I think in One Last God Kubera, magicians actually refer to their professors by their first names. In this case, I'm not going to bother thinking up a first name for this professor. In my culture, we address our teachers and professors by their surnames and sometimes just sir/miss. In any case, like all humans that have thus far appeared, these two humans are of the same lineage as actual Kubera characters in the story, though they may not be direct ancestors.
Disclaimer: There are many things in this world that do not belong to me. Kubera is one of them.
S-C-N-D
Courtship of a Phoenix
…
There was barely a sliver of sun above the horizon, yet a man with a great blue staff and his drowsy companion were already beginning to trudge toward the next city. Around them, there was nothing but dark forest. The only thing that even resembled a path was the little line of barren ground in front of them and at times it was almost impossible to tell where that line was leading to.
Neither of them had a Vayu trait, which made travelling a horrible experience. The woman, however, was a double Surya magician and because of this, was asked to guide her professor to the city of sky on Carte.
"Professor Rahiro," she groaned while tugging at her grey pigtails. "Are you sure you want to take this route to the sky city? Without a Vayu magician, it'll be at least a five day journey."
The professor was frowning. He suddenly stopped walking and glanced at his surroundings calculatingly. "Rina, have you seen any Ananta Suras since we left the earth city?"
"Huh? No…"
"Don't you find it strange, how there are no Ananta or Asura Suras in an area where they are usually abundant?" The silence gave the professor a foreboding feeling and he gripped his staff tighter. "Usually, it means that a strong Superior Sura from a rival clan is in the vicinity. Use Hoti Surya to find the quickest path possible. We must hurry."
…
Chapter Twelve: Hide and Seek
N0 - approx. 60000 years
…
"Um…"
"You're sure you've never seen him?" Garuda asked, pointing to a poorly drawn portrait of Vinata.
The Gandharva Half he'd queried had absolutely no idea what the big, clumpy red thing was so he shook his head slowly while hoping that the white creature wouldn't blast him to pieces. Lately, there'd been rumours passing through Half and heretic villages about a Garuda Nastika hiding out on Carte, looking for someone. The Halfs of his village had been terrified. Although most of them were of Gandharva Clan heritage, they were completely in the dark about the Gandharva-Yaksha-Garuda Clan alliance.
"Okay then," sighed Garuda. Well, what was that? The thirty thousandth time someone had not seen Vinata? Visnu, are you playing a cruel joke on me?
He didn't typically ask Carte's habitants if they'd seen Vinata in Sura form because if he had been in Sura form, he would have passed by faster than the blink of an eye. But Garuda wondered if some Garuda Halfs or Suras could feel his humongous presence. Vinata was usually flashy, after all, and very hard to miss.
"Has anyone seen a red bird?" he called out, knowing that there were members of his clan surrounding him. Since he first arrived at Carte, they loved gathering around him for protection and empowerment against Suras of other clans. "A large one?"
There was some degree of muttering behind him.
"What size exactly? Large as in large or very large…"
"My dad is a large red Garuda Sura."
"Hah, my kid is a large red Garuda Sura."
"I saw one!" A woman with normal skin tone but a purple coat of feathers on her back raised her hand and announced in telepathic Sura speech. Garuda immediately turned to her and he could see that she was pleased by the attention. "Um, it was passing by three years ago. It was huge!" She made a wide circle with her arms to demonstrate. "About the size of a mountain."
Underneath his mask, Garuda's left eye twitched. "What are you, a fifth stage Mara? That's tiny." Clearly these Suras had been hiding under a rock if they didn't even know the relative size of a Nastika. "There's a huge difference between a Rakshasa and a Nastika. I'm asking you if you've ever seen the sun go out."
"Oh, yeah, definitely," a new voice piped up, causing everyone else to clear a path for him. Walking toward Garuda was a green and yellow grown man. From the looks of it, he was a fourth stage Rakshasa or Upani but most likely a Rakshasa considering the authority he appeared to have over the other Garuda Suras. "Fifty years ago, a red and black creature flew over Carte. I was lucky to even get a glimpse of it, considering the speed that it was travelling at."
