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.
“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.
__________
Zardin took a look into the screen that rose
over the z-com right after he had pressed the button.
“Fernox … detonated.” he read from the
screen, his lips hosting a brutal smile.
Ion went totally blank for a second. And then
cold fury came surging through him. Fury like he had never known
before.
Walking forward, Zardin stomped one foot over
Ion’s motionless body, bent down and whispered, “We win, then.”
Straightening up, he hurled a kick at Ion
which sent his limp body rolling over.
Twirling the crystal within his fingers,
Zardin strode upto the tablet in the middle of the dark room. He
bent forward and pressed a spot on the tablet. The large tablet
glowed for a second, and then, with a flash of light, it shrunk
into a miniature model of its former self.
Zardin picked up the shrunken tablet with his
free hand and slowly came back to stand before Ion.
“I think, your master Mantra may have told
you that this particular tablet is something special.” He waved the
shrunken tablet before Ion’s eyes. “Well, he should have. But I’m
sure he never told you why. For this is a tablet which he has
secretly kept hidden here for eight millennia now: And he was
completely right in do so. Because you see,” He gestured to the
tablet. “I’m now holding not just any ordinary tablet … I’m holding
the tablet known as
Valicros
, the most powerful mystical
tablet ever to exist. And with its help now, the spell with which
we release the demon army is going to be a thousand fold as
powerful … and the army would be a thousand times as terrible as
they would have been. And all of this, our order owes to the three
of
you
.”
Ion heard the words, but it took a series of
stiff, unmoving seconds before he actually registered them … and
before his brain, in its frozen state, processed them.
And when he did, a wave of horror froze his
insides. He thought their situation could not, in the meekest
chance, be worse. But he had been proved wrong.
Valicros … The
most powerful tablet … This can’t be happening.
“Desiring to hide the tablet from us, Mantra
had spent eight millennia weaving this particular lie.” Zardin had
his head turned towards the tablet at the centre of the dark hall
as he spoke. “The lie that Valicros had been destroyed, when the
truth was that he had actually been keeping it safe and hidden. He
had known that the tablet was a potentially dangerous one if it
were to come to fall to our hands. He wanted to make sure it was
kept well off our reach. And so, to protect the tablet, he decided
to alter the known version of history: he had spread the word among
the mystic circle that Valicros had been lost, in the hopes of
warding off attempts by us, the Xeni, to try and reach it. And all
his efforts in protecting the tablet have now gone in vain.”
Zardin’s laughter echoed within the walls
again while he stood over Ion, continuing to twirl the crystal idly
within the fingers of his left hand. He slid the shrunken tablet,
Valicros, into his robe pocket.
“We now have the crystal.
And
the most
powerful tablet ever. With the two of them together, we will
unleash the army of Mezmeron to the very height of its power in
this realm.”
He paused, watching Ion closely for a few
seconds.
“It is not possible for us to release the
entire demon army right now: we would need to perform the spell
with the tablet at a certain specific time of the day that aligns
with the nature of our spell. We will perform the complete spell,
to release the demon forces, in a few hours at the Xeni’s lair. But
since the three of you seem just so overly
eager
for this, I
guess with my mystical powers, I can use the crystal to open a meek
crevice in the demons’ dimension, unlocking a very small portion of
our dark forces … right here. For you. To let you have some
fun.”
Striding to the front of where Ion lay, held
the crystal up before his blank sockets. His face absorbing a new
focus. He held one hand right atop the crystal and slowly rotated
it in slow circles. A whole few minutes passed as such, with him
continuing this bizarre ritual.
Finally, after what looked to Ion like a
small eternity, he stopped rotating his hand and lowered it. The
serious look on his face was gone, replaced by that same cold
smile.
Ion watched in horror, wondered if he had
actually done it.
As if in answer, the crystal that Zardin held
before his hand seemed to vibrate. The next second, a fierce red
glow came over it, while it continued to steadily vibrate.
This went on for a few seconds, and Ion
thought they were the most terrible few seconds of his life.
Then, the red glow slowly vanished, and the
small prick like object sank back to a motionless stillness.
“Now,” Zardin lowered the crystal and turning
to Ion. “I think I’ve managed to release a very small something to
give you company here. The rest of the army, no doubt, will be
unleashed only when we perform the spell properly later on today.
But for now, enjoy our gift to you.”
With a final shriek of laughter, Zardin
pocketed the crystal with the shrunken tablet, turned and headed
out the double doorway. As he swept out, his cloak flapping behind
him, the large double doored entrance slowly caved in and sealed
itself behind him. Leaving Ion and his two unconscious friends in
this dark place.
But as Ion lay there on the floor, his breath
heaving, something happened that almost made his heart stop…
His eyes widened as he sensed it…
A new presence. Here, in the dark hall. With
them.
They weren’t alone.
There was someone, or
something
else
in the darkness here with them.
Lagovan, Cluster 57
Atop one of the towering structures that
forming the city of Tastade, a man in a brown gown stood at the
balcony. Wargo had known of cruelty and senselessness in this
world, and had bore witness to some of the most horrific incidents
that had claimed the peace of the spectrum. But none, none at all,
had been anything like what they were facing now.
It was sheer madness. And no one in existence
would have ever dreamt of imagining such a thing.