"It worked!" he said in bewilderment, looking from the stone to Doctor Kalodie and then back to the stone in excitement. Feeling it safe now, Kazuki picked the stone back up, rolling it in his hand for a moment. It felt warm, and oddly, the colors had changed. It still looked like the night skies, but now with splotchy galaxies of bright blue, purple, and yellow. "What do I do now?" he suddenly turned to Kalodie, eyes bright with excitement.
"Ah, so you caught one already!" Kelodie smiled warmly and squatted down closer to Kazuki's level, heartened to see a smile on the boy's face. For awhile there he'd been afraid this child had suffered some irreparable trauma surrounding his death -- but in that excited question was a sort of hope that the doctor wished for the world.
"Well, now," Kelodie said dramatically, raising his head as if he were a wise old sage. "I'd say all you really have to do is concentrate on that stone you've got there, and imagine that creature coming back out of that stone." He tipped his head fondly. "Take your time, just picture that creature in your mind, call it into reality."
The first calling would be a little tricky for Kazuki -- it would take a bit of searching in his mind for the right image, for his own resurrected soul to touch that which resided in the stone -- but the moment it clicked he would almost feel the connection.
The stone jumped suddenly in the boy's hand, and in an instant the three-eyed toad silently poofed into existence around the stone.
Kelodie jumped backward in shock, and he laughed. "Well, that's quite the amphibious friend you've got there!" He squatted down again to examine the creature, fascinated by its size and its third independent eye. The toad shifted and croaked, and it shuffled closer to Kazuki. The doctor grinned. "These are what we call daemons. When you call a daemon out of the stone, it takes on the ability to exist on all the planes at once. Just like you. It means that I can see it now, and it recognizes you instantly." He stretched out a hand to rub the toad's head, but the daemon shuffled away and pressed against Kazuki for comfort. "If you want the daemon to return to the stone, just imagine it happening, or tell it to do so. There's quite a lot you can do just with your imagination -- even I don't know those limits. You can ask your daemons to do all sorts of things for you just by thinking -- and if they like you enough they just might."
A hiss and a whistle issued from the copper pipes on the wall, and Kelodie stood. "I have to go back downstairs, but why don't you go show Mister Sora what you can do?" He pointed out the open doors, toward the dilapidated and overgrown city and the caravan parked just outside. "He'll be wearing a robe just like yours."
Once he was certain Kazuki would be all right on his own, Kelodie descended the stairs to check on the newest resurrection -- hopefully a complete one this time. He'd had so much luck today, he was well-prepared for failure.
Though easier said than done, he first hoisted his head up, placing his arms in position before finally forcing his upper half upward. It was hardly by much, but Lucas had positioned himself just enough to make out the surrounding area; a dimly lit room, rusty and oil stained, lined with all sorts off pods similar to his own.
“Where in the world…?” Lucas muttered, trying to make sense of how he could possibly end up in a place such as this.
The doctor had returned to the pod-room, which didn't look conspicuously different from how he'd left it not long ago. He grabbed his clipboard and checked each of the pods as was his habit, making note of the ones that were malformed or needed a little more time in the oven, performing the preliminary checks on the ones that seemed to be complete, when he heard the creak of a pod lid opening and the shift of movement against the metal. Kelodie grinned, but decided not to turn around right away so as not to startle whoever had returned from the dead. At the question, though, he faced the pod in question and gave Lucas a broad grin.
"Ah! Welcome back! I trust you feel all right. Any aches or pains? Can you move each of your joints?" Without waiting for an answer, the doctor leaned forward with a little light and shone it in each of Lucas' eyes.
"To answer your question," he said as he leaned back and flicked off the light, "You are presently in the Echo laboratory, one of the only ones in the world. Technically we're in the basement of an old monastery, in the kingdom of Sink, but no one's really counting anymore I suppose. I'm Doctor Kelodie, by the way. Do you remember your name?"
He got up immediately and went to a cabinet, from which he drew a loose brown robe and a rope-belt, which he handed to Lucas with a flourish, as if these were grand silken garments. This was followed by a pair of bamboo sandals. "We don't have much to offer here, but there is a caravan outside that might be willing to part with some clothes more to your liking. Are you sure you don't have a headache? Come along, I know you have a thousand questions, and I'll try to answer them the best I can, but there's no substitute for pure experience, now is there?"
On the way through the corridor and up the stairs toward the sanctuary where Kazuki and Sora might be, Doctor Kelodie did his best to explain. "You were dead, but now you're alive. You're what we call an Echo -- that is, an echo of the person you had been. An echo also has the property of being heard across great distances, which is a key ability that might make sense a bit later."
He stopped in the sanctuary where he'd left Kazuki, and he turned to face Lucas. "What year is the last year you remember? Have you heard of the MODO?"
He took a second to think before stepping out into the sunlight to address the people of the caravan. What would he say? He walked up to one of the small groups of men standing nearby, bowing his head slightly in greeting before he spoke.
"Excuse me. I think, I may be able to help you get the girl back from those creatures. But, if I am to help you, could you help me first?" He gestured to himself, pulling the hood of his borrowed robe down as he did so the men could see his face. "I need a proper outfit, as well as some decent weapons since this," He held up the blue stone, which now pulsed with a mixed orange and blue light, "Seems to have only one use."
The caravaners had jumped at the flash of the stone, which to them had seemed to hang precariously in the air a moment before it dropped into the grass. Their eyes then followed the man that had thrown it, another one of those odd monks that came out of the old haunted monastery.
At his request, Rin stepped forward, her hair afly and her reddened eyes determined. She peered at Sora a moment, while the rest of the caravaners watched with bated breath, until she nodded firmly.
"You're an Echo, aren't you?" She'd only heard stories -- more like fairy tales -- but from what she'd seen so far, nothing was impossible. There was still a little uncertainty in her expression, but she stepped aside and gestured him toward one of the largest wagons whose wheel was pitted in the mud. "If you can retrieve my sister from those things, you're welcome to everything we have. Those chests there are full of clothes from all over the continent, and weapons are over here in these boxes." She removed a blanket from a pile of wooden crates and chests, and unhooked the latch of one and pushed it open to reveal several sets of clothes from the far west. There were more similar chests deeper in the caravan, where the destructive daemons hadn't bothered them. She opened a long wooden crate, where swords, axes and daggers had been packed carefully in straw. Another crate held muskets and ammunition.
Rin moved out of his way, but remained where she could keep an eye on him. "I've seen those invisible daemons get hit by bullets and blades, but I've never heard of one getting killed. Can you see them, too? What is that glowing stone? How are you going to find my sister?" As she spoke her voice rushed, a little more eager for the safe return of her little sibling. She believed in the existence of the Echoes and in what they could do -- but the longer they waited the farther the little girl could be carried. They could be anywhere by now -- and Echoes, as far as she knew, weren't bloodhounds.
The bird in the stone, however, had found those creatures easily enough.