image [https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/646bd9baef7e904ad31912d5/c2609650-09c4-4b53-869f-b2a44342717f/Akh+Nara+no+labels.png?format=750w&content-type=image%2Fpng]
Vir swore in rage as he hacked the head off a Shredder.
I’m too late!
He’d anticipated that the northern wall of Samar Patag wouldn’t hold—that the beasts wouldn’t be daunted by the thick forest to the north, nor the soft, narrow coastline that led to it. But he had expected those terrain features to at least slow them down.
That logic might’ve worked for normal beasts, yet even without their prana, Ash Beasts were in a league of their own. While Vir had been busy to the south, they’d flooded in through the north, breaking the tired old wall as if it were paper. Several had already entered the city.
Those rebels better have heeded my advice and hunkered down, or this is going to get ugly, Vir thought worriedly. While Shan was more than capable of fending off the beasts that made it through, like Vir, he could only be in one place at any time.
Vir knew Janani would keep the orphans cloistered and hidden—rather, it was the rebels who were the type to do something rash.
It soon became clear that Vir’s plan wouldn’t work. The distance between the walls was simply too vast, and while he dispatched enemies with ease—far faster than most demons would’ve thought possible—it wasn’t enough. By the time he finished with the monsters at the northern wall and arrived back south, the city was perilously close to falling.
More than once, Vir lamented the Chitran’s neglect of Samar Patag’s most valuable defense. If only they’d maintained the walls. If only they’d filled the gaps…
Faster. I need to take them down even faster.
Vir glanced up worriedly at Samar Patag’s ramparts. Whether emboldened by his success at protecting the city or because they had a death wish, he now had a gallery.
From this distance, he couldn’t be sure if it was Chitran guards or civilians, but either way, it meant his movements were now under scrutiny, his every strike observed.
Vir had two choices—continue as he had, thereby allowing Ash Beasts into the city, or unleash the might of his full power, revealing his unique strengths. Any unique power he used now, he’d have to hide in the future, lest people trace his identity back to Vaak.
Vir didn’t have to ponder hard. That risk was incomparable to the value of even a single life saved.
Reaching under his cloak, Vir retrieved the Artifact chakram from his back.
He grinned. Let’s see how you do now.
The artifact buzzed angrily, and were this the Ashen Realm, Vir could have left the weapon to its own devices, flying autonomously and annihilating any Ash Beast it came across.
The demon realm’s lack of prana, however, compromised its capability. Without prana to power it, the disk was no different from any other finely crafted chakram. Vir had spent long hours struggling with making it useful again.
The deadly razor blades spun at unimaginable speeds as it ripped through the air, homing in on the nearest Ash Wolf. The poor beast fled, but it couldn’t outrun an Artifact of the Gods.
The chakram entered its belly, exited the other side, and lodging itself into the dirt. When Vir recalled the disc, it sailed right back into his hands.
By itself, the disk would’ve been useless, but as it happened, Vir possessed an ability that synergized perfectly with the Artifact. As if they had been made to work together, when fired alongside a Chakram Launch, something magical occurred.
It’d surprised Vir so much that he had to reproduce the phenomenon several times just to convince himself it wasn’t a fluke.
His hard-won ability, Chakram Launch, sent a disc of pure Ash Prana flying from Vir’s body. While he couldn’t alter its path, the Artifact had no issue consuming its energy as it flew. At first, Vir wondered if Ashani had built the feature in to allow it to function outside the Ashen Realm, but quickly realized that wasn’t the case.
The Artifact simply pulled prana from its surroundings. In this situation, all the prana was concentrated in one particular area—the Chakram Launch disk. This meant that the prana disk could power the Artifact’s spinning blades, multiplying its lethality. More importantly, however, just enough residual energy remained within the Artifact afterward to be recalled to Vir’s hand, thus preserving its most useful feature.
While not as potent as it was in the Ash, the weapon remained supremely devastating, nevertheless. Groups of enemies that had previously taken Vir ten minutes to dispatch now took barely a third of that as Vir shifted his fighting strategy, engaging targets directly around him while simultaneously throwing the chakram at more distant threats.
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The weapon’s range was limited only by the range of Chakram Launch, and while an incredibly prana-intensive ability, Vir just happened to have hundreds of nearby reserves to tap into—the Ash Beasts themselves.
What had once been an effective offensive strategy in the Ashen Realm now served to also replenish Vir’s own reserves, allowing him to remain fighting far longer than he otherwise could have.
Well, Vir thought. Now that the secret’s out of the bag, might as well make the most of it.
Vir whirled, confronting another horde that had just broken through the forest.
He hurled his Artifact Chakram and Blinked into the fray.
— —
“This way!” Hiya whispered, urging Bolin and Ekta through Samar Patag’s streets. “I think it came from over here!”
“Why are we doing this again?” Ekta muttered anxiously. “I feel like we should have told Janani.”
“And how long do you think that’ll take?” Hiya replied. “The people who screamed need help right now! Isn’t that right, Bolin?”
“That’s right,” Bolin said with a serious expression. “We can’t just leave them.”
“But what if it’s an Ash Beast?” Ekta said with slumped shoulders. “We’d just die.”
Bolin gave her a confident smile. “You saw what Neel’s doing for us out there. He’s fighting all by his lonesome. If we don’t help him out, who will?”
