"Guys... If you all don't wake up within a day or two, things will get troublesome." I stared at the comatose bodies of my seven friends who had managed to keep their lives intact throughout the whole invasion.
I never knew there was a hospital-like accommodation right under the central Banyan tree. Some weird space magic must be at play here. One of the rooms on my way here also contained numerous jars that safely kept a part of our bodies, specifically pinkies, for body regeneration during resurrection.
I wonder how many similar bodies of beings who have multiple lives are lying all around in the dungeons and Lokas of the Universe.
The last two days have been my busiest. After the seniors went back to assist their friends in taking out the invading Daityas, the Rakshaks who were taking refuge inside the Banyan tree came out to help transfer all the comatose Rakshak bodies here.
The Banyan tree is supposedly a lot like the healing tree-staff that one of the invaders had brought, sending in green pulses of recovery Kundalini at regular intervals.
For my friends, this was probably their first time touching the limiter, leaving them no choice other than tapping out and losing consciousness.
Each section was allocated to two teams and a sage who was supposed to heal the students. I wonder how far the network of rooms stretched underground.
The number of students who were not inside the water dome numbered around only a hundred. While there were many students who had already become Forgotten, after this invasion, many more have followed. We started with around seven hundred Rakshaks and now, only four hundred were left.
Since yesterday we have been feeding the unconscious Rakshaks constantly since it's the only way to regain their Prana but for some reason, it kept falling back to one.
Something weird is happening to their bodies, considering I have already experienced this process dozens of times. Not a single time did it take me this long to regain my consciousness.
"I see you're already done feeding them, Dhruva." Sarvajnana came up to me and patted my head.
This sage had lost a life fighting against the youngest invader. He didn't say it outright, but his droopy eyes were a clear sign of the disappointment he was feeling.
"I did for now. But I hope you all have already found out that this is not a regular case of Prana depletion. The barrier had been sucking up our Prana, but after it dissipated, the effects should no longer remain, right?" I looked up at him, asking for answers.
"Many Rakshaks have already woken up." He notified, "The ones who were on the frontlines are currently like this."
"Our parents are coming today to meet us after a week in Alik. Since it's a Sunday back there, I hope you'll allow us to 'sleep' till 9.30 am instead of waking us up at 5.30. We can get two more days after today that way." I suggested.
"There's no problem with you guys staying here. The problem is with the Forgotten ones. Even though their rooms have been changed, they'll realize the other rooms containing you guys are empty, if they wake up." Sarvajnana pondered, running his fingers through his brown matted hair.
"Kalpa will keep them unconscious like last time. Hopefully..." I said hesitantly.
"Your concern is not too far-fetched. Forgotten ones lose the vessels they got from Kalpa, reducing her hold over them. As time passes, her ability to control them also diminishes." Sarvajnana dropped something controversial.
"So you agree that Kalpa can control us easily anytime she wants." I gave him a sarcastic smile while faking a disheartened expression.
"Sharing vessels with Divine Beings always comes with caveats. I have not seen her abusing it in all my years here though." Sarvajnana started to go over his memories ensuring his words held weight.
After a few minutes of awkward silence, Sarvajnana changed the subject. "Who among them is the closest to you?" He asked, pointing at my friends with his eye movements, "Someone you're willing to do anything for."
"I've only known them for two Satya months and one Alik week. I think it's too soon for me to choose. Why do you always amuse yourself by putting me in a spot like this?" I sighed, shaking my head in disappointment.
"You'll soon be facing many choices like this. I'm just keeping you up to speed. Five people. That's all you'll need in life. Find people who you can trust your back with. Be the same for them. Bonds made from a very early age usually last a lifetime. And again, you'll also find your worst enemies among them." Sarvajnana said all this with utmost sincerity, shaking me up a bit.
I watched seven of my friends napping peacefully on the straw mattresses.
Five people huh?
Aditi goes out at the very beginning. No debate there. I snickered, surprised at my own thought process.
Sarvajnana watched me carefully, entertaining himself over my ever-changing expressions.
I have my teammates and batchmates: Saiyan, Dweep, Anik, Shreya, Esha, and Jhanvi.
Along with my senior mentors who I dungeon crawled with: Vihaan, Laksh, Yashvi, and Trisha.
Then there were my seniors Archit, Jay, and Sobith who I teamed up with for the inter Gurukul league.
