William agreed to leave with the others, but only if I promised not to intervene and help the authorities. He was worried that I might get hurt. I had no intention of helping those who I called “ungrateful bags”, and I swore to join him and the others with plenty of gossip as soon as possible.
Watching Jay fly off with her squadron seemed to rattle the soldiers and the officers deeply, because we could see them arguing with their leadership, and I knew why. They had witnessed first-hand the full force of the Famla and knew that without us they would be decimated.
It seemed to me that the Famla was not willing to wait either, because as soon as they received the message from the chief constable informing them of their decision not to agree to their demands, they slaughtered the entire village, children included, and set it on fire.
Before long, they arrived at J.C. and started to break down the two gates to allow their followers to enter. It took them no more than five minutes. Then they barged in, holding torches. It was surreal. I could only surmise that they were using torches to intimidate their enemies, and as far as I was concerned, it worked – if I had been down there, I would have been terrified.
J.C.’s very own Ragnarök had started. All we could hear was screams and gunfire. I would have given anything to see the faces of the chief constable, the captain and especially the major at that moment, but they had retreated to the main building while their troops were firing at the Famla’s followers.
Cowards, the whole lot of them. I knew it! I thought. In Yanar the leader was the first to head onto the battlefield, but clearly not here. When I saw them cowering in the main building, I thought to myself, They are lucky. If I wasn’t Odin’s daughter, I would have gone down there and said I told you so!
But things quickly escalated. The soldiers seemed to be no match for an angry mob, so I sent Alex to go to Guildford and get the other Yans. We will definitely need them for this fight, I thought.
As much as I was willing to let the major and the other bosses suffer, I liked the soldiers, and I knew that they were only obeying orders. I decided that I couldn’t stand by and let the attack continue. It would be a slaughter.
I signalled Tristan and we attacked. He started blasting the Famla followers with blazes of fire while I was electrocuting them. It was working fine. It was obvious that the Famla had thought we had departed, because they started running away as soon as we attacked. They were surprised to find us in the school.
While they were running away, we noticed a change in the air. The air felt heavy, just like the first time we had dealt with the Firas. It was coming from the west, so we flew over in order to check what was happening, and we saw from afar that something was approaching.
We surmised that it must have been Firas, but they were too far away for us to be absolutely sure, and it looked like they were carrying something. We got closer and we noticed a few human forms. That was when we understood. They had made themselves into a flying carpet and had a group of people with them. Humans could not stand on Firas. The only possible explanation was that it was the Yahas, the Hendus’ very own witches.
We barged into the main hall, where the police officers and soldiers had retreated and were having a meeting. Tristan was so surprised that he blurted out, “Why?”
They turned towards us, and Captain O’Connor walked to us and said, “Why what?”
Then Tristan said, “Why are you having a meeting? Clearly, you have been beaten. Why aren’t you packing up and on your way out?”
He gave us a puzzled look, and I had had enough. I was not prepared to die for their stubbornness, so I hovered above them and told them exactly what was coming and why. I knew talking to Major McNamara was a waste of time. A soldier’s duty was to die for their country, but the police had a duty to live in order to protect the public. I was pretty sure they would retreat with us.
I went straight to the chief constable, and as expected, the major cut me off and said that they should wait for Jay’s squadron to return. I told Nicola Epgrave that I had sent Alex to ask for help a while ago, and since they were flying, if they had not yet arrived, that probably meant that they couldn’t come.
She told Major McNamara that she didn’t want to gamble it, and gave him one last chance to save the lives of his men, because she was leaving with or without him. It worked. They got into their vehicles and made their way to the north gate, but not before making us promise to follow them. We agreed.
As soon as we saw their vehicles disappear, I turned to Tristan and said, “Remember the yew tree. Let’s burn it down before they get here, a nice little goodbye gift for the Yahas.”
“Will it close the anomaly?” he asked.
“I don’t know, but I’ll be damned if I don’t do something to that tree. After all the Hendus have done to us, we have earned the Right of Fuchou,” I said.
The Right of Fuchou was the right of vengeance. It was a right given to any Yan who had been hurt in some way to get revenge on their attacker. It was usually done by challenging the attacker to a duel, but since we did not have that option, we could only go after their tree.
He smiled and agreed, and we started laughing. It was going to be fabulous. We counted to three and lit the tree on fire. Then all of a sudden, we heard an unimaginable and horrendous sound. The tree started to move and vibrate, so much so that it started to look like a double image. The ground started to shake. It felt like the entire structure around the tree was about to collapse, so we flew away.
