The Rising Sun: Episode 5 Page 2

  “Do you know what this is?” Mantra asked Ion, cutting him across. There was a note of silent marvel in his voice.

  Dantox stood beside Ion, looking just as perplexed.

  “Some fang like thing my master gave me,” answered Ion hastily, feeling that was slightly out of place amidst the heat of this situation. “Does it really matter right now?”

  “It matters now more than ever. This is not a fang,” Mantra lowered his hand, staring at Jedius’s token. “This is a conch. The Grael conch, the instrument used for releasing the army of watchmen.”

  2

  Ion heard it, but only after a hazy, long moment did he actually understand what he had heard.

  “What?” he and Dantox gasped together, looking at each other.

  “I was wrong, I see now, to have thought that the conch keepers’ line had died out.” Mantra said, without taking his eyes off Jedius’s token. “It certainly hasn’t. You are the conclusion of the line, Ion.” He gave a soft chuckle. “What do you know … seems like we do have an army after all.”

  “The Grael conch?” breathed Dantox, his jaw still open. “You can’t be serious!”

  Ion gaped at Jedius’s token, held in Mantra’s hand. “Is this for real?”

  Mantra lifted his head and looked at him. “Well, let’s find out.”

  He raised the conch, pressing its fat end to his mouth, the pointed tip into the air … and he blew it.

  __________

  The ground beneath them seemed to shudder. The air seemed to part. The world itself seemed to rumble with a fury that seemed to have been contained for aeons. The entire plateau seemed to reverberate at the piercing, clear note that resounded with the force of a thousand war drums.

  Ion and Dantox threw their hands up to cover their ears … But the roar of the conch that sounded seemed beyond mere sound … It seemed to resonate through their very beings, as though echoing within their heads, and not outside of it…

  The blast of sound had knocked the Zelgron off the sides of the plateau: their screams had suddenly gone quiet, and they were all apparently lying piled at the base of the giant plateau. Mantra lowered the conch slowly. But the ghost of its booming roar seemed to ring in the air silently.

  Ion, Dantox and Mantra stood gazing about them emptily for a few long seconds as the echo of the conch’s bellow faded. Leaving everything blank and gloomy again.

  The three Nyon looked at each other, waiting. Hoping.

  A clear, pitless silence had fallen after the ring of the conch … And then, howls of the Zelgron resumed, overrunning it. The effect of the conch’s roar, which seemed to leave a silent glow in the air, was erased, gone. And mayhem and chaos rose over the atmosphere again, which seemed to slowly close around them.

  Ion felt his heart, which for the meanest second had dared to hope, now sink through his insides.

  “We really are done for.” he stated, raising his sword as the Zelgron came crawling over the sides of the plateau again. And then -

  “Look!” Dantox pointed above them, his eyes widened.

 

  Mantra and Ion drew their sights above…

  And there, coiling and swirling like a hundred fiery serpents, were a cluster of glowing, orange veins … They billowed all over the skies, their brilliant orange light spreading over the black blanket of the night.

  Their warmth almost extending down to the earth and to the plateau on which the Nyon stood, the bright orange threads swirled around rapidly for a few mesmerising seconds, while the entire world below watched, awed. The Zelgron had suddenly stopped climbing and their screams had died out. A scenic, entranced quiet had stolen over the night.

  Without warning, the veins of orange stopped swirling, took a final spin upwards, and then shot down. Like thick beams of sunlight, like threads of burning orange spilling from the heavens, they came down … There seemed to be a thousand of them. And all of them shot towards the earth in a straight, normal angle from the skies. The orange threads shot from the sky and connected to their world across the wide desert expanse, spreading all over it:

  The giant desert expanse which the plateau was amidst was linked to the heavens through a thousand reigns of bright orange. They all stood steadily between the ground and the sky like beams of light, unwavering and beautiful.

  And the beams slowly faded, leaving a fiery glow behind on the earth where they had touched.

  Ion peeled his eyes, gazing out into the expanse … everywhere the orange threads had connected to the world, an orange glow lingered.

  “What are they?” he asked, surprised to hear his voice leave him as a whisper.

  “It’s them.” said Mantra, smiling. “The watchmen.”

  The orange blurs slowly moved, taking shape. And they formed the figure of a man. It was the same man everywhere. He seemed to be made of a fiery orange light, with tongues of flame stretching out to form limbs, and a thin torso which looked like a pillar of fire.

  The watchmen were spread all across the desert around them, but every one of them was turned to face one direction … towards them. They were all standing faced to the plateau. The groaning of the Zelgron slowly stirred again below them, as the creatures slowly grew wary of a new group of targets. The Nyon ran over and looked across the edge.

  The mass of Zelgron had abandoned the plateau and were now raging forth towards the watchmen standing ahead of them. They washed across the land like a great wave of bodies, fierce and savage. As one the watchmen spread across the desert plain turned and came dashing in towards the horde of Zelgron from all sides. They gathered from all over the desert expanse, an army of fiery orange men. Sweeping in towards the enemy group at the centre, the men raised their flaming arms, as though bracing to use them as swords.

