"Generations of neglect for this feud have come back to stab us in the back in the form of one boy. One boy who lit the match for an apocalypse threatening our very species! One boy whose nightmarish reputation has plagued a country he has no right belonging to!"
― Emory R. Frie. Giant country
Twentieth second Yuga, Yaksa calendar (Circa 1624 C.E.) The day of the trial.
The small Ner'uda shuttle activated its cloaking system, rendering it invisible to the citadel's sensors. It descended back to the planet and landed in the jungle, a short distance from the temple where the trials were taking place.
-"Are you sure this is the place?" Ganok' asked, a huge Raksasa with such pale skin that it seemed to have been washed away. He was the second in command when Ujesh' wasn't there. The Raksasa onboard the shuttle stepped out into the jungle and Ganok' pointed towards the temple dome that jutted out from the canopy.
-"Ujesh' has sent confirmation," S'harva, Ujesh's Sire and leader of the clan replied, "We have to hurry, while everyone is distracted."
Ganok' and a group of five warriors entered the jungle, moving silently through the thick undergrowth. When they reached the boundary of the stone construction, they spotted a handful of Vaha'raya's warriors patrolling the temple. Even though the sentries were lightly armed, only carrying plasma cannons on their shoulders, the Raksasa remained hidden behind a leafy shrub.
-"Kill them quietly," S'harva' ordered, "we don't want to raise the alarm."
That meant using their energy weapons was out of the question. If anyone heard or saw the shot, the whole plan would be spoiled.
Ganok' drew a muted gray Dha'nu from its holster and pressed a button on the grip, the limbs of the weapon extended, drawing a thin metal string between the ends.
Firing a weapon like that required a lot of dexterity, since it lacked infrared sight and an automatic guidance system. An accurate shot depended entirely on the skill of the hunter, and Ganok' was an expert in that discipline.
The giant albino leapt to a high branch of a nearby tree. He squatted down and carefully loaded the weapon by putting a projectile on the string and pulling it taut.
The projectile was fired at surprising speed. The material from which it was made was so light that it barely whistled in the wind as it flew. It pierced the neck of its target cleanly, and the Yaksa didn't even have time to see what was coming before his limp body collapsed to the ground.
Ganok' grinned wickedly, clicking his jaws in a rapid movement and readied the next arrow.
But the second Yaksa proved to be more difficult to eliminate. He stayed out of the line of fire, vigilantly patrolling one side of the temple. When he reached the corner, he saw his fallen comrade and immediately went on alert, scanning nearby trees with the sensors in his mask. In his visor, the jungle rendered into a blue-green canvas with a few yellow dots indicating birds. He didn't see anything out of the ordinary, until he looked up. At the top of a giant tree, he spotted a reddish patch perched on a branch.
"I see you," he announced. His helmet locked onto the target with a triangular marker.
A blue plasma ball shot out of the cannon on his shoulder, but Ganok' dodged it by jumping into another tree. Three more plasma bolts zizzled in the air and hit the branches but Ganok' evaded them all.
He drew another arrow quickly, took aim, and fired. The projectile tore through the air, striking the guard in his unprotected chest. The guard slumped, bleeding from his mouth.
-"Good work Ganok'," S'harva congratulated him after emerging from the bushes where he had been hiding. Ganok' climbed down from the tree and started to retrieve his arrows from the bodies, carefully putting them back in his quiver. He pulled out a ceremonial H'rpe from his belt and was about to collect one of the dead guard's heads as a trophy when S'harva stopped him.
-"There is no time for that, we must continue with the plan," S'harva growled. The red-eyed albino snorted in resignation and holstered his weapon again, then followed the rest of the group into the temple through the semi-elliptical opening.
The giant was not particularly bright and was generally content to follow orders, but he did not understand why they were not simply assaulting the citadel. He and the rest of the clan were perfectly capable of defeating most of Vaha'raya's warriors in hand to hand combat.
S'harva clicked in satisfaction once he got inside the cold, dark hallways of the temple. Somewhere in these ruins, his son was participating in the dogmatic ceremonies of the Yaksa. Mur'kha, he thought, why go to the trouble of performing a pointless ritual to get something that you can just take?
That way of thinking was what had ultimately lowered S'harva's ancestors, great and honorable warriors, to becoming Raksasa, bad bloods.
After the devastating war fought millennia ago, when the Devas almost became extinct and migrated to other parts of the universe, the clan declared that the technology and weaponry left behind by the ancient race belonged to them. Spoils of war, they proclaimed, and adapted the Deva technology to become more efficient hunters.
