God of War - Karmic Cycle [AU]

[juniorsundar]

---

Introduction

I've been writing this fanfiction for a while now, in small increments, ever since God of War Ragnarok. However, I've been struggling in deciding whether to release it or not. The benefit of God of War as a franchise is that it explores mythologies and religions that have already gone extinct. So if the creators make any controversial decisions, they don't have to worry about retaliation from the followers of said religion. This fanfiction, however, explores a mythos that is very well still in practise and is followed by approximately 1.2 billion folks worldwide.

I struggled because I didn't want to get attacked in the comments or in the reviews by people who find offense in what I write. And although I am uploading this now, it does not mean that I am no longer apprehensive about it. But rather, I have come to terms with the fact that it is impossible to satisfy everyone, and there will always be someone who will take offense with what you do.

However, I am writing this preface so that those who intend to read this fanfiction do so with an open mind and without the preconceived notion that I am trying to blaspheme or insult Hinduism in any way, shape or form.

About Me

I am a practising Hindu. I have been so since the day I was born. Though I wouldn't classify myself as a devout follower as I still maintain a healthy bit of scepticism in all the claims my religion makes. I think this is important for anyone, since there is a very thin line between fanaticism and faith that those without the inherent scepticism in place fail to recognise.

I was brought up listening to the stories my grandparents told me about gods and the legends associated with them. This mostly acted as guiding principles for me as I grew up, helping me understand what was right and what was wrong. And in some ways they were also entertaining to listen to since Hindu mythology does not portray the gods as infalliable entities. They have unique quirks and personalities that make them - dare I say it - human in some ways.

As I grew up, I also took the time to read and understand the scriptures that were a part of my religion's history. And though I cannot claim to have read the Ramayana, Mahabharatha in its entirety in its original Sanskrit, I can claim that I know them well enough to recite the key bits off the top of my head.

All of this is to say that I am not someone from the outside looking in. I follow the religion I am writing about. Of course this doesn't mean that those who follow a religion are precluded from being accused of blasphemy or disrespect when talking ill of their religion. If this is what is perceived when you read this fanfiction, understand that I am not doing so intentionally. The right thing to do is to bring this point up in the comments or in my Discord. If it is a reasonable statement then I will address it.

About this Fanfiction

Hinduism is an old religion. Perhaps the oldest religion in the world. Although there are a lot of scriptures within the religion, very few have lasted the test of time. And unlike a lot of modern religions, a good portion of the knowledge regarding the teachings and stories of the religion are transmitted through generations via word-of-mouth.

This also excludes the various branches, sects and subsects that interpret the existing religious texts in different ways. So I can confidently say that no two Hindus will have the same interpretation of an event in Hindu mythos.

I would liken this characteristic like a comic book universe. Take the DC universe as an example. You have so many interpretations of the character of Superman. Every new artist has their own interpretation of the character that it often becomes difficult to place him on a power scale. In some interpretations he is as fast as Flash, in others he isn't. This in and of itself makes it difficult for fanfiction writers to write about the character. What most do is to choose a frame of reference - a fixed universe (lets say Young Justice or DCEU) and work from that.

This means that you don't have to worry about the variations that are inherent to the comic book universes. If some reader comes along and says some nonsense about Superman being able to swallow Kryptonite because one particular trade had the character acheive that feat, the fanfiction writer can simply say that, "This isn't the same universe, and kindly scram!".

To that end, I am going to adopt this same stance when writing this fanfiction. I am creating an, let's say 'author's universe', with regards to the Hindu Mythology. This means that I will be taking some creative liberties when working with the characters that are a part of it. This is necessary so that I can pin down ONE interpretation of the character and stick with that. This does not mean that the gods will be doing something that is out of character.

For example, (and please control your emotions to not get triggered by what I am about to write): Lord Shiva and Lord Vishnu embody the two extents of ethics, i.e. the means justify the end and the ends justify the means. In nearly all interpretations of Lord Vishnu, He is shown to be someone who will go to any extent to ensure that the world is preserved and "evil" is vanquished. Lord Shiva does not subscribe to that, as it is shown that he is more perceptive to the intent rather than consequence.

You will notice that I placed "evil" in quotes as the idea of good and evil are a heated point of debate in Hindu Mythology. As it is an old religion, there are certain indicators of what is right and what is wrong that cannot (and should not) be held up in modern times. But this theme is something that I cannot explore briefly. I will, however, be exploring it in this fanfiction.

Now, coming back to the earlier point, the two characters have common traits that persist through most interpretations. I will use that as a schematic to build a version of them in my universe. Let's say that 90% of the character will be from the shared universe, and 10% will be my own interpretation.

This is important to not just have a believable character that people can relate to and understand, but also to anchor down a timeline (which you will see is important in this fanfiction).

So this means that if you think that I have missed something in my interpretation of a particular character, it is intentional. That is not part of my universe. If you are insistent that this interpretation is incorrect, then I kindly encourage you to write your own fanfiction with that interpretation. You can copy mine verbatim and just change the characters to fit the interpretation that you believe is right. After all, neither God of War nor Hinduism belong to me (the former belongs to Santa Monica Studios and the latter is public domain).

Conclusion

Read this fanfiction with an open mind. If you are someone who gets triggered easily, then this isn't for you. Leave comments if you have opinions. Leave reviews if you like or dislike this work. But please be civil.

 

[juniorsundar]

The tranquil serenity of the fertile river delta was shattered as a heavy storm beyond imagining descended upon the vast ocean that bordered the peaceful farmlands. The once bustling fields stood abandoned as the farmers fled into their sturdy homes, terror etched across their faces. Whispers of divine wrath spread like wildfire. Many posited it as the heavens smiting them for their sins both knowingly and unknowingly committed.

Amidst the deafening cacophony of thunder and the relentless downpour, a sudden and brilliant flash of heavenly lightning pierced through the inky sky. It was as though the very fabric of reality had been torn asunder, leaving a jagged rupture in the cosmic tapestry. Through it, was nothing but an endless void - a gateway into the chaos that existed in the realm between realms.

From this rupture, a figure was ejected, ashen white with a spiralling, red birthmark marking his face and body. His presence was an enigma and his body was battered and broken. Crimson trails of blood dripped from a large, gaping wound in his abdomen, marring his pallid skin. The figure's breathing was laboured and ragged, and he clung to the precipice of death itself. With each struggling breath, he sank into the churning waters below, disappearing beneath the tumultuous waves and swallowed into the unforgiving abyss.

As minutes stretched into eternity, the storm's fury began to abate. The thunderous roars faded into distant echoes, and the relentless rain transformed into a gentle drizzle. It was then that the impossible occurred.

From the depths of the ocean, the near-death figure rose once more, carried by an unseen force. He ascended slowly, his ashen form breaking the surface of the water. It was as if the river itself was cradling him. With uncanny grace, the river seemed to take charge. The near-lifeless body was carried upstream against its current. Against all reason and natural laws, the ashen figure floated serenely like a ghost, caressed by the river's mysterious embrace.

The farmers, peering out from their shelters, watched in awe as the enigmatic figure and the river's inexplicable benevolence defied all natural laws. As the days passed and weeks turned into months, the story of a river ghost turned from a folk legend into an old wives' tale, until eventually it faded from existence altogether.

---

As the first rays of the sun kissed the horizon, casting a golden glow upon the tranquil waters of the sacred river Ganga, a sage stood immersed in devotion. The sage, adorned in simple saffron robes with his forehead plastered with three horizontal lines of dried ash with a thin line of red turmeric bisecting them, stood waist-deep in the flowing currents, his eyes closed in serene concentration. The cool morning breeze gently caressed his weathered face as he prepared to perform the sacred ritual of Sandhyavandanam. He cupped a handful of the sacred water and rubbed his yajnopavita, three sets of three white circular threads that ran diagonally from his left shoulder to his right waist, cleaning it.

His long black hair cascaded down his back. In his arms, which were unusually muscular and calloused for a brahmin, he held a copper vessel filled with water. With each breath, he recited the ancient chants and hymns, invoking the divine forces that resided in the celestial realms above. The sage's voice, resonant and filled with spiritual energy, harmonized with the rustling leaves and the rhythmic flow of the holy river.

His face, etched with wisdom and unwavering faith, reflected the profound connection he shared with the divine. The sage's devotion was palpable as if the very air around him shimmered with a sacred presence. Every movement and every gesture was deliberate and infused with reverence.

As the sun's radiant disc gradually emerged, casting a brilliant glow upon the water, the sage cupped his hands, raising them to the heavens. With utmost devotion, he began the achamanam, the ritual sipping of water, purifying himself to commune with the gods.

"Om Achyutaaya Namaha. Om Ananthaya Namaha. Om Govindaya Nahama."

With each name called, the sage sipped water flowing through the crease splitting his right wrist. Once finished, he moved on to the next step.

"Om Keshavaya Namaha," he said while touching his right cheek with his right thumb.

"Om Narayanaya Namaha,*" he said while touching his left cheek with his right thumb.

"Om Madhavaya Namaha," he said while touching his right eye with his ring finger.

"Om Govindaya Namaha," he said while touching his left eye with his ring finger.

"Om Vishnave Namaha," he said while touching the right side of his nose with his index finger.

"Om Madhusudhanaya Namaha," he said while touching the left side of his nose with his index finger.

"Om Trivikramaya Namaha," he said while touching his right ear with his little finger.

"Om Vamanaya Namaha," he said while touching his left ear with his little finger.

"Om Shridharaya Namaha," he said while touching his right shoulder with his middle finger.

"Om Hrishikeshaya Namaha," he said while touching his left shoulder with his middle finger.

"Om Padmanabhaya Namaha," he said while touching his navel with all four of his fingers and thumb folded inwards.

"Om Damodaraya Namaha," he said while touching his head with all four of his fingers and thumb folded inwards.

He pressed his open palms together and held them in prayer against his chest. After taking a long breath, he continued chanting.

"Om Sankarshanaya Namaha."

"Om Vasudevaya Namaha."

"Om Pradyumnaya Namaha."

"Om Anirudhaya Namaha."

"Om Purushothamaya Namaha."

"Om Adhokshajaya Namaha."

"Om Narasimhaya-"

At that instant, something collided against the sage's torso, bringing him out of his ascetic trance. His eyes turned into daggers as he looked around for the interloper who dared to interrupt the most sacred of morning prayers. Whoever, or whatever it was, would inevitably face his wrath and would receive its due, if not in this life then maybe the next one, or the one after.

But his wrath hitched just as the curse reached his lips because his gaze landed on a figure floating beside him. It was a bald man with pale skin, possibly due to blood loss from the large gaping hole in his abdomen caused by a large sword piercing through, or because he was caked in ash. A red birthmark cut through the left side of his face, over his head and left eye, and another spiralling red birthmark snaked around the left side of his torso, ending on his left shoulder.

For all intents and purposes, the man should be dead. But his chest heaved just barely, meaning that life still clung on to him... though only barely. The sage looked towards the direction where the body came from, it was flowing against the current.

"You want me to save him?" The Sage asked the river. In turn, the water churned and bubbled, returning an affirmation. "Why?"

To that, the river had no response. But the sage revealed a faint smile and answered his question, "Have you gotten so tired of carting away the ashes of the dead?"

"Let me finish, then," the sage said before continuing his prayers. But he was once again interrupted by the body hitting him, and nudging him out of concentration. He clicked his tongue in annoyance and looked at the bright disk that had finally leapt off the horizon. He considered the situation thoroughly before letting out a tired sigh.

"Forgive me today, oh Lord!" He said out loud. "But they do say that saving one life is more meritorious than constructing a hundred temples."

He then dipped underwater and ascended while lifting the unconscious body over his shoulders. The move was effortless, as though the over-a-hundred-kilo, muscular mountain of a man was as light as a feather. The sage walked out of the river with steady steps, while latching the copper vessel in his hands against a hook by his hips. As he stepped onto the river bank, he once again looked towards the flowing river.

"This man should have died, and yet he didn't. It was your action, against the prescribed flow of nature, that has saved him. For that, he will owe you. You may not have expected anything in return, but that only raises the righteousness of this act," the sage orated. He then dipped the tip of his ring finger into the water in the copper vessel by his waist and drew a symbol on the right side of the unconscious man's neck, causing it to glow for a short moment. "This mark will ensure that the man won't forget your act of goodwill. And when the time comes, and you wish to collect the favour you have done him, the mark will assure of his acquiescence."

The undulating river subsided and continued its usual behaviour as the sage's words echoed all around.

After giving one short bow to the Sun above, the River before, and the Earth below, the sage walked towards the dense shrubbery. At that moment, he extended his free right hand outwards, palm open. Through the forestry, the sound of something cutting through the wind resonated, until eventually a hand-axe appeared while spinning dangerously. It whipped straight towards the sage's open palm and its wooden handle landed safely in his grasp.

As the wood made contact with his skin a mysterious and malicious energy started to resonate from the bloody metal, before coursing through his veins causing them to pop out with a molten red shade. The sage bit down on the painful assault, that targeted both his physique and psyche before spinning the tool in his grasp and hanging it against another hook by his waistline.

The sage made his way towards the dense shrubbery. As he did so, he started to sing hymns that mellowed the furious winds that rustled the tree branches.

"Om trayambakam yajamahe, sugandhim pushti-vardhanam,"
We sacrifice to the Three-eyed One the fragrant, increaser of prosperity.
"Uruvarukamiva bandhanan, mrityor mukshiya ma mrtat."
Like a cucumber from its stem, might I be freed from death, not from deathlessness.

---

"You disappoint me, Spartan," Athena's ethereal form said with a disdainful frown. Then, with a sudden yank, she pulled the Blade of Olympus from his abdomen. Blood spurted and gushed out like a fountain.

As he saw Athena's receding figure, which eventually disappeared as her ethereal form dissipated, Kratos could feel his life wavering, flickering away with each passing second. But he wasn't a patient man.

'My vengeance ends now,' he'd promised himself. But Kratos was a weapon of vengeance.

As long as he lived - as long as the weapon of vengeance still burned - his promise would remain unfulfilled.

With great difficulty, Kratos rolled over, causing another burst of blood to gush out of his body. With all his strength, he dragged himself to the edge of the cliff at the peak of Mount Olympus. He looked over the edge and saw an endless chasm below. There was probably an end, but the wrathful storms that affected the world around him clouded his vision - and his current state teetering between life and death definitely did not work in his favour.

Kratos let out a long, laboured breath and absorbed the state of the world that remained. His path of vengeance was unforgiving. He was reminded of a fable he heard from a travelling storyteller during his time in the army. A horse roamed a vast and beautiful meadow with great comfort. It was his kingdom. But one day, his kingdom was invaded, by a herd of deer led by a mighty stag. The herd was hungry and insensitive to the meadow's natural beauty. All they sought was sustenance, and they reaped from the meadow mercilessly. The horse tried to chase them away, but he was unsuccessful. They would leave, disperse, but eventually return and continue their culling. The horse had had enough and decided to recruit help. He approached the humans, even though his mother had warned him against doing so. She told him they were strong and duplicitous, a very dangerous combination. But the horse lacked wisdom, all he could see was the problem before him. Upon approaching a human, the horse relayed his problem.

"Oh, that's easy!" The human man said. "Though I will need your help."

"Anything to get those interlopers out of my meadow!" The horse declared.

"If you allow me to saddle you and mount you, I will carry a set of javelins and get rid of those deer for you," the man promised.

And so, the horse willingly surrendered its freedom and adorned the saddle and bridle, and allowed the human to sit atop it.

"What are you doing?" The horse asked as the man placed two dark cups against each of its eyes.

"Have you ever become distracted and lost your momentum while you galloped quickly?" The man asked.

"Once in a while," the horse admitted.

"These help you focus while you move," the man said to assuage the horse's growing discomfort.

And thus, the hunt began. The man and the horse brought down many a deer of the herd. And amongst the first few killed was the mighty stag that would taunt the horse. In its dying breath, the miscreant said.

"You fool! We were just hungry, looking to survive the coming winter. We would have left, and your meadow would have been all yours. But now, you have truly lost your kingdom."

The horse did not understand what the stag said. It was revelling in its victory.

"Now you can take all of it off, right?" The horse asked the human.

"Not yet, our mission still remains incomplete," the human responded. "But first, I need your assistance in moving some things."

The horse didn't question the human and went on with the assigned task. Days turned to weeks that turned to months. And many years later, on a particular day, while the horse was dragging along something heavy tethered to it, the blinders fell off.

The first thing the horse saw was a tree. It was familiar with that tree. It was the only tree in its meadow that produced red and juicy apples. But everything around the tree was different. The green fields were yellow, with wheat growing on them instead of vibrant grass and flowers.

"W-What is this?"

The horse turned around and saw that it was tethered to a large, shovel-like device - a plough. In some cruel twist of fate, the horse was carrying the very thing that ruined its kingdom.

In its thirst for vengeance, the horse had sacrificed its freedom and lost the very kingdom it sought to protect.

Kratos' world was ending, it was evident. No amount of hope could salvage what remained. And all of this was his fault. Kratos closed his eyes before rolling over and allowing himself to fall off the edge of the cliff. The wind picked up as he fell, cutting into him as his speed grew faster, and faster. Within seconds, he was through the storm clouds that hung below the Mountain. Cold water droplets collided against his skin as he kept falling. He could hear ear-shattering thunder as the charged clouds finally discharged the energy accumulating inside them.

Kratos kept falling. He pressed his lids even tighter, anticipating his end. His consciousness drifted away, as the blood loss sent his body into hibernation.

Whatever happened after, Kratos did not know. But he was certain of one thing: he wasn't dead. The last thing he felt was a sudden end of nature's furious assault. Then it was just cold emptiness... Until suddenly, it all came back. His consciousness returned in short flashes. He saw water; he tasted the sea. He saw a furious storm above him. He felt himself drowning.

He let himself go into the sea's enraged grips. Without Poseidon to tame it, the waters were unforgiving - a fitting comeuppance for Kratos, the man who took the life of the God of the Seas.

It was all going to end, finally... Until it didn't. Kratos could sense his breath again. He could hear, he could smell. He could touch!

His eyes burst open, with confusion and unending rage billowing out of them. The first thing he saw, was a face. A man with long, untamed facial hair and matted hair looked down at him with a blank stare. His forehead was plastered with dried ash and a thin red line cutting through it vertically.

"Welcome to the world of the living," the man said.

Kratos' hand moved subconsciously, with the swiftness of a viper, he grabbed the man by his throat and applied force.

"Why?!" Kratos said with a guttural grunt.

"Why did you save me?! Why didn't you just let me die!"

Kratos could feel the rage growing inside him. What of justice? What of his rightful death? For all the sins he'd committed, why was he still alive?!

His palms crushed down with increasing strength, as Kratos let the anger take over. But to his surprise, the man grabbed Kratos' hand pushed his thumb into the centre of the choking palm and pressed hard.

Kratos did not anticipate such force coming from a man with such a wiry frame. Like a clam, his palm slowly drifted open, releasing the hairy man.

"Look, I figured that you probably attempted to end your own life," the man said while standing up. Kratos tried to follow, but a sharp pain assaulted his abdomen. Looking down, he saw his stomach bandaged thoroughly. "Given the trajectory of the sword strike, it was a coin toss between two possibilities: you were either killed by someone at a much higher elevation compared to you, or you tried to kill yourself. You have a warrior's frame, so the former was less likely..."

"And for the record," the man continued as he returned with a mortar and pestle with a green paste inside it. "I wasn't the one who saved you, technically. I am just the healer. The one who saved you was someone else."

"Who?" Kratos demanded.

"I will introduce you to her, later-"

"Her?"

"Her, him," the man said with a shrug. "They prefer her. She's been a she for a large portion of her existence. But She can be a he too, on very rare occasions," the man rattled.

"Speak sense!" Kratos shot back.

"What matters," the man said while waving his hand. "Is that your debt is to be repaid with her."

"Debt?" Kratos said with a scoff. "I never asked to be saved. Why should I owe anyone anything?"

The man shook his head with a morose frown and said, "A life is a life regardless of whether you deem it valuable or not. It is sinful to blame someone for trying to save another, even if the one being saved did not wish to be. To save someone is a pure act of selflessness, do not disparage it."

Kratos let out an irritated snort and tried to get up from the mat he was lying on. He let out a painful groan while clasping the bandaged stab wound while stumbling and hobbling.

"Do not move," the man instructed forcefully. "You cannot fathom the difficulty I faced in trying to set your internal organs back to the way they were supposed to be."

"I don't care," Kratos spat back.

"What are you trying to do?"

Kratos ignored the man's question and pushed through the wooden door to the thatched house he was in. A flood of sunlight hit his face, partially blinding him as his eyes got used to it. The sounds of songbirds and morning insects danced across his ears while his vision finally turned clear. He was deep inside a forest - a beautiful green and serene landscape.

"H-How?" Kratos mumbled. The world he last saw was in tatters. He turned towards the only other individual in his vicinity and growled angrily, "Undo this witchcraft this instant!"

The man squinted his eyes in disbelief and retorted, "It seems the blood loss has affected your brain."

"What?!"

"What makes you think you are being subjected to witchcraft?"

Kratos pointed aggressively at the beautiful scenery and yelled, "The world! It- It should have ended..."

"As evident with what you can sense before you, the world is very much intact," the man denied. "Why do you believe the world to have ended?"

"Because-" Kratos started, but upon absorbing the apparent reality before him, he was stumped. He had no answers. Maybe it was witchcraft, maybe it wasn't. But in all honesty, it didn't matter to him. He wanted this to be real - he sorely wished for it to be the true reality because deep down, Kratos wished to undo everything. Every decision he made, every word spoken, everything! He wanted to take it all back!

"Because...?" The man parrotted.

"You should have left me to die," Kratos spat out.

To that, the man did not respond. He merely looked at Kratos with an evaluating gaze that unnerved him. For a minute, Kratos felt like his entire history was being unravelled before the man's eyes - he felt naked.

"Killing yourself isn't the way out," the man said with a hint of empathy in his voice. "If you wish to atone, then live. By dying, you simply transfer the sins of your current lifetime to your next. Worse yet, you may not remember the sins of your past lifetime after your rebirth, and thus you will have doomed a truly innocent being to a life worse than death."

"What are you blabbering about?" Kratos snapped back with furrowed brows.

"No man inherits the good or evil of another. The fruits reaped will be of the seed that is sowed, be it in this lifetime or next. And the quality of the fruit is determined by the quality of the seed," the man preached.

"You speak baselessly," Kratos accused. "You know nothing of me!"

"No? But I could recognise those eyes anywhere," the man retaliated with a bitter smile. He then quickly shook his head, cleared his face of morose reminiscence and said, "Look at what you've done now! Your wound is bleeding again."

Kratos snarled while hobbling away.

"Where are you going?" The man called out.

Kratos did not answer.

"You will die," the man reminded.

"Then that will be my fate," Kratos said plainly.

"I cannot let that happen," the man said as he started to follow Kratos.

"Leave me be!" Kratos yelled over his shoulder while suppressing a pained groan. But he could see that the man was not letting up. Kratos did not have the energy to argue with the man, so he kept walking onward through the trees.

He kept walking, stumbling intermittently, yet trudging through the forest with great difficulty. His gaze wandered everywhere, absorbing the scenery with great scrutiny. Inwardly, he hoped that it was true - that the world really hadn't ended. This went on for what seemed like hours, until eventually, Kratos could see a clearing through the treeline.

As he finally broke through the shrubbery, Kratos was surprised to see a bustling farming village before him. Men wearing ragged cloth wrapped around their legs worked tirelessly on the fields, while women garbed in colourful cotton clothing spun around them and carried baskets of harvested grain to and fro. Kids assisted and played around, their joyous voices elicited an overall aura of prosperity and happiness. It was as if the world-ending calamities were just a fever dream.

Who knows, maybe they were! Maybe Kratos had suffered a grievous wound against the Alrik, those barbarians, that day and died. Whatever followed was just an illusory dream. But a quick look at his wrists, with the garish burns from when the cursed chains wrapped around them, snapped Kratos back to reality... this particular reality because he was certain that he was no longer in Greece.

One of the farmers looked up and cleaned his brow of sweat using the rag hanging behind him when his eyes met Kratos'. The man quickly rushed towards the pale figure, worry etched on his face.

"&@$@%!" The man said. Kratos squinted and leaned closer.

"&@$@%@#@?" This was a question, Kratos was sure of it. But he did not understand a word. At that moment, the man's eyes looked past Kratos and landed on the long-haired man following him. The farmer quickly bowed and rattled off a few words, to which the long-haired man raised a palm and responded with a single phrase as a blessing of sorts.

"You aren't from here," the man said to Kratos in words he could understand. "You don't speak their language, hence you cannot communicate with them."

"But you know Greek?" Kratos exclaimed.

"I don't know Greek. I can speak to you, I can understand you, but I don't speak the same language you do," the man said cryptically but with a serious expression. He then tapped his chest and his forehead before tapping Kratos' chest and forehead, "I can understand what goes on in here, and in here. And I can communicate directly with you through that. In the same way, I can talk to animals, the trees, the wind and the sea."

"Witchcraft!" Kratos snapped derisively.

"Not Witchcraft!" the man said with an equally angry snarl. "I have simply learned to speak the language of the world. Everything in the world communicates, I have learned how to decipher that and respond in turn."

The man then greeted the rest of the peasant folk gathering around with reverent gazes on their faces before turning back towards the forest. "Let us return. If you wish to survive here, the least you need to know is to express your needs and wants. I will teach you to read, speak and write."

