The scene changed, and now, the three of
them were in a room in the Nyon temple. but as they stood like
ghosts at the back of the room, their eyes fell on the one solemn
figure perched on the tidy ground in front of them, his back turned
to them as he gazed out the window heavily. Mantra’s form was
stiffened as he sat cross legged, but even without looking at his
face, the three of them could feel it … the grief and sorrow
crushing him whole. And it seemed to expand like a wave, to engulf
them as well. They could feel his emotions churning … his sorrow at
the greatest loss. The loss of the great empire of Sirengard. The
loss of the majesty of time, which would never again return.
“The brotherhood was forced into hiding,
with the newly arisen Naxim’s stand against mystics, which they
made following freedom. And since then … for eight thousand years,
we have only lived on as a very scarce tint of our older grandeur.
Mystics themselves were hard to find, let alone mystics who were
interested in joining a brotherhood that had already been marked by
the Naxim and condemned. We scraped our way to survival since that
day. And our fight for survival, amidst the age of darkness …
continues to this very moment as I speak.”
And everything suddenly blurred. And the
three of them were suddenly back in reality on the roof of the
temple, and with Mantra standing ahead of them. He hadn’t moved an
inch since the flashback had begun.
For a long, quiet moment, Mantra’s serene
white eyes were still over the three students. And then a grin
awoke upon those wizened features.
“Any more questions you’d like to ask?”
The four of them stood there gazing at
Mantra in a heavy silence. The elderly master seemed to now awaken
a whole new dimension in Ion’s perception … As he now looked at
him, Ion suddenly felt the weight of the new world he had entered
bear down upon him with a might like no other.
He had just felt the pain of what the Nyon
had endured … the pain that the Xeni had wrought. And as he did, a
sudden steely resolve arose within him. He had always known what to
do. But now, he knew exactly
why
it had to be done. They had
to fight the Xeni, and prevent the return of their army, because if
they didn’t … eight millennia of sheer grief and pain would survive
as a blotch in history that was never erased. And eight thousand
years’ worth of loss would go down in vain.
He could feel Vestra and Qyro equally moved
and stunned by what they had seen.
“The key … to the demon army.” said Qyro at
last. “That’s what it is.”
Mantra slipped his hand into his robe and
produced the crystal for them to see … And this time, as the three
of their eyes fell over it, the same air of dark understanding
stretched over them.
“We now see how important that mission was.”
said Vestra, shaking her head. “We were acquiring the most deadly
object from the Xeni’s hold. We didn’t dream that the mission you
were sending us for was so-”
“That was because the masters and I decided
that keeping you in the dark, at least until you received it and
successfully returned, was necessary.” Mantra paused for a breath.
“We thought if you knew the enormity of what you were being sent
to, the pressure of it might have been detrimental to your
focus.”
Ion gave a moment’s thought over the map of
everything that had now formed in his head, and felt a frown sink
into his brow. “But what did the rebels have to do with this entire
thing? How did
they
get hold of the crystal?”
Mantra nodded. “The Xeni had been hiding,
sealed off the known world for eight millennia. But however well
hidden they stayed, they knew that they were holding an object far
more important than even their own lives: the plague crystal was
more important than even their survival. For they were merely there
to learn the ways of the dark arts, and then pass them on to the
forthcoming members who would join. But the crystal was the
constant, and the soul of their entire force. They needed to keep
it far more well hidden than even their own selves.”
He stopped for a moment’s pause, and a scowl
came over his features. “I could sense it over the ages. I could
sense that the crystal was being moved about through the spectrum.
And with it, carried the dark taint of the demon army that it hid
in the other dimension. I wasn’t attuned enough to find the exact
location of the crystal, or of the Xeni. My senses aren’t that
attuned, as are all mystics’, even the greatest of them. But I knew
for certain that the Xeni were making arrangements to keep their
crystal safer than we could imagine. Over the ages, they slowly
built ties with rogue organisations. They identified them well, as
you have guessed. They ensured that the organisations resided where
none of us, the Nyon, could dare enter. They identified
organisations that were under the protection of the Naxim’s high
territory, and bade them to protect the crystal for them. And so,
over the millennia, they passed the protection of the plague
crystal down an entire list of such rogue organisations in tight
Naxim terrain, and this list ended with the rebels that you just
attacked.”
He slipped the crystal back into his pocket
again.
“Most of this, I found through plain logic
and guesswork.” he carried on. “The Xeni were likely to form ties
among other rogue organisations, despite being mystics. Firstly,
they may not necessarily need to do it
legitimately
. I’m
pretty sure a portion of the criminals they hired to hide the
crystal for them were made to do so under blackmail and threats:
even criminals are dead afraid of mystics, as we’re well aware. And
so, through these eight millennia, the Xeni kept their most
treasured artifact in the safest hands possible. For what they did
prevented the crystal from being threatened both by the Naxim, and
by us.”
“So over the millennia,” said Ion. “they
kept hiring criminals to hide the crystal for them?”
“But couldn’t you guys know where the
crystal was, at any point?” asked Vestra.
Mantra gave a pained smile. “You can imagine
how things were for us over the past eight millennia. We’ve been
facing a struggle all through, not only to hide from the Naxim
constantly and its raids … but also to find new initiates, to keep
our brotherhood going. And that was proving to be really tough
under the heated anti mystic climate we’ve faced till now. But yes,
even amidst all of it, our priority was finding the crystal. I
tried my best, and all I could do was to keep myself attuned to
pick up any signs of alert. The crystal leaves its negative
radiation where it travels, and I knew I was the only one who could
scent the radiation. It wasn’t until very recently … that
breakthrough happened.
