by H. K Oby
The accusation made him blink. How could he be a bully when he hated them so much?
Yet, Rishi had a point. He had abused his knowledge of the guy’s weakness so many times that he had lost count, and he had…
Not the time or place! Concentrate!
Taking a deep breath, he spoke quickly.
“I’m sorry. But let’s talk about it later. Right now, we have to figure out what we’re going to do before that thing comes back. Does anyone have any ideas?”
Amaira spoke even quicker than him, her hands running through her hair so rapidly that he was sure she was yanking some out.
“No. Nothing. I tried but came up blank. What about you, Rishi? And Amin’s right, we have to keep it together until we get out of here.”
He shook his head.
Amin grimaced and folded his hands, urging his thoughts to run quicker. Cradling his chin with his hand, he stared at the ground and started to mumble at almost an incoherent volume.
“We can try to use the vimana. I have no idea how to control it. It might make that thing attack us, and we will be dead. I saw how fast it moved before. If its reaction time is that low, we need a distraction. But even with a distraction, what can I try to do?”
“We will distract it. Won’t we, Rishi?”
Amin looked up when Amaira answered. Behind her, he could hear the sounds of water sloshing and being slapped growing louder, indicating that the last fish was on the verge of being caught.
Rishi whimpered in response and clutched his head again. Incredulously, Amin asked, “You would really do that? The two of you trust me that much? With your lives?”
Amaira shrugged.
“Of course. I know you would do the same for us. Besides, that’s probably our best chance. You are supposed to be the one with the ideas. Don’t fail us now, but no pressure. We will use the same plan as before to get its attention. Just…think of something.”
Beside her, Rishi slapped himself suddenly with such force that he swayed for a moment, looking like he would topple. Then, shaking his head, he gritted his teeth and looked at Amin with watery eyes, saying, “Yes. It is the way forward with the most chance of success. You have to succeed, or, or…”
He almost broke down again, but another slap on his other cheek delivered once again by himself stopped him. At just that second, a bellow sounded from the pond.
“I’m done! You guys can start. Remember the prize!”
With a gleeful grin, the rakshasa ran to them with all the speed of a bullet train. He stared with a mixture of awe and dread as the thing accelerated in an instant, becoming that blue blur he had seen before being knocked out.
Suppressing those feelings and keeping an eye on the rakshasa who stopped and sat cross-legged halfway between the pond and where they were, he analyzed the scene he had been witness to, hoping to find something he could use. After a few moments, he did notice one thing: before accelerating, it had needed a second to gather speed when it had stood there, frozen, but after that, it sped up in just a fraction of a second, almost as if it was activating a siddhi.
He stored away the information even though he didn’t know how they would use it. The two growled at him and spread their hands threateningly after recovering from the shock of seeing the rakshasa move. Intending to buy some time, he took the same stance and started to circle them.
They imitated him, Amaira even taking it a step further and shouting out all the curses she knew. Amin ignored her and just focused on his options, but as each precious second ticked by, he was no closer to figuring out a plan that had a decent chance of success.
What the hell am I supposed to do? This is useless!
He almost fumbled and managed to catch himself in the last moment when the side of him that had reared its ugly head before returned again.
Why not run? When they distract it, maybe I can activate the vimana flee. It could work!
Even while the idea mortified him, he considered it, studying it from all sides and concluding that it could work, but there are too many variables.
“What are you doing? Just fight, or I’ll step in and kill one of you to show the others how it’s done!”
The shout made Amaira turn to the rakshasa with genuine anger.
She started to walk towards it, tugging at the end of Rishi’s jacket and dragging him along at the last second as he had stayed put instead of taking her lead. The rakshasa just looked on, mild interest showing on his face. When the both of them reached within 10 feet of it, she stopped and folded her hands, saying, “What is your problem? You swoop in out of nowhere and knock us out, and now you’re impatient? How do you think we feel, being interrupted on such a lovely day by such an unpleasant fate? How can you be so inconsiderate?”
If the situation hadn’t been so dire, Amin would have laughed out loud. The absurdity still made him blink twice and commend Amaira’s ability to just say whatever came to mind without giving a single thought as to whether it was appropriate or not.
The rakshasas looked just as surprised. Before it could recover, he saw her close her eyes. A weak glow appeared around her, like dew floating in the air around her body that sparkled in the sunlight, telling him that she was activating her siddhi, and he understood immediately that this was the distraction, and he had to make his decision.
The option of fleeing tempted him again. The part that advocated it even insisted that it was best if he acted now as he would have the most time to ensure his escape, and just as Amin saw that it was starting to sound dangerously tantalizing, he made a snap decision and recalled what he had felt after he had let that side of him take control before.
Guilt. Overpowering, crippling guilt that flowed like fire down his chest and through his stomach, making him feel as if he had swallowed a sword that that was now having fun gutting his internal organs.
It seems that, somehow, inexplicably, I…have a conscience. Yes, I do! Will I be able to live with the guilt of leaving them? No way! But is staying and dying futilely a better option?
