The Yoddhas shoved their hands into small cracks of space beside them, pulling out long spears. Placing it between two circular shields held by adjacent Surakshaks, they thrust the long range weapons towards the incoming tsunami of unending monsters. A link of shields broke down at the western end prompting the sixth graders who were still recovering, into action, intercepting a herd of Mutated Rhino variants. No wonder they broke in. Some two meter five headed snakes also followed the herd. The Nagas were huge snakes, and had a hood like king cobra. They didn't have any human like features other than the two hands that protruded out right from where the hood ended at their body, as they clutched maces or spears with them. A huge explosion rocked the northern part. Pieces of the sages' quarters propelled into the air and scattered everywhere. The sky lit up in a fiery aura, as a comet from the northern face of the Banyan tree sped out, as straight as a bullet, piercing Ahara's shoulder as he dodged, trying to defend his face. The mountain behind took the impact and sent out cobwebs of cracks surrounding the crater, manifesting an avalanche from the snow peak, that rushed down swallowing up thousands of Asuras. The huge buffaloes spread out from the hole in our defense, trying to wreak havoc in other parts of the shield line from within. I saw seniors with only a single arm chucking spears towards the Nagas. They could only manage to coat the tip of the spear with negligible Kundalini. Some sixth grader Surakshaks intercepted the buffaloes and were sent away flying with twisted arms or dented rib cages. While a group of twenty meter Danavas appeared at the southern end, swinging their mighty maces with a spherical tip, crushing another part of the defense line, and insta killing twelve or fifteen seventh grader Surakshaks within a second. The sound of bones and organs squashing to leave behind an unrecognisable lump of flesh churned my insides. Some of the fifth graders started vomiting behind me. Right now I was at the southern part too, my hands creating bird heads with sharp beaks covered with a layer of Kundalini commanded to rotate in anticlockwise direction. I had already failed more than thirty times to make the Kundalini circulate, emptying half of my auxiliary chakra. I started with the beak, coating them first, instead of creating the whole bird before hand so that I didn't waste Kundalini unnecessarily. After the coating process, if it didn't work, I tapered the end of the beak to modify them into an earthworm to see if it was even possible to change species, but since I had created the beak with the intention of creating a bird after, I was unable to reuse them. It was a shame that this condition existed, but Intention being important while creating something also made sense.
"I'm sorry fifth graders, but we will be needing your help. Whoever were designated as the Vaidyas in their teams, if you can check your status windows to see whether you have the recovery skill, if yes, you will be really helpful considering the situation. Come with me to the central Banyan. We will teach you how to use your skills."
"I need to go. Gotta keep our seniors alive." I told Anik specifically, remembering he had asked me to train that skill before hand.
"You got the skill after all. Keep me alive in the future too... Thanks." he replied with a smile.
More seniors arrived, proposing to train skills for different classes saying it will be beneficial as you learn faster during actual fights.
Bruh, you guys just weren't equipped. What have you been doing at the Ashrama? Has the education system degraded just like outside or the Asuras are more fierce this time?
I heard Ahara's roar again. Suddenly, a wall of fire went over our dormitory clearing everything in its path. It was like a laser attack or a dragon breath that you see in movies. I suddenly became glad that I wasn't inside. Seeing that, more people got hopeless, all these being too much for the young students. Thinking about all my fellow batchmates who just lost one of their precious lives shook me to the core. Just the sensation of dying out of nowhere might leave them traumatized.
Only 4 people hurried along with me, glad to be as far away from the dorm as possible, following the senior back to the central Banyan.
"Was this totally unprecedented? How come we're in such a disadvantage, even with two classes here?" I asked the senior directly.
"During our time, and also from what I have heard from my seniors, it wasn't even one tenth of what we have here today. This is crazy, the sheer amount of enemies has given us enough psychological damage to make us function inefficiently. Last year, the Asuras couldn't even breach the fire barrier, we just farmed experience from within. Forget the barrier, I haven't heard of this many resurrections happening in the last ten years. This will be a black mark in our Ashrama's history." he said. That is true, if something like this had happened before, the system would be much more strict.
"People just keep saying 'we have enough time' and procrastinate here. They were just relaxing, thinking they have three lives and faced no substantial dangers. We all need to get stronger. This was such a bad example to set as seniors. We are really sorry." he stopped as we reached the inner area again. There were still more than a hundred students left for their Vrata, but the amount of injured bodies stacked up beside the dais was two to three times more than them. The helpless students just kept staring up at the Banyan tree, which took up most of the scenery if you look straight ahead, as they were afraid of what they might witness if they ever turned their heads around.
