188: The Story Of Us (Part Three) (Patreon)

A young Ashani threw off a boulder-sized piece of road that had crushed her, emerging from beneath the rubble to a destroyed, blackened world. The Mahādi of the present day, with its lightning storms and ashen rain.

The sight came with a profound revelation. One that threatened to overload Vir’s mind.

The Ashen Realm hasn’t always existed… Vir thought, struggling to comprehend the implications.

Logically, it made some sense, of course. The Ash had been continuously expanding, which meant it had to start from somewhere. It hardly seemed like a normal phenomenon, so it must have been created, somehow.

But it was one thing to reason about the origin of the world, and another entirely to experience it firsthand. To feel it for himself.

This was where it had started, all those millennia ago. Vir wasn’t merely watching the end of the Prime Imperium. He was witnessing the birth of the Ashen Realm.

Beasts screamed, clawing at each other while others ravaged the few corpses that hadn’t been vaporized by the blast. A colossal wyrm shrieked in the sky, circling around the central spire of Mahādi. It might’ve been Vir’s imagination, but he sensed pain in its shriek—as if it was writhing in agony.

“When I came to,” present-day Ashani narrated, “there was nobody left. Self-preservation inscriptions had restored the buildings, but they’d reformed twisted. Blackened and warped into strange dark spires. As if whatever had scorched the skies and blighted the creatures had also tainted the city itself.”

Vir watched as a young Ashani stumbled dazedly, screaming Siya’s name. The girl’s floating chair lay ruined some distance away, buried amidst rubble.

Ashani smashed away boulder-sized debris with her white rod, hurling them aside as if they were pebbles. Those too durable to be smashed, Ashani lifted with her bare hands, tossing them away.

Vir could feel her desperation, and his heart went out for her. He knew how this story ended. He knew the tragedy that lay in store for the young automaton.

Ashani’s misery was almost palpable as she frantically clawed her through the rubble, calling for Siya over and over. Each call growing more desperate. Each call filled with more of her grief.

Yet there was no sign of her precious friend amidst the rubble. Her search ended when she found a golden necklace. Siya’s necklace—the one she’d been wearing.

Young Ashani clutched the memento to her chest. Her rod slipped from her fingers, clanging against the road. She collapsed to her knees, weeping uncontrollably.

“Where are you, Janak?” Ashani half-screamed, half-sobbed at the falling ash. “I need you! She needs you!”

“I never learned what became of Siya,” Ashani said softly, staring at her younger self. “For years, I cleared rubble, desperate to find something. Anything that might bring me closure. I never did.”

Young Ashani’s sobs were broken by the twitching of a nearby corpse. She spun, only to jolt back in horror as the body began to rise. Except what stood was no man. Limbs grew out of the man’s back as he steadily transformed into a monster the likes of which Vir had never seen.

The man-beast shambled toward Ashani, who stood stock still, too terrified to move.

Deafening thunder boomed, and the world flashed white. When it was gone, the man slumped to the ground.

Young Ashani stood a short distance away, her lightning rod aimed at the abomination. Her body shivered, and she watched at the man with a face full of horror.

“Janak created me not only to be Siya’s companion, but also her guardian. An entirely frivolous and unnecessary gesture in Imperium society—our magic guaranteed Siya’s safety—but a doting father is never assuaged.”

“Seems to me like his caution wasn’t unwarranted,” Vir said.

Ashani nodded. “I’d always thought my powers unbecoming of a lady. But when everyone else was dead or mutated, I was glad for Janak’s foresight. It kept me alive. That, and whatever force saw fit to preserve my life when all around me perished.”

The scene shifted again. Ashani looked much the same, but now, there was no hesitation to her movements. Wherever beasts roamed, Ashani attacked, mercilessly incinerating them with her lightning powers.

“For days after the end, I swept the city, searching desperately for any sign of life. There was none. I soon learned that I was alone in this terrifying place.”

The scene zoomed in on Ashani, who stood perched atop a spire at the outer edge of the city. With a blank expression devoid of hope, she peered at the wasteland that had once been a shining bastion of prosperity.

“Everyone I ever knew and loved was gone,” she said. “Janak, Siya, Amar… Everyone. Only I remained. For what reason, I did not know.”

The vision finally faded away, and Vir found himself on the same towering rooftop he’d been before. Back to the present-day.

Finding his legs unstable, Vir took a seat. He noticed his face was wet.

Ashani folded her legs under her and placed a hand on his cheek. His tears dried instantly.

“Thank you,” she said. “For feeling that way. In all this time, I had no one to confide in. No one to hear my tale. I never knew if society ever picked up the pieces and carried on. Or if what I was protecting was nothing more than a mausoleum.”

“And now?” Vir asked.

“Now, I know. Your existence gives me some hope. Some pieces survived. Perhaps remnants of my people are still out there, somewhere. Perhaps they will return one day.”

