Rah. Whatever…this took so long to write…so long.

In her tent, the blind seer Onin watched as the thick grey smog netted the huge, burnt-out skyscrapers of Haven. It had come out of no-where, seeping along the floor, and trapping anyone in its path. Slowly the cloud unfurled itself, slipping over the walls first. It slunk over the ground, puffing lightly over raised sections of the city. People stopped and stared as it rolled towards them, a huge, uncompromising bank of wispy fog. The vapour rolled on, nether gaining or loosing sped, as it engulfed anything in its path.

It brought with it what at seemed at first to be rain. But the droplets were black and purple and flew towards the ground like arrow shafts in weird, arcing flights. Diluted Dark Eco. Onin looked closer.

The people in the fog were coughing occasionally. She watched as a man removed his hand, only to find it covered in eco-tar. Missing appendages, such as ear tips or fingers, became more and more common. Metal heads, horrifying armies and hordes of rebel Sparagans assaulted the shield walls, which now provided inconsistent power after the surge had racked it. Missing limbs became even more common, with legs and arms inexpertly healed by eco and salves, they became scarred for life.

People left in droves, only to be cut down by the heat, or gunfire from the Marauders, who were constantly on the prowl on the city borders.

Hades was growing rich, harvesting young souls before their life had been finished. Onin watched as the last Scythe-swish in the empty metropolis cut the lonely soul from an orphan who had lost everyone. Like the city of Haven. It then was fated to stand empty until time crumbled the fine structures to dust and washed the dead slums away.

Onin snarled in mute frustration as once again her timeline died, and she was flung from her vision and back into her own body once more.

Blind once more, and back in the present, the Seer allowed her wizened head to fall slightly. Future sight wasn't as easy as it looked, and was more a guessing game. Life still was unpredictable, but she could see how it could go, and how to get to that good future. But…she had made a mistake. She knew what she was doing when she guided the Shadow and Jak through a certain chain of events, even if it left Haven City unprotected for a few months. But she hadn't considered an Eco Surge. Or the Sages. They had destroyed her hopes for Utopia, and now she was desperately searching through the future to find a cure for this plague in the present.

But what ever she did, Haven fell in a matter of months to the Dark Twins. Haven appeared to be doomed.

With renewed energy of desperation, Onin reached out and grasped a new time-line a green fire-fly in a youthful palm, feeling the age wash out of her as she waded through the time cycle. Her soft rose eyes, cleared of cataracts, inspected the memory of the future easily. It was no different to the last, except for a single a speck of dust that drifted slightly to the right twenty years from the present. Worse than useless. Onin pushed her pink and blue bi-coloured hair out of her eyes and headed onwards, searching for a better future.


Maia looked at the corpse with a degree of pity. Dark lay crumpled on the floor, his flesh literally melting away, as he rotted rapidly, liquidised sinew dripping through rips in its skin and exposing the blackened bones underneath. Organs, freed of their muscle constraints had forced open a tiny flesh wound on his stomach, making it into a hole that stretched almost halfway along his body. His organs had rolled through, gushing out in a gory waterfall, basting his remains in a rotting garnish of blood, dark eco, stomach acid and intestines.

She reached down with her long fingers and closed her hand around Darks glistening liver. It was impaled on a loose scale from his pelt. She yanked it loose and tossed it into the river scornfully and shoved her palm once again into the body. Gol kneeled down beside her and helped her with her task. Methodically, yet savagely they prised out all the veins, arteries, organs and muscles. Then, with more care, they removed the bones, setting them to one side. They took apart his beak and claws, putting with the bones.

Next they turned the remaining skin inside out and worked on the web of capillaries, cleaning out the secretions inside and then removing them entirely.

Gol looked at what they had left. With a wave of his hand, Gol re-directed some fresh water over the area, washing away what wasn't needed and cleaning what was.

