“Ashani is touched that you feel that way, but a culture’s worth is not determined by its technological advancement alone. Your art, your history, these are unique to you, and in no way inferior to our own. Different, perhaps, but not any less. No, I believe your people are incredible in their own ways. If there is a difference between us, it is simply one of time.”
Time, huh? I wonder.
Vir couldn’t see humans reaching this state of advancement, even after millennia. It was more likely that the Ash would have taken over the whole realm by then. Their legacy would be nothing more than a land of corrupted monsters and toxic air.
“It’s just hard, Ashani, knowing these dazzling heights your people once achieved. Today, people sacrifice their lives seeking what your people might have passed off as junk. Just to experience a sliver of that greatness. Every weapon I saw sold on that street would be hailed as a divine Artifact of the Gods. It’d be the treasure of any nation’s arsenal.”
Vir laughed. How pathetic. He was starting to understand what Cirayus was talking about when he waxed nostalgic of greater times long passed. And he hadn’t even experienced what the Imperium was like.
“Your people came before us,” Vir said. “We should have inherited your legacy. Why didn’t we?”
How could we have fallen so far?
It was one thing to strive for greatness when you believed you were pushing the boundaries of innovation—venturing into the unknown and unlocking secrets no one ever had.
But what if it was all a lie? What if everything you ever learned—every advancement you ever made—had already been made before? Learned, and then forgotten. What then? How did one go on, knowing just how much further they had to go? It was like climbing a ladder with no end.
Vir had lived his whole life with a cloud obscuring those higher rungs. Now, the cloud was gone, and he saw the ladder for what it truly was—built and climbed by his ancestors, long ago. He, and everyone else, were simply rebuilding what they once had in abundance, and they were still at the bottom rungs.
“We are here,” Ashani said, stopping at a door that Vir recognized.
“This is Janak’s home, isn’t it?”
Ashani nodded. “This is where it all begins.”
32
THE STORY OF US (PART TWO)
Ashani approached the door to a house—the one Vir had woken up in. Janak’s home. Instead of the black, cold home from before, the abode was a brilliant white, decorated in gold.
The door dematerialized for her, and inside, Vir found a beautifully decorated home. Where Sawai aristocrats adorned their walls with paintings and lavish colors, the Imperium preferred prana as their paint instead.
Despite knowing it was the same place, Vir still struggled to accept the facts. The house he knew was dead. This one seemed to burst with life.
A mural covered an entire wall—a work of pure prana. This one depicted a tranquil tropical jungle. Even the ground and ceiling had their own beautiful prana patterns, with Water affinity contrasting Fire and Wind against Lightning.
Inside, Vir saw Ashani—the Ashani as she was at the height of the Imperium.
“You haven’t aged a day,” Vir muttered. While dressed in an elaborate gold dress that flowed behind her, the goddess looked the same.
“Does this surprise you?” she asked, freezing the simulation as she stood next to her younger self. “Like the rest of my people, Automata do not age.”
Her simple, unadorned white one-piece cast an entirely different impression from her old self. While her plain attire made her look like a benevolent, earnest goddess—the younger Ashani looked regal in a way no mortal could. Like an empress.
With her bangles, oversized earrings, and neckpiece, the younger Ashani fit right in with the rest of her people.
She also looked nervous—even scared. How the other occupants of the room could scare someone like Ashani, Vir couldn’t say.
He shifted his attention to the two others.
The man caught Vir’s attention first. He sported short black hair, an enormous headdress, and a waxed handlebar mustache. He looked to be in his early thirties, but for all Vir knew, the man could have been centuries old.
His exposed, sculpted abs showed not a hint of fat anywhere on his body, and despite his slightly slender build and average height, he looked every bit a god. Like everyone else Vir had seen, his bronze skin was unmarred by even a single blemish, and his face appeared as though it’d been sculpted to perfection from a slab of bronze.
“Janak. Siya’s father,” Ashani said quietly.
“You can’t be serious. That’s Janak?” Vir cried.
He was nothing like the aged sage from Valaka Amara. Granted, that had been a prana avatar of something like a copy of Lord Janak. Even so, the difference was just too vast. The man’s behavior only highlighted that point.
“Siya, look!” the man said in a doting voice, kneeling in front of a girl no more than eleven or twelve. “Daddyyy has brought youuu a sweet, sweet friend!”
This is a god? This is ‘The’ Janak?
The man looked like a normal father spoiling his child. An ornately dressed, rich father.
“They’re talking normally?” Vir asked. When Ashani had first spoken to him, he couldn’t understand a word she’d said.
“I have modulated their speech to your dialect,” Ashani replied. “I imagine the conversations in this simulation would sound unintelligible to you.”
“Thank you,” Vir said, grateful for her consideration.
The simulation continued.
“I don’t need any friends, Daddy! Karadi’s my friend,” Siya said, clutching her bear tighter and eyeing Ashani with deep suspicion. “She’s too pretty.”
Vir felt Siya was hardly one to talk. Like Janak, his daughter also boasted perfect facial features, though if there was a family resemblance, Vir didn’t see it. Where Janak’s face was edged and powerful, Siya’s was rounded and soft. Where his hair was a curly mess, hers was flowing and long. Even her clothing contrasted his. She wore a simple blue dress and wore no adornments, save for a single golden necklace, and a glowing yellow sphere on her arm that reminded Vir more than a little of mejai orbs.
She looks like a doll, Vir thought. A delicate, frail doll. The toy bear she clutched only heightened that image—a bear that actually moved its limbs.
“Aiya, little rajni! Daddy made her himself! Just for you! You always wanted an older sister, didn’t you?”
If the man wasn’t a god, Vir might’ve found the scene funny—such a handsome, imposing man talking like a child made for a truly endearing sight. But Janak was a god, worshiped by all and surpassed only by Adinat himself. The thought was a bit disconcerting for Vir.
“Janak constructed me to become Siya’s friend,” Ashani said. “The friend she never had.”
“Come, Ashani. Introduce yourself!”
Young Ashani took a step forward and knelt in front of the young girl. “Pleased to make your acquaintance, Siya. I am Ashani.”
Ashani’s lines came stiff and terse, and Siya darted back in her floating chair, hiding herself behind her father.
Ashani’s expression fell slightly, but she maintained her smile.
“Go on, Siya,” Janak said soothingly. “Why don’t you greet your new friend?”
Siya hesitated, then peeked out from Janak’s back. “P-Pleased to meet you.”
Janak spun Siya’s chair around and looked her in the eyes. “I know you can’t go out much these days, and I have been busy with my work. See? Now you won’t be alone anymore!”