by J Hawk
Ion’s stomach boiled as his thoughts zipped to whatever fate she now lay in … and whether or not that fate left her dead or alive.
No way, don’t think that! he admonished himself sternly. She’s alive, she’s gotta be … and I’m going to go get that object she and the other Nyon she went with had gone for, and get both of them out of there alive …
He repeated it to himself a few times, trying to rig it into his belief. It took him a moment to notice that his breath had turned pacy. He calmed himself, knowing better than to lose it now. But the urgency of the situation bit into him like a talon.
“Are we there yet?” he asked, turning to the elderly man.
“Almost.”
Ion turned back, gazing down the small street that they were now in, with even smaller lanes on both sides. He could feel the bustle of a large commotion somewhere nearby, undoubtedly the ship hangar. They were moving towards it, down the smaller juncture of lanes.
But even beyond the fear of it, the fear that Vestra might not be alive when he reached the village, there was the regret. Because if she really wasn’t, it would have been Ion’s fault…
He might have been able to save her if he made his mind up at the first instance, when Mantra and the other five masters reached him.
If he was too late now, he would never forgive himself.
The aged man was now walking ahead of him, leading him into what looked like the joint alley between two buildings. Four dustbins lay at the corners of the alley, which the two of them briskly strode through. The elderly man suddenly stopped and swung about to face Ion. Ion halted abruptly as well, as he faced the elderly man fully for the first time…
Eryx tore off the wig of long white hair and threw it to the ground. A triumphant sneer spread across his face as he took a step forward towards a completely shellshocked Ion.
“You wriggled outta that one didn’t you, you little worm?” He said, abandoning the sweet, soft tone of the elderly man he had feigned to be all along. His voice now jumped back to the same rough, mildly savage one Ion had conversed with in the z-com earlier.
“You!” exclaimed Ion, taking a step back.
He suddenly remembered something that had slipped his mind earlier on, chased out by the bulkiness of his meeting with the Nyon masters. “What was that you tried with me, earlier on? The Zelgron? What the hell was that all about?”
“You half wit,” laughed Eryx. “You’re talking to a member of the cause that’s responsible for leaving the Nyon terrified off their skins.”
The effect of the words reached Ion a sluggish second late. His eyes went wider. “You’re … one of them. The Xeni.”
“And you’ve heard about us,” Eryx’s sneer stretched. “That’s good. You’ll be going to you’re grave with the knowledge of who it was you trifled with.”
“Trifled with? I don’t even know you. Any of you.”
“No. but you’re about to join the Nyon. And we can’t allow that, now, can we? The last thing we need is for our sworn enemies to gain the benefit of a fresh young mystic joining their ranks. See, kid, the brotherhood is weakened. Badly. They haven’t had a lotta new initiates in a while. Finding and getting stray mystics to join them is becoming harder and harder for them. They’re in a bad state… and at the brink of an inevitable collapse.” Eryx gave a nasty laugh. “We can’t let someone like you join them and lessen the odds of that happening, now, can we?”
Ion had heard enough. He felt his mind sharpen with a rising fury. He stared Eryx dead in the face.
“You aren’t stopping me.” he said quietly. He took a step forward, closing the distance between their faces to a few inches. “Now get out of the way … unless you’re a little confused about what’s good for you.”
Eryx stood there, unmoving. The silence of the alley suddenly seemed louder as the two of them stood there, glaring at each other…
“Get out of the way,” repeated Ion, his voice a breathing hiss. “Or you’ll be sorry you called me in the first place.”
“Oh no, Ion.” Eryx’s sneering face livened with malice. “In the following few minutes, no one in the spectrum’s gonna be as sorry as you.”
And then, the dustbins on each corner of the alley wobbled and the lids covering them flew off. A cloaked figure with a sword emerged from each dustbin, climbing out of the bin with his eyes focused dead on Ion.
Ion felt his jaw slide open. As he turned his head back to Eryx, he realised his mistake. A second too late…
Eryx’s sword, now drawn and ignited, lunged at him from the side. Ion threw himself off the way, only to feel a fiery, scorching feeling across the brace of his skin by his hip. Giving a mild yelp, he landed on three limbs, his hand still holding his sword.
The four other cloaked figures, now having crawled out of the dustbins, ignited their swords and came sprinting to the centre of the alley, where Eryx and Ion were.
Ion felt the air in his lungs go thin, as he realised there was no getting away this time … His mind sped up, and he leapt backwards a second not too soon to avoid a slash from one of the Xeni, and then ducked another from the second. The third slash almost caught him by the side of his face. Without bothering to stop for a breath, he threw himself aside. A split second later, the two glowing swords of two other Xeni clashed against each other, showering sparks right around where he had been standing.