The Yaksa council warned them that this technology was dangerous, that it endangered traditions and their way of life, but they ignored the warnings and when an uncontrolled hunt led to the extinction of a native species, the clan was branded Raksasa and hunted almost to its total destruction by the N'garika, the enforcer caste.
S'harva and the others were the descendants of those who survived.
Once inside the temple, they continued through a tunnel until they reached a circular room with a large hole in the center. The water that condensed on the walls fell towards the bottom forming a waterfall inside the hole.
-"It's inside the chasm?" Ganok' asked, looking down over the edge. S'harva consulted the three-dimensional diagram on his wrist computer.
"Yes," he said, "This conduit goes down to a maintenance and cargo corridor in the hangar."
The gigantic leader and his two burly warriors used ropes made of strong, yet lightweight, carbon fiber filaments to descend the shaft.
The corridor was dark, with walls similar to the ribs of a gigantic animal, illuminated only by a dim blue light.
Voices came from the corridor ahead. The leader made a sign with his hand and the others stopped. They activated their cloaking system, moments before two Yaksa monks appeared, carrying silver-gray urns. A series of geometric markings adorned each of the urns: The language of the Deva. S'harva held back a click of excitement.
He knew what was written on them and what the urns actually contained.
The monks disappeared into an adjacent corridor and the group of Raksasa headed towards where the clerics had come from.
The old legends were true , S'harva thought, as they reached the end of the curved corridor. The room they stepped out into was an ancient hangar. At the center of it, a huge Deva warship was situated. It hadn't been touched since the great war. Its semi-organic architecture gave it a sinister look. S'harva's group made their way to the three openings at its base and entered the artifact.
-"Here it is!" S'harva exclaimed. His henchmen looked around in amazement. Row upon row of gray urns were piled up high in the ship's wide cargo hold. "Do not touch anything," the leader warned.
Ganok' withdrew his hands from the urn he had been about to touch. In the next compartment they discovered thousands of disc-shaped robotic drones. S'harva explained that they were a very powerful weapon.
- "Ujesh'," The leader called his son and second in command over the intercom, "We have it. The last phase of the plan is ready to commence, at your signal."
In the arena, several stories above them, Ujesh 'clicked his jaws in response. He yanked his whip and the stone column it was curled around fell, crushing the last Gallu.
- o -
Now
"We have to rally the survivors," Rava'an said, pointing down to the platform where his father, Chief Adhi'nata, stood.
He and Anu'sha jumped from the tower of the palace to one of the domes below and from there to the platform. Chief Adhi'nata was helping a very old Yaksa up from the rubble. Rava'an recognized the Elder. His name was R'sna, his face was half burned from the Ugra'danda's explosion.
-"Is it over?" Anu'sha asked, seeing the destruction the warship had spread throughout the citadel. Smoldering remnants of the Man'daca burned orange-red in the dim morning light.
- "I don't think so," R'sna responded, "Those worms didn't go to so much trouble just to destroy our ships."
R'sna was so old that some said that he had participated in the great war. He raised his head to the myriad of flying drones, now returning to the crescent-shaped dreadnought.
-"I'm afraid Akrama'na is just one of the weapons that ship has," he said, pointing at the object floating high over the city, "What you faced in the arena, young K'satra, was just a taste of what Deva weapons can do."
-"Scorpion men?" Rava'an asked, "What do those abominations have to do with this?"
-"If those Raksasa are able to release that weapon on the citadel, it will be the end of our city," R'sna predicted, remembering something that happened a long time ago.
-"We have to board that ship," Rava'an clenched his hand into a fist and looked up at Ujesh's floating warship.
-"Such impatience, young warrior," R'sna chuckled, "you don't want to snatch away this warrior's last chance of a glorious death, do you?"
Rava'an looked at him unamused. The Elder shed his cloak, showing off his torso full of scratch marks, old plasma burns and a huge scar that crossed his pectorals diagonally. Rava'an rubbed the wound on his face while he looked at the old injuries. R'sna had been wounded by an adult dawon and survived to tell the tale.
-"Of course not, honored one," replied Rava'an, bowing his head, "how can we kill those worms if we don't board their ship? All of our vessels have been destroyed."
-"My ship is still intact in the lower hangar," R'sna said. The old yaksa slung his triple-pointed spear across his back, adjusted his plasma cannon on his shoulder, and donned his bronzed mask. The face-plate was covered with inscriptions of his achievements. At any other time Rava'an would have liked to hear his stories, but they needed to find a way into the ship fast, before Ujesh' and his band of criminals killed them all.
The chieftain wanted, like R'sna, to fight the Raksasa or die trying, but the old Yaksa let him know with a roar of defiance that he must protect the noncombatants from the impending threat.
