The Rising Sun: Episode 5
“Yes,” he said softly. “Zardin truly has been the soul of our new order. And he will prove it again, very soon.”
Beneath the dark of their hoods, Redgarn could feel the same curiosity kindling in the men’s faces.
He chuckled softly. “Yes, that’s right. He will prove once more, why he is a mastermind among mystics themselves. He will prove it … by fetching us the plague crystal.”
As he said it, he could almost feel the air freeze around the four Xeni in front of him: a sudden stiffness had sparked in their postures. Redgarn could feel the thrill rising in them.
“The - the plague crystal, my lord?” hissed one of them, unable to keep his curiosity from bursting out of him.
Redgarn gave a low laugh, which left a tingling hum to echo behind it in the cave. “Yes … Zardin has just gone for the one task that we need accomplished right now. He’s gone to have the plague crystal obtained. From the Nyon.”
The hooded faces slowly twisted to face each other, and Redgarn sensed the same mixture of shock and excitement beneath all their hoods.
“But - how?” asked one of them, daring to break the same question that all their heads now contained.
Redgarn licked his lips, his eyes narrowing sharply. “He did not tell me. And I did not bother asking.”
The Xeni slowly exchanged another quiet look.
“I have faith in him.” said Redgarn, smiling as he said it. “And whatever plan he has for this.”
The Xeni dared speak no more. But Redgarn knew they were all weighing the odds … and trying to hope that the mastermind who had brought their order this far, could accomplish this final goal for them. The plague crystal.
Redgarn couldn’t help himself either: he pondered over the chances of success Zardin bore. Wondering if he would manage to accomplish this last, and most important feat…
But he quickly caught himself and pushed away such worthless dwellings and fears. Silencing all questions. For the answers were very soon to reach them.
Good luck, Zardin.
19
“Two minutes.” Qyro said, looking into the fifth holo screen beside the four others. “We’ll be at the planet in two minutes.”
He turned to Vestra and Ion, who stood by his left looking into the screen as well. It displayed the distance and time remaining to their destination, the planet Garnor in the nearing star system.
Ion glanced behind at the hull. The priest, Nalzes, sat at the very back, cross legged and eyes closed. After he had entered the ship, less than a minute or two ago, he had settled at the back of the ship where he sank into a deep, undisturbed meditation.
“Let’s check the details of this planet.” Vestra suggested.
Ion ran through the pages of the data stored in the fifth holo screen, before arriving at one that gave them what they wanted - everything about the planet Garnor.
Qyro ran through the page quickly, before turning to the two of them.
“It’s a rainforest planet.” he told them. “One of the rare ones, as a matter of fact.”
“Is it inhabited?” asked Vestra, who bent forward to read, but Qyro shook his head.
“Not my man beings. Not now anyway.”
“Not now?” asked Ion.
“Garnor was apparently inhabited a long, long time ago.” he explained, squinting at the lines of small words filling the page. “Probably too long to even leave any traces of inhabitation behind. Anyway, it’s all green now. Nothing but forests throughout the planet.”
“There is a city remaining behind.” Ion told him. “ An abandoned city. It’s not inhabited. But it used to be, apparently, when the planet was.”
Qyro lifted an eyebrow. “How’d you know?”
“Because that’s where the tablet is.” Ion recalled the exact directions to the tablet, as Mantra had told him. “This abandoned city is where we’re going to find the tablet.”
He mentally ran through the details of the tablet’s location, as given by Mantra. The ship had been set on autodrive to take them directly to the outskirts of the city. From there, they would enter the abandoned place by foot. The tablet, as Mantra had explained, would be found in a structure at the centre of the abandoned city.
He placed his arms behind his back and watched as the empty black stretch shown in the four screens carried on for a minute or two. And then, they could feel the ship’s speed entering a steady drop. And a small orb appeared on one of the screens, enlargening against the black background. Coloured rich green, it expanded in size until the entire screen was swallowed by it.
The stretch of black on all four screens was wiped out as the ship zoomed into the planet’s atmosphere. One of them displayed the sky, while another showed the green lands beneath them, which came hurtling closer.
The lively greenery on the ground zipped backwards as the ship flew by over it. It was dense and rich, forest life that seemed to spawn on and on.
It was mid day: they could see so through the screen bearing the sky. The sun lay half concealed behind a large puff of cloud, a slice of its bright orange rim exposed.
The ship soared on gracefully, its altitude lowering gradually as it approached its destination. Within a few seconds, they saw what was undoubtedly a man made area of inhabitance crop into view at the very edge of the grassy lands. As they approached, they saw the city grow out over the land, steadily turning clearer. Flamebird descended with a stunningly accurate precision: it landed on the grassy land coming beyond the city, right on its outskirts.
“We’re here.”
