The Rising Sun: Episode 3 Read online

Through the window, the gigantic expanse of black glinted with specks of starlight. Qyro was gazing out of it steadily, leaving a prolonged silence to fill the air between him and Ion … since Ion had finished with the story.

  It had been two years.

  Two years since Ion had had a good night’s sleep. Two years since his world had known an ounce of peace.

  The anger. The guilt. The grief. They had all been raging within him for two years now, since the end of his earlier life. The life of an assassin.

  Ion would have given anything at all to have his past scored out of his memory. But not even his entire past … just that one memory.

  The memory at the end of his life as an assassin … and the memory that ended his life as an assassin.

  Slowly, as if finding it painful to, Qyro turned and met Ion’s eyes.

  “Well,” said Ion, his tone just as casual as always. “Are you gonna turn me in?”

  Qyro’s face was blank for a few long seconds.

  “I doubt I can overpower you.” he said finally. “But even otherwise, I couldn’t bring myself to it.”

  “Why?” asked Ion.

  Qyro turned back, frowning in thought. A few seconds of silence passed as he looked out the window again. When he turned to Ion, there was something gentle in his expression.

  “I don’t think you deserve it … the punishment that others might shun you with.” He shook his head. “And you aren’t what you were two years back. That side of you’s gone. There is definitely no justifying whatever you did in your past … but the past remains past. Now, your actions are a part of something greater. Something good.” He dug his hand through the thick furcoat, and produced the crystal piece that Ion had helped retrieve. “Now, you’re one of us. The good guys.” He smiled and added, “And also because you just saved my life.”

  Ion folded his arms, staring at the seat in front. “See the thing is, if I’d turned myself in, it wouldn’t have been punishment at all.” He took a deep breath. “If I’d turned myself in and been executed, it wouldn’t have been a punishment. It would have been relief.”

  He turned and looked at the Redling, his tone now growing rough. “The punishment … is what I face now. And I’ve been facing it for two years now. And it’s too hard to live through it. Believe me, I would have welcomed, and preferred death itself … and I did.”

  Ion paused and gave himself a moment to gaze out the window, at the specks of crystal dots spread over the black abyss. He slumped against his seat, the back of his head hitting the cushion at the top of the seat.

  “Imagine living with the knowledge that you killed your own parents. That you killed what they stood for, and what they raised you with.” He turned and faced Qyro again. “That was the punishment. I face it every moment.”

  I killed my parents … I killed my parents and my brother.

  “I faced the punishment for it all.” he said, feeling the bitterness in his own tone. “I went on. And it was brutal. It was the hardest thing alive, that I could have ever done. But I somehow found the strength to do it.” Absently, his hand hovered over to the fang like object tied around his neck. But I won’t be able to find it again … because he’s gone.

  “What do you mean?” asked Qyro, his tone dipping to a whisper.

  Ion looked at him with a faint smile. “My master, his name was Jedius. And after everything, when I’d realised the horror of what I was … that was when he found me. And that was my darkest time. But Jedius taught me that there was no escape from what I’d done, except to face it and score it out for good. He led me in his noble ways, and made a good person out of a brutal killer. And when he finished, when he’d finished training me, I found the strength to do what I needed to through him. I needed to find and bring down every one of the crime organisations and terror organisations that I’d hunted and killed for. That was the only way to make a greater good score out the evil, and I knew I had to do it. For months after Jedius had finished training me, I tracked down and took apart every one of the rogue organisations I’d worked for. But when I was done, I knew couldn’t go on any further. A part of me felt like the murderer within me couldn’t be forgiven at all, and that whatever I did, there was no way to amend those things I’d done.” He drew in a deep breath. “I almost felt like I wanted revenge against what I’d been earlier on. The anger was unforgiving. And it prevented me from doing anything at all in this world, because I felt like there was a world within him I needed to tackle first. A world of pain, guilt and regret. That came from my past.”

  He turned and looked at Qyro, who was listening intently.

  “In fact,” he continued. “I turned down Mantra and the other Nyon when they approached me for help … because of that. Because I couldn’t think of facing or doing anything in the world outside, without first facing my own self, and getting rid of my ugly past. The anger didn’t let me move on and do what I knew I had to do.” He could feel the pain in his own voice. “It was all locked inside of me. And I wanted to get rid of it all.”

  He remembered Jedius’s advice to him from earlier on:

  “I know you have much anger and guilt. And that what you are doing now, is trying to vanquish them. But you have to learn to bear them and do what must be done. You are struggling with the past, Ion. And as an effect, you are compromising on the present. You need to forget whatever happened, and move on.”

  He looked away, blinking away tears. The memory of Jedius passing on, and leaving him with the mission he had lived for … Ion knew this wasn’t going to be easy. He just wished he could have his master’s words to console and guide him all through.

  Ion turned to find Qyro’s gaze lingering over him. But even after learning this dark secret of his, there was no anger or disgust in Qyro’s face. If anything, there was softness and pity … He almost seemed moved. But Ion knew that this was only because he had heard the whole story … upto the end.

  “We all come with our pasts, Ion. sometimes, dark ones.” Qyro sighed and looked out window. “The only solution to a dark past is in moving past it. Because what’s done is done. And only if we move past them, can we learn from them.”

  The two of them sank into a short silence, in which Ion looked about the cruiser around him. Most of the seats were empty, and the chatter in the hall was almost negligible. A strangely gloomy air seemed to have settled over the world.