Next came Apsara Didi, Varsha, Vishwajeet, Sarvajnana, the little Asura child, and finally Somi.
Among the dead, I have Charulata.
I was surprised at myself, having been acquainted with so many awesome people. Did I really change from my previous self?
Going back through my memories, I remembered that I've always had a great first impression on people.
As time went on, for multiple reasons, I drifted apart from my friends. Most of the time, it was me getting irritated or annoyed and badmouthing them behind their backs to other people. I wonder how I became like that.
A sense of loneliness gripped my emotions, making me sit beside Dweep.
I realized I held people to really high standards and got disappointed when they failed to meet them. I've been comfortable since everyone here seemed to be superior at the beginning.
But after the Siddhi matches, I found out...
Wait.
I'm falling back to my previous tendencies. I opened up the level leaderboard to bring myself back to earth.
I'm at Rank 36 with level 28 right now. The Rakshaks other than our two teams who got to delve into the dungeon, had a free real estate leveling week where they massacred low-level Rakshashas prepared by the sages.
Many students overtook me during that time.
During this last week of Divyastra Utsaav, many fought with Rakshashas and monsters in the trials and leveled up, pushing me further behind.
On the other hand, since the Dungeon Crawl, I haven't been able to level up at all, hoarding my Siddhi points without using them.
Now that the other Chosens have returned from their secret training place, I can finally challenge them and hopefully face any weaknesses I might have missed in my strategies.
It's crazy how the top ranker is a level 52 guy.
Jateen. Class: Yoddha. I wonder how he surpassed Saiyan.
"I'm still waiting for your answer." Sarvajnana smiled at me expectantly.
"For now, I'll choose Saiyan, Dweep, and Anik since they are my teammates. Can I choose people from other batches?" I asked.
"No, since you'll be rarely seeing them from now on. A lot of things have changed in the meeting we had yesterday with the sages from across all the sections. You'll get to know after all these people wake up. You'll need people from your own batch." He answered my query, complicating things further.
"Then I'll choose these two." I pointed at Shreya and Esha.
One I was a wingman for and a mentor for another.
"The other two don't have a positive impression of me. Things happened during the dungeon crawl." I explained my reasoning.
Sarvajnana gave me a slightly disappointed look as if I failed his psychological test. "If you keep choosing people who have a good impression of you, they are bound to get tired of you one day. You'll slowly become a convenient tool for them, called upon only when your services are required. Choose people carefully, from among those who have seen both your positives and negatives. If they still stick around after experiencing both of your sides, they'll stay beside you for a long time."
"I... I have never thought of it like that. I've been trying to be useful to people all this time. Thinking they'll treat me the same. Maybe my whole perspective was wrong?" I mumbled, the gears in my brain trying to make sense of the words of advice from Sarvajnana.
He placed his palm gently over my head and stroked it twice. "You're a good kid. But the actions you've taken for the sake of others have pushed you deep into the chasm of Adharma."
He was mentioning my cold murderous demeanor, from the stories of Sutala and the Dungeon I have told him about previously.
"I thought it was a Kshatriya's Dharma to protect the people on your side." I asked, debating his words. "Would I be considered pious if I did nothing and watched my friends get slaughtered by my enemies?"
"Dharma..." Sarvajnana whispered to himself, "One instance of an action that follows the principles of Dharma can be followed by multiple instances of Adharma. Being bound by duty or honor doesn't mean you can repeatedly commit what's wrong. There are always better ways. Try your best to find them before resorting to the extreme. You are going down a path of self-destruction, the scales representing your actions are already tilted heavily on the side of Adharma. What you do till your sixteenth Alik birthday will determine the judgment Shani administers on you. You'll be safe until then because of an ancient oath Shani took."
"What do you suggest I do then?" I was this close to losing it. These words were the same things Panna had attacked me with.
"Do good deeds. Save other people. Find happiness in theirs. Change people's lives for the better, even by a little. Maybe then you'll be able to overturn your gruesome fate. Do not underestimate Shani. Even the Gods can't escape his trials."
Support creative writers by reading their stories on Royal Road, not stolen versions.
I was slowly getting worried about all this. Am I really in a royal mess?
"Enough talk for now, I'll come back later. It was a fruitful discussion we had. In this Kali Yuga, where everyone's drowning in Adharma, even small acts of kindness can prove to be potent enough. It is the easiest to achieve Moksha in this Age." He gave his final advice for the day.