  Ion and the two masters watched in bounding awe…

  The watchmen zipped through the horde of Zelgron, with their fiery limbs like the Nyon’s blazing swords: spinning both arms like tongues of flame, they cut through the Zelgron like brandished, burning whips.

  The Zelgron were forced into a close pressed huddle as the watchmen flew at them from all around. The fiery soldiers seeped into the close knit mass of Zelgron, using their flaming arms to chop through them like they were butter. They moved so fast that all that was seen of them was an orange blur. The Zelgron fought, clawed and lunged onto their opponents, but to no avail: the watchmen’s’ arms acted like the blade of an ignited sword, slicing past them at the speed of fire.

  Ion felt his jaw drop as he witnessed the scene unfold before him.

  Within a minute, it was done. The only thing remaining of the mob of Zelgron lay charred and littered over the ground. The watchmen had finished them all.

  “But how?” he breathed, turning to Mantra. “The conch … how did -”

  Mantra contemplated the question, frowning. “My guess is that the master who had been caught by the Naxim ages back had already passed the conch down to a student without our knowledge. And, as per the rules of the line of secret keepers, the student could obviously not reveal his identity, or that the conch was safe with him. And so, the line survived within the Nyon, unknown to even us … to even me.”

  Having finished with the Zelgron, the army of fiery men gathered in a large pack before the plateau, waiting for the ones who had summoned them to descend and meet them.

  “Let’s go,” called Mantra, and the three of them descended down the plateau the way they had climbed it. They reached the ground to find the watchmen standing still in a large spread before the desert before the three of them, waiting.

  A daze robbed Ion as he witnessed the watchmen from close range, now face to face with them.

  They seemed to be robed the same way Nyon apprentices were, but with robes that seemed to be formed purely of fire. The flaming contents wrapped over them to form a solid figure, with their head taking the shape of the Nyon’s wrapped scarf. Two beady drops of orange hung in the middle of the opening left in the scarf
, their burning eyes.

  The sight of the army of fiery beings made marvel swell within Ion: he knew that their forms crafted out of the torch that light the universe since the beginning.

  The foremost of the soldiers walked up to stand right before Mantra, who met the man’s gaze calmly, with a light smile on his lips.

  “Well, well … we meet again, Nano.” he said to the fiery man.

  Nano, the fire solider standing before Mantra, made a deep bow. “It has been far too long, Nyon master Mantra.”

  His arm, though glowing, was no longer the burning whip that it had been earlier on: he held it out, and Mantra shook it without having his palm burned.

  He turned to Dantox and repeated the gesture.

  Dantox nodded as he shook the man’s hand. “It’s an honour above all to meet you, Nano, leader of the watchmen.”

  “An honour matched my mine, Nyon master.” Nano said, giving Dantox a deep bow as well. “I realise that we have been summoned after eight millennia. How fares the brotherhood?”

  “The brotherhood’s dead.” said Mantra flatly. “We’re the only three survivors.”

  Nano and the other watchmen, as Mantra had pointed out, had normal mortal shells which were not invulnerable to shock and other disastrous emotions: he could feel Nano’s posture stiffen, as those of the other watchmen. The two orange beads he had for eyes grew wider for a moment’s pause, before shrinking to their normal size again.

  Nano was quiet for a moment. The rest of the watchmen stood as still as stone, their figurines bathing the land in a mild orange glow. Nano turned, his hands behind his back, and walked forth for a few feet, before coming to a stall. He turned sideways to them, and nodded.

  “I see … that explains the surreal aura of the world. I could sense it … darkness abounded. Anarchy pitched to levels like no other.” The fiery beads that made his eyes seemed to burn stronger. “And I also sense that it will only rise, uncontained, if we do not act now.”

  “Well, you’ve sensed right.” said Dantox. “Redgarn has returned. The Xeni are intending to blow off ten planets, one every hour, to fulfill their long dreamt of goal.”

  “With each planet,” said Mantra. “They’ll mount the anarchy tenfold. And when they’re done,” He paused to heave a short breath. “the force of Mezmeron in this world would have climbed to its peak. Anarchy would have reached the level desired to release the army of Mezmeron … the cursed demon army.”

  “Well, looks like we’re in a better off position than we’d dreaded.” said Ion, running his eyes across the entire army, who numbered to a thousand as he knew. “What do we do now?”

  Mantra turned to Ion with a steely glint in his white eyes. “We do something we should have done a long time ago…”

  Ion raised an eyebrow. “Which is…?”

  Mantra withdrew the crystal and held it before him, examining it silently.

  “You’d remember asking me if the crystal could be destroyed once and for all?” he said, raising his eyes to Ion at last.

  “I do.”

  Mantra and Dantox exchanged a glance.

  “Well, it can.” said Dantox. “It can be destroyed once and for all.”

  “What?” asked Ion.