With that said, the man disappeared into the shrubbery, leaving Kratos alone. He looked at the dispersing crowd and tried to absorb the illegible mumbling resonating amidst them. After a long moment of painful contemplation, Kratos too turned and walked down the same path as the long-haired man.

 

[juniorsundar]

What is living a "normal" life like?

Kratos pondered on that thought quite a bit, nowadays, given how he was afforded an endless amount of time to just linger on his thoughts. Gone were the days when he had to wake up before the crack of dawn and cycle through the daily drills. He was also no longer required to brood over the next tasks handed to him by the gods. Finally, he also didn't need to plot his vengeance. That was a massive chip off his shoulder. He could now live out the so-called "normal" life that everyone kept talking about.

But did he even deserve to live a "normal" life, after all he'd done?

That was always the question that followed the first. From a purely Spartan perspective, it should be his rightful prize. After all, all that matters in any war is the winner, and Kratos (for all intents and purposes) won. The gods that wronged him were dead. The world that glorified said deities was reduced to ruins. Kratos won.

But what did he win?

The result of any war should be peace, right? But Kratos wasn't in peace. In fact, his psyche constantly danced on the precarious edge of a blade. A blade that, metaphorically, loomed over his neck and threatened to cleave it in two at a moment's notice.

Kratos wondered if this was why Spartan warriors were forced to go through gruelling and torturous training every day, even if there was no war on the horizon. Because when left to their thoughts, they were forced to live the horrors they had to commit in the name of their land. Because most humans are born with a conscience, and one's conscience tends to be their harshest critique. Because the conscience tends to veer towards self-harm when there is no way out of the guilt that consumed you, after realising that there was just not enough soap in the world to wash away the blood that caked your ruinous hands.

It amused him to realise that he was ultimately turning into an Athenian pansy. All they did was waste away their days pondering over useless drivel, like what is right and what is wrong, or why the human mind worked the way it did. A Spartan's purpose is to do, not question.

But there WAS nothing left for Kratos to do. So what was his purpose?

According to the long-haired man, who had brought him back from the warm embrace of Hades (if that even existed anymore), Kratos' current purpose was to learn the language spoken by the people of the land he now walked.

On that note, Kratos learned quite a bit about his current position. For one, the world he was in was called "Bharat". Upon questioning the existence of his homeworld, Greece, Kratos was told that it probably existed somewhere westwards, beyond the fields and oceans of chaos that separated the planes. There were words of Greek artefacts owned by rulers or powerful clans in these lands, and they were rumoured to have been brought over by adventurous traders who sought luck and fortune by crossing through the chaos.

The source of all this information, of course, was the long-haired man who was also his language teacher. The man's name was Rama Bhargava, not a name or root that Kratos was familiar with (which further drove in the point that he was no longer in familiar lands).

"To make this sound, you need to aspirate while making the same 'g' sound," Rama explained while pointing at a letter that looked like घ.

Kratos growled irritatedly and barked, "That's how I pronounced it!"

"You aren't releasing air hard enough. If you don't do that, it will sound like ग," Rama responded while shaking his head. "It's been over two weeks, Kratos. I expected faster progress. We've barely scratched the surface, you still have two other sets of alphabets to go through."

"Why are there so many languages?" Kratos exclaimed in frustration. "Where I come from, everyone spoke just one."

"What does language mean to you?" Rama inquired while placing the square cutting of slate with the chalk letter written on it aside.

"It is a means of communication," Kratos responded. "Which means that one is enough."

"Communication has different orders," Rama corrected. "The way you communicate with your family may differ from the way you communicate with your friends. The way you communicate with your child may differ from the way you communicate with your superiors. Language changes when the person you are speaking to changes, because what you want to convey changes and so does the way you want to convey it. Language changes when culture changes, because what you share most often differs if the life you live differs. The words and phrases a king may use amongst his ministers are vastly different from the language used by the lowly peasant as he communicates with his neighbour."

"You talk a lot," Kratos interjected as Rama took a break to let his words settle.

"It's because you are a great listener," Rama said with a chuckle. "In fact, I used two different languages in my previous 'rant'."

"Why?" Kratos probed.

"You know this is the first time you've ever asked that question," Rama pointed out. "Why? What a great word it is. Many men more learned than I have said that it is one of the most dangerous phrases out there because it cuts right to the core of everything. The cause!"

"Answer my question!" Kratos growled.

"Fine, fine," Rama said. "No patience at all."

"People are born with a purpose. A warrior's purpose is to fight for a cause he follows and die on the battlefield. A merchant's purpose is to trade and generate wealth. A peasant's purpose is to till the earth and grow crops. A priest's purpose is to perform religious rites, preserve knowledge, and guide the development of civilisation as a whole. To that end, there are topics of discussion that are common amongst one caste that aren't encroached upon by the other. So there isn't a need for someone in, let's say, the Kshatriya (the warrior or ruler) caste to discuss with the Vaishya (merchant or trader) caste. Hence there isn't a need for the Vaishyas to have a language that spans contexts ranging over discussions of statecraft, warfare and politics," Rama explained. "The purpose, cause or duty, is the person's dharma."

"So why are you teaching me all three languages?" Kratos probed. "I don't intend to communicate with rulers or ply myself in politics."

"How do you know your purpose?" Rama responded. "You weren't born here, thus you don't have a caste, and so your purpose in life is fairly open."

"Who decides my purpose," Kratos murmured.

"If you were part of our cycle of reincarnation," Rama said while raising his arms towards the sky "Then the world itself decides for you. But since that isn't the case here, well, I guess you are free to decide what your purpose in life is supposed to be."

"The language I'm teaching you right now is called Sanskrit," Rama continued as he pulled back the slate board. "It is said to be the language spoken by the world itself. It is said that if you can formulate a prose so profound in Sanskrit, the world will respond in kind. The script I am teaching you is just the surface. The beauty of the language runs deep. I'm afraid even I cannot teach you all about it."

"So why don't we start simpler?"

"Because all other languages begin from this. This and Tamil, which is the other language I will teach you," Rama emphasised while raising two fingers.

Kratos growled with a low rumble as he thought of the arduous exercise before him. "All this knowledge is wasted on me."

"Poppycock!" The man snapped back. "Knowledge is never wasted. The more it is distributed, the more it grows."

He then pointed at the rustling leaves of a tree nearby and gently gestured for it to come closer. Then, from within the branches, an apple floated towards him.

"Knowledge is like this fruit here. It is juicy and sweet, filled with good stuff. But amidst all the fleshy goodness lies a seed-" With a quick pull, the apple was broken in two revealing the seeds within. "Now, the apple that remains on the tree, withers and dies. But the apple that is eaten by the common pigeon manages to have its seed carried with the bird as the creature flies away. As the creature defecates, the seed is planted. In the faeces, it finds sustenance. And once the heavens grace the seed with nurturing rain, a new tree grows in its place."

He pointed at Kratos and revealed a mischievous smile, "In our case, I am the tree. The apple is my knowledge. You are the bird. So fly! Oh, great bird! Defecate where your heart calls you and spread the beauty far and wide."

"You are a weird man," Kratos commented. "We will talk no more. Continue your lesson now."

---

"Two. Apples." Kratos said to the panicking vendor standing behind his mobile stall.

"#%!%$& apples are, one cowrie shell each," the man answered while raising two shivering fingers. Kratos let out a growl before producing the shells to complete the transaction. He then accepted the offered fruits and bit into one. A faint, satisfied smile caused the corner of his lips to quirk upwards slightly as a thin trace of juice dripped down the side of his lips.

The sweetness of the apple lingered on Kratos' tongue. He took another look at the red fruit in his hands. It appeared the same as the apples in Greece. It was the same size, the same vibrant shade of red. And the sound it made as he bit into it echoed with the same lively crack as the ones in Greece. But why was it that this one tasted infinitely better than the ones from his home?

He took another bite, and let himself drown in the sweetness. Maybe it was the lack of purpose, the lack of something that needed to be done, that let him just dwell on the small things. Looking up, Kratos was once again enamoured by the vibrant greenery. He was sure that the Greek forests were just as lively and warm, but back home, Kratos wasn't allowed the time or freedom to just look at them.

Kratos' feet moved forward on their own. He observed the birds prancing around between branches, building nests, courting each other. He followed the chatter of the squirrels as they carried their favourite nuts to their horde. He caught the infrequent deer peeking between the trees, running away as he approached them. A strange sense of calmness washed over Kratos, a feeling he had only ever felt once before and that too when was toeing the line between life and death.

After another bite, the apple was finished. Kratos tossed the core aside and chomped down on the second one. But as he took the bite, he noticed that the forest had terminated. Technically, it wasn't finished, it was simply a break in continuity. A break that was caused by a massive ravine that cleft the forest in two.

Kratos approached the ravine uninhibitedly. He neared the edge and looked over into the near-endless darkness that welcomed him from below.

His foot crept closer to the edge, causing a few small rocks to dislodge from beneath him.

Kratos raised the half-eaten apple in front of his palm. As his eyes focused on the red, it started to ooze and drip out as a viscous fluid, coating his hand crimson.

He blinked.

And he was no longer holding an apple in his hand. In its place, Kratos saw the decapitated, hollow-eyed head of Helios hanging.

Kratos' grip loosened, and the head tumbled down the cliff with a sickening squelch as it collided against the rock face repeatedly.

Looking around, Kratos saw the green forest turn red as fires started to swallow all life, and the sky turned grey as storm clouds started to swallow the sun ravenously.

He stood amidst the collapsing world and slowly closed his eyes.

His right leg extended forward, levitating precariously in midair. Slowly, he started to shift his weight.

"There's nothing down there."

The voice brought Kratos back from his trance. The world wasn't burning, and the heavens weren't collapsing around him.

He turned his head and saw Rama walking out of the forest. The man approached the ravine, beside Kratos and looked down.

"There's nothing down there," he repeated. "I've checked."

He then patted Kratos' back and added, "You see the struggle isn't in going down, but coming back up. The rock walls are rather smooth and finding proper hold is difficult."

"You talk as though you have done this before," Kratos commented, to which the man returned a dull gaze and an empathetic sigh.

"Lunch is ready," Rama diverted. "Come quickly or else it will grow cold. And don't do anything stupid."

And with that, the man strolled back into the forest and disappeared between the tree line.

Kratos took one last look into the ravine and narrowed his eyes. Surprisingly, he could now see the bottom and he could see the half-eaten apple shimmering in the darkness, intact.

---

Kratos snarled, the sound rumbling deep within his chest as he swallowed a hand-rolled ball of rice drenched in lentils and vegetables.

"Don't make such unsavoury noises while you eat," Rama's voice carried a stern warning, a sharp edge beneath the calm exterior. "Every grain of rice is a gift from Annapurneshwari. So, even if you find my cooking less than palatable, at least have the decency not to show it."

Rama's chuckle, light and mocking, filled the tense air as he gracefully consumed another morsel of rice.

"The food is adequate," Kratos grumbled through gritted teeth, barely containing his frustration. "But why is there never any meat? It's always
missing!"

"Meat?" Rama replied, his tone laced with incredulity. "Of course, there's no meat. I'm a vegetarian, remember?"

Kratos' glare intensified, his eye blazing with a fury that seemed to challenge the very notion. "Do not look at me with such disdain. Haven't you realized this by now?"

"I assumed you were merely impoverished, unable to afford it," Kratos shot back, his voice dripping with derision.

Rama's response was a dramatic clutch at his chest as if wounded. "Ah, that cuts deeper than any blade."

"You resort to begging," Kratos pointed out bluntly, his accusation hanging heavy between them.

"I do not beg," Rama retorted, his voice rising in anger before he caught himself, taking a deep breath to calm the storm brewing within. "Bhiksha is a request for alms, yes. Technically, it could be seen as begging. But it's not out of poverty." His words stumbled over each other, a rare moment of vulnerability.

"Speak clearly," Kratos commanded, the impatience evident in his tone.

Rama's face tightened, the lines of a forced smile barely masking the hurt. "It seems you've managed to find the last shred of ego I possessed and trampled it beneath your feet. Asking for Bhiksha, for alms, is part of living as an ascetic, a Sannyaasi. It's about renouncing worldly attachments, embracing humility through dependency on the divine and the generosity of others."

"Excuses," Kratos interjected coldly. "You're simply leeching off the community."

"I take only what is surplus to them," Rama explained, trying to maintain his composure. "In exchange, I offer my services."

"You serve their gods, not the people themselves," Kratos accused, his voice rising in anger.

"By serving the gods, I serve the community," Rama insisted, his patience wearing thin. "I pray to Indra for rain, for—"

"The gods serve themselves!" Kratos interrupted his voice a low rumble of contempt.

Rama met Kratos' furious gaze with a defiant stare of his own, anger etching deep lines across his face. "Blasphemy, Kratos. Hold your tongue!"

"I speak only truths," Kratos countered fiercely. "To them, we are insignificant. Just as humans disregard the concerns of ants, the gods overlook humans."

The room charged with an electric tension, the air thick with unspoken challenges. After a tense silence, Rama exhaled sharply, his demeanour softening as he rapidly finished his meal. Once his leaf was clean, he poured a drop of water into his right palm and murmured, "Amrutapithanamasi" before sipping it.

"Do not waste food," Rama declared as he picked up his folded leaf and carried it out the door. As he left he revealed a sly grin and said, "Or Annapurneshwari will be very disappointed."

Kratos growled back before descending on his food begrudgingly.

---

"You dislike gods," Rama said,

"Is that a question?" Kratos inquired in return. The duo were currently seated in the shade of the Banyan tree at the centre of the nearby village.

"The inflexion was clearly that of a statement," Rama retorted. "Care to share?"

"No," Kratos said curtly.

"Okay," Rama answered with a shrug.

---

It was a particularly new moon night, with the night sky coloured a rich shade of black dotted prosperously with stars that gleamed like tiny diamonds. Kratos was sat propped against a tree with his eyes closed, deep in meditation. Beside him, lay Rama, on his back.

"I think today marks exactly five months since our first meeting," Rama commented.

Kratos did not respond.

"I think we've known each other long and well enough to discuss deeper, more personal topics, no?" Rama probed.

"No," Kratos denied.

"Come on, now," Rama urged. "Fine, I'll go first, maybe it will motivate you to share in turn."

"It will not," Kratos reaffirmed with a voice tinged with frustration.

"It is true," Rama started, ignoring Kratos' denial altogether. "The gods do not care for the concerns of mortals. What they care for, above all else, is balance. If there is evil, there must be good. If there is life, there must be death. If there is an excess of one, an influx of the other is warranted."

"My purpose... was to bring balance," Rama said, his voice carrying immense pain and trauma in equal quantity. "I was assigned a task - a mission. I did not have a choice. My life was predetermined - my sufferings, destined."

"And yet, you pray to them," Kratos pointed out.

"Ironic, I know," Rama responded with a wry smile. "But ultimately, we must prostrate ourselves to a higher power. When our life is out of our control, we pray to a power that can maybe give us an iota of it."

"Does it help?" Kratos asked, semi-rhetorically.

"Well, no-"

"And yet, you pray," Kratos reiterated.

"I guess it's just hope," Rama pondered. "Hope that maybe someone is listening and will take pity on me."

"But I know that is something I do not deserve," Rama added wistfully.

A heavy pause lingered before Rama broke it by saying, "I know a self-inflicted injury when I see one. You stabbed yourself with a sword, why?"

Kratos stayed silent, before saying, "I was assigned a task - a mission. I had a choice, and I chose poorly. From that point onwards, my life was predetermined - my sufferings were destined. But I did not pray for a higher power to bring me peace, I sought it out on my own - I sought vengeance."

"And did you achieve it?" Rama followed up.

"Yes."

"Did it help?"

"No." Kratos paused.

"Vengeance turned you blind, as my devotion did to me," Rama summarised. "If I had rebelled against my purpose, I would have ended up in your place. If you had succumbed to yours, you would be in mine. In both cases, what remains is a hollow man. A sinful man."

"Hmm," Kratos hummed. He pondered over an alternate future. One where he had truly become a servant of the gods. A tool through and through. Would it have been better?

'Useless thoughts,' he admonished. Why bother thinking of what could have been when the past has already played itself out?

As he returned to the present mentally, Kratos was surprised to hear the gentle breathing of Rama, as he delved into a deep sleep. Even since they'd met, Rama had never once truly put himself to rest properly, instead relying solely on meditation and micro-naps throughout the day.

Kratos never asked why the man lived this way, as he did not care for the peculiarities of others unless it affected him directly. Nonetheless, it was an observation.

Kratos let himself immerse himself in the pleasant nightly breeze, which complemented the gentle breathing of the sleeping man. And slowly, sleep came for him too.

---

Kratos awoke to the sound of metal cutting through the wind. It was a sound he was extremely intimated with and one that was often followed by bloodshed. Almost by instinct, his eyes darted open and his body entered a low stance ready to leap into action.

Weirdly, no weapon appeared. Kratos' gaze scanned the environment, with his radar tuned for any source of danger. None were there. However, there was something different. Something that would have been missed had it not been for his acute awareness. In Rama's hand, lay his axe. The tool wasn't there before.

At that moment, Rama let out a moan in pain.

"I'm sorry... brother..." he mumbled. His eyes started to bubble with tears.

"I'm sorry... mother..." he mumbled. He let out a scream and broke down into a wail.

"Are you satisfied now... father?"

Kratos approached the hysterical man and tried to shake him awake.

"Rama!" He called out. But the man grew more distressed. "RAMA!"

At that moment, Rama's eyes snapped open, but they lacked clarity - they were glazed all over. His left hand yanked upwards and grabbed Kratos by the throat.

"Ra... ma...," Kratos rasped.

He tried to loosen the man's grip, but his strength was unexpectedly great. How could a man who abhorred meat have such vigour?

After understanding that there was no need to control his strength anymore, Kratos applied more pressure and released himself from Rama's clutches.

"Come to your senses!" Kratos yelled while massaging his neck. But his final word was caught in his throat as an axe hurtled towards where his head was supposed to be. With a dangerous twang, the tool-turned-weapon embedded itself in the trunk of the tree where Kratos lay before.

Kratos let out a growl while looking into the eyes of his attacker. But his attacker's gaze was dead - empty. But Kratos could feel the bloodlust emanating from the man. The man who preached non-violence had definitely spilt blood - human blood. And it wasn't just a drop, or a dollop, but a veritable ocean of it.

There were signs everywhere. The wariness, the measuring gaze, and the predatory aura... Kratos had only seen it in the eyes of those warriors who spent a large part of their lives on the battlefield. He saw it every day when he looked at his reflection.

But Kratos chalked it aside against his better judgement. He wanted to believe that things were as they appeared.

"Wake up, man!" Kratos yelled. Rama tilted his head with a swift jerk, and like a spring uncoiling, he leapt from his position, hurtling dangerously towards Kratos.

Kratos dodged by instinct, avoiding a punch that could have shattered a rib. Rama did not relent, though, as successive attacks followed. His movements were exaggerated and easy to predict, but they carried with it a deadly force and momentum.

Each attack was just as dangerous as the last, for any layman. Kratos was certain he could body some of these hits, and he affirmed his hypothesis by blocking some of the attacks rather than dodging them. However, this led to his first error.

Rama's sweeping kick hit Kratos' right shin. The next one arrived like a pendulum returning, which Kratos tried to redirect to his other side, but Rama twisted in the last minute and the attack struck his right shin once again. Kratos moved to create distance, but an exaggerated leap from Rama covered the distance seamlessly, and two more strikes hit Kratos's right shin.

The fifth barely grazed him, but Kratos could feel the result of the repeated hits as he felt something crack. He could not place his full weight on his right leg anymore without experiencing a shooting pain electrocuting him.

An angry growl escaped Kratos as he adjusted his posture, preparing himself for the sixth strike to his shin. Rama feinted and went for Kratos' left, but Kratos anticipated this. He did not underestimate his opponent just because the man was asleep.

Kratos caught Rama in a grapple, locking the man's lower body with a hip grab.

"AAAARGH!" Kratos bellowed while charging forward. Elbow strikes rained down on his back, but he did not stop. Like a bull, Kratos burst through a tree in his path using Rama as a shield, shattering the towering plant into smithereens. But Rama did not hesitate in his attacks.

Kratos bit through the pain and pushed through another tree, and another, and another. But Rama was jabbing with unwavering intensity.

"AAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRGH!" Kratos yelled. His gaze turned a tint of red as an outcropping of stone appeared before him. Pushing all of his power into his legs, Kratos barrelled onwards and collided with the structure without hesitation.

The earth rumbled in shock, as the man cut through rock like a hot knife through butter. Through sheer strength, Kratos passed through the structure, causing it to destabilise and crumble. As he exited from the other side, he tossed Rama, grabbed him by his legs, spun him around, and tossed him away into the dense forest. Rama hurtled like a ragdoll, destroying everything in his path, and disappearing into the greenery.

Kratos grunted, letting the bubbling anger settle. The crimson tint in his eyes started to diminish.

But a boom distracted him. A split second later, a sharp pain radiated through his face as his sight was momentarily blocked by a hairy foot.

Kratos felt his jaws dislodging slightly. He dodged once again through pure instinct, weaved, and then sent a punch where he estimated Rama's head to be.

Fist hit flesh, and the attack connected.

The red grew darker, deeper.

Anger.

Kratos's sight turned narrow, like a horse wearing an immensely restrictive blinder. All he saw was blood-red.

All he felt was the sensation of his bone pummelling against the bone of his opponent.

He heard a crack, something broke - nothing on his body.

A moment of clarity made itself known - a split second. And what Kratos saw was his hands wrapped around Rama's neck, his opponent's eyes nearly bursting out of their sockets as his face grew pallid through suffocation.

Kratos could feel his opponent struggling. A sense of euphoria started to course through Kratos as he felt the life slowly leaving the man. Kratos took a deep breath as a morbid smile started to crack on his ashen face.

"I... I'm awak-" Rama managed to say, but Kratos was having none of it. With a hard motion, Kratos snapped the man's neck and dismounted the prone body.

---

Complete clarity arrived a whole minute later, as the red settled and true colour returned to the world. Kratos collapsed onto the ground as he gazed at his palms in horror. His eyes alternated between the empty, bloodshot eyes of the dead Rama and his own bruised digits. The weight of his actions was finally dawning on him.

"What have I done?"

"Hideaway all you want, convince yourself that your life will be any different," a ghastly voice echoed from within Kratos' skull. It was a voice he remembered.

"Athena," he growled.

"No matter where you go, you cannot conceal what you are - your true nature," she said derisively. "You have and always will be a hound that bites the hand that feeds it."

"You are, and always will be, a mons-"

A loud inhale of air followed by a hacking cough pulled Kratos back into reality. The man who Kratos thought- no KNEW was dead, seemingly awoke from it, as if it was just another bout of slumber.

Rama massaged his neck as he stood up, "I apologise for hurting you."

"What?!" Kratos snapped.

"I'm sorry for putting you through that ordeal. I hope you aren't injured. Let me inspect you-"

Kratos slapped away the dead man's hand and looked at him in disbelief, "You are dead!"

Rama tilted his head before feeling his pulse by his jugular, "My beating heart says otherwise."

The man revealed a wry smile before sheating his axe by his waist. "Wow, that's quite a bit of damage. I hope no one was maimed or killed."

Kratos watched the man walk away, through the hole he'd made in the rock formation, still unable to process what exactly had taken place.

 

[juniorsundar]

Kratos observed the dead man go about his daily business with caution. His attention however wasn't on the man himself, but the weapon hanging by his waist. Kratos hadn't noticed this in the hubbub early on, but the axe tended to appear in the man's possession at the oddest of times.

When Rama died, he died bare-handed - unarmed. But upon revival, the axe had somehow returned. When Rama fell asleep, he did so without the axe, but when Kratos started fighting him, Rama was armed. Kratos did not believe in coincidences. The fact remained that both instances deviated from the norm when the axe arrived miraculously in Rama's possession.

"You're looking at me as if I just died and came back to life," Rama joked as he draped a cotton towel over his shoulders.

"You were dead," Kratos commented. "And do not lie to me. I have seen enough death in my time at the battlefield to know what it is!"

"Oh my!" Rama exclaimed with fake shock. "Are we finally revealing each other's pasts?"

Kratos growled in return before entering meditation, outwardly. On the inside, he was counting away the seconds until Rama would leave for his early morning bath and exasperatingly lord prayer - Sandhyavandanam, he called it.

As the man disappeared into the forest in the direction of the river, Kratos directed his attention to the tool-turned-weapon that was embedded into a bare tree stump. From afar it did not look like much. It had a simple wooden handle that was approximately the length of a person's forearm. However, it was surprising that the metal of the tool still maintained a healthy sheen and edge. Kratos hadn't seen Rama polish or sharpen it - the man almost despised this thing and would often leave it lying around.

Kratos crouched next to the stump and observed the tool more closely. Iron that has tasted blood adorns a malicious tinge that Kratos was all too familiar with. This tool did not have it. It was safe to say that it had no marks AT ALL. The metal was so clean and unmarred that one could mistake it for being a new piece.

Kratos continued to observe the tool for a while but with sufficient distance between him and it. He still maintained caution, because his instincts were still not satisfied with what the evidence before him had to offer. Kratos was a strict disbeliever of "seeing is believing". The world only shows you what you want to see. It is what it decides not to show you that bites you back. His instincts - which were built through repeated failure, death and resurrection - had been attuned over the years to become receptive to these details.

He leaned so close that his nose was merely a finger's width away from the tool. He took a series of quick sniffs, letting the scent emanating from the tool dance across his olfactory sensors. And unsurprisingly, he got nothing.