All of a sudden, we started seeing the flying carpet getting closer and closer. They were speeding. One of the Hendus in human form was actually flying. The flying-human dot moved to the front of the pack, and we realised that the person was wearing a black mask.
We immediately screamed, “The royal!”
It was so obvious that it was the royal; the outfit had a golden crest right at the front. It was a black suit that reminded me of the one Red Skull wears in Captain America. As it got closer, it became obvious that the royal was a woman.
I thought, Well, clearly, we know who that is. Otherwise, why bother with a full head mask? It’s not like we get The Real Royal of the Hendu Home World on Sky TV.
When I repeated this to Tristan, he gave me a puzzled look, so I had to explain the joke to him. I told him that I was making a reference to The Real Housewives of Atlanta. To me the equivalent would be The Real Royal of the Hendu Home World.
This time he got the joke and burst out laughing but agreed. And now we realised that we must have gotten her really angry, because we could still feel the ground shaking. The screams had diminished, but then it turned into a huge roar. It was so loud that we had to fly higher and close our ears.
The royal screamed when she saw the tree, and flew towards it. Not long after she had reached the tree, the carpet of people finally landed and ran towards her to try and stop her from trying to save the tree, but she pushed them away. The tree gave a last roar, then fell. It was dead. The royal took off her mask, raised her head up and screamed in pain.
She was crying and crying. She was hugging the tree and crying some more. She was devastated. She kept talking in a language we did not understand, and her followers were trying to touch her, but she wouldn’t let them.
We realised that we had done something seriously bad. We couldn’t see the royal’s face, but we could see her and feel her pain. Whatever we had killed meant a lot to her, and I had the feeling that there would be hell to pay.
Tristan took my hand and said, “I think we just made a big mistake. We need to clear out of here yesterday.”
We gave the grieving royal a last look, hoping to see her face, but she did not turn around, so we left.
We flew so fast that we passed the authorities’ convoy, and Tristan stopped me. He wasn’t sure that we should leave them, but I was. We had given them more time than they had deserved.
As far as I was concerned, we were done with them. Our friends and fellow students were my priority, and I wanted to make sure that they had arrived safely in Guildford and were on their way to their homes, or at least at Guildford train station, waiting for their train.
When we were approaching Guildford, we could see from afar a lot of small fires all around the town. I couldn’t understand what had happened, and wondered where my cousin was. Where was my sister? Where was William? Where were our friends? Where were all the students from J.C.? I turned to Tristan in shock. I was also terrified. Something really bad had happened, and I was too scared to speculate. I just said, “Tristan.”
He held my hand and said, “It’s going to be okay. They are fine. They are all fine.”
I couldn’t think straight, so I told him, “I’m too upset. Help me. I can’t think. I can’t think.”
He gave me a hug and whispered in my ear, “You go and find your family. I’ve got the others. I’ve got it. Go.”
Tears started running down my cheeks. I nodded. Then I flew off.
It was dark and hard to see. All I could see was fire everywhere, so I flew higher and conjured some rain to stop the fires. Then I came down. The city seemed deserted. There was no noise; bodies were lying on the street. I checked on a few of them, but they were all dead.
Most places were dark, but even the places that had a light on were deserted or had dead bodies within. The Borough of Guildford had about a hundred and forty-eight thousand inhabitants, and not a single one was left standing in the town. It was obvious that they were not all dead, but where had they all gone? Where was my sister and her friends?
Eventually, I met back with Tristan, and he told me that he couldn’t find anyone either, and for the first time, we really felt alone.
We should have had our phones with us, but as usual we didn’t. Yans didn’t use social media – it was illegal in Yanar – and the Yans living in the Masani world tended to not walk around with their phones. The people of Yanar no longer used phones. We used a communication device on our wrist called KJ, but it wasn’t available in the Masani world.
Tristan thought that maybe they had all gone to London for safety, Yans and Masanis alike, including the Guildford locals, and proposed that we follow them there. I agreed, and we had started making our way when I noticed a few familiar vehicles. It was the convoy that had been transporting the younger students, and those wounded, as well as the bodies, from J.C.
The vehicles were turned upside down. It was obvious that the convoy had been ambushed. The coach transporting the students was empty, but their luggage was splattered on the floor. The bodies from J.C. were missing, and I immediately thought of Delphine and Brown. Their bodies were gone as well.
