We Shall Be Monsters, page 37
The earth began to darken and wither. Veins of sickly black rose to the surface like pungent tar. Kutaa laid his ears flat. Kajal could sense the halahala even through the soles of her shoes, toxic and wrong. The product of conflict. Death.
“Adi, don’t!” Tav fought out of Vivaan’s hold. But as he got close to Advaith, his brother’s energy lashed out, pushing him backward.
“Don’t stop me, bhara,” Advaith warned. “They deserve this.”
The Vadhia only realized something was wrong when the veins reached the encampment. Kajal heard their cries of shock and fear, saw the way they scurried to fetch weapons and horses. But Advaith forced the halahala out of the ground. It burst upward into snakelike beings, towering over the Vadhia.
“No!” Lasya cried, but it was too late. The vines of halahala descended, striking down each and every soldier. Chests were caved in. Skulls were crushed. Limbs were ripped from bodies.
Satisfaction, dark and jubilant, bloomed within Kajal. As much as she longed to deny it, the sight of the Vadhia afraid and in pain pleased her. Whether it was the part of her that was the asura, thriving on chaos and disorder, or the part of her that was a girl trying to survive in this wretched world, she couldn’t say. Maybe they were one and the same.
Advaith’s forehead shone with sweat as the poison seeped into the soldiers’ bodies, covering them in that tar-like substance. The air was so thick with blight-touched tamas that both Tav and Lasya cringed. Kajal could smell it, taste it on her tongue. It brought her back to that moment before Lasya’s death, when she had attempted to open the gates on her own. But she had been an asura with no training; Advaith had had years of it.
Only when all the soldiers were dead did they rise and shamble toward the crest. Kajal had once likened Tav’s connection to animals as a puppet master with his puppets, but she could see now that was wrong. This was what a true puppet master looked like.
Advaith shook while he struggled to maintain control. The ruby ring upon his finger lit up with his power. “Div— Kajal, please, help me.”
But Kajal refused to move, too stricken with the memory of killing the Vadhia soldiers near the dakinis’ forest. How the halahala had answered some silent summons of hers, caused by fear or rage or both.
She hadn’t meant to kill them, just as she hadn’t meant to kill the miners, or Gurveer Bibi, or Gurdeep, or Riddhi. Just as she hadn’t meant to kill Lasya. Just as she hadn’t meant for her mistakes to lead to the murdering of innocents by the Vadhia.
As a dakini, she hadn’t cared, but she was no longer that person.
Kajal was only dimly aware of Jassi ushering Vritika and Dalbir away, now that the demons’ attention was elsewhere. The corpses shuffled without direction, jaws hanging slack and eyes white and unseeing. Two of them tore at each other’s diseased flesh with piercing cries, their sattva corroding while the tamas around them swelled higher.
“Now,” Advaith ground out.
In the air before him came a faint sheen of black and silver. The gateway to Patala. The one Kajal had tried so hard to summon.
The gates that flickered into existence were wide and tall, made of glittering black stone that didn’t look of this world. Their surface was studded with jewels and engraved with various species of rakshasas and night-blooming flowers, the symbol of a trishul standing as the keystone. With a deep rumble, the gates opened ajar, a sliver of beckoning shadow beyond.
Advaith was starting to flag. He groaned around gritted teeth, his energy sputtering as the veins on his wrists blackened.
Lasya tried to get past Sezal, but the danava blocked her way.
“Why are you allowing him to do this?” Kajal demanded of the aide. “He didn’t tell you about his plans with Dukha and Bakshi. He kept you in the dark, and look what happened!”
Sezal wavered. “We need him. He’s the asura.”
“I’m the asura,” Kajal said.
Sezal looked at her with mounting uncertainty.
“Do you really think this will lead to a cure?” Kajal gestured at the dead, wilted ground. “Or do you want to find another way?”
Sezal glanced between her and Lasya. Vivaan called to her, but she ignored him. A moment later, the danava stepped to one side.
