Slightly on the "meh" side. Actually I've written this some four or five times and am totally wiped out. Although I have an event plan, it seems that my execution quality is slowly deteriorating.
I made up Varuna's personality before she appeared in The Finite. After reading that, I thought to myself, this doesn't sound like her at all... But I'm past trying to make this chapter acceptable in any way so I'm going to use the old time excuse. Since this, she had thirty seven thousand years to change. A lot can happen in that time. Probably.
Edit: fixed the time error.
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
…
"Move."
A skinny dark figure with a pile of paperwork bulldozed through the crowds of hell. The poor, unsuspecting souls that weren't able to react fast enough to his command were crudely tossed aside.
"Another ten thousand years here…" he grumbled. "Stupid Yaksha Clan…"
A nearby goddess, while giggling with her boyfriend, caught sight of her disgruntled comrade. "My, my! Well, look who's here! Join the party, Chandra!"
With one arm, she swept aside half a dozen stacks of paperwork and patted the now vacant spot beside her.
"Varuna, Varuna's boytoy," Chandra greeted. When she took offense, he rolled his eyes and snorted, "what? It's not like he'll still be around by the time Agni lets you out."
"Be a bit more considerate, else I'll just keep all the good news to myself."
Chandra said nothing as he set down his paperwork where hers used to be.
"Fine, whatever." She tossed her silky blue hair back. "Guess you don't want to hear about Garuda's new wife."
He didn't even bother to pause his shuffling. "You mean the one he keeps glued to his side while hunting? Those uncouth birds. Pathetic."
"Oh, that's not all. I was just visited by Vayu before getting sent down here. You won't believe who she is…"
…
Chapter Eighteen: The Most Dysfunctional Couple
N0 - approx. 38000 years
…
"Protect me."
Vinata latched a death grip onto his arm, which Garuda tried his best to shake off to no avail.
"I'm serious," she said, gripping it tighter. "Hoards of gods coming after me for what I've done to them."
The wide eyed plea weakened his resolve and he almost caved. Her lips trembled and she pressed closer to him. His hand reached out before he could stop himself. It settled shakily on her head, tousling her hair. She reached her arms around him and he embraced her tightly. She was so warm, but it was the kind of warmth that was independent of him.
Images of her devious smiles suddenly assailed his brain.
The shield was back in effect. "Why do you always find it necessary to do this to me?"
She only clutched him tighter.
"Vinata," he bent down to whisper in her ear, "protect yourself."
She was dumbfounded he slipped out of her arms and left.
Defeated yet again, Vinata sighed as she covered her face with a hand. Why could he not ever let go of his kingly pride? That way, she wouldn't have to go out of her way to pretend to be weak. This damsel in distress act was really becoming unbecoming. It was also turning into an addiction. The more he ignored her, the more desperately she wanted to get his attention.
I hope I don't end up becoming like Utpala, she thought with a shiver.
"No luck with the husband?" The voice was monotonous. Only two people in her clan spoke in that way.
"Ah!" she piped up a little overly cheerfully. "Avifauna, have you come to defend the merit of your son's near death?"
He shot her a dirty look. "You know, Vinata, it may not stick through your thick skull, but presently, I am stronger than you. Shouldn't you be a little more considerate when speaking to me?"
She tilted her head and blinked, evidently waiting for him to continue. Avifauna kept his mouth shut.
"What, that's it?" she asked after a minute. "Was that the threat?"
Avifauna himself was tempted to ask her whether she was trying to threaten him with Garuda. To his better judgement, he kept his mouth firmly shut to think of a more intelligent response.
"I don't mean to belittle your manly moment, nor do I mean to burst your bubble, but you have never posed as a threat to me." Much to his chagrin, Vinata grinned so hard that her lower eyelids curved up.
"Because you have Garuda to back you up? To clean after your fiascos?" he snapped. It was more his style to negotiate than goad, but Vinata's words were very provocative and he was nothing short of provoked. "A female Nastika chasing her mate… this kind of thing is unheard of in the Sura world. Has there ever been a more dysfunctional couple?"
"Vasuki and Sagara?"
Avifauna was temporarily stumped. "Yes… but they're snakes," he dismissed with a wave of his hand, "so they don't count. However, since you brought them up, I have to say that your habit is worse than Sagara's by far. It's unsightly having to see you seducing him at every meeting, every hunt. Don't you know that you caused our clan to be the subject of all ridicule?"
She gave him a sombre stare that he never thought possible of person like Vinata. For an inexplicable reason, Avifauna pictured Garuda overlapping with his wife, resulting in a grim red-white Sura with a fiery temper. He clutched his head to steady himself. After blinking several times, the image disappeared.