His sister clicked her fingers and a small crystal crackled into being, dusting her hand with glittering splinters. She inserted it into the stomach rip and started sawing and the tough demon-hide with glee.

"Who will control him until our Goddess arrives?" she wondered. Out loud, however, she voiced a slightly different question. "How will we control him – will our alchemy work? Or will we have to break him?"

Gol frowned. "Our talents will be enough, I am sure. He must have realised that we set him up, before he died."

"What if he didn't though, or what if he doesn't remember?"

"That's the interesting thing about the Eco-beasts." Gol replied, "They store their memories in their bodies, in every cell."

Maia snorted. "I know that, brother. I am the one who thought up this method, after all."

"He'll remember. He could not forget. Besides, if he does have a rebellious streak, we can very easily weaken him to the point of death – like we did after his fight with the red-haired man."

The following silence was broken by a dry tearing sound. Maia looked up and beckoned to her brother. Gol came forward with an armful of black bones. Under her supervision, he laid them in Darks pelt, and then folded the two halves back over. Maia darned the holes in the hide with Dark Eco, knitting the sharp snake scales together, and finally fixed his beak back on his face.

Gol, with his superior control of water, inflated up the gristly object with clean water from some pipes above him, and kept it inside, while Maia retrieved two glass ellipses from her bag and fixed them in his empty eye sockets.

Then the work began. Gol pressed a strip of treated Precursorium onto Dark's rib, channelling eco through his palm. The metal bent and blacked, and the corpses flesh bubbled like tar. The foul stench of burnt hair and skin filled the small sewers. Maia started wielding half moon ellipse along its spine, coughing as smoke wafted upwards and choked the air.

After an hour of the evil work, they both stood back to admire their handy-work

Maia, with a jar of dark eco, upended its contents into the creature's mouth. Holding another jar at arms length, she dumped its green sparking contents into its beak.

The corpse's flank began moving, imitating breathing. A clawless finger twitched. A tail moved.


Dark eco and Green eco shouldn't be mixed. But when they do, they can resurrect the dead.

The Blue Sage pressed his narrow face up against Jak's. "Well-well…well." He mused, his little square glasses wobbling precariously off the end of his nose. He took them off and began polishing them in rapid circles on his cuff, leaning back on his heels as he did so. He made a 'thuk' sound as he sucked his teeth and shut his eyes, brows knitting.

This was a show of nerves that only Jak saw. Jak smiled. Not because the man was scared, but because the man was scared of him. And somehow, he didn't feel…tense or angry or worried, like he would usually did when he sensed a person's fear.

Oddly, the ability to sense a person's negative emotions had been fading too. In Haven, the ability to empathise beyond what nature had intended had almost driven him mad – if a person stood near enough and had enough passion he could feel exactly what they thought about him. But he was never able to hear anything useful, only whispers of curses and insults the elves around him were too cowardly to voice. Instead his gift was fading back to what he had in Sandover – a sixth sense that could only be used when he concentrated, over all emotions.

Was that a side effect of what Gol did to him?

Why couldn't he talk anymore?

Could that day…have been more real than he thought?

…And what else could he do now the beast had been released?

"Well." Springdew huffed, annoyed. Jak thudded back to earth, to a conversation he was dangerously close to loosing track of. "Is that even possible? That the elderly Sages of Dark eco, could, well, remove a person's affinity with an eco? Or cure a person's blood-lust?" Bolton squinted at Jak. "Or that a, a, a temporary mutation of a persons DNA – a pure chemical reaction – could have a personality?"

Springdew put his spectacles back on his face gently. "And could this – well, sentience be capable of possession? Murder? Can you be 'murdered' by a soul in control of another's personality? But we're digressing here, into psychology and philosophy. Back to scientific fact."

He began pacing. "If we hypothesise, well, well uh, well, that's a big 'if' by the way, I'm stretching my professional credibility to the limit, but, well, if we ignore, for the moment, the improbability, no, impossibility that a by-product of overexposure to certain types of Eco, could produce intelligence…"

Bolton waited expectantly for perhaps half a second.