Garuda took a zealous step forward. "Which way did it go?"
"Southeast, toward what the humans call the city of sky. This was fifty years ago…" he added, noting that fifty years was probably a laughably short time for a Nastika like Garuda. "It's probably long gone."
Had it been a few hundred thousand years earlier, it wouldn't have mattered much to Garuda. But right now, he no longer had a choice. He had travelled to Carte every day for a hundred years until his wings ached and he decided to just stay put on this planet. Nine hundred more years dawdled by and now that it was finally exactly a hundred thousand years since Vinata left with Kalavinka, he would take any clue to find his lieutenant. Even one of Shess's horrible maps.
"I shall check nonetheless," he decided, swiftly turning. "I would also like to be left alone from this point onward." Not that it wasn't flattering to have a hoard of Maras and Upanis chasing his coattails, but Halfs tended to find the little entourage of Suras quite intimidating.
The yellow Rakshasa put a hand in front of his body and bowed. "As you wish, my king."
Garuda was momentarily surprised. "Did you use to live in my mountains?"
"Oh, no no no. My wife did and she told me many stories of you making a fool of yourself in front of Vinata-nim."
"…"
He made a mental note to remind the Suras of his clan lightly that they should not be running their mouths left and right about his love life. It went on the top of his priority list, right after dragging Vinata back home by his tail feathers.
"Oh yes, Garuda-nim, there are a lot of Half towns from here to the sky city. It's highly unlikely, but sometimes Nastikas do mix in with the Halfs for their own reasons."
He nodded, keeping the green and yellow Rakshasa's words in mind. Vinata was fortunately—or unfortunately—one of those Nastikas with Sura parts that could be hidden relatively easily. There wasn't much to hide on his body except the talons on his feet and a few markings around his eyes. The talons could easily be hidden by a long skirt or baggy pants. As for the eyes, even with those features he could get passed off for a Half or, though it was highly unlikely, a Quarter.
Garuda himself tucked his wings away and examined his appearance in front of a clear pond. Apart from the mask and the hair, he also didn't have any other Sura parts that needed hiding. It was a huge bother, but probably the best decision to put away his wings for the time being. If Vinata was indeed hiding out on Carte, he'd best not attract too much attention to himself.
Who knew when the phoenix was going to stop running away?
S-C-N-D
N0 – approx. 60000 years
S-C-N-D
A grey haired woman put a set of large, green binoculars to her eyes. She looked physically seventeen, with pigtails hanging just above her shoulders. Her short physique put her at a disadvantage when it came to travelling, so she and her professor hiked up a hill to get a wider view of the area. Even from there, it was hard to see anything other than forest and the occasional pond here or there.
"Ah!" she suddenly exclaimed, catching a flash of white. "I see a man. That's strange. We rarely see any other magicians on this road. Do you think he's a Vayu magician, Professor? Maybe he can take us to the next city."
The blue haired man behind her frowned. Twenty years her senior, he was a triple Indra magician, ranked third on the planet, and had experience fighting Suras that surmounted any other magician from Carte. Multiple scars underneath his magician robe proved that. At her mention of a man, he gestured for her to pass the binoculars.
"That's not a man," he said, squinting at the small, white figure. "That's a giant." Using the estimated distance from the man to where he was standing, the professor calculated his height to be at least a hundred and ninety centimetres.
"A Half then?" suggested Rina. "Or maybe a Quarter?"
Or, the professor thought with a wrench in his gut, we might have found ourselves a Superior Sura.
It didn't look like much, but the man's face suddenly turned their way. Rina couldn't see that far without the binoculars but Professor Rahiro could make out a grey mask underneath the white hair. His suspicions were confirmed: either a Half or a Superior Sura.
He took the binoculars off his eyes. "We have to move."
"Uh, professor…" she informed. "I think he's coming towards us."
The blue haired man turned back to see the creature making a beeline for the hill they were standing on. "My god…" he gasped with cold shivers passing down his body. He had never seen anyone move that fast.
"With that speed, he could get us to the sky city in less than a day!"
Professor Rahiro was shaking his head in horror. "Rina, hide us."
"What? Why?"
"Just do it."
