Author's Notes:

Exams ended! Can't say I'm completely satisfied with some of the work in the end, but that's on me. I put the time in the preparation, imagining if I didn't. I would be screwed. Anyway, back to normal speed again. Lots of prayer time now, hoping god can mind control my lecturers into giving some bias results for me.

And now everyone knows I have internal issues like these! (Sarcasm) If I were really a chirper bastard, RaK would not exist and I would be irresponsibly clubbing just because.


The last thing he remembered before being where he was, in the brig of the Royal Fortress Command was on his way to the local store to purchase confectionaries. Then, armed men began running through the street rounding specific families with ties to the military, including his own.

He was stuffed into a truck and when they took off his hood, he was in a holding cell with both members of his family, including their extended family of his siblings, in-laws and their families. The entire House Roka was a a jail cell with them. They were all here because of him, he was the highest military authority in Kyrat, a word from him could change everything.

Arjun didn't need to guess what was happening.

"So they've decided to act… and now of all times!" He kicked the bars.

"Dear, you really need to stop taking out your anxiety upon the iron bars." Manisha was ever watchful of his manner. But this time she had good reason, because Arjun represented one of the family heads that everyone looked to for advice and peace. Showing a roudy behaviour would only unsettle them.

Arjun left the bars alone and sat on the cold hard floor crosslegged as he meditated for a while.

"Still, to think they would really do it. Could it be because the boy was not around?" She asked as she sat quietly next to him.

"…." He pondered on the subject for a while, like he always did.

"Mistress Lau wasn't around to marshal them for obvious reasons, Badala fell into a coma, the Jatayu Brigades and half of the Armoured Battalions are overseas, Golden Path and Brother Mohan are not here. They're virtually unchallenged. But even still, I'm not sure how they would ever convince the people to acknowledge their rule."

"I don't find it surprising at all."

Arjun turned to his wife with sceptiscism as to how.

"How else did His Highness and Mistress Lau do things before that boy entered the scene?"

Arjun came to the epiphany, they were going to resume the occupation of Kyrat in the old style. It made sense as to how they had some Kyrati support in their actions. Not everyone was for the big reforms, especially for Badala taking the mantle of Duke right after Marquis. They were suspicious of his lineage from the very beginning. And if the King did not acknowledge the complex procedure to attaining these ranks by generation than by merit. Then, it showed that the King no longer cared for his subjects' priveleges and rights.

Adding to this was the dissolution of the Royal Guard army, the premier elite guard for marshalling the Kingdom. House Hamal was a definite supporter of the Cantons, old Raghu still hadn't forgotten what Badala did to his son whilst entrapping him with his younger son.

Manisha poked his cheek affectionately to break his line of worry.

"These trivial things, you don't have to worry. The rest can be handled by your subordinates. What we need now is the head of the household and my husband." Arjun nodded, agreeing with her assessment of the situation.

Saraswati was at the corner comforting her cousins, his nieces and nephews from ages two to thirty. Telling some stories of her adventures in the army, both in Kyrat and abroad in Yinke as well as the Papir Garud Durbar Palace.

Arjun listened unintentionally to one of the stories which she switched characters of genuine people for animals. That was a little more appealing to the young ones.

One such story was her original idea, "The Badger and the Fox." Which she told in a part minisery-style every after meals. They'd spent over at least half-a day in here without a single report of what was happening outside.

As Arjun listened to the story, he began to find a similarity to certain individuals as her characters. The Tigers were the leading force in the valley, probably the Cantons and Kyrati Military Officers. The even numerous Dhole that ate everything indiscriminantly like locust were Golden Path. The Fox seemed to be her, sporting luscious fur that subjected all who bore gaze a tinge of admiration or envy. A bit shameless if Arjun had anything to say about it, making herself the star of the story. Then again, this was her story. Her friend in the story was a White Tigress, which if he was guessing correctly was Maya Kadayat because of her pet sky tiger. Pagan seemed to be the Lord of the Tigers, Arjun himself seem to be in the story as the Rhino which he was not to pleased to hear.

And who was the ever-feared Honey Badger, resilient, fearless and ferocious it was like a little devil? It could only be one person. The Dhole were more frighten of him than the Tigers who were also afraid had it not been for the Lord of Tigers adopting him.

