Zahn handed her a small ball filled with an orange liquid.
“What are you saying, Mortals?” one guardian said.
“What is this?” Darshana said as she examined the small ball of liquid.
“It’s a special acid that Asha’s father gave us. It’s supposed to slow them down. Everyone ready?”
“Okay.”
“Got it.”
Zahn stepped back into the light and smiled, even though the guardians still couldn’t see him.
“Yes, there are indeed three of you,” he said. “And there are three of us, which means you’re still at a disadvantage.”
In an instant, Zahn darted forward and shot the nearest guardian in the eyes. Asha simultaneously shot the one behind that guardian in the face, and both growled in surprise, covering their faces for a moment.
The third guardian held out his left palm and shot a bolt of light toward where Zahn had been standing a moment before. Zahn rolled forward and dodged the bolt just before it impacted on the wall, causing huge pieces of stone to fly everywhere and litter the floor. Asha used that opportunity to fire a repulsing burst at the Tulari atop the pedestal, but it only moved slightly.
Zahn noticed that Asha’s cloaking field flickered for a moment. One of the guardians she’d shot in the eye noticed, too, and lunged toward her.
Asha fired at the Tulari again and finally managed to knock it loose. As it fell, Zahn called out to her.
“Asha, watch out! Your cloak is faltering!”
But she didn’t have time. One guardian grabbed her by the neck and pushed her up against the pedestal, choking her.
Still cloaked, Darshana ran up and threw the small ball of liquid at the guardian choking Asha. Her aim was true, and it exploded into a hissing, bubbling liquid which covered the guardian’s eyes and mouth. The guardian released Asha and clawed at his face. Nearby, the other guardian noticed that Darshana’s cloaking field had flickered and fired a red bolt of light from his palm toward her. It impacted onto her side, and she collapsed onto the ground.
Meanwhile, on the other side of the pedestal the third guardian caught the falling Tulari before Zahn was able to catch it. When he caught it, the guardian made eye contact with him, and Zahn realized that his cloak must be failing, as well. The guardian shot a red bolt toward Zahn, but he just managed to dodge it and rolled behind a large chunk of stone that had been blown loose from the wall. He fired back, but his resonator didn’t seem to affect the guardian at all.
He looked at his hand. He was invisible for the moment, so he quietly crawled behind a different piece of rubble. As he sat there, Yantrik’s words came roaring back to him.
“Let me know how they work,” Yantrik had said.
Zahn would definitely have a few things to tell Yantrik when he saw him again.
If he saw him again.
“Mortal!” one guardian called out. “We have your friends.”
He knew that they were trying to trick him into revealing his location, so he remained as quiet as possible. In the distance, he heard one of the guardians cough.
“You shouldn’t have come, off-worlder. You are wasting your friends’ lives.”
Behind him, he heard someone familiar whisper his name.
“Asha?” Zahn whispered a bit too loudly. “Asha, are you okay? How’d you escape?”
She crawled over to him.
“Your mom helped me. But… she was hit, Zahn.”
A feeling of shock soon transformed itself into guilt.
“I shouldn’t have brought her. I shouldn’t have brought her. We should have left her in the ship where she’d be safe.”
“Then she would be stuck back on the ship, and we might have been killed already,” Asha whispered. “Zahn, we needed her help. She knew the risk.”
Zahn closed his eyes, and for the first time since they’d rescued her, he prayed. Within his mind, he called out to his guides for help.
In the distance, he heard one of the guardians approaching.
“I don’t think our resonators work against them, Asha.”
“I know.”
Zahn reached out for Asha’s hand and she took it.
“Don’t you see?” the guardian bellowed. “Now you must hide from us. You are all cowards, and you must pay the penalty for cowardice.”
At any moment, a blood-red bolt of light was going to flood his vision. He heard the footsteps of the guardian draw nearer.
This was it.
He was going to die here.
As a last effort, he took the lens out of his pocket and tried to wedge it into the sonic barrel of his resonator. It was a tough fit, but it was his last idea.
Behind him, he could see the wall growing redder as the guardian approached. He would have only one chance.
“Leave now or perish!” one howled.
“I’m going to stand up,” Zahn whispered to Asha.
“What? They’ll kill you.”
“They’re going to kill both of us. I’ve got a plan. When they’re distracted, run back to the ship and start firing into the pyramid’s open door.”
“Zahn—”
“No time to argue.”
He threw a small piece of rubble across the room, and when it hit the far wall, the nearest guardian shattered it with another bolt. Slowly, Zahn rose up from behind the large stone he’d been hiding behind, and he was pointing the resonator directly at the nearest guardian.
At seeing this, the guardian grinned arrogantly.
“I am immune to your weapon, mortal. It will not save you.”
“Then shoot me, you beast!” Zahn screamed.
The guardian’s eyes flashed like fire, and he blasted Zahn with a blood-red bolt of light. The bolt careened toward him, impacting onto his resonator.
But when it hit his resonator, something unprecedented happened. The bolt of light bounced off of the tip of the gun and headed straight back toward the guardian who shot it.
