Deathsworn: Siddhi Chronicles Book 1

by H. K Oby

  The eight siddhis were:

  Anima: the ability to reduce the size of the body.

  Mahima: the ability to increase the size of the body.

  Garima: the ability to increase one’s weight.

  Laghima: the ability to decrease one’s weight.

  Prapti: the ability to create physical objects.

  Prakamya: the ability to impose one’s will upon the world, changing reality.

  Vasitva: the ability to control the elements and other forces, such as gravity, etc.

  Isitva: absolute control over all aspects of creation.

  Reading about each siddhi made his jaw drop more and more, and when he reached the last one, he just gawked at the book, eyes unfocused.

  This is godly stuff! Is all of this really possible?

  Recovering after a minute, he read further. Apparently, the classification had been worked out after analyzing the experiences of those who had meditated on the very idea of stepping out of mortal bounds. A specific type of comprehension of the world accompanied each siddhi. Focusing separately on each type made it easier for one to tread down the chosen path, with the most negligible chances of going astray.

  Each siddhi had sub-siddhis. The further down one went in the list, the more the number of sub-siddhis increased. Rishi’s siddhi was a sub-form of Prakamya: he changed reality to obtain spurts of strength.

  One’s mental strength and internal energy were the two factors that governed the use of a siddhi. The stronger you were mentally, the more powerful your siddhi was. Rishi could barely manage to double his physical strength when he was at his best. He had been told that if he grew strong enough, he would be able to punch through concrete or metal.

  The more energy you have, the longer you can use a siddhi. For all initiates, increasing internal energy was something they were ordered not to think about now. He had hoped he would find out why this was so, but the book didn’t have the answer.

  The summary he made was concise, containing only the information useful to him. The book had gone into a lot of detail, most of it concerning the history of each siddhi and the men and women who had perfected it. He had skimmed through those parts, finding no interest in knowing who all were better than him, and at the end of the book, he found a page that had been added outside the cover of the second book. Its heading read “Related books of interest”, and below it was a list of books with locations marked on the right side of each.

  One name popped out of the rest to him, and after a few moments of rest, he started to hunt for it. Knowing the location, it was easy to figure out how to find the book. The rows were numbered, and the bookcases also had numbers. Following them, he pressed the button and felt that dense substance take ahold of him again, sending him up into the air while he righted himself quickly and waited for the 12th row.

  A minute or so later, he was back on the table, clutching a book with the bold title “How to fly?”

  There was no denying it; the obsession to once again experience what had saved him in that eventful evening was hard to suppress. Once again opening the book and flipping past to the second half that was probably a translation, he started to read.

  It was a much thicker tome than the first one. There were at least five hundred pages to go through, but he still managed to finish it in a couple of hours, not even pausing to take a drink of water. When he was done, he felt his throat burn, and looking around, he found a mud jar with a glass on top like the one in an initiate’s hut.

  Taking a drink, he reflected on everything he had learned.

  Flying was such a broad subject that there were almost a hundred ways to accomplish it, listed in increasing order of difficulty. The easiest was, coincidentally, the one he had experienced so many times already. It involved using the siddhi related to changing reality, creating an area around oneself, or around the target that did not follow the rules of gravity.

  He wasn’t satisfied, at all, with this method, and so, sitting back down on the table, he closed his eyes and went back to that moment when he had flown out of the car and zipped through the air. It was still hazy, a memory only half-remembered as his mind had been taken to the edge of existence, but the more he thought about it, the more he grew sure of the fact that it was a technique toward the very end of the book.

  It had been listed just a couple of pages behind the most demanding method, which was to shift space around oneself—a feat that the book claimed only those who had mastered all other siddhis to some degree could hope to accomplish. The one that caught his interest was a combination of the siddhi relating to decreasing one’s weight and one of propelling oneself.

  Now it makes sense! That is why those disciples of the first elder and even the first elder, himself, were so surprised. The pulse lets initiates use one siddhi, but I was able to use two! But what do I do now? Which one do I focus on?

  He asked himself which siddhi he could use more in a fight, and the answer was easy. Suddenly moving faster seemed like an almost unbeatable power if used correctly; in fact, it must exactly have been what the giant had been using to move so quickly despite his size, and this thought sealed the deal.

  The book also had a page at the back with probable books that one might continue their studies with. In the list was a book related to self-propulsion, and a few minutes later, Amin happily sat down on the table and opened the translated copy.

  Another hour later, he was done. He would have been lying if he said that he hadn’t been scared of the possibility that the path to learning this siddhi might have been too difficult to even understand, but perplexingly, the opposite was true. The path was actually simple, and immediately, this put him on his guard.

  He had read every word three times, going through the entire thing until he was satisfied that it said nothing between the lines. He had even cross-referenced what he had found with other books and was forced to conclude that the same thing was being repeated, albeit in different ways with a few tips that should have been obvious.

  The gist was this: one had to create a visual moment within oneself that implied that they had already mastered the siddhi. One had to ascertain all of the emotions and feelings that went with it, drawing a mental paintbrush with such precision that the image would be no different from reality. One had to find a secluded place and meditate on the completed image, on the completed moment in time, learning what it was like to have the siddhi.