  “There is a priest by the name of Nalzes,” said Mantra. “Who lives in the farthest reach of the outer spectrum. He is an old friend of mine … and he’s just as old as I am. He is the only other member of our original brotherhood alive today. He has powers of incantation which you’d remember me telling you, are a specialised field in our world. They are needed to perform a spell before a tablet.”

  “And…” pressed Ion, feeling the tug of anticipation go stronger with every word.

  “He has ancient powers of incantation,” repeated Mantra, bringing his eyes before the crystal again. “ones that can destroy the crystal once and for all.” He nodded. “It was made before a mystical tablet by a well versed incanter, Redgarn. And it can also be destroyed just the same way. This man, Nalzes has the mystical powers required to get rid of the crystal once and for all.”

  “Well, then why didn’t we do it?” asked Ion, spreading his hands. “All along, we could have ended this so easily!”

  “There’s the catch, dear boy.” said Dantox, smiling. “It is no easy venture.”

  “The planet Nalzes lives in is at the very deepest of the outer spectrum.” said Mantra. “And a normal ship would take five hours at least to get there.”

  Ion was struck speechless as he grappled with the distance this was…

  “Five hours?” he breathed.

  Dantox nodded gravely. “Five hours in which everything in the world could go wrong … from the Xeni to the Naxim. And so, deciding not to undertake this huge risk at this greatly tense time, we had dropped the idea.”

  “But now,” carried over Mantra. “I see that the need is greater than we thought it was: seeing what the Xeni are prepared to do to get the crystal,” His eyes roved over the ground beyond them, littered with the remains of the Zelgron horde. “and seeing the dangerous level of commitment they show, I was mistaken to ever think that the crystal could be kept safe with us. I know now that until it is destroyed once and for all, there is no such thing as a peace for us: the Xeni are far more deadly than we had imagined, and they just proved it to us. This is something we should have done earlier on … and now, we will do it.”

  Nano stepped forward, and Mantra and him exchanged a swift nod.

  “Also,” continued Mantra, looking at Ion. “this is a venture we can now afford to undertake. Because we’re now given tools that will make it easier.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “With the army of watchmen now released, we have a certain tool available to us, which will be of aid should we decide to undertake such a perilous journey. A great aid.” said Mantra. “As a result, if we decide to now go forth on this journey to the planet Nalzes lives in, it will be considerably safer. But even there, nothing at all is certain. And dangers along the way, both from the Naxim and the Xeni, still persist. But this is a venture we have to take.”

  He scowled, looking from Ion to Dantox. “But what we need to realise is that even if we get the crystal destroyed successfully, those ten planets will still be blown off. And we cannot allow that to happen: we’re now in a position where we can try and save them. As a result, the journey to the priest Nalzes will have to be undertaken by one of us. In the meantime, the remaining two of us will have to take the army of watchmen, and try and stop the ten bombs going off.”

  “I’ll do it.” said Ion, nodding at Mantra. “I’ll take the crystal to the planet where this priest stays, to have it destroyed. In the meantime, the two of you go and find those bombs.”

  For the first time since the battle of the temple, Ion felt a steely sense of purpose like never before. Now that the caged, helpless feeling he had experienced earlier on was gone and the time had come for action, he felt his urge to act, to help the world, livened and ablaze again. He knew that whatever dangers and threats lay ahead, he would be more than willing to face them.

  Mantra, Dantox and Nano were all looking at him after he had said it.

  Mantra gave a nod. “Good. Very good. Ion will take the crystal to Nalzes, to have it destroyed.” He turned to Nano and then to Dantox. “In the meanwhile, myself, Dantox, Nano and the watchmen will scour the spectrum and do whatever we can to stop those bombs from going off.”

  “So what’s this great tool you were talking of?” Ion inquired. “Which is supposed to help me in this journey?”

  Mantra smiled. “Nothing more than a ship.”

  Nano turned and nodded at the army of watchmen, all of whom looked identical to him. The entire army of thousand or fire moulded soldiers held one hand out, pointing into the sky. As one, a long orange ribbon shot out of every one of their arms, streaking into the sky. The orange ribbons touched the heavenly abyss and began swirling and coiling again, as they had earlier. A second or two passed mesm
erisingly, and the flaming cords seemed to gain speed rapidly, so that all that was seen of them was a hazy swish of orange.

  And then, as the swirling of the ribbons slowed down, there was a giant orange mass that had taken shape amidst them, hanging densely in the middle of the night’s pitch black expanse.

  It slowly descended from the sky, with the watchmen all gazing at it as it lowered. As if hoisted by an invisible rope, it lowered slowly, steadily, and thudded to the ground right ahead of the three Nyon, where the watchmen had carved a clearing for it.

  Flamebird seemed to shimmer with radiance, its orange skin bright and brilliant. Shaped like a giant orange falcon, it stood large and magnificent before them. The bird’s eyes, narrowed and focussed, were fixed over the three Nyon, waiting for them to board it. Its wings were stretched out on both sides, elegant and sprawling. It was a medium sized ship, but there was a quiet power pulsating in its ancient depths. Ion knew it was woven by the energy of the watchmen.