At this moment, Kratos should have pulled the reigns on his rampant curiosity. But the mystery was far too tempting to put down. A man had died but also hadn't.

After letting his instincts argue with his rationality, Kratos discerned that he had sufficiently evaluated the danger to be able to hold the tool. And so, with measured movements, Kratos wrapped his palm around the wooden handle and dislodged the tool from the stump. He turned the tool in his grasp, moved it around, swung it a few times, and chopped it down on the wooden stump. He dislodged the tool and inspected the iron. He noticed that the hit had caused minuscule chips to form on its surface. But within seconds, the damage started to heal itself. Metal mended as though it were flesh. This was enough to confirm Kratos' suspicion.

Deductive reasoning set in and a conclusion formed in his mind. The nature of the weapon's recovery could extend to the person wielding it. If it was basically reverting itself to an initial state, maybe the power could extend to the wielder as well. Alternatively, the weapon itself could be living (harbouring some entity) and this could be why it was undergoing recovery. Nonetheless, what worried Kratos was the question that came next. Every power comes with a cost. The greater the power, the greater the cost.

If this tool could resurrect its wielder, then it is within reason that the cost of such a power would be equally exacting. Was it blood? Souls?

Kratos decided to test the theory and cut his palm while holding the tool. Though, to his surprise, he did not notice any difference in the way his flesh responded to the gash. Blood trickled out with the same vigour and intensity as it usually did. And the tool remained dormant.

'Maybe it is so because I am not the original wielder.'

At that moment, Kratos' attention was piqued by the sound of approaching footsteps. He looked up and noticed the water-drenched Rama walking through the shrubbery. The man revealed a smile as their gaze met, but then the blooming expression of happiness froze and his eyes widened in shock as they traced the axe held in Kratos' hand.

The man extended his own and snapped his fingers, which was when the second bout of shock made itself visible on Rama's face. All of this was observed with Kratos and he took a mental note of it to grill Rama at a later time.

Now, was a later time.

"This axe repairs itself," Kratos commented. Rama extended his palm, calling for Kratos to pass the tool to him, which Kratos did by tossing it in the air. Kratos had a commendable aim, he had ejected the tool anticipating that it would land in Rama's hand safely. However, the man moved his hand back slightly, ensuring that the tool would miss. Yet his palms remained open, waiting to receive the tool. Yet the tool, as expected, landed on the ground in front of Rama.

The man looked at the tool for an extended period, no emotion showing itself on his face, until tears started to bubble. But Rama was quick to dab them away. He looked up to Kratos and revealed a smile that felt as if he was unburdening centuries worth of pain. He walked around the fallen tool with a wide radius, as if it was the source of some inhuman plague.

"I have a bow as well as some arrows stowed away in the shed at the back. Let us go hunting for deer today," Rama declared.

"You do not hunt. You do not eat meat," Kratos pointed out, voicing his suspicion.

"But I know that you do," Rama retorted. "I won't be eating, of course. So I will have to trouble you to kill, clean and cook it."

"What is your angle," Kratos responded. "This is different from your usual self."

"Change isn't bad."

"I have yet to see a tree that grows underground," Kratos said with a growl.

"Then you have not seen a real tree," Rama scoffed. "A tree's root reach further underground than its branches reach towards the sky."

"Do not play with words," Kratos demanded.

"And yet it was you who brought up the analogy of the tree," Rama pointed out with a scandalous smile. "My, oh my, Kratos, it seems that there is still some hope left for you. We can yet turn you into a civilised man!"

Kratos growled again and pressed on, "You are deflecting. What is that axe's significance?"

Rama paused, "It is as you said. It is a tool that can repair itself. It was... gifted to me."

"It resurrected you," Kratos added, more like stating a fact than asking a question.

"Can such a wondrous weapon exist?" Rama asked in return.

Kratos did not respond.

"Well... we are wasting daylight," Rama redirected. "Let us hunt!"

Kratos observed as Rama practically fled from the scene. Once the man's figure retreated around the corner of his house, Kratos' eyes landed on the axe. It just lay there, in its unassuming state. He walked over to it and picked it up. He then returned it to the chopped stump and embedded the tool back in its place.

---

Kratos just couldn't shake away the feeling of discomfort gnawing away at him. The source of this discomfort was the demeanour of the man who'd been housing, feeding, healing, and teaching him. Rama's general demeanour had turned different. The shift was subtle to a casual observer, but Kratos could see it as clear as day.

The man's attitude had grown uplifted. His steps were light and had a gentle skip to it. It was the kind of movement one would exhibit when they were having a really good day. To top it off, Kratos also noticed something interesting in the man's temper.

Anger is hard to mask. It can be suppressed, but not hidden. Although he wore a calm outer facade, Kratos could feel the rage bubbling within him every time something unexpected transpired. Even though he appeared as a man of infinite patience whenever he taught Kratos how to speak, read and write in Sanskrit and other languages, Kratos could see the minute tinge of red flashing past his gaze with every silly mistake Kratos made.

But now. It was like there was no anger at all. Kratos tested it too, by intentionally spilling the bucket of milk he drew from the cow.

He glanced at Rama, but the man shrugged and subtly skipped away.

Something was odd. People don't just change suddenly.

Rama left around midday, leaving Kratos to his own devices - time which he utilised to observe the axe once again. The tool was where he'd left it in the morning. Embedded superficially in the chopped trunk. It looked mundane in every single way. But it was the root cause of the change.

Unknowingly, the seconds sprinted away as Kratos scrutinised the weapon, stripping away at it layer by layer with just his calculating gaze. Yet no amount of scrutiny yielded any result, forcing Kratos to step away, admitting that maybe he'd just succumbed to his inbuilt paranoia.

Around the time the sun started to set, Rama finally returned. He walked in balancing a thick branch on his shoulder, with two earthen pots suspended on each end with a rope. He greeted Kratos with a smile as he placed the burden on the ground.

"I've brought you something special!" He declared while slowly opening the pot's lid. And as he did so, a torrent of flavours assaulted Kratos, causing his mouth to water unwittingly. Rama, however, showed an expression often presented by pregnant women who smelled something that didn't agree with their mood, and he recoiled immediately.

Kratos leaned forward and was shocked to see a large piece of bone sticking out of a pond of sumptuous, rich-brown curry. It was meat! His eyes darted towards Rama, who was supporting himself against a tree and dry-heaving.

"What is this?" Kratos asked with a growl.

"It's venison curry," Rama said with a hoarse voice. "I had the village's hunter make some."

"Why?!" Kratos exclaimed.

"No reason-"

Before Rama could finish his response, he found himself getting grabbed and shaken violently. As his vision stabilised, he found himself an inch away from Kratos, whose ashen face was nearly bleeding red in anger.

"What is your objective with this!"

"Hey... Relax... You've been asking for meat for a while now. And I just felt that it was unfair to force you to follow my lifestyle," Rama explained calmly while gently disengaging Kratos' grip.

"Now I suggest that we start eating before it gets cold..." Then, with a lower voice, he said, "I don't want to reheat this. The smell is unbearable!"

To that, Kratos would have to disagree. A single whiff of the enamouring steam that billowed out of the pot caused a shiver of ecstasy to pulse through his body. Maybe it was the complete lack of meat in his diet that had turned him so sensitive. Frankly, it was embarrassing.

His mouth watered involuntarily as Rama stirred the curry with the wooden spoon before dumping a hefty serving of it on his banana leaf.

The golden-brown gravy poured down the sides of the deer leg piece like a river of rich flavour snaking down a mountain.

"Rice?" Rama offered.

"No," Kratos boomed before descending into the meat like a ravenous beast. With a single bite, he pulled out a large mouthful of the gamey meat and started to chew on it while simultaneously immersing himself in the volcano of flavours erupting across his tastebuds.

"I've never seen such an emotion in your face before," Rama muttered. Right as Kratos opened his eyes, he noticed that the man's face was barely an arm's length away from his own.

"I didn't know that this perpetually scowling face could actually sport a smile, huh! So all it took was some meat. You should have told me earlier," Rama joked.

"Humans aren't meant to survive off of grass," Kratos said between bites.

"Asceticism is the process of letting go of such pleasures," Rama reminded. "It is to extend beyond the baser human instincts. Eating meat is natural - that is what humans are meant to do. But to voluntarily put that aside-"

"If you keep talking, I will put this in your mouth," Kratos threatened while holding up another leg bone with vibrant red meat on it.

Rama play-acted by holding his palm against his lips before letting out a chuckle and gazing into the dimming sky. A fresh paint of red as the sun set over the horizon illuminated the heavens, evoking a myriad of emotions that escaped his lips with a long sigh.

A thought sparked in the man's eyes as he extricated himself from Kratos' company. Kratos continued to eat while his attention remained on the man through his peripheral vision. Rama disappeared into the cow shed by the cottage. What followed was the sound of heavy objects being moved about and utensils crashing. A few minutes later, the man exited carrying a rather extravagantly decorated pot about half his size.

It wasn't earthen - made entirely out of gold with innumerable gems laden all around it with great care. It wasn't something that could be found in some random villager's shed out in the woods. Which really made Kratos wonder what the origin of this container was.

"It was a gift," Rama answered the question plaguing Kratos' thoughts. "I did someone a favour, in return he gave me this- Well, what he gave me was what is contained within. The container was just a bonus."

Rama approached Kratos and dropped the container by his side.

"Unfortunately-" he continued as he twisted the pot's lid. With an enticing pop, the lid came off with it, and a heavenly aroma pervaded the ambience. "- I cannot drink a single drop."

Kratos' body moved involuntarily as the piece of venison in his grasp dropped onto the banana leaf. He stood up leaned over the pot and gazed in. In the seemingly endless darkness, Kratos saw a liquid sloshing with the vibrance of honey, but with the viscosity of water. It smelled more divine than ambrosia itself.

"What... is this?"

"Soma," Rama explained. He dipped a cup into the pot and filled it to the brim. "Here, drink."

Kratos looked at the extended cup with suspicion and great apprehension. He had to fight against every instinct of his body that urged him to down the entire container. He held on to the last trace of rationality that remained, the rest having succumbed to whatever siren song the liquid sang through its odour.

"What is it?" He repeated.

"As I said, it is Soma," Rama repeated. After facing Kratos' growing suspicion once again, he let out a defeated sigh and said, "It isn't poisoned-"

"You drink it first," Kratos demanded.

"I can't-"

"Why?"

"It's alcoholic! Damn it!" Rama yelled in exasperation.

"Why do you have alcohol?" Kratos asked after a long minute of silence.

"Do you want it or not?" Rama retorted angrily.

Kratos growled before yanking the cup out of Rama's grasp. He brought it up to his nose and took a healthy whiff. Then, with a slow gulp, he took a sip.

The moment the liquid made it past his lips and danced on his tongue, Kratos blanked out.

---

"Kratos, wake up!"

"Kratos- Husband, wake up!"

This voice. He knew this voice. But- But how?

He could feel himself being shaken awake. His face was held in a gentle caress.

A soft touch descended on his lips, with a moist object invading it, like a mischievous snake, entering and exiting like a hesitant thief.

His sight turned clearer, and he was forced to confront his greatest regret- but she was alive, which meant that he hadn't committed his gravest sin just yet.

"Lysandra!" The name left his lips with an emotion that had been lost to him many years ago. The face, which he thought he'd forgotten was once again before him.

"I thought you'd never wake up!" His wife expressed with a playful smirk as she collapsed onto his chest, her head resting gently over his heart.

"C-Calliope?"

"She's out playing..." She said into his ear with an inviting whisper. "We finally have time for ourselves. What if-"

"WHO ARE YOU!"

"K-Kratos... You're... Hurting..."

The vice-like grip started to constrict around the neck of his dead wife. Her face grew paler, her eyes redder as blood started to slowly pool in them.

The asphyxiating woman looked at Kratos with fear, before her gaze mellowed and an alluring smile split her reddening face.

"Do you so eagerly wish for me to die, Kratos?" She asked with grace, almost as if her vocal cords hadn't been crushed by Kratos' constricting grip.

"You. Are Not. Real." He grunted before bellowing loudly in rage.

---

The vision dispersed like pollen in spring, and his true sight returned though with a blurriness akin to a man drowning. Kratos struggled to move as his body felt loose, almost lightweight.

"R-RAMA!" He yelled groggily. He could see the crimson outline of the man who'd poisoned him.

"It isn't poison," Rama said while clicking his tongue in disdain. "Stop fighting the Soma's effect. Immerse in it."

Kratos could feel himself being dragged across the ground and leaned against a tree. "The more you fight it, the worse it gets."

Kratos felt himself slowly slipping against the tree, falling over in slow motion, endlessly, for a very, very, very long time.

"What is this feee... eee... hmm," he grunted. "It feels like time is stretching endless... endless... endlessly."

"It is harmless," Rama repeated. "Try to enjoy it while it lasts. You will see what you wish to see. You will experience what your heart truly desires. So do not fight it, ease into it. Roll with the waves."

As he said this, Rama pressed his thumb against Kratos' forehead and gently massaged him.

"What are you..."

"Shhhhhhhh...... Indulge in the pleasant dreams that it bestows on you while you still can."

---

Kratos found himself in a field of tall grass swaying gently in the wind. The grass was a lush, vibrant green, each blade kissed by the golden rays of the setting sun. The sky above was a brilliant canvas of orange and pink hues, the clouds painted in soft pastels as if by the hand of an artist. The air was filled with the sweet scent of wildflowers, their delicate petals opening up to the sky, releasing a symphony of fragrances that mingled with the crisp freshness of the breeze.

The serene scene was filled with joyous laughter. Giggles echoed across the meadow like the tinkling of tiny bells, blending harmoniously with the gentle rustling of the grass. Among them was his beloved daughter, Calliope, running and playing, her movements fluid and carefree. Her giggles were a melody that tugged at his heartstrings, a sound he had longed to hear again. Nearby, Lysandra, his wife, joined in the chase, her laughter a soothing balm to his soul. She moved with grace, her long hair flowing behind her like a cascade of silk, her eyes sparkling with happiness and love.

It wasn't real. He knew that. They were dead. He did that.

It was painful to see them again. But it also evoked a tinge of joy from deep within. It was an emotion he felt very rarely, and he had almost written himself off as unworthy of feeling it altogether.

Kratos began to walk towards them, his steps tentative. The soft earth beneath his feet felt cool and reassuring, grounding him in the moment. The distance between them seemed to stretch endlessly, an eternity captured in mere moments. The tranquil environment seemed to hold its breath, as if time itself had paused to allow him this fleeting glimpse of joy.

As he finally reached them, he extended his hand, yearning to touch the shoulder of his wife, to feel her warmth once more. His fingers brushed against her, and for a moment, everything felt perfect. The world around him was a paradise of peace and happiness, the very air humming with a gentle, harmonious energy. It was a place where pain and sorrow did not exist, where only love and joy reigned supreme.

But then it all started to go downhill. The fingers through which his wife's hair cascaded constricted and yanked roughly, causing the woman to stumble and fall onto the ground with a loud wail.

He then turned and started to walk away, pulling the woman by her hair.

The field, once vibrant and green, began to wither and burn around him. Flames licked at the grass, transforming the tranquil scene into a hellish inferno. The sweet scent of wildflowers was replaced by the acrid smell of smoke, and the peaceful sounds were drowned out by the roar of the fire.

He was no longer outside now. Instead, he was walking down a long and grand hallway of a palace. Though it looked like the building had just weathered a rather dastardly disaster. Its pillars were shattered or near collapse and the floor was marred with craters and loose stone.

He ignored the woman's pain-filled cries and dragged her across the worn and torn path. As he ascended the steps leading up to the throne room, he could hear the woman yelp in agony as her entire weight was pulled by her scalp. But he did not care.

The throne room was in a far worse condition than the rest of the palace. There was endless wreckage everywhere and bodies were strewn willy-nilly, most missing one or multiple body parts. There were none alive here, except one - the King.

The man who would sit on the throne laden in gold and gems was instead crucified against it. But this was no ordinary King. This was Kartavirya Arjuna - The Thousand Armed King. Yet each of his arms was hammered into the golden throne, made immobile. His lower body remained limp, as his spine had been severed rendering it useless.

Kratos approached the broken king and slapped his face. The man shook awake, his eyes red with anger and pain.

"Y-You! All this just for a cow?" The man spat out. "Just take her! Why go this far-"

"The punishment isn't for the theft of a cow," Kratos spoke up, though his voice was altogether different. "It is for the fact that you chose to repay my father's benevolence in treating you, his guests, to a filling meal by stealing the very resource that fed his family. And when he denied it, you chose to take it anyway by force."

"W-Wha-"

Kratos grasped Arjuna by his jaw and brought his face up to him. "If your sins had stopped there, we wouldn't be in this position right now. No. Your greatest sin is being a poor father. Children repeat what they see, and what they saw their entire life was an entitled man who would snatch anything that caught his fancy come hell or high water. Your sons decided that Kamadhenu wasn't enough, they wanted her calf too. And when my father and brothers tried to stop them, guess what your sons did?"

Kratos tossed the woman to the side and approached a large sack thrown by the throne. He picked it up and emptied it in front of the crucified Arjuna. From the jute bag, out rolled four heads.

"M-My sons!" Arjuna bellowed. "Y-You monster!"

Kratos approached the woman and raised her by her hair. He looked into her tear-filled and surrendered eyes and said, "I take no pleasure in this-"

"Please don't kill me!" The woman begged with a hoarse voice. "I am with child!"

"Please, oh, great Sage! Please spare me and the life that I carry~"

A tense silence filled the room as neither party moved.

"L-Let her go. This is between you and me. Innocents don't have to get hurt-"

"My father and brother were innocent," Kratos snapped angrily. "But that didn't matter to you, nor your children."

"So be it," Kratos muttered, and a flash of hope glanced past the woman's eyes, but they were summarily extinguished as Kratos' palm surrounded her throat and started to crush it like a vice.

"NO!" Arjuna yelled as he tried to extricate himself from his imprisonment, but to no avail. "LET HER GO!"

The woman's eyes started to bulge out as she struggled for air. Her nails dug into Kratos' hand as he collapsed his fist around her neck to an unnaturally small circumference. A muffled snap echoed, and the woman went completely limp.

"NOOOO-" A loud thunk followed as Kratos brought his fist down on the man's jaw, dislocating it completely.

As Arjuna mumbled unintelligibly, Kratos extended his hand behind him with his palm open. A series of clangs approached him as metal struck marble. As it grew closer, the sound of wind being cleaved started to grow louder. And through the broken pillars, a spinning axe burst through before perching comfortably in Kratos' palm with a satisfying "thwump".

The axe's metal sang with murderous ecstacy, as he raised it and brought it down on one of Arjuna's arms.

Amidst the King's wails in pain, Kratos raised the axe and brought it down again. And again. And again.

By the thousandth slash, the Unarmed King, though alive, was now a husk of his formal self. His life clung on by its final strand. For all intents and purposes, he was a dead man.

The thousandth and first slash descended, separating the King's head from his body.

Thus ended the Haihaya Dynasty.

Kratos looked down, as the blood pooled out of the dead King's body.

He knew that this was only the beginning. Because bonds of blood still remained - the Dead King had relations both near and distant.

At that moment, the pool stilled and he could see his reflection.

Only, it wasn't his face that he saw.

It was Rama's.

 

[juniorsundar]

WARNING
Sensitive content and gore in this chapter. Proceed with care.

---

Kratos awoke with a start.

It was early in the morning, and the birds were out chirping and celebrating the rise of the sun once again.

But their uplifting songs did little to calm the ambience, as it was as tense as ever.

His breath was heavy and quick, and his body was drenched in cold sweats.

The dream, if it could even be called that, was far too real - too immersive. And it definitely wasn't his.

As he inspected his body to ascertain that he was, in fact, still Kratos, he noticed that the axe from his dream (and also from reality) was perched in his grasp.

When did that get there?

"RAMA!" He bellowed, calling for the man he deemed the culprit for the turn of events.

There was no response.

"RAMA!" Kratos tried again, but the only voice that responded was his own as his calls echoed out of the forest.

There was silence now, as even the birds and insects acknowledged the eeriness in the ambience.

"Rama..." He growled as he stood up. He tossed the axe aside and started to pace around the cottage in frustration.

"RAMA!!"

---

Kratos searched near and far, high and low. But he could find no trace of Rama anywhere.

The villagers hadn't seen him either. For all intents and purposes, the man had just disappeared.

Kratos thought, at first, that maybe he had gone somewhere for a short while.

But hours passed and turned into days, yet the man did not return.

As his anger and frustration simmered in a low heat, Kratos finally grasped his circumstance. His gaze remained affixed on the axe that he had tossed aside a while back.

He knew that it was something different, something special. But his life experience said that special and different weren't synonymous with good. His Blades of Chaos were different and special, forged specifically for him. But apart from being one of the deadliest weapons of Greece, they were also a symbol of his servitude under the Gods of Olympus.

This axe... currently, it was emanating a faint yet indistinguishable aura of bloodlust. Just looking at it made Kratos feel an unending swell of rage. Kratos recognised that it was a symbol of servitude, and Rama was the slave. What he was a servant of? Kratos did not know for certain. But whatever it was had transferred over to him now.

If Kratos were in Rama's slippers and some unsuspecting bloke dropped into Kratos' lap and managed to pry the Blades of Chaos off of his forearms, making it so that the scalding metal chain-links would never snake themselves around his flesh, what would he have done?

The answer was obvious. He would run far, far away. Lest the weapon changes its mind and returns to his possession.

That was exactly what Rama had done. The man had pumped Kratos up with food like a pig fresh for slaughter, drowned him in heavenly intoxicants, and fled the scene. While ironically, Kratos would have done something similar, it did not feel pleasant to be on the receiving end of the treatment.

Kratos lifted the axe from the ground and inspected it once again. And just like before, it did not reveal much to him. It looked plain. Just what could it do?

---

"Please- Please leave my child alone!" The woman wailed as she held on to Kratos' legs for dear life. Kratos looked down at the newborn tucked away in his arms, and his rage-filled eyes moved past the child and onto its mother.

He reached down and lifted the woman by her hair. She held onto her scalp in pain as tears streamed down her face. "Please!" She repeated pressing her palms together and rubbing them pleadingly. She begged.

"Fine, a mother shouldn't have to see her child die before her," Kratos spoke in Rama's voice. Right as a flash of relief sparked on the woman's face, Kratos brought his grip closer to her scalp and rammed her face against the pillar nearby. A gut-wrenching squelch echoed and blood exploded from her face as her nose and skull cracked. He brought her face against the pillar again, and again, and again until neither the pillar nor the woman's head remained.

Then, with a seamless move, she held the baby by its leg, raised it and swung it down rapidly towards the-

---

Kratos awoke, screaming. His pale skin was soaked in sweat, and his eyes were wide and tinged red in anger.

As his senses calmed down and he regained his composure, he suddenly felt something rigid and wooden in his right arm. He already knew what it was as he brought it forward with a growl.

The damned axe!

Leaving his sleeping mat, Kratos walked out of the cottage. As it was still deep into the night, there was no light out barring the rays reflected off the crescent moon. Even the stars were muted in the dark night today.

With a loud yell, Kratos wound his arm back and tossed the axe into the forest. The tool spun rapidly and disappeared into the darkness. It travelled so far that he could not hear it land back onto the ground.

He remained in silence, only interjected intermittently by the jitter of crickets. But then, he recollected a scene from one of his dreams. He raised his right palm and held it forward, open. His mind returned to the axe, envisioning it firmly within his grasp.

And like magnetite brought close to iron, he started to feel a slight pull towards him. It was barely registerable but was recognisable nonetheless. Within seconds he started to hear the sound of metal striking against wood and rock, growing louder and closer.

Then suddenly, through the treeline, the very axe he'd thrown earlier came out spinning dangerously.

He didn't exhibit the normal reaction a person would have when seeing a sharp object hurtling towards them at such a dangerous speed. Because even if it did decapitate him, it would be doing him a favour. Yet the tool slowed down rapidly as it neared his palm before landing snugly in place within his grasp with an annoyingly satisfying thunk.

He let out a low growl before embedding it into the nearby trunk and walking away.

It was ironic. The thing that he wished gone would come to him the moment he thought of it.

---

Kratos stood facing a massive army. There were hundreds of horses, elephants, men on horses, men on elephants, and just men on foot.

He'd never witnessed such an expansive army before - even the combined armies of the entirety of Greece paled in comparison to this.

If he were to confront such an army all on his own, he wasn't confident that he would walk out of it alive. But surprisingly, he didn't feel hesitance or fear. Then again, it wasn't "him", it was Rama.

What gave Rama such confidence, to face such impossible odds? That too all on his lonesome.

The confrontation was at a tense standstill. The opposing army stood opposite exuding an intense aura of intimidation. They extended far into the horizon, or was it just an elaborate encirclement trapping Kratos in its centre?

"You killed my cousins, my sisters-in-law, my nephews and grandnephews, my grandchildren... my only son and daughters..."

The voice came from atop the largest, most extravagant chariot on the battlefield. It was a veritable tank being heralded by ten horses. Atop it was an aged yet bulky man garbed in heavy armour coated with gold. He wore a helmet that was laden with jewels and complex inlays of gold. In one hand, he held a large compound bow, and he jammed the other hand forward with a shaking finger pointing it in Kratos' direction.

"You Rakshasa garbed in the skin of a Brahmin!" The aged general accused with a rasp. "Do you not fear the wrath of the heavens?!"