  Finally, one had to reach the state where they were one with the siddhi, and automatically, they would have learned it.

  It seemed absurdly simple, but at the end of each book, a line had made Amin gulp and try to forget that he had read it.

  It was the line that said that the approximate time to learn the siddhi by oneself was 10 years, spent in deep meditation.

  He had to convince himself that he was different, that there must be a way that others had not figured out. He had even reasoned that his need was far more potent than any other, so it was possible it may help him to achieve the impossible.

  Determined to at least try his best, he left the library. Going back to his hut and finding it empty, he immediately began, imagining a scene where he stood on the sparring ground against the giant with his hands up and moved so supernaturally fast that he was ten feet away in barely a second.

  By that night, he had made no progress. A lot has been said on the fickle nature of the mind and how hard it was to bring it under control. Amin saw for himself how much this was true. He had always thought that he was an expert in controlling his mind, but he quickly understood how wrong he had been. At most, he was able to go for an hour with no interfering thoughts. Then, a single one would pop up, and it would be as if a dam had burst, filling his mind with useless things and a sense of futility.

  He still persevered, taking not a single break until Rishi and Amaira came in the evening, asking whether he wanted to eat. He just told them what he was doing and said that he wasn’t in the mood. He couldn’t waste any time; even a secon
d spent not dwelling on the moment he had chosen might be one where he was backtracking all the progress he had made, so he stayed put.

  He spent the entire night wavering between absolute focus and periods of almost painful unmindfulness where he tried to rein in all his thoughts and always failed. Slowly, the amount of time he could spend without being interrupted by a random thought like how Amaira would feel if she was hugging him right now increased, but it seemed to make no difference.

  Even when he was completely dwelling on the image, there were too many variables. Would it feel as if someone was pushing him from behind? Would it feel as if he was barrelling through the air, as if shot out of cannon? Would the wind hurt because he was going so fast? How would his hair feel with all that wind going through it? His clothes should flap, right? What sound would they make if they did, and how would he hear that sound while moving so fast?

  There were too many questions. When he answered ten, a hundred more would pop up.

  Rishi and Amaira were shocked when they found him the following day in the same position. When they reminded him of the punishment he had been given, he grimaced and went to the library, half-heartedly replying to the warm greetings from many of the vanaras who saw him. Even inside the library, he found a secluded spot at the very edge of the large building and went back to his meditation, not even acknowledging the presence of the hunger in his stomach.

  The day passed in that manner, with Amin only taking breaks to stretch his legs and hands that hurt from sitting in one position for too long. In the back of his mind, frustration was building because it was getting harder and harder to attain those long periods of focus, but he kept at it, telling himself that he was not someone who gave up easily.

  Rishi and Amaira returned at night, and he felt like kissing both of them seeing the leaf-wrapped food they brought. It was a vegetable stew mix with rice, and after almost 2 days of eating nothing, it tasted divine.

  It’s funny. I decided to check up on them frequently, but they’re the ones checking on me.

  Seeing how he ate, Amaira suggested that he take breaks at least for his meals, but he shot down the suggestion, explaining that the sage who had written the book had said how it helped to abstain as much as possible. It was true; the man had spoken about abstinence but in the space of years, not days.

  Not bothering to go back to the hut, he stayed in the library which was kept lit all night, surprisingly, by lamps that flared to life on their own, hanging from the ceiling at such a height that they were invisible to one on the ground during daytime. They looked like kerosene lamps on the outside, like the ones given to the initiates, hung from thick vines at various heights, but they glowed with a light far stronger than one that would emanate from a flame. There was also no flame evident; they were just like light bulbs that looked archaic, and he had even wondered whether that was the truth.

  The next morning dawned, and Amin was no closer to his goal. The absence of sleep was catching up to him; now, hardly a half-hour went by before stupid thoughts arose in his head, and each time this happened, the annoyance he felt showed on his face and even his body.

  As night began to approach on the third day, each break in focus started to be accompanied by a violent outburst that he barely managed to control each time. The time periods kept falling, from half an hour to fifteen minutes, then to ten, then to five, and then to just one.

  When he found himself measuring the time internally and looking forward to when his two friends would come with more food, he threw his hands in the air and finally gave up. He hadn’t even been focusing for the last 10 minutes. He had been dwelling on a mental image of eating what they brought, and that had felt more vivid than anything he had created so far.

  Bending forward and resting his head on the hands he folded and placed on the table, Amin tried to stop the wetness in his eyes. He knew, now, that that sage had been right. It really might take 10 years to master the siddhi, and he probably didn’t even have ten months.

  “Have we given up, then, finally?”

  A shaky voice made him look up into eyes that were a brilliant black. He spent a moment marveling at how deep they were, and then, he was suddenly sucked in.

  Time lost all meaning. A stray thought said that he had experienced this before, but what he had felt then was dwarfed entirely by all of the sensations going through him at the moment.

  He felt as if he was in control of the entire world, but at the same time, he knew he was nothing, as inconsequential as a speck of dust. He felt as if the whole cosmos was arrayed in front of him, to be reached out and grasped as effortlessly as if it was a fruit on a tree, but at the same time, he knew that any motion he made would achieve nothing.

