182: Ash Damned (Patreon)

She regarded the abomination knowing her end neared. Were it only a few centuries ago, such an Ash Beast would have posed her little threat. But now? When the energy it would cost her burned away the little time she had left? Months, not years.

Where was the fabled encounter it had promised? Where was the one who she was told to trust with her life? Who would lead her to a new future, so bright and dazzling?

Where was her release from this prison of the dead?

She shook off the thoughts as she faced the monster with her friends. Her dear companions. There were still those who needed her protection. For them, she would fight. She would persist.

Wishing for the day when her people returned.

— —

Vir was blind. He couldn’t see his arms. Or his legs, or any other part of his body.

It wasn’t that he saw nothing; there was something out there. A whole lot of it.

But before he could unravel the mystery, pain crashed into him with the weight of Balancer of Scales on max. He writhed on the cold, hard ground, screaming in agony.

As he started to suffocate, the Ash Tear behind him slammed shut.

No!

Vir acted reflexively, rather than consciously. A good thing, too, because if he’d strengthened Prana Dam any later, he would have turned into a cloud of bloody pulp.

While his reflexes might’ve kept him alive, they’d bought him only a few seconds. The weight of a mountain crashed down on Vir—like the Foundation Chakra, but magnified a thousandfold.

It wasn’t even metaphysical energy that attacked him—it was just prana. A disgustingly obscene amount of it. And it was waging a war on his body.

Vir funneled as much prana as he could into the saturated layer he maintained next to his skin, pushing his blood to its limit.

It wasn’t enough, so he went beyond, stretching his blood’s capacity as much as he dared. This was it. His last hope. If this didn’t work, he was dead.

It didn’t work. In fact, it seemed to do little of anything.

The blood near his skin burst, pain consumed him, and Vir lost all faculties for conscious thought.

Why? Vir thought as his mind faded. How?

The world went slowly black as he suffocated to death.

— —

Vir awoke dazed and confused. He could see again, which ought to have alleviated his confusion, but it didn’t.

He knew this place—it was the grassy plain where he’d met Parai the Ancient.

He wasn’t alone.

“What’s going on?” Vir asked, approaching Shardul.

“You were dragged into a part of the Ash you should not have entered. I am trying to keep you alive. We all are.” Shardul gestured behind him, and only then did Vir notice the four figures who stood in a circle some paces away, staring holes in each others’ heads. One was significantly larger than the others. One was gangly. One sage, and the other wise.

“Narak, Ekanai, Parai, and… Jalendra?” Vir asked.

The white-haired old man with a beard that came to his knees regarded Vir inquisitively, but said nothing.

“He cannot speak, Ekavir,” Shardul said, clasping Vir’s shoulder. “Time is short, so I must be brief. You are in a very precarious situation right now. You should never have come to this place. You weren’t ready.”

“You don’t say? Tell that to the wolf who brought me here.”

“An unfortunate turn of events. For you and for us.”

Vir frowned. “What do you mean?”

Shardul sighed. “You have somehow been pulled into the deepest part of the Ashen Realm. A place you were destined to eventually reach, but not yet. Not until you were far stronger.”

“You could’ve helped, you know? I held up my end of the bargain. I entered the Ash, just as you and Ekanai wanted. But I haven’t heard a word from you. Nothing. Why?”

“Because nothing is without cost in this world, young Ekavir. Have you ever considered what we pay to manifest in front of you? Have you ever wondered why we only intervene when absolutely necessary, and why each time, you’ve met with a different ancestor? Don’t you think we would help you more if we could?”

What’s he talking about? Appearing before me hurts them in some way?

“Yes. It does,” Shardul said, replying to Vir’s thoughts. “We are but memories of your prior lives. Each time we manifest, the memory is consumed. Burned. Gone forever. Like blood that has been diluted with water, we lessen with each manifestation.”

Vir went pale. “And now…”

“And now, we burn away a great deal of ourselves to keep you safe, using lessons hard won in your previous lives. Though I fear it may be for naught. Even if the Ash doesn’t kill you… The denizens of the Mahādi Realm surely well.”

Vir’s stomach lurched. “Mahādi? That’s where I am?”

The place Cirayus said even he dare not tread.

“It is time for you to return,” Shardul said, the world fading away even as he spoke.

But it wasn’t enough. Vir had finally gotten some answers. He wasn’t about to leave without getting some more.

He thought of the only thing that might work. This wasn’t reality. It was a dream world—a spiritual world of the metaphysical. And Vir knew of only one thing that could affect the metaphysical.

He channeled thoughts of heaviness. Of mountains, great and unmovable. Vir might not have mastered the Foundation Chakra—he wasn’t even close—but he knew one thing: Mountains did not ‘return’ anywhere. Nor were they forcibly cast.

Vir resisted, anchoring himself. The image stopped fading.

“You look surprised, Shardul,” Vir said, grimacing at splitting his concentration between speaking and preventing the world from fading away.

“Were this any other time, I would be impressed. What is it you wish to know? Ask.”

“How do I… talk to you… Without… burning your memories?” Vir said through gritted teeth, finding the task harder than he’d thought.

“Ekavir,” Shardul said. “I fear this is the last you will see of us. What we are about to do… It may very well cost us everything. Even if fragments do survive, we will be powerless to save you as we have in the past.”

