Interlude: Eko

(664 A.C.)

It had been two weeks since Wanily left. Two weeks since Eko was given a spark of hope that he could escape–and then a glimpse into the future that gave him a front row seat to the fate of the world. What could he say? Two equally important things in an eventful day.

Even after looking into Wanily’s future, he hadn’t known exactly when he was getting out of prison, just that he would. How else was he supposed to be there when she came looking for him in–what was it? Twenty-odd years? By the mists, what would he do with himself during all that time?

Well, he had some idea. There were things that happened–things that Eko could possibly lend an expert hand in tweaking. Just to make sure everything went according to plan, right? Because Eko really wanted everything to go to plan. He did like living, after all–or he would. First, he just needed to get out of this gods-damn dungeon.

He sat against the side of his cell, bars digging into his back and legs bunched up to his chest so he could rest his elbows on his knees. There was only one guard, Yunt, down with him and had been ever since that bloke came in and tore into the warden, the prison, and everything else, and by the gods was Yunt making his life miserable. Eko got it–he was about to lose his very easy job and either be moved to a different position in the prison or be dropped altogether. And well, Eko had always made a very good target to hit, right? Easier to punch down than up and all that.

Eko got it, but he didn’t like it, not in the least. He had promised himself when he left Fris all those years ago that he would not take anyone’s shit ever again. And, well, he hadn’t had a choice the last few years, but he did now. Or, he would. He just had to wait for the day to come.

In the meantime, Eko threw his thoughts back toward things he had tried so hard to forget–namely, spells. And anything else that could help him in his new goal in life, which was, apparently, saving the entire fucking world. Eko thought he had left behind all those grand, altruistic ambitions when Leolin died, but somehow, some way, fate had decided to thrust it upon him.

He wasn’t even going to be paid for it this time around.

Whatever. Saving the world meant saving his own skin–not to mention sticking it to Atlas Stellar–so Eko would swallow any misgivings he had and face it head on.

Yunt made a low grunt, and Eko glanced at him. The man was sitting with his feet up on the table, gazing down at Eko like he was a rat he’d found in his bed. “What’re you smiling for?” he growled.

Eko hadn’t realized he had been. He shrugged. “Oh, just considering how nice it will be to never have to look at your ugly mug again.”

Yunt scowled. “Oh, you think you’re funny, do you? Think you’re gonna get out of here any time soon? I hope they take you out of here just to throw you somewhere darker and smellier and leave you there to rot.”

“Why, Yunt, I daresay it wouldn’t be possible to go somewhere smellier. You won’t be there, after all.”

Yunt’s face turned an almost comical shade of red. “You think you’re so fucking witty, don’t you?” He smiled sharply suddenly, eyes wide and hard. “Tell me again, how did you end up here?”

Eko tilted his head back, letting it rest against the bars behind his back. He pursed his lips, considering. He had made mistakes in his life, which may have not been mistakes at all. Maybe he was supposed to be in this place, at this time, so that he could help save the world. Whatever. The point being, he had been a not-so-great guy for a good portion of his life, and he couldn’t completely blame that on Atlas. Now, he was going to give using his powers for good a try.

But maybe he could be a bad person, one last time.

“And would you like to know how your story ends, Yunt?” Eko climbed to his feet and padded to the front of his cell, threading his fingers behind his head. He smiled crookedly at Yunt, who frowned at him in confusion. “You are going to be hired by a merchant passing through the Wilds and paid three times what you make here while getting to travel the world. You’ll never marry, but you’ll pick up a couple of rowdy urchins along the way and whip them into shape. Because despite how much of an arsehole you can be, you still got some compassion.” Yunt’s eyes widened when he realized Eko wasn’t stopping. He shot to his feet, but Eko kept going. “They’ll make good fighters, and when you get too old to travel anymore, you’ll settle down in a nice town.” Yunt banged on the bars with his metal baton, shouting, but the words were tumbling out now faster than Eko could be bothered to stop, “They’ll stop by when their travels allow them, and in the meantime, you’ll help out the people. You’ll actually become something of a good person, if you can believe it.” He grinned up at the thunderous expression on Yunt’s face. “Or well, you would have.” He leaned closer and whispered, “How about that, Yunt? I saw your life, knew what you were and where you were going. I know you better than you even know yourself, and I still despise you.”

“You’re lying,” Yunt hissed. “And if you’re not, I’m going to make you wish that you had been.”

Eko shrugged. “And I plan on being long gone before you have the chance to make good on that threat. Funny that, isn’t it?”

Eko was saved from Yunt’s response by the door at the top of the stairs opening. Yunt sent Eko one final glare before standing at attention. A good thing, too, as the familiar boots of the warden appeared on the steps, preceding the familiar mug of the man with his head of red hair and perpetual sour expression like he’d just bitten a lemon.