At present, she was telling the part where the playful fox began to see the dark history of the Badger and rethink her opinion of it. Arjun had a feeling that this children's story had a romance element within it. It reminded him of her illicit relation with Badala, and it bugged the hell out of him. How could she continue with this when she had a fiancé was she not bothered about what the societal norms in their class had towards extra martial affairs? Even if she was genuinely reluctant, couldn't she have waited till she actually met Mohan's boy to tell him straight in his face she didn't want to marry him? There was a formality in place, he wished that she would at least be considerate of both his and Mohan's original good will. He truly didn't understand the people nowadays. Texting and messaging one another online instead of talking face to face at social events. There wasn't a time when he saw youths put down those damn smartphones. Even now, there were a few of his nephews and nieces using them in here.

The doors opened and in walked in their guards and a Canton he should have been familiar with, but his daughter said it before him.

"Han Feng."

"Didn't think the 3rd Lord of the Army would bother with a humble nobody like me." He said with a smirk.

"What is Sun Kwan's boy doing here?" His relatives began to whisper amongst themselves.

The guards opened the gate and walked in, surrounding Saras. "What are you-."

They grasped her by the arms and tugged her out of her seat.

"Get your hands off my daughter!" A fist came his way and struck him square in the jaw.

Saraswati did not struggle less they do something to the rest of the hostages.

"Don't make this hard on yourself, Marshal."

"You still have the gall to call me that after you Cantons commit the highest act of criminal act against the crown!" He wiped the blood stain from his mouth.

Han Feng grappled him and slammed him hard against the bars, by now the guards had already walked ahead with Saras. Han Feng said a few quiet words to Arjun that caught him by surprise and stared at him in a daze. Han Feng pressed something into his hand and left while the remaining guard that returned to lock the bars stood guard

Arjun's relatives gathered around him to check if he was alright.

"What is he planning to do with your daughter, Arjun?!"

"It couldn't be-." Han Feng had a rather infamous reputation after his attempted rape of Hamal's step-daughter.

The relatives began to discuss heatedly amongst themselves and worried themselves for utterly no reason at all. To add to the flames, Arjun was silently staring through the small barred window out of the Royal Fortress.

His wife approached him and clasped his hand. Arjun returned strength into his hand to let Manisha know he was alright.

"What did you learn?"

"… Not everything is going as the Canton Lords have planned. Despite a comms blackout, the Army and paramilitary groups are fighting back. Lady Najjar is somehow responsible for drumming up the frontier garrisons' defences just coincidentally as they expected Golden Path instead. Gopan is fighting a three-way battle with the rebels and an advance party of Golden Path for Lanka. They failed to kill Badala at the hospital and found him in Shanath. They're trying again."

"They really fear him, even when he's in a coma." Manisha found it all too cautious and cowardly of the brazen Cantons.

Arjun brooded over what the young Canton had briefly told him about his opinion of this rebellion before handing Arjun an item which represented his belief on how it should be approached

"What did the Sun Kwan's son say to you?"

Arjun raised his clenched hand in the light of the window for only himself and his wife to see. Opening his hand to reveal a key with the dimensions just right for the cell bars.

"What truly becomes of us in this insane world."


These unknown enemies carried a strangely nostalgic and eerie presence from appearing out of thin air. When was it that he first learnt about the word Rakshasa? When his mother, his true birth mother read him a bedtime story on the adventures of Kalinag and even before that, Ramayana. The Rakshasa were demi-god-like beings, a creation of the ancient hindu gods just as mankind and all other creatures were made. Banashivism hadn't encompassed all of Kyrat like the monks would have you believe it was the state religion. Even so, these religions shared a very similar concept, same beings and style of carrying tales. The Rakshasa were evil beings that looked down upon entities weaker than them, cruel, prideful and ruthless. But most importantly, immortal. True immortality. Not a half-baked version that the witch conjured up upon his brethren. They were a product of the oldest hindu deity.

He didn't have time to think these thoughts as he fled with a confused Gopan and a young officer found lying on the floor unconscious over his shoulders still knocked out.

