Three creatures emerged from the forest.
They were not wolves, or indeed any animal known to humans, stonehorns, or aditarus. No scholar had ever laid eyes on them before. Because if they did, every single soul on Sindria would’ve heard about it, so strange was one detail about their anatomy.
Their Throat Chakra was churning at an incredibly rapid rate.
It was Awakened.
For several long blinks, all five of them tried to process this piece of information in his or her own way, with varying degrees of success.
“By the Maker!!” breathed Kumil, “What are they?” while James barked, “Regroup.”
A frowning Aisha dragged Eve by her elbow and stood behind the Cleric, who gave her a small nod of approval.
Arjun simply stared at them, noticing and trying to memorize every detail about these strange beings. In the next blink, the excitement of discovering a whole new species fled his mind as the nearest creature turned its head and looked Arjun straight in the eye.
At roughly five feet tall, with pale sky-blue skin, thick corded muscles, short legs, and long arms that almost touched the ground, it bore more resemblance to a gorilla than a human.
That is until you saw its piercing all-too-humanlike dark eyes. Eyes full of barely controlled rage. Eyes gleaming with malevolent intelligence.
Gazing into those intense coal-black orbs, a strange sense of reluctance enveloped Arjun’s Heart.
Two more of the creatures dropped down from a nearby tree, landing with almost preternatural grace. With silent padded feet that contained six digits, both approached the rear of the mound, but from different directions, surrounding them stealthily. The movement of their limbs seemed jerky and effortless at the same time, more akin to a bird or a reptile than any mammal Arjun had ever encountered.
Something at the back of Arjun’s mind screamed a warning, urging caution, and kept on insisting that the very presence of these creatures was contradictory to the laws of the Cosmos.
Arjun heartily agreed.
Even the very essence in the surrounding air swirled in strange chaotic patterns before being sucked into their bodies. Odder still, they all had exactly two of the primary Chakras Awakened, besides the Crown – Heart and Throat, while every single one of the eight secondary Chakras blazed like a bonfire of kernel. Compared to them, the primaries, especially the Throat, seemed like a weak candle before the twinsuns. As for opened Chakras, there was only one. The Spine.
Tilting its wolf-shaped head back, one of the creatures, bulkier than the rest, sniffed the air. Whatever it smelled, didn’t seem to agree with it as a low growl escaped from deep within its belly.
“Rubina protect us!!” Kumil said, grim-faced. “Box?” he asked the Battle Cleric, who gave a firm nod in reply, and the five of them fell into formation, with James guarding the front and the half-stonehorn taking the rear beside Arjun.
Standing there at James’ side, Eve looked strangely hesitant. Dejected even. She also wasn’t as surprised to see these ‘gorilla-men’ as the rest of them.
Seems that was one question answered, though given the state of affairs, Arjun would’ve preferred the mystery.
“Why do I get the feeling these creatures are not as wild as their appearance suggests?”
His question, or perhaps the raised voice carrying an undertone of panic, seemed to agitate the creatures even more. They paused, standing rigid for a blink. Then, without any apparent visual cue, all five of them attacked together.
The nearest one crossed the ten or so feet separating them in less than half a blink, bulldozing through the earthen shield raised by Kumil. Even with reduced momentum, the muscular hairy creature all but bowled Arjun over with its heavy body. It was only thanks to his mental talents that he managed to anticipate the trajectory of the body and barely avoided being knocked down. These things were far faster than their ungainly frames suggested.
Missing its prey seemed to enrage the creature even more. With a savage growl, it launched into an almost horizontal jump.
Arjun scrambled to evade the left-handed punch, but again, its reflexes were a lot faster than anything he’d ever encountered before. The fist missed his abdomen and collided with the left side of his chest, cracking a few ribs and knocking the wind out of him. Before he could Heal himself, the creature was upon him, pummeling him mercilessly with its fists, elbows, even Knees.
Arjun was flabbergasted when he sensed the impact with the latter Chakra seemed to be disrupting his kernel signature, forcing him to Heal himself. Also, in spite of the fact that the creature lacked fighting technique, it more than made up for it with its ferocity and agility, the last of which was only marginally lesser than that of Arjun himself, something that left Arjun bruised and battered within blinks because of one simple yet bewildering fact.
When it came to pure raw strength, the gorilla-man was leagues ahead of him, far more so than even their muscular frames suggested, hinting that some form of alteration of Reality was involved, though Arjun had no idea how that could possibly be true. He sensed no Manipulation from any of them. And sure as the twinsuns, they weren’t aditarus.
Rolling with the punches and doing his level best to simultaneously Heal himself and to use degenerative Healing when the creature’s punches made contact with the palm of his hands, Arjun struggled to clear his mind and come up with a strategy to defeat his bizarre opponent. The unrelenting blows made even trivial earth Manipulation a challenge. And since most of the time the attacks lacked any conscious thought or planning, and instead were launched using pure instinct, Arjun’s sense of anticipation and mental talent were proving to be less useful than usual.
