Free The Rising Sun: Episode 3 by J Hawk Page A

centre of the room, locked in a steely glare with each
other.
     
    Redgarn took another step forward towards
the one who had challenged him, his eyes containing such a mighty
fury that Ion thought whatever they fell upon might sear and
broil…
     
    “I’ve worked on this long and hard,” he
said, his voice leaving him as a deadly whisper. “And if you … or
anyone else gets in my way,” He brought his hands before the other
man’s throat, making a show of enclosing them around his throat.
“Hell won’t know fury…”
     
    And with that, Redgarn turned, his cloak
leaping around, and swept out of the room.
     
    The three of them stood there, watching the
man who had challenged Redgarn. Ion looked at the other two, and
saw that they had been just as intensely absorbed in the goings on
as he was.
     
    “Well, that was entertaining.” said
Qyro.
     
    Ion turned back to the man left in the room.
A man who had mustered the boldness to oppose a wrongful ideal … a
man who had probably died in vain, along with all the other
innocent members of the Brotherhood who had died opposing Redgarn
ages back.
     
    But as the man sighed and turned to face the
window which the three of them stood in front of … Ion felt shock
erupt within him. And his mouth fell wide open.
     
    Mantra was tall and thin. He had long brown
hair that fell to his shoulders at the back, and was tidy at the
front. His face bore a youthly radiance. But the glow of his
handsome features were marred by a new worry. He stared out the
window that the three of them now stood in front of.
     
    And the voice drew over the world again, the
echo reaching it from across a distant chasm, bearing an unbearable
grief… the weight of millennia.
     
    “I watched the tale unfold myself.” said the
voice of the real Mantra, the one speaking as the vision played.
“Watched the most tragic story weave through the events around me …
helpless. Unable to stop it.”
     
    The scene swirled, and now Ion found himself
in a larger, more lavish room. Curtains hung over the large windows
by both sides of the wall, all of them painted in an exquisite
green colour. The walls and floor, along with the high raised
ceiling with a chandelier sparkling atop them, were all dressed
with a polished, maroon glow. A large table stood at the centre of
the room. A table that bore the emblem of the Nyon. The very same
one which Ion had witnessed with his eyes some time back in the
present. Two cloaked men were lingering at the back of the room,
both of them looking deeply engrossed in a serious conversation.
One of them looked young, while the other was significantly older.
The older man was a Brownling, with short brown hair all over his
body. The two of them came strolling closer to end of the room
where Ion, Qyro and Vestra stood, and their voices slowly grew
audible.
     
    “I was there myself, as he made this
speech.” Mantra was saying to the other cloaked man. Like all other
Nyon, the master was tall and thin. He gazed ahead of him as Mantra
spoke, absorbed in thought. “I fear this may turn into a threat … a
grave one, if not attended to, master.” Mantra frowned and looked
ahead of him, and Ion sensed a brewing fear in his eyes as he
searched for the words to go on.
     
    The two of them came to a stop as they
reached the end of the large corridor. They turned, now facing each
other fully.
     
    “He is not the kind of person that you see
in him, master Tesmor.” Mantra’s voice carried a sense of
foreboding, along with a silent plea to hear it. “I know Redgarn.
We grew up together. Here, in this very temple. I know him, and
that is why this scares me. Deep down, he is something other than
what you and the other masters view him to be. Deep down, Redgarn
is the kind of man that obeys no boundaries. The kind of man that
will stop at nothing to achieve something that he envisions for
himself. Anything. He is to be kept in wares, or else he may turn
into something of an enemy.