"How do you coat your weapons with Kundalini? They seem to be alive." I enquired the senior of my conundrum.
"It took us about a year to learn that. I suggest starting as soon as possible. It'll be better to learn Kundalini Tethering before that. You just need to attach a Kundalini string to the coating and keep commanding it in real time. Sorry, it might be confusing, but once you learn Tethering you'll understand what I wanted to convey." he answered. People here are really direct. Love it.
"That was really helpful!! Thank you very much! May I know your name, Senior??" I couldn't help respecting him as he solved my query in such a precise manner. It was also such a easy solution being right in front of me, literally. Coming up with a solution by yourself is indeed enjoyable, but I should also limit the time and number of tries I waste before asking about it from someone else who already knew.
"Ah, it's not much. It might have been better if you came up with it by yourself. I'll give you guys a demo about how to use Kundalini for activation of your skills. Recovery can be cast on both yourselves and other entities requiring different techniques for both. For healing yourselves, you just need to rearrange the sap vessels and send it to the place you are hurt from within your body. But for healing other people, you need to project your intent of healing someone else and eject your Kundalini outwards. The Kundalini will listen to you if you coax it gently into doing what you want... so take some time until you get used to it." He concentrated on showing us an example, as Kundalini flowed out from his fingers and slowly rested on a patient's body.
"That was the last of my Kundalini." he ended the demonstration and forgot to say his name. He was already in tremendous pressure, as it seemed from the scenes in front of me.
I glanced at where the most injured people were.
"What is the Recovery level of the Vaidyas from sixth grade?" I asked him, curious about where I stood in terms of Recovery skill.
"Maybe level 5 on average. It gets progressively harder to level up after level 3. And as you can see from our condition, people didn't get this much injured before, for us to practice."
I was not sure whether revealing my healing abilities will be a good idea before levelling up my attacking skills, but being able to hide my other aspects behind the veil of a healer might also be a different approach to things. The scene in front of me was also unbearable. Witnessing such tragedy will automatically tickle whatever morality and humanity that was nestled within your body, forcing you to take action when you have the ability to. Right now, keeping people alive was much better than mindlessly charging at our so called enemies, whose motivations I wasn't even privy to. Firstly, I would die at first contact, and I didn't want to lose my extra lives over nothing.
"I'm going there. I'll be able to help." I told the senior, my eyes full of confidence. I took quite a blow when I couldn't even regenerate my little finger before, but hearing that we needed to relocate our sap vessels to the injured area for better healing gave me the knowledge I wanted. Before, my Kundalini distribution vessels were thinned out to cover as many parts of the body as possible as it wasn't wild like Shakti, but now I realised that I needed to concentrate the vessels in the injured part for better healing. Let's not waste any by regenerating my finger right now, and concentrate on healing the seniors.
The senior nodded, distributed the other people with me to the other seniors already present there, and took me to the ICU of this Ashrama where the seventh standard Vaidyas were. With them here, I now realised why the fireworks festival had stopped. These Vaidyas were Kundalini store houses. They buffed the glass canons called Dhanurdhars who seemed to have a very few shots at their disposal while only using their own internal energy.
"Is he a battery? Why did you bring him here?" One of the seventh guys asked the senior accompanying me.
"He's confident he can help. We need as much as we can muster, from all sources." my senior commented.
Without giving me another look the seventh grader told me to start from the other side of the crowd of injured people.
"I also need to go, heal as many as I can." he said and went away. I still didn't get to know his name. Well, there will always be another time.
Instead of going to the other side I made my way between the patients and sat at the middle in the tree pose that I have been repeating for the last few days.
I suddenly was surprised at the placement of this area of healing. It was right on the Shakti Rekha that joined the two dorms. I was now on the central-western side nearer to the girls' dorms on the left of the Central Banyan.
"Panna, you've been awfully quiet for sometime. Is everything okay? We need to try out the automatic mode." I sent her a mind message.
"I was just... a little horrified. I didn't know the Asuras were so scary. I had severed the sensory connections because it was too much for me. Sorry." she sent back in a regretful tone.
"It's okay. You don't need to see these. You are born for a different reason. To help others with the incredible powers you have. Let's do that, shall we?" I thought gently to her.
"Yeah, let's do it."
Power swelled within me as Panna activated my Recovery and Field of Protection skills. I instantly started absorbing Shakti sitting over the Rekha without a break.
A green light washed over the region lighting up the wounds on the people. My field of protection touched everybody around me with my Kundalini, healing them, while also being amplified with my recovery skill as I chose targets one by one and sent a Tether connecting my body to theirs.
"Whoa, he awakened the heart chakra." one the Vaidya seniors near me mumbled observing my green Kundalini.