"I am being punished for it already," Kratos murmured while looking at the axe in his hands. "But this is the path I have chosen to walk, for it is justice - my justice."

"Do not confuse petty vengeance for justice!" The general bellowed with tears streaming down his face.

"So you do recognise the crimes your kin have committed-"

"I recognise the crime my GRANDNEPHEW and his offspring committed," the general responded. "But my son didn't... He was innocent! His baby was INNOCENT!"

"He was guilty of being related by blood to the criminal," Kratos spat back with vitriol in his voice. "To cull weed infecting bounteous farmland, you have to pull it out root and stem. Leave even a trace of it, and it will propagate if left unchecked."

"Do you even hear yourself talk? Those were people you killed. Men, women, CHILDREN!"

"Monsters!" Kratos responded. "Dogs beget dogs, cows beget cows, monsters... beget monsters. Monsters took my family away from me. They killed my father. They killed my brothers. And the grief... it... it took my mother."

Silence pervaded the battlefield before Kratos' voice spoke up again, "To kill monsters, one must be prepared to become one. Do you blame me for culling an entire lineage? Well, here I stand, the last of mine. And you, the last of yours. Monster against monster."

"Only one will walk away from here alive, Brahmin!" The General declared.

"In that you are correct," Kratos said with a grunt. "Me."

"Arrogance!"

"No," Kratos retorted. "For that is certain, and the heavens have ordained it as such!"

Kratos raised the axe towards the sky, and his lips started to move. The words that escaped were loud and clear, but he could not hear a single syllable. Evidently, the general knew exactly what was being said as his eyes widened with a shocking realisation.

"You madman! You intend to call upon the Brahmastra to cleanse the entire battlefield?!" The general yelled. "You will damn everything!" Surprisingly, his voice cut through the ear-shattering words leaving Kratos' lips.

"R-Retrea-"

The call for a retreat could not be finished. As Kratos brought the axe down, crashing into the ground.

The last thing he saw was the heaven and earth cracking into a million pieces as the world itself shattered like crystal.

There was no pain. There was no sound. There was only death. Swift. Merciless.

---

Kratos awoke while screaming... again. This time, though, he was sweating profusely with the hairs all over his body standing erect. He was experiencing an emotion he had long since forgotten. An emotion that the rigorous Spartan training had squeezed out of him.

Fear.

This was unusual.

Just what had Rama summoned back then, this... "Brahmastra..." He said while looking at the axe that had once again settled into his grasp.

Was this the extent of the axe's power? The power didn't originate from the axe, it was being channelled through it as a focus.

The Blades of Chaos channelled Kratos' fury, but the Primordial Fire that burned within them transmuted his rage into something far more destructive.

However, the Brahmastra was originating from Rama himself. It didn't drain him, rather it felt like the power was being summoned. The axe was merely like a finger, pointing the direction in which the attack was to be sent.

And evidently, the attack was extremely destructive. So destructive, in fact, that Kratos couldn't even witness the first few fractions of seconds that passed after the attack was launched. Yet Rama called it down without a second thought, using himself as the epicentre.

He had died. Kratos was certain of it.

But he didn't die. Because if these events had occurred in the past, then how was he alive now?

---

Life continued this way for months - if one could call it a life, that is. There was no moment of respite for Kratos. His hours awake were spent reliving the atrocities he had committed, and his time asleep was spent reliving the atrocities of another.

The axe was relentless. No matter where or how he discarded it, it would eventually find its way back into his hands the moment he closed his eyes and fell asleep. He also realised that it could not be destroyed - not by regular means anyway. The blacksmith in the village tried everything to melt the mundane-looking metal, but the steel didn't even glow red with heat - it was perpetually cool. Even the wooden handle would mysteriously return every night.

There was no escaping it.

Kratos had always wondered why he was let off easy for the sins he'd committed. Turns out, just as Rama would say, things that must happen will happen. This was his punishment. Endless suffering without peace.

It was right. It was just.

But he could take it no more. Kratos convinced himself after every violent awakening, that he deserved this.

He deserved to suffer.

But as the days blended into each other, Kratos found himself in a Sisyphean rut - an endless day.

Anger swelled within him. Irritation reigned supreme. Frustration clouded his senses turning him into a mute who simply responded in animalistic grunts and growls.

The villagers made a conscious decision to avoid him, every time he walked through the village - the aura he exuded was suffocating.

As time passed, the frustration, irritation and anger subsided, turning into sloth and apathy. Kratos would remain seated on his mattress through day and night. He ate no longer, and he didn't drink - he didn't feel thirsty or hungry anymore.

His body started to shrivel as it ate away his muscles for sustenance. His beard grew unruly covering the entire lower half of his face, before the black mat started to grey out.

His eyes which were perpetually red with anger, were now red with fatigue.

This was right. This was just. This... could go on no longer.

Kratos uncrossed his legs with great difficulty as he fought against his atrophied muscles and ligaments. He bit through the pain and stood up, his eyes blank yet trained in a single direction. He trudged out of the cottage and moved eastwards, through the shallow shrubbery. He stumbled multiple times, before finally deciding to use a stray wooden stick for support.

Yet the stick couldn't bear his entire weight and shattered within minutes. Luckily he had reached his destination.

The babbling of water as it gushed and crashed against the rocky banks suppressed the cacophony of fauna.

He dragged himself towards the river and let his hand dip into the torrential flow. Even through the unsettled waters, he could see his reflection, and it looked nothing like the man he once was.

He was emaciated, weak, and standing on the brink of death.

He took a deep breath, closed his eyes and rolled over.

With a gentle splash, he threw himself into the river, descending into its depths and letting it carry him away.

This wasn't right. This wasn't just. He was taking the easy way out. But he could take his punishment no longer.

---

Rama looked at the three unlit funeral pyres before him. The bodies laid atop them were that of his father and his two brothers... or what remained of them. His father was missing his head, all that remained was a trampled mess of of crushed bone and brain. His brothers were lacking their extremities. It took a lot of effort to relax their faces from abject fear and agony to the tentative tranquillity it was in right now.

He offered the fire - yajna - before him another serving of clarified butter - ghee - and recited the final verse, "Swahaa..."

Although their bodies were wrecked beyond recognition, he hoped that their souls would find their way to the realm of Lord Yama safely before entering the cycle of reincarnation. It would be unfair to ask them to ascend in peace, but he sincerely hoped so. The dead shouldn't have to carry grudges, that should solely be left to the living who could actually do something to resolve them.

He wrapped a length of cotton cloth around a thick wooden branch dipped it into the ghee pot, and let it ignite by holding it atop the yajna.

Then, he slowly approached the pyres half hesitantly.

At that moment, he saw his mother walk up to his father's pyre, climb it, and sit down cross-legged.

"W-What are you doing?" Rama stuttered.

"I am following my husband to his next life," his mother expressed with a tired drone. Her face looked sunken, the result of her mourning.

"B-But why?" Rama asked in disbelief. "Are you out of your mind?"

"What reason is there for me to live, Rama?" She asked with sincere confusion.

"ME!" He bellowed. "One of your sons still lives!"

"The son who didn't hesitate to take his mother's life wishes that she remain to accompany him?" She responded with a caustic edge in her tone.

"Why do you bring back the past, Mother?" Rama stumbled back in pain. "I was only following father's orders, mother, you know that-"

"You are old enough to form rational opinions now, Rama," she interjected. "Tell me, what kind of a man was your father?"

"He was a devout man of god. A scholar. Excellent in every field-" He listed out of rote memory. The words were supposed to carry pride, but they were sorely lacking in it.

"You parrot his achievements, yet speak little of his character," his mother reiterated. "What kind of a man was your father?"

"He was..."

"Selfish," his mother answered. "Arrogant. Rageful. Prideful. Rama... He wasn't a good man."

Rama wished to retort, but he couldn't find just a reason to refute her claims.

"Just because I got distracted, and let myself indulge in pleasure by watching a couple so deeply in love engage in acts of intimacy, he wished me dead for infidelity?" She reminded. "Does that sound reasonable to you?"

"N-No-"

"And you didn't question him before smiting me... Not once?" She jabbed. Her expression sunk with betrayal.

Rama's father, Jamadagni, was a revered sage, known for his unwavering devotion to the gods and his strict adherence to dharma - duty. His mother, Renuka, was the epitome of grace and virtue, but her one moment of distraction had sealed her fate.

Jamadagni's rage had been swift and merciless. He saw Renuka's innocent gaze as a betrayal, a stain on his honour that could only be cleansed with her blood. Rama, as the dutiful son, had been caught in the crossfire of his parents' conflict. Torn between his love for his mother and his fear of his father's wrath, he had chosen to obey - to fulfil his duty.

The day he struck her down was the day his childhood ended. The weight of his actions had haunted him ever since, a constant reminder of his father's uncompromising nature and his own perceived weakness.

"It was all an illusion, Mother," Rama begged. "Father was only testing us. He would never truly wish you dead."

It was, in the end, just an illusion his father had crafted. Even the scene of the young couple engaging in intimate acts was an illusion. It was all a convoluted test. A test to see if his wife and sons would adhere to dharma. His wife, to maintain her sanctity in marriage towards her husband, and his sons, to obey him without a shadow of a doubt. Rama's mother had failed, as per their father's definition of dharma. And so had Rama's brothers, and they too were forced to fall under his assault for their disobedience, albeit in the illusion.

"You didn't know that," She shrieked. "Look, Rama. I birthed you, and thus I am burdened with the duty to raise you. And raise you, I did. That is where my duty ends. The moment you killed me, illusion or not, you severed the emotional bond that I had for you."

Rama held back his tears as his mother's words dug right into his heart.

That night, his mother had come to him as he lay asleep, her face shadowed in the moonlight. "Always remember, Rama," she had whispered, "Premah Dharmasya Mrtyuh Asti. If you wish to live life following dharma, you must be ready to sacrifice affection and love, because the two cannot exist in the same plane."

"There is nothing left for me here," she stated. "You can ignite the pyre now."

"Mother-"

"You are your father's son, Rama. Selfish. Arrogant. Rageful. Prideful. My words now will do little to affect your character, I know that. The moment you gain self-realisation, it will already be too late. And when you do, I know you will regret everything. A mother's duty is to be patient, caring, and understanding. And as your mother, I forgive you. However, as a person, you will never have my forgiveness."

His mother's final words stung Rama. As he watched the flames consume the pyres, Rama couldn't help but reflect on his mother's words. The rage he felt now was a familiar companion, one that had been with him since that fateful day. It was easier to feel anger than to face the guilt and shame that threatened to overwhelm him.

He remembered the countless times he had tried to justify his actions, to convince himself that he had done the right thing. But deep down, he knew the truth. He had failed his mother. He had failed to protect her, to question his father's judgment, to stand up for what he knew was right.

But he had done his duty to his father. Like his mother had done hers to him. And in performing one's duties, there was often very little wiggle room for questions.

And as he deposited his family's ashes in Ganga, his eyes followed her upstream.

Like his mother, Rama had little to live for now. His family had been excised from this world in one fell swoop. What was he to do? Move on? And let the assailants who'd stolen his world walk the plane unhindered?

He was certain that the cycle of reincarnation was just. They would get their just desserts if not in this life, then the next. But where was the fairness in that? Why must he yield his rightful justice to the apathetic wheels of karma?

There were consequences to every action. But where is the fairness in meting out the consequences of the actions of one life in the subsequent ones, when no wrong had been committed?

Justice is just only if it is immediate, not delayed. And if the world couldn't expedite the serving of said justice, then Rama had to take matters into his own hands.

To seek justice Rama knew that he would have to turn to a higher power. He was far too weak. Insignificant.

He was ready to sacrifice everything to achieve his justice, and he knew that there was only one being powerful enough to grant him the power to realise it.

With resolute steps, Rama followed the river against its current, towards its source.

---

A loud gasp for air followed by incessant sputtering cut through the forest's tranquillity, as Kratos regained consciousness and expelled the water filling up his lungs.

He was certain that he had died, and yet, here he was, alive. And the axe... the cursed tool was perched comfortably in his hand.

He brought it forward and looked at it half in disbelief and half in realisation. He knew that he'd killed Rama back then. Yet he came back alive, as though nothing had happened.

It was the axe, after all.

"Immortality," Kratos said with a derisive chuckle before breaking down into a sarcastic laugh.

As his hysteria settled, Kratos was forced to confront his new reality.

There was no escaping his punishment, not even death.

"But... WHY?!" He bellowed into the heavens. He was certain that this was the machination of some god, it always was.

But who? That was the golden question. And Kratos knew that to answer that question, he would have to ascertain the providence of the axe.

It was at that moment, that Kratos realised something.

"That vision..." Almost every dream of his that revealed a vision to him from Rama's past ended with Rama grasping the axe. Yet the most recent one was different.

"The axe wasn't there."

The vision ended with Rama leaving for an excursion following a river to its source. The same river that Kratos had tried to drown himself in.

Kratos followed the precarious currents of the river as they zig-zagged and snaked through the forest.

He knew that he was grasping at straws, but Kratos was sorely lacking in leads. Even one that was so vague and improbable as simply following a river was akin to a lifeline. Even if it led to nowhere, it would be better than counting away his days in solitude and depression.

Kratos didn't mind being punished. He knew he deserved it. Yet it annoyed him that he was carrying the punishment of another.

So, with resolute strides, Kratos latched the axe against his waist and strode off into the forest with the river as his guide to his final destination... wherever that lay.

 

[juniorsundar]

Hunger was simply a mental construct, Kratos realized. Although he felt it, he didn't have to act on it. The axe, in all its glory, simply wouldn't let him die of hunger. The same could be said for thirst. Or even breathing.

In fact, Kratos could push himself to the absolute limit, to a point where one would teeter on the precipice between life and death, and he would simply remain there until his body deteriorated completely. And the very next moment, once his consciousness returned to him, he would find himself back to his original state.

He didn't experiment with the powers bestowed upon him by the axe consciously. He had just grown tired of having to maintain himself when he evidently didn't need to.

An entire week had passed since he first set out from his home. He trekked day and night without sleep since he didn't need that either. All the while, he kept the flowing Ganges to his right. He followed its winding and widening path tirelessly, of course, because he couldn't grow tired. Tiredness was a mental construct.

Exhaustion would reach its peak before his consciousness would flicker, and he was back to normal all over again.

It was numbing. He didn't have to worry about anything. Nothing could kill him. And any injury inflicted on him would just disappear.

The world around him blurred and grew darker with each passing day. The pleasant sounds of birds, insects, and other creatures turned muffled and blended into the background. All Kratos could hear was the wet sound of his feet sloshing against the dew-laden grass and shrubs.

This was until the ninth day since his departure.

A new sound cracked through the self-imposed monotony. It was different. It didn't sound human, nor did it sound animalistic. It was... monstrous.

A crack, snap, and squelch followed by incessant chomping resonated through the woods, growing louder as Kratos walked towards its source. A maniacal chuckle followed by more squelching, chomping, and cracking continued as whatever was creating the sound relished what Kratos could immediately discern to be its current meal. And by the sound of bones breaking, flesh rending, and saliva being hungrily slurped, he could guess what was happening just beyond the two trees blocking his current path.

See, experience suggested that creatures that make such noises and exhibit a limited extent of sentience tended to veer towards the consumption of bipeds. That is to say. The monster, which was a hefty and hairy beast twice the size of a regular human with horns twice the length of a bull and dirty claws the length of small knives, was eating humans.

A small mound of bones stood between Kratos and the creature, which had its back to him. But then, a rogue gust of wind picked up from behind Kratos, and he tensed his muscles in anticipation, as his scent wafted over the ravenous monster.

Its eyes were bloodshot and hazy, clearly drenched in bloodlust. His face was littered with viscera from its most recent victim, which it unceremoniously threw away before rushing towards Kratos.

Through pure instinct, he reached for the only weapon in his vicinity, the axe, and poised himself in preparation for an evasion.

The creature was large and its movements were greatly telegraphed. Kratos' body transitioned around its attacks effortlessly.

He continued to dodge for an entire two minutes, observing as the attempts grew more frantic and agitated.

Creatures with high sentience, like humans, tend to have a better gauge of their strengths and weaknesses. Most know when it's time to give up or change tactics. Animals are similar. They are quick to judge a disparity in strength and are quick to resort to fight or flight. Things that are in between, though, like this monster... They have the worst of both. They have an excess of ego from high-sentient creatures and an unlimited supply of aggression from their low-sentient counterparts. This makes them dangerous, but also foolhardy.

Case in point, the creature was incapable of judging just when it was outclassed.

Kratos waited for the right time. Which was the exact moment the creature overcommitted to an attack. It did not guard its blindspot. Which was the exact moment he struck. With a heavy slash, the axe embedded itself in the creature's right armpit.

As it recoiled in pain, Kratos doubled down on his attack. He used its knees to propel himself above the creature, and with the momentum gained from gravity, he brought the axe down into its skull.

He anticipated a hit, but the creature was uncharacteristically fast in dodging the strike. However, it did not escape unscathed. It had to sacrifice one of its horns.

But Kratos did not stop there. He strafed forward, ducking under an attack, before hitting its other armpit, and repeating his attack combination. The creature was prepared this time, but so was Kratos, as he feinted by leaping over the monster and positioning himself behind it.

With a roar, he swung the axe into its spine. And as metal struck its flesh, he could hear a muffled crack as the beast crumbled on all fours. He then spun forward and swept the axe in an upward motion, letting it cleanly cut off the beast's head from its body.

And as the headless creature collapsed into the ground, spurting out deep red bloom from its empty neck, Kratos could suddenly feel a dangerous urge coursing through him.

It radiated throughout his body before emanating out of his pores, leaving him cold. But it did not cease. The sensation repeated again, burgeoning, starting from his arm. The very arm that was grasping the axe.

It was thirsty. It did not convey that explicitly, but Kratos could feel it. The inanimate weapon evoked the same emotion as a parched beast suddenly gifted with a drop of water, even if it was salty or contaminated. And it didn't take much mental arithmetic to discern what it was thirsty for, because the pulsing sensation only grew more vigorous and "loud". So much so that it had turned into a call.

A call for violence.

Kratos' senses captured movement in the tree line. Heavy and inhuman trampling was approaching him rapidly from all directions. Some were short and frantic, others heavy and booming literally causing the ground to vibrate.

His grasp on the axe grew tighter.

A question flashed past his mind, "Why am I fighting?"

It was an interesting probe of his psyche. Leading up to this point Kratos cared little for his state. Since no matter what he did, he would remain unaffected. And yet, here he was, preparing for combat.

What was the point?

Unfortunately, Kratos did not have the opportunity to dwell on that. Because the moment the tree right beside him burst into splinters and a tar-skinned monstrosity with six arms and two legs barrelled through, the axe's call grew as loud as a blaring horn, and his consciousness blacked out.

---

Are Rakshasas born or are they made?

What are Rakshasas? Beings of magic with illusory powers, often indulging in the basest of instincts and devolving into beasts. Creatures that revel in chaos and bloodshed. Beings with an endless desire to kill and consume humans.

That was the most common depiction of Rakshasas.

But where did they come from? Were they born, off of the womb of other Rakshasas, or where were they made - were they once human and were turned through some curse or overindulgence?

Bhairava had asked this question to many learned men, and each had given him a different answer - none agreed with each other. As a man of action and results, he preferred to hear the answer straight from the horse's mouth. But of course, he could not go and ask a Rakshasa now, could he?

"Captain, with all due respect. Do we need to continue wasting time asking these scholars such inane questions?" Ravi, his right-hand man complained as the duo exited the ashram. "You do realise they're probably mocking us behind our backs the moment we leave."

"To know the enemy is half the battle, my friend," Bhairava responded while mounting his horse. It fussed as he found perch on the saddle, but chuffed in acquiescence nonetheless. A grumpy softy, that was its character after all.

"The King has entrusted me with this task. It is the first time I am bearing his confidence. I cannot afford to fail, Ravi," Bhairava reminded.

"I know," Ravi said with an understanding wave. "But all reports state that it's the usual flying kind. We have enough nets and archers to ensnare the thing. Once it's grounded, it will be as easy as stealing laddoo from a child."

"There is no loss in being prudent," Bhairava retorted.

"I'd say the lost time is pretty valuable," Ravi grumbled. "I struggle to understand your line of questioning. First off, what is there to gain from knowing the origins of Rakshasas? They are dangerous. They like to kill and wreak havoc. I mean... is there anything more to know? Besides, we haven't learned anything new. What these so-called 'learned men' claim to be the origin of Rakshasas is nothing but hearsay. There are no written texts investigating this matter."

"Maybe you're right," Bhairava said as he urged his horse to pick up its pace. "Maybe I was just satisfying a latent curiosity of mine."

"There will be time to pursue our interests after the damn monster is slain!" Ravi yelled from behind, as his voice was drowned out by the rhythmic clopping of horse hooves against the hard ground.

In that, Ravi wasn't wrong. Bhairava hated to admit it, but his quest to learn more about his enemy had yielded poor results.

He was no closer to understanding the origins of Rakshasas than before he'd begun.

But that was the thing. Unlike humans, Rakshasas couldn't really be classified into buckets. There was no race, no caste, nor was there a commonality that bound Rakshasas together. Each one was different from the last.

For instance, there had been records of Rakshasas with the powers of flight in the Kingdom's libraries. But each exhibited the power through different mediums. Some had wings, some could walk on air, and some just emulated flight through illusion.

So although Ravi moved on with confidence, Bhairava could not shake away the foreboding sensation that things would not turn out to be so trivial.

---

And as it turned out, Bhairava's intuition proved correct. As he held Ravi's decapitated head in his arms and beheld the abject massacre strewn around him, Bhairava thought back to where things had started to go wrong.

Maybe right from the start? For one, he was definitely asking the wrong questions.

His late father had a saying. "There's no point trying to prepare for a cliff far away if you can't even see the pit right under your nose."

What reason did Bhairava have to try and understand the entirety of Rakshasa-kind? Would he have gained any advantage from learning of their origins? Evidently not, because he'd missed the metaphorical pit.

The flying Rakshasa didn't fly. While it navigated in three dimensions seamlessly like a flying creature, and while its three pairs of arms interwove and moved around fluidly as wings would, it wasn't actually flying.

For a layman, the creature would appear to fly. But for a warrior such as Bhairava, whose senses had been attuned to notice even the most minute of details in the thick of battle, he could clearly see fine strings glinting in the midday sun's rays crisscrossing all across the treeline forming a crude yet dangerous web.

The creature was skittering from one end to the other atop these razor-sharp strands like some monstrous spider, though its rotund, tar-black form and grotesque appearance with canine sprouting out and a pair of horns was as far from an arachnoid as one could be.

The moment his retinue arrived at the supposed haunt, Bhairava realised that they'd been misinformed. Before the archers could get ready, a fine thread shot out of the treeline and went taut, before immediately wrapping around causing everyone and everything in the trajectory of the thread to get cleft in two. The thread was razor sharp, even more so than his sword, and it cut through flesh and bone like a hot knife through ghee.

Had he not leapt off of his horse in time, he would have lost his legs.

Before they could retaliate, a second string shot out and now the two threads swept in opposite directions. Bhairava barely made it by diving between the narrow gap between the sweeping attacks. But this was the end of his retinue. The last attack had beheaded Ravi who had leapt off his steed with Bhairava, but alas his friend wasn't as agile as he was.

And now, as Bhairava stared down into the abyssal eyes of the beast approaching him, as it effortlessly swatted away a large tree like it was made of cotton. He could do nothing but blame himself.

It was his fault for trusting the reports and descriptions of peasants scared out of their wits. He blamed himself for not conducting a more thorough investigation. He blamed himself for not listening to Ravi and spending his preparation time more fruitfully. He blamed himself for not scouting the area and gathering information first before confronting the monster. He blamed himself for not coordinating the attack more actively.

Had he done his proper due diligence, he would known better than to fight the monster in its home ground, a forest. He could have lured it into the plains, leaving it less likely to gain vertical advantage. But hindsight is often filled with regrets.

The ground rumbled as the monster walked up to him, its lips split into a grin and its tongue danced across it hungrily. It brought its first two palms together and pinched the index finger and thumb. As it pulled them apart, a fine glimmering string connected them.

As he prepared for his eventual demise, something strange happened. The Rakshasa visibly shuddered and looked away, into the distance. It then crouched, and with an earth-shaking leap, disappeared into the treeline.

Bhairava's eyes followed the monster, and he estimated its trajectory. He physically stopped himself from letting out a breath of relief, he did not deserve that. There was no return from such a dishonourable confrontation. He would either die today, or the Rakshasa would.

With renewed resolve and eyes blank, ready for death's welcoming embrace, he picked up his sword and followed the monster on foot. He could barely keep up with it, but his senses could follow the rumbling and rustling of the trees, as well as the residual strings that marred the monster's path.

His sprint continued for many minutes before something confusing jumbled up his sense of direction. Multiple movements started to resonate from all around him. Footfalls, hoofbeats and wingbeats of many kinds, weights and sounds started to overlap and drown out the trace of the eight-limbed Rakshasa he had been following. But Bhairava quickly realised that all these entities were moving in the same direction - they were converging.

With his trained senses, Bhairava quickly deduced that these entities weren't of human or animal origin. They were definitely more Rakshasas, and they were all converging into one location where someone or something was attracting them.

Fear did pass over his consciousness, but it was quickly pushed down. This did not change his objective. He would either die today, or that monster would. Regardless, his destination remained unchanged and his feet carried him onwards.