Vir thought of what it must have been like for her. For millennia, she’d played the role of a guardian, driven by the hope that some of her people might be alive out there, somewhere. She waited and waited, hoping someone would return. A hope that was, in all likelihood, false. Would she continue forever in this way?

It’d lingered at the back of his mind through her entire tale. What would it do to her if she knew her people were truly gone? Would she fall apart? Would she lose her reason to live?

Whether Vir remained silent or he spoke up, he’d hurt her. So, if he was doomed to hurt her anyway, he might as well do what he could for the goddess.

She deserves better than this.

“The gods are gone, Ashani. They’ve never once descended to the Human Realm. It’s a new Age now. The Age of Realms. The Age of Gods ended with that moment you shared.”

Ashani stayed silent for a moment. “You can’t say for certain, can you? You don’t truly know.”

Ashani had spent her entire life in this nightmare, all alone. Nobody should ever have had to bear such a cruel fate. Let alone her. What had she done to deserve any of this?

No. She deserved better. Maybe Vir couldn’t change the past, but he could at least change the future. The last page of her life hadn’t yet been written. It didn’t have to end in sorrow.

The last page? Vir suddenly thought, unsure of why he’d felt that way.

He steeled his nerves and met her gaze.

“It’s been millennia,” he said. “Maybe they couldn’t have returned here, to the Mahādi Realm, but they’d surely have ventured to the Human Realm by now, right?”

Vir glossed over the Vimana that hovered over the human cities. He omitted mentioning Janak. Because he hoped. He hoped for something better. A brighter future for her than anything this place offered.

A tear fell down Ashani’s cheek. “I…”

“Ashani, how many realms existed in your time?”

More tears fell down her face.

“No. Please.”

“How many realms were there when the Prime Imperium was at its height?”

Vir began to suspect it when Ashani had asked him about the Human Realm. He was almost positive now.

“Just the one. There was only ever one realm.”

“That hasn’t been true for the past four thousand years,” Vir said. “Now, there are three, with who knows how many smaller realms floating around. Ashani, I think… I think whatever happened that day didn’t just destroy Mahādi. I think it broke the realm somehow. And I think a lot of things broke when that happened. We got the Human and Demon Realms. The moon ceased to be. The Ashen Realm was born, and nothing makes sense anymore.”

“What do you mean?” Ashani asked.

“You said four thousand years have passed since the fall of the Imperium, didn’t you?”

Ashani nodded, wiping away her tears. Vir noted she didn’t simply dissolve them as she’d done for him.

“Just over four millennia, yes.”

“But how can that be?” Vir asked. “You said time moved slower here when compared to the Ashen Realm. The thing is, time in the center of the ash moves slower than the Human Realm. A lot slower. Which should mean that only about a few centuries should’ve passed since the downfall of the Imperium, at least from your perspective.”

Ashani shook her head. “I can assure you that is not the case.”

“Exactly. There’s something horribly wrong here. How can time move slower here when the same number of years have passed outside? For that matter, how can ash fall perpetually from the sky? Where does it all come from? Where does it go? Why hasn’t the ash risen to cover the tallest peaks yet? Unlike Mahādi, the Ashen Realm doesn’t have any magic to dissolve the soot on the ground. The Ashen rain never ceases, yet it never seems to pile up. And that’s not all. Where did the moon go? And why is there no day or night within the Ash? Reality is broken. And… I think your people were the ones to break it.”

Ashani gazed out at the ravaged city before them, her expression blank.

“You don’t know, do you?” Vir asked. “You don’t actually know what caused that explosion.”

“I do not. I suspected it was some research initiative that went awry, but I was never able to confirm my theory. To this day, I cannot venture anywhere near the central spire of Mahādi.”

“Why? What happens if you do?”

“My prana circuits break down. ‘Tis not simply a matter of prana exposure—my body has systems for handling such things. ‘Tis something else. Something… not physical.”

Janak’s words echoed in Vir’s mind. Find me at Mahādi. But do not venture there until you are ready.

Vir knew he wasn’t ready. Not nearly. But that was alright. He didn’t need to be. He could always come back… If Ashani came with him.

“There’s nothing for you here anymore, Ashani. Come with me,” he said, extending his hand. “You wanted to know what became of society? I’ll show you. Come back with me.”

Ashani hesitantly extended her hand, but stopped before her fingers touched his.

“You are kind, Vir,” she breathed. “You can’t know how much you’ve already done for me. I truly feel blessed to have met you, in the end.”

Vir frowned. “What do you mean, in the—”

Their hands touched, and knowledge bled into him. Ashani’s memories. Her long bouts of hibernation to preserve herself, desperately lengthening what little time she’d been given. Waking up after decades of deep sleep, to a world that never changed. She had never been designed to survive so long on so little.

“You don’t have long to live. Do you?”

- - 

NOTE: Happy weekend! That's it for Ashani's story. Back to some juicy progression stuff next week :D