“Recently, I had been sensing dark forces
rising … chaos stirring. I heightened my efforts, knowing that it
indicated the return of the Xeni. And amidst the stirring evil that
I sensed, I could find the location of the plague crystal. And it
was at the rebel village. But by then, it was too late. The masters
had all been enlisted in the Naxim’s hitlist in the raid they
conducted a few years back, which we barely escaped from. We knew
the crystal’s location … but we were helpless. Going to the planet
would have been nothing short of suicide. And so, we waited. We
found two initiates in this dangerous stage.” His gaze fixed over
Vestra and Qyro. “But at the same time, sending them in for this
mission too, would have been suicide. For they had just joined, and
were not yet powerful enough for such an undertaking.
“And so, we decided to wait, let the two of
you grow to a powerful stage before we sent you for this deadly
mission. But there, too, fate intervened.” He sighed and turned to
look past the forests on the right. “Just a day back, I found
signals of the gravest type possible … I could feel that something
very dark was stirring around us. And when I dawned over the news
of the terrorist attack in Tansof, it was evident that the Xeni
were behind it. And that was when I knew that this was the time to
act. We needed to obtain the crystal from the Xeni’s hold before it
was too late … and so, I convinced the council that no matter what
the risk, the only option remaining was to be taken. If we couldn’t
go to the planet ourselves - and that definitely was ruled out - we
needed to take the only measure left to try procuring the crystal.
And so we sent the two of you, who were not on the Naxim’s hitlist
and could therefore enter the planet without invoking their
attacks, for this mission.”
“Why has it been so hard, finding new
initiates?” asked Ion.
“The brotherhood is lucky to have survived
this long,” said Vestra. “Incase you didn’t catch that part, when
the Naxim exiled the mystics, we, the Nyon, were their foremost
targets. We had to keep ourselves as low as possible. And so, we
hardly had mystics joining us.”
“But mystics who were found alive itself
were getting hard.” said Mantra. “And even among the few mystics
joining our order over the ages, many of them were caught by the
Naxim when they made their raids in unknown planets in the outer
spectrum.”
“Raids?” asked Ion.
“Raids.” Mantra nodded. “The Naxim conducted
them specially for us. Because they knew we were the biggest bunch
of mystics there was to find. There was one conducted very
recently, and the eighty three of us here now were too lucky to
have escaped.” He gave a pained sigh. “Many others weren’t. It was
a few years back. After we managed to escape, we relocated the
temple, like the other hundred times over the eight millennial span
that we needed to. And we continued to lie low.”
“But when the Naxim was founded,” asked Ion,
frowning. “Why did they mark us, the Nyon, as an enemy?”
“Ion, look at it from their eyes.” said
Mantra, shaking his head. “The spectrum had just undergone the
heaviest span of torture under the rule of a bunch of satanic
mystics. A bunch of satanic mystics that
we
, the Nyon, had
created.”
“But the Nyon didn’t
create
them!”
Ion argued fiercely.
“But did they see it like that?” Mantra
sighed. “When Redgarn and his empire had fallen, the spectrum had
been seized by a fresh wave of fury for what they, the Xeni, had
taken from them. They had robbed them of the golden age, and had
left the entire world in shambles. The newly freed peoples of the
spectrum wanted to protect themselves from it happening again. But
what’s more, they wanted
revenge
. And both of these motives
added up to sum one conclusion: the Nyon and the existence of
mystics had led to Redgarn and the Xeni. And the devastation they
had wrought through their mystic powers came through
our
teachings. They saw the carnage that Redgarn’s empire wreaked as a
side effect of our mystical teachings. They did not understand that
Redgarn had simply misused what we had given him as knowledge.”
As Ion opened his mouth to argue again,
Mantra held up his hand, shaking his head with the same mild smile.
“No, Ion. the fault was ours. you’re forgetting that if Tesmor had
had the courage to look past his arrogance and his blinded
affection for his student … If he had just done the right thing by
delivering justice and imprisoning Redgarn and the eight others
that day for their crimes,
nothing
of this grievous fate
would have happened. And as a result, the Nyon
is
partially
responsible. We carved this of our own hands … as all men do for
their fates.”
Silence landed between them again, as Ion
chewed what the three of them had just been taken through. Then, as
something slowly dawned on him, he looked at Mantra and asked, “So
the watchmen, the Grael conch … what happened to them after the
war?”
“After the war, we kept the conch.”
“What for?” asked Ion.
“Yes,” replied Mantra. “The Grael conch
contains the power of the watchmen within it. A power that cannot
be destroyed. After the war, the watchmen were returned to the
conch, where they slumbered.”
“Slumbered?” asked Qyro, slanting his
eyebrow. “You mean … the watchmen’re not gone?”
Ion shared the same confusion that his tone
carried.
Mantra gave a strangely hollow smile. “The
watchmen were spirits of Elderon. The conch carried the glow of his
life force itself. The force of harmony. And when unleashed, that
power would form them and give them mortal forms in this world, to
fight for the cause of harmony. The watchmen were indeed mortal in
their make, and they were normal beings. But their core was not:
when their mortal shell falls, they return to occupy the conch. And
there, they wait until the time arises once more for the battle
between Elderon and Mezmeron. And here is the most tragic part of
the entire story.”
The three of them glanced at each other.
“What do you mean?” asked Vestra.
“But the battle between Elderon and
Mezmeron’s arisen now!” pressed Qyro. “Where are they?”
“They don’t just jump into existence, Qyro.”
said Mantra. “After falling once, they rest in the conch for a
thousand years. After that span of time, if the Nyon needed them,
we were to sound the conch, in order have them re summoned.”
“A thousand years?” asked Vestra, sounding
incredulous. “But well over that’s passed! Eight thousand years
have passed!”