As he approached the epicentre of the congregating entities, Bhairava's senses picked up the sound of conflict. He could hear the familiar, inhuman bleats, roars, screeches and yelps of Rakshasas interwoven with the sound of bones breaking, flesh tearing, trees cracking, ground shaking-

"RAAAAGH!"

A human's rage-filled yell cut through everything, and Bhairava managed to leap out of the way just in time as a large object hurtled in his direction. He peeked out of the bush he dove into and saw the same Rakshasa that he'd chased all the way here, but there was a stark difference in its appearance compared to what it was earlier. It had two fewer arms and its primary right arm was fastened onto a tree with an unassuming axe.

It tried to extricate itself, but its arm looked like it was clued into the bark, the axe wasn't budging. It growled in pain and anger before its eyes flashed with a dangerous resolve. Then with an unbelievable wave of its free arm, it released a razor-sharp wire and cut off its other arm. Its gaze darted back to where it came flying from and rushed back into the fray.

Bhairava waited for a beat before approaching the dismembered arm that was still stuck against the tree by the axe. He then followed the movement of the Rakshasa and rushed after it. He wove through the treeline, most of which had been demolished to kingdom come due to what could be described as a small war. And it wasn't just nature that was in disarray, because he could see bodies of other Rakshasas, big and small, strewn left and right, some intact and others in multiple pieces. Each and every single one of them had met a gruesome demise, either by being cleft into pieces by an axe or being literally torn apart.

What could cause such damage? Bhairava wondered half in awe and with the other half quivering in anxiety and fear.

The sound of fighting grew loudest, and as he peeked past a tree he noticed an even greater scene of carnage. There stood a man drenched head-to-toe in viscera and blood, some his and others of his victims, holding a Rakshasa with both arms dislocated by its jaw. His right hand held the beast's lower jaw, its serrated teeth cutting into his fingers and stripping them of their flesh, and his left pryed apart the upper jaw suffering the same damage in the process.

The Rakshasa groaned in pain, and the man in turn yelled out with the rage of a thousand rampaging bulls as he pulled apart literally tearing the creature in two from head to toe.

Suddenly, the man's head turned and two bloodshot and blood-soaked eyes looked straight through Bhairava. His body froze and his feet went limp. He collapsed as he instinctively took a step back. Right in time too, as a bouquet of razer sharp wires burst past where his head would have been.

The man raised his right arm and the cables wound themselves around his forearm. And as they tightened, they tore away all flesh on his arms, revealing his bones. The man did not flinch in pain, instead, he yanked his tethered arm, pulling the Rakshasa from its perch in the trees. He then pulled the struggling beast towards him before wrapping the same wires around its neck.

The Rakshasa thrashed and flailed. Its free arm reached over its head and grabbed the man's face, digging into his eyes with its nails.

And again, the man did not flinch. Instead, he did the unthinkable. He dragged the thrashing monster with him towards the babbling river and descended into the raging currents with the monster.

Bhairava quickly collected himself and rushed towards the river bank. He looked on as a torrent of bubbles rose from the river bed, and the water grew redder by the second. He couldn't see the struggle taking place underwater, but he could fathom it. And it did not feel pleasant at all.

As the bubbles petered off and disappeared, he got down to his knees and let out a long and heartfelt prayer.

"Oh, great warrior clad in blood. For your noble sacrifice, may you find prosperity and peace in your next life."

Just as he was about to speak the subsequent verses, his senses caught the sound of metal striking against wood and cutting through the air, approaching him. Once again, he dodged out of the way as he noticed an axe hurtling past him and jetting into the river.

He barely had time to rub his eyes to clear his doubts before a body leapt out of the river and landed against its banks.

He could match the form of the body to the man that he thought had sacrificed himself. But he appeared very much alive, and unharmed. What struck him as interesting was the completely pale and ashen skin, only highlighted by two red circles - probably birthmarks - that bisected his torso and bald head.

Bhairava assumed that the man was a devout follower of Shiva, as they often garbed themselves in animal hide and coated themselves thoroughly in ash. Although, this man's coating had survived a bath in the river. Maybe it was something he'd injected under his skin? Those sanyasis tended to be eccentric; maybe it was one of the concoctions of their cannabis-addled minds to grow closer to the very deity they worshipped. Then again, the man's build and appearance apart from his ashen skin did not match Bhairava's knowledge of a sanyasi. His frame was that of a seasoned warrior, with musculature unlike someone living off of the earth and vegetables. Furthermore, the man was completely bald, where he should have had long, matted and unkempt hair.

And if that wasn't enough, no Brahmin in their right mind would raise arms against anyone, or anything. And with a single glance over his shoulder, Bhairava cleansed his theory once over.

This was no ordinary man. The raw power he exhibited was unfathomable!

Bhairava's gaze scanned the sputtering man and landed on the unassuming axe that had pinned down a Rakshasa so unwaveringly that the monster saw it fit to dismember itself.

He wasn't a fool. He was certain that this axe was a divine weapon. And a wielder of a divine weapon could not be a mere mortal. Case in point, the man had literally survived being gouged, eviscerated, and drowned, and came out unscathed.

Once his mind processed all this information at light speed, he immediately collapsed to his knees and prostrated before the man.

"What are you doing?" A gravelly voice inquired with an accentuated grunt.

"Oh, great ashen-skinned warrior!" Bhairava expressed with a heavy stutter. "Please forgive me for not recognising your Excellence's identity."

There was silence, but Bhairava could hear movement, and yet he dared not look up.

"P-Pardon me-" He peeked and was shocked to see the man walking away. "W-Wait!"

He leapt onto his feet and quickly covered the distance, blocking the man's path.

"What I want to say is thank you!" Bhairva said hurriedly. "Thank you for killing that Rakshasa."

"Rakshasa?" The man responded with furrowed brows. His expression implied unfamiliarity with that work.

"Umm, the beings you just killed. Their species- They're called Rakshasas," Bhairava explained.

"What does it mean?" He asked again. "Monsters?"

"You could say that," Bhairava said with a light shake of his head in uncertainty.

"Where do they come from?" He followed up, to which Bhairava burst into cynical laughter. He quickly calmed himself down and said, "I frankly don't know. And trust me, I've asked around a lot."

The man let out a disdainful growl and walked around Bhairava.

"W-Warrior, wait!" Bhairava once again ran past the man and blocked his way.

"What do you want?" The man snapped, causing Bhairava to flinch instinctively.

"I..." Bhairava swallowed a dry mouthful of air as the man approached him with an incisive gaze that cut through his soul.

"Do not block my way again," the man warned before continuing his journey.

"C-Could you at least, please share your name?!" Bhairava yelled at the man's departing figure. But he received no response. The man disappeared along with Ganga as she snaked through the shrubbery.

 

[juniorsundar]

Early chapter because I will be on vacation next week

---

The axe craved violence. It revelled in it. As Kratos followed the river upstream, he tried to pry into his memories to unearth his mental state during his rampage earlier.

All was well until the axe tasted its first drop of blood. After that, it was like it had a life of its own. It radiated bloodlust, so much so that it incited entities predilected to violence in its vicinity into a frenzy. To top it all off, it even clouded his consciousness, sending him into a trance-like state that revelled in the bloodshed, where his body moved through pure instinct. He was only freed from this trance when he drowned and revived.

Kratos looked at the axe with a tinge of fear and great frustration. Just as he'd rid himself of one weapon that messed with his mind, he was foisted with another that was equally taxing. The axe stimulated his innate bloodlust, and if Kratos decided to give into the state completely and provide positive feedback back into the weapon, it would probably reveal a greater portion of its power.

But Kratos had no desire to go down that path. As a warrior by blood, he believed firmly that weapons were merely tools to realize the wielder's will. That had been his training from the start.

That being said, the irony wasn't lost on him that for the greater portion of his life, he'd wielded the horrible Blades of Chaos. While they were a symbol of his bondage to Ares and the Gods of Olympus, they were also his de facto weapons of choice. The blades would kindle Kratos' rage and be equally augmented with the rage he fed back into it in a sort of grotesque symbiosis. Very much like the axe.

During his quest for vengeance, Kratos had cared little for the consequences of using the blades. He just wanted results, and the Blade of Chaos were notoriously effective in materialising those results. Now, with hindsight, he could see the cost more clearly. After learning from his mistakes, Kratos resolved to listen to his overseer's teachings from his childhood and denounce any weapon that overpowered his psyche, depriving him of clarity and sense.

Yet, the axe was now tethered to him.

As he ripped apart the jaws of a tiger that had attacked him and shattered its skull, he glanced at the axe embedded in a tree on the far side of the clearing. It called to him. It sensed the carnage and yearned to partake in it. But it was a slippery slope, one he would descend deeper into if he kept succumbing to its siren call.

After rinsing his bloodstained hands in the river, he caught his reflection in the swirling waters.

It perfectly reflected his state of mind - unsettled. Spartans were trained to have a clear mind from birth. Their only duty was to follow orders; thinking was reserved for those above them. Until they reached the rank where decisions were required, obedience was all that mattered.

Kratos' brows furrowed as he jerked his head up, listening intently. The river's babble and the chirping of crickets and birds surrounded him. But beyond that, there was a voice. Faint, human, coming from somewhere - or everywhere. It was a whisper, barely audible but echoing in every direction, making its source elusive.

...

..

.

It vanished.

He growled low in his throat and approached the tiger's corpse. Drawing a knife from the pouch at his waist, he began to skin the beast. This land was teeming with creatures he had never encountered. The tiger was one of them - a predator with the strength of a lion, the cunning of a wolf, and the ferocity of both combined.

The water buffalo was another - outwardly nonchalant, with skin as dark as the river Styx. Its peaceful demeanour belied the brutal force it wielded when provoked. Kratos had witnessed a herd trample a pack of wolves into pulp. The peasants had, fortunately, found a way to tame them.

It was odd how a seemingly gentle herbivore could be capable of such violence.

His mind recollected Rama - the herbivore - and contrasted him against the same Rama from his axe-induced nightmares. And then it all made sense.

Everyone is capable of violence. It lies dormant within their animal nature, barely restrained by the thin veneer of civilization. For most, all it takes is a gentle nudge for that facade to crumble. For others, more force is needed. But in the end, violence always prevails.

Kratos lit a fire and methodically treated the tiger's hide. His deer hide garments had been reduced to tatters from his recent battles, and the tiger's pelt would make a worthy replacement. Perhaps it would also send a clear message to potential threats.

And as he let the hide dry itself before the fire, Kratos fought against his fleeting consciousness as sleep attempted to embrace him.

Kratos snapped awake at the sound of a voice. The whisper had returned, faint and omnipresent, echoing from all directions. His head swivelled, searching, but once again-

...

..

.

It vanished.

---

Water is the bedrock of any civilisation. Water gives life, water sustains life. Without water, there cannot be life.

This fact held true even here. Wherever the river flowed through, Kratos could see life flourishing. Villages, towns, and even large cities flourished around the river. It cut through forests, plains and hills, leaving vibrant life in its wake. But what astonished Kratos was that the river was the pathway into the afterlife for the people in this world. Upon death, the corpse is burned and the ash is deposited into the river amidst prayers.

It was off - the same entity that bestows life and is celebrated for it is the same entity that shuttles the dead away.

His trip that veered northwards brought him to a large city.

From a distance, it emerged as a shimmering jewel with the river cutting through it. It was surrounded by tall, ancient stone walls, that appeared weathered by time yet radiated a sense of sacred protection.

As he approached the city, its walls seemed to rise out of the earth itself. The surface was adorned with intricate carvings of deities, celestial beings, sacred animals, and many more that Kratos could not recognise. They were so well-detailed, and he was so deeply engrossed in them, that he completely overlooked the long throngs of people waiting in line to enter through its gates.

Above the walls, spires of towering temples pierced the sky. With their golden tips glinting in the sunlight and casting a warm yet solemn glow. The echoing, harmonious bellows of the temple bells augmented the atmosphere bringing with it a sense of serenity that grew in strength the closer he approached.

"Toll-" The guard droned in boredom while adjusting his helmet, pulling Kratos out of his calm stupor.

"I wish to pass through," Kratos responded blankly.

"Okay... Toll?"

"I said-"

"You still need to enter if you wish to pass through," the guard clarified. "Look, you are free to go around if you don't want to pay. But the entry is tolled. Everyone must pay."

As he said this, he gestured beyond Kratos towards the massive line that led into the walled city. Kratos followed the city's boundary with his eyes, and it disappeared into the horizon. He estimated that a detour would waylay him by a day or two at least.

"Fine," he acquiesced with a growl. "How much?"

The guard raised two digits, and Kratos in turn furnished him with two cowrie shells.

"Thank you. Welcome to Kashi," the man responded while moving aside and letting Kratos through. "I pray that you find peace."

And Kratos was certain that he meant it.

The moment Kratos stepped into the city, he was overwhelmed by an aura of solemnity that hung thick in the air. The scent of incense permeated every corner, drifting unseen from hidden recesses of the city. Even the gentle bubbling of the nearby river could be heard over the monotonous hum of the bustling crowd—thousands of people navigating the winding streets. The chorus of merchants hawking their wares—flowers, oil lamps, powdered ash, and more—blended with the sharp chants of priests, their prayers resonating like a constant drone through the air.

This was clearly a place of pilgrimage, Kratos deduced from the reverence in the behaviour and hushed conversations of the people passing by. They were undoubtedly here to pay homage to their gods.

"Begging for forgiveness from beings who care nothing for their suffering," Kratos thought with a sneer. "Weak-"

"It's not weakness to seek forgiveness," a voice interrupted from behind him. Kratos spun around to face a short man, whose height barely reached his chest. The man had long, matted hair, and a gaunt frame, and his entire body was smeared with white ash.

Kratos narrowed his eyes, suspicious, and immediately cleared his mind of all thoughts.

"I'm not reading your mind," the man remarked, his voice laced with knowing. "I can recognize a sceptic just by looking at one. Though I must say, it's rather unusual to see a Shiva-Bhakta harbouring doubt."

"Bhakta?" Kratos echoed, searching his memory for the word. "I am not some sycophant who bends the knee to a god that couldn't care less about the mortals beneath him."

"You say that, yet you cover yourself in ash—" The man reached out, rubbing his fingers along Kratos' triceps, before recoiling in surprise. "Wait, that's your actual skin? Incredible!"

With a growl, Kratos yanked his arm away and stormed off into the heaving mass of people. At that very moment, a loud bell tolled throughout the city, its deep reverberations cutting through the noise.

The crowd froze as still as statues in unison. Then, as if propelled by a single force, they all began to move in one direction, flowing like the current of a mighty river. Unfortunately for Kratos, he was caught too deeply within the throng to escape.

The collective movement was so powerful that it nearly lifted him off his feet, dragging him forward in a relentless surge. He fought to resist, but the press of bodies was overwhelming. His only option was to force his way out, though he wasn't sure he could do so without causing a scene—and perhaps casualties.

Reluctantly, he allowed himself to be swept along in the tide, which flowed inexorably toward the heart of the city.

As they moved closer to the centre, the smell of incense grew stronger, the monotonous drone of the crowd louder. Kratos noticed that people were converging from every corner of the sprawling metropolis, their paths merging into one. And it wasn't long before he realized exactly where they were all headed.

His eyes were drawn to a colossal structure that gradually emerged from the haze of incense and dust. Towering over the surrounding buildings, its imposing silhouette appeared grand. At a distance, the temple's spires glistened, gilded with gold that caught the light of the sun, sending shimmering reflections across the vast expanse of the city. Each spire soared higher than the last, culminating in a central dome that pierced the sky.

The temple was vast, far larger than any structure Kratos had encountered. After all, if it was supposed to house all these people at once, it HAD to be big enough. Its foundation stretched for what seemed like kilometres, sprawling in all directions, carved from a single massive slab of gleaming white marble that glowed in the golden light of the day. The walls were intricately etched with carvings and statues of various figures both human and inhuman, celestial and Hades-spawned, their expressions frozen in time yet exuding an aura of lividity. The base of the temple was adorned with massive stone elephants, standing guard, their trunks raised.

A grand staircase, flanked by tall pillars that reached higher than the tallest trees, led up to the main entrance. Each step was wide enough to allow dozens to walk abreast, yet there was a certain reverence in the way people approached, their footsteps slowing as they neared the sacred structure. The pillars were colossal, each one carved with impossibly detailed stories, their surfaces alive with the rich history of a world which had lasted for innumerable years. Hanging from the arches between these pillars were enormous bells, made from shimmering brass, their deep, resonant tones audible even over the collective drone of the shuffling throng.

As Kratos was pulled closer, he noticed the walls adorned with murals, each so vivid that they appeared to move in the flickering light of the ever-burning lamps. The stone itself seemed to pulse with ancient energy as if the temple was not merely built by mortals but had been raised by the hands of gods themselves. The air around the structure was thick with the scent of sandalwood and flowers, adding to the heady mixture of incense that came from everywhere and nowhere all at once.

This place was special - filled with magic augmented by the collective belief of a population that could dwarf Greece's.

Above, the central spire soared impossibly high, tapering into a gleaming golden finial that shimmered like a distant star. Around it, smaller shrines clustered in perfect symmetry, orbiting the grand temple as though they were planets caught in the gravity of a divine sun. Each shrine, dedicated to a different deity, was adorned with relics, treasures, and carvings of such exquisite detail that they seemed to radiate a life of their own. The scale of the temple was overwhelming, its towering archways leading into chambers that seemed to stretch on forever.

The final archway led into a cavernous hall, where the unrelenting rush of the crowd slowed, their frenetic energy dissolving into a collective calm. A deep sense of reverence fell over the room as the swarm of bodies came to a standstill, each person falling into place like a piece of a grand puzzle.

The chamber was so vast that the ceiling disappeared into shadows above, unreachable, unknowable. Circular balconies spiralled upward, clinging to the walls like the ribs of some great creature, rising in unending loops toward unseen heights. At precise intervals along these balconies stood priests, draped in plain, sandal-hued robes, each cradling a metal vessel. Their faces were serene, eyes closed in solemn prayer as they remained on the edge of the precipice, their presence ethereal, almost ghostly. The faint clinking of metal echoed in the stillness as if the air itself carried their whispered invocations.

The architecture, the priests, the people - they all faded into the background as mere peripherals in the presence of the temple's core. Towering nearly thirty meters into the air, a smooth, void-black stone stood like a monolith, dominating the space. It was an object that defied understanding. The stone seemed to absorb light, drawing all focus toward its inky, unfathomable surface. It was not just massive; it was magnetic, like a spiritual force that transcended the physical world.

No matter where he looked, the monolith called him back by pulling his thoughts toward it. He felt it deep within his bones, in the core of his being - a resonance that echoed through him and, disturbingly, through the axe strapped to his back. The weapon trembled slightly, as if alive with a strange excitement and a sense of recognition.

Kratos frowned, his hand instinctively reaching for the axe, but before he could explore the sensation, a loud gong sounded through the chamber. The deep, sonorous tone reverberated through the stone walls, and the chant of "Om Namah Shivaya" rose from the balconies above, layering in deep, resonant tones. In an instant, everything stopped.

Kratos stiffened, his warrior instincts heightened and his senses were on full alert. He glanced upward just in time to see a droplet of liquid land on his forehead. He saw a torrent of milk cascading down the sides of the black monolith. Priests standing on the balconies above poured vast quantities of the white liquid from metal vessels, drenching the stone structure.

But even with the nigh uncountable horde of priests showering the structure with milk, there just wasn't enough to drown the void-black surface with the off-white blanket of the liquid. What did make its way to the base of the structure was then directed through rock channels, allowing the crowd to dip their palm into the stream and take a sip.

As soon as the liquid touched their mouths their expressions went slack. Their eyes clouded over as they fell into a trance-like state and prostrated themselves before the monolith.

Kratos' eyes narrowed. There was something in the milk, something that affected the crowd. Yet no matter how hard he focused, his keen senses detected nothing unusual about the liquid.

And then he saw it.

The monolith moved.

Three-quarters of the way up the structure there were three thick horizontal lines of ash drawn across the black surface. They were bisected by a sharp crimson slash of powder as vibrant as fresh blood. Kratos stared in disbelief as the monolith shifted. The crimson line quivered, splitting further until it resembled an eye - a single, blood-red eye that seemed to pierce through the very fabric of reality.

The eye locked onto Kratos.

A force slammed into him, unseen but palpable, driving him to his knees. The oppressive weight bore down on him, and his muscles screamed in protest as he fought to remain upright. His gaze never left the crimson eye, and he met its malevolent stare with one of his own. The stone structure seemed to grow angry, seemingly affronted by Kratos' defiance.

The pressure increased, the ground beneath him cracking under the strain. His body trembled with the effort to resist, but he refused to yield. And then, as suddenly as it had come, the weight lifted. The eye flicked away, but in its wake, a new sensation overtook Kratos - an unbearable itch, as if his skin were on fire.

Every inch of his flesh burned with an insatiable itch that no amount of scratching could soothe. It was maddening, a torment unlike anything Kratos had ever experienced. He gritted his teeth, fighting the overwhelming urge to claw at his own skin.

The crowd began to move again and converged once more, leaving Kratos no room to breathe, let alone escape. Desperate to calm the itch, he shoved his way through the throng, pushing bodies aside as he fought his way to the nearest exit.

When at last he broke free of the mass of humanity, he found himself in an unfamiliar part of the city. The temple loomed ominously behind him. He gasped for air, still battling the maddening itch crawling all over him. His breath came in ragged gasps, each one feeling like fire burning through his lungs. He clawed at his skin desperately to rid himself of the unbearable sensation.

"You looked Him in the eye didn't you?" A familiar voice spoke up from behind. Kratos didn't need to look to know that it was that it was the vagabond-like man he'd met after entering the city. "I should've warned you. But you should rejoice, He has taken an interest in you and is prepared to absolve you of your sins."

"W-What-"

Kratos felt his arm being grabbed and pulled. The man led him down the stairs which descended into the river itself.

"Relax, and let Her take you the rest of the way."

The man didn't deign to explain any further before shoving Kratos into the still river.

---

Kratos was no stranger to drowning; it was a feeling he'd unfortunately grown familiar with. Yet, though he found himself submerged in an endless deluge, he wasn't drowning.

His vision was clear, but the waters were not. A thick, viscous fog hung all around, blurring what lay beyond. And something did lay beyond, as he could see a shadow moving.

Humans weren't meant to swim; water wasn't their intended habitat. Besides, the waters are treacherous, hiding secrets—secrets beyond human comprehension. Such uncertainty breeds doubt, and doubt, over time, gives way to fear.

But Kratos was not afraid. Spartans have fear drilled out of them from a young age. Years of abuse and indoctrination numbed away that emotion. Spartans rely on those above them to tell them what to feel, trusting that their superiors have experienced similar things and know the appropriate reaction.

But what if there are no superiors? What if there's no one telling you what to feel or do?

Spartans aren't trained to be independent thinkers.

In the face of unpredicted adversity, they revert to their basest instinct: fight or flight.

That was Kratos's operational philosophy. Yet in this case, he had no idea what he was fighting. The water? Or the shadowy creature circling him suspiciously?

Suspicion deepened as the shadow became clearer with its approach. It bore the eerie form of a woman.

Sirens!

"I'm not like those creatures you're thinking of," a melodious voice invaded his thoughts. The sound echoed everywhere. "I should be insulted, but I'll let it slide."

Suddenly, the shadow jerked, and in an instant, the creature crossed the distance. Kratos found himself face-to-face with a woman—not entirely human. She seemed made of water, her edges undulating against the current, resembling a viscous ghost.

"I'm not a ghost either," she sighed, shaking her head in mock disappointment.

By instinct, Kratos flooded his mind with white noise.

The entity seemed to sigh, placing her right thumb on his forehead. Instantly, Kratos felt his body grow lighter - far lighter than one already submerged. It was as though he was being unburdened.

And at the height of this release, he noticed something shocking: the ash embedded in his skin was dissipating, revealing his natural pink hue.

Kratos froze. It had been years since he'd seen his natural skin colour. Yet he had barely a moment before the feeling ceased abruptly.

"Oh-" the voice muttered as the ash dispersed into the water, then rushed back into his skin.

"You are repenting, but not seeking forgiveness. How strange…" she commented. "Instead, you adamantly carry your sins upon your skin."

What did she mean? Why would he want to keep the cursed ash on his body?!

"It's not about what this wants—" she tapped his forehead, "It's about what this wants—" she pressed her palm to his chest.

"I'm sorry, I cannot help you if you don't want it," she shrugged. Then, with a wave of her hand, Kratos was pulled through a turbulent vortex before he lost consciousness.

Only for a moment, though, as he suddenly felt his lungs flood with water. He coughed violently, expelling water from his mouth and nose.

As his vision cleared, he realized a crowd had gathered. At first, it was a single ash-covered man in ragged garb, but now he was surrounded by a horde.

"He saw her!" one of the men whispered reverently. The man who'd tossed Kratos into the river squatted and grabbed his hands.

"What did she look like?" he asked frantically, his eyes wild. "Tell me everything."

Kratos shot him a confused, irritated look as he tried to pull free, still sputtering water.

"Ganga Ma! You saw her! We know you did! What did she look like?" he bellowed, shoving his face into Kratos's.

Still fighting for breath, Kratos reacted instinctively and headbutted him. A crack echoed, silencing the crowd as the man fell back, blood seeping from his crooked nose.

Without hesitation, Kratos leapt up and hobbled away.

The crowd parted, forming a passage for him to escape the river's edge.

Once far enough, he turned into a narrow alley and collapsed, inspecting his skin for any sign of change. He felt a strange mix of relief and disappointment upon confirming it was still covered in ash.