On top of all that, the gorilla-man was surprisingly resistant to Healing, and even when Arjun managed to sneak in a punch or two, it hardly seemed to inconvenience the bulky creature, eliciting nothing more than a grunt or two. The only saving grace was its lack of Manipulation abilities, which Arjun finally decided to take full advantage of.
Realizing direct close-quarter conflict was unwise without first restricting its movements, with a burst of speed Arjun disengaged from his foe and jumped back using earth Manipulation, then, with a pulse of dark-brown ocher essence through his left Sole, softened the soil while the creature advanced toward him.
The slight distraction provided by the subsequent slip enabled Arjun to dodge the next fist. But he’d misjudged the creature’s cunning intelligence, because all of a sudden, its speed surpassed his own, and he found himself nose-to-nose with his foe.
As it bit down on Arjun’s left shoulder, he threw caution to the wind and grabbed it by the bull-like neck. Next, ignoring the blossoming pain in his shoulder, Arjun encased its feet and lower torso in solid earth. This only served to enrage the beast even more as it chomped down harder.
With overwhelming pain and blood-loss threatening to break his concentration, Arjun desperately wrung its neck, trying to dislodge the jaw from his shoulder. After a couple of excruciatingly long blinks of jostling, the jaw disengaged with a growl, taking with it a good chunk of the muscles from his shoulder.
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Then, the pain reached a crescendo and Arjun realized he’d miscalculated.
The Aimin-cursed beast’s saliva was poisonous.
Worse still, it was a mix of haemotoxin and neurotoxin he was utterly unfamiliar with. As a result, despite his best efforts, Arjun realized that the damage to his body done by the incredibly corrosive poison flowing through his veins was beyond his ability to Heal, at least completely. He’d have to hope James could come to his aid before too long. Till then, his own efforts would have to suffice. But first, he had a damned beast to kill.
With the last of his flagging strength, Arjun started breaking down the skin and then muscles and bones of the creature’s neck. It was resistant to Healing, but not immune to it. However, the strange nature of its biology made the whole process agonizingly slow.
Then, between one blink and the next, Time seemed to come alive and everything started slowing down.
Arjun smelled the creature’s blood, a metallic coppery taste.
And, his sluggish Crown noted with interest, green in color.
He also sensed his own heartbeat, irregular and rapidly weakening. With the shadows deepening around his field of view due to lack of air, he sensed another heartbeat. One a lot faster than his own.
Then, something miraculous happened.
The world opened up. Time slowed further, almost to a crawl. Or his perception of it quickened. Arjun couldn’t care less which was true as his Crown drowned in blissful information.
No, not mere information.
Knowledge. Eternal, ephemeral, excruciating knowledge.
Philosophers and theologians argue that impending death brings clarity, wisdom – some even posit, omniscience.
They might be onto something, Arjun decided, while another, tiny, part of his Crown kept on insisting this was just delirium brought on by lack of air. Hushing that unimaginative part of himself, Arjun let his senses drift.
He could sense his surroundings with absolute clarity. Smell the coming rain in the air, marvel at the fragrance of the rhododendron blossoms that had a sheen of ice coating it, the sight of which always brought a smile to his face. Feel the vibrations from the beavers building a dam upstream as they scampered about gathering logs, the male rebuking its mate for neglecting their sole offspring while he hunted. A lone raven in the pine tree sharpening its beak, eagerly awaiting the feast to come. No matter who won, a banquet was guaranteed. A kingfisher flying away from the cacophonous noise emanating from the clearing, heading west, its blue and yellow feathers distinctive even at this distance.
Then, tearing his gaze away from these small wonders of nature – the true wonders – Arjun reluctantly turned his attention to the battle raging all around him.
James, even while lacking his trusted shortsword, had somehow managed to decapitate one of the gorilla-men and was engaged in a close-fought combat against another. He had a few more holes in his body than usual, but his movements didn’t seem to be hampered by them.
Kumil was slumped beside a freshly closed pit in the ground, bleeding profusely, his skin more ashen than normal. Burying them alive seemed to be more effective than surrounding them in earthen walls. These beastly creatures were immensely strong. His own bruises can attest to that fact. Problem was Arjun lacked the raw Manipulation strength needed to do so at a moment’s notice, especially with an enraged inhumanly strong creature bearing down on him.
Eve had fared rather well against one, as evidenced by the mangled corpse at her feet. Their direct relentless fighting style mirrored her own, only she had access to Manipulation, enabling her to come out of the encounter relatively unscathed. Relative to Arjun, that is. Bathed in blood, she dusted herself off, and then helped Aisha get back to her feet.
Judging by the blood-soaked jacket, his half-aditarun friend was grievously wounded, though not all the blood might be hers as she seemed to be recovering faster than logically possible. Perhaps James had Healed Aisha before engaging her attacker. The bemused and puzzled expression on Eve’s face as she looked at Aisha’s wounds suggested there might be another explanation behind her rapid recovery. Aisha herself was looking in Arjun’s direction, a horrified expression frozen on her stunning face.
At that moment, Arjun knew he was very close to death. But that fact didn’t seem all that important. People die by the millions every day. What was one more soul visiting the Eternal Halls? Perhaps another question will finally be answered, and he’ll get to meet that strange being, the one that still haunted his dreams.
Mundane dreams, not vivid ones like the dream he’d dreamt that fateful day. Not a memory.
With impending death, a small, practical, part of his Crown grew larger, and normal, logical, operations resumed.
Arjun took stock.
Even if James knew the composition of the poison, the Healing process would take several blinks at the very least. Arjun didn’t have several blinks of life left in him, and James might be too preoccupied with other dangers. Like a furious alien creature with superhuman reflexes and insane strength who was also resistant to degenerative Healing.
Then, the nearest heartbeat wavered, slowed down, fluttered one final time, then stopped. As the weight around his hands went limp, the world snapped back to normal speed.
Somebody groaned. It took Arjun a few moments to realize that somebody was him.
By the time Aisha had reached him, trailed by a grimacing and limping Eve, Arjun had managed to extricate himself from the corpse of the beastly creature half-encased in earthen mound. But as soon as he did that, his feet betrayed him, and he collapsed, barely able to support his own weight. The Healing process had slowed down the spread of the poison, but had by no means eradicated it. His left shoulder was numb, and the numbness was spreading as the paralytic poison circulated to other parts of his body through the bloodstream.
Aisha scrambled to his side, knelt down, put her right palm on his chest, and closed her eyes.
Arjun had been Healed before, so the sharp cold lethargic feeling was familiar to him. But the accompanying sense of worry, fear and anxiety emanating from Aisha, an inadvertent result of the Healing and his own inexplicable mental connection with her, told him what he had suspected since the very first time he’d laid eyes on her.
She had romantic feelings for him, very strong feelings, despite knowing him for such a short period of time. He sighed in relief, more from learning that his own feelings were reciprocated than from the lessening of pain.
Then, it hit him.
Aisha was a Healer.
Arjun’s eyes snapped open, and he looked toward her accusingly. She should have told him earlier. Trust is a two-way street.
“Well, well, what do you know? The girl’s full of surprises.” James had somehow managed to dispatch his opponent, Heal Kumil to some degree and was gingerly walking toward them. He had a few more bruises, and judging by the way he was pressing his chest, a few freshly cracked ribs, But otherwise he was in excellent health, especially considering their opponents.
“What were these things?” Arjun croaked, coughed, then slowly got to his feet, wobbling for a moment before righting himself with Aisha’s help.
“Haven’t got a clue.” James pursed his lips, looking at the three corpses. The last two had joined the Maker’s Embrace while being in the bosom of Krumilam, as the latter’s namesake would say, although given the temperament of these creatures, even Jukatis may very well deny them that privilege.
“Kumil? You gonna be alright?” Eve hobbled toward the half-stonehorn, who was unsuccessfully trying to stand up.
“I should be fine. That damned beast was strong as Classiklam. Punched his way out of most walls I created.”
“And fast too.” Eve helped Kumil up, giving the impromptu burial chamber beside his feet a wary glance.
Kumil shrugged. “Can’t dig its way through fifty feet of solid rock.”
“We need to rest up. Then, investigate these corpses and where those stairs lead,” James said, heading toward their campsite, “Hope they didn’t ransack our food, or the horses didn’t bolt. Else, it’ll be a long few weeks ahead of us.”
As Arjun caught up with Aisha, determined to ask her why she hadn’t trusted him enough to mention that she was a Healer – with considerably more skill and knowledge than him – the vibrant leaves of the rhododendron bushes to his left rustled and then parted, revealing a creature reminiscent of the ones they’d just fought, but with three opened primary Chakras instead of one. Also, his anatomy suggested he was more closely related to humans than gorillas.
The similarities didn’t end there.
He possessed an even brighter and denser Awakened Throat Chakra, and similar powerful heavily-muscled arms and short legs, though closer in proportion to those of a human. Unlike the creatures and very much more like a human, the brownish cast to his blue skin made him look like a hybrid. A very unnatural hybrid. With an approximate height of about five feet, he was a few digits taller than a typical stonehorn but shorter than an average human. And every digit of that stocky frame screamed danger.
There was a distinct difference between him and the creatures, though, one that produced an even stronger feeling of…contradiction.
His facial features were that of a middle-aged human male. Also, his dark-blue eyes lacked the homicidal rage of the creatures, and instead emitted a shrewd and uncanny intelligence that observed all while giving nothing away. The man was also wearing considerably more clothes than the naked creatures. Dressed in dark trousers and sturdy Alchemically-treated boots, his lower face and upper body was hidden by a trench-coat with design and cut that suggested it was a uniform of some sort.
Pointedly ignoring all their dumbstruck gazes, the stranger calmly strolled toward the five of them, scanning every member of the beleaguered group with an icy calculating gaze, lingering slightly longer on James. As his eyes reached Eve, the last member, he gave a smile that betrayed the first emotion Arjun had managed to discern from him, one that raised more questions than it answered.
Regret.
“Hello Eventine.”