The guardian barely jumped out of the way in time, and the bolt impacted onto the stone wall behind him, blowing more huge chunks of rock from the wall. Asha covered her face as thousands of small bits of rock flew through the air.
The guardian stood up and dusted himself off.
He looked furious.
“We told you! Mortals are not worthy to wield the Pearl!”
His yell echoed down the halls, and then the sound of the yell was dwarfed by the sound of another explosion, this time originating from outside of the pyramid’s walls.
Natural light flooded the inner room, and a gust of wind blew in from the outside. Zahn and Asha looked out from the edge of the boulder and saw a short, radiant figure enter the room through a hall that had been dark before. Appearing to be clothed in light itself, the figure was so bright that they couldn’t discern its facial features at all. Zahn noticed that even the guardians shielded their eyes.
The figure spoke in a strong, resonating voice.
“And what about immortals? Are they worthy?” it said.
All three of the guardians held up their hands to block the radiance that was blinding them.
“You are going to give these wanderers what they need.”
Zahn wondered who it was that would speak with such authority to these mighty guardians.
“What authority do you have here, Radiant One?” the first guardian said.
As the guardian was finishing his words, the figure held out a hand and lowered it. As his hand lowered, the first guardian became smaller and smaller, and as he became smaller, the pitch of his voice grew higher and higher. When the figure had stopped, the guardian was less than a half meter tall. When it realized this, it screamed in a high pitch and ran off down one of the halls.
As the figure approached the other two guardians, they knelt down immediately.
“Please diminish your brightness, Radiant One. Who are you?” one guardian said.
“I am the child-like laughter under a starry sky.”
“Please, R
adiant One. Speak plainly.”
“I am ageless, and my name is of little importance. That is all you need know.”
The figure’s radiance diminished slightly, but Zahn still couldn’t discern any features. It was still extremely bright.
“Thank you for diminishing your radiance, Unnamed One. We recognize your power, but please tell us. How could these lower beings be worthy of such an unspeakable power as great as the Pearl?”
“Don’t you see? Their hearts are selfless in their desire to save those that they love. But not only this. Their selfless actions serve far more than even their own worlds. Indeed, they have allowed themselves to be Instruments of Light that, in time, will serve an innumerable number of beings. Because of this, they wield a rare kind of power. Therefore, you will give them the Pearl. Now.”
Reluctantly, the first guardian handed it to the radiant figure, and the figure turned toward Zahn and approached them.
Zahn looked at his hand. The cloak was holding steady, so how could it see them? The figure’s brightness was almost overwhelming now.
Asha and Zahn stood up. Even at just a few meters away, Zahn couldn’t see his face. The brightness was impenetrable.
“Wield it well,” the figure said as he handed it to Asha, who was closest. “And always remember, never allow your enemy to tell you who you are.”
“Zahn, the Tulari. I’m holding it. It’s real.” Asha’s eyes welled up. “I wish my father could be here to see this.”
“Radiant One, may I ask who you are?” Zahn said.
“I reveal hidden strength in times of darkness.”
“But why have you helped us? Did you hear my prayer?”
“What have you learned, Zahn? Have you seized the moments? Have you looked through new lenses and gained new insights? Have you expanded your understanding? Your opportunities have not manifested by chance. We have been guiding you and showing you the way whenever you had eyes to see, ears to hear, and the heart to feel.”
“Thank you, Radiant One. I am extremely grateful for your protection. But how do you know this? Who is ‘we’? Can you tell me who you are?”
“You must seize this time. Right now, you, your mother, and your friends are the only ones who stand between the Vakragha and the enslavement of your home. Remember, all you need do is to deliver the Tulari into the wormhole itself. Your mother will recover momentarily. Seize this time and go. If you do not act now, Avani will fall.”
The figure walked over to Darshana, sprayed a strange pink mist onto her collapsed body, and disappeared back down the hall where he had come in.
For a moment, Zahn watched the dust float around the room as it drifted through a beam of sunlight. Across from them, the guardians dusted themselves off, glanced at Zahn and Asha in disgust, and walked down the hall that the shrunken guardian had run down.
Darshana slowly sat up and looked around, and Zahn walked over and helped her get to her feet.
“I’m sorry I wasn’t able to be of more help, guys,” Zahn said. “If it weren’t for that Radiant Figure, we’d all be burnt to a crisp by now, wouldn’t we?”
“Zahn,” Darshana said. “If it wasn’t for you and Asha, the Radiant Figure wouldn’t have had anyone to save when he arrived. Your resonator idea gave us the precious extra minutes we needed.”
“Thanks.” Zahn smiled. Somehow, she was everything he remembered her to be.
“Who was that, anyway?” Asha said. “I’ve never seen anything like that.”
“Whoever he was, he has a phenomenal understanding of biology,” Darshana said, stretching her neck. “That must have been the most powerful healing agent I’ve ever seen, because I can almost walk normally again. When that red bolt of light hit me, I was completely paralyzed. When I hit the floor, all I could move were my eyes. I almost thought—”
Darshana nearly tripped over a piece of rubble, but Asha caught her.
“—that it was the end.”
“Far from it, Mom. Far from it.”