Jak was learning that the Sage was an impatient man.

"Well, we should be considering the scientific facts – which we have little to none – and I suppose the baseless speculation. And first…we must be sure that, well, well…well Jak here" The blue skinned man waved in completely the opposite direction Jak was sitting in. "Is not using this as a, a mere excuse to avoid accountability for his actions…well, we could be in some degree of trouble."

Sparking erratically at the thought Bolton turned around to interrogate Jak more, but froze at what he saw. His little blue energies– his eco, was orbiting round Jak's outstretched finger. Jak pushed at the little fuzzy thing and it skittered back, almost alive.

Everyone in the room was watching fixated. Jak called to the eco, pulling it back towards him. He flicked at it with a graceful index finger, making the blue droplet explode into tiny glittering dandelion seeds. They twirled and danced while Jak conducted them; a sweep of his tanned hands causing them to flow in joyful eddies around the room.

Jak seemed to swirl in time to the ethereal substance as it twirled round him in ribbons. There was more eco than when Jak started, much more. It reached out to everyone, in almost curious leaps away from its master to the other occupants. The guards at the door stuck their head round and started at the display of skill.

Another slow spin and Jak shut his eyes. He caught the tip of one of the thin ribbons that swam around him, almost if it was solid. Frowning in concentration, he ran his hands over it.

It twisted into a flat reptilian head, which leaned back, ready to strike. Just before it got close enough to do damage, Jak deftly snapped its jaws together and turned it into a blue leaper lizard. It squeaked happily, running round his creator once, before Jak let it disappear. Jak would have continued for hours, to celebrate his unexpected return of his gifts, but realised what he was doing. Playing with glowing ribbons. If Jinx ever found out, he would have a field day…he had already laughed at him when Jak shut down the gun turrets in Havens sewers. (And going down in history as the only person to call Jak a 'ballerina'. And live.)

He jumped out of the eco's embrace, landing next to Seem. Almost instantly, the eco lost is definition, and Jak called the fairy-dust back to his palm, crushing it.

When he opened his palm, a pure droplet of blue eco rolled in the centre, which he gave back to the speechless Bolton.

Seem walked over to Jak. "Amazing." She breathed in her sand-scarred voice. "You are able to channel blue eco?"

"Not since he was 14." Replied Samos, already starting to answer for Jak. "The Barons…treatments…we thought that the Dark Eco destroyed his compatibility."

"Yeah, an' a few weeks ago, he got himsel' fried by eco when he was hanging around some buggy."

Seem pursed her lips. "Perhaps his abilities were masked…"

Sig raised his non-existent eyebrows "You can't hide stuff like that." There was a pause. "Can yuh?"

There was a high pitched squeaking noise, and Samos, who had been perched in a corner, pulled out his comm. unit.

Samos glanced around the room, pausing on Jak. Jak waved at him to go on "Yes?"

Trigger's raised voice, panicked, screeched over the transmission.

"Hey, little problem. You know tha dark sage – tha one whos rampaging? Yeah well, he's gotta whole lotta men and hunting us down like M-heads! Get ure self geared up – its gonna be a mother o' all punch-ups in abowt five minutes. You game?"

Samos spluttered, and was cut off with a crackle. Sig wrenched the little machine from the old man's hands, while Trigger hissed from the other end.

"Samos? Samos? Sa-"

Sig, answered, a hint of amusement in his voice. "Woah, girl, calm down. You're gonna help nobody or nuthin. Sig here. What's the problem?"

"We are going to die, if Ih don't get any help here!" Trigger's static-filled voice snarled

"BURN! BURN! BURN! BURN! BURN! BURN! BURN! BURN! BURN! BURN! BURN!"

"Hold a mo would you?"