"Okay, okay," she grumbled. "Hoti Chandra."
S-C-N-D
N0 – approx. 60000 years
S-C-N-D
The figures of the two blurred slightly but still remained in view. It was almost like someone slung a translucent shower curtain over them. Garuda couldn't quite make out their features as clearly anymore, but generally speaking he saw a young grey woman and an older blue man—two magicians, no doubt, and smart ones for humans. It looked like they recognized his nature and used Chandra's magic—one of the spells he often used to hide from him and Vinata, and not so much him as Vinata. For the humans, though, this wasn't nearly as effective.
And he felt kind of insulted that they would even assume that he couldn't see through that petty little trick. What was that measly little hiding spell going to do for them when he had been hunting and killing the covert god of darkness for billions of years?
"In your case," Garuda's eyes stayed focused on the two figures as he recalled Visnu's words, "grey and blue make red."
He wanted to approach them immediately, to throttle them while demanding where Vinata was, but even as he was running, another figure was already making a beeline towards him. Few Garuda Suras could outrun Garuda, even while he was in his human form, but this one was exceptionally fast.
Then he realized that it wasn't a Sura but a Half. A Yaksha Half, which would explain the speed despite him looking physically eight or nine. The Half quickly grabbed Garuda's robe, ducked beneath him and whimpered.
He was about to give the child a questioning look when an Ananta Sura sprung out of nowhere and roared in his face, spraying disgusting saliva everywhere. If there was one thing a bird absolutely detested, it was becoming wet. Almost with a vengeance, Garuda drew out his sword and sliced the monster cleanly in half, splattering its guts everywhere. As it fell, he recognized it as a second stage Ananta Upani.
What an annoyance, he thought, sheathing his sword. Haven't I already wiped out all the Ananta Suras in this area? Like cockroaches, they never seem to die.
"Did you see that professor?" He could hear the very small grey haired girl gasp from her hiding place. "What inhuman strength! What was that, a Mara? Isn't it impossible for an average human to destroy a Sura with one strike? Maybe he's a knight or maybe his sword is a godly item. You didn't see him use Hoti Kubera, did you? What if he is Kubera?"
Garuda could barely refrain from leveling the entire hill after hearing that insult.
"Have you seen this man?" he pulled out Vinata's picture and asked the Yaksha Half child with a forced smile.
"Ah!" it was not the Half's voice that reached his ears, but that stupid, annoying grey haired woman's. "He talked, professor! He's not a Sura after all! A Half or a Quarter then… what is that horrible drawing? I can't tell if that's a wing or a coat of feathers. The proportions are all out of place."
Garuda was having herculean trouble holding his smile in place.
The Half shook his head slowly before running off. He seemed more than eager to skedaddle out of there.
… Is my smile that scary?
Meanwhile, on top of that hill, conversation was still going on between the girl and the man.
"I'm going to approach him, okay?"
"Rina," her superior warned.
"Hoti Vayu!"
Garuda felt a gust of wind beside him before it cleared out to reveal the woman. She was very small, even for a human, almost a head and half shorter than him. From the looks of her defined facial features, though, she didn't appear to be that young. Old enough, at least, to resemble a late third stage Rakshasa.
In fact, she could be easily passed off for one of Cepphus and Kalavinka's children with her clear blue eyes, except she didn't have any Sura features. Smilingly, she reached out a hand as soon as she walked up to him.
"Hello there, tall man! I'm Rina Sairofe, and that's professor Rahiro there on that hill. We're both magicians. I couldn't help but notice you kill that big Sura earlier. That was amazing! Not a lot of people on this planet can do that, you know? You must be a Half or a magician of really high rank from another planet. Isholy? Taitalika? Willarv? I have a few relatives on Willarv! Anyhow, what's your name?"
S-C-N-D
Just as a minor piece of info, that red and black creature the Rakshasa saw was a Nastika of the Vritra Clan, Utpala to be specific. He was searching for Taksaka, as usual. I was actually going to have him meet with Garuda in this story but decided against it in the end as it would be kind of pointless to the overall plot.
Thank you for reading! Please leave a review!
-SCND