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The Overseer’s body split not at his waist, but rather vertically, down the very center of his body.
Vir stared in stunned disbelief as the wreckage of the kothi’s body tumbled to the ground. He continued staring a long moment after, as did all who’d gathered around.
Fearing this exact situation, Vir had reduced the prana in his katar. Rather, he'd feared the opposite—that his attack would be trivially brushed away. He expected the Overseer to at least block his well-announced strike. He’d wanted to get the Overseer to back off, not to kill him.
Yes, there would’ve been consequences. He’d likely have to feign pain as the Overseer buzzed his collar and made an example of him. Balagra’s life was more important than any of that.
Now, though?
Now… What?
It was a hacking cough that broke Vir out of his reverie.
“H-He’s come to!” Malik said. He’d been squatting beside the downed naga ever since he’d applied the tourniquet, applying pressure on Balagra’s stump to further reduce the blood flow. “You better not turn back to your naga form,” he muttered.
“Why?” Vir asked, joining Malik in applying pressure. “What happens if he does?”
“Nothing good.”
Balagra looked up dazedly at Vir, trying to form words. Only a wheeze escaped his lips, however.
“Don’t talk. Can you heal yourself?” Vir asked, applying pressure on his wound with both hands. Balagra grunted, but it significantly lessened the bleeding. Even so, Balagra had lost too much blood.
By now, the other Chitran guards had encircled the group, their talwars and spears pointed inward. Though, whether out of caution or fear, they did not attack.
The naga nodded almost imperceptibly, raising a weakened hand. Unsure of what else to do, Vir took Balagra’s hand in his own, but the demon shook it off. He brought his hand to the collar.
The collar’s restricting his prana. If I can break it…
Vir hesitated. Ever since they’d clapped one around his neck, he’d been studying the collars in great detail. Unlike human Artifact collars, they didn’t consume prana from the environment. Rather, they stored prana within them, releasing them when commanded. Vir was almost certain an overload into its storage mechanism would cripple the device. He just didn’t know if it would harm Balagra as well. After all, injecting prana into his enemies had proven an incredibly deadly attack in the past.
Then again, if he did nothing, Balagra would die.
“Halt!” a guard barked, just as Vir rested his hand on the collar. “Break it up. All of you!”
Vir ignored him, attempting to concentrate on the task at hand, but when Malik squeezed Vir’s shoulder, he begrudgingly stole a glance behind him.
In the Chitran’s hand was a tablet.
“Stay back!” the guard said. While he didn’t quite stutter, his fluster was obvious. He waved the tablet in front of him, as if it were an orb capable of warding off the demons who slowly encircled him.
“And why would we do that?” a gruff voice said from the crowd.
“Fool! This is the control tablet for your collars. Do as I say! I’ll use it! S-stop!”
The guard’s voice grew increasingly more desperate as the demonic noose tightened.
In desperation, Balagra clutched Vir’s arm. His wheezing had grown suddenly worse, and Vir knew he didn’t have much longer to live.
It’s now or never, Vir thought, silencing the ruckus brewing around him.
Vir gripped the collar, pushing the tiniest trickle of prana he could into its inscription. Under other circumstances, he’d never dare attempt something this dangerous. Now? He simply uttered a prayer to Badrak for good luck.
Nothing happened, so Vir upped the prana. Then, to his horror, he saw the inscription light up. It wasn’t his prana, however. It was a combination of every other affinity.
They’ve activated the collars.
Vir immediately surged prana into the collar, gripping the metal with as much force as he could muster.
Crack!
Balagra’s body jolted in pain. His body seized once, then went limp as the collar surrounding his neck crumbled into pieces.
Malik, who had been diligently pressing against Balagra’s wound, screamed out in pain. He fell to the ground, clutching his head, writhing.
Similar screams erupted from all around Vir, though he spared them only the briefest glance.
Vir searched Balagra’s prana signature for any trace of Ash prana. He couldn’t find any, though that didn’t mean—
Balagra heaved, his eyes flying wide open. His silver Panav tattoo glowed, and the blood ceased pouring from the demon’s body within moments.
Well, at least he won’t die, Vir thought sadly. Though he wanted to watch over the naga, the crisis unfolding around him denied him that luxury.
Vir stood and swept a glance across the field, quickly taking stock of the situation.
It was as he’d feared—the prisoners writhed on the ground, while the Kothis watched over them with a range of expressions ranging from smug to sadistic.
Not for long.
Vir didn’t bother physically striking the kothi who held the tablet. A Talwar Launch bisected the object, much in the same way it had with the Overseer, taking the kothi’s hand with it.
The prana link shut off instantly, as Vir had hoped. But when the demons’ cries didn’t immediately cease, Vir worried he’d made a terrible mistake.