I could only wonder why he himself hadn't achieved it then. Which way do his scales tilt?
I kept staring at the empty doorway absent-mindedly even after his body disappeared around the corner.
Find people who'll stick with me even after experiencing both sides...
Should I try having another talk with Jhanvi? Is she even willing to sit down on equal terms considering the conversation we had last time?
I remembered the words we exchanged inside the water dome. It'll be fine. My intuition told me.
I heard a knock and focused on Varsha, daughter of Mahabali, who was now standing right where I was staring off into space. She was carrying the translucent Asuran child clad in a white blanket in her arms.
"Where were you all this time?" I stopped myself after raising my voice involuntarily.
Both Ashwatthama and Vishwajeet had disappeared when we needed them the most. So did Varsha.
"Calm down. I had to accompany my father for a while. He also tasked me with trying to find out connections between the captured invader and the Asuran faction who attacked our kingdom." She already had an excuse ready, "You don't have a right to be angry with me. I only know you four and these girls a bit. I can't risk my life when I'm stuck gathering my strength back from the very bottom. You should have been with them instead of me."
I sighed, looking down at the ground. "I know that already... I was just thinking that having you or Vishwajeet around would have lessened the number of casualties by a lot. I guess you don't care about that."
"I do care." She replied adamantly, sitting down beside me in two swift motions. "That's why I've been hunting Celestial Aberrants with Dad on his missions to find the Shadow Planets in Bhuvar Loka. I'm trying my best, so please, don't talk like that."
I found myself becoming ashamed of my actions. To find my tendencies working their nasty magic right after realizing my fatal flaw was disheartening.
"I'm sorry." I whispered.
"Aren't you glad to have me put you in your place once in a while?" Varsha gave a bright victorious smile instead.
She handed the Asuran baby to me, placing it on my lap and positioning my arms so that it was comfortable for the little one. The baby seemed more than one year old right now.
"Isn't she growing a bit too fast?" I asked, teasing Varsha. "You on the other hand don't seem to age even if you're an old hag."
"Keep yapping away. I bet your future girlfriend won't even come close to me in terms of looks." She smirked confidently.
"If you don't change your nature, Maya's disguising properties in Marta will make you look like an ugly demon to her." I poked back.
"That's just you accepting defeat. Simply confirm that you don't have what it takes to woo the extraordinary girls of Ashrama who can witness my true beautiful nature." She stretched out her hands, shaking her head in disapproval. "Well... If they happen to become Forgotten, then it might be possible. But you'll have to start from the very beginning again. What a cruel fate."
"Okay, self-proclaimed Miss Brahmand. You're getting a little too ahead of yourself. Four hundred years and zero boyfriends can really do terrible damage on your psyche it seems." I retorted playfully, breaking into a burst of laughter. With this, I knew I had gained the upper hand. I only needed to...
In one swift motion, I blocked her punch to my right arm with the left while bending my knees upward to support the little child gently in my lap.
She grunted in frustration.
"Sorry to interrupt your banter, but it seems my partner is in deep trouble." An old lady's voice suddenly boomed inside my brain.
Varsha and I shared a glance and snapped our heads in the direction of Jhanvi, where a dimensional crack had appeared.
Her spiky sinister bow slipped voluntarily out of her dimensional box.
Partner. A sentient bow.
Interesting.
"What's wrong?" I asked, totally familiar with this telepathy business.
"Her body has a foreign soul inside. Both of them are fighting for control over this body. She's getting riddled with curses the more time passes. Do something fast!" The voice was desperate.
"They have Bhootas inside! No wonder the sages couldn't find out the reason behind their ailments. We'll require the assistance of Tantriks who specialize in ethereal beings!" Varsha got up in a hurry, "I'll go notify the sages. Stay here and get ready."
After she ran away, I started talking with the sentient bow. "Is there anything I can do until help arrives?"
"How's your mental strength?"
"Good enough."
"Try putting up your mental barriers. I'll test you."
"Okay?" I tried not to ask questions when time was of the essence.
Following Vishwajeet's advice, I imagined myself sitting in a dark empty room, with multiple spherical barriers around me.
Suddenly, I was in the middle of a Hollywood-inspired gunfight. My barriers started shattering from enormous bullets that pierced through multiple barriers at once. These are not bullets... These are highly penetrative arrows. It was as if dozens of arrows were being launched from multiple angles at the same time.
