Prologue

The Serpent Echo: Prologue

Prologue


    If he was following me, I reasoned, he would have caught up by now. I therefore stopped running. It was only logical. The word ‘logic’ hung sadly in the back of my head like the forgotten orphaned child it was.
    Running this far had been harder than I thought it would, so I paused to lean against the rock face. I heard myself gasping but hardly noticed, staring around wildly. The bleak landscape rolled out from under me. Somewhere at the base of the mountain, I could just make out the roof of my house, barely reflected in the hard black edge of the lake. A drop of red shingles against the looming reflection of Mount Auros.
    “Don’t stop,” a smooth voice smiled from above, “you were so entertaining…” I whirled and nearly slipped off the mountain.
    He was there- inexplicably, infuriatingly there- perched in the branches of a dead tree, hanging six meters higher than me. “Now go on,” he commanded, “commence running.” He paused. “Please.” And to my horror, our eyes met.
    The mountain swayed and sucked itself out of sight. There were only his eyes, flat and dull and utterly fascinating in their light green colour, identical to mine. I felt the familiar hypnotic voice in my head, telling me to run, struggle uselessly against him, escape, go on, try. I didn’t want to- but, under his gaze, I realized, I had to. It was something I had to do. No, it was something I wanted to do now. I needed it. I needed to run until my heart gave out. I would die running from this man. Waves of confusion broke in my mind, blurring my thoughts together. Running, his eyes told me quietly, I was running…