“We’ll die here,” Gunin shouted in panic.
“And?” Lagen fired back as he blocked an incoming attack. “What would you have us do? Believe me, dying on a suicide mission for the Chitran was not how I intended to meet my end.”
Lagen wanted nothing more than to flee with his life. Attempting to would only shorten his already limited lifespan. For it wasn’t merely a handful of beasts that surrounded them, but dozens, of all shapes and sizes. Some slow, and others more than capable of running him down.
No, this was where they met their end. And such a fitting end at that. Fighting fruitlessly at a barren, forgotten husk of a city against beasts who bore them no malice. Who were only searching for their next meal.
This was no glorious death in service to his clan. No, like the rest of his family, he would perish against overwhelming odds. Unable to make even the slightest difference. Forgotten by time and buried by ash.
Yet, his body soldiered on, even when he had long ago given up. His arms swung, his torso twisted, and his legs dodged. More out of habit than anything else. Delaying the inevitable.
Lagen didn’t believe in miracles. For the gods had blessed his lineage with none.
So when it arrived in the form of a black comet, hurtling from the sky, he refused to believe it.
He refused to believe it, even when it carved through the horde with impossible speed. He refused to believe that, in the span of just a few seconds, the sea of deadly monsters that surrounded them had themselves been offed by a monster far greater than themselves.
Lagen could no longer refuse to believe when their salvation appeared in front of them, gazing at them with the eyes of a ruler.
“Sorry I’m late,” Neel said, setting a suit of plate metal on the ground. “I brought some armor.”
Rounding up hundreds of suits of armor turned out to be simultaneously more and less effort than Vir anticipated.
With the Praya Parul’s Ash Beasts eradicated, Vir felt safer bringing the Ash’va into the pit in the middle of the city, rather than leaving them out in the open where they could be attacked again. Lagen and Gunin had put up an impressive fight, but Vir was terrified at how close they’d come to succumbing.
Even a minute later, and Vir could very well have returned to corpses instead of allies. Powerful allies, judging from their performance.
Furthermore, ferrying suits of armor one by one was tedious and time-consuming, even with Leap and Blink, which would never have lasted long enough. Topped up as Vir was on prana, so many activations would’ve still drained him dry well before he’d carried all the equipment.
Yet even with the Ash’va present, it took surprisingly more time than he’d anticipated to lash them to the beasts of burden, organizing them in the most efficient manner possible to allow them to carry everything back.
That task he left to Gunin and Lagen, who, despite looking like they absolutely loathed being in the same realm as each other, made a surprisingly efficient team. Vir suspected their recent near-death experience may have had something to do with that.
Roaming the now-empty pit, Vir searched for the best weapons and armor, evaluating both their construction quality and condition before bringing them back. Having lain out in the open for almost two decades, subjected to the elements and the trampling of Ash Beasts, less than a third remained usable. Even so, it would be an invaluable haul for his troops.
Picking proper armor, while important, was hardly an absorbing task, and so Vir’s mind wandered. To the pit nearby, whose deluge of prana ceased the moment Vir returned to his body. It was as if all that prana had been for one purpose—to show him the memory of Janak. Clearly, it’d been compromised over the ages, showing only bits and pieces.
The map crumpled in Vir’s pocket told him he’d obtained some very important pieces, however. Where it led and what it meant, he didn’t know. Not yet. But he’d find out.
As he worked, the voice of worry grew stronger. What were the chances of him stumbling upon these ruins? What were the chances that the first chamber he found conveniently only required the Foundation Chakra to open? Were they all like that? Or did they require more Chakras?
Discovering this place had been an incredible coincidence. Or, perhaps, it wasn’t a coincidence at all. If someone had guided him to this place…
But who? And for what purpose? Could it have been Janak’s avatar, somehow? Vir doubted it. Janak had remained silent even when Vir visited Mahādi—the very place Janak told him to venture to when he was ready.
Either Janak had no intention of communicating with Vir, or he was physically unable to.
Vir thought back to the illusion chamber he’d encountered in the Ash, and the strange tree-like room he’d been deposited to after. To Saunak’s Ink of Clarity.
And what was the purpose of those primordial chambers? Yes, Vir had benefited from the monstrous influx of prana, expanding his capacity, but that felt more like an accident than anything intentional. Were they all connected somehow? With every bit of the mystery Vir uncovered, his confusion only grew, spawning more questions than they answered.
Alas, there were no more questions to be had here. Vir had tried returning to the chamber at the bottom of the pit, but found its door inert. Dead. Though he had no issues using Dance of the Shadow Demon to appear on the other side, it led only to a featureless rectangular chamber. The one where he’d presumably been shown the vision. Finding nothing else of note there, Vir had returned to the surface.
“We’re just about ready,” Lagen said in a voice that was slightly different from before. Stiffer. More deferential. It was a slight thing, and Vir might’ve missed it had he not been trained to recognize such things.
“The tools as well?” Vir asked.
“All secured, though we’re not quite sure what you plan to use them for. Shovels, pickaxes… You planning on having us dig?”
Vir gave them a mysterious smile as he surveyed their handiwork. “Perhaps. Perhaps not.”
The gear would prove useful. The trust he’d build with Lagen and Gunin, however? That was priceless.
As Vir set out for his camp of demons, he couldn’t help but feel rather high-spirited about their situation.
55
MANTLE OF THE BLESSED CHOSEN (PART ONE) (MAIYA)
Maiya braced herself for a bloody battle. Against an enemy she knew next to nothing about, no amount of precaution would suffice. Nor would the Blessed Chosen go down easily. His assassination attempts and his show of force had proven that abundantly.
She didn’t know what powers the large man boasted, so Maiya would hold nothing back. She’d brought every orb she could conceal, precharging them all. The upcoming fight would be neither simple nor clean. It was, however, necessary.
At this point, it was no secret she was a mejai, and she doubted the Sisters would mind her breaking decorum by packing a few extra weapons for the ritual. There wasn’t a soul present who didn’t see this crowning ceremony for the farce it was.
Maiya only hoped the casualties would be few. She’d feel terrible if the Sisters, or any other innocents, got caught in the crossfire. The Children might’ve been deranged, but that didn’t mean they needed to die.
So, it was with a great deal of surprise that Maiya arrived in her crimson ceremonial garb to find the Blessed Chosen absent.
“Did he flee?” Maiya asked the Sister of Gray presiding over the transfer of power. She still didn’t know the woman’s name, nor, for that matter, the names of any of the Sisters. Eschewing names was something of a mark of honor within their group.
“We do not believe so, Blessed Prophet,” the Sister replied, leading Maiya out of the ritual chamber and down a hallway. “We believe he has cloistered himself in his quarters.”