The Weapon of the Devas

by Nanda Gopal Guruswamy

  “Oh, rea … ,” my witty retort was interrupted as he rushed me and picked me up casually and threw me. I flew for a few yards before falling. I altered the spell in my hand and said “vayis” as I was falling. A gust of wind came out of nowhere underneath me. The bed of air was softer than a mattress made of goose feathers. It cradled me gently as my body reached the ground. No one just chucks a wizard around. I stood up and turned around.

  “Saragni,” I said, and sent a wave of heated air towards Narimbu. He stopped the gust of air as I knew he would. But I had added heat to the air, which made it unbearable to touch. His hands erupted and skin peeled off burning away. He screamed as he redirected the hot air away. But some got into his face, and his hat flew away revealing his demonic face getting steamed like a lobster.

  “Hatha,” I followed that up with a push of force to his legs. He tripped and fell right on his face. His face as he got up was filled with wrath and he was looking right at me. I needed to take this fight away from here as other ‘people’ could get hurt. I ran away to the emergency exit door and opened it and took the stairs to the top. I heard the door blasted away, as Narimbu followed me with a bellow.

  I reached the top terrace which had a nice open space for us to fight. I was standing in the middle of the terrace, when the door exploded and out came Narimbu, in the form of a bull with red eyes. While Rakshasas could not do magic like wizards, they had a different sort of magic which was natural to them like breathing. Like shape shifting, Narimbu had changed himself into a bull. I was waiting for him on bent knees, ready to move. Narimbu came rampaging in and just as he was about to gore me with those hideous horns, I side stepped him. He went by harmlessly. As he was turning, I jumped on him and held his horns and forced him down to the ground. As he was going down I put my knee on his neck making sure he couldn’t throw me off. Just a little trick I learned from the village bull fighting. As I was bearing the enormous black bull to the ground and sticking his horns to the concrete, he vanished again and I was holding nothing but air. He changed into a coiled deeply black cobra nearly six feet long. He was rapidly uncoiling and raising his huge hood, while I was still on the ground trying to balance myself.

  The cobra was jet black but on his hood were blood red scales just like his eyes. It was breathtaking, except for the fangs that were nearly as long as my pinky finger. He struck at my thigh. I was able to deflect that with my left hand. As he was coming back up, I used my left hand again to grab him from behind his hood. I had him. He was helpless and immobile in this position. I repeatedly banged his head on the concrete.

  He transformed back to his human form and I was holding a thick neck and looking into his ugly face. His arms grabbed my throat and started to choke me like Prajwal. But I wasn’t helpless. I gouged his eyes and kicked him the groin. I have no qualms about fighting dirty. When he let go of me, I gave him a vicious uppercut that stunned him for a moment. But that was all I needed to move away from him and stay out of arm’s length. He was as strong as a bull. I couldn’t win a one-on-one fight with him. I remembered that now I was out in the open and it was safe for me to start using fire again.

  “Agni,” the sound came from half-crushed throat like a screech.

  But a stream of fire came out of my hand and went straight into Narimbu’s face. He screamed as his already tender eyes were burned again and was holding his face. I was trying to think of a way to beat him and maybe drag his essence out of Prajwal. I was wearing my clothes here even though I wasn’t in the real world, so my mind was projecting itself. But then one item was missing, my staff.

  My staff, which was made from serpent wood, the rarest wood on earth—the staff that I won in the dark and grimy halls of sarpaloka, the snake world, in a game of cards against another wizard. But that’s another story for another time. Serpent wood is a very rare form of wood that is preferred by wizards for its ability to channel magic more effectively. Every fibre in my staff had been closely acquainted with magic. The staff itself does not have any power, but the ancient symbols on it and the wood itself helped ease the effort to create spells and could channel more power into it making the spell much more powerful and focused than I can create by hand.

