Chapter 9: Unholy Intervention

Ashura.

The last echo of the evil God's reveal cascaded off the darkened walls. The muscles surrounding my kneecaps pulled in short bursts, the edges of my sight frayed, and suddenly, the surrounding dark was thick and clotting, suffocating me.

I knew in technical terms what she was: a Superior Shura. It had been so long since one had been seen in Dagon that they had nearly turned into a legend. Some said a random fullblood from the higher realms could destroy Dagon’s barriers within two spells. Others claimed making eye contact was enough to keep your soul from entering the cycle of rebirth. Yet even that mythical and mystical tern didn’t do her justice. There were levels to the tower of power, and an Ashura was an existence lounging on a beach bed with an open coconut in their hands on a floor other Superior Shuras couldn’t dream of finding a staircase to reach.

One finger. A word. A thought. How little effort would it take for her to destroy me so that my corpse would be left beyond recognition? That image cascaded in my brain like a warning. Move careful, I told myself.

With a shaky hand, I raised my cup to my lips and swallowed. I winced at the sound, the gulp landing harder than I meant to. The Ashura said nothing and kept an amiable smile on her face. She was giving me time to digest. I almost told her she didn't need to since talking 'business' over my death with an eldritch being had never been in the top one hundred of my to-do list. It was somewhere below 'anything dangerous for my health' and 'Ignis torturing my spirit for a million years in hell'. But here I was.

I took another swallow, this time succeeding in suppressing the noise, and steeled my nerves. Strangely, I reached an oasis of calm with ease as the drink slithered down my throat. I imagined being back in the ring, eyes glued to my opponent, breathing unnoticeable, just as the bell tolled.

“How do I know if you’re speaking the truth?” I said.

"About being an Ashura, you mean?" The Ashura's too-soft voice sounded.

Her eyes were still closed (they had been since I entered the abode), but somehow it added to her non-threatening mien. I wasn't grateful for it. Her kind aura only unnerved me more, tightened the gripping darkness that enclosed me, and I felt like she was watching me, though she couldn't possibly be.

I fought to keep the calm that the Ashura almost broke without effort and tentatively nodded.

She scratched her chin.

“What do you know of us?”

“Almost nothing.”

It was the truth. My lack of knowledge was not a personal fault since not much was known about Ashuras to begin with. Most books couldn’t even agree on their number. ‘One for every Primal’ or ‘Two for all the gods, because Evil outnumbers Good,’ to name a few opinions.

"Then proving it would be difficult, I'm afraid, my dear. You will not be able to identify what I show you."

Touche. Then again, with her mere presence resting on my shoulders with the weight of a mountain, I could easily convince myself of what she was saying.

I breathed out, realigning myself.

“I would like to hear what you are offering.”

The dark deity watched me. Faintly, I could detect within the darkness around her…please. The dark was purring.

She stood up and walked to a closet near the fireplace. Her hand opened and closed, and between the space of an instant and non-existence, an object appeared in her palm that she put on the top of the cabinet. The placing was such that I could gaze at it unperturbed. It was a cube-like stone that was, to no one's surprise, black. Yet the stone's surface was smooth and translucent to the point that I suspected it would reflect had there been any natural light. I could see inside it. Something—mana I presumed—swirled between the bounds of the material. Call me crazy, but the swirling looked like a dance as if a conscious flow was moving with grace and intent akin to that of a sentient being.

"To begin, let's list some facts," the Ashura said, returning to her seat and making no further comment on the mysterious stone. "At this point, Marco—the one using Ignis's abilities—is booking an appointment with Erregar for you. Even if he wasn't, your blood loss would give the little scythe man a ring. The wound in your right arm was too great. The remedies too little and too late."

I pulled my chin back. Had she just called Erregar ‘little scythe man’? I shook my head. That has nothing to do with me. Focus, Asha.

The screen the Ashura had used to refresh my memory was still there, frozen on a shot of myself sleeping in Eva's basket right before the explosion was about to hit. It was hard to see from this angle, but the skin around the knife and most of my arm had turned a black which was not a part of my skin colour, normally somewhere between the shade of bronze and copper.

“It looks nasty,” I said, grimacing.

Adrenaline had allowed me to bite through the tear somewhat. But seeing the weapon's effects from a third-person view with a cold mind made me aware of the gravity surrounding the injury. The pill Crumbs gave me had knitted my flesh, but that was all it had achieved.

I bit my lips.

“My right arm, will it…” I trailed off, not daring to ask the question.

"Let's say you miraculously survived the explosion. Unless one of Eva's clerics shows up right away through a miracle of equal proportion, your arm will remain non-functional for the rest of your life."