Though Bolin did his best to project an aura of confidence, he could hear the shaking in his voice. Ekta knew he was scared. Because she was scared. And she was right—if an Ash Beast truly had entered the city, there was little any of them could do.
But how could they just turn back? They couldn’t. Not after seeing Neel fight.
For years, hadn’t they complained about their meager rations and their ripped, too-small clothes, expecting Janani or Greesha to help? But what had they ever done about it? What had they done to change things for the better?
Nothing. Not one thing. At least Bolin went on the food raids—the others just sat quietly at home. They’d grown complacent.
That was until Neel came along and showed them that anything was possible. That one demon could change the fate of an entire city. Hiya may not have been a Warrior of Ash, nor even a Porcelain-ranked Guardian, but she did know the city like the back of her hand. So did Ekta and Bolin.
They rounded a bend, and in less time than it took to gasp, Hiya knew she’d been wrong. About fighting. About the Ash Beasts. About everything.
Her body refused to move. Her eyes were glued to the bipedal monster in the distance, pecking at a dead body on the street. Its skin was see-through, revealing its bones and blood and ghastly organs.
It was the most hideous thing Hiya had ever seen. She knew, then, that they would die if it noticed them. Forget fighting or even distracting it—there was no running away from such a beast.
Worse, backed up against a wall, cowering in terror, was none other than Svar and two of his friends.
Finally regaining her senses, Hiya inched backward… Only to collide with Ekta, who had rounded the corner just after her.
Hiya whirled in panic, desperate to shield Ekta from the horrific scene, but she was too late.
Ekta’s eyes widened in horror. And then she screamed. “AAAAAAAAH!”
Bolin clasped her mouth from behind, but the damage was already done.
We should never have brought her. She’s too young, Hiya thought as dread flowed through her veins. We’re all too young! What was I thinking?
Bolin reacted first. “Run!” he screamed, shoving Hiya and Ekta into the alley they’d just come from.
“C-Come here, you lousy monster!” Bolin shouted. “Svar! Let’s work together!”
Bolin’s plea fell on deaf ears. Svar and his goons had taken the opportunity to sprint in the opposite direction. The beast ignored them, focusing on Bolin.
Hiya didn’t think. Her instincts took over. Before she knew it, she was tearing down the alley, holding Ekta’s wrist in a death grip.
“Hiya!” Ekta shouted. “Hiya, stop it! You’re hurting me!”
Hiya finally came to her senses. She was drenched in sweat, and her breaths came ragged and uneven.
“We just left him there!” Ekta squeaked.
“You saw that thing!” Hiya shrieked, knowing just how hysterical she sounded. “Do you think we can fight that? You were right. You were right, Ekta. I was a chal for thinking we could help.”
“I’m scared,” Ekta said, breaking down into tears. “I’m scared, Hiya. I wanna go home.”
Somehow, witnessing Ekta’s panic calmed Hiya’s own raging torrent of emotions. Her thoughts came more clearly, and she took a deep breath before looking Ekta in the eye.
“I know, Ekta,” Hiya said. “I am too. And you’re right. We can’t leave Bolin. I’ll… I’ll go back to help. I want you to go to Janani, alright? Tell her everything that’s happened. She’ll send help. Okay?”
She expected the terrified girl to obey, so she was shocked when Ekta frowned and shook her head, her expression full of determination.
“No,” she said. “Wherever you’re going, I’m coming too. I won’t abananadon you.”
Hiya paused. Was this the right decision? Perhaps not, but she didn’t have the time to argue. “Stay close, alright?”
Ekta nodded.
“Then let’s go. Oh, and Ekta?”
“Yeah?”
“It’s abandon.”
Hiya drew a deep breath and made her resolution.
----------------------------------------
Hiya led Ekta through Samar Patag, quickly homing in on Bolin’s position. Finding him wasn’t nearly as hard as she feared—his shouts and running feet carried far in the empty city streets.
But what to do when we get there?
They’d recklessly approached the beast without a plan, and it had nearly gotten them killed. If Bolin was still alive when they reached him, they needed some way of—if not winning—then at least escaping together.
What would Neel do? What would Vaak do?
Hiya wracked her mind as they ran, yet no solution was forthcoming. She wasn’t like Bolin or Neel or even Janani. She simply wasn’t smart enough to think on her feet like that.
When they finally found Bolin pressed against the wall at the end of an alley, Hiya still had nothing. So she did the only thing she could.
“Hey! Over here!” she yelled, causing the beast to spin and regard her. Bolin was covered in tiny scratches that covered his face and arms.
Ekta gasped, and Hiya frowned.
How is he still walking? She wondered. While the wounds looked bad, they looked only as bad as the ones Bolin got when Svar beat him. The beast could’ve killed Bolin in seconds, so why hadn’t it? It had chased him into this alley instead. Why?
Because it’s toying with him! Hiya realized. And maybe, just maybe, they could use that to their advantage.
Hiya’s mind whirred, and a plan began to form. A plan that could very well—
A black blur descended from the sky, so fast that before anyone had registered the newcomer’s arrival, the bipedal beast’s head was rolling on the ground, cut cleanly from its body.
The body of the translucent beast that had nearly killed Bolin fell over, dead.
The new beast stood on its hindlegs, spread its webbed wings, and roared.