YOU MIGHT WANNA COME GET THEM FAST.
A cold smile gleamed on his pale features.
Vonayz, along with the rest of force one, had come to join their
side just recently. It was too bad Mantra and Ion didn’t know it.
Too bad for them.
He punched in a reply, and sent it to
Vonayz:
I’LL BE THERE.
AS YOU KNOW, WE’RE CLOSER THAN YOU THINK.
He turned and walked back down the metallic
floor, pocketing his z-com.
__________
“The time is upon us.” said Mantra, his hand
still over Vonayz’s shoulder. “We have very little time to gather
our armies and if you join us, you and force one would be our most
needed alliance.”
Vonayz lifted an eyebrow, a look of dawning
interest on his face.
“Gather your armies?” he asked slowly. “And …
how exactly are you doing this?”
Mantra considered the question for a moment,
and said, “With the aid of a most needed force we have by our side
… the army of watchmen.”
Vonayz’s breathing stalled as his eyes
widened. “
Watchmen?
They’ve returned?”
“Yes they have.”
“You have the watchmen with your side
now?”
“Yes we do.”
The shock lingered for a few moments on
Vonayz’s face, before sinking back to the same uninterested look
he’d been wearing. But Ion couldn’t help noticing that something in
his eyes almost looked … unsettled. Troubled. He sank to a
thoughtful gaze for a while. leaving Ion in front of him with his
arms folded in contempt, and Mantra beside him with his hand still
clutching his shoulder.
The sky above dimmed slowly, as the final
lights of the day faded. As the dusk wore through and the night
formed, the mild activity around them was dying down. The people
who’d been outside the huts were receding back to it, lighting
torches within them.
Ion noticed a group of people filing outside
the large black ship near them, where they’d been all along. They
disbanded, all of them spreading out to return to their respective
huts.
“So what’re the watchmen doing?” Vonayz asked
finally.
“We’ve sent them to gather our forces.”
“Yeah, but what’s the plan there, exactly?”
asked Vonayz, and Ion picked up a strange, sharp anticipation in
his tone. He was being, in Ion’s opinion, overly curious all of a
sudden.
He wondered why…
Mantra chuckled softly. “You know we can’t be
giving out all our secrets to outsiders, right?”
“Outsiders?” asked Vonayz, his lips parting
in a grin.
“Sorry, kid,” said Mantra. “But that’s what
you are as of now … unless you decide to join us, of course.”
“Give me one solid reason I should,” said
Vonayz, a mild growl in his tone as he switched his gaze over to
Ion.
Ion had to fight the urge to unsheathe his
sword and run it through Vonayz. But he contented himself with a
tight smile, before turning and gazing across the lands.
“Believe me,” said Mantra, his grip on
Vonayz’s shoulder tightening. “If you refuse my offer … there will
be a time when you will regret it.”
“Believe me,” contradicted Vonayz. “I won’t.”
He wrenched Mantra’s hand off his shoulder, turned and kicked dirt
over to the fire, dousing it.
Ion walked forward and sat behind where
Mantra was. He inwardly felt that this was a lost cause the very
moment he knew who Mantra’s student was. But Mantra apparently had
other notions. Far off from where they were, the setting sun lay
pressed to the horizon, a disc of radiant, glowing red. One of the
cloaked men from the black ship was trotting towards them, making
his way to his hut. And as he neared, Ion caught sight of his face
… Zardin’s blank eyesockets were fixed steadily on Ion, his face
alive with malice as he walked over towards them.
As Ion rose, his tongue bone dry, he realised
that the rest of the cloaked men who’d alighted the large black
ship weren’t spreading out towards their huts … they were spreading
out to
surround
him and Mantra.
Vonayz turned back to face Ion, a grin
burning on his face. “Sorry to say … I’ve already made my
alliance.”
Mantra paused for a second, and then turned
to face Zardin as his footsteps neared. His calm look was just as
dangerously unfazed as always.