Then, a terrifying thought almost sent shivers down his feather coat. Oh lord, what will become of this clan when they start having kids?
Vinata, oblivious to his inner turmoil, made no mystery of her displeasure. "Avifauna," she snapped him out of his thoughts with her menacing tone, "you better be careful. Though I choose to live as a woman, I am certainly not above putting you in your place, should you forget it."
Though initially distasteful, the brown Nastika's expression soon became almost smug.
"Now's not the time to lash back at a little criticism, my queen. If you get so riled up at my words alone, I can't imagine what you would do to the rest of your former supporters who've run off to the Sura Realm to find Robin."
There was a name she hadn't heard in almost a billion years.
"Robin?" she laughed disbelievingly. "The misandrist? What could possibly delude them to believe that she would even listen to a single word?"
Robin was the very power-hungry, very green Nastika who left Garuda's mountains a little prior to the Seven Thousand Year War. Dismayed to find her female form stronger, she threatened to kill any man who attempted to court her. Since she had been ranked fourth, that strategy proved to be effective for a while. However, the lack of female Nastikas remained a pressing concern, and many did decide to take the risk. Visnu had to personally stop her from putting Garuda Nastikas into extinction. However, tension still ran high in the clan and she still refused to mingle or mate with any males. When the Seven Thousand Year War broke out, she was the only Nastika who refused to side with Garuda or Vinata. Instead, she cussed them out in front of the clan and announced that she had neither patience nor place in crude and unsightly disputes of machismo, right before vanishing to where even Surya couldn't find her.
"Word in the sky is that Robin met a female Nastika and got involved." Avifauna shrugged his shoulders and kept his arms in a W shape. "With her, she had a child, who surprisingly turned out to be a son. Also, it seems that the son looks excessively like his mother's male form, which usually wouldn't be a big deal. Unfortunately, his mother just turns out to be one of Robin's old suitors, who used to be especially persistent and annoying back in the old day. Since Robin couldn't kill a woman, she settled for killing the son instead. But the mother hid the son too well so in the end, she gave up and left for the Sura Realm. Only recently did some of your former supporters go out of their way to look for her. Now she's convinced that you blew up the surface of Carte while her son was on it. Needless to say, she's ecstatic."
Vinata did not know whether to put her hand to her forehead or slowly inch away. Finally, she squinted her eyes incredulously. "Are you pulling this story out of your tail feathers?"
"No."
"Then… your wings?"
"No…"
"Are you sure? You don't sound so sure."
"Robin did have a son," he huffed, although it sounded more like he was trying to convince himself than Vinata. "She also thinks that she's doing you a favour by picking up this rivalry with Garuda, which is why the balance of our clan is once again jeopardized. You know, it occurs to me that you never once thought about cleaning up this political mess that you left behind."
"I thought they were gone!" was her feeble yet much too chirpy excuse to defend her past actions. "Didn't they give up hope after I turned female?"
Suddenly, the ground began shaking beneath her. All the other mountains stayed put, so Vinata knew that it wasn't an earthquake. Her first instinct was to spread her wings and fly. Her body, however, was not as compliant. Very quickly, it leadened and rooted. Even for a typical Nastika, it wasn't hard to summon a little vigor to overcome the pressure. However, Avifauna's ability was a little different than the rest and it was precisely because of it that he was deemed the third strongest of the clan. Vinata tried her best to stand steady, a feat hard to accomplish when in her mind, she was incessantly on the verge of sinking straight into the ground.
"Put me in my place, did you say? Seems like nothing more than a bluff."
"Fine," she snapped irritably, folding her arms. Her legs, much to her dismay, were still visibly trembling. "You have my undivided attention. What do you want me to do?"
The sinking stopped and Avifauna sighed. What he would give for her to become a little more responsible on her own.
"Prove to me and to the rest of our clan why you are deserving of your title. You can start by cleaning up the mess you made."
S-C-N-D
N0 - approx. 37000 years
S-C-N-D
A crowd of a hundred gathered in a wild and ragged land. Gods didn't spend much time in the God Realm when there were other, more beautiful places they could be. As a result, it became common to organize campaigns here in a place that was neither barren nor brimming with life. In fact, today the grass looked internally trampled and the air felt even stuffier with the crowd. Chandra threw brief glances at the one and two zen gods he didn't know existed.
Beside him, Varuna stood proud and strong as she properly surveyed the divine beings. He was impressed with the crowd she'd amassed, but why was there a glaring absence of higher leveled gods? Against a Nastika, Astikas of one and two zen level would hardly be of use.
"You couldn't have gotten Surya?"
"Summoned."
"Indra?"
"Paperwork."