Was it all a vision? A manifestation of a water-addled mind? And what did she mean by "not seeking forgiveness"?

Kratos knew there were only two ways to find answers: look within or look without.

He wasn't built for introspection. That wasn't how he'd been trained. Spartans don't question - they act. So his only option was to dive back into the waters and confront the spirit.

Sometimes, the solution to a problem is a straight line. Drowning wasn't a concern. Even if he failed, he would try again and again.

And so he did, for a week until city guards evicted him for "desecrating the holy site by attempting suicide." Kratos lacked the patience to explain he couldn't die even if he wanted to. But the spirit never reappeared, no matter how often he tried.

He even revisited the temple, defiantly facing the rock's eye, but the fiery sensation never returned.

After a week, Kratos concluded his efforts were a bust. It was time to abandon this detour and return to his journey.

---

The river, once flowing crystal-clear and jubilant, had abruptly turned a deathly crimson. A faint smell of iron - blood - tainted the air.

Kratos narrowed his gaze, following the bloodied river downstream, his eyes fixed on the plains over two kilometres away. There, amidst a mountain of armoured corpses - humans, horses, and elephants alike - sat a giant creature. Its skin was as red as blood, its nails as long as scimitars, and its horns as thick and twisted as tree branches.

All around it lay a wasteland - a remnant of a long-drawn and epic battle. A battle that had finished a while back. Smaller creatures of similar appearance roamed the battlefield dragging corpses towards the growing mountain. Making it easier for the larger creature to consume.

And the larger creature could care less for what its palms grasped, be it a dead carcass or even its smaller brethren. Each and every single piece of flesh found its way into its gaping maw indiscriminately.

The creature tossed a severed arm into its mouth, chomping down greedily. Then, as if sensing him, its gaze jerked towards Kratos.

Its grin widened, saliva mingling with the blood of its prey as it dripped from its maw.

With a sudden burst, it stood and broke into a sprint.

 

[juniorsundar]

A/N: Sorry for the delay in upload.

---

Of the many species that roam these lands of the living, five reign supreme: Deva, Asura, Manushya, Rakshasa and Yaksha.

Manushya, or humans are the most widespread of these species. They are defined by their character of exhibiting good and evil. Compassion and apathy. Their lifetimes are short but eventful as a result of their mortality.

Devas are angelic beings, virtually immortal though not unkillable. They are defined as beings of strong virtue and benevolence, said to uphold dharma or righteousness.

On the other end of the spectrum exist the Asuras, or demonic beings. Though they appear similar in form to Devas, they are more driven by ambition, pride and desire for power. Asuras can be benevolent or malevolent, and just like Devas, they are immortal.

Devas and Asuras exist in a higher plane called Svarga, or heaven, and Patala, or the nether, respectively. These planes are separated from Bhuloka, the realm of the living, and can only be crossed by beings that have attained moksha, or liberation from the cycle of birth and death to attain immortality.

Yakshas are spirits of nature often tethered to a region and supported by the collective power of belief of the region's inhabitants. They can be benevolent or mischievous.

Yet all of these species are born. Be it through reproduction, or manifestation through pure belief, they originate in that form. Rakshasas on the other hand are made. These are creatures, or monsters, predilected towards violence, slaughter, death and destruction. They are evil, through and through. Immense concentration of negative emotions or energy, and grudges can warp the minds of those most susceptible to it, turning them into entities with intelligence just above that of a wild animal but with a penchant for veering towards fight rather than flight.

---

Rambha and Karambha were two brothers born into a declining dynasty originating from a lineage of powerful Asuras - the Danavas.

In an attempt to revive the dynasty, they decided to perform a powerful act of penance in reverence to both Varuna, the goddess of the ocean and skies, and Agni, the god of fire.

The brothers prayed with great devotion and conviction, so much so that it even caught the attention of Indra, the King of Devas and Svarga. Having witnessed the imbalance inflicted on the three realms by the two brothers' predecessors, Indra took it upon himself to nip the problem in the bud. And by taking the form of a crocodile he dragged Karambha, who stood in deep penance in the middle of a large lake, by his feet into the waters and drowned him.

Indra then turned his attention to Rambha, who'd witnessed his brother's brutal murder. But he wasn't deterred. He fought against his survival instincts and remained unperturbed in his prayers. And right as he was to meet the same end as his brother, the pit of fire he'd been standing amidst quenched itself and from it arose Agni himself.

Impressed with Rambha's devotion, the god saved him by driving Indra away.

Rambha was inconsolable. He was wrought with anger and sorrow, so much so that he vowed to cut off his head so that the person who'd killed his brother would meet a similar end. Agni responded, "To kill oneself is worse than killing another - it is a great sin."

In return, he promised Rambha a wish. "I wish for my brother to return."

But, that was beyond Agni's control as Karambha had already entered the cycle of rebirth, "But I can make it so that he will be reborn as your son."

Rambha prostrated himself with gratitude and added, "I wish for my son to be better than me in every way, with power rivalling that of Vayu, the god of wind - the strongest of them all - and incapable of being defeated by any man, Deva or Asura."

Agni affirmed and said, "So be it, the son you sire with a woman you covet, will be born with these blessings."

Despite the gratitude and fulfilment he felt, Rambha remained consumed by his thirst for vengeance. Determined to leave nothing to chance, he set his sights on Mahishi, a formidable Asura with the strength of a hundred buffaloes and the power to shapeshift into one. Her lineage was renowned for its potent abilities, making her the perfect instrument for his revenge.

Mahishi was immediately smitten by Rambha. He was, after all, a being with an impeccable appearance, and she was often ostracised by other Asuras for her hefty physique and skin that did not conform to societal standards of beauty. And thus the two married.

But Patalaloka wasn't free of conflicts. Another Asura, Durmada, harbored the same desires for Mahishi as Rambha. Driven by ambition and lust, Durmada challenged Rambha to a fierce duel, their demonic energies clashing amidst the dark caverns of the underworld. The battle raged for days, shaking the very foundations of Patalaloka. In the end, Durmada's cunning and ruthlessness proved too much for Rambha. With a final, devastating blow, Durmada engulfed Rambha in the unquenchable flames of the nether.

As Rambha was burned alive, his wife, Mahishi decided to follow him into the next life by jumping into the flames as well. Though she did not know that she was with child, and as Rambha embraced his wife, he felt the feet of his unborn fetus kicking from within her womb. The rage that consumed Rambha at that moment outstripped the flames that consumed him. With his dying breath, he let out a curse against the heavens and the Devas.

The flames that consumed Rambha and Mahishi became a crucible of rebirth. From the ashes, Rambha emerged, his form imbued with the fury of the netherworld. Beside him rose his son, born prematurely amidst the fiery chaos. But the child bore the mark of the inferno, his form twisted into a buffalo-like semblance.

Rambha, heartbroken but defiant, named his son Mahishasura, in honour of his beloved Mahishi. He looked upon his son, a creature of immense power and a vessel for his burning vengeance. Rambha knew that Mahishasura was destined for greatness, a force that would shake the heavens and fulfil his curse against the Devas. He would raise his son to be a warrior, a king, an unstoppable force of nature. The flames of revenge had been rekindled, and Mahishasura would be the instrument of Rambha's wrath.

---

Mahishasura's ascent was swift and relentless. He possessed a cunning mind, inherited from his father, and the brute strength that came from his mother's lineage. As he matured, he became a master of warfare, crafting strategies that few could counter. Under his rule, the once-disparate clans of Patala were united, bound by either allegiance or sheer fear. Mahishasura was not just a ruler but a tyrant - a being driven by a single, all-consuming purpose: to avenge his father's death and claim dominion over the three realms.

Mahishasura's ambition was not limited to the netherworld. His gaze turned upward, toward Bhuloka, the realm of humans, and beyond it, Svarga, the celestial abode of the Devas. To him, these realms represented both conquest and vengeance. For years, he prepared his army, amassing an unprecedented force. He forged alliances with other Asura clans, striking fear into the hearts of even the fiercest demons of Patala. Mahishasura's reputation grew, spreading to Bhuloka and finally reaching the ears of Indra, the king of Svarga.

Indra, ever vigilant, resolved not to await Mahishasura's arrival at the gates of Svarga. Instead, he led the heavenly armies down to intercept the invading forces as they breached Bhuloka's borders.

The confrontation was devastating. Despite their vast numbers, the heavenly forces were no match for Mahishasura's troops. Within hours of first contact, the army of the heavens lay decimated, crushed by the overwhelming force of the Asura king.

The balance of the three realms trembled, shaken by the unimaginable defeat of the Devas and the rise of Mahishasura's unstoppable dominion.

In fact, the invasion into Bhuloka was simply a distraction, Mahishasura had sent a second invading force into the heavens in secret hoping that his presence on the battlefield in Bhuloka would distract the Devas. His ploy had succeeded. With Indra and the vast armies of heaven occupied and defeated in Bhuloka, the invading party in Svarga faced little resistance.

It was an utter defeat on two fronts, as Mahishasura's troops quickly conquered the heavens, granting him dominion over both the immortal realms.

After consolidating his troops, Mahishasura planned to invade Bhuloka and conquer it in one fell swoop.

The Great Preserver was quick to realise the dire implications of this. A being born in the immortal realms couldn't reign in the mortal realms without greatly destabilising the order in Bhuloka. This was also why he had to banish Mahabali many eons back even though he was a benevolent and devout Asura.

But he also realised that because of Agni's boon, his hands were tied. There was nothing he could do to defeat Mahishasura. At least nothing given the immediacy of the situation.

The moment Mahishasura's troops set foot into Bhuloka, the three realms rumbled. An unprecedented feat was about to be achieved. A feat that would shake the world's balance to its core.

Rambha, who stood at the rear of the invading army was ecstatic. As he watched his son decimate a human army with one wave of his mace, a sense of exhilaration consumed him. They were close to achieving their dream of uniting the realms under one banner. They'd defeated the Devas, sending Indra running with his tail between his legs. And there was nothing the great preserver could do to stop them. None could go toe-to-toe with his boy, for he was invincible, undefeatable by any man, Deva or Asura!

Man, Deva, or Asura.

MAN, Deva, or Asura.

---

Rambha had witnessed death before, but watching it claim his blood was different. Twice, he had seen his brother die, each death more savage than the last.

Now, as he beheld the goddess descending on the battlefield, astride a tiger and armed with two glinting talwars, a terrible foreboding knotted in his stomach. This was no ordinary foe. She was fury incarnate, an untamed force against which all of Patala's might seemed small.

Rambha could only watch as Mahishasura faced her alone. Powerless, he watched as the tiger lunged, its claws raking across his son's body, and as the goddess seized Mahishasura by his hair, dragging him through the dust. Horror filled him, yet he could do nothing.

He saw the tiger feasting upon his son, tearing into his flesh while he still lived, and the goddess stood above him, methodically draining his strength and his life.

He could do nothing but watch, helpless as death claimed his son in its brutal, unyielding grip.

Something snapped within Rambha that day.

Barefoot, he journeyed across barren lands toward the towering mountains where He resided.

Rambha prayed for years, forsaking food, water, and sleep. His devotion was unwavering; his purpose singular.

At last, his prayers were answered. The Raven-Skinned One descended from the mountains, his presence dark and foreboding.

Rambha's request was simple yet laced with desperation.

"For as long as a single drop of my blood touches the ground, let another be born from it," he pleaded.

"So be it," the Three-Eyed One replied, his tone as cold as stone. He raised his hand, and from his palm erupted a scorching beam of light. Its searing heat consumed Rambha in seconds, reducing him to a pool of blood.

But from that blood, something began to stir, rising from the crimson depths.

---

Rakhtabhija, the blood-seed, that was his name now. It was the name they called him by. It felt fitting. A drop of blood was all it took for him to amass an army - a veritable field ripe for harvest.

"Your rampage ends here, monster!" The Deva's voice thundered across the battlefield. Resplendent in a gilded chestplate encrusted with jewels, he looked almost too pristine for war as he stood atop his chariot. The chariot was drawn by horses with wings, their golden bridles glinting under the sunlight. How absurdly grand. How impractical.

"We shall see," Rakhtabhija responded while letting his tongue slither out with ecstatic anticipation for the looming carnage.

How had it come to this? Why was he alone against the armies of Svarga?

Well, it all started with a simple slaughter of a city in the mortal realm. A slaughter that barrelled out of control and destroyed an entire kingdom.

And it didn't stop there. Like an endless tide of red, he kept reaving from one population centre to the next. Killing, and desecrating holy sites.

See, Rakhtabhija didn't care anymore. The dream of conquering the three realms no longer fancied him. Now, he was driven only by his thirst for devastation and the bittersweetness of vengeance - vengeance against the Goddess that had stolen his brother away from him. But he knew that she was elusive. She wouldn't show until he was deemed enough of a threat.

To do that, he had to make waves.

Eventually, his wanton desecration had sufficiently irked the pride of the Devas above that they'd decided to descend with an army. Though it did irritate him that the size of the party confronting him was less than half the size that Indra brought down to confront his brother.

No matter, they weren't taking him seriously. That would change.

"Nock!" The command rang out as the Deva general lifted his hand, and ranks of archers readied their arrows, points glittering with celestial light.

"Draw!" Rakhtabhija felt a slow grin spread across his face, the thrill of the fight humming through him.

"Loose!"

He raised his arms wide, welcoming the descending storm of arrows. Each arrow was like a dark point blotting out the sun and casting shadows across the battlefield.

This was going to be deliciously chaotic.

---

Rakhtabhija didn't particularly enjoy devouring his prey. But it was a messy necessity. His powers were double-edged - he couldn't bleed endlessly. Although exorbitant, there was a limit to the amount of blood she could shed before it became irrecoverable.

To remedy that, he had to consume blood. And sucking the blood out of bodies drop by drop was too inefficient. Might as well pop the whole thing in and let his stomach and intestines handle the rest.

"tsk! You need to try harder," he grumbled. A groan responded. He looked below him and tapped the bruised cheek of the quartered general almost mockingly, before popping the man's severed arm into his gaping maw. Then, without ceremony, he hefted the appendage-less torso over his shoulder and dropped the general into his flying chariot.

"Tell them to bring more next time," he requested as he looked into the empty gaze of the man nearing death, before urging the horses to return the grisly package to Svarga.

"Now, to clean up this mess here."

Rakhtabhija bit his finger and let his blood drip into the soil. The drop sank into the ground like ink into parchment, and dark shapes began to rise from it - a lesser version of himself.

"Round them up!" He commanded his lesser selves, gesturing to the surrounding bodies scattered across the battlefield like broken dolls. Satisfied, he approached the large mound of corpses and settled himself atop it.

---

The Devas had returned in greater numbers this time. But as Rakhtabhija surveyed the broken bodies sprawled before him, he knew: it still wasn't enough.

He cast a scornful glance at the corpse of the general whose defiant stare had faded to lifelessness. "I'm torn, truly," he sneered, leaning in close. "Should I be flattered that you dared to return, or insulted that you thought it would change a thing?" With a sharp, dismissive stomp, he crushed the man's skull beneath his heel, bone and blood scattering. "Insulted it is."

With a leap, he landed atop the towering mound of bodies that had amassed into a small mountain.

One scoop after another, he tossed bodies into his maw. Each bite was a brutal act, teeth ripping through flesh and sinew, his jaws grinding bones, his throat swallowing blood and entrails as though they were nectar. The more he consumed, the more his hunger grew, and the more his form warped.

His muscles swelled, and his skin deepened into a more savage shade of crimson as rivulets of blood trickled from his mouth, merging into his flesh. His teeth grew longer and sharper, his tongue morphed into a serpent's coil. His fingers extended into talons, each swipe allowing him to tear through the remains with even greater efficiency, each new corpse fueling a monstrous transformation.

At that moment, his sense of smell observed a sharp note against the iron tang of blood. There was someone nearby. His nose twitched, guiding his gaze to a figure standing at a distance beside the river Ganga. The river that flowed clear and blue was now viscous and crimson with blood.

His curiosity and a primal instinct kicked in. And in an instant, Rakhtabhija was on the move as he bolted from his position atop the mound of corpses.

---

The Rakshasa thundered forward with each step inducing a seismic event. Its unsteady gait betrayed the creature's lack of control. With its raw and chaotic movement, it lumbered like a child struggling to balance. But despite its ungainly approach, it radiated an invisible menace. The palpable threat prickled against Kratos' instincts.

Kratos held his ground and braced for impact. His eyes narrowed as the creature's form blurred before him. In an instant, it was upon him with its sword-like claws slashing forward with a force that sent a violent gust of wind in their wake. His instinct kicked in and Kratos ducked just in time, as he heard the creature's claws whistle past him while it sliced the air inches above his head, missing him by the narrowest of margins.

He took advantage of the moment by stepping forward to close the distance between them. Having fought titans and monsters far taller than himself, he knew that the creature's size and lack of coordination could be used against it. It was one thing to have a powerful and large frame, and it was another to wield it with precision. This Rakshasa clearly struggled with its new form, as it had yet to perfect the instinctive sense of self that any seasoned warrior possessed. Without that, it was clumsy, vulnerable to misjudging distance and balance, and unable to adapt to the movements of its bulk.

This was often the case with beings that are thrust into a new form suddenly. And in every such situation, the best way to gain the advantage was to close the distance, because it was easy to overshoot an attack but extremely difficult to undershoot it.

The Rakshasa swiped again, but Kratos weaved beneath its arm, feeling the rush of wind as its swing barely missed him. With his movements hones through years of countless battles, he could slip past its strikes with ease. As the creature stumbled with its wild and unmeasured swings, Kratos threw body blows into its exposed sides. The sickening thud of his fists colliding against its flesh reverberated with each strike. Each hit destabilised it further, forcing it into an awkward rhythm that made it even more cumbersome.

Then, just as he anticipated, the Rakshasa faltered as it committed to a movement far beyond its level of control. It was all the opening he needed. Summoning his axe, he felt its weight in his hand as it returned, and he swung it upward in a smooth and deadly arc. The blade embedded itself beneath the creature's jaw, shattering its jawbone with a stomach-turning crunch.

Using the creature's thigh as leverage, he kicked off and drove the axe deeper using the momentum of his knee to thrust the handle's back, forcing the blade through its skull with brutal efficiency. Blood sprayed in a dark arc as the creature dropped to its knees. Kratos wrenched the axe free and brought it down in a final, crushing blow to its cranium, causing the gore and brain matter to fountain out.

It was over. Or so he thought.

Before his eyes, the pool of blood gathering beside the corpse began to move. The dark liquid thickened unnaturally, gaining a gelatinous quality as it twisted and morphed like living clay and reformed itself into smaller versions of the slain Rakshasa. Dozens of them. Each miniature creature glistened with fresh blood and their eyes flashed with a feral, relentless hunger.

Realizing the change in his enemy's approach, Kratos leapt back, adjusting his strategy. These smaller beings were nimbler. Their attacks were tighter and more precise. A close confrontation with them was unfavourable, so Kratos resorted to kiting them. Yet their smaller forms closed in with alarming speed.

He lashed out with his axe and struck them, but for everyone he cut down, more seemed to rise from the blood splattering the ground. It was as if each strike only multiplied their number.

Soon, he was surrounded by the smaller Rakshasas swarming him, scratching and biting, their claws slicing into his flesh with haphazard precision. Kratos swung, slashed, kicked, and punched, each movement a desperate attempt to keep them at bay. But their numbers kept growing, the red tide pressing closer, encroaching inch by inch.

He felt his strength ebbing as more of the creatures clambered onto him, tearing into his skin. With each new bite and scratch, his vitality diminished. His vision began to blur, and the cacophony of claws and snarls grew faint. It was now his turn to falter, as his footing slipped on the gelatinous accumulation of blood beneath him. And that was all it took for the horde to descend on him.

Kratos' last sight was a horizon of crimson flesh, descending upon him like a wave until he felt nothing at all.

---

Yet he wasn't out for long. A rush of air entered his lungs, which he was certain were deflated and consumed as he still lived.

He looked around and noticed the creatures collecting the body parts of his form that they had just recently butchered. Yet here he was, remade anew. Unscathed. Prepared.

He immediately tossed his axe before confronting the nearest creature. He grabbed it from behind in a choke hold before compressing his muscles and snapping its neck in one swift motion. Before the horde could register, he was upon the next, and then the next.

Even after they officially engaged him, Kratos proceeded with the methodical precision of a seasoned hunter, taking down his enemies with unrelenting efficiency.

He could not use sharp weapons. And he could not let them spill blood. Rather untrivial conditions for victory, but he'd fought against worse odds and come out the victor.

As he finished his thirtieth opponent, Kratos noticed a shift. The creatures no longer moved alone, rather they formed groups of twos or threes with their backs against each other. And they no longer succumbed to his kiting manoeuvres, immediately disengaging when he drew them beyond a certain radius centring at a much larger version of their form that was rapidly growing. They no longer fell for his obvious feints, creating distance if an obvious opening presented itself. Gradually, they stopped falling for his more convoluted chain of moves that would draw them into a compromising state.

He didn't even anticipate it when a pair of arms rose from the ground and held down both his feet. For the second time, he felt himself being devoured alive and disassembled piece by piece. Before he was unceremoniously thrust back into his body that was unscathed like before he'd engaged with these beasts.

---

After his third attempt ended mere moments after resurrection, Kratos understood: that he had grown complacent. The edge he once held that was honed by the urgency of survival and vengeance, had dulled. His hands clenched into tight fists as he swallowed the bitter realisation that without the threat of true death, he had lost something vital - a sharpness, a desperation.

This was not his first encounter with a creature that could multiply itself endlessly. The Hydra's memory flickered through his mind. That was a foe that demanded precision and patience, as each severed head doubled its fury. That was the first time Kratos had to temper his fury and push his methodical thinking to its limits.

But the Rakshasa's power felt different - less predictable, more chaotic. Where the Hydra followed a brutal rhythm, the Rakshasa was pure frenzy. Yet this was also a facade. Because Kratos could see the sharp intelligence that flickered within the eyes of these creatures. Their mind functioned faster than his own, as their ability to adapt was quicker than any seasoned warrior he'd ever fought against - even Ares, who prided himself in being the greatest god of war.

They learned continuously. And their brutality followed with it.

But Kratos did not believe in invulnerability. Anything that breathed, could be killed - even him with his now limitless ability to resurrect. All that was necessary was perspective. And thanks to his limitless resurrections, he was afforded an unlimited amount of that.

With his fourth resurrection, Kratos shifted his method of approach.

There were many ways to kill someone without bloodshed. He'd tried one unsuccessfully. As his attention turned to the babbling stream of red behind him, another strategy presented itself.

He grabbed one of the creatures and leapt with it into the river. He held it down, as it scratched and clawed to escape his death grip. This struggle went on for a while before the creature went limp, and so did Kratos.

But within seconds, he was back, his axe in hand.

He leapt out of the river and found another and repeated the same.

It was a slower method. But it worked. However, he quickly realised that the creature wasn't averse to maiming itself to spawn more of its kind. And it didn't let the bodies of its fallen selves go to waste as another was waiting downstream to catch its own corpses and consume them, adding them back into its body.

Frustrating. But not a complete failure.

 

[juniorsundar]

The village was silent, utterly barren. The birds that once sang and filled the air with merriment had vanished, leaving behind an eerie quiet. Dust motes danced in the shafts of pale sunlight that filtered through the barred windows of the temple. Even the wind had grown dreary, barely stirring the sagging leaves of the trees that surrounded and dotted the deserted village streets. The only sound was the occasional creak of the agape wooden doors of the abandoned homes that once housed lively families.

The natural paint peeled from the mud houses like sunburnt skin, revealing the grey, weathered mud bricks beneath. A string of fresh marigold garlands hung limply across the entrance to the temple, but even their once vibrant colours had become bleached by the relentless sun.

A faint hum of words reverberated within the temple, spilling out of its weathered doors and contrasting sharply with the eerie quiet of the abandoned village. Inside, the air was thick with the scent of sandalwood incense and the earthy aroma of dried cow dung. A man sat cross-legged before the idol of Durga, his lips moving in a muted prayer. The goddess, adorned with a garland of fresh marigolds, sat atop a stone pedestal. Her painted, yet lively eyes gazed out at the desolate landscape beyond the temple walls.

This was the only part of the village that still carried life. And the man who remained last while his village had left, was the caretaker of the hallowed building - the priest. His head was clean-shaven except for a medium-length of hair tied into a thin braid. His forehead was plastered with ash with a thin line of crimson cutting through it. His eyes were closed, a spiritual calm washing over him.

But the serenity of the moment was about to be shattered as the hurried sounds of a person approaching could be heard. As it grew closer, the temple floor vibrated faintly. Within seconds, the doors were swung open in earnest and a young man, breathless and dishevelled, stumbled into the temple.

This was a teen, a lot younger than the middle-aged priest, but carried the same thin braided strand, clean-shaven head, and ashen forehead with the crimson bisecting line.

"The King's messengers have spoken, Guruji. We need to evacuate now!" The boy pleaded as he slid into a kneeling position behind his master. His eyes darted between the idol of his Goddess and his master's back until instinct took in and he let out a quick succession of prose in Sanskrit to greet the Goddess.

"This temple has been under the care of my family for generations. I cannot abandon it," the priest responded, interjecting his prayers but without turning to face his disciple. "You should follow the rest of the villagers."

The teen clenched his palms into a tight fist before letting out a quivering breath to calm himself. Then, he responded methodically, "Wherever the Goddess lives the temple will follow. And the Goddess lives where her followers reside."