Walking on towards them, Zardin shook his
head and spread his hands in a warm gesture. “What a pleasant
surprise, I must say … for you.”
Mantra turned back to Vonayz, gazing at him
in steady silence. Wounded silence.
Ion’s fear was blotted by the surge of fury
that awoke inside of him. As Mantra stood there, gazing calmly at
his former student, Ion walked forward and unsheathed his
sword.
“I swear do you,” he hissed, locking eyes
with Vonayz. “before the end of this life … I will kill you.”
Vonayz sneered. “Not if I kill you
first.”
He drew his saber and progressed. Approaching
fast from beside them, Zardin shouted to the Xeni closing them all
over: “Kill them!”
“Time to leave,” Mantra said, tugging Ion
from the back. “let’s go, Run!”
With a final, seething glare at Vonayz, Ion
and Mantra turned and took to their heals. The rough, sloping lands
marked no difference to the two of them as they tore across it,
with the Xeni sweeping in towards them from all sides, surrounding
them.
Ion’s hopes crashed: the Xeni swooped in from
all sides, and there was no way in the world they could wriggle off
their grasp.
But Mantra threw both hands out as he had
done when the Zelgron had attacked them: A violent shockwave
erupted from where Mantra stood, soaring out to smash into the Xeni
from all over, lifting them into the air. They sailed, airborne,
across ten metres. Before they had landed, Mantra and Ion had
hurtled across the distance and had passed them. A collective,
muffled
thud
and a set of groans sounded right behind them
as the Xeni’s bodies landed. Ion threw a split second glance: the
Xeni were scurrying to their feet and, together, dashing towards
the two Nyon dangerously fast…
His heart hammering, Ion turned back and
propelled himself forth alongside Mantra.
Redgarn strode down the large cave with quiet
footsteps, another cloaked Xeni by his side. The only faint sound
through the silence was the rustle of their cloaks scraping the
cave floor behind them as they walked.
“We’ve come far.” Redgarn said. “We are now
closer than anyone had dared for ages. We owe our debts to many,
both before us and with us now, to have helped us reach where we
are now.”
The Xeni walking by his side nodded.
Redgarn continued. “But our greatest debt is
to you, my fellow Xeni. You rank after Zardin himself, in the
contribution made to our order’s victory.”
“Thank you, my lord. You are very kind.”
“Your continued assistance to us has been the
greatest boon possible.” said Redgarn. “And it has fetched us a
great heap of benefits. You have served with us for almost two
decades, and these two decades formed the period of our rise … and
of their fall. The fall of the Nyon. It’s no co incidence at all.
But it was your most recent achievement that we could not have done
without: your success in getting the Ensys to join us. For that,
the entire order is truly grateful to you. The Ensys are a valuable
ally, and you steered them away from joining the Nyon and got them
to join us instead.” He shook his head. “But didn’t the Nyon ever
suspect you?”
“They didn’t.” Dantox replied, his smile
seeming to glitter in the dark. “I was good at what I did.”
Redgarn gave a loud, unpleasant laugh. “You
definitely were. A spy within the Nyon is something is the one
achievement we had craved for, but never could achieve. But you
made that possible. For years now, you have lived among them as a
spy, pretending, and hiding your deep secret well from them. I must
congratulate you, for it must have been no easy feat. And now,
after so long, your efforts have paid off … in our long awaited
victory.”
“Thank you, my lord.” Dantox gave a mild bow.
“I must admit, it
was
no easy feat. I was forced to hide my
intentions in the most crucial way possibly. For the Nyon were not
the sort that fell prey to deception with ease. And I was forced to
arm myself with only the most advanced mind concealing training to
undertake the dangerous mission.” He stopped and turned to face
Redgarn, his eyes gleaming with triumph. “And it payed of. I proved
myself worthy to them, and something happened which made my very
own self question the enormity of my luck…”
Redgarn nodded slowly. “Yes … you were made a
member of the elder council.”