Their musings were broken by a dull roar. It for a moment, sounded lit the sea had broken its boundary's and was rushing towards the walls of the palace. But then under the static rush, they could make out faint words, and they chilled them to the bone.

BURN! BURN! BURN!

Suddenly everyone was moving. Jak bolted in front of Seem, his translator, waiting and protecting her. Sig hastily took up his massive weapon/baby/adopted child, its dull barrel shining dully in the candle light. One of the guards scrambled in and in a thick accent started explaining the situation.

"'S a riot, daown baih the palace walls. They came at us inatwo pincer formations. Look, there's nuthin we can do about it. We're trapped."

Sig waved him off.

"What yu thinkin' Jak? We can't just walk through that lot, they'll be on our six before you can kill a yakow."

Jak frowned, shooting him a why are you asking me? look.

"Hey now, You're the expert a' gettin' in 'n' outa places that you shouldn't be, n you've got more experienced wi' blood thirsty crowds than we do. Sparagan's are the best at huntin' metal heads, but we don't do urban combat. There usally ain't enough people ta fight."

Jak raised an eyebrow and pointed to the ceiling.

"Nah. Too open, 'n' we couldn't get everyone outta here 'fore they saw us. An' before you ask, we don't have bloody huge open drain, or passages underneath the castle. That would be damn stupid – it's built on sand."

For some reason, Jak was looking at the Blue Sage. This, in turn, caused the blue sage to panic. Blue eco bubbled and spat from his palms, which he rubbed nervously. "W-w-what?" He squeaked.

Although, yes, several fungi had more back-bone than he did, and an equal blue, luminous glow,The blue sage had heard horrific rumours and stories about the man - and Jak was a mass murderer (Even if a hell of a lot of them were written off as manslaughter or self defence).

Jak wasn't exactly on his 'huggy-people' list. More like, people-to-run-the-hell-away-from list. Getting death glares from said man can't be fun.

This is the reaction Jak wanted, however. The Sage, he had noticed, produced eco when frightened or nervous – pure, refined eco which Jak could very easily work with – in fact he found it easier to channel Sage eco, than vent eco. Within a few moments Jak had a reasonable amount in his palm. Turning to Seem he allowed the eco to float beside him in a power-cell formation, while he signed.

"He says", Seem said slowly, "He says –eco? Blue…what? Spell that. K-I-N-E-T-I-C…kinetic energy? hearing…anger? Outside? Oh, the mob. Right. This is…advanced". She admitted "I never learned the sign for scientific terms….just basic words. You'll have to go slower, Saviour."

There was a pause. Seem watched attentively while Jak signed and pantomimed his way through his explanation.

Finally she understood.

"He suggests…that we divide and incapacitate the men outside, with both blue and green ecos. With the blue eco he suggests creating solid mirages, like the lizard, of us.

Samos, he asks of you to give him a great proportion of your eco. He'll use the Green Eco offensively – you wouldn't be able to do so because of you're sage-hood and healer status. And Bolton, he asks of you to create an orb of blue eco the size of-" She broke off and gestured vaguely. "I think about "30 eint's (1)"

"Correct?" She asked. Jak nodded, and tapped his ears.

"He also asks of us all to…block our ears?"

"While this is going one, he believes it wise for us to travel in four groups – headed by the Channelers of Light, Green and Blue eco's – me, Jak, Sir Samos and Sir Bolton. Bolton, is advised to remove the kinetic energy of anything he deems a threat. He'll be doing the same. Samos and I will hold shields around our group.

"Sparagan'z can channel Eco too, little miss." Chimed in Sig. "Jak, should I round them up? They aint as strong, aint been trained enough - but they could be damn useful in a fight."

Jak nodded.

And the cogs of history, past, present and future clicked into place.


"Helu?" The delicate, lilting Eastern accent of the Monk echoed down the maze-like corridors of the temple. "Mise? You cannot come down heah. Thee Monks told mee that eet was not allowed. Mise?"