'The rest of my life' being a solid few minutes. I chuckled, and as I did, the calm within me broke. A heat that came from deep down took its place, seeped into my veins, scalding me so badly I thought I was on fire. It wormed its way into my right limb, which was somehow intact here, in the void space.

‘That’s the phantom,’ Dave had said. ‘Every fan of the sport thinks she’s the next champion.’ And how much work did I put in to reach that point? How many days had I spent running in the rain when it was freezing cold? It didn’t matter. Not to me. Boxing was something that was mine. Something that I was good at, could wake up early for and give my all. That was gone. All of it gone because of a fucking clown!

Jester's mask crossed my mind, and now I could almost see the flames raging in my arm.

“What a shit show,” I spat.

“Doesn’t feel just, does it?” she asked.

“What do you think?!”

My voice rose above the room's ambience, and my fingers snaked around the chair's armrest. The wood groaned and creaked, then crumbled with a loud crash of sound that made me jump out of my skin. I stared at the broken handle. Had I done that? The centre of my hand was searing, and I turned my palm over, looking at it from different angles. What was going on?

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My head turned sharply towards the Ashura, face asking for an explanation.

Her gaze contained the same ease and patience as before.

“What I think,” she said, “is that justice is a fantasy. A flimsy concept those who have nothing else to hide behind perpetuate because the more powerful give it to them once every blue moon as a sign of mercy or compassion.”

"Take the girl Jester took, for example," she said. The screen next to me skipped to the relevant part of the night, showing how the girl I tried to help got dragged into the alley. "Do you want to know what Jester did to her?"

“Show me,” I said. The conviction in my own voice surprised me. I had to see.

Darkness shifted. Colours melded, and on the centre of the viewing window was the female Shura—the blood on her temple still visible—spiked to a stake in the middle of the street. The wooden shaft was pounded into the ground right in the middle of a phrase that I could practically hear Jester whisper in my ear as he pressed the blade against my neck:

NO SHURAS.

“This is sickening,” I said.

The only thing keeping me from retching was the fact that I was seeing this on a screen and not in real life. My insides still swirled, though. But what caused me the most turmoil was that I felt more angry and disappointed than anything else. Disappointed that what I risked my life for turned out to be a complete waste. Angry at myself that I wasn’t strong enough to prevent this atrocity. If May had been there, the girl would have lived.

“It is justice,” the Ashura corrected, staring at me from beneath her eyelids.

“How can this possibly be justice?! Aren’t you on our side?”

I snapped at her. As the last sentence left my mouth, the dark God in front of me laughed, like I had made a mistake she had been waiting on for a millennia.

“If you are talking about the side of Shuras,” she said, “then yes, I suppose I am on your side. Yet make no mistake—”

I could only describe the kindness and warmth snuffing out of her features and the room as how a flame would die when left outside in the heart of winter.

“—Shuras are not just or without sin. Even if the purebloods and sorcerers in Dagon went on a rampage and murdered every Half or Quarter in the city, which is hundreds of thousands, it would be a drop in the barrel of how many of their kind we Shuras have slaughtered over the aeons.”

And that was the truth, I was forced to admit. There was a reason Superior Shuras and purebloods lived in entirely different realms today. Shuras had waged innumerable wars on purebloods and gods. For most of them, no one even knew why.

“But—” I began.

“—Halfs and Quarters played no role in the wars,” she finished my sentence for me. “So let me ask you, child, is that why your justice weighs more heavily than that of Jester? Because you and her—”she pointed to the girl“—deserve better?”

I turned my head away and then whispered: “No.” The cold had seeped into my skin, dousing the fires inside, and it came out as more of a whimper.

You didn't get what you deserved in life. That was a naive sentiment which had been beaten out of me after Mother died and Father got jailed, leaving me by myself.

The Ashura gave a slow and respectful tip of her head as if that was precisely what she had wanted to hear.

"The only difference between Jester and you is that he has the strength to make his own justice a reality. That is all. You're not a pureblood, Asha. Never will be. You are a Shura. A force of evil, as purebloods like to call us, that only gets what it takes and nothing else."

She used my name. I didn’t remember ever giving it to her, but sitting in a space far away from my home in a room whose vividness I was imagining more than seeing, I didn’t question it.

“So that’s what you want from me?” I said in a low voice. “To take my fortune?”

With only the bubbling of the boiling pot and the faint melody of tea sips to accompany it, the words rung ominously.

The chuckle that escaped me sounded forced to my own ears. Even if she saved me, I would be a cripple. So, what was there for me to take? I looked up, and my eyes found the stone and the dancing wisp at its core.

The Ashura set her cup down.

