Sneak Exerpt: Surface of the Deep "Echoes"

Echoes: Off the Wall

November 13, 2014 at 3:56pm

"Echoes" is likely a chapter nearing the end of the book. Before this, Elle finds herself emmersed in learning about magic from master Atuer, after discovering the deep after saving Ryton, after discovering Ryton, after discovering magic exists. There is first a chapter about the life of Elle Course a student at Uashrok Academy, who is living in Chillin' cove with her commerades, Benjamin and Anaura, who are both secretly magicians. Elle finds a magic scroll and a scope and like a colidoscope, she sees separate windows of daily life, and like a wand, the scroll rod can realease the magic of charms like the one's she writing as incantaions in her scroll. She's emmersed a charm accross the more than just her home lands: the islands of Jusuayan, but across as far as she knows: could be the entire planet. And their just the wittiest incantations. A pirate has caught on to what she believes to be the power of the world and is now being hunted by the man named Brox: who has more than just a fleet of ships, he is capturing and enchanting dragons with a curse overpowering any magic: weakening their strength and backfiring their spells.

Ryton is umong those dragons being captured in the beginning, thus Elle's rescue. He then leads her to the sunken ship: which has a scroll in the mast where she recovers a charm directing currents and a current is directed haphazardly directly at the underwater city: The Deep Ajustcause.

She meets Atuer who is the keeper of the Deep: he calls the city Ajustcause although, the true name of the city is unknown to her: he only enightenes her a                                                           little bit before sending her on her way to save Ryton. Although Elles cut him free of the ropes he was bound in, he is still stuck in a an enchanted chain, cursing him to feel weak without reliance on a master to direct his travels, thus relying on Elle to empower him and be sure to set him on a course he might find suitable as not to clumsily aim in the opposit direction his master should direct him.

Elle generously sets his course wherever he wants at first, although without Elle Ryton is not quite getting them anywhere. Over time he must learn to trust her guidance as not to travel off track in finding the many treasures to be found.

But first, Elle must remove the curse: for not only was Ryton pained by the chain releasing too much energy into the waters, desperate for guidance, Ryton had cursed Elleto be bound to him for her power was the only he could trust since she had saved him from the ropes and chains in the first place.

The Echo bowed and turned his head toward the wall lining the mouth of the cave and whistled. The whistling rang throughout the cave and the echo reverberated the whistling right back.

The Echo, a dark grey scaley dragon, starred a piercing look strait  into Ryton's soul. The dragon was holding on to the inside of the cave wall giving him some hight to look down from, he was nearly the size of Ryton, although not quite. Ryton had just stammored backward almost losing grips at the cliff's edge, recovered, and let out a hum. The grey dragon climbed down, and bowed his head gracefully and maintained, now, more humble eye contact. Ryton as well narrowed his eyes to reveal a very sincere look of grace and respect and he too, bowed before the other dragon.

The shrill call of the echoes was just as Master Atuer had explained:
"Echoes
High in the mountains, the 'Halo Halls,'
pitch their whistling within cave walls,
rign out an air clearing spell in their calls,"

"Elle," he called, "the falls are beyong the edge of the forrest by coast's side. To remove Ryton's curse, you must travel beyond the falls into the mountains of Halo Halls. Ryton will take you there."

In his kind refreshing tone, she recalled him asking "fresh air?" And he conjured a gust of wind from his wand around the room.

"Master Atuer?" Elle asked.
"can you show me the wind charm."

Atuer motioned for Elle to hand him her scroll and she did. He dipped her quill into the dark blue jar of ink on the desk and bagan writing. A great ammount of time had passed by when he looked up. Elle was into a thrird of his scrolls she had been skiming on the sofa now and dazzled by a haze charm. Thinking of a diversion, she was hoping that this in addition of a howling wind, she might find freedom in escape of pirates if she ever ran into any.

At the cliff's edge, Elle, was peering out from inside the satchel. Feeling confident, she rubbed Ryton's back through the leather: motioning to him she felt safe climb out of the pouch. She untied the spell-tied bond with her wand and stood up high on Ryton's back and bowed as well to now five grey dragon's peering out from inside the cave.

A silver glow was gleaming from a line running down each of the dragon's backs- from nose to tail. Elle let out a soft howling wind for a trick before the dragons and the charm enchanted them with a sweet echo within the caves. Ryton let out more hums than whistles and all of them were bemused by echoing tricks.

Elle slid down Ryton's side to the ground and leaned into him whispering "we're here," once again feeling somewhat confident he could understand her. Then her eyes widened at the sight of the smallest Echo: surprised to see a dragon that was almost her size. They were then motioned to enter the cave by the first dragon they had seen.

Atuer had bid farewell to Elle at the shore of the cove. With as much power her could muster in a wind tunnel toward Elle's destination, Halos, a peaceful whistling rang through the air as she climbed into a satchel spell-bound to Ryton's back, and packed her self in among the rest of her supplies. It had now only been a few days since she had seen him.

Elle's hand was now dripping with blood from a small echoe's mistake. Her foot has slipped from a rock gashing her arm with his hind claws. Her scream echoed throughout the cave. The older echoed turned from their conversation with Ryton and Elle pulled out a hankerchief and laughed and sighed a little anxious around so many dragons. She let the dragon look at her arm: it was only a scratch. Wrapped it noting she's need some of the water from the jar which contained her only sea flower to heal herself later.

The first of the Echoes she had met, Elle was now assuming was the youngest's mother, picked her little one up by the silver scaled scruff on the back of her neck and cariied her to a nook within the cave, and whistled to her. Elle understood this to mean perhaps she the young one should be more careful.

She then returned to her conversation in whistles to Ryton. Ryton seemed to be having a hard time communicating in his hums and attempts to mimic their whistles, while the others could almost rumble some hums like Ryton's. They were all entertained by a musical sounding charm, although one was glaring suspiciously at Ryton's chain.

By night fall, the cave was empowered by the musical charms and she found herself emmersed in enough magic to power the entire deep city.  She removed her scroll from her waist's scroll case and the scroll opened up in the air: absorbing charms. Elle released her own whistling charms herself: learning the charms quickly in tune with the dragons and minded the words she might use to describe just how she might remember how to enchant with this magic.

They all echoed their songs for hours into the night and hoped that their humble efforts would relieve Ryton of the curse of the chain and relieve him of the pain around his chest and neck.

It began to sprinkle outside and Elle set up camp for the fifth night on her adventure now. She wrapped herself in a blanket next to Ryton, and Ryton pitched his wing over her, and she fell asleep in the nook in the cave, along with all five of the other dragon's. All of whome had expressed the same nobility and wisdome in their eyes as the others deep beneath the ocean's surface. Deep deep down in the depths of The Deep. In the great Deep city where powerful dragons had given her hope and expressed to her wisdom in their own songs: humming: songs of anchient spells. Back in the deep...