He nodded to Eko then turned his nose up–ever so slightly but enough that Eko noticed–as he addressed Yunt. “Am I interrupting something?”

“No, sir,” Yunt muttered. He cleared his throat, speaking more clearly. “What was it you needed?”

The warden flicked a finger toward Eko. “New orders came in,” he said. “He’s to go free as well.”

Yunt’s eyebrow twitched, his face turning a shade of red similar to a tomato. Eko grinned. It started as a heady feeling, then it spread through his body, something bright and light as a feather. It was one thing to know, in a roundabout fashion, that he was going to be freed. It was another thing to actually hear the words being spoken.

“Surely there must be some mistake,” Yunt said haltingly. “Sir. We have ample evidence that he–”

“Did nothing against any nation’s written laws?” The warden arched one thin eyebrow. “Ekostaphollese was given a life sentence for a crime that simply does not exist. It only stands to reason that if the prison is cutting back on its expenses, it would let an innocent man go free.

“On that note, I must speak to you as well.” The warden clasped his hands behind his back, raising his chin imperiously. “Seeing as there will no longer be separate cells for our specialty mages–and seeing that we do not currently have any specialty mages at all–you will be needing to find another employment opportunity.”

Eko, impossibly, felt his grin stretch wider. He looked from the warden to Yunt and back again, watching with unbridled glee as the warden’s words slowly worked their way through Yunt’s thick skull. His face slowly tightened, the veins in his neck and on his forehead beginning to bulge.

“Sir?” he gritted out, teeth clenched. “I’m not sure I understand–”

The warden stared down at him. “Your employment here will be henceforth terminated.” He leaned down until his eyes were level with Yunt’s. “Leave.”

Yunt’s free hand tightened into a fist, the other tightening so much around his baton that the metal bowed under his touch.

Eko let out a low whistle. “Tough break, Yunt. Maybe you’ll get lucky traveling through the Wilds on your way out of here.” Yunt whirled on him, and Eko winked at him. “Or you would have, yeah?”

Yunt bellowed, “You–”

“Will be leaving,” the warden cut in, as perfectly calm and collected as always. “Both of you will.”

The bottom of Eko’s stomach tightened. Well, he knew he would live through this, but that knowledge seemed small and pathetic compared to the huge, maniac smile on Yunt’s face. “Yes, sir,” he said. “I’ll go ahead and escort the prisoner on my way out.”

The warden looked sidelong at Eko. Eko gave him a cautious smile. He had saved the warden’s son by spoiling the future where he died in a traveling accident–the warden owed him, didn’t he? He wouldn’t let Yunt do anything to him.

Right?

Eventually, the warden nodded. Eko felt his smile drop like a stone. “Agreeable,” he said, before turning and striding away.

The heels of his boots clicked on the stone steps leading up to the door, and when the door banged shut behind him, Yunt turned to Eko with the same level of unrestrained joy that Eko had felt just moments before. Funny how things often came back around to bite Eko in the ass.

He chuckled uneasily. “Heya, Yunt.”

Yunt did not respond except to pull out the key to Eko’s cell, the smile on his face never wavering. The cell’s gate swung open with a screech of metal on metal. Yunt strode forward, the metal baton in his hand swinging back and forth.

Eko held up his hands, laughing again and backing away. When his back hit the wall, he offered Yunt one of his signature smiles. “We can talk about this, right?”

Yunt laughed. That was all the warning Eko got before he was swinging forward with the baton. Eko blanched, ducking and scrambling forward on all fours like some type of terrorized mutt. Behind him, there was the clang of the baton striking the brick where Eko’s head had been just moments before.

“You little shit!” Yunt roared, whirling and lashing out with the baton again in one fluid motion.

Eko yelped, shooting to his feet and just barely evading the attack. He reached out behind him to grab the gate of the cell before Yunt could take more than another step forward. It wasn’t much but he managed to pull the gate shut behind him, forcing Yunt to stop in his pursuit and wrench it back open.

“Get back here!” Yunt shouted as Eko started up the stairs, taking two at a time and scrabbling for the handle of the door. He slipped through it and looked back just in time to see Yunt throw his baton. Eko started and slammed the door shut. The baton let out a loud thud when it hit the wood.

There was something warm on his back. Eko froze, turning around himself slowly and gazing up.

There, burning bright above him, was the afternoon sun. Sure, the air was cold as a frost lion’s teat out here, and the wind made it even more cutting, and Eko was wearing nothing but threadbare, repurposed rucksacks. None of that mattered. Eko could feel the sunlight, could feel the wind against his skin. He found himself laughing, hard enough to bring tears to eyes, and simply allowed himself a moment to bask in the sunlight.