Can Jhanvi too replicate this attack in real life after she becomes stronger?
I used the residuals of broken mental shields and put them together to create new ones. Soon, I could 'feel' where the next attack was going to come from. Is this what they meant by tracking your enemy's motive?
Let's do what I do best. I imagined the broken pieces of the shattered barriers and moved them around like the Kundalini fogs I already have.
Seven o'clock, eleven, two-thirty... The attacks kept coming and following my gut, I kept putting up concentrated shields by stacking up fragments of my mental shield.
"No wonder." The voice laughed, and I felt a syringe pulling itself out of my skin, breaking my mental imagination. It was as if someone suddenly interrupted my 'saving the school from terrorists' daydream. Are those Tethers coming out of the bow?
I was disgusted at first glance but quickly composed myself since I too have those things coming out of my fingers or back in my battle mode.
"I'll guide you inside her consciousness. Help me in kicking that insolent bastard out of her body." The voice now had an amused tone.
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Jhanvi's mental image was vibrant with colors, unlike my dark and empty space. But it gripped me with a sense of discomfort.
Walking through a meadow of lush green grass dotted with patches of small white flowers, I found her sitting on her knees in a small constricted area surrounded by a fence.
It didn't take me long to realize what actually was happening here.
I kicked the fence hard and saw her blank eyes watching me with an aloof expression painted on her face.
"It's not budging," I mumbled, frustrated at the fact that I had none of my powers here.
This was her world, and only she could grant me those.
"Any help will be appreciated. I thought you'd guide me through the process." I looked around, asking the old lady to keep her word.
Not a single answer came from her side.
"Is this fence the Bhoota itself?" I wondered, "Or is this just a constraint placed on her by the experiences she had in her life."
When I had started enduring more than five of Vishwajeet's sleep commands, he slowly taught me the basics of mental imagery.
The first time we delved inside, he was surprised. It's rare to have nothing inside one's mind. But it was also concerning in a way.
If my mind was truly free of any such attachments, it would have been bright white, like a clear canvas. But in contrast, it was pitch black.
We had discussions and the only thing that came forward was interference.
I knew it was because of Panna, but I couldn't tell him anything about her. He's been worried about me since.
"Can you hear me, Jhanvi?" I shouted from the edge of the circular land, bordered by the sturdy fence. There was a barrier along it that stopped me from jumping over.
What does this fence signify? If I had something like this in my own mind world, what would it represent?
I remembered my talk with Sarvajnana. About the people I needed to find for whom I'd be willing to do anything.
This fence would then designate what I consider precious in my case. I won't even take a second look at anything outside this small patch of 'my' land. For some, it can be responsibilities, commitments, and relationships while for others it can be shackles, limitations, or a comfort zone that holds them back from exploring new opportunities.
"I can hear you." Her eyes brightened for a second before glazing over again, "Share a bit of your Prana with me, I'll take care of the rest. Thanks for coming."
"I'm finally here!" The old lady's voice huffed in exhaustion beside me. "It took quite a while for me to reach here... My old bones are killing me."
I rolled my eyes at her nonsensical complaint.
"Get ready. You'll feel light-headed when start the transferring process." She warned me.
"No need to worry about me. Do what you need to."
For a second, I saw a faint silhouette of a young woman standing guard over Jhanvi while she meditated with her eyes opened.
A tether attached itself to me, sucking away my Prana at an alarming rate.
"So you must be some incredible warrior from the past?" I asked the consciousness inside Jhanvi's bow using the telepathy technique.
"I don't remember." Came a curt response. A sensitive topic?
"Okay, I'll shut up if you don't want to be disturbed. Why did you even call me here then? You could have taken my life energy from the physical world itself."
"Physical world?" She laughed.
"Why are you laughing?" I asked in an instant. Little bits and pieces of information like this never escaped my attention.
"Kalpa's machinations are beyond your comprehension little child. I wonder what you'll think after knowing about the @#*$$&."
"Really? You're listening to this, Kalpa?" I couldn't help smirking at the censoring event. "She sure is meticulous. No wonder I don't trust her."
The grass around where Jhanvi was sitting started to wither away. The battle inside her mind should be at its climax.
"So the mind and the mind world are technically two different things." I mumbled to myself.
