Lightning struck and Vir’s ears rang with the boom of thunder, as if the skies confirmed his thoughts.
Vir pushed aside the thought and cycled Prana Current to its maximum, condensing the layer of Ash prana that surrounded his skin. Then he Leaped over the walls, intent on honoring his words to Lagen and Gunin; they’d linger here not one moment longer than was absolutely necessary.
“Would it kill you to speak to me?” Gunin asked. The first time his words went unanswered by Lagen, he’d assumed the Gargan simply hadn’t heard him. The second time, he wasn’t so sure. After being ignored thrice, it didn’t take his sister’s prodigal talent to understand that he was being ignored.
Normally, Gunin would’ve liked nothing better—he’d always preferred to keep to himself, even as a boy. Instead of confronting the demon, he’d rather have spent hours agonizing about whether Lagen hated him, coming up with a myriad of responses, and never acting on them. Just that guiding a dozen Ash’va, unfortunately, required them to work together. To say nothing of riled up beasts that needed to be pacified. These were gentle creatures, unused to being surrounded by such danger.
You are not the only ones… Gunin stole a glance at the shimmering Ash Boundary that bisected Praya Parul just a few hundred paces away. A permanent reminder of the danger they were all in by merely being there.
“I see no need to speak to the enemy,” came Lagen’s curt reply.
Gunin stiffened. “Because I am a Kothi,” he said.
“Don’t feign innocence. You know well what I think of your kind,” Lagen said. There was genuine loathing in his eyes. Hatred restrained only by the thinnest veneer of self-control.
He’ll kill me if he gets a chance, Gunin thought, nearly taking an involuntary half step back. Gunin stopped himself. He isn’t the only one with such feelings.
“You’re all the same,” Gunin said, panic rising in his chest even as he uttered the words. What are you doing? He’ll kill you! “You think you were the only ones who lost something in that war?”
Lagen turned slowly, his jaw flexing. That action, more than his flared nostrils, or the hand that went to his talwar’s pommel, spoke more about just how close Gunin was to receiving a blade to the throat.
This was not his element, and Gunin feared he’d made a grave mistake.
“You would lecture me about loss? You, who invaded our land? Who enslaved my people?” Lagen’s voice rose as he closed the distance. Barely a pace remained between the two now.
“You dare claim that we were at fault for protecting ourselves?”
This time, Gunin did step back.
Lagen stopped. He drew in a long, slow breath. “You know?” he said with a wry laugh. “I’d agonized over what I was about to do. Over what had to be done when I had the chance to kill one of you.”
The anger had left Lagen. He seemed more composed now—his tone even.
So why am I shaking?
“I must thank you for making the decision easy.” Lagen unsheathed his talwar slowly. Golden Gargan tattoos flared to life around his exposed arms. “I will rest better at night, knowing one less of your kind draws breath.”
This is it, Gunin said, readying his own tattoos, knowing fully well it was a futile gesture. If he could defend himself worth a damn, his family would never have banished him in the first place. He’d never have been sold as a common slave. Him. Heir to his noble family after his prodigal sister’s death. After the Gargans murdered her.
Well, dear sister. It seems I will be joining you shortly.
It was neither Lagen’s mercy nor Gunin’s own battle prowess that saved him. It was a howl and a shriek. A terrible, otherworldly scream.
The Ash Beasts had arrived.
Only moments after entering the city, Vir realized something was off.
As he bounded from rampart to roof to spire, he’d encountered nothing but a city being progressively buried with Ash. Whatever mechanism prevented its buildup within the Ashen Realm seemed to be absent here, and the streets were covered in it.
While that complicated Vir’s task, it was the Ash Beasts that worried him.
Forget being attacked—he’d spotted not even a single one. Not one solitary beast roaming the soot or digging around for scraps.
Then where did those shrieks come from? Vir wondered. Rather than relief, his worry deepened. This was not normal behavior for Ash Beasts.
He pressed deeper into the city. It was clear from the first moment that the Chitran’s old capital was a far cry from Samar Patag’s squalor. Even abandoned and ravaged by the ash, Vir could easily imagine its former splendor. Enormous monkey statues standing in heroic poses lined the streets and served as gateways to thoroughfares.
The roads were wide, and the buildings tall. Taller than Vir would have expected. The shorter ones had been buried under the Ash, of course, though Vir felt those couldn’t have been more than a tiny minority. Almost every building in the city soared six or seven stories into the air, with bridges and catwalks often stretching between their upper floors, making for a sort of elevated road network.
Did they put those up in response to the ash? Vir wondered. If so, it sounded like the encroaching Boundary had been far greater of an issue than Vir had given them credit for.
Why did you ignore their plight? Vir asked his late father, Raja Maion of Garga. Maybe things wouldn’t have unfolded the way they did if you had… Maybe you wouldn’t have had to die.
Alas, whatever Maion’s reasons were, they went with him to his grave. If not even Greesha knew, no one would.
The very wind that ravaged the city and broke down the Chitran structures had kept many of the bridges free of Ash, allowing Vir to alight on a hanging bridge to reorient and recover his prana.
The process would take several minutes without Ash Beasts to drain, so Vir used that time to enter the building that stood at the end of the suspended bridge.
He forced open a door on its uppermost floor, expecting to find the room within empty. Instead, found a room with four narrow beds—one at each corner. Charcoal decorations were etched on the walls, with four wooden dressers filling the space next to each bed. All covered in a thick coating of ash.
Everything too heavy to carry was left behind, Vir surmised as he walked through the room. Two decades ago, someone lived here. A family, perhaps?
In the next room, Vir found a darker space slightly larger—a common area with a large table and chairs. Owing to its boarded up windows, this room had substantially less ash than the other, and the large rectangular table and chairs all looked to be in good shape.
It drove home just how short a time twenty years really was.
This was their reality.
The Ash Boundary may have gained ground every day, yes, but it hardly moved quickly. It’d been encroaching upon both the Human and Demon Realms for millennia, which meant its pace couldn’t have been more than a glacial crawl.
The situation Vir was dealing with now must have been similar to what the Chitran had dealt with for a century or more. He couldn’t even imagine what living like this had been like. Demons would’ve had to clear the streets of Ash constantly, transporting and dumping it elsewhere.