It had been so long. He was free. Free.

Footsteps behind him broke him out of his reverie, and he was shooting across the prison yard before the door–leading down to his ex-cell because he was an ex-prisoner–burst open. There were other prisoners currently lounging around, eating lunch and looking appropriately menacing even with their colorful, pastel heads of hair. They glared at Eko as he raced past, still laughing, legs burning and chest heaving for the first time in years.

He could hear Yunt chasing after him, but Eko didn’t care about that. At the end of the yard, the warden stood as tall and rigidly as a pole, watching Eko’s flight from the vantage of his nose. When Eko got closer, he motioned him over with the wave of two fingers.

Eko skidded to a stop in front of him. “What the fuck was that?” he fumed. Glancing back, he saw Yunt slow to a stop, clearly wary of the warden. One side of the warden’s mouth quirked up, and Eko’s blanched. He’d never seen the warden give anything resembling a smile.

Still, Eko was pissed. “Oh sure, laugh all you want.” Never mind that the warden wasn’t actually laughing–for the stoic crane of a man, a smirk was basically the same thing. “You know he’s going to try to kill me the moment I step foot outside of this prison.”

“So don’t step outside,” the warden said, like a cryptic son of a bitch.

The realization hit him, then. The warden was toying with him. Eko couldn’t really blame him though. Amusement was probably sparse in these parts and would likely become ever scarcer once Eko was gone. He’d let the warden have this as long as he stopped Yunt from splitting his skull open.

The warden pulled his wooden wand from his belt, holding it up like a conductor about to cue an orchestra. “Light as a feather, wings would be better,” he said. He brought the tip of the wand down until it was a hair’s width from Eko’s chest. Eko grinned at him, recognizing exactly the spell he was casting. It was one that proved the warden was worthy of that head of red he was sporting. “From the bonds of gravity, you will be freed.”

Eko laughed at the sudden sense of weightlessness over all of his body, like he had been dumped in a pool of water. He didn’t start to rise until he focused on the feeling, centered in his chest, and pulled up on it.

He lurched upward, his clothes rippling as the air moving past teased the edges. The warden watched him ascend with an impassive air about him once more. “You have about six minutes,” he said. He tucked his wand back into his belt, nodding. “I suggest you make the most of it.”

Eko grinned down at him. He mulled over what terribly witty thing to say to the man in parting, but eventually he decided on a simple, “Thank you.”

The warden raised one hand in farewell. Eko tugged himself up the last few feet until he rose above the wall surrounding the prison’s courtyard. The guards walking their rounds on top of the wall watched him with a sort of tempered irritation, no doubt having watched him run across the yard and the warden’s subsequent aid in his escape. Most of these guards were familiar with Eko in some fashion, whether just through hearsay or having the misfortune to meet him. Judging by the lack of Eko’s body being used as a pincushion for arrows right now, the news of Eko’s newly acquired freedom must have already been spread among them.

Eko saluted them with a grin before glancing back at the prison one last time. The warden and Yunt were watching him, aloof and furious, respectively, while the rest of the prisoners looked on with anything from envy to such murderous intent Eko was surprised he didn’t just drop dead out of the air right then.

The larger complex of Festra sprawled out behind where Yunt stood, and there, slightly off to the right, was the simple wooden door that led down to what was once the specialty mage cells. Gazing down at it, thinking about all he’d lost and the task that laid before him, Eko wanted to do anything but smile–which is exactly why he did.

Tugging on that feeling in his chest once again, he moved himself forward, above the guards and past the wall. Spilling out ahead of him was the rugged, snowy terrain of Vixx. There was a forest not too far from the area cleared for the prison, its evergreen trees tall and dusted with powdery snow. To the north, he could just barely make out the Zestrian Mountains, their silhouettes like sleeping hydras blotting out the horizon. To the south, more forest. Behind the prison to the west–who could’ve guessed it–even more forest.

Eko sighed, the cold air burning in his lungs. Six minutes–probably more like five now. He should make the best of it, put as much distance between him and Yunt as possible. Just in case. Eko wasn’t an immortal after all–and just because he’d seen himself in Wanily’s future didn’t guarantee anything if that future didn’t come to fruition.

But that future would come true. Eko would make sure of it.

Before he could pull any strings though, he needed to make sure he was capable of doing that. So, he pulled himself south, soaring over the forests and snow below. Back toward Fris, the land he’d left behind so long ago. There would be no Leolin there to teach him, no king that would be his benefactor, but he was certain that some of Leolin’s old contacts would still be alive. Eko was no honey-worded Atlas Stellar, but hopefully, he could convince them to continue his education where Leolin’s teachings had ended.

The fate of the world depended on it, after all. And somehow, Eko was going to make damn sure that everything fell into place.