How he was even given the window to escape, was thanks to a grenade launcher he appropriated from the armory before coming to Lanka. The bandolier of grenades were marked MEI Hellhound, some sort of incerdiary grenade he thought. So when he fired it between him and the Rakshasa young man and his minions the charge detonated at pointblank and out of the round erupted a shockwave that took out the narrow walls of the alley they were in. They had also been pushed backwards by the blast sore on places they didn't even want to comment on. That round was clearly anything but fire.

"Hey! What does this say?" He held out one of the fresh 40mm rounds to Gopan while they ran.

Gopan's eyes widen when he saw the description upon the round.

"You numbskull! Why don't you just kill me and yourself right now! That says thermobaric!"

"Thermo- baric?" He had no idea what it did.

"It's a high pressure explosive that kills by vacuum, and in these narrow confine streets it'll vapourise anything from two blocks to an entire bastion! Fool!"

"You're welcome."

Gopan stopped dead in his tracks and raised his rifle at Vasu, cocking it.

"I didn't ask to be saved, especially by you! I still haven't forgotten what you did to my son!"

"Your son?-…. Wait-… You're Kul?"

"Tell me what it was like, plunging your blade into my boy? Tell me!" Gopan completely forgot about the looming threat in favour of what he knew at heart.

"Nothing."

"I should kill you by the most painful means if I had the time to-."

"Squabbling over pettiness. I would have imagined both of you to die for a more reasonable cause." Boomed the voice of Bhaskar who interrupted them as he dashed through the street towards them at inhuman speeds/ His minions had dispersed into the streets to kill any living being they found, be it rebel or loyalist, they were equal in the eyes of these monsters. Gunfire rattled in the air and dying screams resounded with the rest of the noise of battle which was now becoming slaughter.

(Thump) (BOOM) Vasu fired another grenade from the revolver-type MGL grenade launcher. The grenade struck the young Bhaskar point-blank and turned him into the centre of the fireball and shockwave.

"Madarchod! Didn't we discuss what thermobaric was?!" Gopan complained rightfully as it was shot at Bhaskar only five metres away.

"Not the time to be relaxing, Kul. He's still got some life left in him." Vasu reloaded the chambers of the grenade launcher with fresh rounds.

"What are you talking about? There's no way anyone would survive that!" Gopan said with a reasonable assessment.

"But I'm no mere anyone." Came a voice from amidst the dying flames who answered in place of Vasu why it took more than a powerful explosive to kill it.

"Wha-." As the smoke and flames cleared, it revealed a standing corpse. With much of its flesh burnt off revealing tissue and muscle charred underneath.

"That tickled quite a bit, and not even that will kill me, little soldier. As I've said before, no one here is even remotely capable of killing me. If this body fails then another can be easily requisited. Perhaps yours might be a suitable candidate… It could potentially save time completing her highness's instructions." The corpse moved its jaw to mouth those words. And then, the healing factor kicked in at an insane rate for both of them to bear witness. For Vasu to see the disparity between a Rakshasa and an altered human. Gopan saw the horror of a monster that could not potentially be killed even with firepower available to them.

Vasu stood between Bhaskar and Gopan. Even now, Gopan wasn't able to accept the reality of the situation so Vasu made it clear for him. By grasping his collar.

"You're the only one that can prepare your men for this scourge. Return to your Command. I'll handle this."

He said before flinging him off into a narrow alley. "Go!" He said once more.

"Vasu Sen….. You owe me an explanation, so don't die here!" He said as he turned around to run off for the Command module. But then he stopped in his tracks as he felt like reminding him something.

"That monster….. it had been sealed in your friend sixteen years prior by Specialist Major Darshan Khati!" Once again, Gopan had mentioned the name of his benefactor who had saved his life years ago.

Vasu heard it and was genuinely surprised to hear Darshan's name of all names. And sixteen years prior? Did this mean that Darshan was capable of actually sealing this monster already? It put things like his fights with his mortal enemy into prespective. It meant that Darshan could have very well been able to beat them effortlessly over a dozen times even if they couldn't accept it.

But as Vasu heard what Gopan told him, so did Bhaskar. As his face warped into a twisted rage that didn't resemble the original young man he was. It sprinted in Gopan's direction, it had warned him not to speak that wrecked name and he said it without caution. "I'll rip thee in tway!"

