What the hell?!
Ratino stared at the
body of their King, horrified. The beeping seemed to emit from the
corpse’s stomach.
“The bomb’s not diffusible.” said Zardin. “So
don’t try it. And we’ve installed sensors – if you take it outside
of the perimeter of that wonderful building you’re in, it’ll
instantly go off. So I suggest you focus your resources on
something that would be a little more enterprising: trying not to
die.”
Alarm swallowed the room.
Mayhem burst out, and the screams in the room
drowned out the beeping noise … and the high pitched laughter of
the maniac in the screen.
In a minute or two, Ratino was in his hover
bike, zooming away from the tower – the largest tower in the
planet. Every other member of the room had flown off in every other
direction. He peeled a slight glance to floor two hundred and
eleven. And just as he did, it happened – the bomb went off. A
savage blast blew apart the entire floor, seeming to race outwards.
The fiery orange cloud broke out for the entire width of the
structure, shearing it fully apart.
As Ratino rode on, his widened eyes were
fastened to the tower. The tallest tower in the planet slowly broke
at one of its lowest floors. The tower slowly swayed to the right,
and then fell.
Ratino felt something bubble in his stomach
as he watched the tower hit at least a dozen other giant towers,
breaking them as well and sending them sliding to the ground. The
tower’s height seemed to crawl on for miles as it angled slowly to
the right, now having reached a ninety degree dip. It smashed onto
a final, looming tower, which was knocked off and fell as well…
The giant structure tore off completely from
its base, and sank to the ground. The length of the tower seemed to
spawn for a few horrifying miles, all through which crashing,
destructive noises ensued as it smashed onto the city … at least a
hundred or so other structures, below on ground, would have been
crushed by it.
__________
Millions of miles away, Zardin watched as the
holographic screen disappeared. And he knew the office displayed
inside of it had as well.
They were now in their ship in mid space. He
could feel the surroundings of the hull he stood in.
“Phase 1 complete.” Came Redgarn’s rough
voice from behind him. He stepped forward beside Zardin, smiling.
“And now, it is time for phase 2 … the grand finale.”
A few other Xeni standing behind the two of
them chuckled cruelly.
Redgarn looked out the window ahead. At the
starry chasm of space, which the ship was frozen amidst: they had
stopped the ship here for the time being, until the doll’s
operation had been finished.
“When we finish this,” Redgarn said. “anarchy
would be unleashed at long last … the force of Mezmeron would have
devoured this world once more.” He turned to Zardin, his smile
stretching slightly. “This will be entertaining to watch.”
Zardin couldn’t help smiling himself. “It
most certainly will be. Not only for us.” He looked at Redgarn.
“I’ll warm up the show … and then let you take over as the star
act.”
Redgarn’s voice rumbled the inside of the
hull in a terrible laughter.
Zardin turned to the pack of Xeni behind them
and barked, “Set the co ordinates, and take the ship off. It’s
show time
.”
One of the cloaked men hurried up and stood
before the control desk, punching digits on it. A holo screen
formed over the air atop the desk, a piloting screen. The Xeni felt
a very faint pulling sensation, and then the ship was in motion,
tearing down the starry abyss.
Mantra had been right: as lifeless as the
place they had landed in seemed, they had managed to find a
deserted, lonesome restaurant perched amidst the deserted expanse.
In the middle of nowhere.
It was a large one storeyed structure with
glass walls. They entered it through the front door. Inside, large
round tables lay spread around the place, with a thick layer of
dust gathered over them. A clutter of dragonfly like creatures,
unlike anything seen in planets elsewhere, were buzzing about the
place, over some of the tables. They all had curious looking
multicoloured wings.
At the front lay a counter, with a door
opposite to them. The place was large enough for them to spend
their time here in complete desolate peace.
“This used to be a restaurant.” Observed
Mantra, with a thoughtful look.
“So?” asked Ion.
“So we may find something here that stands a
chance to be more useful than the rest of the place appears.”
With that, he bustled over behind the
counter, running his eyes over the back of it. He disappeared
behind the counter as he bent down looking for something.
“This place used to have a TV.” Came Mantra’s
voice from behind the counter.
“Does it still function?” asked Dantox,
sounding excited. “Well, check if it does! I have a strange feeling
that we’ll be needing to catch up on the news.”
Mantra’s voice could be heard playing in an
amused chuckle. “I have that very same feeling.”
They could hear him pressing a button from
behind. And then, as he straightened back up, the three of them
turned to the corner of the restaurant: at the edge of the counter,
tilted in an angle that allowed the entire place to see it, a large
holographic screen arose.
Mantra turned to the two of them with a
smile. “It works.”
He bent down again, and the channels flicked
across the screen one by one, stopping at a news channel. He then
came back around the counter and joined the other two as they stood
there in the middle of the abandoned place, watching the large holo
screen intently.
As Mantra had rightly predicted, the news
channel they were now watching displayed was showcasing something
far graver than a usual day’s news: The reporter sitting in front
with a stack of papers on his desk was narrating heatedly, about a
series of intense terrorist attacks the spectrum had come under
within a few hours this day…
The first was the attack on the Mech
laboratory in Tansof.
Next, an entire cruiser had been blown
up.
Next (as the three of them listened in horror
to this latest update), Evander, the chief high councillor of the
Naxim, two other Naxim high councillors, and a bunch of policemen
had been lured into a trap and killed by a mysterious bomb. The
suspect here was the same bunch of mystics responsible for the
earlier two attacks. Although they had no proof of this.