Before Kajal could act, Lasya ran out ahead. With her revenant strength, Lasya landed a powerful kick to Advaith’s side, sending him flying across the blackened grass. Lasya’s hair stirred in the wind, her face eerily blank, and Kajal almost despaired that she hadn’t been resurrected after all—that she was still the bhuta out for blood.
But her sister’s eyes glowed blue, not red. As Advaith righted himself with a grimace, emotion flitted across Lasya’s face. It was an emotion Kajal had never seen on her, and at first she couldn’t be sure she’d seen it at all.
Fury.
“Don’t make me do this.” Advaith put a hand on his sword hilt. The veins on his wrist remained black, as if he’d taken in some of the halahala to better control it.
“I will kill you before you try,” Lasya said. The words made Kajal feel like she was the one who’d been kicked.
Advaith unsheathed his talwar at the same time Lasya flew at him. Red and blue clashed, searing even behind Kajal’s eyelids. They were both matched in strength, but the wind around Lasya was phantom and strange, smelling of grave soil.
Advaith lined his sword with violent red energy and struck. But Lasya dodged and spun with inhuman speed, aiming a punch at him. He jumped away and her fist smashed into the diseased ground, forming a small crater that steamed with blue-and-black mist.
“Careful,” Advaith said, lifting his glowing talwar. “You don’t yet know how to control those powers.”
Lasya’s eyes narrowed. Silently, she spread out her arms, fingers curled upward like claws. Behind her an azure light grew and flickered like a flame.
It resolved into the birdlike figure of a garuda. The phantom yaksha spread its wings wide and released high-pitched cries from its three heads before it plummeted toward Advaith like descending upon a serpent.
The prince barely put up a crimson shield in time. The garuda slammed into it, wings buffeting and talons scratching at the surface. In Advaith’s weakened state, his shield stuttered long enough for the phantom yaksha to slice a long gash under his collarbone.
“Advaith!” Vivaan cried. Kajal could already see the knife in his hand, ready to plunge it into Lasya’s unprotected back. Kutaa growled and clamped his jaws around Vivaan’s leg to keep him in place.
A crossbow bolt whistled through the air before landing deep in Vivaan’s shoulder. The danava cried out, the bolt’s blessing sending white flashes like lightning across his chest. Kajal whirled around; Vritika had taken repossession of her crossbow, already nocking another bolt.
Advaith retaliated by reaching for the halahala, raising new vines from the earth that undulated around him. One by one, they struck at Lasya, and she dodged and blocked as best she could. Kajal yelled when one came close to hitting her, but the phantom garuda dove in front of it, shrieking as it scattered in a burst of blue light.
Lasya’s eyes flared red, and she shoved a hand out before her. Advaith dropped his talwar and fell to one knee as he clutched at his sutured throat, struggling for breath. Kajal touched her own throat, remembering how it felt to have the bhuta choking her. The deadened earth beneath them turned darker, bubbling with toxin.
“Stop!”
Tav got between Lasya and Advaith, arms flung out on either side.
“Stop!” he begged again. “Please, don’t—don’t make the halahala worse.”
Lasya slowly lowered her hand and released her hold on Advaith. The glow left her eyes, but the bhuta’s wind still whipped around her like an agitated cat’s tail.
“He’s caused so much devastation,” Lasya said.
“And he’ll attempt to fix it. We,” Tav corrected, looking over his shoulder at his brother, “will attempt to fix it.”
Kajal took a step forward, but she already knew she couldn’t prevent what was coming.
“I’ll go with you,” Tav said to Advaith. “To Patala. We can solve this without you killing yourself on your own power.” Eyes filled with remorse, he glanced at Kajal. “Just promise me you’ll leave them out of this.”
The surge of hope on Advaith’s face was painful. “You’ll go with me?”
“Yes. We’ll find Lord Dukha and ask how to reverse halahala. And if he truly is working with Bakshi, then we will find a way to unseat them both. We’re in this together.”
We’re in this together.
Tav had spoken those same words to her. They had made her feel, at least for a little while, less alone.
