The Lord of the Rings - The Terrible Crystal

I guess it all began in the great muscle factories of Ulna Major. The state highway was as usual blocked with traffic, in spite of the one-way rule by the ruling class. Most of the commuters were the dabbawalas, clothed in the bright red of their class, moving on in a continuous line to pass the tiffins to the working class. These dabbawalas were akin to their counterparts from the city of Islands, save for the fact that they never made a mistake (unlike the Islanders who made a glitch once in every million assignments). Once the working class was done with their meal, the empty boxes were given back to the dabbawalas, dressed now in blue indicating the end of their day’s work. These dabbawalas had one enemy, the Army of the winged hordes, who used massive vacuum tubes to suck in dabbawalas, their favorite food, and then regurgitated the remnants of digestion, causing major discomfort to the dabbawalas, making them go pale and clinging to each other, and finally causing paralysis and death.

One such pipe now showed itself. The dabbawalas shrieked, running for cover, but apparently the winged terror was not hungry today, for it only probed with its tube for a few seconds, before spitting out a small crystal and then flying away. Now the simple minded dabbawalas, to whom life meant just delivering food to and fro and nothing else were attracted to the brilliant luster of the crystal. For they had a saying that a great soul would one day come from the sky and change their lives (very conveniently, the prophecy failed to specify whether the lives would change for better or worse, but the dabbawalas were too simple to understand such complications).

And as the poor chaps came near the crystal, the crystal began to grow, and began to take the shape of a living thing. And they saw before them a man covered from head to toe in rings. Rings in his ears, and rings in his nose, and everywhere else including some places best not mentioned here. And they stood awed, for never before had they seen someone so lordly or awe-inspiring. And the man (if he can be called so) then spoke, “I come to you from the heavens. I have plenty to give to you, and can take a fair bit too. Come now, let us teach each other our trades.”

And so the Ring-man learnt the trade of the dabbawalas, the unerring accuracy, and the ability to transfer anything from one point to another without any loss. And he taught the dabbawalas to spread his teachings to all they knew. But in secret he plotted to conquer the land, and for this purpose he created an army. This he succeeded in doing by corrupting the hearts of those dabbawalas who were most loyal to him, and he offered them power. They gladly accepted, and he devoured their souls and made them wraiths, a plague on the land. And they went abroad spreading pestilence throughout the land. The sky turned red, and all the workers in the muscle factories got sores. Even the palace of the kings, who made all the important decisions and ruled the land, was not spared. The entire land was under shadow, and it seemed to all that hope was lost and the darkness would last forever. But in the 5^th sector of the Tarsal belt, a hope was born.

For the Ring-lord’s method of killing was simple. All he (or his followers) did was touch victims with a ring, and then watch in sadistic pleasure as the poor chap writhed in pain as he shriveled into nothingness. But in one such putsch, a ring was snatched by the victim in his dance of death, and no attempt was made to recover it. And thus some things that were not meant to be forgotten were lost. And thus it was that the ring was found by the Robbic Hemo, and he took it at great peril to the council of the free peoples. And it was there decided that the ring must be taken to the White Council, where it could be studied and a method to neutralize it could be found.

Will Hemo succeed? Or will the Ring-lord rule the land forever in darkness? To know more, catch the next post The Lord Of The Rings – The Long Journey, which will be coming up soon.