At that moment, the priest turned to face his disciple and gently patted the boy's shoulder.

"I don't think we have time to debate semantics, my dear disciple," he said with a bitter chuckle. "This temple has stood in this village for centuries before me and was wardened by my ancestors. I will die before abandoning it."

"You should go," he added with a resolute expression. "You aren't beholden to this directive like I am-"

"How can you ask me to abandon you!" The boy bellowed with tears streaking down his face and his eyes burning red with rage and sorrow. "What would they call a disciple who abandons his Guru at their time of need?"

"I cannot ask you to perish with me either. It isn't just!" The priest argued in response.

The boy dried his face with the sleeves of his kurta and said, "We either perish together or not at all! That is final!"

The priest sucked in a sharp breath of air before standing up and reprimanding the boy, "Do not be so stubborn, child! You need to leave now."

He tried to pry the boy from his place but he was stubborn. The kid in turn hugged the priest's leg in a vice grip and refused to let go.

"Oh Goddess protect me, give this child some sense!" The priest expressed exhaustion after failing to extricate his disciple from his legs.

He threw his arms into the air in defeat and declared, "Fine! Have it your way."

Cautiously, the boy let go of his master and slunk back into a meditative state with his legs crossed. The duo descended into a harmonious exhortation towards the Goddess for protection, support and salvation, letting the world blend away.

Belief was what drove mortals forward. The belief was that there was a higher power out there listening to them and willing to assist them when things escaped beyond their control. The priest believed. The boy, though, was still sceptical towards the Goddess' powers. But he believed his master, and that was what kept him from leaving.

Minutes flowed like the endless currents of the river until a faint rumble caught their attention.

This was it.

Although they hadn't personally witnessed the so-called "Tidal Wave of Blood" that had annihilated kingdoms and even defeated the armies of heavens twice, leaving none alive, the explicit stories of the slaughter had inevitably made its way into the village. And from what the two had heard, what awaited them wasn't a pleasant end.

The priest was more schooled in his expression, able to suppress the fear that was practically causing his entire body to vibrate. The kid, however, wasn't. His teeth chattered in trepid harmony with the rumbling of the ground. His body became increasingly drenched in sweat.

The rumbling grew louder and closer. The ground vibrated beneath their feet. Louder. Closer. The boy whimpered, his eyes wide with terror.

Then, silence. A heartbeat.

The temple doors burst open. A monstrous shadow engulfed them, contorting and swaying in the flickering light.

"AAAAAAAAAHHHH!" The boy's shriek echoed through the temple. He scrambled backwards, his limbs flailing, until he collided with the wall, curling into a fetal position.

The priest's breath hitched in his throat. He shielded his eyes against the sudden glare from the sunlight, his heart pounding in his chest.

"Eh? Ah! Punditji, you're here! Good!" A booming voice echoed. (Punditji is a respectful way of calling a priest)

"Mohan?" the priest called back, recognizing the familiar individual at the entryway. This was the buffalo-herder of the village, a man whose bulk filled the doorway. Despite his size, Mohan was known for his simple-mindedness and harmlessness, a consequence of being kicked in the head by a buffalo as a child. "What are you doing here? Shouldn't you have evacuated with the rest of the villagers?"

"Umm... We did," Mohan bumbled, his voice echoing in the temple. "But we saw something... I think you should come see this." With that, he turned and lumbered away, his footsteps pounding the earth as he hurried back towards the village.

The priest slowly stood up, his joints creaking, and nudged his disciple. "Come, child," he said, his voice firm despite the tremor in his hands. The boy, still pale and trembling, unfolded himself from his fetal position and followed the priest out of the temple.

Outside, the entire village was gathered, their faces etched with fear and uncertainty. The village chief, a wiry man with a weathered face and a long, grey beard, approached the priest and bowed deeply. "Punditji," he said, his voice heavy with worry, "the convoy was just leaving. But the Rakshasa... they reached the farms, blocking our path. We were certain of our demise, but then..." He paused, his eyes darting towards the horizon. "Something caught their attention. They all turned and ran towards the river. Our fastest runners followed, and..."

"What is it?!" the priest urged, unable to bear the suspense. The village chief scratched his head under his turban. "I think you need to see this for yourself, Punditji. I am not sure what to make of it."

The group turned and moved as one towards the farmlands, a sea of anxious faces heading towards the distant plumes of dust rising from the fields. The farmlands were a good half-hour's walk from the village, bordering the wide expanse of the Ganga. As they traversed the parched land, the sounds of battle grew louder and carried on the wind. The maddening screeches of the Rakshasa echoed across the plains, punctuated by the grunts and yells of a lone man fighting for his life.

The priest squinted, trying to make out the figures in the distance. The villagers, a tight knot of fear and anticipation, followed closely behind him. They were still a fair distance away, but the sight that awaited them was already beginning to take shape against the horizon.

Once they approached a distance that was sufficiently close to observe the situation, they were shocked to witness the sight before them. The sea of healthy beige wheat had been decimated and replaced with a morbid swatch of crimson. The river that was alive and blue was now a deathly velvet shade, causing even the healthy peat-brown soil to turn darker.

But what shocked them even more was witnessing a lone warrior, coated in ash and blood, fighting against the horde by his lonesome. The priest was about to ask them what exactly was going on, but it was at that moment that the horde gained the advantage and started to tear into the stumbling man like ravenous beasts. The priest could barely hold back his shock and disgust before in front of his eyes, the man appeared again, whole and unharmed.

"What the-"

The fight reignited. With a familiar dance and exchange before the man was once again caught, disassembled and consumed. Only to revive anew.

"Incredible!" The priest's disciple exclaimed. "Guruji, who is this warrior?"

The priest had an idea, as his eyes were fixated on the axe the man was wielding. But the man's appearance did not overlap with the person who supposedly owned the weapon. This confounded the priest for a moment. But he quickly collected himself and instructed the villagers, "What are you people waiting for? Leave! The warrior is occupying the Rakshasa and is offering you the opportunity to evacuate safely."

The village chief flinched at the priest's sudden outburst.

"B-But..." he mumbled.

"What are you hesitating about? LEAVE!"

"But Guruji!" The boy cut in. His eyes glimmering with a type of fanaticism the priest had only read about from his great-grandfather's memoirs. This was the same emotion his ancestor evoked in his writing when talking about Durga, their ancestral deity. "It would be unjust to hang the warrior out to dry like this when he is putting his very life on the line for our safety!"

Noticing the villagers nodding their heads subconsciously, the priest furrowed his brows and whacked the boy at the back of his head. Then with a stern whisper, he said, "Do not get lost in your emotions. These people look towards us for guidance. We cannot lead them to their peril while being consumed in our emotions."

Then, he said out loud, "How exactly do you intend to support this brave warrior?"

This question quelled the swelling ambience as the villagers shook away their aberrant thoughts.

But it seemed that his stern warnings hadn't passed over to his disciple, as the boy slapped his fist against his open palm and shouted, "We must observe a Vira Puja for this warrior's victory!"

Having had enough, the priest grabbed the boy's ear and asked, "Do you even know what the purpose of this prayer is?"

"OW! O-Of course, Guruji-"

"Is it the right circumstance for this Puja?"

"W-Well-"

"Do you think prayers as inconsequential gibberish? To be spoken without thought and consequence? Is this how I have taught you, boy?" The priest scolded. But he could see that his words had little effect on the boy's enthusiasm.

He let go of the boy's earlobe and let out a worried sigh. He then turned to the villagers and repeated, "You need to evacuate now. We do not know how long this warrior can hold on for. The best course of action is for us to take advantage of this opportunity and create distance."

"W-Will you be coming with us, Punditji?" The chief asked. To which the man shook his head firmly, "My place is with my Goddess."

As he observed the villagers filing out in a hurry, he turned to his disciple and bit his lips in thought. After some contemplation, he placed a gentle palm on the boy's shoulder and said, "If you wish to do something for the warrior, an Agni Puja will suffice."

"T-Thank you, Guruji-"

"You will lead this prayer," the man declared before moving towards the well nearby and pulling out the loose mud bricks. As he formed the pit for the fire, the boy gulped loudly and said, "B-But Guruji, do you think I am ready?"

"You're as ready as you will ever be," the man responded. This was a big deal because being able to lead a Puja was the rite of passage for the disciple to graduate and become a full-fledged priest. "And truthfully, if this IS the end, I don't want this karmic tether to be retained."

"G-Guruji?" The boy stuttered sorrowfully.

"Don't get me wrong. I don't want to burden you in your next life by becoming my disciple again. Find someone better," he assuaged with a warm smile.

"You are my Guru in this life and in every subsequent life no matter what I am reborn as!" The boy declared resolutely.

"Enough talk, run back to the temple and collect the items needed, I will prepare the pyre in the meantime," the priest instructed.

Once the boy was out of sight, the priest looked back at the war raging before him and hardened his expression.

"Win." He said.

The warrior had to win.

---

Rakhtabhija couldn't process the situation. He was beginning to regret this confrontation with the tenacious human who simply refused to die! The irony wasn't lost on him; his match was someone with a power similar to his own – practical immortality.

The logical course of action was clear: disengage, regroup, and try alternative strategies. But retreat meant defeat, and Rakhtabhija refused to accept another loss. Not again. His pride wouldn't allow it. He would push forward, even if it meant slamming against a brick wall repeatedly.

He didn't understand the principle behind his opponent's immortality, but he assumed it was voluntary. So, he reasoned, all he had to do was outlast the human and tire him out. A classic war of attrition. He was certain it was achievable.

But as the hours bled into days, a gnawing doubt began to worm its way into his mind. The man showed no signs of fatigue. He just kept coming. Following each death, he returned with renewed vigour and the same burning glint in his eyes. Who was this man?

One day turned into two, and the assault continued relentlessly. Two turned into three. The once fertile farmland was now a churned-up wasteland, painted crimson with blood. The stench of death hung heavy in the air, thick and cloying. Three days bled into four, then into an entire week. But the man...just...kept...coming...back.

Rakhtabhija's mind was aching. There was a drawback to his endless resurrection. Each death assimilated the knowledge and experience gained from that life into his collective psyche. And each and every death that was accrued brought with it the pain of the cause of said death. At this point, he'd even lost count of how many of his forms had been slain. But the growing buzz in his mental space was sufficient to conclude that it was taking a toll on him.

Doubt warred with his pride. Was this truly a battle he could win? Or was his ego blinding him to a grim reality?

---

What was Kratos doing? What was the point in all of this? His body moved with familiarity, dodging, weaving, attacking. It was a dance he'd practised for years, a dance that had become a macabre muscle memory.

What was he gaining from confronting this monster so doggedly? He knew, by now, that there was no way to defeat it without stopping its blood from hitting the ground. He lacked the resources. The correct course of action would be to disengage, regroup, and find another strategy. But Kratos didn't want to. He would take that approach if he wanted to kill the beast. But he didn't care. He didn't care if the monster died. He didn't care if he died.

He was doing what he was born to do. Fight. Kill. Die. Again. And again.

Kratos realized, with a chilling clarity, the strange comfort Sisyphus might have found in his endless struggle. Just one job. A job that was also his punishment. A punishment that required no thought. No need to eat, sleep, or drink. Just keep pushing the boulder up, up, up. This monster was his boulder. He could see the burning ego in its gaze, and he just knew that the creature wouldn't relent.

This was, in effect, an endless fight.

A hell of his own design.

His torture chamber.

His damnation.

His comeuppance.

"Who are you to decide that?"

The voice echoed in his mindscape, pulling him away from the battle. He found himself dissociated from his body, floating in a shallow pool of water.

"How convenient, isn't it, Spartan?"

Kratos looked around, into the consuming shadows. A figure emerged.

"Athena!" he growled, his voice rough with disuse and despair.

"How astute," the Goddess mocked. The smug figure of the Greek Goddess of Knowledge and Warfare stepped out of the shadows, her feet gliding over the water without a ripple. Her presence brought a wave of nausea and self-loathing crashing over him.

"Do you really think that this is sufficient to atone for the atrocities you've committed?" She challenged.

The water around Kratos started to churn, reflecting his rising anger. "This... this is my punishment," he spat.

Athena laughed with a cold and hollow twang that echoed in the emptiness. "This? This is nothing, Kratos. This is merely a playground for your guilt and a pathetic attempt to atone. Do you call this suffering? You haven't even begun to pay the price for your sins."

Kratos lunged forward, his hands reaching for Athena's throat. With overwhelming rage, he strangled the spectral form of the Goddess, who barely reacted, returning a chilling smile that caused him to flinch.

"You think you know suffering?" he roared, his voice cracking with emotion. "You think you know the depths of my pain?"

"Oh, Kratos," the woman said with mock sympathy. "Where do you think you are?"

The shadows and mist dissipated, the shallow waters evaporating. What remained was a scene Kratos barely remembered. The goddess's form dispersed, replaced by his wife, Calliope. Her eyes bulging red and wide with fear. A faint whisper of his name escaped her lips, followed by her final breath.

Her figure spontaneously incinerated and her ashes seared into his skin, causing an unbearable burning and itching sensation across every inch of his body. Kratos screamed while clawing at his flesh, trying to escape the agonizing pain.

"Now this!" The Goddess's voice boomed with malice. "This is suffering. This is punishment."

Kratos was forced to relive the murder of his wife and daughter, again and again. His body moved involuntarily, yet his consciousness remained agonizingly aware. He witnessed his daughter being impaled by the Blades of Chaos, her tears replaced with crimson streaks of blood as she was incinerated alive from within. He watched helplessly, as his wife slipped away slowly and painfully by his own hands. Each vision was more vivid than the last, the pain more excruciating, the horror more profound.

He was trapped in a loop of agony with his past sins replaying before his eyes in a hideous spectacle of death and despair.

This was his torture chamber.

His damnation.

His true comeuppance.

---

The man's movements had become mechanical and repetitive. While the man wasn't successful in his attempt to best Rakhtabhija, gone was the spark of innovation and unpredictability in his strategies that kept Rakhtabhija on edge and entertained. Now, it was just a monotonous cycle. The same attacks, executed in the same sequence, over and over again. The man moved with a dullness in his eyes. It was a distant look that implied that while he was here physically, his mental state was dissociated.

Rakhtabhija yearned to disengage. This fight had become a tedious dance and a pointless exercise in futility. But to disengage was to admit defeat, and that was unacceptable.

Again. His pride wouldn't allow it.

He was trapped in a stalemate, his opponent's stubborn persistence forced him to continue this farcical battle.

Rakhtabhija's frustration mounted.

How much longer could this go on? Something had to change, and soon.

---

The master and apprentice began the prayer in earnest. With the village deserted, there was no shortage of offerings to Agni – ghee, fragrant sandalwood, dried herbs, and fruits hastily left behind. The master moved methodically, selecting each item with reverence, while the disciple began to chant the ancient Sanskrit verses, his voice clear and resonant even in the open farm fields that were already filled with the cacophonic sounds of the battle raging ahead.

The fire pit crackled as the flames caught, fueled by the purest ghee. They danced and flickered, casting an ethereal glow with their intensity mirroring the growing fervour of the ritual.

The priest watched his disciple closely. The boy had entered a state of complete absorption. His movements were fluid and precise as he performed the mudras - the ritual gestures - and offered each item to the flames. The Sanskrit words flowed from his lips with precise pronunciation and perfect pacing, punctuated properly.

A wave of pride washed over the priest, followed by a pang of unease. This state of complete concentration, of utter immersion in the divine, was not easily achieved. Learned scholars, renowned ascetics, men who had dedicated their lives to spiritual pursuits – many had strived for this state and failed. Yet, this boy, barely a man, had attained it with such apparent ease.

But the priest knew that this was a false assumption. It was no easy feat to achieve something like that, especially in such a tense environment.

Then, it struck him. Passion. That was the key. The boy possessed a burning passion, an unwavering faith in the power of the unknown warrior he prayed to. It was this passion that fueled his devotion, allowing him to transcend the limitations of his mind and achieve a state of pure communion with the divine.

The priest felt a twinge of regret. He had always been a devout man dedicated to his duties, but had he truly been passionate? Had he approached his worship of his Goddess with the same fervour and the same unwavering belief as the boy? Perhaps if he had, he too would have attained this state of spiritual transcendence.

Meanwhile, the boy remained oblivious to the conflict brewing within his master's mind, as well as the battle raging between the Rakshasa and the warrior. His focus was solely on the internal conflict between the involuntary processes sustaining his body and his conscious mind, which was wholly immersed in the mantras.

What separates animals and mortals from the transcended is a simple equation. Was it the mind or the body that reigned supreme? For animals, the body reigned supreme, as their mind was beholden to the needs and wants of the body.

Eating, sleeping, excreting - these were the mundane tethers that bound mortals to their physical existence and were the involuntary "wants" of the body that acted as distractions, hindering spiritual ascension. While for animals, the body supersedes the mind, most sentient mortals with the capacity for higher thinking face a constant struggle between their body and mind. The requirement for transcendence is realising that it is the mind that is superior to the body, and having complete independence from the concerns of those base necessities.

The boy wasn't necessarily an "animal", but he wasn't transcended either. As the day stretched into the next, the boy's body began to rebel. Hunger gnawed at his belly and his throat grew parched, turning his voice into a raspy whisper. He was tempted to give in, to succumb to the demands of his physical needs.

However, another primal instinct, one that transcended mortality itself, spurred him onward - the fear of death. He knew that if his prayer faltered and the warrior fell, his own demise would be inevitable and brutal. He also knew that by suppressing his physical needs, he increased the warrior's chances of victory. The potential consequence – incapacitation, perhaps even a prolonged illness. That paled in comparison to the certainty of death.

Faced with the choice between inevitable death and the possibility of survival, albeit through suffering, the answer was clear. He would endure.

Days turned into weeks. But the boy did not halt in his prayers. His voice had more or less disappeared, but his lips moved and the words still left him.

His body grew emaciated, concerning his Master to no end. But both knew that having reached this far into the prayers, there was no point in stopping. And so, as the master swallowed his discomfort while watching his beloved disciple growing wearier by the day. And the disciple bit through the pain as his body screamed in agony.

It was at the end of the second week, that the boy knew he'd reached his limit. His eyes no longer opened. His body had quite literally eaten away all of his muscle and fat. He looked like he'd aged decades within the span of fourteen days.

The priest could take it no more. The war between monster and man looked like it could go on for aeons. This wasn't a fight for mortals to interfere in.

Right as he was about to catch his disciple and drag him to safety, the ground rumbled.

---

Kratos was trapped in a Sisyphean loop, an endless cycle of torment that chipped away at his soul with each repetition. He had lost count of the times he'd murdered his wife and daughter. Each death was a fresh wound on his already scarred psyche. The initial agony had dulled into a numb despair, then a chilling apathy.

Nothing mattered. Not the screams of his wife, not the terror in his daughter's eyes, not even his own existence. He was a puppet, forced to reenact his greatest sins for an unseen audience, his will shackled, his spirit broken.

The visions blurred into a grotesque montage of blood and suffering. Calliope's pleading eyes, Calliope's lifeless body, over and over and over. He was no longer a participant. He was merely an observer, detached and indifferent to the horrors unfolding before him.

What was the point of resistance? What was the point of anything?

Kratos drifted through the endless cycle as his mind grew numb. His emotions faded into a void of nothingness. He was a ghost, haunting the ruins of his own life as a prisoner in his own mind.

... his own mind ...

'I cannot help you if you don't want it,' Kratos remembered.

"I-I do want forgiveness. I want to atone!" he bellowed, the sound of his own voice a jarring intrusion in the silent torment.

He had been going about it all wrong. His whole life, destruction had been his only solution, his default response to every problem. But now, he saw the truth. Destruction wasn't a solution; it was the cause.

Endless, brutal self-punishment wasn't the answer. He was walking down the same path of destruction, merely redirecting it inward.

This was wrong!

"I am not a puppet!" Kratos roared, defiance surging through him. He wrestled against the ingrained patterns of his mind, against the compulsion to repeat the cycle of violence. And with great effort, he forced his hands to release his wife, breaking the chain of torment.

The Blades of Chaos materialized in his hands and its chains seared his flesh like molten fire. But this time, he resisted. With a guttural cry, he forcefully kept his hands from acting against his daughter.

The void that he was in rumbled as his boundless rage and will resonated all over the place. The last thing Kratos saw before he was ejected from this void, was the faint smile of his daughter and wife. But it was also at this point that he lost his consciousness to his rage.

---

The ground shook violently, forcing Rakhtabhija to stumble and interrupt his attack. A wave of crimson energy exploded outwards from the man, and a guttural roar tore from his throat. The very earth seemed to tremble in response, dust and stones swirling around him in a chaotic dance.

The roar subsided, but the tremors intensified as the ground rippled and buckled with increasing ferocity. Rakhtabhija's massive form swayed precariously, and he lost his footing and crashed to the ground. At that moment, a gaping fissure ripped through the earth centred on the man. Molten lava surged from the chasm and painted the battlefield in a fiery glow.

Two chains, glowing with an infernal heat, erupted from the fissure. Their movements were swift and predatory. They lashed out like living things, sinking their fangs into the man's forearms and coiling around his flesh with terrifying speed.

The chains pulsed with molten fury as they pulled more lava from the depths. And as the fiery torrent surged, it revealed the weapons bound to the chains' ends - two wicked blades whose edges gleamed with a malevolent light.

Rakhtabhija's blood ran cold. For the first time since his resurrection, he felt the fear of impending death.

If there was ever a better time to retreat, it would be now.

 

[juniorsundar]

A/N: Apologies for the delay. I keep a 4 Chapter buffer as I write. And in the current chapter, Kratos has already finished his journey alongside the river. Without spoiling, I have to now introduce 4 new characters that are quintessential in the Hindu Mythos. Doing so without being disrespectful took quite a bit of time as it involved a lot of research.

---

The priest lost his footing and collapsed onto the ground as the earth beneath him rumbled with incessant fury. He'd never seen destruction of this proportion before in his entire life. The ground itself started to crack, emitting a flurry of molten rock.

And it did not stop. The fissure that originated with the warrior at its epicentre, extended outwards in all directions, swallowing most of the smaller version of the Rakshasa in its wake.

The priest's elation at the turn of events was short-lived, though, because the fissure did not cease its rapid approach in their general direction.

"W-Watch out!" He yelled towards his disciple. But he knew that his calls were wasted. There was no escape, for either of them. With open eyes, he awaited the gaping maws of Bhumi Devi - the Earth Goddess - as she was about to swallow them.

But then something amazing happened.

The fissure snaking towards them collided with the pyre first. And the construct exploded into a mist of soot and embers before a line of fire extended in a perpendicular vector to the fissure, in both directions. His eyes traced the rapidly extending line of blue flames as they circumnavigated the village, forming a type of boundary. And to his surprise, he saw that the approaching fissure had halted. The world outside the boundary was overturned in fury, but within their safe haven surrounded by the sacred fire, they were safe.

At that moment, the priest heard the hoarse shrieks of the monster as the closest clone beelined towards them. It jumped over the cracks and oozing lava, and leapt with its claws extended towards his disciple, who sat closest to the boundary.

The priest's exclamation halted in his throat as the creature disintegrated instantaneously as soon as its body crossed the boundary. From a mass of flesh, it was turned to grey ash.

"Amazing!" He exclaimed.

The destruction did not cease and the rampant ejection of molten rock from below grew more violent, blanketing everything in a new sea of red - a sea of red that consumed everything!

Right then, a metaphysical wave of pressure washed over them. A pressure so great that the priest was forced to kneel. He feared for his disciple's condition and worried that he wouldn't be able to bear it. Yet to his surprise, he saw the boy seated in the same cross-legged position. Through sheer force of will, the boy fought through the pressure, only collapsing after losing consciousness once the pressure had lifted itself.

As the priest cradled the boy's head to ensure that he didn't accidentally swallow his tongue, he observed the battle raging behind the boundary of fire. It wouldn't be incorrect to say that the tables had turned. The warrior was decimating the Rakshasas faster than the lava could. He harvested their lives like a farmer harvesting common crops - the chains that tethered the jagged blades to his forearms burned with righteous fury as they cleaved through the beasts with gruesome efficiency. Due to the heat emitted by these weapons, the bodies cauterised themselves automatically before even a drop of blood could escape. And the blood that did spurt out unhindered was burned into ash before it could even reach the ground.

The man had thoroughly trounced the beast's power and singular advantage.

This was it. They were saved!

---

Rakhtabhija did not anticipate a turnabout so swift and decisive to present itself, that too so unexpectedly.

It was akin to a mighty fortress, thought impregnable, crumbling unexpectedly from a single, rogue shot from a slingshot.

As all of his many forms were cleaved and burned, his mind started to shut down under the overwhelming pressure of the agony and the fear of rapidly encroaching death.

In his final moments, he could only chuckle wryly at the irony of dying to a veritable nobody. He thought he could overturn the three realms, and bring them to their knees. But he could barely defeat an unknown immortal from nowhere.

Maybe if he had disengaged earlier and hadn't let his pride get to his head, he could have lived to see another day.

Well, what use was dwelling in hindsight?

---

Kratos remained in a limbo state for an immeasurable duration. His mind was first to gain clarity, and because of that, he was thrust into the never-ending cycle of nightmares gifted by the cursed axe almost immediately. He was adrift in a sea of agony, unsure how long he had been submerged.

Eventually, though, his eyes snapped open and a searing flash of light momentarily blinded him. He winced as he cleared the gritty sand caking his eyelids.

