A rain of meteoric death is falling from the skies.  The new-agers have ironically invoked the coming of Kai Nak-Klai’iktan, the demon cryptlord that has long disguised himself as all things annoyingly hippie (you could tell those new-agers were subject to dark forces, couldn’t you?  No one can be that annoying and not worship the seed of evil).  His mouth—a swirling, tooth-filled, hurricane vortex—takes up the entire horizon.  Gross, tumorous comets are streaking down from the heavens.  When they’re a hundred yards up, they burst open into clusters of gibbering insectoids.  Everyone’s running through San Francisco streets like Godzilla has just emerged from the ocean.  I turn and see one of the comets coming toward me and eject the equivalent of Hell’s own Special Forces:  A swarm of emasculated dad-bodded middle managers, ready to swarm the world with passive-aggressivity.    I fumble my eReader open to Echo.  Magic flash.  Gandalf the Grey appears beside me.  Three whirling gestures of his glowing staff and the new-agers gather into a giant, patchouli-dripping ball.  One upward swipe and he sends it skyward, toward the swirling hurricane-vortex that is the maw of the demon cryptlord.  The skies echo with a gulping noise, then the sound of a gorge violently rising, then a torrent of sobbing.  No one can take in that much BO and not roll a tear—not even a cryptlord.

When the new-agers take it a step too far, you need to be ready to call on Middle-Earth’s greatest wizard.  Get Echo Vol. 1 on Kindle here:  Vol. 1 on Kindle.  Vol. 2 on Kindle here:  Vol.2 on Kindle