She had been a fool for believing them.
Advaith nodded eagerly, sheathing his talwar to grab Tav by the arm. “Yes. Yes. We’re the asura and deva. We don’t need anyone else getting in our way. And I can— I can make all this up to you.”
Tav lifted his fingers to Advaith’s face like he had on the Harama Plain with his brother’s trishul impaling him.
“I know, Adi,” Tav whispered.
Vivaan had broken off the crossbow bolt. Though he was clearly in pain, he took Advaith’s wrist and grimly examined the black lines there.
“Heal him,” Vivaan ordered Tav.
Kajal saw the moment Tav recalled the blighted yaksha in the lake. The way his powers hadn’t been able to reduce even a vein of pollution.
“I can’t,” Tav confessed. “I can keep him from being in pain, but…the blight is beyond me.”
Vivaan turned toward the humans. “He will need a physician.”
Jassi stepped in front of Vritika and Dalbir. “If you promise to let my students go, I’ll come with you.” Her voice shook only slightly. Vritika and Dalbir started to argue, but the professor quieted them. “It’s all right.”
Vivaan let go of Advaith’s wrist. “Very well. Sezal, come. His Majesty needs us.”
Haltingly, Sezal took her spot at Kajal’s side. “I serve the new asura.”
Vivaan reeled as though she had run him through. He opened his mouth, but Advaith lifted a hand.
“She is free to serve whomever she chooses.” Yet Advaith’s parting nod to her was stiff, and he could barely conceal the hurt in his expression. “I wish you well, Sezal.”
She ducked her head.
The corpses below them stilled, and the edges of the gateway faded. “There isn’t much time,” Advaith said. He looked at Kajal and Lasya with some reluctance, despite his insistence that they would only get in his way.
She knew Advaith would allow her to go with them, if for no other reason than to have access to another asura’s power. She could finally enter Patala and join their mission to track down the demon lord.
But Advaith had chosen a path of destruction, even if he’d done so thinking it was for the greater good. And she was so tired of destroying everything she touched.
She and Lasya would figure this out on their own, as they’d always done.
Noting their resolve, Advaith frowned and dismissed them.
Vivaan gestured for Jassi to enter the gates. The professor wavered at the sight of the darkness beyond, casting one last glance at Vritika, Dalbir, and Kajal before steeling herself and stepping through. Vivaan allowed himself a resentful glare at Sezal before he followed. Advaith waited for Tav to do the same.
Instead, Tav turned back to Kajal. There was an apology there, and regret, but also steadfast determination. He believed he was doing the right thing, and perhaps he was.
Yet the part of her that remembered being Divya couldn’t help but think he was once again choosing his brother, his duty, over everything else. They hadn’t even had a chance to speak. Not with the truth exposed, her past opened up to her. He knew who she was, and again he was leaving her.
“Tav.” Advaith reached out an impatient hand. “Leave them.”
Whatever Tav saw in Kajal’s face made his own shift, as if something inside him were breaking.
I’m sorry, he mouthed.
As if she hadn’t lied to him over and over. As if she deserved an apology from anyone.
He and Advaith turned to the darkness and let it swallow them together. Before anyone could think to follow, the gates sealed shut and vanished.
* * *
As if Tav’s presence had been the only thing keeping her upright, Kajal fell to her knees. Lasya’s wind died and she crouched beside her, Kutaa approaching on her other side.
“You shouldn’t exert yourself,” Lasya said, patting down Kajal’s hair.
Kajal’s laugh was mirthless as she steadied herself against Kutaa’s bulk. “You should talk.”
Lasya touched Kajal’s throat. “There’s a ring around your neck. It’s blue.”
Kajal’s fingertips bumped against Lasya’s. The spot was right over her throat chakra. Tav and Lasya’s combined healing must have altered it as they’d burned away the poison.
Watching Kajal closely, Lasya moved her hand to her shoulder. “We’ll find our own way to Patala. We’ll stop him.”