It wasn’t. It definitely wasn’t. Yet…
Amaira’s scream that erupted all of a sudden made him take a voluntary step back. Feeling a lump in his throat, he focused his gaze on where they were and saw Amaira lying on the ground, one of her limbs resting a few feet away.
She had grown as tall as the rakshasa, but the grinning devil stood with its lower left hand holding a curved sword that was more like an oversized machete. Blood stained the sword’s edge. Clutching the spurting stump of her leg, Amaira screamed so loud her voice broke.
Rishi just stood where he was, frozen, with no sign of that glow anywhere around him. Clearly, fear had won out. The question that had popped into his mind repeated itself, and Amin found that he had an answer.
He hated both options, and it wasn’t the first time he was facing such a choice.
When given the option between going to jail for 10 years or giving up the name of someone he had worked with and signing his own death warrant, he had chosen neither.
When faced with the choice between leaving with his hands empty or staying and getting caught, he had chosen neither.
In all those moments before, his mind had sped up to such a degree that it didn’t even function with words. Feelings, emotions, and images were its language, and a solution that ordinary people would believe didn’t exist was the goal.
His eyes moved like a hawk’s, studying and categorizing everything he could use. His muscles flexed and relaxed over and over again, getting ready to aid him immediately if he needed to move.
He even delved into the past, searching for something he might not have seen before. Nothing still occurred to him for a few excruciating seconds during which Amaira’s broken voice echoed in his ears, causing his heart to hurt as if someone was squeezing it, and then, he put his hands in his pockets in a movement that came to be more out of habit then intention and felt his fingers touch a sharp object.
Everything about the vimana floated
in his mind, and a bold idea occurred to him.
There was no time to dally; looking up and seeing that the rakshasa had raised its sword above Amaira’s other leg, he screamed, “Hey, ugly! You forgot me! Come here! I’ll tell you exactly how tasteless you look!”
The rakshasa froze. Its playful look disappeared. Fat red veins snaked across its face. It took a step forward that made the ground shake again, and after a second during which it stayed immobile, it turned into a blue streak and was in front of him before he could move a muscle.
Why is it so angry? Oh… I just remembered. Didn’t I hear somewhere that rakshasas really hate when their appearance is made fun of?
In a low voice that sounded more dangerous than its loudest bellows, the creature asked, “I’m here. What did you want to say about me?”
Amin almost lost his grip on his mind and body, a wave of fear battering at him with the strength of a tsunami. His idea barely gave him the strength to remain standing. He took a breath and tried to calm himself. When it didn’t work, he launched into the first step of his plan anyway.
He recalled that moment when he had propelled himself into the air in his hut. The feeling eluded him, constantly slipping his grasp due to the terror that still shook him to his core, but after taking a glance at Amaira who had screamed herself hoarse, he used every ounce of strength within himself and concentrated, trapping the sensation and feeling the tell-tale tingling in his body that preceded the activation of a siddhi.
The rakshasa threw its head back and laughed for a second without mirth. When it focused on him again, it drew out two more swords, and with a sound akin to plastic being stretched, two gigantic black wings popped out from its back. They were covered with the same type of black feathers he had seen on that patch on its back before. Each wing was at least 20 feet long, and the feathers at the edges were razor-sharp, looking like blades unto themselves.
“All humans are the same. Act tough first, cry later. Too late for crying now.”
It raised all three swords; only its upper right hand remained empty. Nails grew on that hand while it opened like a claw. The wings spread wide, the edges gleaming in the sun. The rakshasa’s mouth opened to reveal its fangs, and all in all, it was an image that would loosen the bladder of even the bravest soldier in any army in the world.
Amin felt his fear grow, but this was the moment he had been waiting for. The rakshasa brandished all of its swords and moved before freezing again. That single second of stasis was his target. Clinging onto his focus with the last shreds of his mind, he focused his energy through the mental tunnel made by his memory but changed what he was thinking of at the last second.
Instead of moving up, he imagined his hand speeding up until it disappeared from vision. Trusting and knowing that it would work, he put his hand in his pocket, squeezed tight, drew out his fist, and threw as hard as he could, his hand really disappearing as it accelerated to a blinding speed.
Please don’t miss, please don’t miss, please don’t miss…
He didn’t. The vimana sailed straight into the rakshasa's mouth.
The thing disappeared right after. A gust of wind from his right made his hair fly, and for a moment, he believed that the timing had been wrong, that one of the rakshasa’s swords would lop off his head.
Instead, a scream that deafened him erupted from a spot just a foot in front of where he stood. He threw himself back, yet he didn’t escape the flying wall made of something he couldn’t recognize that smashed into him, knocking out his breath and breaking more than a few bones.
He fell and rolled. When he came to a stop, the adrenaline pumping through allowed him to ignore the pain and look down to see what had struck him.
Blood and gore met his eyes. Excitedly, he tilted his head up and found exactly what he had been hoping for: the vimana in its expanded form, standing on top of the remains of the rakshasa, its severed head twirling on the sharp point of the ship like a wound-up spinning top.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
AMIN COULDN’T TAKE his eyes away from his handiwork, equal parts of pride and disgust forming a mixture in his mind that kept him where he was.