"Answering your first question," The old lady was finally feeling the need to hold a conversation, "I thought you'd be of help, so I brought you here. But she was adamant in not wanting to show you what's going on inside her mind. Rejected!" She started snorting and laughing like a barbarian.
"What the hell." I sighed in exasperation.
I leaned against the fence and kept watching the process. A darkness had started spreading outwards slowly yet rapidly while we were talking and now it was almost touching the fence itself.
Jhanvi suddenly punched her stomach but it phased right through her skin inside. As if searching for something, she rummaged around and finally pulled out a translucent white orb.
"Got it!!" Jhanvi jumped up and twirled around on one of her feet like a Bharatnatyam dancer. The victorious smile on her face was refreshing.
She parkoured over the fence and landed next to me. "This wasn't a malevolent being. Just... What should I do with it?"
"Did you guys already train your mental world before coming here?" I asked, amazed at her current jolly disposition. "I just started a few weeks back."
"Yeah. My sister trained me mostly with imaginative exercises. She would ask me to imagine hypothetical situations and ask me to solve them by giving small hints. I would imagine some action, and she would give feedback. I loved the labyrinth setting a lot." She blabbered away excitedly while clasping her hands around the white orb, using it like a smiley sponge ball.
I got the gist of it but had a hard time understanding the depth of the game. Until I saw it happening in person it would be hard for me to realize the inner workings of that training method.
"How long was I out for?" Jhanvi asked, getting a bit worried.
"Two days. But we got an extension of four extra. We'll wake up at 9.30 am."
"Neat." She sighed in relief, then looked down and tapped her feet nervously. "Your Prana helped me break through the stalemate we were in. Also, thanks for feeding me while I was engaged with this naughty kid." She pressed the orb harder.
I wondered how she knew... Oh, it must be her bow.
"But I feel like I didn't do much this time." I smiled, faking disappointment.
"You have done enough already, and for a lot of instances. Any more and we would become..." She stopped suddenly.
"Become what?"
" I'm sorry. It's just..." She sighed but still didn't complete what she was about to say.
"Jhanvi." I leaned my back against the fence and stared off into the horizon, where the endless grasslands and the cloudless blue sky met. "Tell me what you were going to say. It's not fair, to say all that and stop at the end."
"It's just something we had a small talk about." She seemed unwilling to say any further.
I waited, not moving from my position.
"We were surprised how we had improved over the past few weeks rapidly." She muttered, "One of us said that it was because... you weren't there."
"You all think I'm holding you back?" I asked, weird emotions bubbling inside my stomach. "Me, who didn't even know of this world before coming here?"
"Not all of us." She defended. I don't know how she was expecting me to react while hearing this. "Dweep had a huge fight afterward... Things were not looking good until Esha managed to calm things down."
My brain was rushing. I wanted to say so many things but couldn't. It felt like there was no use letting out those words.
I would only be repeating what I did last time. If I opened my mouth right now, good things would not come out.
"I'm sorry. I shouldn't have brought this up. This wasn't what I wanted to talk to you about. I really..." I blocked the rest of her voice from registering in my brain.
"Old lady. Take me out of here." I used telepathy to ask her. "Right now."
"I think my partner still wants to talk to you. She deeply regrets taking the conversation on that tangent..." The sentient bow stopped midway.
I don't know what kind of expression I was giving but it also forced Jhanvi to take a step back.
"Okay..." The old lady mumbled nervously.
The next moment I found myself sitting where I was, holding the Asuran baby in my arms.
A white orb now floated above Jhanvi's sleeping body.
The little one kept staring at it, intrigued. Wasn't she also half Bhoota?
Raising one of her tiny little hands, she tried to grasp at the little white ball, popping it from a distance.
"What the..." I mumbled, standing up and stepping closer in order to get a better look.
Small energy particles that the orb left behind started integrating themselves with the child's body. As a result, her pale body got a bit of its color back. The opacity also changed by a few degrees.
I wanted to stay here and examine the phenomenon but I seriously wanted to run away from here right now, before Jhanvi woke up from her slumber. I needed to cool off badly.
Without looking back once, I left the room and found Varsha running towards me from the other side of the corridor with two orange-clad Tantriks walking casually a few meters behind her.
"She feasts on Bhootas. Try experimenting. I need to go rest for a while." Somehow blurting out those words, I handed her the baby and walked away, getting one last look at her confused face.
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx