Free The Rising Sun: Episode 2 by J Hawk Page B

with a disciple, and an old friend. So tell me, what’ve you
been upto, lately?”
     
     
    It had been a few months since they had
parted. But as the two of them stood in the balcony outside, it
felt like the gap had never happened: Ion recited all that had
happened to him since he had left Jedius. He told Jedius about how
he had managed to track and bring down all the criminals he had
crossed in his past, and how he had concluded with Grando just
earlier on this day. He ended the tale, his tone now pitched in
shock, of the startling event which had found him just a few
minutes back. Of how the members of the revered brotherhood of Nyon
had found him, and had asked of him to join them.
     
    “They’d been keeping a track on me!” said
Ion, his own voice thick with disbelief. “I was being watched by
the Nyon, can you believe it?”
     
    “Did you ask them why?” inquired Jedius.
“What did they find in you, to interest them?”
     
    “They thought I had the qualities they were
looking for in their initiates, and they’ve been running very low
on initiates. So when they discovered me, two years back, they
thought I’d be a good candidate to join them. And had a tab kept on
me … until they lost me somewhere in the middle.”
     
    As he did for most things, Jedius showed
little reaction or surprise at this revelation. He stood by the
door, just as still as ever, watching Ion as he strode up and down
the balcony while he spoke.
     
    “They were watching me,” went on Ion. “until
they lost my trace for some reason. But there’s something I can’t
understand fully.” He came to a halt in his pacing and rounded
towards Jedius. “But when they discovered me two years back, how
did they keep me traced?”
     
    Jedius was quiet, seeming to chew all of this
for a meek moment.
     
    “Through me, of course.” he suddenly
said.
     
    Ion stared, feeling his jaw slack open.
     
    “ You? ” he asked.
     
    Jedius nodded, still smiling.
     
    “You’re one of the Nyon!”
     
    “Yes, Ion.” he said. “But not in the sense
that the other masters are, including the ones you just met.”
     
    “What do you mean?”
     
    “I had been with them for a long time.” he
explained. “I was a member in the brotherhood for many years,
struggling their struggle. Trying to do noble things, and build
something good out of this world.” His voice now sounded distant
and lost. As if reconnecting to a pain that had he had felt a long
time back. “It wasn’t easy, Ion. everything was in chaos. The
brotherhood had come to a stage where we were hardly able to help
the world: unable to find mystics to aid our cause, we ourselves
were about to fall. I wanted to serve the world. But I realised
that I was serving nothing … I found no meaning in it. I found no
meaning in the life I was leading, in the cause I was serving.
Because that cause itself was about to fall, soon. But it was then
that I realised it, that I found it.” He turned slowly, facing Ion.
“I found my purpose.”
     
    Behind him, the first traces of dawn were
beginning to descend from the heavens.
     
    “And it was not in doing noble things. It was
in helping others do noble things. It was not in using my skills to
aid the world. It was in stepping back, and guiding others to aid
the world better than I ever could.” His gaze over Ion seemed to
grow deeper. “And so I found you.”
     
    “Me?”
     
    “That day,” said Jedius. “After I saved you,
and after I saw what you were facing, I realised that there was
hope after all, for our brotherhood … and for our world. And that
hope was you, Ion.”
     
    He turned and looked at the city sprawling
beyond the balcony.
     
    “Two years back, after you met Vestra, she
brought us everything about you … she recounted her meeting with
you, and she expressed her belief that you were someone who would
be of aid to us … with the right input.” He paused for a moment.
“She told us that she truly believed in a