"See, he was a battery. A healing battery at that. Crazy." the guy who was so dismissive of me broke into a smile. He looked up at me and gave a thumbs up. "Sorry for earlier, you don't have to distribute Kundalini to us though. Just concentrate on healing. Good job! Really."
"I can't distinguish between just healing and providing others with energy yet. This skill activates both simultaneously for now. Got any suggestions?"
The senior was going to say something, but a huge series of explosions followed by a roar rocked the place. A huge ball of fire rose over the Banyan tree and sent a shockwave across the Ashrama. For a moment I thought about the waterfall pool. Our rendezvous point. It probably went extinct today. A shame for such a beautiful place.
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"Do you not care about all these children getting caught up in your missiles?" I heard Ahara's taunting.
"You don't have to worry about them, Demon, I have them well protected with my Kavach spells. You're free to try out how durable they are. But do not think you have the leisure of concentrating somewhere else. "
I so wanted to witness that fight. It had now moved over to the northeastern side getting blocked by the Banyan tree. The vibrations continued, the huge Danavas were now congregating against Ashwatthama's sides as a backup. If they didn't tie up Ashwatthama, he would clear some directions very soon. So they have decided to keep him busy while the slaughter continued in other places by the shapeshifter animal Rakshashas and Nagas.
"Instead of projecting it like a sphere around you, try kneading the outgoing Kundalini into spikes, like a porcupine. What you're doing is enough for now, you can practice later at your leisure. Trying things out will only waste precious energy right now. Keep it up."
After five minutes, I felt my auxiliary getting empty as the filtration process of the main chakra couldn't keep up with the rate Kundalini was leaving my body. This was too inefficient I felt.
Spikes. I was feeling like the theory made a little sense, each spike can be either a healing one, or a distribution one. I think getting to a higher Akshara level might help me in that, as I essentially knead the Kundalini after it comes out from my body.
"Convert one point of Prana, Panna!" I asked her.
"Yeah, I was waiting for the permission. Keep filtering as fast as you can, I'll take care of this side." she's a magnificent support.
As soon as my root chakra filled up with filtered Kundalini, I started pushing it towards the gap created by the vanishing kundalini in my auxiliary.
At this time, five minutes after I started, more fifth graders arrived as manual labour for shifting away the patients closer to me, who were out of immediate danger, and carried in another batch of serious patients. The ones towards the outskirts were removed at the middle of two such interchanges.
I lost track of time. People moved around leaving trails around me as if time had sped up for them, leaving me sitting still like a tree rooted to the ground. Is this how you feel, Panna?
I saw badly cutup bodies recovering in front of my eyes. The relaxing of their anguished faces sent a deep wave of satisfaction within me. Profusely bleeding body parts covered with herb bandages started closing up.
Sitting there, I was surprised to see my Recovery and Field of Protection skill rising to level 5. There were still 7 points of Prana left within me.
Now the seniors were getting seriously impressed.
"Who the heck called him a battery? Bring him to me!!! He's a crazy inverter, lighting up a whole house in a damned loadshedding."
I broke into a smile hearing his analogy.
"Bring me food. I'm low on Prana!!! Preferably meat." I shouted back.
A group of senior sisters chuckled and hurried away to fetch my food. Damn you, treating me like a gullible younger brother.
"Stack more injured near him. He's on his last legs already." The fifth graders were instructed.
The seventh grader Vaidyas were now on the edge of the sphere of my field just enough to touch it, and each took care of small portions of injured in front of them. I was now at the center of a bigger circle, with several smaller ones on the whole circumference.
My Prana hit 3 when food arrived.
The elder sisters started shoving food into my mouth. "Eat fast, our Kundalini has regenerated a bit standing near you, so we can go back to healing after getting over with this. Thanks again, you saved a lot of my friends' lives. Even if we have three, it causes a lot of depression if you lose one. The rest of the wounds can be slowly healed later, so in future, make sure to not get insta killed. Rest can be taken care of."
I nodded, trying to smile with my mouth filled with food. They laughed beautifully at my attempt, making me skip a few heartbeats. Whoa!! Elder sisters can be quite cute. My Prana regenerated to 9 after consuming hand fed meat from them.
"What's your name? I would like to remember it." one of the sisters with short brown hair that just reached her shoulders asked me. She had a thick strand that kept sliding down from infront of her ear the whole time. She also had a cute little mole over her left eyebrow.
"Dhruva."
"So Dhruva, you can call me Apsara didi. Okay? While you are at the Ashrama, come to me if you're in trouble with any seniors. I'll refuse to heal them forever." she smiled and turned around with her friend, who also thanked me.