“Dagon will turn into a battlefield in a couple of hours,” she said, dropping the information the way a rock did in a pond. “There’s no way for you to survive the coming onslaught with your current level of strength.”

The reveal dug a trench between me and my oncoming depression. My throat caught. A battlefield?

“Are the barriers breaking?”

It was the first thing that came to my mind. How else would the entirety of Dagon be under threat with our barriers still up and running?

“Like sand through a sieve,” she said. “There will be nowhere to hide.”

I breathed in sharply. Samantha, I immediately thought to myself. May and Father would be able to protect themselves. But Samantha…would she be okay? I needed to warn her.

“In essence,” the Ashura said, oblivious to my worries, “you need a way to survive the explosion, your bleeding and a way to defend yourself in the upcoming war that will raze your city.”

And then it dawned on me. I had been looking at this entire conversation wrong. Somewhere in my head, when I heard the word 'business', I had naively thought that I needed to make some sort of deal, that there would be a trade. There would be no trade. Not when the investment I needed was so high. Either I accepted the help she offered me and the resulting bill, or I took nothing at all.

“How?” I asked.

There wasn’t exactly worry and helplessness in my tone, but it wasn’t far from it.

She pointed at the pot of boiling tea.

I didn't say I hoped her offer was more than another glass, yet my face said it all.

She smiled and gave me a refill.

“Luckily for you,” she said, her finger moving from the pot to my chair, “it’s more than just tasty tea.”

Our conversation had made me forget all about what I’d done to the poor piece of furniture. For the first time, I questioned what this Darqi that I had been drinking really was. How could tree-juice have such a drastic effect on me?

“But,” she said, “I do have something else for you as well.”

The stone appeared in her palm. I’d never seen her move to grab it.

“What is it?” I asked, taking the bait.

“A soul stone.”

The name and wisp carried an implication I did not like at all. Before I could ask the obvious question on my lips, the Ashura shook her head.

“I must confess that I got a little carried away. Our talk is coming to an end. For now. Pausing the flow of time within an area for too long is a costly endeavour after all, one neither one of us would want to pay the price for.”

I wriggled in my chair at that. There could be a price too high for an Ashura?

“The Darqi I fed you will power you if it wasn’t obvious already,” she said. “It will also keep you alive despite your blood loss. Manage it correctly, and it will be enough for you to make it through the current mess coming your way. Afterwards, you’ll find yourself stumbling into this humble space again. We’ll continue where we left off, then.”

I stroked my forearm, feeling for the burning sensations I experienced prior. But my arm was cold to the touch. Keep me alive, I thought. Suddenly, a desire to lick the entire pot of Darqi clean rose inside me. I suppressed it. There must be a reason she only fed it to me in small doses. Also, if the Ashura said I would be back, then I would be back. No need to get greedy. Better to enjoy the little things in life, such as that I got to keep my soul all to myself for a bit longer.

“Manage it correctly,” I repeated. “That sounds like a condition. What if I screw it up?”

“Then you die,” she said. There was no emotion on her face. “Continuing my investment is worthless if you cannot make it past this little a hurdle.”

I didn’t question the Ashura’s definition of ‘little’. Right. No pressure at all. Just leave it to me to not look stupid at the most important moment in my life.

"Do not worry, Asha," she said. "See it as an opportunity. A practice run. Experiencing the dangers outside while being powered by Darqi will allow you to form a broader opinion of what is possible, see the wonders it can and cannot perform. Deals should not be made blind."

The stone vanished along with the teapot, and an unnatural quiet burst to life between us. Even the faint, unnerving humming of the void was gone.

I looked around me. Then, back at the Ashura. I was almost too afraid to speak up.

“What now?”

“You leave, and I await your return.”

I didn’t call Captain Obvious out on her stupidity because I valued my life.

“Do I just go through the door or…?”

"That won't be needed. Simply close your eyes and count to ten. You will find yourself back in Dagon right after the explosion."

I counted down. And when I got to the last count, I heard a whisper right next to my ear:

‘Good luck, my dear. Try to survive the night.’

…

—Three hours until the collapse of the barriers—

In Brighttown

Shadows twisted, darkness writhed. Time unfroze.

Fires stormed and laid waste to everything within the plaza. Gravel cracked and melted, windows, doors and pieces of buildings were blown off, debris hurtled through the sky, crashing into the homes of the less fortunate.

A heated stone saw its opportunity, went beyond its limits, and smashed into a gas station on the side of the streets. Homerun. The sky lit up, and shock waves of sound ignited car alarms in the distance, which supported the flames in further demolishing the silence of the night.

Chaos had stirred all night while Brighttown had been half asleep.

Now, the city was wide awake.