(Thump) (BOOM) A hellhound round was fired not at the Rakshasa Bhaskar but at the arch over its head. Causing the structure overhead to come crashing down upon it. (BOBOBOBOoom) The heavy bricks and foundations piled over Bhaskar and buried him under the weight of the rubble. Gopan took his leave to command his men, whilst Vasu reloaded his launcher, now left with five rounds. He knew it wasn't far from dead, but at least now he had changed its current agenda from rage murdering the Commandant of Lanka.

Past affiliations and relations, even one as long as sixteen years were now void in the Rakshasa General's thoughts.


People were screaming as they ran out of the Shanath Arena catacombs. It wasn't an uncommon occurrence since the dark and hidden catacombs were perfect for rituals, mugging and quiet killing of victims. Yet, it differed by the volume of noise being created. Majority of that sound came from gunfire pulsing away inside the catacombs between two distinct sides. One was the Condotierri and the other were Yuma's former Special Deep Strike Group. The most advance special operations group in her inventory and should have been loyal to her exclusively. But their presence here proved otherwise. She was clearly not in charge right now, likely hold up in the Royal Palace with Pagan.

Samson was more than familiar with them one way or another. Like himself and the Condotierri that taught the Jatayu Para Commando Brigade the principles of airborne operations. These highly-skilled specops passed on their knowledge of wetwork and espionage, as well as operating behind enemy lines for long periods of time and establishing network resistance cells. It was fairer to say their speciality was clandestine operations, what Perkins and David would familiarly call Blackops.

Had he not witness the training regime they put the Jatayu commandos through diligently, he would have been caught completely unawares of the deadly efficiency of their close-quarter battle techniques and tactics which he had to admit were superior to his own military training.

"Who trained these guys?!" Ricardo shouted over the loudness of the stalemate firefight they managed to achieve.

Ricardo shared a common interest. That was what he wanted to know as well. Could it be? That it was a matter of who trained them that defined their current agenda of hunting the demon? It was definitely not for money nor power of their own as a reward. It was something else, did Yuma truly have a leash over these guys to begin with?

"These guys are definitely Blackops!" Samson said whilst chucking a smoke grenade for concealment.

"Urgh! Bastardi!" He cursed as he ran through the heavy suppressive fire volume with little cover from the smoke to Ricardo's location.

"A fanabla!" He shouted while giving the bird to the specops group after a successful transition to safer cover.

"Didn't you teach us the word, cover fire?" He questioned his former mentor for his one-man recklessness.

"And give them two things to shoot at? Come on, let's go! This route is a lost cause anyway." He patted him to follow as they made their way to the third and last line of defences they'd hastily set up. The Special Deep Strike Group took this opportunity to advance an in turn discover new alternative to trying to flank them. (BOOM) Which they paid dearly with their lives for carelessly prancing into a claymore trap. Even so, they had a relatively large group at their disposal. Luca escaped in plain clothing to act as reconnassaince outside to determine the numbers they were dealing with as he mixed with the crowds that ran out. Fifty men, that was at least a platoon, or in this case five or more fireteams. This was beyond their ability to delay or deter. They were just two trained paratroopers, one armed woman and helpless nurses. Not forgetting a comatosed demon that was barely any help.

"Damnit! I really wish the boss would wake up right now!" Ricardo gave his most sincere of wishes.

"Go to storage and bar the doors!" Samson directed him.

"What about you?"

"….."

"Fratello!-" He called out frantically to no response from a cold look in Samson's eyes.

"I often ask myself, why did I accept that offer?"

"You can think about it after this, now get up!" He held out a hand for Samson to get off his firing position behind the brick wall with a small opening below.

"I knew every well what I was getting into back then. Back when we took the airport together….. I just….. No. I knew all along." He plied Ricardo's hand of his shoulder.

"For so long I looked at my dear Adrianna's grave up on the cliff at the Florentian beach. I was looking for an excuse to join her."

"Don't do this, fratello!"

"And then you lot jumped out of the plane unwittingly. You foiled my plan by making me worry for your survival, you delayed my journey to my wife!"

"Suicide won't bring you to her!"

"Not if it was selfless sacrifice for another less fortunate than us. Our god in heaven would have understo-." His sentence abruptly ended with a fist striking his face.

