The stillness of space enveloped the three
Nyon on the two hover boards as they shot across millions of miles.
They voyaged across the pitch black abyss for ten minutes or so in
the same gloomy silence. The same airless silence that seemed to
constrict from all around.
On the hover board in the right, Ion stood
with a sense of anxiety choking him from within. The electric buzz
of the board’s engine seemed to have been drowned by the pounding
within him. The rapid pounding of his heart, fuelled by fear and
panic like no other … but not for himself.
“What about all the others?” he asked through
the still silence, placing a hand on Mantra’s shoulder from behind.
“What about the masters left in the temple?”
Mantra was quiet for a moment, not even
showing signs of having heard Ion.
“Master -?”
“It doesn’t matter.” He said, and Ion could
feel the suppressed regret in his voice. “What matters now is
safe.”
He slid his hand into his pocket and drew out
the crystal, holding it from behind for Ion to see, before
pocketing it again.
Ion gritted his teeth, his temper rising. “We
can’t just leave them all behind!”
Without turning, the elderly man shook his
bald head slowly.
“We have to. If we go back to try and save
them, we risk losing what matters most now.”
“But –”
“Ion, we need to safeguard what the
brotherhood stood for,” Mantra said quietly. “And the plague
crystal being kept off the Xeni is something any number of Nyon
would have gladly died to achieve.” His voice bore a painful
mixture of sorrow and regret.
Ion turned back, feeling the dead weight in
his stomach grow heavier. The entire Nyon temple was now alone,
fighting off the onslaught of a ruthless Xeni army in the middle of
the sky. The masters were all by themselves now.
But a part of Ion’s concerns clung to
something more aggrieving for him.
Vestra and Qyro…
__________
It was over faster than anyone had thought it
would be.
Redgarn, Zardin, and the rest of the Xeni now
stood in a large platform that was perched higher on the sky than
the temple. The giant platform, torn from the Nyon temple, was
floating serenely in mid sky, carrying a large group of cloaked,
hooded men over it. A group of warships hung about around the large
platform, spread over the sky around them.
Redgarn stood frontmost of the cloaked men on
the platform, his red eyes peering scornfully down at the Nyon
temple below them. Zardin stepped forward, turning to gaze at
Redgarn from between his curtains of long black hair, through the
dark sockets that had no eyes.
“Have they all … been taken care of?” he
asked silently.
Redgarn growled, “Every one of them … The
brotherhood of Nyon is no more.”
Zardin continued to gaze at his master,
something sparking in those black, eyeless sockets … Then, a cruel
smile awoke on those pale features.
After hearing that Mantra had escaped with
the crystal, Redgarn’s fury had loosened like an uncontained blast.
He had struck down every one of the remaining Nyon he found in the
temple, crushing them all like ants below a boot … and now, it was
over. The temple below then was free at last. Free of the taint of
the Nyon. As was the entire world.
Redgarn held up his hand, letting the gush of
mental energy which he had kept up till now steadily dissolve. “And
so … the ancient brotherhood falls.”
As he let the energy holding the Nyon temple
up dissolve, the swirling debris around the structure hanging below
them stalled slowly. The Nyon temple hung over the sky, untethered,
for one final, fleeting moment … and then, the lifeless structure
dropped, along with the flood of debris surrounding it.
__________
As one, the wrecked remains of the Nyon
temple, now scoured of all life, plummeted to the ground … across a
two mile drop. It violently gathered speed with every passing
moment. And its speed, as it rocketed downward through a two mile
fall, seemed to split the sky as it fell through it.
And then, with an explosive splash of
wreckage, the temple crashed to the ground. The impact left its
shattered, worthless remains to spew across a hundred metres of
where it had landed, raining wreckage all over the ground around
it.
The Nyon temple rested in smithereens on the
cold earthen floor beneath it.
A legacy that had carried across eight
thousand years, now lying shattered on the ground.
Utakor, Outer spectrum
The barren soil was a few inches high,
leaving the three pairs of feet to sink into it, muffled and
soundless. The deserted plain of this region seemed to stretch on
forever. It ran forth, sweeping the land for as far as could be
seen, before merging with the horizon at the very edge.
After leaving the temple, Mantra, Dantox and
Ion had flown through the outer spectrum on their hover boards, to
this planet. They knew that they had to put as much distance
between them and Farnor as possible, to prevent the Xeni from
finding them again. And so, they had carried across a painful half
hour long journey to reach here. They had decided on this planet,
for the reason that it was nearly uninhabited, and cut off
completely from the rest of the spectrum. The Xeni would never find
them here.
The vast half hour long journey had sapped
their boards’ power drives of all power. They had decided to make
their way by foot from where they had landed, with their hover
boards scoured of all fuel and worthless. But being stripped of
transport made no difference to them now, for they knew that moving
from this planet anytime soon would be foolish. After what they had
undergone to save the crystal and reach here safely.
The heaviness of the situation seemed to
press over the three of them cruelly, as they treaded down the
deserted lands of the famished planet.
Ion still couldn’t bring himself to face it.
The cold truth. A part of him screamed in rebellion, searching for
another way … for a way out. But deep down, in the silent depths of
his intelligence, he knew there was none. There was no other way,
and there was no escaping it.
We’d just met less than a few hours
back.
He felt a dead weight clutch to his stomach, as the
beautiful face flashed across him again. Her face seemed to cross
him as a distant shadow, a ghost. Try as he may, he couldn’t block
it out … she came back to haunt him.
