Four days ago -
Like usual, the night was spent by a warm tinder fire with woods that gave off a rather calming sweet smell. Supposely rendering feral animals sleepy, just like Vajra who was yawning away and finally closed its dog eyes and slept peacefully.
The only ones awake were Darshan and Ajay, another long day of learning and crafting demon banishing techniques.
Ajay had learnt much about the Demon Banishing arts as well as of his own demonic powers in the process through a relative theory in one of the scripts. He first started with a breathing exercise to sense the flow of spiritual residue and the strands of Karma after Darshan performed a rite of passage ceremony for him and forcefully opened his third eye and chakra.
He could paint talismans and impart some spiritual sense into them to act as sensory devices, or weapons to be directed at an enemy of unnatural being. He could engrave runes upon wooden swords, bullets and blades to give the same effect of damaging them. He could control the flow of prana in his body to manifest strength in his chants. Mire, deflection, empower, divine sense. These were some of the basic spells that Darshan taught. But of all these chants, he couldn't quite do one of them. And it was the most important of them all, the 8th Demon Banishing Hex. It had one of the most complex nunciations out of the rest that were only a few words, the Banishing Hex was an entire sentence like out of a poem.
The spell used to deliver a killing blow to beings too powerful to defeat with magic weapons or talismans. There were drawbacks like an unusually long chant and absolute focus required. This meant that your opponent needed to be kept at a distance to use it, like they would let you. So Darshan had often mired or weakened them to the point he could not be reached in time.
When he finally got the hang of pursuing his own path in developing his demon banishing skills Darshan advised him less and less, so as to let him experiment and feel his full potential on his own. He had prepared a trial for him to come, to exorcise a spiritual entity that often lurks in caves in these parts. Much like the smaller tests but this one involved no intervention from Darshan and if he didn't kill it he would perish. If he could succeed in this trial it was sufficient to qualify as a Demon Banisher, albeit not as skillful as Darshan but enough to counter and deter the Rakshasa on his own grounds. And adding his own demonic strength into the picture to force multiply, it was a power that not even the Four Pillars would want to reckon with lightly.
And so, both of them were doing some last-minute preparations before the next day, Darshan sharpened his blade and tested the seals. Ajay carefully carved runic symbols onto a gauntlet belonging to his armor, to protect himself from whatever spell of curse was casted at him.
"We'll begin the tracking of your target tomorrow, make sure you have those seals and trap rigs done before breakfast."
"I'll finish it before we get some shut eye." Darshan nodded in acceptance.
"Darshan." Ajay called out, feeling the time was alright to ask.
Darshan put down the knife from sharpening and looked over.
"… What happened?" It was a simple question but it was only referring to one thing. His past before all of this.
Over the course of a week, Darshan had come to understand Ajay's earnesty in learning and was not opposed to his unwillingness to fight the Rakshasa to the death.
He looked up into the starry sky and gazed deeply as if recalling something.
"… What if time and space were irrelevant?" He posed that unusual question instead.
"What if the death of her brother and the fall of the Rakshasa hadn't even been thousands of years ago but just a few centuries or maybe even decades."
"Is that even possible?"
"Why gods and immortal beings don't age is because they don't heed to the flow of time or era like we mortals do. So what exists instead is an alternate path, another timeline." Ajay was shocked to hear him say this, could it be?
"You aren't the original Ajay Ghale of this timeline. Just as I'm not a resident of this era either."
"I'm sorry- what?" Did he say he was from another timeline? Ajay almost thought he heard wrong.
"Don't get me started, Ajay Ghale. You yourself come from a different time, so why can't I?"
"…. (sigh)… Fair enough…. So what happened?" Ajay was inclined to ask, Darshan stared back like there was an abyss in his eyes.
"…. We lost."
"I was a warrior of another version of the Kyrat that we know now, a place where Pagan had not arrived and the Devi bloodline prevailed." Ajay nearly fell over as Darshan immediately went straight to the point.
"… Even if the Kingdom wasn't as strong as it is now, it still didn't go through two decades of civil war to drain its resources or manpower. And even still, when we met out in the fields of Pacchim…. It was a slaughter. Imagine fighting an enemy that shrugged your bullets and overpowered you in hand to hand, then multiply it by tens of thousands of them when all it took was a hundred to wipe out our entire army." It was a horror that Ajay didn't want to experience next to his previous life of despair.
"Of course, the rest of the Rakshasa were busy as well…. Busy butchering the entire population to exert their wrath of a forgotten era upon us. We hid, we struggled, we resisted but they seemed to know where we were and swept us way like twigs. We did call out for help. But the other nations were just as frightened of them as we were, United States and the world nations fortified Pakistan, India called forth their hidden bloodlines, China dispatched their state Daoist priests. Together, they sealed us in with those monsters." A face of anguish and hatred for the foreign powers appeared in the form of lines on his face.