The small cloaked form tilted the hood slightly, listening intently. Then it carried on walking…through a wall. Leaving the poor attending monk panting, in an empty, dark hall; all alone and very frightened.

The ghost of the Keeper walked down the halls while the walls happily dribbled ancient runes. Something was happening – something bad. The further she got down the hidden passageway she had walked into, the stronger the feeling got. It was a kinda stuffy feeling in her head, like when a storm was building and the air became heavy and still, just waiting for the first rain to fall. The question was, would the storm wash away them mud, or cause floods.

She quickened her 'pace' (she was floating in mid-air by now) and arrived at the statue. She soared down and sat on the floor.

A light breeze stirred in the room. It came from the statue.

"NAME. RANK. PURPOSE." It commanded, in a booming, army-sergeant style.

"I have come to you to retrieve the Mage's Oath, the Sage's Vow and the God's Decree, as commanded by you sister statue." She answered. "I am the Keeper of knowledge suitable for nether Precursors nor Men. I am Ramel Ha'kan Mar, Wife of the Sand Lord and Daughter of Bon and Onin.

The ancient statue seemed to shift uncomfortably.

"THE OBJECTS YOU REQUIRE CANNOT BE SHOWN TO YOU. I HAVE BEEN TASKED WITH PROTECTING THESE SCROLLS. MY MISTRESSES AND MASTERS MUST COMMAND ME BEFORE I MAY GIVE YOU THEM."

The battle-worn ghost snorted. "Give? I take."


"On three." Said Kleiver. Vegar sat on his shoulder, shivering miserably. He was trying to simultaneously to press himself into (less of a target) his steed…and not. Because this is Kleiver, Krew's ugly long-lost cousin (if rumours were true). Enough said.

Kleiver stood beside Seem, as one of the complimentary Channelers. Surprisingly he was a competent Red. Vegar, not so surprisingly, was a weak Light. Other Sparagans were grouped loosely together, competent Channelers and skilled marksmen and women ringing the less able combatants, the monks and the children. There were no elderly to take care of.

"Two."

Three other groups, with the same amount of people, were getting ready to charge all around the four points of the fortress.

"One" Ground out Kleiver.

Far above him, a single volley of Eco shot up into the sky – around 30 Eints of the stuff. As one, every elf shoved their hands over their ears-some plugging them with wax.

In group number 3, Jak concentrated hard. Shutting his eyes, he focused on the pure energy above.

Energy was energy was energy – whether it was heat, electricity, whatever, one form of energy can be turned from another – electricity (a main component of Blue Eco) to heat (yellow eco), for example…or, perhaps, electricity to sound.

Isn't physics fun?

For the aggressors? No.

The rioters screamed as the pressure wave of pure 170-80 (2) decibel noise, rammed itself down their ear holes causing their eardrums to explode. The sound waves created a solid wall of air, moving at 10-20 miles per hour, bitchslapping the men and women, and physically vibrating their vocal chords and bodies. The huge and rapid expansion air cooled it down and the faintest whips of fog began to appear in the ripped air. (3)However, because of the fact Jak had used Blue Eco – a short lasting, high energy Eco, it only lasted for a few meters, and dissipated almost harmlessly. Meaning that some rouge saboteurs escaped with some of their hearing. Those closest to the blast lay dead. A radio tower twisted itself round with a mournful cry and plummeted to earth, hitting terra firma with a resounding crash, sending shards of metal everywhere.

The escape begun.

(1) Eints. Eco Pints, a measurement of eco – roughly the amount of blue eco to rip apart a small building.

(2) This is all true. This will happen if this amount of noise hits you. I looked it up.

(3) Okay, back to bull shit. Where's the fun if you kill off all the aggressors so easily?

It's supposed to be an Iranian kind of accent. On reflection, it reads more like African…

Well, damn.

Thanks to Afeenaninganing for giving me Ramel's name.