Mantra exhaled slowly, shaking his head
solemnly. “I think this is worse than it looks.”
But he had spoken too soon…
Just minutes in, something fresh broke in the
news:
The reporter informed them, unable to hide
the shock in his own face, of how an entire moon in the state of
Sunatra had just been destroyed by the same mystic group just
minutes back. The terrorists had sent the dead body of King Xurin
with a bomb inside of it. And this bomb created widespread wreckage
in the planet when it exploded in the lower level of the planet’s
tallest structure.
Shock and horror flooded Ion. “They blew up
an entire planet?
”
The three Nyon switched the same horrified
looks.
“It’s happening again,” said Mantra gravely.
“They’re plunging the world into anarchy. Allowing the force of
Mezmeron to thrive, so that they can release the demon army.”
Dantox frowned at the screen, thoughtful for
a few seconds.
“Our position isn’t that bad, just yet.” he
said finally. “Firstly, we have the crystal There’s nothing they
can do without it. And secondly, even if they wanted to release the
army of Mezmeron, they would require far, far graver chaos and
anarchy than just this.”
“I don’t doubt they’re not capable of it.”
said Ion. “Seeing from what they’ve accomplished till now.”
The reporter in the screen went on:
“The newly elected high council leader of the
Naxim, Haxor, has agreed to present himself at this grave hour.
Haxor has a message to send to the rest of the spectrum in this
period of graveness marked … by the return of mystics.”
She looked across the room, and the camera
moved across to show a door at the other side of the room. As the
door slid open, Haxor, the newly elected Naxim high council leader,
stood there.
But something in his features seemed blank,
devoid of a trace of life bound expression. The next second,
everyone saw why: Haxor’s body crashed to the floor and Zardin, who
had been standing behind him, holding his body upright, strutted
into the room with raised hands.
A set of sharp gasps could be heard from the
rest of the room, the reporters and the other personnel in the news
room.
“Oh, don’t worry about him.” said Zardin,
gesturing to the body of the Naxim leader. “He’s just out. He’ll
come around. But as for you people…”
He produced a Sparkler from his cloak pocket
and, without warning, pelted jets of light with it across the room.
Ion heard the room echo with a set of
thuds
repeatedly, as
all the people in the news studio hit the ground, unconscious or
dead. The camera slackened and tilted, as the man holding it also
fell prey to the Sparkler shots.
Through the slanted camera angle, a
thoroughly flabbergasted Ion watched as Zardin pocketed the
Sparkler. Kicking aside the unconscious body of the Naxim leader,
he slowly walked up before the camera. Clasping it with both hands,
he brought it to level with his horrible face, and smiled
widely.
“Welcome people,” he declared, his cold,
blank sockets seeming to burn with malice. “Welcome to the new age.
This is the newsflash that has been waiting for eight thousand
years to reach the world.”
__________
Iranor, Calitone republic, Cluster 21
Lying in a small curl on the sofa, Algine
twiddled with her thumb. An empty plate with muffin crumbs sat in
front of her on the sofa. All evening, she had been fretting over
the upcoming promotion she was facing, and of the implications that
rode along with it. Completely absorbed in her worries, she had
drifted well out of the present – but this had now knocked her back
into it.
“You are now witnessing a new dawn.” said the
man, who had just walked into the news studio and shot down
everyone in it.
As Algine processed in complete detail what
she was seeing, a wave of unworldly horror seized her.
The creature standing before the camera had
no eyes
… just blank, dark sockets that stared about, as if
able to see everything in perfect clarity. His skin was pale, like
a corpse’s. And his hair hung on both sides of his face in long,
black curtains. He was
the
single most horrifying sight she
had ever seen…
“By the time you finish watching this,” the
creature said, and his pale features twisting in something of a
smile. “the world will never be the same again.”
The plate with muffin crumbs in front of her
slipped off the sofa and crashed to the floor.
__________
Valton, Dron Kingdom, Cluster 18
“I’m here as a mentor to this world,” the man
went on, his every word seeming to sharpen the silence. It was
turning dagger like now. The entire shopping mall seemed to have
come to a standstill, with the giant screen in the middle of the
main hall sucking every drop of attention there was in it. What
they had just witnessed had engraved itself on the minds of every
man, woman and child. The crowd standing speechless over the hall
were now looking at proof. Proof of Satan’s existence in their
world. And they all knew, as they looked into those deadly features
of the killer who had attacked the new studio, that they were
looking at the face of Satan himself.
“I’m here as a mentor to the new times.” went
on the man, the smile spreading longer on his pale face. “I will
guide you, and I will teach you. And your first and most important
lesson … is exactly how painful life can get.”
__________
Aronor, Garanog republic, Cluster 31
The crowd was struck senseless as they
watched the giant holo screen over the centre of their street. A
deathly silence had stolen over them all. The only sounds heard
were the faint revving of electrical engines from the sky overhead,
where vehicles zoomed past.
The man’s last words, seemed to leave a
reverberating echo in the air.
And your first and most important lesson …
just how painful life can get.
And as the crowed before the large screen in
the middle of the screen watched, the eyeless man slowly turned to
face the door of the news studio, through which he had entered.
The room door slid open, and there, stood
another horrific figment of creation … nearly as horrific as this
eyeless man. This man had skin that seemed to be formed of molten
lava. Scorching red. His bead like red eyes seemed to gleam. He
walked into the news studio, stepping in front of the other
man…