"You damn fool. If life was so meaningless then die here! I won't bury nor cremate your corpse!" He said as he ran off to where Noore and Badala were.

The SDSG specops were cautiously approaching whilst laying a thick volume of fire to advance, but their progress was slow. Samson lay behind the pillar all scratched by the grazes of 5.56mm rounds. He took out a locket chain around his neck beneath his clothing and opened the cover. Inside was a picture of his late wife still content and very much in love with him. What killed her was none other than himself. When he had disobeyed orders and assaulted that incompetent officer in the army years ago. He was dishonourably discharged only after three years in a cell. But all it took was two years till she took her life out of heartbreak, she had always been that weak at heart so to begin with. But he could not blame her for that, after all he was in the unit with the most likely action and he had yet promised her to return to celebrate their anniversary together. He chose moral over orders and landed up in jail for his actions, and in the process caused her to die inside. From then on, he'd lost his meaning to live, and travelled abroad a mercenary, in hopes to find some battlefield to die properly in.

Who would have thought those brats would stick with him all the way. They were delaying his rightful place in the afterlife and they had wilfully given up their promising career in the army. They were stupid brat, and bloodly fools!

"Forgive me, Adrianna. I cannot let these young ones die here." He kissed the small portrait. He readied his rifle and grenades.

"Even if it means I cannot be with you in heaven."


….

….

The tables seem to have turned on the demon, the hunter became the hunted. In just mere weeks, his growth and been exponential. The demon could no longer hurt him if Ajay didn't want him to.

Ajay had surpassed himself, a tenfold.

But even still, he could not kill or critically wound the demon enough that it would concede in this contest of strength, it would not yield to a human like him. Human, the fact that it acknowledged his existence as a human being instead of the demon everyone saw him for made him feel a little less lonely at heart.

"You've learnt all you needed to learn about yourself and me, but… in the end of the day its getting out that still matters."

"I know."

He stood in a stance with the worn kukri, now battered to the point that the tip had broken.

"Consider this match the final one."

The demon expression turned into a smile like never before, it was clear Ajay's resolve was more crystal clear than before when it was fouled up by conviction and worry.

"Ready to die?"

"I'm ready to leave."

"I certainly hope so, if you want my strength you need to take it from me."

The demon took the initiative to attack this time and leaped with the dirty floor cracking under its feet.

(BANG) The resonance of the steel blades created a high-pitched sound that disturbed the natural law of the lands.

It was the demon's strokes that carried the force to flatten a pillar or vaporise hard rock. Yet, Ajay calmly deflected it as if it was a mere child's sword game.

Ajay had finally comprehended the Autumn style.

The third form of Four Seasons Pandemonium, Ajay had taken a giant leap forward in being the first of his generation to get pass the third stage and onwards to the final form. The last was supposedly more powerful that all three combined, it turned mere men into legends. It kept the British Empire away, quelled the Nationalists and chasted Golden Path now.

"Maple falls leaving home, carried by cold winds." He murmured the passage that Bibek had given him to recite.

And after weeks of clear mind and thoughts he understood it was a type of offensive style. Like the falling leaves of autumn, collecting together. The winds that did not carry much yield, picked up a whole season's worth of foliage. Gathering energy… and releasing it upon your opponent like the winds.

When he first tried it upon the demon, he created the deepest gash he'd ever inflicted upon the hard armour-cladded demon. An armor-piercing move, ideal against harden Golden Path. The demon knew that this was his turning point.

Yet, it did not back down in its unrelenting assault upon Ajay who merely defended fifty minutes into the match. The demon thought it strange, by now he should have discovered a way to overpower it.

"What are you doing?..."

For once in its time, it could not read his thoughts like it did usually. Ajay had become even more remote and alien to the demon than it could comprehend. It was hopeless to beat him now as it was for Ajay to beat him, he would never submit no matter how much Ajay forced him into submission.

He was a product of Ajay Ghale's wrath, it claimed to have rage running deeper than Yalung himself.

He swung at Ajay who parried and used the force of his strike to propel his blade into the demon. The Demon roared in agony as the stab wound was deep, it kicked him away to gain space and time to recover. Yet, Ajay did not use that opportunity to prevent his recovery and constantly batter him with chain of attacks. His movements and motives were getting stranger by the minute.

