“By the Burning Balls of Bramka, now they can fly?” screamed Kumil.

Arjun’s excitement was cut short when Aisha grabbed hold of his right hand. “A tiny spherical Space just beside the Node corresponding to the middle of the Pools is vibrating at a very low frequency.”

“I sense it now. It’s too small to see with the naked eye. But it’s giving off a barely discernible feel of Space essence.” Saying this, James promptly turned their impromptu craft in that direction.

Eve kept shooting apprehensive glances below them, at the rapidly rising reptiles, while Kumil stroked his beard, looking more distressed than ever. “Drive right into it,” she urged. “If it’s a Node corresponding to Sphere of Space, and if it’s navigable, we should slide right into it.”

Eve cringed, all but closing her eyes as the vibrating point in Space approached at breakneck speed. “I hate Portaaaaaa….”

Her voice was cut off as she felt her insides swapping places with the rest of the Cosmos. In the next blink, before she could even process the weird feeling, they appeared in an entirely new Space. The experience for some reason was way worse than the two similar ones she’d been forced to endure previously.

Even before they arrived, the air-construct dissolved and Eve smacked into a granite wall, her feet touching down on solid ground once more. Despite her bruises, she all but collapsed in relief.

“Where in Om’s blessed name are we?” She glanced around their strange yet comforting surroundings. At least there were no snakes here. “We’re inside Sindria somewhere,” Eve answered her own question as the Soles supplied her with a mountain of information.

There was a lot happening beneath them.

While the granite floor of the wide circular tunnel she found herself in was flat, the walls curved to form part of a huge sphere, one which was also made of granite, but mixed with a host of other minerals she was utterly incapable of identifying. To top it off, there was a permanent essence shield made of earth and Energy that covered the outside, protecting it from the immense heat and pressure of the boiling sea of magma that enclosed the whole region. Even then, the sheer amount of fire and earth essence that seeped through all the layers made the hairs on her arms stand on end.

The outer corridor, the place where they had all been unceremoniously dumped in by the Jukatis-blasted Node that acted as a Portal, encircled a large central chamber which was segmented into smaller rooms. Several doorless openings in the inner wall led to those rooms while other openings connected with distant parts of the massive spherical complex, parts shielded from their earth senses. However, the same senses were overwhelmed by the volume of information coming from the magma, via the weird shield, and then through the rock.

“Can’t tell how deep though,” Eve said, glancing around warily, her emotions alternating between shock and awe. “Feels as if whoever built this place was looking to connect with the very soul of Sindria.”

“You might’ve hit the nail on the head there,” said Arjun, his eyes gleaming with a touch of insanity. His desire to know things is going to be the death of them all one day. “Feels as if this entire place is geared toward Manipulation. And observation. I can sense vibrations originating well over twenty miles away.” A broad grin broke his grimy, bloody face. “Originating on the surface. We’re inside Kailash, not too far from the inn we’d stayed in.” A touch of elation entered his voice. “The one with coffee.”

Before he could dash off to explore, the Cleric held up his right hand. “I sense two kernel signatures.”

This caused Eve to concentrate, though it proved mighty difficult given the distracting interplay of fire and earth essence mere digits beneath her feet. Vibrations she finally found, but they might as well have been rats for all she could tell.

Both Arjun and Kumil, however, had almost identical puzzled expressions on their faces.

“What is it?” she demanded.

“Something beyond the realm of possibility,” Arjun said, a stupid joyous expression on his face. “Something lost in the mists of time.”

As two Space Shields got beneath his own protective Shield, one that he habitually maintained at all times, and started to contract, threatening to crush him into oblivion, Mainak desperately tried and failed to form another Shield underneath and push.

Then Jeevanil, having dispelled a similar attack with relative ease, wrapped two Shields around both the human Enfolders and the resulting shrinking erased one of them from existence, while the other was locked in a close-fought struggle, a snarl of defiance on his square-jawed face which had lost the distinctive mask.

Just moments prior to reforming the Shield around himself, a twist of his hips enabled Mainak to avoid the woman’s blast of fire, causing nothing more than superficial scorching of his hair. By the time he had managed to compose himself, the female Power Cleric was also dead, erased from the Cosmos. Once Mainak lent his own Shield on top of Jeevanil’s, the last Enfolder was also squashed out of existence.

One cannot exist without Space. Omnipresent Space, Unobtrusive Space, Vital Space – as the saying goes.

It is perhaps the most humane way to kill someone, if there is such a thing. Instantaneous and totally painless, unlike when using Tears, which could be gory.