“I don’t care. I want to… meet you… again. There’s so much… I don’t know,” Vir rasped.

Shardul sighed. “Open your primary Chakras. The more you unlock, the more of us you'll be able to access. Focus on the Foundation Chakra for now. I shall meet with you then. Assuming anything of me remains, after this.”

“I’ll hold you to that,” Vir said as the world began dissolving again. “So don’t you dare die.”

He could’ve sworn he caught a small grin on the demon’s face before he was ejected out.

When Vir awoke in the Mahādi Realm, he could see again, and the pain, while not gone, had lessened.

He didn’t know what his ancestors had done, and he didn’t have the time to find out.

For an Ash Wolf faced him down. And not just any Ash Wolf. This beast was cut from a different cloth.

Prana oozed off its hide, so thick that Vir didn’t need Prana Vision to see it. It wasn’t just some wisp of prana either. It was like black flame, burning off this god of wolves.

That thing can end me with a thought.

It was also the beast that had dragged him through, though it hadn’t been wreathed in flame back then.

Vir couldn’t tell if it had unlocked a chakra, but he suspected not. At least, the pressure it generated seemed to stem purely from the absolutely absurd prana coursing within its body and burning off its hide. To Prana Vision, the beast was a black abyss. Infinite and unknowable.

Vir did the only rational thing—put his hands up and slowly back away. Shardul, Ekanai, and the others had just sacrificed something very precious to give him this new lease on life. He wasn’t about to squander it only seconds later.

The Ash Wolf growled, baring its fangs at him.

Good wolfie. Good wolfie, Vir thought, inching away.

The Ash Wolf did not like what it saw. The next thing Vir knew, he’d fallen, and was being pulled by some great force.

It ate my leg! Vir thought, writhing on the ground in a daze as the scenery blurred by.

Except there was no pain. At least, not from his leg.

Again?

The Ash Wolf had once again bit into his boot and was dragging him with its maw. It was a clumsy way to drag someone, and it should’ve been slow, allowing Vir more than enough time to stand up.

Instead, it yanked him nearly as quickly as his own running gait.

Where’s it taking me? Vir thought frantically, trying to make sense of this situation as he bounced and jolted. The beast hadn’t killed him. That was good. But it was dragging him somewhere, rather violently, which was bad.

Escape was Vir’s first instinct, but how? And to where?

Whatever his ancestors had done hadn’t disabled his prana manipulation. He could invoke Dance of the Shadow Demon if he wanted to—the many buildings cast dark shadows—but should he?

If part of him sank into the shadows with the wolf still holding his leg, he wouldn’t be able to sink all the way. Worse, with the wolf’s strength, being torn limb from limb might be a very real possibility. Cirayus had warned him of the many pitfalls of Dance of the Shadow Demon, and this was one.

Nor did he think he could penetrate the wolf’s solid prana armor to free himself. Trying might very well anger the beast enough to end him.

Vir decided to wait it out. The wolf would let go eventually, and he could use that opportunity to flee to the Shadow Realm.

Just calm down. Think. Observe, he told himself. Forcing his breaths to even, even as he was dragged along.

Vir took care to protect his head, then regarded his surroundings as best he could from his poor vantage.

The first thing he noticed were the buildings. Dark and impossibly tall, soaring into the clouds.

They looked pristine, but Vir could somehow tell they hadn’t been occupied in centuries. Like a perfectly preserved dead animal—the parts were all there, but the soul was not.

The architecture reminded him of only one other place he’d seen—Valaka Amara. The Imperium outpost where he’d met Janak.

The buildings here were markedly different. Darker and more foreboding, with lightning continuously raking their tops from the dark, low clouds. Some were so close they made Vir’s ears ring. But the arches, pillars, and spires were all the same.

Is this a lost Imperium City, then?

It was all Vir could see before the wolf rounded a bend and his situation went from bad to worse.

Over a dozen Ash Wolves surrounded a person.

Vir scrambled to his feet the moment the wolf came to a halt some twenty paces away.

“A Goddess?” he breathed.

She was a being of pure white. A slim woman with stark white hair, wearing long white earrings, a gorgeous white dress and heeled sandals—also white—and wielding a white rod in her left hand, she struck him as an incarnation of Yuma, the goddess of health and fertility.

Or she would be, if she wasn’t sitting crumpled on the floor with her right arm missing, oozing silvery blue blood that marred her pristine dress. Vir grimaced, expecting to see bone and muscle from her torn shoulder… But instead found a multitude of black ropes, tightly packed and sparking, arcing small flashes of lightning every few seconds. Despite her bizarre anatomy and her contorted, anguished expression, she managed to look otherworldly, in a divine sort of way.

Which was why Vir’s eyes found her first, despite the hideous beast that stood from only paces away.

Vir tore his eyes away from the impossibly beautiful woman to regard the monstrosity she and the wolves fought.

The beast stood fifteen paces in height and resembled an oversized bat with the legs of an ox and the claws of a bear, extending from its batwing arms. Like the Ash Wolves before it—several of which lay dead and dying—it oozed Ash Prana so thick it was visible to the naked eye.

Terror descended on Vir, making him despair.

I don’t stand a chance against that thing.