"Is that why all this time you didn't trust any form of foreign aid?"
"….." Ajay knew the answer to that question but still asked to be clarified on it.
"I just don't understand one thing, if she and the Rakshasa could overpower you back then without problem, wouldn't it have been easier to achieve their goal?" Darshan almost chuckled in sadness at the cruel response that Ajay gave with no tack, Ajay only wanted to know the history of the Rakshasa in hopes of finding a weakness to exploit.
"Yunno, out of all the others. None of them exhibit a personality like yours, it only confirms that your soul and memories have amixed with her Brother."
"'cuse me? Others?"
"From the moment you appeared in the Royal Palace that day, you didn't follow the route which the original would." Ajay had a moment to make a conclusion of what Darshan told him.
"…. You're saying you've encountered other Ajay Ghales' have you?" Darshan nodded.
"So… What happened to me in your-… nevermind."
"… You died fighting." Darshan answered his unfinished question of where he was in Darshan's timeline. Even if it was to be expected, Ajay wondered what life would have been like for him if the Devi bloodline prevailed as Darshan said it did and that Pagan hadn't come. Did that mean he had a complete family life?
"So you're saying that this isn't the first time she's tried to awaken him from me."
"Yes and No. This will be the last time out of the ten incarnations, if she can't bring him out on this last incarnate…. You. Then she'll never be able to ever again, her brother won't enter the cycle of reincarnation nor will his spirit linger. It will vanish just like she would."
"Again. How do you know so much?"
"Because I am the fourth incarnate…. Or at least I used to be." Ajay didn't notice but his hand had started to jitter, either because he was in shock or that he just couldn't accept how wide this world genuinely was.
"Not every incarnate was Ajay Ghale. Like me, our only common ground was that we'd had a fateful encounter with Yalung's bloodline."
"Hang on! Are you saying that you have this-."
"No, Ajay Ghale. I don't have it with me any longer, it was expelled. The inheritance of the Demon Banishers, I only discovered later." When Ajay heard these words, he slumped back against the sleeping bag of his. Just when he had his hopes about Darshan exporting the Demonic Powers in him as well. But this did explain why he knew what he knew on Yalung's essence and imparted upon him some forbidden techniques such as blood read. To steal memories from a victim's inner blood directly from the heart.
"When I first encountered her, all she was on about was a loving affection for a person whose soul inhabited me. Yet, she intentionally killed my friends, my brothers, my parents…. One by one in front of me, sometimes slowly, sometimes so quick I barely even processed it. And then-….. then came Jita and Lalita's turn." He clenched his hand around a pendant that Ajay couldn't see under the dim light of the fire.
"And when I finally broke, she found that the ritual failed yet again like the others had. Then….. I was discarded. Her cold gaze looked at me like I was some useless excess post-ritual, so her followers dispatched of me."
Darshan then turned to Ajay with a look like he'd aged a decade in a single night.
"Lalita…. And Jita….. Your wife and kid, right?" He slowly mimicked those names as if he'd heard them before but couldn't bring out enough synapses to recall. Ajay recalled him saying his wife had been expecting as well. The amount of cruelty against him, all because of a seed within him she tried to acquire.
"Why?..." He didn't understand why she'd done all of this, how would that bring her brother back?
"By breaking your spirit just as the corrupted Ancient Devi dynasty did to Kalinag. These raw emotions coupled with an unprotected soul are all she needs to encourage his return and possession of your body reformed as a Rakshasa."
"Is that even possible? Bringing someone from the dead I mean." This wasn't like chanting scripts from an Egyptian book of the dead to bring a mummy back to unlife.
"They're not omnipotent, but the possibility exists. Albeit slim with the kind of power and boons they might have. They're Rakshasa, not full-fledge Asuras or Devas after all."
They had a moment of silence among themselves.
"Tell me, Darshan. Against an ancient and immortal enemy, what chance do we have? I-… we're just as small state of humans that only just broke from the chain of civil war. We have the Americans looming over in search of their lost nukes." Depending on the answer, it was the definition of how they'd fight against the Rakshasa.
"So I've heard from Vijaya. You're trying to lure the Rakshasa into finishing off your mortal foes. I can leave you some talismans that might help you attract them to investigate from their boundaries." Ajay was pleased that Darshan was even willing to help him on this because Darshan had only thus far cared about killing Rakshasa and renegade spirits.
"Thanks."
"Mmm…. If we can take her down, we stand a chance at erasing the Rakshasa from history forever."