  He was the sun, he was the stars, he was the earth, he was an ant. Lives flickered in his eyes; eons passed in a blink. And then he was back in his own body, and he collapsed onto the back of the chair.

  “I expect you haven’t slept at all? Sleep is the most important food for the mind. Ignore it, and this is what happens. You just fainted, young man.”

  Amin shook his head, trying to get rid of the blurriness that really was affecting his vision.

  Was that it? Was it really a dream? But it felt as if it was because of those eyes…oh, who am I kidding. I really am sleep-deprived enough to hallucinate.

  The one speaking to him was the oldest vanara he had seen yet, with fur that was completely white all over his body. He, too, wore a dhoti and a khanduva like the supervisor, but the colors on them were muted. Both were stark white, neatly pressed, and both looked like they were part of the old vanara’s body.

  Kind eyes met his. They were black, but they were nothing like what he thought he had seen.

  Nodding wearily, he replied, “Yes, you’re right. May I ask who you are?”

  Blinking as if confused then smiling generously, the vanara replied, “You’ve been in my library for so long, and you don’t know who I am? Has no one told you? I am the librarian. No name is necessary; my work is my life.”

  The librarian? There is one?

  Amin felt his thoughts growing slower, again, so he shook his head vigorously and stood up, intending to go and sleep before making any drastic decisions or embarking down a path of resentment and depression. Yet, the moment he began to turn away after saying that he was sorry and that he had to go, the librarian spoke, and the words he heard made him freeze.

  “I’m the one who is sorry. You wasted three days because I wasn’t here to advise you! If I hadn’t had to leave on something urgent, I would have told you on that first day, itself, that it is useless to follow what is written in the books you read. Being granted a gift from the matrix eliminates the time to learn a siddhi completely, but when Ayodhya first began, there weren’t that many who agreed to take part in the godly matrix. Then, there were many like you, even though most have forgotten this fact. The pulse was created not just to identify potential initiates. Its purpose is also to grant a gift of its own: the gift of that moment of using a siddhi which can be pondered on and comprehended to learn the siddhi used. Just focus on what you felt when the pulse entered you, young man, and you will succeed. Isn’t that much easier?”

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Half of Amin wanted to punch the librarian in the face no matter how much like an old man he looked, and the other half wanted to hug the guy tightly.

  Three days. Three days he had spent completely wasting his time in a dead-end task that had no chance of success.

  The book said there was no chance… How is it anyone else’s fault that I didn’t believe them? But why didn’t this guy talk to me sooner!

  It looked like the first half would win out, but a memory instantly tilted the balance, making him groan, then smack his head as hard as he could.

  Dammit! Didn’t Narad tell me to find this librarian as soon as I entered the library? He did talk about an old vanara, though, and he didn’t use the honorific, but why didn’t I follow that advice immediately? Okay,
I do know why. I’m dumb. That’s it; I’m the dumbest guy alive…and I give in to something that fills my mind way too often. Why can’t I control myself and think about a situation logically?

  He swayed from the force of his own punch. When he had finally gotten to the library, the thought hadn’t even occurred to him to recall what that great sage had said. Later on, he remembered thinking about it momentarily but then shrugging it away as he believed that his time was better spent trying to achieve the impossible rather than go looking for some vanara.

  Now that he thought about it, it felt like the most idiotic decision he had ever taken in his life.

  The librarian was looking at him strangely, probably convinced that he had gone mad due to the lack of sleep. When he looked at the vanara, gratitude suddenly overwhelmed him, gratitude and relief because he now had something specific he could target, instead of repeatedly having to convince himself that he could shorten 10 years to 10 days.

  He bowed for the first time in his life with all the intent of his heart and soul. Bringing his hands together in respect, palms meeting each other, he saluted the old one and said, “Thank you. Thank you! You don’t know how much this means to me. I was getting dejected by the second, believing that there was no other way for me, that there was no way out of failing the trails. You’ve shown me the way forward. May I ask, respectfully, whether you have any other words of advice? You were right about sleep. I’ll catch up, then immediately do what you said. I don’t know why I didn’t think of it myself; maybe I should have connected the dots after reading the book, itself.”

  He raised his hand to smack himself again, but the old vanara caught it with surprising speed and strength, saying, “No, it is not that obvious. You did the logical thing: after finding out that you employed two siddhis, you aimed to break the task down and master one before proceeding to the other. The reason initiates are told not to enter the library is that the books create assumptions that are hard to get rid of. Take you, for example. You believed that the technical aspects were the most important, that siddhis have a concrete bridge between each of them, and that they revolve around some laws you don’t know yet. That is completely false. Siddhis are just states of being that can be attained in infinite ways. There is no definite way to aim for one. One must just study one’s own experiences, one’s own mind, one’s own talents, and decide the best way forward. Old folk like us exist to offer advice on this decision. You have been graced by the Pulse, graced in a way that few others are lucky enough to experience, and honestly, it would have even been a waste if you had gotten a siddhi from the gods. True, you would have been much farther along, but in a way, you would have been wasting what you were lucky enough or skilled enough to obtain.”