  I only had to visualize the staff in my hand to have it appear in my hands. It is five feet in length and is entirely black except for streaks of red. I carefully expanded the red stripes over time and slowly made them grow in to the form of racing stripes. So the five feet of black wood with racing stripes surging with potential appeared in my hand. I poured power into it and felt the power amplified and feed back into me. I poured more power into it and the staff purified it, focused it and fed it back to me until we reached a resonant state. The staff increased my powers and put me at the peak of my abilities.

  I turned on the unsuspecting rakshasa. He had also recovered and charged at me blindly.

  “Vayis,” I summoned a gust of wind ten times greater than before. It lifted him off his feet and threw him 20 yards away. The thought of roasting him alive did enter my head, but I disregarded it … too cruel. So I settled for giving him a beat down, force blows magnified using the staff rained down on the rakshasa who was on the ground trying to get up. Somehow even under the constant force of blows he got up on one knee and transformed into a huge rat, then a crow that took flight. The double transformation took me by surprise and before I could adjust the crow flew straight at me and transformed into his human form.

  He was already inside my guard. He held my hand holding the staff with one hand and with the other caught hold of the front of my leather jacket and head butted me. I was still seeing stars when he did it again. At the same time he was driving me back towards the edge of the terrace. I struggled to free myself, but he had already fastened himself to me and as we reached the edge, I put my fiercest resistance, but it was no use. I was too dazed. With a roar, he pushed me over. But not before I caught hold of him. We both went tumbling down the building, the concrete rushing up to meet me.

  The cover over the bathtub tumbled over violently as I came back up and rubbed my eyes. I was back in the real world and was breathing deeply, partly in relief and partly in fear. Narimbu was clearly stronger than me. But my trip was not wasted. I knew why Prajwal was in a coma. I knew the location of the item he had acquired. He had somehow got his hands on a piece of armour that he said belonged to the great Arjuna. ‘The’ Arjuna from the Mahabharata.

  Chapter 7: Arjuna

  So Narimbu was keeping Prajwal in coma. Dragging Narimbu over the edge of the terrace onto the concrete several storeys below must have hurt him, but not killed him. Prajwal was still in a coma but his colour had improved. Narimbu had been much stronger than me and I doubted if any exorcism could drive him out. Going back into his mind was risky. The fight between us caused some damage to the environment around us and I wasn’t sure if I could handle the mighty rakshasa. The only way I saw for rescuing Prajwal would be to command the rakshasa to come out and that can only be done by his master. I had to find out who his master was.

  Maybe the piece of armour would give me a clue. Palak, Aditya and I were standing and looking at the magnificent tapestry on the wall. It was hidden in plain sight all along. I just hadn’t seen it. The room was dimly lit and the tapestry was all made of dark colours so it wasn’t really standing out among the other antiques in there. The tapestry on the wall was that of Arjuna and Krishna riding into battle on a golden chariot. It was huge and covered a large portion of the wall. Arjuna was wearing the armour. I leaned in for a closer look and could detect a slight aura coming off the tapestry. There was something different about Arjuna’s armour on the tapestry. It looked like something had been amended recently. I ran my fingers along the tapestry and felt a small bump along the Arjuna’s chest. I slowly scratched the tapestry with the nail of my index finger and could feel the threads slowly unraveling. There was something underneath. Something golden!

  I slowly unravelled that part of the tapestry thread by thread and sh
immering underneath was a hard golden object. Palak came closer and gasped and covered her mouth with her hand. Aditya’s jaw dropped as well. The tapestry had a small hiding place gouged in the wall. A small golden object roughly the size of my hand had been lodged in it and stitched over. I took a small piece of cloth and used it to remove the golden object. My hand was a bit unsteady. It was like a golden fish scale, slightly curved and the size of my hand, it was slightly flexible. The aura coming off it was clear now, like a clear high note from a musical instrument.

