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“Who in the Ash are you?” Reaper Ekanai rasped, clenching and unclenching his gangly fists.
As did Vir, who faced off against him, some ten paces away.
A gentle breeze rustled the nearby leaves of Vir’s mindscape. Great Godhollows soared around their clearing, while birds chirped from their canopies. An idyllic setting, but one whose peace was about to be violently broken.
“You don’t remember?” Vir asked. “Or is this a ploy to get me to lower my guard?”
“Remember what? Where am I?”
“You’re… in my mindscape,” Vir replied, taken aback at Ekanai’s words. The demon had been many things, but he'd been no actor. Rather, Ekanai was forthright and earnest in his hatred of Vir and Maiya. He’d assumed the demon would attack him immediately and had braced himself for battle.
“Mindscape?” Ekanai scoffed. “What sorcery is this?”
Vir had expected a variety of reactions and had planned for several contingencies, but he’d never guessed the warrior would appear before him dazed and confused.
“You truly don’t know who I am?” Vir asked.
“Are you my enemy?”
“No,” Vir said, feeling, surprisingly, a pang of loss. His experiences with the demon had been far from pleasant, but for better or for worse, they had a history together. For Ekanai to have simply forgotten struck Vir hard. Harder than it ought to have.
Vir thought back to what his predecessors had done for him—what they’d all sacrificed, including Ekanai—when he’d first entered the Mahādi Realm.
So this is the cost. This is why they can never intervene on my behalf again.
His predecessors had always maintained some semblance of awareness in his mind. Some part of themselves, however imperfect, had remained conscious. Now that was all gone. The Ekanai before Vir was not the Ekanai Vir had interacted with in the past, but another. Likely a version created by Vir’s own imagination, based on Vir’s memories.
Vir watched Ekanai wander around the clearing, his footsteps unsteady.
“Release me!” Ekanai barked.
Vir averted his eyes. “I’m sorry. I can’t.”
“So you are my captor,” the demon replied, a grin forming on his Ghael face. his faltering footsteps steadied, and he crouched. “Then there is only one thing to be done.”
Vir barely had time to react before the demon was upon him.
Blinking away in the nick of time, Vir avoided the Reaper’s vicious claw-like nails that shot from his hands.
That’s new, Vir thought as he circled behind his opponent.
“I don’t want to fight you,” he said, but his words fell on deaf ears. Lacking any weapons, the Reaper was forced to fight with his bare hands.
Despite this, Ekanai had quite the arsenal at his disposal. Between his claws, tattoos, and Chakras, he was still a formidable threat.
Even nails became lethal weapons when augmented by the Warrior Chakra.
Vir reeled when the world fell away from under him, activating the Foundation Chakra in the nick of time, which brought him back to the present.
When he did, the Reaper was in front of him, plunging his Chakra-laden claws in a vicious downward strike.
He expected me to use my Foundation Chakra to block his attack! Vir realized, narrowly dodging the demon’s attack.
Ekanai struck while Vir dodged, and with each encounter, Vir’s fear drifted away. He found himself forgetting the danger, falling into the rhythm of the fight.
Ekanai was nowhere near as powerful as he’d been in the subterranean chamber of illusions. Now, he was more akin to a normal demon.
Vir felt the almighty force of Balancer of Scales, but he’d long since learned to deal with its pressure.
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Ekanai stepped back in surprise when Vir shrugged off its effects.
Vir activated Haste at the same moment that Ekanai used Clarity.
A stalemate ensued. While the Reaper could see the future, Vir moved fast enough to negate its usefulness.
A rush overcame Vir, and soon, their fight resembled less a lethal duel and more a dance. Their timing and movements flowed from attack to defense to attack.
They were, surprisingly, evenly matched. Ekanai with his reach, tattoos, and Chakra, and Vir with Prana Current, his agility… and his invulnerability in the mindscape.
Vir hadn’t been able to dodge all the veteran warrior’s strikes, and several had landed. Initially, Vir had assumed Prana Armor had protected him, but then he saw the truth—Ekanai hadn’t even dented the armor.
His strikes simply weren’t getting through. This was, after all, Vir’s own mind. Here, he had unlimited prana. Here, he could set the rules of engagement, and here, he could not be harmed. At least, not physically.
Though he knew he was cheating, Vir couldn’t help but appreciate the battle. Ekanai fought with such unbridled ferocity and skill that only Cirayus could hope to match him. Even then, Vir figured it’d be an even match.
Vir missed those fights. As ridiculous as it sounded, he missed the hordes of Ash Beasts—the days of pitting himself against monsters again and again, always striving to become faster, deadlier, and smarter.
Vir pushed aside Ekanai’s strike and used the demon’s momentum to trip him.
They fell to the ground, with Vir mounting the gangly demon, grappling with him. Though despite Vir having the dominant position, Ekanai held a far greater advantage—his gangly arms more than made up for his compromised reach, and he landed blow after blow on Vir… until he suddenly stopped.
