by J Hawk
They stalked down the mist doused street surrounded by crumbling buildings. Slowly approaching the cloaked figure with messy red hair who was moving ahead of them. Their target’s game was up. He couldn’t run. He couldn’t hide. He couldn’t do anything … Not with them now in the court.
“All right, team, speed up.” RED ONE called, barely moving his lips. “Time to move in for the kill.”
“We’ll take him from the back,” suggested the figure beside RED ONE. “He’ll be out cold before he even realises it.”
“No.” said RED ONE. “We will openly confront him, and then take him head on.”
The man stared. “But we have a direct shot! We can end it here and now, and return with the prize!”
RED ONE felt his flow of anger swerve towards a new target.
“I’m in charge.” he hissed. “And I decide how it’s done. Believe me, I don’t waste time with an open confrontation for no reason.”
The man turned forward, sensible enough to shut up. RED ONE felt his pulse climb higher and higher as they slowly approached the black cloaked target from behind. When they had reached around ten or so feet from him, the red haired boy seemed to have finally gathered something from his senses: He stopped and whipped around to face the group of seven uniformed men striding up from behind them.
RED ONE felt a smile light his face. He held up a palm, and the group came to a stop before the spiky haired teenager, who was staring at them.
RED ONE slowly walked forward before the red haired boy, so that the two of them were just a few feet apart. For a long moment, the two of them stood with their eyes locked…
This can’t be. Ion thought, as he stared at the face of the uniformed man standing in front of him. A face he knew…
“Vonayz?” he gasped.
To be continued …
In THE RISING SUN – Episode 2
A glimpse of Episode 2 …
*********************
And red hot pain scorched Ion’s shoulder as Vonayz’s sword brushed it from the side. Ion hit the ground with a roar of pain, his sword slipping from his hand.
Vonayz and the others stood over him, basking in the helpless state of their target.
Vonayz bent down over him, a fiendish glow upon his face.
“It’s too bad we were told to bring you back alive.” he whispered. “But wait a second … You don’t need all your bones to be in one piece for interrogation, do you?”
*********************
“We are at the precipice of a new age,” said the man in the holographic screen. “The age of unravelling.”
His pale face. His razor sharp teeth. His black hair falling on both sides of his face in frames. It was all terrifying. But not merely as terrifying as his eyes.
Because the man had no eyes … just empty, blank sockets that gazed out horrifyingly.
As he finished speaking, the silence that followed seemed to drill into the president’s ears. Standing about behind him were the other members of his office. All of them were standing rigid, facing the holo screen at the front of the office.
The president took a deep, calming breath, and broke the silence with his steady voice:
“What do you want?”
“Oh, but you already know, Mr. President.” said the man, and he gave another twisted smile. “You’ve always known.”
*********************
The fifteen men sitting about the board table all stared without speaking. The Naxim’s high council had never before been so rattled.
Everyone seemed to be quietly weighing the scale of catastrophe, all faces mirrors of the same dread and anxiety.
Evander looked about the boardroom, nodding.
“Gentlemen,” he said in a stern voice. “We are now at war. The worst threat we have faced in centuries … possibly even millennia, has risen once more, to haunt us again. And we need to arm ourselves in preparation of whatever lies ahead. Because if we don’t act now, nothing will ever be the same again.”
*********************
A thick gag was stuffed into Qyro’s 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.
It was no use … 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. But 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…
*********************
Carcasar drew his hood back again, his one remaining eye staring out from underneath it. Slowly trotting downwards on the slope, he lay on the ground, staring at the stars above. His one remaining eye twitched as he remembered the incident from a night so similar to this one…
The incident that had taken his other eye, and left a gash across his face in place of it.
And he remembered the one responsible for it. For tearing his eye out.
You won’t get away with what you did, boy. A growl of fury rumbled within his throat. Ion will pay for what he did … I’ll make sure of it. Eye for an eye.
His insides mashed with rage as he remembered that red haired, orange eyed boy. Someone who had made himself a most deadly enemy…
He knew that before the end of this life, the boy would pay. He intended to make sure he did. He had a list of enemies who dreaded him and the rest of his kind under his command … And he knew that this boy was one of them.
That day, two years back, would have left its mark on him. A mark which Carcasar knew he was carrying upto this day … and he was right in doing so.
Because when the chance came for it, Carcasar would find the boy again and finish their meeting two years back…
And the chance was coming very soon…
*********************
Ion’s freefall rapidly gained speed. He was now falling through what seemed like a few miles above the earth.
Looming below him, a giant churning mass … 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…
Gravity sucked him downwards with a raw, senseless force. 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…
He plunged through the remaining distance 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…
*********************