The three of them spun around, and saw the priest standing right behind them. He had apparently woken from meditation completely unknown to them. His green eyes were fixed on the four screens before them, and a faint frown wore on his brow.
“Let’s not tarry,” he said, his voice pinched with something faintly grim. “Time is of the essence.”
“And so it is.” Ion frowned too, and the as the ramp caved in from the floor before them, landing on the grassy ground beneath, the four of them swept down it.
The ramp re sealed itself as they exited the ship. The four of them lined outside of the ship, holding their gazes upon the deserted, ruined city spreading before them.
The buildings were all made in the same, identical fashion. They all looked like small scale pyramids with the upper tip shaved off. All of them were roughly of the same size, rising as tall as a two storey building. The skin covering the structure seemed to be some sort of a diamond like material. It glimmered in the harsh rays of the mid day sun, carrying a polished shine unfazed by the great span of years it had endured.
Ion couldn’t help observing that Nalzes’s expression was strangely closed, with a half frown over his brow. A strangely dark look. For some reason, he heaved in a deep breath, and then held his eyes closed for a long, intense moment, as though praying … or trying to detect something.
And then, Nalzes’s eyes suddenly opened.
“We should hurry.” he said softly.
His voice was just as calm as ever, but there was a sharp note of urgency in it.
“I’ll lead the way,” said Ion, giving him a nod.
And without another word, he swept forward in a brisk pace, with the other three hurrying on behind him.
As he walked, Ion had the strangest feeling that Nalzes was sensing trouble. The same way Mantra could. He remembered having the same feeling when he had met him earlier. Feeling his nerves tingle very mildly, he gathered his pace and walked faster with the three of them striding along behind him.
The flooring of the entire city was uniform, laid with concrete tiles. The entire city was sprawled over the unbroken concrete tiling that acted like a platform for its build. The half pyramid structures were all distributed over the city’s large platform. Faint mushes of greenery lay smeared between the concrete flooring, either in the form of tufts of grass or bushes. Creepers stretched over most of the buildings, some of them thin and mildly layered. Wh
ile others were dense, wrapping and enshrouding the entire building in greenery.
They were treading down the large, magnificent city at a hurried trot. Ion was leading them, the other two and Nalzes huddling along in his wake. He sent a glance back and saw Qyro and Vestra by either side of Nalzes, whose face carried the same dark frown. The two others had stoned looks on their faces, and Ion knew that the same, silent anxiety pressed upon them all. One that had been triggered by the sudden urgency Nalzes displayed. The anxiety of something looming over them, waiting to land.
Pushing the thought away, Ion turned back and let his pace quicken subconsciously.
As the four of them swept down the city, Ion couldn’t help letting his gaze wander over it. Despite its abandoned state, the place had a lingering sense of awe from the exquisite nature of its build. The touch of grandeur in the city’s craft was unravaged. The expensive material making the half pyramid structures all around them preserved the unblemished, smooth nature of its surface, even through the age it had stood through. Some of the structures, which were noticeably larger than the rest, had their surface coated with a spread of glinting lights. And with a closer look upon one of them, Ion noticed that they were precious stones that adorned the building. He guessed that these had been buildings bearing a greater importance in the city than the rest.
Though simply modelled, the city was large, larger by far than he had imagined. He redoubled his pace, and the three of him followed suit, almost running. The place seemed to spawn for a small eternity of tense walking, with Ion’s nerves quietly tingling all through.
An air of desolate emptiness haunted the place. One that seemed strangely awakened, renewed as the five new visitors hurriedly passed through the city.
Ion let his gaze shoot about the place all the time, looking for signs of the building Mantra had directed him to. He remembered Mantra’s instructions, directing him to a central building in the abandoned city, wherein lay this tablet. And, keeping them in mind all through, he carried on down the maze of structures, leading the others.
Within a few minutes, he had reached the building Mantra had directed him to. And as soon as he did, as the five of them stood before the large, grandly built half pyramid wherein lay the tablet, Ion felt something in his gut loosen.
The building was the largest of the entire city, or so Ion guessed from what he had observed of the city through their wandering. A large pair of large double doors lay sealed shut at front.
Nalzes gave a flick of his hand and the door swung open, revealing a large dark hall touched only by the faintest illumination. But even through the dimness of the place, they could spot it … sitting directly in the middle of the room, large and elegant.
The tablet they had come here for.
Ion’s tension died out in an instant, as he released a great sigh of relief.
“We’ve made it.” whispered Qyro by his right, his eyes on the tablet.
Nalzes turned to Ion, his green eyes seeming to sparkle through the darkness. Ion sensed the same relief bursting through him as well, casting away the dark forebodings he had apparently sensed earlier.
He pulled the crystal out from his robe pocket, and handed it to the priest. “End this. Once and for all.”
Nalzes took a moment to survey the crystal. Then, with a nod to the three of them, he turned and strode into the room, and before the tablet.