He glanced at Malik, still clutching his collar in agony.
Destroying the tablet doesn’t turn them off!?
Desperately, Vir wracked his mind. A minute more of this torture, and they’d be unconscious. One more after that, and they’d be dead.
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There was but one answer. Only a single option that had a chance of working.
An ability Vir had theorized about and ruminated on, yet had never tested.
This had better work…
Vir activated Haste, summoned every ounce of prana within his body… and exploded.
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When Vir came to, it was not to a field of dead demons, or even to a gag and shackles, as he’d expected. He’d been lain down on no less than three cushions—if stinky unwashed robes could be considered cushions.
What happened? Vir thought groggily before turning to his side. He came face to face with a serpent larger than any he’d ever seen. Vir panicked, thinking some foul Ash Beast had come to finish him in his sleep, but the ill-fitting cuirass it wore—ridiculous on a snake—and the spear nearby—made him reconsider.
“Balagra?”
Vir had never once seen the naga in his full serpent form, and he wondered why. For it was magnificent. Twin bright white lines traced down the length of Balagra’s otherwise jet-black scales. In all, he had to have been twelve paces long, though coiled up as he was, it was difficult to estimate.
The snake’s body neither rose nor fell, so Vir couldn’t tell if it—he—was breathing, but then again, Vir knew little of serpent anatomy. The most he’d ever seen were the small snakes that always slithered away before he could reach them in the Godshollow.
Still, while his eyes failed him here, the prana in the naga’s body told Vir all was well.
“You’re up!” a voice said. “Good.”
Vir looked up to find Malik handing him a bowl of hot soup.
“Whatever you did made the collars cease functioning. Some of us have Aspect of the Inferno, so we were able to rustle up some hot rations. Figured you’d want some when you awoke.”
Vir sat up, rubbing his temples. Prana Burst… Right. The initial idea for the ability involved a spherical burst of prana in all directions. Like Prana Dart, just multiplied. It was supposed to be a last-ditch defense against multiple foes.
Here, he’d needed something a bit more discerning. Instead of a globe, he’d fired a half-dozen darts at every nearby demon. Of course, six wasn’t nearly enough, so he’d Blinked around, stopping barely long enough to fire off handfuls more.
The entire process had taken less than a minute, draining him and leaving him little more than a desiccated husk.
As a combat ability, it wasn’t nearly ready. Though, judging from the sounds coming from outside the tent, it sounded like its trial run hadn’t failed, either.
How did I ever manage to live like this? Vir wondered, thinking back to his life at Brij. He felt gutted, and even the slightest movement seemed to require inordinate effort.
“Thanks,” he muttered, cycling Prana Current as he slurped the soup with gratitude. It wasn’t prana, but it did fill him with an inner warmth. Prana Current would have to slowly rebuild the rest. It’d be a day or more before he was full again, but, well, it could be worse. At least he wasn’t dead.
“Balagra?” Vir asked.
“Alive,” Malik reported. “Albeit barely. Had his collar snapped a moment later, I’m afraid we’d be cremating a corpse instead.”
Vir winced. To think he’d cut it so close… Vir needed Balagra. He was talented, had military experience. More than that, though, Vir didn’t want the naga to die. Whatever deeds he’d done in the past… Vir knew there was a good soul lurking beneath that rough exterior. He’d eventually come around to Vir’s cause. Perhaps not soon, but someday. Maybe they’d even become fast friends.
“Thank you,” Vir said. “For looking after him. If you hadn’t applied that tourniquet…”
Malik waved Vir’s sentiment away. “It was the least I could do.”
Vir took a look around the infirmary, finding countless demons, most lying down, but a few up and milling about.
“Everyone’s safe, then?”
“Better than safe,” Malik replied. “Do you understand what you’ve done?” he asked. “You’ve liberated them. Us! We’re no longer prisoners!”
Vir’s eyes widened in panic. “What about the other guards? Did they…”
“Kill them?” Malik completed. “No. We stripped them of their weapons and armor and placed the spare collars they were carrying around their necks. Symbolic, mind you, since the tablet was destroyed, but we have them under heavy guard. I’m hoping Balagra can concoct something when he awakens to put them under. With their Chakras and bloodline arts, they could wreak a lot of havoc before we brought them down. Best to keep them unconscious.”
“Sounds like a good plan,” Vir agreed. He couldn’t understand how demonic jails worked when everyone was this powerful.
“I have to tell you, Neel. That moment? When we snapped those collars on our captors? I haven’t felt that good in a long while. I only wish you were conscious to see it.”