Then I check the wounded, and they had all disappeared. If it wasn’t for the massive amount of blood and the obvious sign of struggle, I would have thought that those vehicles had been empty to start with.
I gasped and looked at Tristan. I said, “What on earth happened here?” I was so distraught that I was almost yelling.
Tristan was frozen. He wasn’t saying a word. Then he looked at me and said, “It was a trap. It was a game from the beginning, and we fell for it.”
I didn’t understand what he meant at first. Then it just clicked. He was right; it had been a trap. The Famla had never expected us to hand over to them twenty-four students.
They knew that the authorities would send the students away. They also knew that the government wouldn’t negotiate with them, and they knew that the closest town was Guildford.
All they’d had to do was to wait for the convoy and attack it and take the students. The inhabitants of Thursley village had probably been killed a long time ago. I realised that Major McNamara was right and I was wrong. Negotiating with the Famla would have been a waste of time.
Tristan started yelling, “Let’s get out of here, now. Let’s go now.”
So we flew away, and we were making our way to London, and that was when we saw it: the dome. London was under a dome. There was no other explanation for it but that the council had been pushed to do it.
I looked at Tristan and said, “How tired are you?”
He replied, “Very.”
Then we knew that we needed to go and regroup somewhere and spend the night, so we flew to Birmingham and knocked at Hassan’s uncle’s house. When he opened the door, he wasn’t surprised to see us. He just said, “About time,” and moved away. Behind him were Amelia and the gang. I started crying and ran towards them. I knew they had a lot to tell, but so did we.
After hugging Amelia, Scarlett, Hogan, Alex, Pam and Hassan, I noticed that my William wasn’t there. I frantically asked where he was, and they sent me upstairs. I ran into Hassan’s bedroom, hoping that William was there, and found him lying on the bed.
He smiled and opened his arms, and I jumped on him. He screamed, and I realised that he was hurt. I pulled his top up and saw bruises all over his body. I looked at him with tears in my eyes. All I could do was touch him gently and tell him how sorry I was.
He had had his ribs broken, but he assured me that he was okay and had seen a doctor. He took me back into his arms, and I lay next to him. I wanted to know what had happened, and he wanted to kiss me first. I happily caved. We started kissing, and William put his hand under my top and was touching me when Hassan barged in.
The look we gave him could have killed Godzilla himself. Forgetting that we owed him our accommodation, William screamed at him to get out, but Hassan ignored him. He turned to me and said, “We received news. Get downstairs now.”
We looked at each other and then jumped from the bed. William struggled but refused to stay behind. I could see he was in pain, and asked him to lean on me, but he refused. As usual, his macho side was winning over common sense.
When we got to the living room, Amelia was in tears. I asked, “What’s going on?”
Hogan was struggling to speak. He had been crying too and said, “Jay’s team is almost entirely gone. They died in the battle of Guildford, and she is in intensive care. They are not sure if she is going to make it.”
“She was taken back to Yanar by her flight lieutenant, Diallo.”
I said, “Wait, wait, wait. I was in Guildford. If Yan bodies were there, I would have seen them.”
Hassan told me to activate my KJ. At his uncle’s home, they had the KJ’s activation key. As soon as I did, I saw the message that had been left. Amelia and I had received a message from our parents, narrating what had happened to Jay. She had used the Mjölnir attack, and by doing so, she had managed to take out the entire Hendu battalion situated at Guildford station.
The news made me feel sick. Jay was almost gone. She had chosen to risk her life to save someone else’s. That was definitely the attitude I would have expected from her. I ran to the closest bathroom and vomited. Then I screamed in anger and pain. I should have been there. I should have been fighting next to her, but instead, I had been foolish enough to want to stay at J.C.
I don’t know how long I stayed in the bathroom until William came to get me. He told me how sorry he was. He added that I needed to get up, because breaking us was exactly what the enemy wanted. He also added that my cousin wasn’t dead yet and that he fully believed that she would pull through.
That was what I needed to hear, so I turned around and hugged him. He was my rock, and I knew at that moment that he was my everything. When I got to the living room, the others were waiting for me. Hogan and Hassan said that I should be proud of Jay, that she had destroyed the enemy, and her squadron’s sacrifice meant that I would see them very soon in Valhalla.
He was right; their sacrifice did guarantee them a prominent place next to Odin, but it still hurt, and it wasn’t much consolation. I knew most of them and loved them dearly. It did, however, give me the strength and determination to avenge their death.