Rava'an and Anu'sha looked at each other. They had never before seen anyone have the audacity to put Adhi'natha in his place. The chieftain agreed reluctantly to stay behind to help other survivors.
When R'sna started to climb a collapsed pillar to gain higher ground, Anu'sha and Rava'an did their best to keep up with the old hunter.
The hangar R'sna spoke of was located at the bottom of Saubha, below the water level, so Rava'an inferred that they must pass through the flooded area.
The old yaksa headed for a maintenance shaft that led into a tunnel, which in turn led down to the lower levels. The hatch creaked open and a musty smell filled the noses of the youths. Without hesitation, R'sna leapt into the darkness and seconds later, Rava'an and Anu'sha did the same.
The tunnels were dimly lit by an amber-orange light, casting sinister shadows down the corridor. Their feet splashed on the soggy ground.
-"No one has come down to this place in a long time," R'sna explained while trudging forward.
Entering a side corridor of curved walls filled with bas-reliefs, Rava'an paused for a moment to admire the engravings, which showed ancient battles.
One of the images caught his attention; the stylized figure of a female, or at least it seemed a female. She had a slim body with a slight bulge on the chest and long dreadlocks. The strange thing was that she was very small, at least two heads lower than the figure of the hunter represented next to her and she was piercing a dawon's maw with a spear.
Rava'an ran one of his hands over the engraving, caressing the figure, "who was she?" he wondered, and he searched among the symbols to see if he could find her name.
-"This way," the old yaksa indicated, interrupting his musings.
The corridor widened and started to lean up slightly. R'sna headed forward until they heard a soft click. The elder stopped instantly, meticulously searching the ceiling and walls. He ran a hand along the carved wall. When he showed the others his fingers, they gleamed with phosphorescent bloodstains.
-"We're not alone," he warned.
Anu'sha lowered her hand to the cha'kra hanging from her belt, while Rava'an readied his blades.
Suddenly, a blue plasma ball hissed through the air and hit the veteran warrior in the shoulder. He grunted in pain and fell back, but got up quickly and fired three times towards the place where the shot came from.
-"Show yourself!" he roared, "Fight me face to face, raksasa!"
Another bolt of plasma came in response. It hit the floor, sending a shower of yellow sparks around the tunnel.
Rava'an took the opportunity to locate the attacker and threw his disc. The weapon hit the raksasa in the shoulder, which disintegrated in a shower of blue sparks, his vaj'ra cannon was destroyed.
The raksasa roared furiously at being discovered. Rava'an saw that it was the same one who had presented himself at the ceremony and during the attack had been wounded by Elder Vaha'raya.
-"Kishen'," R'sna snarled, "always attacking from the shadows."
Kishen' activated his blades and lunged at the old yaksa. Despite his age, R'sna proved to be quite agile. He in turn activated his own blades and intercepted the attack, with a clash of metal on metal. Both enemies roared as they tried to take down the other.
Kishen' kneed R'sna in the abdomen, but that did not bring him down. The elder took the chance to head butt him. Kishen' spat blood and fell to his knees with his face turned down. R'sna relaxed, thinking he had won, but Kishen' was just pretending to have been defeated. He activated an energy flechette from his wrist gauntlet and fired point-blank.
The energy projectile tore cleanly through one of R'sna's pectorals, narrowly missing one of his r'daya. R'sna responded by extending his triple-pointed spear and plunging it directly into the raksasa's mouth. Kishen's eyes widened when he realized he was dying, but he didn't have time to make a move because R'sna jerked the spear upwards, ripping off the killer's head.
The old yaksa gave a roar of victory as he showed his young companions the head and spine of his enemy dangling from the spear.
Rava'an and Anu'sha roared in response, the old yaksa was truly a formidable warrior. Rava'an bowed his head in reverence, perhaps one day he would become like him... If Cetanu didn't call him first.
"Come," R'sna said, breathing heavily because of the wound, "There is no time to waste." They headed for the hangar, which was right up ahead.
- o -
Welcome back! Finally after all these days the latest chapter is done. Thanks to iterations for the editing, I hope you'd enjoy it and wait for the great finale.
Here's a glossary, of course.
akra'mana - kind of defensive/offensive weapon
cetanu - Lord of death
cha'kra - Smart disc
chi'kitsa - Medikit
dha'nu - Composite bow.
Ganok' - Troll, from the raramuri word ganoko, a stone giant.
ner'uda - Shuttle
n'garika - Enforcer.
r'daya - Heart
R'sna - Frenzy, Berserker
ugra'danda - Relentless.
vaj'ra - plasma caster.