Remembering Amaira’s plight after a few seconds, he tried to get up but had to stop when he realized that the damage was far more extensive than he thought. At the speed the rakshasa had been going, it was a wonder that he hadn’t been crushed, flat out, when the interruption by the vimana suddenly enlarging gloriously inside its throat had led to the being probably losing control of the siddhi it had been employing. He was thankful that the weight of the vimana had ensured that not too much of the rakshasa’s body had flown forward and crashed into him. If that was the case, he was sure that he would have been beyond coherent thought by now, probably drifting straight into Yama’s realm.
I succeeded… But what now?
The question made him raise his head, grunting due to the pain that radiated from his chest which had been struck the hardest. Rishi stood gawking at the rakshasa’s dead body with Amaira lying beside him motionless. A sudden flash of irritation almost made Amin snap at the guy.
The impulse halted in its tracks when he recalled being called a bully. This probably wasn’t the time to think on such things, but it was apparent that he would be fulfilling that role, again, if he spoke in that manner.
Controlling himself, he decided to attract the guy's attention in a more normal manner, but abruptly, a voice sounded out from all around them that made him shiver then look all around, thoughts of another rakshasa appearing unbidden in his mind.
“There you are… by Yama, what in the fourteen realms is that?”
Amin search turned up nothing. The voice broke Rishi out of his reverie, making the guy rush to Amaira, first, to check whether she was breathing. His audible sigh of relief told Amin that she was alive, causing a knot in his stomach to untangle. Keeping half an eye on the two, he kept searching the glade, the pond, and the forest to the sides and behind him, and after a few seconds during which Rishi ran toward Amin after finally realizing that he was hurt, a man appeared beside the tree to which he had been tied, right at the age edge of the forest that surrounded the glade.
The way he arrived was peculiar. A hole appeared in the grassy undergrowth beside the tree through which matted hair, a clean-shaven face, and a topless body of a sage arose, looking like he was ascending an invisible escalator that led up from the depths of the earth.
After smiling at Amin in a way that reminded him of Narad, the sage looked to the vimana and the body of the rakshasa, putting his hands on his hips and nodding as if it was a most desirable sight. When his gaze moved beyond it to Amaira’s body and the limb that had been severed from it, he sighed and said, “Hard fight, was it? Lord Ha- … I mean, the librarian told me you would be coming. Normally, I would have waited where I was, but I needed to leave my cave for some supplies, anyway. I thought I would look in on you, but I didn’t find you anywhere! Imagine my surprise when a rakshasa’s containment circle ceased to function suddenly and revealed you all. Amin, is it? I’ve heard a lot. Let me take care of your friend, first. I am sage name, by the way.”
Saluting as respectfully as if Amin was a sage, himself, the newcomer strode to Amaira’s side, picking up her leg on the way. Placing it near where it had been severed from, he closed his eyes and started to chant silently under his breath, his right palm hovering above the spot of the wound.
Amin felt his thundering heart finally begin to slow down for the first time since waking up from being knocked out by the rakshasa. He had gotten the doubt whether the sage was who he said he was, but he had had no option but to squash it after realizing that he was in no position to do anything even if this was another rakshasa playing a sick joke. It hurt to hold his head up and keep watching, so he laid back down. Just when he did so, a scream from Amaira made him try and scramble to his feet despite the excruciating agony pulsating from countless spots all over his body, ready to fight whatever was torturing her to the death.
Oh…damn the adrenaline.
Seeing that she was holding her leg which had been magically reattached, Amin cursed himself for a fool and laid down, this time intending to just stay so until he could be healed. The sage hadn't moved despite Amaira’s low moans that now echoed in the blade. Resting his head on the soft grass, Amin thought back to what they had just been through and found himself filled with mixed feelings about the entire thing.
The guilt was still present. It stemmed from both the fact that he had let himself react in that manner to being caught, and that he had considered running away. True, change was coming over him, but there was a long, long way to go if he wanted to become someone truly worthy of being a friend.
At least…I know now that such a relationship exists. And…I think I want to be a part of it.
A tiny part of him said that he should admit everything, that he should just come clean. He shut it down immediately, telling himself that he would lose everything for no reason if he did so. After all, there was nothing to suggest that those things had happened, so why go out of his way to spoil everything for himself?
The tiny voice still said that it was wrong, but he pushed it into the deepest recesses of his mind. He didn't have the energy or the mood to reflect on what it meant. At the end of the day, he had succeeded: he had pulled a plan straight out of his ass that had actually worked, and they were all safe.
"You will be alright, Miss. I can see the vestiges of what happened here. If I'm right, you distracted the rakshasa and your companion killed it. It is no small thing to have the courage to face down a foe that can kill you in a heartbeat while trusting in your friends to come through. It is not a common quality nowadays. I am impressed. This is my boon to you: if ever all feels lost, call on my name and you will be awarded with double the strength you're capable of at your best for a short time. Now, let me take care of your friend. Meanwhile, you, sir, tend to her. She needs to rest. Pluck leaves from some trees and make her a pillow. Do not worry; I have drawn my own containment circle around here, so nothing shall disturb you."