But for that, I needed to know exactly what had happened when they had left us and made their way to Guildford. Jay’s squadron had left with all the students.
I was told that when they got to Guildford, they had found the first convoy had been attacked and no students were left. The Hendus were picking up the bodies of J.C.’s dead students, which were meant to be returned to their families, while other Hendus were escorting the inhabitants of Guildford in chains and putting them into lorries like animals.
Jay had sent a group of Airborns to London with instructions to protect all the students and put them on trains back to their homes. They were ordered to stay with the Masani students until the last one had been safely put on a train, and come back to Guildford. The Yan students, however, were asked to prepare for a fight on the ground with the Famla. William and Scarlett refused to leave with the others but were forcibly removed by Jay’s team.
When the students arrived in London, they found it under siege by the Firas, so the Airborns told the students that there were too few of them to fight the Firas. They opted for the best solution at that moment and flew the students to Birmingham. There were too many students to fly in one go, so they had to take them one by one and drop them at the train station.
Scarlett and William asked to be dropped at the Congo Tree offices, a charity based in Birmingham working to help citizens of RDC living in the UK. Hogan had told them that one of their prominent members was a Yan. They lied to him and told him that Jay had asked that they remain with him until Hassan and the other Yans joined them.
Hogan had indicated that they would meet them as soon as they could, but since London was under a dome, they decided to gamble and hoped that at least Hassan would be taking refuge at his uncle’s home.
So when the Yan at Congo Tree was in front of them, they told him that they had been sent by Jaimie Bouba, and her instructions were for him to protect them. Then they left. The Yan in question then took them to the most prominent Yan in town, Jonathan Mulumba, Hassan’s uncle.
We then turned to Hogan, Hassan and Pam, and asked them what had happened when the others left. They paused for a second, and then Pam said that they had been told by Jay to call for help, and Jay and her team had left. The problem was that all their KJs were offline, and as usual, none of the Yans carried mobile phones, so they had had to run into different buildings and try to use their landlines, but the lines had been cut.
The office was ransacked. The entire town looked like it had been looted. They were about to lose hope when they found a working mobile phone on the ground and called for help, but the embassy demanded that they leave the Guildford inhabitants to their fate and report to London immediately.
It looked like the Hendus had also called for help, because not long after William’s group had left, a swarm of Yahas wearing black hooded capes with the royal family crest, like the Volturis in Twilight, arrived to give their Guildford team a hand.
A Yan squadron was made of one hundred fighters. Unfortunately, from what Pam was saying, even though the Fira squadron wasn’t bigger, they still had at least three hundred Yahas on their side. On J.C.’s side, there were only thirteen Yans, not counting Jay’s already diminished group, since she had sent a sizable portion of her team to escort the Masani students to safety. The fight was looking more and more like an impossible battle, and Jay knew it.
She made the decision to send some of her remaining squadron to escort the Yan students to London. At first the students refused, but she turned her request into an order, and they retreated like the Road Runner in front of Wile E. Coyote.
As soon as the Yahas realised that the J.C. Yans were doing a runner, they started running after them and showed how powerful they actually were. A first the Yahas started running after the students. Then they stopped. A group of them held hands and started chanting, “Berlin bango.”
They chanted over and over again. A wall of clay erected itself in front of Pam and the other Yans. Unfortunately for them, Pam being a Terrayan, she made it explode in on itself, allowing them to continue on their way. She then flew and hovered over them. She gave them a very big smile. By attempting to stop them, the Yahas had shown their hand.
Individually they couldn’t match Yans. It clearly took at least ten of them to erect a wall, which told Pam and the others that individually they were not that hard to kill. Pam turned to Mabel and shouted, “Wahdu mahol,” which meant “Create a wall” in Yan.
They both raised their hands and erected a wall between them and the Yahas. Pam turned to the boys to give them the next step, but Eirnin Maclochlainn – a fellow Yan from JC – was faster than her, and he said, “Girls, you have helped enough. Time to leave and let us try to hold them back.”
Pam disagreed and said, “Look, guys, it doesn’t matter how strong you guys are. They outnumber you at least twenty to one. You are all dead before the fight even starts.”
Then Hogan asked, “So what exactly do you expect us to do? Run away?”
Hassan turned to him and said, “Hoggy, in some cases, the only victory is to flee.”
The other guys agreed with him, except the Irish boys, as usual. Irish Yans were known to be incapable of moving away from a fight.