CHAPTER 34
RENDEZVOUS AT RODHAS
Stepping over the chunks of rubble that now littered the floor, Zahn, Asha, and Darshana walked over to where the sunlight was pouring in to see where the strange figure had emerged from, but they only saw that a similar door had been rolled open at the end of another narrow hall. Zahn ran to the end of the hall but couldn’t find any sign of the figure or a ship.
They retraced their steps and followed the first hall back to the partially opened door and emerged back out into the open air. It was nearly dusk now.
Zahn looked over to Asha who was holding the faintly glowing Tulari.
“How heavy is it?” he said.
“Not as heavy as you might think. It’s a little warm, too. Touch it.”
It did feel warm to the touch, as if it were alive.
After removing his flute from the sneezing bush, Zahn led them down to the ship. Soon, they were racing high above the jagged peaks of Taarakalis, and the dark blue of the sky transformed itself into the Ocean of Space once more.
This time, he told Navika to prepare for a timespace jump to the outer edge of the Kuvela system, but not to Rodhas itself. Instead, he chose the most distant moon of Rodhas. He wanted to retain the element of surprise for as long as possible before they acted, just in case the Vakragha had a way of disrupting Navika’s cloak and revealing their position. He couldn’t make a mistake now. Too much was depending on him.
“One moment,” Navika said. “I am detecting debris in high orbit above the planet that was not present when we arrived.”
Zahn thought of the guttural disembodied voice that had spoken to him as they were leaving Hataaza Darad.
“Any idea of its source?”
“Difficult to ascertain. The debris is primarily a fine metallic dust. However, I can say that it poses no immediate threat to us.”
“Good. Then let’s get out of here. We have a planet to save.”
The timespace drive roared to life, and this time the roar seemed louder than it had ever been before.
Once again he saw the luminous realm. There was a flash, and then he saw space once more. A flash and then space. A flash and then space. Again and again. It happened so many times that Zahn lost count. It must have happened dozens of times now. Was something wrong? Why not just make one big jump?
A moment later, there was a final flash, and they reemerged into the Ocean of Space, a dark moon looming just below.
“We have travelled over 30,000 light-years, the longest jump of the entire journey.”
“Whoa. That’s almost a third of the diameter of the galaxy, but what about those flashes? It seemed like we were briefly entering space, and then reentering timespace again. Why were we doing that, Navika?”
“As I suspect Asha could tell you, a jump is defined as a superset of one or more hops. These hops are necessary because of the drive’s limited energy reservoir. However, since this energy is returned to the reservoir by the timespace field at the end of every hop, the time between hops is negligible. So, as I said, the sum total of the most recent sequence of hops is over 30,000 light-years, nearly one-third of the diameter of the galaxy. Welcome home.”
“We’re not quite home yet, and I’m not sure I understood all of that, but thanks. Can you confirm our position?”
“We are on the night side of the eighth moon of Rodhas, on the edge of the Kuvela system.”
“Good. Proceed under cloak.”
Hesitantly, Zahn maneuvered the ship to the edge of the moon and passively scanned Rodhas. Its cratered surface was a darker shade of grey-green than he had remembered it being from photos. But then again, photos can be deceiving, and he had Navika display a magnified view of the planet while they formulated a plan.
To their horror, angular pieces of the planet’s crust pulled back for a moment, revealing shallow shafts that led into a vast hollow expanse. Within it, Zahn caught a glimpse of a dark, menacing shape that was soon blocked by a small swarm of fighters
as they emerged from many points on the planet at once. He had unintentionally fulfilled his dream of seeing Rodhas, but he had never expected this.
“Be careful what you wish for,” Zahn said quietly.
“What?” Asha said.
“Nothing.”
The swarm of small, angular fighters which had emerged from the planet flew around in formation for a few seconds before flying off toward the dark side of the planet. Zahn wondered what they were up to, but was distracted when he realized that both of his ears were ringing. Why did that keep happening?
Zahn looked over to Asha and his mother while he rubbed his right ear. They both seemed anxious.
“So this is the disease…” Darshana’s eyes studied the infested world. “And we have the cure?”
“Yes, and I know what you’re thinking. I know that we’re just one ship facing an entire armada of Vakragha, but we also don’t know how much time there is before this wormhole is unleashed. We have to use the Tulari now.”
“From Avani,” Darshana said. “I could detect the wormhole’s mass, but I never thought it would look so menacing up close. I wonder if they’re using negative energy to maintain the wormhole’s stability…”
“So, what are we supposed to do, Zahn?” Asha said. “There’s only one mindcap, remember?”
“Don’t worry. We have the Tulari. We can do this.”
“I just wish I could be of more help. I’m a pretty good pilot, you know.”
“How could I forget that? You saved us from the marauders, and then you brought my mother back to health, something I don’t think I’ll ever be able to fully repay. You’ve already been crucial to our success, Asha. Don’t feel bad if you can’t do as much now. We never would have even gotten here without you.”
Zahn closed his eyes for a moment.
“Anyway, I just asked Navika, but he says he can’t exactly split up into two ships. So we’ll just have to work with what we have.”
In the back of Zahn’s mind, he heard a quiet ping sound.
Epic of Aravinda 1: The Truth Beyond the Sky Page 24
