The Rising Sun: Episode 1 (16 page)

“All right,
team, speed up.” RED ONE called, barely moving his lips. “Time to
move in for the kill.”

“We’ll take him
from the back,” suggested the figure beside RED ONE. “He’ll be out
cold before he even realises it.”

“No.” said RED
ONE. “We will openly confront him, and then take him head on.”

The man stared.
“But we have a direct shot! We can end it here and now, and return
with the prize!”

RED ONE felt
his flow of anger swerve towards a new target.

“I’m in
charge.” he hissed. “And I decide how it’s done. Believe me, I
don’t waste time with an open confrontation for no reason.”

The man turned
forward, sensible enough to shut up. RED ONE felt his pulse climb
higher and higher as they slowly approached the black cloaked
target from behind. When they had reached around ten or so feet
from him, the red haired boy seemed to have finally gathered
something from his senses: He stopped and whipped around to face
the group of seven uniformed men striding up from behind them.

RED ONE felt a
smile light his face. He held up a palm, and the group came to a
stop before the spiky haired teenager, who was staring at them.

RED ONE slowly
walked forward before the red haired boy, so that the two of them
were just a few feet apart. For a long moment, the two of them
stood with their eyes locked…

This can’t
be.
Ion thought, as he stared at the face of the uniformed man
standing in front of him. A face he knew…

“
Vonayz?
” he gasped.

To be
continued …

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*******

And red hot
pain scorched Ion’s shoulder as Vonayz’s sword brushed it from the
side. Ion hit the ground with a roar of pain, his sword slipping
from his hand.

Vonayz and the
others stood over him, basking in the helpless state of their
target.

Vonayz bent
down over him, a fiendish glow upon his face.

“It’s too bad
we were told to bring you back alive.” he whispered. “But wait a
second … You don’t need all your bones to be in one piece for
interrogation, do you?”

******* *******
*******

“We are at the
precipice of a new age,” said the man in the holographic screen.
“The age of unravelling.”

His pale face.
His razor sharp teeth. His black hair falling on both sides of his
face in frames. It was all terrifying. But not merely as terrifying
as his eyes.

Because the man
had
no eyes … just empty, blank sockets that gazed out
horrifyingly.

As he finished
speaking, the silence that followed seemed to drill into the
president’s ears. Standing about behind him were the other members
of his office. All of them were standing rigid, facing the holo
screen at the front of the office.

The president
took a deep, calming breath, and broke the silence with his steady
voice:

“What do you
want?”

“Oh, but you
already know, Mr. President.” said the man, and he gave another
twisted smile. “You’ve always known.”

******* *******
*******

The fifteen men
sitting about the board table all stared without speaking. The
Naxim’s high council had never before been so rattled.

Everyone seemed
to be quietly weighing the scale of catastrophe, all faces mirrors
of the same dread and anxiety.

Evander looked
about the boardroom, nodding.

“Gentlemen,” he
said in a stern voice. “We are now
at war
. The worst threat
we have faced in centuries … possibly even
millennia
, has
risen once more, to haunt us again. And we need to arm ourselves in
preparation of whatever lies ahead. Because if we don’t act now,
nothing will ever be the same again.”

******* *******
*******

A thick gag was
stuffed into Qyro’s mouth, while a pair of thick iron shackles
bound his wrists. Qyro could have easily used his mystic powers to
snap apart a pair of normal cuffs. But the thick iron make of the
cuffs that clasped his hands were far too strong. Even for his
mystic strength.

It was no use …
The worst had just happened…

I’ve been
taken prisoner?
Qyro couldn’t believe it.
Why didn’t they
just kill me?

This was the
worst possible, dreaded outcome: When Vestra and he had been sent
here, they had been made well aware of this. At absolutely no cost
would they be taken prisoner by the enemy … that would spell
catastrophe for the entire brotherhood. Now his captors would
interrogate him. They would try finding out who he worked for and
everything about them. And if they succeeded in weeding the
information out of him, the location of the Nyon temple would be
compromised. The information would hit the Naxim, who would attack
the temple. Qyro felt his pulse soar out of control, and a faint
drumming noise ensued from within his chest.

Where’s
Vestra? What’ve they done to her?

A small voice
which came from intelligent reasoning told him that she was dead.
It was undeniable. The rebels didn’t need either of them alive,
except only to interrogate them. And if so, they didn’t need two
prisoners alive for interrogation … they just needed one. She was
dead. She had to be.

As a part of
him mourned the loss of his friend, another part of him imagined a
new, dawning possibility that revolved around her. A
nasty
possibility.

What if
they’ve already interrogated her? And what if … she had
submitted?
If this was true, she would be dead as well. But
there would be a far graver reason to mourn, and to despair…

The Nyon.

The entire
brotherhood would be under attack, with the location of the temple
now disclosed. The Nyon in the temple would be attacked completely
unawares, and there would be literally no escape. Nowhere to
run…

******* *******
*******

Carcasar drew
his hood back again, his one remaining eye staring out from
underneath it. Slowly trotting downwards on the slope, he lay on
the ground, staring at the stars above. His one remaining eye
twitched as he remembered the incident from a night so similar to
this one…

The incident
that had taken his other eye, and left a gash across his face in
place of it.

And he
remembered the one responsible for it. For tearing his eye out.

You won’t
get away with what you did, boy.
A growl of fury rumbled within
his throat.
Ion
will pay for what he did … I’ll make sure
of it. Eye for an eye.

His insides
mashed with rage as he remembered that red haired, orange eyed boy.
Someone who had made himself a most deadly enemy…

He knew that
before the end of this life, the boy would pay. He intended to make
sure he did. He had a list of enemies who dreaded him and the rest
of his kind under his command … And he knew that this boy was one
of them.

That day, two
years back, would have left its mark on him. A mark which Carcasar
knew he was carrying upto this day … and he was right in doing
so.

Because when
the chance came for it, Carcasar would find the boy again and
finish their meeting two years back…

And the chance
was coming
very
soon…

******* *******
*******

Ion’s freefall
rapidly gained speed. He was now falling through what seemed like a
few miles above the earth.

Looming below
him, a giant churning mass … an ocean.

Ion’s insides
froze in horror.

The ocean
surface was raging and wild, with waves that lashed about with
uncontained might. And as Ion saw it racing up towards him, he knew
that this was the worst possible way to die…

Gravity sucked
him downwards with a raw, senseless force. His body seemed to slice
through the air like a bullet.

The giant,
untamed mass of blue below him slowly magnified, and the brutal
waves lashing around it swelled in size. Raw fear coursing his
veins, Ion felt time slow down, and every moment seemed to expand.
The fall seemed to go on and on, bottomless and agonizing.

As the last few
seconds of the fall, and his life, dawned over him, Ion felt all
hopes vaporise…

He plunged
through the remaining distance between him and the ocean within the
splinter of a second … And then he felt himself crash into what
felt like a wall of solid concrete. He thought the impact snapped a
few bones in his body…

As unbearable
pain seared all over him, the lights within him dulled and went
off…

******* *******
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