"How?"
"They've lasted this long because of their Princess and the boons which she holds, she's their emotional crutch as she is their only hope of survival against the Natural Law of the Mountains and Valley. If she isn't around, there's no point for them to continue living." He implied they'd commit mass suicide.
"Weren't they the original owners of these mountains? How did it all turn against them?"
"I'm not sure about the details, but it seems they lost it to someone they only describe by the title of "Great Betrayer"." It wasn't the most innovative of titles, but it didn't take what he or she did out of the equation to earn that sort of name.
Ajay reminisced the message Vel passed on behalf of her master, even though Darshan claimed it was merely because of the soul trapped in him that she viewed him that way. He was somehow convinced it wasn't entirely true.
"…. Meet in Shangri-La….." Me murmured.
"Shangri-la cannot be opened by them, that right has been stripped from them." Darshan said to his own self-questioning.
"But we mortals still have our qualifications." So that was why the Rakshasa were supporting the Golden Path. They needed them to break into Shangri-la and with the help of Mohan whom held the Kalinag Thangkas, it might not seem to be so hard after all. Ajay just realized how important the Kalinag thangka was now of all times. He'd have to make a trip through the caves to retrieve them once more, but according to his father's diary even he didn't know where Darpan split it apart and hid them. Only Ajay, both the recently deceased Reggie and Yogi knew, not if they could summon Darpan's spirit to ask them they might never know. Yuma had spent her entire life searching in a wild goose chase for the thangkas with all of her resources, so what chance did the Golden Path have.
Perhaps that was a bargaining tool he had to her for the time being.
So now, Ajay had a clearer picture of what he was up against and what were the likely objectives than he ever had before. It was him and the Royal Army against the Rakshasa and Golden Path, with the US expeditionary force as a third and unwelcomed party.
-Hang on!- There wasn't just three parties here.
"What if…" Ajay said with some hope to his question.
"What if we could get the Disciples of Yalung to fight them?"
"…." But Darshan seemed to have that taken into account.
"Do you know why the Disciples are the way they are and what turns them into those abominations?" He said almost sighing.
If there was a cricket now would be the time it made noise on Ajay's behalf.
"The "elixir" is nothing more than Yalung's blood containing corrupted memories of Kalinag's rage and fall. While there is some truth to the events that conspired, the hosts of this blood don't fully understand the incomplete blocks that make up the true events and so they become deluded with ony those repeated memories. Hence, the Disciples came into being."
"The last time I went up, there were no Disciples in that mountain."
"There are always Disciples, as long as the prison is there, there will always be ignorant fools that venture too far into those caves." Darshan stated like it was a fact.
"As for those abominations…." Ajay could only guess he referred to the Yetis.
"They're a failed attempt to ascend based on the visions of the blood. The result is a form that isn't truly ascended yet not entirely mortal either. They should've been crushed by the mountains and valleys. But somehow took a form that mimicked the Vanara monkey tribe, in doing this they aheeded to the natural law by inheriting the extinct sentient Monkeys' right to live in the mountains.
Ajay was surprised to say the least. That the Vanara tribe monkeys looked something like the Yetis he knew. Giant gorilla like apes or something close to that. It seemed that the half-baked ascended Disciples and the like which took in the elixir had adapted to suit the natural law without offending it. But apparently Darshan wasn't convinced that a herd of deluded people would respond to their requests.
"If anything, the Discples are a huge hindrance to the Rakshasas' plans. Being the way they are in an ascended form has made them more animal than sentient, hence they abide by their natural instincts. This means that the natural law can used them to banish the Rakshasa should they oppose it without their protection of the Princess." It was another affirmation that without the Rakshasa Princess they would surely perish.
"Rest up, Ajay Ghale. You have a long day tomorrow, I've gone through with you the entire process of initiation into the Demon Banishing order. Now, it is up to you to prove you are worthy of the seal." He held out that medallion that whispered to him previously. Ajay was inclined to refuse it.
He lay back against his sleeping bag and into the night sky, stars blanketing the dark and keeping the inhospitable night warm.
"We will win this, Ajay Ghale…. We have to." Darshan said one last time before turning in.
So much hope, this fella had. Despite the odds that even made Ajay's stomach turn. This guy no longer had the demonic powers like Ajay did, only his wit and the Demon Banishing inheritance. He was just a normal human being like everyone else. And yet, she and the Four Pillars didn't discount his abilities. Perhaps Darshan's willpower was still his most valuable asset, even if it was solely for revenge.
But Ajay knew, that when all this was done. Darshan might turn his blade his way. For if there was to truly be peace to Kyrat, the Demon of Kyrat should vanish along with all other monsters.
