alright then. We were going to head that way anyway," I replied, putting a hand on my hip. "So, now what? We just go on our way?"

"First, I wish to show you something…"


The next chain of events was both odd and surprising, but not important enough to ramble on in exact detail about. The Snow Lurker Queen actually began to move, the armour she was clad in clanking and squeaking the whole time. The armour made her walk upright like a human, and she moved slowly and uncomfortably, but it was still something to behold. She lumbered behind her throne, which apparently wasn't set up against the back wall like I had thought it would be. We followed the Lurker around, and discovered a gaping hole carved into the back. This hole was an entrance to a tunnel, which snaked both up and down and to the side before coming to a dead end. This dead end contained a vent full of Blue Eco, and a launching pad. I only had a vague idea of what launching pad were all about and what you had to do to activate them through reading some books. None-the-less, the Queen Snow Lurker was quick to demonstrate by passing through the vent as if it were a normal, every day thing, then stood on the launching pad and jumped.

The strange thing about it was that it didn't really seem like it was her body that was channelling the eco, but instead it was her armour. Precursor crap was weird like that.

I was a bit hesitant to step into the vent of Blue Eco. It wasn't as if I hadn't been on an eco vent before; I had often made use of the vents that flowed in the Spider Cave to knock off the nasty critters. I could remember, though, the first time I had stepped on the Yellow Eco vent. I wasn't being chased by any of the oversized pests, I was just simply curious as to what the big deal was about channelling eco. I remember the rush through my body as it coursed through my veins, and how it made my world spin as I got light headed. That light headedness lead to my fainting. Luckily when I fell, I fell off of the vent, so I didn't get 'saturated', as they called it. After a couple of times practise, I got used to channelling such a concentrated amount of eco, and I could do it with ease. But this was a different eco, and I had no idea how my body was going to react.

Taking a deep breath, I stepped forward onto the vent, with Egeus waiting patiently behind me. The Blue Eco surged through my body, and almost instantly I could feel my heart begin to race at a million miles per minute. My whole body felt as light as a feather, energised, full of potential. The light headedness was there, but I decided not to dwell on it and instantly ran over to the launch pad, quicker than I had moved anywhere in my entire life, and sprang upwards into the dark narrow hole above the pad. The feeling was much like flying as I surged upwards, the current of Blue Eco still strong within my body. Looking upwards, I could see a small circle of light, and I tried to compress myself as much as possible so I would travel up faster through the air. The pad certainly had a kick to it, to be able to propel me that far upwards.

As the eco in me dwindled, I came soaring upwards from out of the whole, and landed quite neatly on the solid ground. A small shock wave of Blue Eco emanated from me as I landed, and that ended my rush of Blue Eco. Taking a step forward so Egeus would have room to land when he came up, I took the time to examine the room around me. It was a room which had jaggedy ice crystal walls which gave everything a slightly bluish tinge. I swore I had seen enough blue and white to last me a life time during my short over night stay at the Lurker nest. In the centre of the room was a golden Precursor pillar, with for windy ramps that led up to the top of it. There, I thought I could see the familiar glow of a Power Cell. With a bit of a start, I checked my pocket for the Power Cell I had managed to wheedle out of those two miners, down in the Crater. A pulse of relief came over me as I felt the warm bulge in my pocket. Power Cells were few and far between in those days, and having one went you had a fair bit of power over someone who was out collecting them.

This relief was crushed out of me when Egeus came flying out of the launch pad tube, arms flailing, and came crashing down on me, much to my displeasure (to say the very least). Whilst he certainly wasn't someone who was round, his height gave him an incredible weight, which I certainly felt baring down on my ribs. At it was somewhat warmer under him. Egeus was on the ball, however, and was quick to jump up and start apologising, his face redder than ever before. I felt the urge to scream something at him, but whether it was from the lack of air in my body or my ever increasing soft spot for the awkward young man that I simply waved him off, pulling myself up off the frigid ground.

"This is a very important place," came the haunting voice of the Queen through my pounding head. I looked around in a daze to find out where she had pissed off to, and found her strolling up one of the ramps which lead to the crest of the pillar. With a bit of a huff, I made my way to another of the ramps and began making my own way up, Egeus hot on my trail, still murmuring apologies.

"Several years ago, approximately fifteen, during the First Eclipse, this place sprung to life, as did many Precursor monuments and buildings across the world. It began to vibrate and shake violently, whilst thousands upon thousands of ghostly voices sang praises. You are well versed on what day that was, are you not?"

"Yeah. Apparently it was our birthday," I answered, nodding my head towards Egeus. "Sure was a heck of a lot of fuss. Do the Precursors really take things so seriously with the people they've picked to go fight evil on their behalf?"

"'Birthday'…is an interesting way to put it. But yes, what you have been chosen for is quite the cause for such a fuss. You see Zorna; there is much beyond just destroying the current threat…so much more after that."

"More? Please don't say more…what we're doing now is enough to hurt my brain in places I didn't know it could hurt," I whined, dragging my hands across my face whilst making an exasperated noise.

"I guess we'll come to that when we come to that," Egeus said steadily, moving up closer behind me. "After we've finished what we need to do here first, then we'll think about the future." I couldn't help but turn to smile at him and his backing up of me. He smiled back, this time looking unashamed at the pink that sprung to his cheeks.

The Lurker Queen nodded solemnly and gestured towards the Power Cell that was spinning in between us. "Please, take it, and use it wisely on your journey," she whispered, then turned to leave. "I must return to my place on the throne. It was lovely to get up and stretch. Even more of a pleasure to meet such destined children. Farewell, Zorna. Farewell, Egeus." And with that, the noble Lurker had disappeared out of sight.

I turned to Egeus, and stepped out of the way for him. "By all means, you take it. I'm not stepping on any more Precursor stumps or pillars. Really. Have your turn," I said graciously, then retreated back down the ramp. He looked down at me, confusion twisting his face. I nodded encouragingly at him, and hopped off the ramp completely, just to be safe. With a bit of a gulp, Egeus stepped down onto the top of the golden pillar, quickly swiping the Power Cell from its resting place. Before he could jump off, however, the pillar shuddered, making the whole place shake, then began to sink. Egeus leapt off, tumbling as he hit the ground, but by that time, the rumbles had stopped, and nothing major had happened. We looked at each other quizzically, then around us, then back at each other, before shrugging, Egeus getting himself up. We were about to search for an exit, when a familiar voice whispered in our heads:

"Good…I see you really are the ones. You have activated a very old switch, which was linked to all the closed Yellow Eco vents around the word. They are now flowing once more, and are free for use. Only those of pure blood, chosen by the Precursors can unlock such switches. Be on the look out for the many other artefacts which are just waiting for your touch. Now go, go to the Rock Village and learn of yourselves properly, before it is too late!"