  Whatever it was, it was magical. And touching an unknown magical object with your bare hands is dangerous … it could be cursed, so I slowly took it out to the balcony where I first met Palak and placed it on the coffee table. The golden scale glinted in the dawn sunlight. I was very curious. It really did look like a piece of armour with some power but was it really the Pandava’s? Summoning a large chunk of my energy, I let out an arc of force at the armour. The table shattered into pieces and glass flew everywhere.

  “Are you crazy? What’s wrong with you?” Palak shouted

  Aditya on the other hand looked dumbstruck. His left eye was twitching uncontrollably.

  “What on earth … how did he do that?”

  I was still looking at the ruins of the coffee table … spellbound and at the little piece of glinting armour.

  “Look at it. It is unharmed, not even a dent.” I said

  Palak saw that I was right and a disturbed expression was on her face. Aditya stepped forward and was examining the pieces of the table closely. “Gotta be here, he must have placed some sort of explosive here before we all came in. There must be traces.” He continued trying to convince himself.

  I crouched next to Aditya and removed the piece using a cloth. It hadn’t even fallen very far. I had thrown a considerable amount of power at it but it made no difference at all. It was still the same, I could only imagine what a suit made of this golden scales would be like. The wearer would be invincible, completely protected like a golden dragon. I was breathing heavily with the effort and a wave of tiredness came on me.

  I shrugged it off and told Palak that I need the golden scale. She was nodding with a faraway look. Aditya was still searching for traces of explosive on the balcony, peering into the potted plants. The poor sap, I considered telling him the truth but he wouldn’t believe me anyway. I carefully placed the scale in my jacket and rode back to my place.

  As I opened the door, I was greeted by the sound of cats fighting. It was a video running on my laptop. Kajur was staring at it completely mesmerized.

  “Hey,” I said, placing my helmet on the stand after removing my shoes. Kajur was seated on the desk. He was sitting cross legged. He was just two feet so sitting down he wasn’t much higher than the laptop screen. He turned around with a look of childish glee.

  “What is this? It’s amazing. It has even more knowledge than me.”

  “It is a laptop connected to the internet. ” I replied.

  “Internet …” he said musingly.

  I walked over to him and saw that he had already opened a certain website for hosting videos and was looking at cat videos. He learns fast but had gotten hooked onto cats. It was funny.

  He moved his hand gingerly over the mouse and clicked play again. That was strange.

  “How did you know how to use the mouse?” I asked pointing at it.

  “I saw you use it before.”

  I did check my mail before leaving, so he must have seen it then.

  “This is incredible!” He kept saying looking at the screen, delighted.

  “So what happened about your anger over my so-called enslavement of you? ”

  “Oh, forget that boss. I would gladly serve given that I have access to this internet. It will take years before I go through all of this.”

  “And they would have added a lot more by the time you were done. Now move over, I have work to do. You can see this stuff later.”

  “Yes Sir, Master Chief!” He said clicking his heels and giving me a salute.

  I tried hard not to laugh and said “Good.”

  Researching the internet for real facts is a tedious job, especially while searching for something mythological. There were very little facts available on the internet about Arjuna’s armour. I did find a related forum and left a question there. Next, I looked over some original versions of the Mahabharata, but there were no proper references to his armour. Finally I got up to make a few calls to the experts in the subject. I really couldn’t find anything connecting this piece of armour of Arjuna.

  What could be the connection between Suryaprakash’s yagna, and the piece of armour? Without looking at the slokas in the yagna, it would be impossible to tell. I thought about the life of the Arjuna, supposedly the greatest archer in the Mahabharata, the third Pandava, the son of Kunti and Lord Indra, the thunder god … trained by Dronacharya, sponsored by a god.

  I turned around to Kajur, the little guy, who quickly took his seat opposite the laptop. He was completely hooked onto the web as if trying to download the entire internet into his little brain. I asked him to sit in front of me. He looked up from the laptop and said, “Did you know that white cats with blue eyes are almost always deaf?”

  “Hmm …. Useful.”

  I raised the armour piece and asked, “You know anything about this?”

