บท 57: The taste of defeat

There was a blinding flash of blue that forced Nubeous to close his eyes. An in the next flash of a second, everything had quietened down.

The tornado had been calmed.

The only sound that he heard was the cracking of the ground underneath.

"Thud-Crack!"

He looked all around but Morpheous was nowhere to be seen.

"Gaaaaahhhhh....."

He shouted and out of anger and snapped his fingers again, but to his utter dismay, his blot was back to normal. It wasn't that fiery red anymore. Disgruntled, he started casting bolt after bolt, completely unaware of the fact that a part of his energy was being driven away into the portal that Balthazaar had created.

A small part of that huge influx of energy kept the portal open even though Balthazaar had closed it up.

Originally the fallen angel had decided to sacrifice himself to send Morpheous into the future, but just when he was about to use his last bit of power, there was an external surge of energy. The tunnel of time was split into six and that flung them into the six realms in different eras of time.

The way the time was relative in the six realms was fascinating because it made them co-exist at the same time on the different realms. Neither Balthazaar nor Damianos had any idea where these realms existed. They only knew about the existence of the realms but neither of them had even been to any other realm apart from the Kingdom of Nubia or Niðavellir.

Vanaheimr - The land of God and Álfheimr - The land of Angels had been isolated from the reach of anyone as in one lied the dead remains of God and in the other stayed the angels in complete harmony. They had hidden both these realms from the reach of anyone through guarding spells.

The remaining seven realms were now each located in different Astral dimension and there existed no connectivity in between. But today finally the miracle happened as the reference portal was opened which was the only common gateway that existed between all the realms.

Frustrated with the escape of Morpheous, and completely unaware of the miracle that had happened, Nubeous engulfed the entire place with fire as his deathly bolts started the rampage. The whole area started burning in front of his eyes, but that didn't suffice the revenge thirsty soul of his. He picked up the ingot in his hands and cast another bolt. But alas! The result was still the same.

The fieriness of his bolt, the unparalleled intensity of his bolt had disappeared and somehow that made him feel limp and crippled from within.

There was no sign of anyone in that cropland area. His men had run away and somehow he wanted to blame that cynical old Balthazaar for all of it. It was probably his sixth sense, but he could feel that it was Balthazaar who had entered the tornado just before Morpheous disappeared.

The land around him had slowly started sinking into the lava and there was barely any place to stand. So without wasting any more time, he ran back towards the oak tree where he had tied his horse.

His poor horse had been neighing relentlessly and restlessly for everything around it had started to burn and no matter how hard it tried, it couldn't escape from the leather ties. So when it saw Nubeous approaching, it started neighing even louder.

Alighting his horse along with the ingot, he galloped back towards the kingdom.

That merciless man didn't even turn once to see the amount of devastation that he had caused in that one single night. The bitterness of the taste of defeat, the wound on his ego had completely marred the biggest achievement of his life today - finding that ingot.

His mind was no more occupied in extracting the metal from the ingot, but to find the whereabouts of the man who had disappeared after scarring his ego.

He rode for hours at a stretch, without caring for the lashing rain or the spine chilling cold air that in no way could douse his spirit of revenge.

The members of the general council stayed up all night at the Iridium Palace as they didn't possess the guts to go back home as Nubeous had marched towards Ambracia in search of the ingot by himself. In the wee hours of the morning when the fort keeper informed them about the return of the soldiers, they asked for the head soldier to report to them.

Diogenes was really worried when he heard from the fort guards that the soldiers had returned alone. He paced in the room waiting for the head soldier's arrival.

"Knock Knock"

"Come in!" said Diogenes and darted out his question at him, without giving the soldier any time to greet the other council members.

"Where is Nubeous? What happened to the ingot?"

With an ashamed face, the head soldier replied,

"We ran away!"

"You what?" exclaimed Diogenes.

The head soldier immediately knelt in front of him and said,

"Please sire! Please understand. That was not a fight for common men like us to join. That was..."

"What fight?" asked Diogenes surprised.

"That man, that man who had killed three hundred soldiers alone. He was back from the dead sire. I don't know how but that was him. He had the eyes that spoke the language of death sire. They burned, they burned in the shade of blue. We had two options, either to be killed by him or to be killed by my master. So we fled and..."

But before he could complete his sentence, Diogenes ordered,

"You are dismissed!"

"Sire!"

"Please leave this room right now! Rather leave the kingdom right now if you want to survive. Why did you even come back in the first place? Do you think Nubeous will spare you?" asked Diogenes and without waiting for any further explanation he turned towards the other council members.

His face looked drained as if he had seen a ghost.