The three others, standing a few feet ahead of him, sprang towards him, their faces livened in the flickering light of their glowing swords. Making a lightspeed leap to the side, Ion dodged the first man’s blade, then ducked as another two slashed at the air to his ribs. His sword left a thin, loud cling! in the air as it blocked the third man’s sword, and then slashed across the fourth’s with such speed that the Xeni’s blade went spinning out of his hand…
Eryx charged at him from right amidst, sending a fist hurled at him. Ion’s ribs throbbed with pain, as the force of the man’s punch sent him flying. He felt his sword leaving his hand, twirling off his grasp… and his body soared back and crashed loudly on one of the dustbins of the alley.
He rolled off the rummage and slipped to the ground of the alley, his vision flickering slightly. He fought the spinning sensation over his head and watched helplessly as the five mystics, their glowing blades in hands, came strutting upto where he lay, defenseless … Their mocking sneers were the last Ion saw before the blackness overcame him.
__________
“Wait till he wakes … he oughta see this himself.”
“How do you think he’ll like that?”
“He’ll never know what took him.”
“Definitely.”
Ion’s eyelids fluttered open.
What appeared to be a metallic roof spread right overhead him. He tried to move, only to realise that his entire body lay wrapped in heavy iron chains. He felt a mild tugging sensation, like that of high speed motion. It seemed as though he was now in some sort of a vehicle.
A pair of footsteps came his way, and then Eryx bent down over where he lay chained up.
“Enjoying yourself?” he asked, and then gave a cruel chuckle. “Well … we are.”
“What … where … am I?” breathed Ion, straining to knit words together.
“Boss told us to make it slow, kid.” replied Eryx coldly. “And it’s been a while since we’ve watched someone die.” He stopped for a thought, then added, “At least die like this, that is.” He gave another cruel laugh, before turning and striding off.
Die like this? thought Ion, his panic mounting. What the hell does he mean?
He tried to crane his neck to either side, to catch a glimpse of where he was, or what was going on … But rigged tightly in iron chains, his whole body lay bound in a scarily still, statue like state. The chains weighed down on him from atop, pressing him hard to the cold metallic surface beneath him.
Eryx reappeared, holding a long, thin stick like object, with a handle emerging from one sid
e.
“A poetic ending.” he whispered, bending down. “Live and die by your sword.”
He tucked the sword by Ion’s back, inserting it through the chains binding him from behind.
Then, with a final salute, Eryx sent a magnum kick to Ion, who felt himself soar off the ground. His eyes shut themselves in preparation of the impact of hitting the floor again. But for some reason, the impact never came … He seemed to go on soaring.
A sudden rage of wind currents tore at him from below, and Ion’s eyes shot open again.
And instantly, he wished he hadn’t opened them.
He was falling. Freefalling down the blissful, cloud gorged layer of the sky. As his body spun upwards in the torrent of the wind, he saw a hover van fly past far above him. The hover van which the Xeni had just thrown him off. He was now falling through what seemed like a few miles above the earth.
As his spun about again, and the clouds below him slowly shifted, Ion felt his blood halt in its course…
Looming below him, a giant churning mass … an ocean.
He had just been tossed out of the sky, towards an ocean.
Ion’s insides froze in horror.
The ocean surface was raging and wild, with waves that lashed about with uncontained might. And as Ion saw it racing up towards him, he knew that this was the worst possible way to die…
His fall gained speed rapidly as gravity sucked him downwards in a raw, senseless tug. His body seemed to slice through the air like a bullet. The giant, untamed mass of blue below him slowly magnified, and the brutal waves lashing around it swelled in size. Raw fear coursing his veins, Ion felt time slow down, and every moment seemed to expand. The fall seemed to go on and on, bottomless and agonizing.
As the last few seconds of the fall, and his life, dawned over him, Ion felt all hopes vaporise. As he spun about one last time to face the sky above, the beauty of what he saw filled the grip of his mind for what felt like a clear, untarnished moment:
The sky was a pale, taintless blue. The clouds strewn over it looked like giant mushrooms, dense, white and puffy. The sun lay frozen near the top of the clear blue expanse, its radiance trickling through the gaps in the clouds in shining, golden rays. The elegance of the sight washed across Ion with a powerful, divine force. It was, he thought, one of the most beautiful moments of his life.
And then, his body twisted around again to face the inevitable doom awaiting him below.
He plunged through the ten or so metres between him and the ocean within the splinter of a second. And then he felt himself crash into what felt like a wall of solid concrete. He thought the impact snapped a few bones in his body. As unbearable pain seared all over him, the lights within him dulled and went off…
14
Tapping his foot in impatience, Evander held the z-com to his ear, waiting. The ringtone played for fifteen seconds, before falling silent. Evander slowly lowered the z-com, frowning. He dialed the same number again, and pressed the z-com to his ear. But again, there was no answer.
His gaze drifted out the large window at the front of his office, looking past the towers outside and the flow of vehicles and ships around them.