The memory of that day, that beautiful day
they had met two years back replayed at the back of Ion’s mind,
suddenly not seeming so distant at all. It seemed like yesterday …
it had been a memory that was carved so beautifully in his mind.
And now, the same memory brought a stab of cold like nothing else.
Just a few hours back .. And I thought all problems had
vanished, when we met.
He looked up at the stars burning in the
night sky. An echo of his grief could be felt resonating in the
velvety chasm overhead … the stars willed to share his pain, and
bear it.
But Ion knew his pain was his alone…
Vestra was gone.
He had lost her right after he had found
her.
His eyes burning, Ion reached for his
sleeve.
And Qyro as well … He remembered the two of
them and the short, beautiful time they’d shared, standing before
the lake outside the temple … before everything came crashing down,
reduced to wrecks…
They’re gone.
Ion felt the agony and
the anguish crash over him like a tidal wave.
They’re
all
gone…
He turned to the two masters by either side,
who hadn’t spoken a word. Not one word, since they had landed here.
The mournful silence shared by them bore a pain that well surpassed
Ion’s. With their gazes firmly set on the ground before them, the
two of them walked on slowly … as if pushing their limbs with every
ounce of energy in them.
In his own bitterness of losing Vestra and
Qyro, Ion had forgotten that they were facing a loss, a grief that
was tons heavier: after living for so long, and after being with an
entire company of other masters their entire life, Mantra and
Dantox had now seen them all destroyed … They had lost every one of
their brethren among the Nyon. The three of them were now all that
remained …
And they would have to carry on until the job
that the brotherhood of Nyon had stood for was done … or die in
vain along with it.
It was past late at night. But the city, as
always, was still thriving and brimming with activity. The giant
towers sprouting into the skies had a majority of their storeys
lit, with people still active in the offices and homes within them.
Large passageways built for air vehicles snaked across the place.
Circular passages made of a transparent, glass like material. They
twisted and twined all about the city, passing through the giant
towers and forming a connected network of the city’s structures.
Air vehicles flowed in a constant stream within the glass
passageways, most of them small ships or hover cars. Hover bikes,
and occasional boards could also be spotted. The buzz of vehicles
rushed past the tunnels through the towers and all over the city,
sustaining the flow of the thriving metropolis. One of the most
advanced, and elegant of this day.
Standing on the large balcony stretching from
one of the giant towers was a lone figure in a clean brown suit.
For some reason, as Haxor gazed out the balcony, he felt a cruel
betrayal: the city’s beauty and its man made, artistic look was a
veiled deception to the state of threat it now lay in. The state of
threat the entire spectrum lay in.
Fighting off the weariness, Haxor kept
himself patient. He had been here, at the Naxim’s headquarters, for
almost an entire non stop day now. Without a wink of sleep. For the
past few hours, the entire high council and he had worked
furiously, contacting all of their bases, setting them to the state
of alert. Hiring various intelligence networks to help them with
this. But nothing at all seemed to add up to give them a response.
They were as good as clutching at straws. The mystics they were
after were as good as ghosts, and they knew finding them was going
to be far harder than imaginable.
For a few quiet moments, Haxor let his gaze
float about the urban scenery before him.
His mind was running over the problem with an
incessant grit, trying to find a means to reach a solution for it.
But as Haxor continued to look out the balcony silently, he felt a
rising foreboding. Something in the atmosphere seemed to bear down
over the entire world like a cage. Haxor had the strangest feeling
that this dark, threatening phase that they were going through was
only going to get worse.
Sighing, he turned and headed back to his
office.
Sitting with his legs spread in front on the
chair, Redgarn allowed himself a few moments of silent pondering.
To consider his next move. The world was almost his now.
There was only that tiny smudge that the
plague crystal had failed to be recovered. But they would set that
right too, in time. Yes, they would.
The ship they were now in was a large, silver
one, its hull sprawling and lavish. Standing about the back of the
hull were a small group of Xeni. Redgarn was sitting right before
the control desk, watching the expanse of star strewn black through
the window ahead of him.
He frowned, trying to think through the radio
playing from the ship’s desk:
“- protests have flared in the Varido
republic over the rising electroz prices. The citizens have
channelled –”
Although he knew he was wavering in focus,
Redgarn felt the nature of the newsline draw him slightly.
Negativity. The media feeds, thrives on negativity. On anarchy.
What a tragedy … for this world, that is. And what a blessing
for
us.
“The rebel forces at the corner of the
Svarion Empire had claimed responsibility for the serial blast that
had I two days back. The empire has seen a widespread –”
Redgarn clasped his hands tighter, inhaling
slowly to let his mind gather focus. He sat idly for a minute or
so, while a part of his mind stayed attuned to the mostly negative
news.
“King Xurin, the executive head of the
Kingdom of Sunatra, has just been reported missing,” the reporter
was now saying. “Sources claim of the involvement of the separatist
forces –”
“Oh, turn that trash off, won’t you?” snarled
Redgarn, now feeling really irritated with his inability to focus
because of the radio’s negative news feed ranting.
One of the Xeni, who had been sidled by the
wall of the hull behind, came hurrying up and jabbed a button, and
the annoying reporter’s voice was instantly doused.
Enjoying the silence, Redgarn mulled over
what needed to be done, his eyes perched on the starry chasm their
ship was now tearing though mindlessly.