Ion and the other two stood at the entrance, watching as the man heaved a deep breath in preparation for what he needed to do. Then, he reached for something in his right wrist. He wrenched off a metallic object that had been strapped around the front of his wrist, and threw it to the ground: Ion’s eyes followed the device, which he recognised to be a disguise simulator … And immediately, the simulated disguise that the priest had been wearing rippled and died.
Zardin turned to face the three of them with the crystal held before him in his hand, his smile blazing with triumph even through the darkness.
20
“End this you ask?” Zardin said, as he withdrew a Sparkler from the pocket of his black robe and aimed. “End it, I shall.”
He released three jets of blue at them. And all of them found their targets.
Their three bodies were lifted off the ground as one, caught in a slow mid air sail across the room. Ion felt every thought obliterated as his nerves gushed with a searing pain. The half second in which he was airborne seemed to expand across a few aeons. And then, with a dull crash, his body smashed to the floor at the entrance, frozen. Through the corner of his twitching eye, he saw Vestra and Qyro having hit the wall behind them and rolled off. The impact seemed to have put them out.
No! No! No!
Ion was now lying helpless on the floor, the warmth squeezed out of his body. Paralysed, unable to move, unable to hardly think, he lay on the floor while Zardin stood before the tablet in the centre of the room. The maniac released a chilling laughter that rang unpleasantly within the walls of the large hall.
“Galinor, another surviving member of your brotherhood, had been kind enough to tell us everything.” he said, slowly striding forward. “Of course, he was slightly un co operative initially, and we had to put him out a few times before he came to his senses and revealed the entire plan.” He stopped and bent before Ion, those eyeless, soulless sockets appearing to gleam viciously. “Yes, he told us what you were planning to do, apparently having heard it from Mantra. He told us of the priest you were planning to meet, and where you were heading to meet him. And so, there I was, in disguise of that same priest - a disguise I managed to procure with his help, of course.” He looked over at the base of the tablet, where the watch like device he had been wearing lay on the ground. “With the help of the disguisor device, I had his appearance imprinted into it, and then used it to fool you. You should have realised that if I were the real Nalzes, I would never have been waiting for you at the village’s outskirts when you landed itself - Nalzes would have sensed your arrival and reached you only a while after you’d landed, and you knew that.”
Ion’s thoughts had come under a painful jam - not even because of the freeze shot’s effect, but because of the shock and alarm now pounding on him. After everything they had done … they had been thwarted.
Zardin went on, his voice razor edged with malice. “Galinor also told us what Mantra and Dantox, the only two others remaining of your brotherhood, were planning to do. And are now doing. They had committed themselves to the task of stopping the ten bombs, before they went off. The second hour is almost up. It’s almost time for the second planet, Fernox to hit the dust. Here, the string of events can take two routes: one - Mantra and Dantox have managed to successfully destroy the bomb by now, and the planet lives. Two - they haven’t managed to find the bomb yet, and the planet dies … with them dying along with it.”
He let a mean pause follow his words, and Ion understood that it was to let the effect of what he was saying drill into him. The alarming, terrible effect.
Zardin pulled out his z-com, and a holo screen shimmered to life over it, leaving a pale blue glow to spread over the hall. “The bomb in Fernox was meant to go off in another seven minutes. It was pre programmed. I have the power to override the bomb’s timing and set it off earlier. And I think I will.”
He gestured to the z-com. “One button on this device, and the bomb in Fernox goes off the very next second. I hope, for their sake, that Mantra and Dantox have managed to destroy the bomb. For if not,” His finger hovered over the trigger. “The bomb will now destroy them. Along with all else in the planet.”
His words bit into Ion’s mind like red hot talons. Sharp and scorching. Ion mustered his hopes that Mantra and Dantox had managed to get to the bomb by now … because if not, their chances were up.
Zardin’s pale face was watching him, his framed black hair falling loosely on both sides of his face so that, in the darkness, he looked ever more like a lunatic. A soulless body animated to walk around
… and it was ever more terrifying.
A humorless smile awoke upon those daunting features. “So tell me, Ion, what do you think? Have they found and destroyed the bomb?”
He wagged the z-com before Ion again, who felt a parching desire to seize the device. But all he could do was lie there, helpless, on the cold ground, and watch the horror unfold before him.
Zardin straightened back up, positioning his thumb over a button on his z-com. “Time to find out.” And his thumb landed over the button, and pressed it.
__________
Fernox experienced the meanest split second of rumbling … terrible, furious rumbling, as though the force of a million earthquakes had been compressed and unleashed in that one moment. And the next split second saw a fiery blaze of light soaking the entire planet, and devouring it.
The explosion was infernal. Uncontained. It ripped apart the entire planet within the span of a second. Its shattered remains were sent rocketing across space, the remnants of the once majestic planet, living and thriving … now lifeless and cold.