Derigor wasn’t answering his call. Evander had tried calling him more than ten times in the past hour or so. But all ten times, there had been no response.
A tune of anxiety began to ring softly at the back of Evander’s mind. Something didn’t feel right.
For a person in such a high ranking post, this wasn’t the type of thing Derigor would do. But knowing him personally, Evander knew that it definitely wasn’t the type of thing Derigor would do. In the past few years, he had rarely ever missed a call from any of his colleagues, even when off work hours.
Feeling the tune slowly louden at the back of his mind, Evander continued to gaze out the window for a few seconds. He let his thoughts run over a list of explanations as to what had happened, to keep Derigor busy enough to miss ten successive calls from his colleague. But the deeper his mind waded into the scenario, the stranger it felt.
Sweating mildly, he slipped his z-com into his pocket, turned and headed for his door.
__________
Logic seemed to have vaporised, leaving the world in a senseless haze of confusion. No direction. No meaning. No reason. Nothing at all, but the cruel sensation of floating mindlessly, untethered.
Faint noises seeped through, before being swept away by the tiding chaos.
Finally, a ray of clarity sliced through the grogginess. And then, slowly, the world seemed to unfold around … Reason came breezing in. Light came flooding into the world, illuminating everything.
As his eyes flew open, Qyro found nothing making sense initially. He squinted, his thoughtflow still groping amidst chaos and confusion. Finally, as the hazy, disorienting feeling faded, he found everything making sense before him.
And that was why panic seized him.
This can’t be!
The small room that he was in had dull brown walls, with a door posed directly opposite to him. A thick gag was stuffed into his mouth, while a pair of thick iron shackles bound his wrists. Qyro could have easily used his mystic powers to snap apart a pair of normal cuffs. But the thick iron make of the cuffs that clasped his hands were far too strong. Even for his mystic strength. And even if that weren’t so, his mind was now clouded with panic and dread: and this would have diluted his powers, which would have slipped past his unfocussed grasp. It was no use … he was trapped, taken prisoner. The worst had just happened…
I’ve been taken prisoner? Qyro couldn’t believe it. Why didn’t they just kill me?
This was the worst possible, dreaded outcome: When Vestra and he had been sent here, they had been made well aware of this. At absolutely no cost would they be taken prisoner by the enemy … that would spell catastrophe for the entire brotherhood. Now his captors would interrogate him. They would try finding out who he worked for and everything about them. And if they succeeded in weeding the information out of him, the location of the Nyon temple would be compromised. The information would hit the Naxim, who would attack the temple. Qyro felt his pulse soar out of control, and a faint drumming noise ensued from within his chest.
Where’s Vestra? What’ve they done to her?
A small voice which came from intelligent reasoning told him that she was dead. It was undeniable. The rebels didn’t need either of them alive, except only to interrogate them. And if so, they didn’t need two prisoners alive for interrogation … they just needed one. She was dead. She had to be.
As a part of him mourned the loss of his friend, another part of him imagined a new, dawning possibility that revolved around her. A nasty possibility.
What if they’ve already interrogated her? And what if … she had submitted? If this was true, she would be dead as well. And if this was true, there would be a far graver reason to mourn, and to despair…
The Nyon.
The entire brotherhood would be under attack, with the location of the temple now disclosed. The Nyon in the temple would be attacked completely unawares, and there would be literally no escape. Nowhere to run.
Qyro quelled his panic, keeping himself together. But either way, he knew that the hopes for the Nyon temple were slim: they would interrogate him anyway. And there was no telling how much he would be able to endure before he snapped and told them everything.
He tried controlling himself, slowing his breathing. And then, getting a grasp of his mystic mind powers, he tried searching for a way out. His powers would be of little use against the iron shackles, which he knew were far too strong to break. But Qyro was well aware that escaping wasn’t his plan at all … his plan was inevitable now that he was caught and to be interrogated. His plan was relatively easier to carry out. But tons harder to contemplate…
His plan was suicide.
He needed to kill himself, or the entire brotherhood would fall to attack. And he needed to do it before the interrogation beg
un.
As Qyro accepted it, he felt an unnatural sense of calm. The fact that he was dying with a purpose, for the greater good … it erased the despair of the situation, and allowed warmth to flower inside.
He braced himself, gulping sharp breaths of air. His captors had left him gagged, bound and unable to move at all. But they hadn’t been aware of one crucially important thing: he was a mystic. Using his powers, he could snap a vital nerve, or even stop his heart.
But nobody said it would be painless.
Qyro continued breathing for a few seconds, before steadying himself … Bracing himself boldly. The target was a vital nerve in his neck. It needed to be severed, and all problems would end. The task of severing the nerve would require a meek sliver of his powers. Qyro shut his eyes, hoping it could be quick.