Pam then had a brilliant idea. She offered to break the wall down, open the ground underneath the Yahas and close it back. Whatever was left of them would be easily defeated by the boys.
They agreed and prepared themselves. Pam came down, and with Mabel they both stood in front of the wall. She could hear the Yahas on the other side, chanting in a language they did not understand. “Bango ya sauko.”
The girls blew away their wall, which took out a few of the Yahas. The girls then plunged onto one knee, knocked the ground with their fists, and it opened right underneath the Yahas, prompting a large number of Yahas to fall in. They then closed the rift back, ensuring that the fallen had been buried forever.
The Yahas looked furious. They screamed with rage and ran towards them, determined to tear them apart. This was when the boys ran towards the Yahas, and the fight started. The Yahas were very good fighters, and it was a difficult battle. Mabel was trying her best, but Pam noticed that she was about to be overrun by her opponents, so she coated her in clay and sent her flying away from the fighting site.
Mabel’s opponent turned towards Pam in rage, but Pam, being excellent at FIST, was overpowering them easily. Eventually, they realised that they couldn’t win, and the remaining group of Yahas who could still stand ran away. Pam flew away to make sure that Mabel had landed safely, and they all left the area.
We then turned to Alex to find out what he had seen. When he arrived, it was a full-blown war. Most Firas had been killed by the squadron, but the Yahas were a challenge for them. The witches had cast a protective spell on themselves, so Yan powers were not affecting them.
Jay had no other option but to engage them in a physical fight, which should have been easy if it wasn’t for the fact that the Yahas seriously outnumbered the Yans.
Jay realised that if they could fight them with melee combat, then they could kill them in one go as well. She conjured rain, and one of her Omni fighters blasted an electric ball on the wet ground while the squadron got off the ground quickly, which killed all the Yahas instantly.
Jay then realised that Alex had arrived, and she flew towards him. When she reached him, she said, “Go, tell the council everything you know about the Hendus. I’ll be giving them a report as soon as I am done here.”
He informed her that they could not be killed by bullets but, like zombies, chopping off their heads worked fine. She smiled at him, gave him a forward Sahnu, which was the Yan goodbye, told him that she loved him and sent him to rejoin his sister.
Alex had a funny feeling. His stomach became tight. He wanted to turn around, but he knew that Jay was not joking and would have him escorted if necessary. While he was leaving, he saw Jay’s Omnis imprisoning another squadron of Yahas who had just arrived in the mud, and heard her preparing for the Mjölnir attack.
He was about to ask her why when he saw a squadron of Firas approaching, as well as even more Yahas marching towards them. He couldn’t understand how there could be so many Hendus in Surrey. He was wondering where they were coming from. He wanted to stay despite Jay’s order, but he knew that he had to leave and find Pam because J.C. was in trouble, so he left.
As soon as I heard that, my heart sank. The Mjölnir attack was a military move created by the Norse to crush their enemies in one blow with Thor’s help. I didn’t know how it was performed, but I had heard that the people executing it were guaranteed a trip straight to Valhalla.
Jay had known she might never see Alex again. That was why she gave him a forward Sahnu rather than a regular Sahnu. A Sahnu was the Yan greeting. The forward Sahnu involved crossing your arms over your chest, having the back of your hands touch with those of the other person and then putting your forehead on their forehead. The regular Sahnu did not involve the foreheads touching.
As much as I was saddened by Jay’s condition, I couldn’t help but feel immense pride. My cousin was so amazing that she had defied the council’s orders to stand down, so she could shield as many people as she could, and she had almost died trying to stop the Hendus from hurting more people than they had planned.
William suddenly said, “By the way, anyone know what is happening in the country? I am quite worried about my family.”
“I am too,” said the others.
“Wait. No one has tried to watch TV or check online?” I asked.
They answered no. Apparently, they were too scared to do so in case the news was not good. The only message left by the council for us was an immediate return home.
In the Masani world, however, we found out from the news that the Hendus were winning every battle, and the portals were being opened by the Famla, allowing more Hendus to cross over to our world.
London was no longer under a dome. The news explained that the dome had been placed by the Yans in order to give the British authorities time to relocate the members of parliament and the royal family to a safe location.
Uncle Jonathan had confirmed that the UK was at war and that public transport was no longer safe for anyone, so we were asked to escort our friends home. I wanted to see William safe-ly home, so I took him while Hogan, accompanied by Tristan, took Scarlett back to Hereford.