The Demon avoided a close call from a swing driven by momentum that nearly sliced its throat which would have been painful. They locked blades for a second time.

"I believe every word you've said." The demon looked at him with a complex expression.

"I am the will of an asura led astray, and you are the will of Ajay. The impulse of his last dying emotion….."

"What are you trying to say, fool?"

"I pity you." The demon added a sudden burst of fury into its blade to push him back.

"You overrate yourself!"

They stood on top of a cliff where the red river flowed down into a chasm fall, and Ajay was the one with his back to the waterfall down.

The demon began an unrelenting assault to drive him off the cliff. Its blade banged against his blunt broken piece he once called a knife. Until he was at the ledge, the demon delivered a heavy strike to knock him off his feet, which Ajay parried but brought him off his footing and down the long heights of the waterfall.

The demon, unwilling to let him go, jumped down after him. Ajay continued to face it as it streamlined itself to gain acceleration towards him. Then it held out the knife in from of it, with the intention of piercing him. It should be hard to deflect but not impossible despite that speed, it was what it did that the Demon wanted. Which was to add deadly speeds to Ajay's fall down the cliff and die from the fall in the water.

"DIE!"

That was when it noticed the stranged sequence of events to happen after another. It begun with a warm smile creeping upon Ajay's face, a sensation of loss eroded into the demon's thoughts but he clenched the kukri tightly as it roared towards him. Ajay held his blunt but solid knife out, and then…..

He let go.

That single action shook the demon to its core, but it was already too late.

(Stab) The kukri pierced his chest while they were still falling.

And then… time stopped. The demon willed it.

They were left hanging in mid-air and just metres from the water below. The demon's hands trembled upon the knife that stabbed into him and action it had never believed he would take.

"….Why?..."

"… You misunderstood, when I said I pitied you. What I truly meant to say, was that I pitied the path that I'd set for myself before." Ajay raised his bloodstained hand and placed it upon the demon's face.

"All that rage, against those that wronged us. It would get us nowhere, except to square one and we knew it, every time we unleashed it upon an enemy. Those painful emotions of loneliness and heartbreak could never wash away." The knife had stabbed his heart yet he felt no pain from it, just this once. The demon prevented it.

"I was the fool all this while." He admitted that should have felt refreshing to the demon, but now it was wavering. His inner demon could not comprehend him.

"I kept thinking that you were a foreign entity stowed away from the Relic. Even though your presence had been with me longer than I dared to admit."

"You are a manifestation of my wrath upon the world that betrayed my expectations. But this is no longer that world, my wrath should not exist any longer."

"And yet, a cannot simply discard it. Because you are a part of me, just as I am of you. I need you now more than ever."

"…..Ahaha….AhhahahahahHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!" The demon laughed in a humour that it hadn't ever before today.

"I concede." At this phrase, the world around them began to crumble slowly but surely. Behind the walls of where the sheets of reality covered was a vast expanse of void. The mountains crumbled, the sky shattered, and the ground collapsed beneath a bottomless nothing.

The demon placed his hand upon the knife impaled in Ajay and held it with its own. The demon began to slowly disintegrate as well but into motes of light. Even still, it wore a smile of contentment despite its predicament.

"How I longed to hear those words, even though I did not ask for them. From now on, I will always be with you. In conscience and in spirit, I know there is no such thing as no anger, no wrath. But know that it shall never be pointed at you nor those precious to you. For I cherish them as you would them."

Ajay nodded as they came to an understanding.

"I have a few things I'd like to share while I still have time. That witch…." Ajay paid attention as it indulged something he didn't know very well yet always had a weird feeling of nostalgia when encountering her presence physically or in his dreams.

"There is a thread of Karma that binds us to her, I can see the thread deep within. And its stronger than any relation you ever had so far, even that of our own mother."

"….. Past life?" It nodded to the conclusion. Was she a past lover or something? If it the thread was so thick that even the bond with his mother lost out. That voice in his dreams, it both sounded familiar and not. It triggered a vision of the past once, back to ancient times when a newly born-Asura of destruction and wrath was being sealed away by Arhats.