Dantox’s smile widened. “Yes. And that was
the turning point for the Xeni. With my entering into the elder
council, I managed to redeem information of various sorts, to aid
our rising conquest. I found the existence of file D from some of
the other masters, who confided in the secret deeming me
trustworthy now that I was a member of the council. Mantra, who had
been there when the file had been created, had been aware of it all
along. In time, I forged spy relations with a very, very crucial
entity: the Naxim. And through this, I learned about the current
secret holder of file D, and where he lives. And so, with that
knowledge, Zardin went on to capture Derigor, to have the file
procured from him.”
“You’ve been the reason for our many
triumphs.” said Redgarn, stroking his chin. “You gave us the
location of the Nyon temple earlier on, and let us attack it. When
the attack failed, you were lucky enough to have stuck to Mantra,
to know what he was doing with the plague crystal. Of course, you
were unable to contact us initially, with risk of giving yourself
away with Mantra by your side. But in time, you managed to find an
opening, and you told us where the plague crystal was, and what the
Nyon were doing with it. And as the latest victory for our side,
you managed to secretly get the Ensys’ horde to join forces with us
instead of the Nyon.”
Dantox drifted into reminiscence for a meek
moment.
“It was rather easy, my lord.” he said
finally, turning back to his master with a sly smile. “Too easy, as
a matter of fact.”
Half an hour back
Having finished their audience with the
Ensys, Nano and the watchmen trotted back down the cavern, the way
they came. The army marched past with a new energy in their
walk.
“That was easier than we ought to have
hoped.” Nano said. “Would you not agree, master Dantox? … Dantox?”
He stopped and turned back, only to realise that the watchmen were
now marching off down the place alone.
Dantox wasn’t with them.
“Where–?”
One of the watchmen right behind Nano, said,
“He is still in the cavern, with the Ensys.”
The entire batch of watchmen came to a stop
behind Nano. Nano gazed down the dark cavern, now enclosed with
shadows. With the light from their torches having moved past
it.
“Still in the cavern?” Nano repeated
wondrously.
The other watchman nodded. “He told us to go
on, said that there was something he needed to take care of.”
Nano felt a slight, almost unnoticeable
stroke of discord. “That is rather odd.” He mumbled. “What would he
be doing with them, when our pact has already been made?”
The hundred watchmen behind stood silently,
watching their leader as he peered down the dark cavern. Where the
Nyon master was.
“Should we go back for him?” asked one of the
men.
Nano thought for a quiet second, before
shaking his head and turning back. “No … I believe it would be
fine. Let us do as he says, and go on … he will come back.”
The hundred watchmen resumed striding down
the dark cavern, the light from their torches casting a wide orange
halo of illumination around them.
Nano felt a silent unsettlement cast a shadow
over the joy of having this task accomplished.
For what had Dantox stayed behind with the
Ensys? Nano guessed that he was hanging back to meet their leader,
Rigmrr. But for what reason exactly?…
A very faint queasiness ruffled his thoughts
as he walked on … he sensed something wrong in this situation,
something hovering overhead, waiting to land. But exactly what, he
couldn’t tell.
__________
Meanwhile, far inside of the cave, in a
complete silence, the leader of the Ensys was resting with his
giant, hideous form seated over the rocky ground.
Dantox stood feet in front of him, with a
neat smile on his face. He was here to ensure that the Ensys came
to join the Xeni, instead of the Nyon. He had just finished telling
Rigmrr whom he represented, and asked for the tribe of Ensys to
change their minds and to join them, the Xeni, instead.
Rigmrr was gazing down upon Dantox with
something brewing within the depths of those dark red beads that
made his eyes. Finally, after a long, tense silence that would have
taken anyone to jitters, Rigmrr threw his head back and laughed.
The sound felt like a set of razors scraping over a barren, rough
surface.