But he knew that he wasn’t the only one…
The knowledge that he was the reason for his
family’s suffering … That was the true pain. He knew that his
foster parents were losing a bit of their life everyday without Ion
and Eol. And Eol, though innocent, he had been forced to undergo
this as well. And the fact that he was innocent, and not a mystic,
was horror to Ion: because even he, as a mystic, couldn’t undergo
these tortures. How could Eol? He couldn’t hope for it. Eol, his
innocent twin brother, was forced to suffer and die because of Ion.
He could not last … And the reason for it was Ion. The knowledge
drilled into him with merciless fury. At night, sometimes, he
thought he heard the ghostly cries of his brother reach him from
across the veil … and he would stay awake, sleepless and wide eyed,
for the rest of the night…
When will it end?
he asked fate everyday,
for suicide too was kept away from his reach: the prison ensured
that he stayed alive, strapped up and placed at the corner of the
cell, so that he could wake up the next day for his usual schedule
of experiments.
When?…
And then light came.
One fine day, it happened.
A thirteen year old Ion had been sleeping,
submerged beneath the same layer of cruel dreams he had these days.
He was jolted out of his sleep by the thrashing, loud noises. Lying
strapped at the corner of the prison cell, he could do nothing but
listen. There were bangs and screams and then…
The door to his cell blasted open. And he
had strode into Ion’s cell with a blazing sword in one hand,
cutting Ion free from his bound state, and then holding a hand to
help him up.
“
I’m here to help.” the mysterious
attacker declared. “The name’s Vonayz.”
The boy was here along with a small group of
kids around his age. They were all mystics, like Ion. the group of
them were bounty hunters, assassins. Merciless and savage in what
they did. They took pleasure in what they did, which was showing
the world how much they hated it. They were repaying the cruelty
and contempt the world had shown them, in a radical and brutal
manner. They had decided to make an attacked this prison as a
leisure activity. And they chanced by Ion and rescued him.
Before they fled the burning prison, wrecked
by Vonayz and his group, Ion had sought commander Rox. Luckily he
had still been alive. Luckily for Ion.
His mind blazing, Ion stood before the man
who had made his life hell, the man who had torn his world apart …
and Ion unleashed all of his madness. All of his pain. He had
killed Rox with his bare hands … And the moment was one he would
never forget, ever. For the first time in his life, he felt a
savage, untamed joy like no other. It seemed to ignite his world
his world. Revenge.
“
Join us,” Vonayz told Ion after the
incident. “You know this is where you belong. You can feel
it.”
Ion felt a growing tug of madness pull at
him. A tug of fury and revenge … But suddenly, two faces flashed
before him, obliterating the hatred and anger instantly…
Marion and Selia would not have wanted
this…
But when he remembered his two foster
parents, his insides twisted painfully … for another question
arose: what had become of them, after all these years?
He wished he hadn’t found the answer…
He stood in front of their graves in the
village, feeling a storm of rage like no other. They had died of
grief, the other villagers had claimed. Eol’s gravestone was
perched beside his parents. An empty gravestone. Eol had died as
well in the Naxim station they had taken him to … but his mutilated
body hadn’t even been recovered!
When Ion had heard that, he had felt as
though an invisible fist and clenched upon his insides…
And it was all his fault. It was all Ion’s
fault that they were gone. The three of them were gone.
Forever.
It was all over … all over.
With his world brought to ashes, he sank to
his knees before their graves. Anguish and sorrow crashed over
him.
But then, something arose from within him.
Something mightier than even the sorrow. And it erupted with the
force of a thousand volcanic explosions compressed as one …
Rage.
Rage against fate for what it had done to
him, to Eol, and his family. Rage against this world. Against the
people, and against everything.
It consumed his being.
And it was then that everything, all the
values and principles and ideals which his foster parents had bred
and brought him up with died … and joined his foster parents.
And Ion made up his mind, as to how he would
now proceed with this lunatic meandering called life.
He stood in front of Vonayz and the other
kids around his age. His world teetered at the brink of madness.
There was nothing left for him. He felt his veins pulsate with
anger and hatred like nothing his entire life … and the feeling of
gaining revenge, which he had experienced earlier as he strangled
Rox … it was sooo sweet. It was the only solace to his pain. It was
the only antidote. It was all that was left for him. Revenge
against the world which had done this to him.
“
Ok.” he whispered, as Vonayz stood
before him, his arm stretched out in a gesture of friendship. “I’ve
come back … to say, I wanna join you.”
A smile slit the boy’s face, as Ion shook
his hand.
“
You’re a mystic … but fully, yet.” said
Vonayz, his eyes running up and down him.
“
What do you mean?” asked Ion.
“
The first thing you need … is a sword.”
replied Vonayz. “A mystic sword, made of Kostron. We’ll get one …
and then we’ll train you.” His smile lengthened. “We’ll show you to
tap into these powers, and use them … and to make life hell for
others’ using them.”
“
And get well paid for It.” added another
kid behind Vonayz, one of the other bounty hunter kids. “We get to
hunt down, torture and kill normal people. People who hate us.
And
get paid for it.” His sneer spread longer upon his young,
radiant face. “Is that a smashing deal or what?”
“
Don’t you think nobody in the spectrum
likes you, Ion.” said another of the kids. “There’re loads of
people out there who just love us. Mafias. Crime lords. Terrorists.
People who need us and our powers to do their dirty work. Oh
believe me … they can’t get enough of us.”
“
This,” said Vonayz, smiling nastily. “is
where you truly belong, Ion. join us … and you know you won’t
regret being born a mystic.”
And so, Ion joined them. Vonayz was a year
or two older than him, but he had been well trained. For some
reason, he never delved into where or how he had been so well
trained, or where he had received his great mystic powers from, but
Ion didn’t need to know. As long as he learned them, too. Vonayz
coached Ion, trained him in the disciplines of the mind and the art
of thoughts, and how the powers within them had long slumbered …
and Ion unleashed all the power churning within him. Including the
anger. The hatred. The bitterness. The dark recesses of his soul,
gathered over the past few years came gushing to the surface, and
acting like a propellant for his mind’s abilities … Ion’s powers
grew exponentially, fuelled by the raw force of his anger and
hatred…
His anger drove his mind to a great
sharpness. Made him far stronger. And before they knew it, Ion was
just as strong a mystic as Vonayz himself was. The two of them
enjoyed sparring and duelling with each other in playful means, to
keep their skills sharp. They had grown to become a sort of role
model figure duo for the others of the team. And most of all, they
had become the thickest of friends. Ion could never forget the boy
who had saved him from that hell. And his friendship with Vonayz
grew into a powerful bond over the years…
The present
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.”