"She's not against you, but neither is she for your current interests. Her power, is unfathomable. If she wanted to crush us all she could." It warned.

"Then why isn't she doing so to get her way, why does she need Mohan and Golden Path?"

"Its just a theory, but I think she can't afford to directly manipulate the natural law around her surroundings here. Specifically, within these mountains and valleys we call the Himalayas. Or it would retaliate and where even she would have no defense against it." It appeared as if the lands had a life of their own and was capable of banishing powerful outsiders.

It made partial sense to Ajay. And there was also another point that supported it. The reason why she did not intervene in Golden Paths fight or escape to Yinke instead of backing them up further as she did to a limit with the Devas exclusively. He remembered the hunter cadre leader saying to him once that they could not read the grounds nor contact the local spirits in Yinke. Because there were none. Perhaps that was why there was a sudden boom in inhuman Golden Path warriors which she could bestow power upon whilst not within the sight of these "protected" areas, due to the weakness of natural laws there and the lands self-defense mechanism.

If so, then it was better that she was here than away from Kyrat where her ability to influence the battlefield would have terrible consequences on their side. Shangri-la, the name of that legendary city popped into his mind again. She said all would be clear when he entered Shangri-la, he had a really bad feeling about this. He was being pulled into something he didn't want, but was forced to deal with.

"Also, one last thing." It said as it was now a ghost with no lower body, while the surroundings were almost a void.

"What you call stolen memories when you called upon me isn't just mere memory. But your Karma to the people you cherish and all the good times you had with them. In a way, you will forget about them as you would for losing memories, but they still hold Karma on their end to you, so they will still remember you."

"That's not very assuring."

"Unfortunately, that is to say that there is a chance that they could lose this strand of Karma to you and forget you entirely."

"Is anyone even capable of doing that?"

"To sever Karma between you and them. The witch might be capable. And so can you."

"Why would I want to do that?!"

"Maybe to ease a broken heart, or erase your existence from their minds. But there is also an interesting thing you might not fully understand."

The demon-… his other conscience spoke of things he had no prior information to and desperately needed if he was to combat these otherworldly foes without the reliable help of Darshan.

"Karma can be used as a weapon."

-A weapon?-

The demon was now only a floating head now.

"Karma is essentially a wish, between you and another. Karma is what empowers the gods and demi-god alike, though it makes little difference to them due to their transcendent nature. It is however what gives legendary heroes of old the power to overcome the impossible, that is how they kept a winning streak, because thousands believed in them. But they're also as easily forgotten because of this, when people lose faith in their abilities."

"So all this while, you never had any power to begin with?"

"Don't phrase it that way, I have direct access to the fragment in you. Since that time you said you would trade something with me, you weren't talking to me, but the fragment of the soul in you. In other words, I allowed the transaction to happen between you and Yalung's power." So it was nothing but a middleman all this while.

"But now, I will not allow you to lose any more Karma between those you cherish. Even if it means, giving myself up in exchange."

Ajay remained quiet to the resolve of the demon within him. In other words, his wrath was offering itself up to give him access to that wellspring of power at its expense.

"I am very much a part of you, Ajay. So don't make that face, it would do you some good to have a little less hatred in your life later, assuming you chose to live quiet and happily after this….. no?" It made a sadden smile in declaring this.

Beat things he physically couldn't by sacrificing Karma sown between individuals. It sounded like a forbidden power, with a cost unimaginable. To lose everything between you and say a loved one. What if Saraswati suddenly couldn't remember him? It was a painful thought.

"I hope it doesn't come to that."

"I hope so too….. may fortune always be with us, Ajay Ghale."

The world around him grew into a fireball and then turned dark all together. The dream world had finally collapsed and allowed him to return to the land of the living. But how much had it changed while he was in a coma.

Ajay had to see it with his own eyes to believe the events that were taking place even at that very moment when his body lay in a hidden storage room in Shanath Arena.

…..

…..


Author's Notes:

More to come. Time to craft out the demon banishing formula.

Author's Thoughts:

Shakespearean Rakshasa. Not my finest hour for making them sound ancient. But at least you guys'll understand it since none of us can fluently understand Sanskrit or speak hindi.

More shakepearean Rakshasa to come.