Apsara, name of the celestial nymphs born out of the same Samudra Manthan incident. They were known for their beauty, as well as their skills in the art of dancing and music. She's indeed beautiful like their descriptions sharing her name with those species. I can already imagine the depression some seniors might get if she ever refuses to heal them right infront of their faces. This was a huge soft power granted to me over the seventh graders.
We often call the elder sisters in our family 'didi', it is a right that only the favourite younger brothers and sisters had.
It was probably the eleventh transportation that happened around me. This whole operation turned to be no longer than fifty minutes, with the injured getting switched every three to four minutes. The manual labour guys worked much more harder than me to be honest. They were crucial to the plan with all our seniors occupied with healing and buffing Dhanurdhars. Some came to replenish their Kundalini really close to me and again went off to the fight, while I was fed one more time by another male senior who happened to be emptied of energy.
"You know how crazy you are? How did you learn Prana conversion? Everybody has an idea of what you've been doing and have been checking up on you, after you asked for food, shouting that you were low on Prana. You have been really impressive, but you might have to hear something from the sages. Prana conversion is prohibited by them. Since you are new you might be sent off with some scolding but since it is risky you might be prohibited to continue it in future. People have often lost their lives while converting Prana because of miscalculations. They stopped teaching the skill after that." he said, genuinely concerned. "We were really touched to see you using your life energy for us. We also gave some beating to the guy who called you a battery." He smiled. "You've been nicknamed as the Generator now. Taking care of a whole little society."
A society was a bunch of skyscrapers within a small area created for using space efficiently in an urban City where population is really high. Some of the cities contained people more than a few countries combined. They should start relocating some people to Satya Marta. I don't know why they ignore pressing issues like this. Things needed to be changed, but there might be unknown factors which I wasn't cognizant of. There were another round of intense fireworks that brightened up the northern sky. It was terrifying.
The northern part of the Ashrama was razed to the ground, the sage quarters nowhere to be seen. The boys' dorm was already in pieces, a section of it flattened by the huge energy blast that came from Ahara. The orange light from before was Agni Deva's Kundalini that was converted by Ahara after consuming it.
A huge dome suddenly appeared overhead, as snakes of energy slid across its surface and fell somewhere beyond the clearing of the Ashrama. It was probably another energy blast from Ahara which was deflected by a Kundalini shield.
"I won't fall for it twice, Ahara!!!!" Ashwatthama's voice broke through my tranced state. I was done, everything was emptied, and I doubted I even had the mental energy to keep filtering Shakti. My sap vessels were exhausted, throwing up whatever Shakti I tried to absorb as soon as it entered my body. From the corner of my eye, I saw the last student drinking the Sanjeevani Amrita. It was like a mental trigger, as soon as I saw it, my body totally gave up as if I was in an illusion, like my duty was only until the Vrata was done.
The sound of several conches came from the Banyan tree.
The sages were now free.
Their hands invaded small cracks of space and brought out intricately designed bows and swords. Huge pillars of Kundalini erupted around the Banyan, and another round of fireworks adorned the sky, imitating the setting sun. It was already more than five hours since the ritual started.
I looked at my green status and saw the number 2 on my levels. How many more could I have gained?
Please, just enough for two birds. Please.
I strained my sap vessels one more time to refine Shakti and after a while kneaded my Kundalini to a single bird. I covered its beak with a spiralling Kundalini and attached two tethers to it. One to the body, another to the beak coating.
The sages around me were fierce, they turned the unending blanket of Asuras, over the mountains, to ashes with their Kundalini arrows, they contained the energy from multiple chakras, mashed up together to create other shades than the seven primary ones. One also kept sending out rainbow missiles, probably using all the chakras at once.
Patches of empty spaces dotted the mountains now, as they kept increasing in size like a fire eating through paper. Their orange clothes fluttered around in the wind, their beards gave off a divine expression making me convinced that what they were doing was of utmost importance, as if they were bringing down divine judgment.
"We humans overcome our shortcomings and keep getting better. How can you even dream about conquering us?" Ashwatthama's voice announced with a tone of finality. The northeast hummed with a constant amplifying energy frequency. As if that giant lizard was charging up before using its atomic breath.
"I was cursed because I had used this without mastering it, being unable to take it back and ending the life of an unborn as a result. This is my repentance, my atonement by saving lives instead. I will gladly carry a new sin if I have to, for the sake of killing you, to protect the precious lives behind me.
Answer to my call again, after all these eons, to end this evil in front of me. What you will destroy will never be reborn again, casting its atman beyond the reach of Samsara. May your divine fire swallow all my enemies, and bring peace over this land.