All of this did not come without a cost, though. By some miracle of Om, the last Manipulator, a stocky man in faded brown worker’s clothing and wearing another one of those disturbing masks, had managed to hold off Jeevanil’s Shield from his body, and had even managed to return the favor using an earthen shield that enclosed old Enfolder’s lower torso, perforating both the soles of his feet, literally nailing him to the ground. The distress on Jeevanil’s face suggested that he had suffered other, invisible, injuries as well.

Strands of light-violet Space essence quickly dispelled Mainak’s confusion as his head swiveled to the small alleyway behind their welcoming party. Seeing him free and amongst the living, the Builder Battle Cleric’s eyes widened in shock and alarm, but before he could form further thoughts, Mainak clamped a Shield over him, one that encountered a weak resistance, thanks to the hidden Enfolder, but he overwhelmed it with sheer strength. In the next blink, the Builder was no more.

After smashing through the restrictive earthen barrier, Jeevanil produced a pale-green vial from within his voluminous cloak and downed it in one go. One of the high-grade Major Healing Potions, Mainak’s senses indicated.

“The second Enfolder created a Portal just prior to his demise. The last Enfolder fled using it. Follow me.”

Seeing Jeevanil’s precarious condition, with his pristine white cloak stained crimson and full of holes, Mainak decided to propose an alternative course of action. “Let me open the Portal. It is still fresh enough for me to trace.”

Getting a tired nod of acquiescence in return, he hastened to the alley, and concentrated on the surrounding Space, almost immediately detecting tiny purplish-violet spiderweb cracks in Space. Using his mind, Mainak willed the widest of the cracks to open further, and after a brief sense of reluctance, it obeyed, forming an oval Portal that led towards a close-by point in Space. Mainak vanished through it without a backward glance, knowing Jeevanil was right on his heels.

When the vibrations of a set of two distant footfalls reached Arjun’s Soles, his eyes picked out a couple of bizarre creatures. Then, he and Kumil both sensed their kernel signatures. Or rather, they were allowed that luxury by the strange beings that could erase their entire signature, Crown included, otherwise the two of them should’ve been able to sense them from miles away, so unique was their signature.

It consisted of a single Chakra, the Crown, one that was far denser than any Crown could possibly be.

People have been trying to work around this restriction of the human body for Ages, to no avail. Artificially imbibing more than a small dose of refined essence, in the form of drinks made from Khudra – like the one he just drank, would send you on your way to the Eternal Halls faster than a sword through the heart, though kernel poisoning only killed those rare few who were both stupidly rich and, well….stupid. The staggering level of control needed to redistribute excess kernel inside your own body can only be gained through Ascension.

A cold shiver went down Arjun’s spine. The beings before him had shed their mortal coils and become Ascendant.

According to rumors and Legends, they could no longer be considered mere mortals. Neither were they human. Nor aditaru. Not by most definitions. They had evolved into something greater. Closer to perfection. Closer to the Creator.

Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

The taller of the two figures, resembling an aditarun man in appearance, one who was fond of raiding the larder, stepped forward, his clear blue eyes settling on the Battle Cleric.

“Greetings. Would we be correct in assuming that you have eliminated the full-blooded Augmenter?”

James’ warning eyes flickered to Eve before returning to the Ascendant. Her expression was a volatile mix of grief, fury, and curiosity.

“Yes,” said the Cleric, forestalling Eve’s scathing remark, his posture ready for a Cataclysm.

“Good. I hope the added Nodal vibrations did not have too great an impact on the surrounding lifeforms.”

“Some of the flora were stunted,” Kumil replied, eyes gleaming with understanding. “But nothing more.”

“Excellent,” replied the human woman who would’ve made queens green with envy and kings weak in the knees. With large slanting hazel eyes, a body that was proportionally curvy exactly where needed and nowhere else, and dense dark long wavy hair reaching down to her waist, she looked to have walked straight out of a painter’s dream.

Only her bizarre kernel signature kept Arjun sane. Just like the aditaru man, her attire, which consisted of a long elaborate gown split down the bottom, seemed to have come out of a story from the Historica. The man’s long flabby coat must’ve been in fashion sometime around the turn of the first millennium.

“However,” she began and Arjun’s instincts screamed danger, “there are more of you here than Foretold.”

Then, James got his wish as the ground exploded in a shower of lava.

Even having anticipated the move, all efforts on Arjun’s part to negate the act of earth Manipulation proved completely and utterly futile as more and more geysers of lava formed all around them, the tunnel slowly being flooded by the magma outside.