Vir gave Malik a pained smile. He didn’t hate the Kothis. Not truly. He hated Asuman, yes, and Raja Matiman, as well as anyone actively suppressing the Gargans. But Vir wasn’t naïve enough to believe that every kothi was evil. It was akin to claiming that all humans—or all demons—were nothing but monsters. How was that any different from Tia? Hadn’t he argued exactly that point to get her to see reason?
No, Vir had lived through too much to pretend that the world was black and white. There was no such thing. No convenient good or evil. Only shades of ash… Which only made it so much harder to reconcile the turmoil raging within his chest.
“Take me to them,” he said.
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The bound kothis looked up at Vir with a mixture of spite and fear. Gagged as they were, none uttered a word. The fifty-odd angry demons who thronged around them might’ve also had something to do with it.
“Relax,” Vir said. “I won’t harm you. And I won’t let the others either.”
The prisoners’ expressions shifted. Some to confusion, others to relief.
“Not while I’m in control. And I am in control, am I not, Malik?”
The gray demon nodded. “Some prisoners ran off on their own. Those were the dumb ones. The smarter among us understand your power, Neel. The smarter of us understand that our chances of surviving go up drastically with… er…”
“With what?”
“Well, with you. Wha—whoever you are,” Malik hastily corrected. He’d been about to say ‘whatever’.
“I see,” Vir replied. Fear and rumormongering weren’t Vir’s preferred tools for gaining obedience, but given the circumstances, it was about the best he could’ve hoped for.
“Well, you heard him,” Vir said. “I’m the leader now. So, can I expect you to behave?”
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The guards, as it turned out, did behave. Even without the implicit threat of getting collared. That was better than Vir had hoped for.
What was not what he’d hoped for, however, were the incessant questions and looks of fear, respect, and hope on his charges’ faces. And to Vir’s chagrin, on a select few—anger. Betrayal. Hatred.
Those may be a problem, eventually…
Not all the demons were Gargan, though most did hail from his clan. Even so, Vir wasn’t ready to reveal who he was. They were thankful to the one who’d rescued them, yes. Thankful enough to ignore that his existence had caused their lifetime of suffering? Likely not.
No, Vir’s Akh Nara reveal would have to come later. Once he could trust his troops with his life. Both implicitly and explicitly.
He could, however, divulge his other secret identity. Layers upon layers had their uses, after all. The Endless hours of effort cultivating his identity were spent precisely for moments like these. And it was all about to come to fruition.
“Long have we been oppressed. Downtrodden and trampled. But hear me now! The rebellion is coming,” Vir said, impersonating the best smug grin he could muster—which was to say, masterful. “Be sure you’re on the right side when it happens.”
He could almost hear the kothis gulp. The stronger among them looked away in shame, while the weaker, less experienced guards nervously exchanged glanced with one another.
They won’t be a problem, Vir thought as he walked away. Just wish I could say the same for the others.
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“Alright, look,” Vir announced, his voice amplified by the same tablet the Overseer used. Balagra had charged it, and if he’d had any reservations about why he’d been asked to charge it, he kept them to himself. Having his life saved had had a profound impact on the naga’s attitude to Vir.
“I won’t claim to have all the answers. Who am I? Gargan rebellion. Yes, I said it. No, I’m not afraid. Yes, I’d be a grakking chal to think we could rebel and flee right now. Where would we go? To the Ash? We’d die. Across the border? We’d be fugitives. And I doubt any of you harbor delusions that we’d be let back into Chitran-controlled territory.”
“So what should we do?” someone asked.
“For starters, we head to a secure location. By those mountains,” Vir said, pointing to the jagged peaks that were bisected by the Ash Boundary.
The prisoners shuffled anxiously, and some uttered prayers, though not one spoke up against him.
“I know it’s dangerous,” Vir said. “But it’s the best shot we have. The mountains will protect us from Ash Beasts. And the Kothis aren’t expecting us back for a week or more. We’ll make good use of that time, though not in the way they intended. We’ll train. I’ll train you. You’ve all seen what I can do. When we’re done, you’ll wield those weapons of yours as well as you move your own arms. I can’t say you’ll win one-on-one against Ash Beasts, but three-on-one? Doable.”
Excited whispers sounded through the crowd. They were hesitant, but curious. Vir could work with that.
“For those of you lacking weapons… Well, I plan to raid Praya Parul. On my own. And I’ll bring back better gear than you could ever have dreamed of.”
“What about after?” someone asked. “What do we do then?”
“Then we return to Garrison Atnu. We’ll be wearing our collars, but we’ll no longer be slaves. No longer prisoners. We’ll be rebels. And when the time comes, we will destroy them.”
A cheer unlike Vir had ever expected burst forth, deafening the ears of all those present.
And, to Vir, Malik, and Balagra’s immense satisfaction, more than one Chitran guard pissed their pants.
Vir looked over his future troops with feigned pride. If only it works out that way…