by J Hawk
The doll standing on the floor swayed and fell sideways, the thud of its landing seeming to thunder amidst the silence.
“What is it?” came the tense voice of the defense minister, who obviously couldn’t see what had happened from the angle of the screen. “What’s happened?”
As Ratino turned to him, he saw that the screen was flickering. There seemed to be some disruption and the minister’s image was being fazed.
“The signal’s –” the minister called through the flickering signal, before his face was erased fully. And now, another face was staring out. A face that was as pale as a corpse’s … with eyeless, blank sockets that gazed out as though seeing.
“Surprise, surprise.” The man’s voice was sharper than a hiss, seeming to slit the air through the dumbstruck silence. “I see you might have received our little present.”
Ratino quickly pushed away the panic and dread flooding him. For he knew that the time now was for action. Focus. They were now facing war.
“You blew up an entire planet?” he said softly, walking upto the screen so that the man’s face seemed to grow lifelike before him. “You killed our King, and then blew up our moon … an entire planet? Just who do you think you are?”
“I’m the breeze that wafts through your skies,” replied the man. “slowly rolling into a wind, and gathering force into a surge … and now finally,” He smiled. “raging forth as a storm.”
Ratino took a step forward, now closer than an inch to the face in the screen. “What do you want?”
He had to summon every ounce of grit lying in him to keep from flinching as he stood with eyes locked onto those blank sockets. As the silence after his question carried on, the man tilted his head to one side, seeming faintly amused. And a twisted smile spread across his pale lips.
“I want peace, dear man.” He reached into his cloak pocket, drawing a small trigger like device. “And my peace … is your chaos.”
He pressed the button on the device, and a sudden beeping cut the air in the room, coming from the dead body of the emperor, which lay inside the coffin.
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.
14
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 att
ack 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…
The crowd before the screen held their breaths, their flesh rippling. And as they gaped at the screen, where the terrifying scene was being relayed to them, the red man’s lips twitched in a mirthless grin.
“Ladies and gentlemen of the spectrum,” he said softly. “I have waited for eight thousand years for it. And now, allow me to tell you that my name … is Redgarn.”
The final word of this proclamation seemed to leave behind a thundering effect.
The crowd gathered before the screen looked at each other, eyes widened, jaws open. Half of them were beginning to question the validity of what they were watching, but Redgarn threw his head back and gave a cackle of laughter.
“This is not a joke, dear world. I’ve come back, after eight long millennia for you. To haunt you.”
__________
Finiros, Mraud republic, Cluster 65
Every pair of eyes in the hallway was peeled wide. The air in the large office seemed to stagnate, a sense of unreality and horror breeding through the silence.
The hall seemed to have forgotten itself. Forgotten everything other than the large screen perched amidst it.
Everyone in the office, every fully functional intelligence in the hall was exploding with the same question:
Redgarn? … The Redgarn?
&nbs
p; Could what they had heard really be?
The short silence passed and the man with the ravaged look went on:
“You oppressed us. You prosecuted and chased us out. For eight thousand years my brethren, the mystics, have suffered at the hands of this deluded world. And now,” He tilted his head, and the rip of a smile formed on his face. “we return what you gave us.”
He walked forward, so that his terrible features magnified over the screen. “This will be the day you shall all remember. The day the Order of Xeni returns…”
A loud cling came as someone in the office dropped a z-com, the sound ten times as loud in the silence.
“After eight thousand years of exile, hidden in the darkest depths of this spectrum,” went on Redgarn. “We now come back to finish what we started … and our fury has never been worse. My fury has never been worse. I shall prove it to you, today.”
__________