Every single Portal or Shield put up by Aisha was obliterated with ease by the man, a true Maestro, one who had opened or Awakened all seven, and none of the eight secondary Chakras. His signature, now having shed its illusory shroud, glowed brighter than the lava called forth by his female companion, their two churning Third-Eyes providing the greatest illumination.

Seeing her efforts being ineffective against the Enfolder, Aisha quickly switched targets, creating as many as three Tears in just as many blinks, all aimed at the woman’s fast-moving form. Two were blocked by the Maestro while the last, upon reaching the woman’s side, was simply squeezed out of existence by an essence-construct of indescribable complexity, one made of nothing but air.

“Excellent thinking,” said the raven-haired beauty, “but in the face of true power and superior technique, your only recourse is prayer.” She seemed to reconsider for a moment. “Or Fate.”

Aisha, too busy to answer back, seemed oddly happy to hear this, but Arjun couldn’t spare any more thoughts as he and Eve, both scalded and bruised, engaged the woman in hand-to-hand combat. James came to her rescue, and the two of them started assisting Kumil, who seemed to have drawn most of the ire from the aditaru man. His beard was singed, a long gash across his chest was bleeding profusely, but the half-stonehorn, with a rictus of rage on his usually grinning face, was launching spear after spear as long as himself at his opponent, whose impenetrable Space Shield kept blocking them all, though he did look somewhat taken aback by Kumil’s level of skill and ferocity.

While Eve wasn’t having much luck with her punches or earthen boulders, she did draw the bulk of the woman’s attention, enabling Arjun to sneak in a punch or two, which, on the third attempt, managed to negate the air-shield and grazed her abdomen, earning him an approving glance from the breathtaking brunette.

Looking at those mesmerizing hazel eyes, Arjun knew they were being tested. That realization prompted him to cease his attacks and frown.

“Where are the serpents that were chasing us? Did they gain entrance as well?”

All of them stopped in their tracks when the two Ascendants stepped back, identical cryptic smiles on their faces.

“They did,” said the man while the woman cooled and plucked up all the holes in the floor within a couple of blinks. It illustrated just how much she’d been holding back while fighting – testing – the five of them.

Eve glanced around in panic while Kumil asked, “Where are they now?”

“They,” said the female as her kernel broke apart in a display that left them all flabbergasted, “stand before you.” The lower portion of her body, below the waist, transformed into shadows, which coalesced into the tail end of a massive serpent. “Yet you knew not.” Her glance shifted to Arjun, causing his heart to flutter. “Though some of you suspected.”

“How can this possibly be?” James muttered, uncomprehending eyes locked onto the swishing tail.

“What is and is not possible is only bound by one’s imagination.” The smile the aditaru man produced was almost beatific in its glory, the kernel signature adding a certain undeniable weight to the declaration. “So, let your minds be free, and Reality will bend before you.”

“Good advice, if I’ve ever heard one,” Eve said. “But who are you peeps?”

A short melodious peal of laughter escaped the woman’s perfect lips while her tail undulated in merriment, all fifteen rearranged Chakras bathing her in an almost divine light. Some of the secondary Chakras, now aligned in a straight line down her tail, were emitting an even stronger glow.

“Forgive our manners, little sister. Isolation has rendered them rusty. I was once called Rhuvenia, and my husband here was known by the name of Swapneel.”

“Was?”

“After our Ascension, we…changed. Evolved, one could argue,” Swapneel said. “Along with our mortal bodies, we also shed our former names. And became The Keepers of the First Phase. The serpents were a myth recounted to us by none other than Aimin himself, from a Space and Time long before ours, or even his.”

The casual but honest and heartfelt assertion caused five sets of eyes to widen in shock.

“It told of serpent-like creatures that could transform fully, or partially, into humanoid beings, be it human or aditaru. Nagas, they were called. I was always fascinated by them. Ascension granted me the ability to fulfill a lifelong dream. As for how we ended up in this place; my devoted wife was dying of old age.” He gave her a look of such affection and love that it almost broke Arjun’s heart. “Only way to save her was to make certain she managed to Ascend before being granted access to the Eternal Halls. But even during our time, it took the convergence of innumerable Fates to achieve that feat. What she needed more than anything was time. She could do the rest by herself. And so when asked, we jumped at this chance, and took upon this sacred duty.”

“This place is a Temporal Chamber?” Arjun asked to make sure.

The half-snake, or Naga, nodded her head. “Parts of it, yes. So was the entirety of the Pocket Dimension you just left, the Chamber of Drawn Fates.”

“Why did you attack us?” James asked.