  “When Mantra and the other masters met you,” Qyro said, turning to look at Ion. “did they tell you what exactly was going on? And why he wanted you to get to the most dangerous planet to get hold of this piece of scrap?” He ended by holding the crystal out before Ion. “Whatever in the world it is.”

  Ion frowned, recalling the conversation.

  “They didn’t tell me much, but I do remember something of what they told me.” Ion felt his voice darken. “They told me the Xeni were back. And that the Nyon needed to stop them before they finished what Redgarn started eight millennia back.”

  He looked at Qyro, whose jaw had dropped wide open.

  “The Xeni?” the Redling gasped.

  “You’ve heard of them, I presume?” asked Ion.

  “What! Of course I have. The whole world has! But they were supposed to be dead. The Nyon took care of them eight millennia back, didn’t they?”

  “Apparently not as well they should have.” said Ion. “they’ve been in hiding ever since, waiting to grow stronger before the time to strike back … I guess that time’s here.”

  Qyro looked out the window, thinking for a few seconds. “You know … Vestra and I heard rumours of some strange terrorist attack just earlier on…”

  “That must be them, then.” confirmed Ion.

  Qyro looked at the crystal piece, his brow sinking lower in a frown. “But what does this have to do with anything?”

  “I wish just as much as you, that I knew.” chuckled Ion. “But they didn’t tell me anything more. Let’s hope they do when we get back.”

  Qyro continue
d to stare at the crystal shard, as though by holding it in his glare, it would reveal all of its secrets. With a sigh, he stuffed it back into his pocket under his thick furcoat.

  “Tell me how it is.”

  Qyro looked at Ion, an eyebrow raised. “How what is?”

  Ion looked out the window by the wall beside him. “Life with the Nyon.”

  Qyro gave the question a moment’s thought. Then, he gave Ion a strange smile.

  “It’s life as it’s meant to be.” he said. “At least for me, it is.” He sighed, turning to gaze out the window again. “Nobody said life was meant to be easy … or a bed of roses.”

  “Nobody should expect it to.” said Ion. “the true measure of a man’s life isn’t in the amount of happiness he finds … but quite the opposite. The amount of pain he endures.”

  Qyro nodded, sagging on his seat and folding his arms.

  “There’s much suffering in our world, the world of the Nyon.” he told Ion. “but I wouldn’t presume to know even a fragment of it. I wouldn’t presume to have seen a fraction of what some of the older masters saw and went through, in their time with the brotherhood.”

  “How come?”

  “I just joined less than two years back.” answered Qyro. “I was a stay mystic all along, before I joined them.” A dark look crossed his face, and Ion knew that he was drifting through those memories, memories of his life as a stray mystic earlier on. “It wasn’t easy, living as I did back then. I had known other stray mystics … and I was a part of the world that the mystic evading prosecution knew. I saw all of the suffering, apart from my own. And the question that hit me when I spent those years, hiding and fleeing, was this: was this all my life was going to come to?” He gave a shake of his head. “No … I wanted to be a part of something greater. And even if it meant compromising safety, and taking the world full on … taking the most dangerous route there was, that was what I yearned for my life to come to at the end. Something that made meaning. And a greater cause.” A smile brushed his lips. “And as if in answer to that, they found me … Mantra and a few others of the elder council. I remember it like it was yesterday. They told me that this was the most dangerous life there was, far more dangerous than my present life. They said that the life of the Nyon was the one that usually turned out to be shorter than a stray mystic’s … but when I thought about it, I realised living a shorter life that was more fulfilled was far better than living a longer life spend hiding and running in complete cowardice.”

  The tone of power and courage he spoke in drew Ion’s thoughts to another person he could relate such a tone to.

  “What about Vestra?” he asked.

  “Vestra was already a member by the time I’d joined.” replied Qyro. “She was the only student they had, at that time. Usually the Nyon approach mystics that they deem would as good members, and ask them to join their brotherhood. But here, it was the other way around. Vestra approached the brotherhood, asking to join them. Right from the start, our elders praised her courage and strength … She came with her own share of suffering.”

  He stopped reclining and sat upfront on his seat.

  “My point in the end,” he said, turning and looking Ion full in the face. “Is that you’re not as alone as you might think. We’ve all given up much to get here. To where we are now.”

  “And the fun’s just started.” said Ion ironically.

  What they’d just been talking about seemed to leave Qyro in thought for a few moments. He then looked at Ion with a slightly confused expression.

  “You said that Vestra met you two years back. And that when she returned to the Nyon, they kept an eye on you cause they thought you might be a good candidate to join them. So … she was the one who told them that? She told them you might be a good person for the Nyon to recruit?”

  Ion slowly turned back, frowning. This hadn’t occurred to him earlier. Just an hour back had he learned why the Nyon had been tailgating him for so long now. But at that point, in the heat of the situation, it had slipped his attention.

  Vestra … She was the reason the Nyon had found interest in him.

  Qyro hesitated. “Don’t get me wrong: you’re all right now, and we’re happy to have you by our side. But back then, you were an assassin…” He lifted an eyebrow. “And she was actually suggesting to the masters, that an assassin be given the chance to join the brotherhood of Nyon?”

  Ion stared at the seat ahead, slightly perplexed. Now that he was given time to think of it, what he just realised was not only bizarre but also slightly humourous.

  But beneath the humour, the question still lingered…

  Two years back, Vestra had gotten the masters interested in him … when he had been a dangerous assassin…

  Why?

  __________