The Rising Sun: Episode 2 by J Hawk Page A

it. But you
can’t.”
     
    Ion painfully accepted it. He was
right.
     
    All this while, for two years, he had been
trying to outrun the past. But he knew he couldn’t.
     
    “ I am a part of you, Ion.” The voice
from his dreams echoed within him.
     
    Jedius’s words had now opened his eyes. Ion
now admitted what he had always known: he had to face those things
that he couldn’t alter or change. And the past was one of those
things.
     
    He was now willing to accept that there was
no escape from the pain. He had to face it, and bear it. And go on
to do what needed to be done. Ion knew it wasn’t going to be easy.
He knew the courage that was needed for this … but it was Jedius’s
courage that he borrowed. His master’s memory would light the way
ahead in this meandering road. The large fang like object he had
left with Ion lay tucked inside his pocket.
     
    But as of now, the real steel being driven
through him came from someone else. The true source of the resolve
he now felt … was her.
     
    Vestra…
     
    Ion remembered the pained look on Mantra’s
face, when he had asked him what had become of her … He now knew
why. Vestra was one of the two students they had sent for this
mission, who hadn’t come back. And Mantra had decided to hide this
from Ion, to save him from that pain.
     
    Ion’s stomach boiled as his thoughts zipped
to whatever fate she now lay in … and whether or not that fate left
her dead or alive.
     
    No way, don’t think that! he
admonished himself sternly. She’s alive, she’s gotta be … and
I’m going to go get that object she and the other Nyon she went
with had gone for, and get both of them out of there alive
…
     
    He repeated it to himself a few times, trying
to rig it into his belief. It took him a moment to notice that his
breath had turned pacy. He calmed himself, knowing better than to
lose it now. But the urgency of the situation bit into him like a
talon.
     
    “Are we there yet?” he asked, turning to the
elderly man.
     
    “Almost.”
     
    Ion turned back, gazing down the small street
that they were now in, with even smaller lanes on both sides. He
could feel the bustle of a large commotion somewhere nearby,
undoubtedly the ship hangar. They were moving towards it, down the
smaller juncture of lanes.
     
    But even beyond the fear of it, the fear that
Vestra might not be alive when he reached the village, there was
the regret. Because if she really wasn’t, it would have been Ion’s
fault…
     
    He might have been able to save her if he
made his mind up at the first instance, when Mantra and the other
five masters reached him.
     
    If he was too late now, he would never
forgive himself.
     
    The aged man was now walking ahead of him,
leading him into what looked like the joint alley between two
buildings. Four dustbins lay at the corners of the alley, which the
two of them briskly strode through. The elderly man suddenly
stopped and swung about to face Ion. Ion halted abruptly as well,
as he faced the elderly man fully for the first time…
     
    Eryx tore off the wig of long white hair and
threw it to the ground. A triumphant sneer spread across his face
as he took a step forward towards a completely shellshocked
Ion.
     
    “You wriggled outta that one didn’t you, you
little worm?” He said, abandoning the sweet, soft tone of the
elderly man he had feigned to be all along. His voice now jumped
back to the same rough, mildly savage one Ion had conversed with in
the z-com earlier.
     
    “You!” exclaimed Ion, taking a step back.
     
    He suddenly remembered something that had
slipped his mind earlier on, chased out by the bulkiness of his
meeting with the Nyon masters. “What was that you tried with me,
earlier on? The Zelgron? What the hell was that all about?”
     
    “You half wit,” laughed Eryx. “You’re talking
to a member of the cause that’s responsible for leaving the Nyon
terrified off their skins.”
     
    The effect of the words reached