The demon stared at his claws, retracted them, and let out a great breath.
Vir dismounted the demon and offered a hand. Ekanai took it.
“Your prana. You… are me,” Ekanai said. “You are my next incarnation.”
Vir nodded.
Ekanai laughed wryly. “Then I am dead.”
“You died five hundred years ago, Ekanai. You’re just a memory. My memory. Of you.”
Ekanai heavily sat on the trampled grass. “I see. How… did I die? I remember nothing.”
Despite everything Ekanai had done to him, Vir was beginning to pity the demon, despite all that had happened. After all, the version of Ekanai who’d threatened and harassed him was a compromised and distorted one. The Ekanai before Vir looked lost. Lost, and scared.
Vir sat beside the Reaper. “You ventured into the Mahādi Realm, but your body couldn’t take it. You perished soon after.”
“Tell me,” Ekanai rasped, his voice even more hoarse than usual. “What transpired after? Why have you brought me here? Tell me everything.”
Vir ripped a piece of grass and let it fly away, watching it pensively. “I suppose I should start from the beginning. From our first encounter.”
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Vir spent the next hours narrating his encounters with Ekanai, from the Godshollow, and how the demon had commandeered his body, to their fights in the chamber of illusions in the Ashen Realm.
“Impossible,” Ekanai said. “I know nothing of the workings of the soul. I couldn’t have siphoned your lover’s soul into an orb.”
“I figured as much,” Vir replied, his lips pulled tight. “I feel the chamber was using you as a vessel for its own ends. Or something to that effect. To this day, I can’t understand it all.”
Ekanai grumbled. “You… must hate me. After all those atrocities I committed. You consider me your enemy.”
“I… don’t,” Vir said. The realization came as a surprise to him. “The you I knew… wasn’t really you, was it? I know that now. But even before I did… I’d resolved to accept you. For who you were. You are a part of me. Only by recognizing that could I move on. Only by accepting that did I open my Foundation Chakra.”
Ekanai grunted.
“Then I suppose I have redeemed myself somewhat, though my actions remain unacceptable. My memories are few, but I at least know that I fought for my people. To protect them. To ward off the destruction of all that I knew.”
“Ekanai,” Vir asked. “What is the purpose of the Primordial? The Akh Nara. Is it really to reunite demonkind?”
“I… do not know,” Ekanai said slowly. “Memories of my life elude me. It is an aggravating feeling.”
“I suppose that makes sense,” Vir said, disappointed. “All you have are my memories, after all.”
“If I were to wager a guess, however…” Ekanai said, “I feel as though there is more. What need was there for our earliest incarnations to unite the Demon Realm?”
“That’s… true.” The splintering of the clans was a recent thing. A millennia ago, the political landscape would have looked quite different.
Vir was left with more questions than ever before.
“Tell me,” Ekanai said. “Why have you summoned me here? What do you require of me?”
Oh, right.
With all that had happened, Vir had nearly forgotten about why he’d summoned Ekanai to his mindscape in the first place.
“The Life Chakra. I need help training it.”
Ekanai looked away for a moment. “My instruction would do you little good. I have learned by instinct. Through adversity. I would make a terrible teacher.”
“I… figured,” Vir replied, deflated. “Well, it was worth a—”
“All I ever did,” Ekanai continued, “all I have ever known, is fighting. If nothing else, I can strike you with Life Chakra attacks.”
Vir winced. “Will that help?”
“Who can say? Perhaps you’ll be driven mad. But it is how I would train.”
Vir stood up. “Well, I suppose it can’t hurt to try.”
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Vir quickly learned that indeed, it could hurt to try, as Ekanai catapulted Vir’s mind into nightmare after nightmare.
Vir lived through visions of Maiya’s death. Of Neel getting gored. Of Shan being ripped into two, and of Cirayus being burned alive.
He lived through personal agony. He witnessed the failure of his uprising against the Chitran and the subsequent annihilation of Garga.
When it stopped, Vir could no longer stand. He lay sprawled on the grass of the Godshollow mindscape, twitching.
Who said I couldn’t get hurt here? Vir fumed. Maybe he couldn’t be physically harmed, but it seemed there was no limit to the damage his mind could sustain.
“Are you undamaged?” Ekanai asked.
What a strange choice of word, Vir thought dazedly.
Sitting up, he pulled on the Foundation Chakra and cleared his mind.
“I’ll be fine,” he replied. “I just don’t know if this helped or hurt.”
For the first time in their encounter, Ekanai grinned. “Oh, it helped.”
“How do you know?” Vir asked.
“Because I can feel it. I can feel you, striking back at me whenever I assault your mind.”
Vir’s eyes bulged. “Really? I’m opening the chakra?”
Ekanai scoffed. “No. Not even close. It will be a long path. A painful one. But if you persist, the Life Chakra will be yours in due time.”
There was no hesitation in Vir's response.
“Then let’s continue.”