“To verify it was indeed you as was long Foretold, and not some shapeshifting Cleric,” she said, giving the Battle Cleric another one of those cryptic smiles.

Arjun swallowed the hundreds of questions that simple statement evoked in his Heart. Maybe later.

The Naga’s hypnotic eyes then moved on from the clearly nervous Battle Cleric to Eve. “All self-aware lifeforms,” she gave a rueful chuckle, her emotion shifting between mirth, regret and hope, “possess free will. Their Fate, for the most part, is still in their hands.” Finally, the intense eyes settled on Arjun. “As a result, no event – not even one long Foretold – occurs quite the same way as Foreseen. Some deviation is inevitable. Also,” she continued, her gaze now on the half-stonehorn, who fidgeted nervously under it. “One additional Strand of Fate was detected. His Heart had to be tested.”

“And what did your test reveal?” Kumil asked, voice belligerent.

“That he is a worthy companion, true of Heart, keen of Mind, and stout of body.”

This seemed to pacify Kumil as a familiar grin slowly formed on his face. Letting out a tired sigh, he asked, “We would love to chat longer, but must know something first; can you help us get to the surface, away from any prying eyes – unomynd or otherwise?”

“We can. Take the fourth door to the right.” She gestured with her hand, down the corridor. “You’ll find a unique Chamber that will facilitate your journey. Before laying eyes on you, we didn’t think you would be able to make use of it,” she said, her eyes flickering to Arjun. “That would be the deviation I mentioned earlier.”

With a subtle nod of the head, James motioned for them to get a move on, but Arjun was never going to let this Aimin-blessed chance slip by quite so easily.

“Wait. How long have you been in here? Why? How did you Ascend?” Then, he said, almost to himself, “Must’ve been difficult, or else we’d be swimming in Ascendants.” Arjun gazed up at them, a feverish gleam in his light-brown eyes.

The desire to know, to have these questions answered, was so strong that he himself was taken aback by it. “Why exactly was it difficult? Can you give us some insight into the process? Is the procedure same for all?”

If the two Nagas were irritated by the rapid-fire questions, their peerless kernel signatures didn’t reveal any sign of it. “A curious soul, you are,” said Swapneel. “Nothing worthwhile is ever easy, and yes, it varies greatly from person to person. As for why we have sequestered ourselves in here, outside the reach of most mortals…we have our reasons, which will become apparent in time.”

“Perhaps a little context wouldn’t hurt, husband. It would be within our purview.” Seeing his reluctant, but affirming, nod, she continued. “This duty was appointed to us by someone we held in high regard, who asked this of us in order to fulfill the vision of someone she herself loved dearly, the Manifolder known as Chiranjeev.”

Arjun swallowed. “The Chiranjeev? The greatest Manifolder in history and the son of the Creators?”

“The very same,” she nodded, a slight smile on her face. “A calamity of epic proportions threatened the world, and so we decided to provide any and all help we could. The Order that we helped set up,” her eyes switched to James, who, Arjun was delighted to note, looked absolutely dumbstruck, “was still in its infancy. So the Rangers were also asked for assistance.”

“Which we readily provided,” Swapneel took up the story. “When Allmother herself recommends a course of action, there is to be only one possible outcome. Most of the volunteers, like myself, came from the Forefathers, the very First Generation of seventy-two aditarus created by the hands of Allmother and Allfather.”

“You’re one of the legendary Forefathers?” Arjun croaked, then turned to Rhuvenia. “And you’re one of the First Disciples.” An ecstatic grin spread across his face.

It’s official. Today really is the day all his dreams have come true.

He gave both of them a deep bow, an example the rest of them belatedly followed. “It has been a privilege meeting you both.”

“It truly has,” the Battle Cleric echoed, though he looked nowhere near as excited about it as Arjun. If anything, he looked downright concerned.

“What calamity?” Eve asked.

“Answers often make more sense at the appropriate time,” the man once called Swapneel replied. “This is not such a time. It would only make the flow of events more turbulent.”

“Not to mention the fact that even in here, Time is of the essence, sometimes literally,” said the female Naga, eyes distant. Arjun dared not interrupt her with another question. Instead, as always, he listened with rapt attention. “This was an encounter I had been looking forward to for over two millennia. It more than matched up to the promise. As will you.” her gaze panned across the whole group, even including Kumil in it. “Fare you well, my little brothers and sisters.”

Then, between one blink and the next, both of them vanished in a display that demonstrated just how natural Teleportation could be made to look like by an Ascendant Maestro.

Eve let out a short sweet explosive sigh. “So, just to clarify; I didn’t get smacked on the head and dream the last bell of madness?”