But there was so much more to it than that. It was the life she remembered that Lasya hadn’t been part of. It was the enormity of halahala’s devastation due to her own pride and pain. It was that she still didn’t know how to use her powers to their full extent.
Useless.
Kajal shook her head. She couldn’t think like that. Those kinds of thoughts had gotten her killed the first time, and an overabundance of confidence had gotten her killed the second.
Sezal knelt before her, head bowed. “Blessed Asura, I am yours to command.”
Kajal took a deep breath. “Can I have my dagger back?”
Sezal blinked, then pulled it out of her belt and handed it to her. Kajal savored the heft of it. She’d thought it was foreign before, but now it couldn’t have been more natural.
“Is it over?”
Dalbir and Vritika joined them. It was Dalbir who had spoken, gaze fixed on the spot where the gates had been.
“For now,” Lasya answered. “Until we figure out how to follow them.”
Vritika pointed at the ruined encampment, where the corpses had fallen motionless to the ground. “What, and do that again? We need to rescue Professor Jassi, but if this is the cost—”
“That’s not the only way.”
Everyone started at the new voice. Everyone except Kajal, who looked up sharply.
Several paces away, standing where the halahala ended and the grass grew green, was the same nagi who had harassed her under the hawthorn tree, recited the poem in the lake, and stopped the Vadhia soldiers.
“Bina,” Kajal whispered.
The nagi’s eyes widened before she let out a husky laugh. “So you finally remember.”
“Remember?” Lasya frowned. “Remember what?”
“It’s a long story,” Kajal murmured. She nodded to Bina. “I assume you have an idea?”
“A few.”
“Will I like any of them?”
“No.”
Kajal huffed. But so long as she could avoid spreading halahala further, so long as she could prevent more hearts from stopping, she would listen.
“We will ensure that one of them works.” Bina smiled slightly. “Maa is waiting for you to come home.”
Kajal’s hand curled around the dagger’s sheath. Something else dug into the palm of her opposite hand, and she unfurled it. The amber pendant gleamed against her skin, housing its solitary lotus petal.
She wondered if she would ever return to the river. If she would be alone or have someone at her side. If she would ever reclaim the feeling of peace she’d once coveted.
But everything was different. She was different.
As she stared down at the pendant, a butterfly yaksha landed on her finger. It flapped its wings serenely, unbothered by the deva’s disappearance.
Tav claimed that no one else could hear the butterflies, but if she concentrated, she thought she could detect the faintest whisper.
Trust me.
She closed her watering eyes. When she opened them again, the butterfly was gone.
She got to her feet and assessed the others. They all watched her, as if waiting for her to give them an order. The spot between her eyebrows prickled. She remembered sitting under a banyan tree with Lasya as a pujari knelt before them, his thumbs pressed to their foreheads, saying their titles for the first time.
Kajal had wanted a simple life. A life that didn’t demand anything of her, a life that allowed for her and Lasya to be together forever. She’d known even then that it wasn’t possible.
Now, standing there with a dakini’s dagger and a pendant crafted by hands she no longer possessed, Kajal accepted that she was the asura, and that demons bowed to her.
That she was halfway a demon herself.
And that one way or another, she would return home.
Author’s Note
The Mutability of Myth
Western media has familiarized many readers with a spectrum of fantasy staples: elves, dwarves, dragons, and even demons and angels. There are so many interpretations of these tropes spanning countless books, movies, and shows that some readers might forget they originated in religion. In fact, one of the most formative pieces of fantasy literature, The Lord of the Rings, was inspired by Norse mythology.
Just as Norse mythology is tied to ancient faith, so, too, is Hindu mythology tied to religion—a religion that’s very active, beloved, and sacred to many today. In that vein, this book is not meant to teach you Hindu mythology, which is incredibly nuanced and varied. Rather, I’ve created an Indian fantasy in the way some authors take mythological cues when developing their secondary worlds.
However, for those who are not as acquainted with these specific mythological cues, I have the responsibility to explain how they deviate from their origins.