  His face was blank as he looked at me without answering. His previous master must have commanded him not to say anything. I tried to get at the answer in a different way.

  “Let us say that we’re having a theoretical discussion. If I have a piece of clothing, what kind of things could I do with it, magically speaking?”

  Kajur smiled as he spoke. “Lots of things. It is possible for the aura or the essence of a person to attach itself to an object that the person uses regularly for a long time, especially if the object was associated to the person during a very emotional or traumatic time. This object becomes the very extension of the person’s body.”

  That was true. After Jesus was crucified, His body was placed on a piece of cloth and buried. After he was resurrected, the image of Jesus was imprinted on the cloth and the cloth itself is said to possess many miraculous powers, including healing. That piece of cloth is called the ‘Shroud of Turin’ and is now safeguarded in a church in Europe as an important piece of religious history. The stories say that every fragment on the piece of that cloth possesses a detectable aura. So it was possible that this piece of armour contained the aura of Arjuna, even though he lived hundreds of years earlier that Jesus. Could it be possible that his aura was retained in this piece of armour he wore to battle after thousands of years? There was something coming off the armour piece for sure and I could sense it on the magical plane. Like a sound coming from a tuning fork after it’s been struck. But was it really Arjuna’s? And now that I could sense the continuous disturbance, it was annoying.

  Kajur continued. “So this object charged with the aura of a person is almost equivalent to having his blood or some other body part like hair or nails. So you can do the same things that you can do with a person’s blood. Many things come to mind but predominant of them is summoning. ”

  “Summoning what?”

  His face went blank again. His clothes shimmered and changed. It looked like he was wearing a white coat.

  “I’m sorry, detective. My responses are limited. You must ask the right questions.” He said in a deep voice.

  “Oh, I get it. You saw the iRobot movie. Gotcha Dr Alfred Lanning.”

  He nodded his head.

  He became distant and uncommunicative after that. So I let him get back to the laptop.

  I put the armour piece under the sofa cushion and the vibrations reduced somewhat. The tiredness came back to me in a rush and all I wanted to do was lie down and take rest. My head was feeling a little light. But I needed to stay on top of this thing. There was something big going on in the city and I wasn’t going to let something bad happen on my watch. So I got up a
nd opened the fridge, took a sports drink that contained large amount of caffeine to keep me awake. One wasn’t enough, so I drank two.

  Pumped on caffeine, I was still pacing in the hall with the TV on; the background noise helped me think. Alagaraja arrived; he sat on the sofa, put his feet up on the coffee table and laid his head back.

  ‘’Oh, man. What a day! I got to look under the hood of an Aston-Martin today. Freaking amazing.”

  “That’s nice. I may have found a relic that proves the Mahabharatha really did happen.” I replied dryly. He looked at me with tired eyes and said, “Ok, you win. Your day was better”.

  I liked using Raja as a sounding board for bouncing ideas. He had a mechanical, trained mind that complemented my non-linear, unorthodox type of thinking that often makes me think of crazy ideas that just might work. So I told him what had happened.

  After listening to everything he said, “Ok, in a nutshell, you are after a guy. He needs an object for something. You have the object but don’t know what that something is. You want to find out.”

  “You’re right. So why not trade? I give him the object to tell me what that something is,” I replied.

  “But wouldn’t that get him one step closer to whatever he is trying to achieve?” Raja said

  “Maybe. My fear is that this piece might not be irreplaceable. This piece of armour, rare as it might be, may not be the only piece. What if there are other pieces? If he could track this piece to its location, he might be able to track the others. And he might be able to obtain another piece somewhere else. Worse, what if there are other relics that have survived? He could get those objects for the yagna. Having this piece is my only advantage. I can find out what the yagna or spell or whatever Suryaprakash had designed, prevent it from happening. And of course, find a way to get Narimbu out of Prajwal.”

  Raja was looking at me doubtfully. “Sounds like a tall order. Lots of things to do for you. ”