'Avirbhavati!! Brahmastra!!!!' [Manifest!! Divine weapon of Brahma, The Progenitor of Universes!!!!]"
A shrill cry shattered the cloudy heavens as rays of sunlight assaulted our eyes. An arrow with golden feathers and a red spiral for the tip struck down from above right into the clutches of Ashwatthama. Mounting it on his bow, he stretched out his hands creating tremendous tension on the bowstring.
Ahara, sensing his demise, shouted, "Rahu! Bless me with the protection you promised!!!"
The light from above, dimmed as an energy somewhere beyond, cleared the clouds above us. The setting sun which was still above the horizon appeared above one of the mountains which had caved in, losing its peak. A celestial shadow started creeping across the sun gradually swallowing it. As if we were watching a solar eclipse recording in 2x playback speed. Ahara's body glowed with the energy of the sun and grew in intensity as the original one lost its radiance. It started from his head and slowly flowed downwards like liquid gold.
I will miss my chance!!! I sent the Kundalini bird rocketing towards Ahara's feet and put all my Kundalini in the beak tether making it spiral as fast as possible. Just a Hit. Please.
I felt the impact from the bird right before the connection popped off. Ashwatthama's bow was now at its highest tension waiting for Ahara to cover his body completely. As if he wanted Ahara to try everything at his disposal before getting destroyed miserably anyway.
Twanggg!!!!!
The sound of the bow string releasing Brahmastra shattered my eardrums. The Banyan tree swayed uncontrollably losing branches and leaves in the process.
"Swarna Kavach!!!!" I heard Ashwatthama's voice again as a golden dome appeared around Ahara, trapping him and the Brahmastra within it.
The ground within the dome shattered and slammed against the barrier. A ball of fire erupted within, and expanded outwards bulging the golden dome to its Max capacity. Another golden dome appeared over it as the sages also put together their Kundalini. And suddenly, everything in that space contracted as if a black hole had appeared within. Both the domes shattered and got sucked away, along with its contents, into the unending abyss that the small hole was connected to.
Within seconds, there was nothing anymore, other than a crater on the ground with a smooth surface. The temperature within had turned the rocks into a glass like substance. There might be a term for it but I was robbed of whatever vocabulary I had at my disposal after witnessing the impossible scene.
"Revered Sages, the ritual is now completed. Carry on your duties to purify the land of this filth."
As Ashwatthama turned around and walked back towards the Banyan tree, I realised why he refused to come out publicly. There was deep wound on his forehead that continuously released pus that flowed down his eyebrows. His whole body was riddled with melting skin, a sign of leprosy. As he got closer, I could smell the rotting flesh over the ferrous scent of blood all around.
It was the curse of Krishna, the avatar of Lord Vishnu. He had a choice to destroy any one thing in the whole world, and he had chosen the unborn baby of his enemy out of spite. He had lost the gem on his forehead in return, getting cursed to wander the world till the end of Kaliyuga as a cursed ugly leper. Never to find love all his life.
He used this curse of immortality for the betterment of human kind, raising generations of Rakshaks in Satya Marta to keep it safe from the continuous invasion of the Asuras from Patala.
I was filled with nothing but respect for him. People change with time. For better or worse. I had already found someone who became much better.
Or maybe I felt like that because he was currently on my side.
In the Mahabharata epic, the hero of truth, Yudhishthira, had lied only once in his whole life to disarm Dronacharya, stating that Ashwatthama had died. Since Dronacharya knew Yudhisthira won't lie, he gave up his weapons in grief over losing his son. But it was an elephant named Ashwatthama who was killed for this plot to work.
"Ashwatthama has been killed!" Yudhisthira had announced in front of Dronacharya, adding the next bit in a whisper, "who was an elephant."
Yudhisthira just stated a fact, but the effects of the truth were similar to a lie.
Losing his father, Ashwatthama went mad with revenge, especially after learning how he was murdered using underhanded tactics. If Yudhisthira, could lie during a war and still gets to keep his morals just because he was associated with Krishna, it didn't matter if he sneaked into the enemy camp at night when war is not supposed to happen, and kill his enemies. He killed the five children of Draupadi, the common wife of the five Pandavas, and later released Brahmastra to kill Parikshit, who was still inside his mother's womb. Krishna later resurrected Parikshit using Sanjeevani, who went on to become the sole heir of the bloodline of Pandavas. So Ashwatthama had technically erased a whole bloodline.
He was a heinous criminal in the eyes of Pandavas. And a hero for Kauravas. What was right? What was wrong? What is justified and what is not? Everything was decided by Krishna, the most powerful being of that era.