"Agni?"
"Not interested in fire types since his humiliating loss against Vasuki."
Chandra was getting desperate.
"Vayu?"
"Resting."
"What do you mean resting?"
She humphed and crossed her arms. "You try talking to him when he's in one of his moods."
He wanted to extinguish the sun somehow… somehow. "Fine, what about Kubera?"
"Grumpy."
He stared in disbelief. "Did you even try?"
Varuna, impatient, gestured to the crowd. "Look, there are plenty here that are of use. Asvins and Marut persuaded some four zen gods. I also purposely recruited assist types so we can focus on the attacking throughout the battle. We've got the advantage of attribute, even if Garuda happens to show up. It doesn't take that big of a party to strike down a female Nastika."
Chandra bit his nails with a vengeance. What Varuna said was true, but Vinata wasn't just any female Nastika. He was sure that she would be just as wild, just as feral as she had been every single time he was hunted. He had been lucky that Shuri, Garuda, and most of the light types were relatively merciful when it came to killing. Then, Vinata had taken an interest in him. Curse Vinata and her obsession with her king. Because of her, his entire life turned into a cat and mouse game that left him deprived of many normal godly joys.
"Where's your boyfriend?" he asked, suddenly remembering.
"What boyfriend? One does not bring former lovers to war."
As I thought, he sighed inwardly, poor guy really was just a pastime for her sentence in hell.
He scrutinized what the gods and humans considered a divine beauty. Varuna was stretching and cranking her arm back with loud cracks. He supposed she could be considered a beautiful warrior by some, but in his eyes, she was too often stained with Sura blood. He had always been repulsed by her gruesome habits of slaying.
"We leave on the day of Vayu, hour of Surya." Vayu for a fast journey and Surya to lead the way. It was tradition for Varuna to honour those two gods, her two best allies.
Chandra personally thought it was a silly tradition, but he merely shrugged. Varuna would be useful for extinguishing Vinata's flames, which was, in the end, the most important thing.
"Fine by me."
S-C-N-D
N0 - approx. 37000 years
S-C-N-D
Clear sky.
Good wind.
Perfect day to set out on a journey.
As Vinata surveyed the land with her hand flat against her eyebrows, Avifauna leaned on a boulder with his eyes shut. "It's futile to approach the problem from this angle," he warned her. "Instead of trying to find Robin, you should attack the root of the uprising.
"Which is?"
"Are your supporters."
She tilted her head to the side. "Really? I'm having a hard time seeing how it's more helpful to try and handle a hundred Nastikas when I can just handle one."
He resisted the urge to roll his eyes. "One day, you'll regret this."
"Now you just sound like Chandra."
Even Avifauna knew when to let it go. With one last glare, he turned and walked away. Vinata watched his figure from the corner of her eye. Though he gave the appearance of leaving, she knew he was watching from a distance. There had always been mutual distrust between them.
She shook her head while raising her two hands, finger open, to eye level. One by one, she folded her fingers slowly with a big, foolish grin in place.
"Six…"
"What the hell are you doing?" She could literally feel Avifauna fuming from a distance.
Vinata turned. "Ah! There you are. I knew you couldn't have gone far. I was just counting down the number of weeks I would be away from my husband dearest." Then, clutching her hands, she exclaimed dramatically, "oh, he must be so lonely without me here!"
"Just. Go." He nearly seethed.
The grin dropped from Vinata's face. She lowered her head to a descending angle so that the other Nastika could not read her eyes. "Avifauna… This is just between you and me, okay? Don't tell Garuda that I'm leaving to find Robin. If he notices my absence, tell him I've gone hunting. I know you're supposed to be loyal to him, but please do me this one favour in exchange for saving Vegavis's life."
With a quaint smile, she disappeared into the sky, leaving Avifauna to stare blankly at the glaring sun. Before long, he shut his eyes in frustration. It just had to be them, huh? His king and queen. The most dysfunctional couple in all eight clans.
S-C-N-D
Robin's son is… you guessed it: the yellow green Rakshasa that Garuda talked to. His mother will not appear in CoaP. As a matter of fact, she might not ever be mentioned again. She's not important.
For the wonderful guest who left a review for me, this story is following a made up timeline and not a scientific one. Humans are created near the beginning of the universe, have been civilized since N0 - 970000 years and created Mistyshore around N0 - 420000 years. Hah. Not exactly accurate. Haha. In any case, I am not a reliable narrator. Q-Q However, most of this story either takes place in the Garuda Mountains (Ch74) or on some random barren planet which would probably look like the Sura Realm. These places remain relatively unchanged in many years. :D
Thank you for reading! Please leave a review!
-SCND