"He's waking up!" a voice exclaimed, tinged with both excitement and relief. This was instantly followed by a raspy, "Shush! Let them rest!"

A tired groan rumbled in Kratos's chest as his hearing sharpened, and gradually, the world around him began to take shape.

He lay on a coarse, wooden mattress within a dimly lit thatched hut. The air hung heavy with the scent of damp earth and wood smoke. A figure stirred in the shadows, and a small group of children with curious eyes peeked in from the entrance.

At that moment, a wet cloth, smelling faintly of herbs, brushed against his shoulder and trailed down his arm causing a surge of warmth to course up his skin - he was being cleaned.

His vision cleared, and he finally saw a teenage boy tending to him. The boy was thin and wiry, his eyes wide with awe.

"W-Who are you?" Kratos rasped a dry voice that came out as a brittle whisper. He was parched, incredibly so.

The boy didn't answer; instead, he dipped a clay cup into an earthenware jug and brought it to Kratos's lips. The water, infused with herbs and spices, left a bitter aftertaste, but it soothed his throat as he drank.

Ignoring the boy's anxious urging to rest, Kratos sat up while contending against every muscle in his body that protested with a dull ache. He studied the teenager, his gaze lingering on the boy's trembling hands.

The boy fell to his knees, prostrating himself before Kratos. Kratos sensed no fear in the boy's trembling; it was not the cowering of prey before a predator, but pure, unadulterated reverence. The intensity of it was unsettling and evoked a suffocating weight that Kratos instinctively recoiled from. He disliked the feeling of being revered; he didn't deserve it.

"What are you doing!" Kratos roared, his voice rough with irritation.

"This one apologizes for his failings," the boy stammered, his voice barely above a whisper. "This one tried his best to feed the Great Warrior, but he was in a coma and couldn't swallow. This one saw the Great Warrior succumb to malnourishment, only to be reborn without any ailment."

"How long?" Kratos grunted, cutting through the boy's rambling.

"Hm?" the boy said, startled. Understanding Kratos's question, he quickly replied, "Three lunar cycles."

"Three lunar cycles," Kratos echoed—three months.

"What happened?" Kratos demanded, his brow furrowed in concentration. His memories of the fight were a fragmented and chaotic jumble of blood and fury.

"The Great Warrior defeated the ruthless demon Rakhtabhija," the boy recounted, his eyes wide with awe, "drowning its many mimics in a raging torrent of molten rock and soil." The boy's admiration was palpable and turbulent like a suffocating wave. It washed over Kratos and left him feeling nauseous.

"Be careful, Great Warrior!" the boy exclaimed, his voice laced with concern as Kratos lurched to his feet and nearly stumbling. The boy rushed out and returned with an intricately carved walking stick. He gently placed it in Kratos's hands. "Guruji anticipated that the Great Warrior might have trouble walking after being unconscious for so long," the boy explained. "This one made this stick from the heartwood of the ancient banyan tree; it's quite sturdy."

Kratos, ignoring the boy's incessant chatter, ducked through the low doorway. The sudden burst of sunlight momentarily blinded him. The vibrant colours of the village – the lush greens, the earthy browns, the bright splashes of flowers – assaulted his senses. As he stepped out, he was greeted by the sound of children's laughter. Suddenly, something small and solid crashed into him, and a high-pitched yelp followed by a muffled thud echoed through the air.

"Rekha!" the boy scolded, rushing to the fallen girl and lifting her to her feet. "Apologize to the Great Warrior!"

"I-I'm sowwy," the girl whimpered, tears welling in her eyes. The boy gave her a gentle swat and shooed her away. "Please forgive her, Great Warrior; she meant no disrespect. Children are often careless."

His patience wearing thin, Kratos pushed past the boy and continued on as an unknown force pulled him forward. One of the few things he remembered from his rage-fueled blackout was the presence of something he thought he'd lost, something dangerous. He hoped he was wrong, but the renewed burn scars on his forearms, throbbing with a dull ache, suggested otherwise.

His feet carried him to the village centre, drawn to a building that towered over the surrounding huts. It was constructed from black stone, with its stark geometry and imposing facade reminiscent of the temple in Kashi, though on a smaller scale.

Kratos hesitantly approached the entrance as a sense of foreboding settled over him. The cloying scent of sandalwood and incense smoke wafted from within, but it did little to calm the growing unease in his gut. He knew what awaited him beyond those heavy wooden doors.

He froze, his breath catching in his throat. The gentle ringing of bells from within the temple echoed in his skull. Each chime was like a hammer's blow against his sanity.

"This one took the liberty of cleaning the Great Warrior's weapons and placing them on the altar inside," the boy's voice piped up from behind, startling Kratos. "Such powerful Shastras deserve to be stored in a place of reverence. Forgive this one's presumption—"

The world swam before Kratos's eyes. He took a shaky breath and forced himself to step through the doorway, his heart pounding like a war drum.

And there they were, bathed in the soft glow of flickering oil lamps, the Blades of Chaos.

The blades were as he'd recollected them before he'd collapsed down Mount Olympus. Their obsidian-black surfaces were etched with intricate patterns that seemed to writhe and shift in the flickering lamplight. They were caked with a rusty sheen, either a result of ageing and poor maintenance or the blood of countless victims seeping into the very metal, staining them with the crimson of death.

The sight of them sent a wave of nausea through Kratos causing bile to rise up his throat like a venomous serpent. What amplified his revulsion was the line of crimson powder adorning the auburn blades, another sign of reverence in these lands. The chains that tethered to the blades' hilts were coiled into a neat pile, and they were smothered in a shower of marigolds, roses, and jasmines.

And the people, the many villagers, they were prostrated before the altar, worshipping it!

The suffocating scent of the flowers, the hushed reverence of the temple, the weight of a thousand eyes upon him - it was all too much. Panic clawed at his throat and constricted his breath. He had to get out and escape the suffocating piety that threatened to drown him.

He stumbled back from the altar. He turned and fled past the teenager, his bare feet pounding against the smooth stone floor. He burst through the temple doors and hobbled through the village. His walking stick was a useless appendage at this point and was lost somewhere along the way. The villagers grew startled by his sudden appearance and frantic demeanour and swarmed around him in concern. But the cacophony of sounds amplified his feeling of claustrophobia.

Kratos shoved past them. He had to get away.

His breathing grew heavy, and so did his footsteps. He did not know how far he'd traversed in this state of panic. But he could recognise the surroundings a bit.

Before him lay a scene of utter devastation. What used to be a fertile expanse of farmland was now a wasteland of jagged igneous rock formations. This was the battlefield, scarred and broken. This was familiar in many ways to Kratos. Most of his life was spent on one battlefield or the other. And all of them were exactly the same; they were filled with desolation and isolation.

Yet, amidst the devastation here, signs of life persisted. The sky above was a clear, vibrant blue, devoid of the oppressive gloom that was usually the case. And amidst the crows - the frequent inhabitants of battlefields - there were the sounds of sparrows and other songbirds. The air, though still heavy with the scent of sulfur and ash, carried the faintest hint of new growth. His senses which had finally escaped the tunnel-vision wrought of panic, picked up the rhythmic clang of metal against stone and the synchronized shouts of men working in unison.

Drawn by the sounds, Kratos stumbled towards their source. He navigated through and around the formations to find a group of villagers toiling away. And to his shock and surprise, their faces were etched with determination and hope rather than despair. The men's bodies glistened with sweat as they swung their picks and hammers against the massive rock formations, breaking them down into manageable chunks. The women and children had their hands stained with ash as they gathered the fragments and scattered them across the ravaged fields.

It wasn't the desolate wasteland he had initially perceived. Amidst the charred earth and shattered rocks, tiny green shoots were emerging.

A voice, clear and resonant, cut through the rhythmic clang of metal and stone. "Great Warrior!"

Kratos turned to find a priest standing on a small rise with his arms outstretched in greeting. His bearing suggested that he was middle-aged, though the youth was faintly peeking through given his ear-to-ear smile. The villagers paused in their labours and bowed their heads in respect as Kratos approached.

The priest descended from his elevated position and clasped Kratos's hands with a surprisingly strong grip. "We are indebted to you, Great Warrior," he said with a voice filled with gratitude. "The Great Warrior has saved our village, annihilated the terrible Rakshasa Rakhtabhija and brought life back to our land."

Amidst the cheers from the crowd, Kratos stared at the priest with confusion clouding his features. The priest, sensing his bewilderment, chuckled softly.

"The Great Warrior is unaware of the gift that they have bestowed upon us," he said, his eyes twinkling.

He gestured towards the fields, where the villagers were now spreading the pulverized rock fragments. "Though the battle with the Rakshasa brought destruction," he explained, "it also unearthed a hidden blessing. The eruption brought forth a wealth of minerals from deep within the earth, enriching our soil beyond measure."

He went on to describe how the ash and smoke from the battle had triggered a week of torrential rain, cleansing the land and nourishing the parched earth. When the farmers returned, they found the soil transformed with a rich, dark hue promising abundant harvests.

"We conducted tests," the priest continued, "and discovered that the igneous formations and ash are laden with nutrients. The aged hands even tasted the soil to confirm its quality. It is a veritable feast for our crops. You have not only vanquished a demon, Great Warrior, but you have also breathed new life into our land."

Kratos listened, his mind reeling. The revulsion and panic that had consumed him moments before began to recede, replaced by a flicker of something akin to wonder. Could it be that his destructive rage had inadvertently brought forth something good?

The thought was both unsettling and strangely comforting.

---

Clearing the igneous rocks from the fields was a terribly slow process, but one that was uplifting with each sector cleared. The villagers could already envision the fields, once barren and grey, now teeming with golden wheat and plump vegetables, promising bounteous harvests in the years to come.

The priest had mapped out a system to optimize the clearing of the region so that they could take advantage of the approaching planting season. Following his plan, the portion of the field closest to the river was already being tilled and sowed and the mineral-rich soil was already promising a fertile bed for the seeds.

"Careful!" he cautioned as the men tried to demolish a particularly tricky igneous formation in the shape of a wave. "Get down from there now, Mohan. Don't break the rock while standing on it. You wouldn't chop off a branch while sitting on it, would you?"

The village simpleton, his face flushed from exertion, revealed a sheepish grin before leaping off the structure.

"Alright, on three! 1! 2! 3!"

With a mighty heave, three men struck the base of the structure with their pickaxe. A webbing crack started to spread across the rock structure before it shattered and collapsed with a resounding crash, sending dust swirling into the air.

"Take turns and crush it," he instructed. But just as they prepared to reduce the shattered rocks into dust, a sharp yell halted them.

"WAIT!" It was his disciple. The boy rushed over to the shattered rock pile and started to sift through them haphazardly. His brow was furrowed in concentration as though he was searching for something precious he'd lost.

"There!" he declared, his voice filled with relief, as he picked up a rock around the same dimension of his torso. It looked like a thick slab with an uneven and rough surface.

His eyes scanned it with ardent interest, his gaze growing increasingly manic as it traced the black and semi-porous surface.

"This- This is perfect!"

"Perfect for what?" the priest asked, but it was a moment too late as the boy was already rushing back towards the village with the rock clutched tightly in his arms.

---

What he was looking for was hidden inside the rock. He could see it clearly, a vision shimmering just beneath the surface.

His fingers gently traced over the flat surface, moving stealthily over every possible edge and curve that remained buried within. All he had to do was to unearth it and reveal his vision to the world.

He picked up the mallet and chisel and carefully placed the sharp bit at the slab's corner. With a gentle tap of the mallet, a chip snapped off and bounced away, the sound echoing in the quiet room.

He let out a long exhale of satisfaction and let the tension leave his shoulders. He was now one step closer to manifesting the design in his vision, the image that burned so brightly in his mind.

He placed the chisel tip once again on the rock surface and gently tapped it with the mallet. And again. And again.

The rhythmic tapping of the mallet and chisel filled the air in a steady and methodical beat that accompanied the boy's focused work. The process continued with each strike bringing him closer to realizing his vision.

Incrementally, the hidden masterpiece within the rock slowly started to emerge from its stony prison.

It took him two continuous days without food, water or sleep. He was used to that now, having sustained an even more rigorous and terrible fast just a few months earlier. Time moved like a breeze, until eventually, he lowered the chisel and mallet and placed them back on his table with a satisfied smile.

This was it!

Before him, stood an idol. An idol of a man - a Great Warrior.

He rushed into his storage and retrieved a large container of holy ash. He took a handful and started to rub it all over the idol until it was completely caked in it. He then took a hefty pinch of crimson and started to draw a diagonal line across the idol's face and body using his thumb.

He took a step back and observed his handiwork- No. This wasn't his handiwork at all. This was there all along, all he did was bring it out of its shell.

---

The sun had just risen above the horizon, and the priest had just finished his Sandhyavandanam. The air was still cool, carrying the fragrance of jasmine and damp earth. It was around this time that the temple would be officially opened for cleaning and preparation.

Every day, he would begin by cleaning the steps leading to the temple entrance, sweeping away fallen leaves and debris. He would then meticulously wash the stone floor inside, ensuring every corner was spotless. Next, he would move to the altar, carefully dusting and polishing the idol. Finally, he would gently bathe the idol of the deity with water and sandalwood paste, adorning it with fresh flowers from the temple garden.

With the sanctuary cleansed and prepared, he anticipated the morning puja - prayers. The farmers would already be toiling in their fields, but this marked the hour when most of the village stirred to life.

Slipping off his wooden sandals, he approached the temple gates, surprised to find them ajar. Someone had preceded him today. A flicker of pride touched his heart – it must be his disciple diligently fulfilling his duties.

A faint smile curved his lips as he ascended the already-swept steps, noting the pristine surroundings, devoid of yesterday's fallen leaves and debris. But his satisfaction was fleeting. Upon entering, he found the Goddess's idol still adorned with yesterday's wilted flowers and offerings.

Suppressing a surge of frustration, he turned towards the hushed whispers emanating from the far corner of the temple. He rounded a pillar, prepared to admonish the boy for his tardiness when his steps faltered.

In the empty corner where they had temporarily placed the Great Warrior's Shastras, a new altar had sprouted, bearing an idol that defied all familiarity. It was the nameless Great Warrior himself. Four arms extended from his powerful torso, two wielding the chained blades, their fiery chains coiling around his wrists. A third hand spawning from his lower torso gripped a formidable axe. The fourth arm, empty and curled into a fist, pulsed with restrained power.

Beneath his feet lay the dismembered form of Rakhtabhija, now forever vanquished. The idol itself was coated in ash, starkly contrasted by the crimson line that bisected its form, mirroring the Great Warrior's birthmark. But it was the lifelike aura emanating from the statue that truly captivated the priest. The eyes, sculpted with chilling precision, seemed to burn with an inner fire, igniting a primal fear and reverence within him.

Involuntarily, the priest found himself getting down on his knees and prostrating before the idol. His lips moved along with his disciple's as the duo rattled out praises and prayers in successive unison.

---

The news of a new idol in the temple, crafted in his likeness, reached Kratos within the day much to his discontent. As the former patron God of Sparta, he was no stranger to worship, but the memories of his past filled with bloodshed and regret made him recoil from such veneration.

Looking back, he really liked the feeling of being revered when he sat on the throne of the God of War. It gave him validation. It made him feel powerful. It made him feel invincible. Power is intoxicating. It tends to poison the mind with hubris. It was the same hubris that led Kratos down the destructive path that ultimately ended with his world becoming savaged and desolate.

He did not want the past to repeat itself. Not this time.

Yet his gentle urgings towards the villagers and priests to take down the idol and cease all worship wasn't met with much success. If anything, it amplified their fanaticism as it was misinterpreted as humility.

"You don't even know who I am," Kratos reasoned.

"It matters not," the priest - the older one - responded. "For beings of the Great Warrior's stature, a name is just a proclamation of their achievements and deeds. The Great Warrior is the Slayer of Rakhtabhija."

"The One that Births Life from the Ashes!" The teen chimed in.

"The One with Rage that Boils the Earth!" The older priest added.

This went on for some time. Kratos was surprised with just how many "Names" the duo could come up with in such a short time span.

"That's not the point!" Kratos interjected as they reached somewhere close to the fiftieth name. "I... I am not someone worth worshipping. You know nothing of my past. You know nothing of the kind of man I am. Yet you revere me."

"While true," the older priest responded. "For an ant, a sparrow that frequently drops its food while nesting is worth revering. Even if the sparrow will eventually eat the ant if it is starving."

"Look," the priest followed up. "We understand the Great Warrior's apprehension. We also ask that the Great Warrior understand our perspective. Our lives were forfeit. Had Rakhtabhija reached our village, our death would have been imminent. Yet the Great Warrior helped us overcome our fate. That is reason enough for us to look up to the Great Warrior. Fortunately, the Great Warrior is not evil - they did not hurt us. They did not disparage us. That is reason enough for us to venerate the Great Warrior."

"Ant," he emphasised while gesturing to himself and the village, "Sparrow," he added while gesturing towards Kratos.

At this point, when rudimentary diplomacy fails, Kratos would resort to violence - if words couldn't convince these people then maybe force would.

But Kratos couldn't bring himself to enter the temple. He couldn't look at the Blades of Chaos without feeling an intense urge to dry heave.

Left with no other choice, Kratos had to resort to the second half of "fight or flight".

He packed what he could and proceeded to leave the village in the dead of the night.

"Great Warrior, wait!" A voice stopped him as he neared the village's boundary. He turned around and noticed a cart approaching him, being driven by buffaloes. Looking past the beasts of burden, he was greeted by the half-asleep village simpleton. And beside him, sat the teenaged priest.

"Great Warrior, you forgot your Shastras!" He said. And as Kratos peeked into the cart behind the buffaloes, he felt a sudden visceral dread gushing from within.

At this point, Kratos realised that he was now saddled with two accursed weapons that just refused to leave him. One that reminded him of his horrific past, and another that constantly thrust him into the sinful history of another.

---

Spoiler: Corrections

[2025-01-20] Corrected Astras -> Shastras
Former are projectile weapons like javelins, arrows, etc. latter are wielded weapons like maces, swords, etc.

 

[juniorsundar]

This is a "What if...?" chapter. What if, Kratos hadn't shown up to defeat Rakhtabhija? This chapter is not totally standalone, as there will be details in here that will be present in the main storyline in some way.

In this chapter, I will be re-envisioning the original story of Rakhtabhija and Kali in the context of the Alternate/Author's Universe I am building here.

I am interested in writing more of these "What if...?" chapters to present stories from Hindu Mythology as they are introduced in the main plot, especially to show what would have happened if Kratos hadn't interfered. Depending on the reception of this chapter, I will plan out more or fewer of such chapters.

---

The monster rampaged through the village like a grotesque tide of flesh and fury. None could halt its advance; homes became charnel houses, and bodies were ripped open like gruesome offerings. Each spilt drop of blood seemed to shudder and twist, birthing another abomination in the first's wake. Men, women, children - nothing was spared the creature's sadistic hunger. The monster descended on the village like a plague and left a desolate tapestry of blood.

The creature was less a predator than carnage incarnate. Its claws, like rusted butcher's hooks, shredded flesh from bone. Villagers weren't merely killed – they were disassembled. Limbs wrenched from sockets with nauseating pops, torsos cracked open like macabre eggshells. Those who weren't devoured outright became playthings, akin to screaming puppets jerked and twitched by its smaller and frenzied clones. The air hung thick with the coppery stench of blood and the wet, fleshy sound of feasting.

The once vibrant and lively green grass that uplifted the village was now stained a deep red. And the river that fertilised and brought life to these soils ran thick with blood.

"Oh Durga Ma, help us!" The priest begged as he prostrated himself before the idol of his Goddess. The figure in stone looked back, inanimate, unempathetic. "Save us..."

Words in Sanskrit spilt out of his mouth in quick succession and with the same familiarity as a swordsman, trained since birth, would swing his weapon - it was plain muscle memory. He'd done it over a thousand times in this lifetime, each time just as sincerely as the last. Never once had he expected the Goddess to answer. Yet today, he sincerely wished for it. He sincerely wished that the unbending stone would turn soft, and the Goddess would step forth.

After all, all it took was devotion. Unbending, uncompromising devotion. Devotion so deep that even the threat of death couldn't cause your heart to waver. This was how Prahalad managed to get the Great Preserver to descend. Was his devotion to his Goddess any less?

The priest did the only thing he knew to do, pray. It was his calling since his birth, by passion and by caste. Even his first words weren't mother or father, it was 'Durga Ma.'

Boy, did it send his parents over the moon! They'd devoted their lives to Her, just like their parents, and their parents before that. His entire family had devoted their cause and lives to the Goddess.

"Can you not hear your devotees wailing?!" The priest yelled. How could she not? Even he could not hear his voice over the blood-curdling yells of the denizens beyond the hallowed walls of the temple. Overlaid on this cacophony was the demonic cackle of the beast that revelled in this violence.

"They're all dying, my Goddess! PLEASE! SAVE US!"

And all of a sudden, the world turned still. The screams and yells just ceased, as if a heavy blanket was smothered over them all. Were his prayers answered?

"Do you think she can hear you?" A gravelly voice said with a rumbling chuckle. It was a guttural growl layered with mocking amusement. The priest spun around as his heart pounded frantically against his ribs. At the entrance, peeking through the open doorway was the monster. It was far too big to fit into the hallowed altar, as its face spanned half the length of the doorway itself. Its vast bulk and heft strained against the ancient stones, and its thick forearms rippled beneath blood-soaked skin.

"Did she hear the thousands I've killed, drained and guzzled?" It added with a snort, and a spray of crimson speckled the floor by the priest's feet. The monster's face stretched impossibly wide, with its cavernous maw crammed with jagged teeth the size of daggers. Blood and viscera clung to them, likely remnants of its most recent feast. Its maddened eyes, which hid behind narrow, reptilian slits that resembled that of a gharial, blinked twice as it measured him as a predator would prey. A forked tongue, slick and impossibly long, writhed as it tasted the air, savouring the scent of terror that clung to the priest like a shroud.

"S-She won't let you off alive, Rakshasa!" The priest challenged, though his shivering tone did smother the force of his declaration.

"I would like to see her try, human!" The monster's laughter echoed with a grating mockery that made the temple stones seem to shiver. It withdrew from the doorway, yet its voice boomed on, "Fine! I will give you till the count of ten. Bring her here, but if you fail, your death will be most painful."

Five of the smaller creatures (though that was only in comparison to the massive Rakshasa, as his smaller forms matched the priest in height), chittered and snarled as they scuttled into the temple. Their bulbous eyes fixed on the priest with a twisted hunger that mirrored their original. The priest collapsed to his knees, his spirit nearly as broken as his body soon would be.

He clasped his hands and the frantic prayers started forming on his lips even before his mind could process it.

The Asura's voice echoed from outside like a death knell for the priest and the shattered remnants of his hope. "Ten..."

The first creature lunged and positioned itself in the priest's blind spot. The priest, eyes shut while he fought against the growing terror, continued his desperate chant.

"Nine..."

He could smell the creature's foul breath and feel its spittle on his face.

"Eight..."

The Sanskrit verses that were once a source of comfort now felt hollow.

"Seven..." The Asura's voice boomed. The descending number hammered onto his dwindling hope with growing intensity.

Another creature joined the first. It moved forward as its claws rasped against the temple floor. The priest's voice faltered as the screech interjected the underlying tune of his prayers causing the sacred words to snag in his throat.

"Six…" The number seemed to reverberate through the very air.

The creatures closed in, and their gurgling hisses mingled with the priest's ragged gasps. He could see their fetid breath steaming in the dim light, and smell the fresh meat lodged between their teeth.

"Five…" The priest's prayer dissolved into a choked sob. Durga Ma, his beloved Goddess, had she abandoned him?

The creatures crouched, ready to spring. Yellowed fangs glinted in the dark halls, promising not just death, but agonizing dismemberment.

"Four…" Time itself seemed to stretch and each second turned into unbearable torment. Yet, no divine light shattered the gloom. No celestial roar drowned out the creatures' hungry snarls.

"Three…" The priest's final prayer died on his lips. A bitter laugh choked out – was this the reward for a lifetime of devotion?

"Two…" A rough, scaled hand clamped around his ankle, yanking him back. His head struck the stone floor and the world blurred into a swirl of pain and darkness.

"One…" The Asura's voice boomed like a death sentence.

He was dragged as he kicked and screamed like a desperate animal snared by predators. His fingernails clawed gouges in the stone, in a pathetic and futile act of resistance. His eyes, wide with horror, remained fixed on the idol. Durga Ma stared back, silent and unmoved.

The last thing he saw as he was unceremoniously ejected from his temple, the place that was like his second home, wasn't the monstrous glee in the Rakshasa's eyes, but the implacable stone face of his Goddess.

"I don't see here here, human," the Rakshasa mocked as he loomed over the priest. The forked tongue snaked out and started to caress the priest's face as he spoke. Before a response could form on his lips, the legion of monsters around him lunged forward, grabbed his appendages and held him down. In a panic, he looked around and noticed that one of the little Rakshasas was exiting the temple with the stone idol in its grasp.

"I think a fitting end to you lot is in duty to the same gods you pray to. I may be a savage, but there is certainly some beauty in a poetic end," the fanged monster said as it picked the stone idol effortlessly with one hand. "Just as a Kshatriya must meet his end with a sword in his hand, so must a Brahmin with his head against an idol's feet."

The monster raised the idol above its head and brought it down in one swift motion.

Only, he didn't.

That is to say, he couldn't.

His arm froze by his chest, and his entire body began vibrating, starting from the idol grasped firmly in his hands. His expression of malice dispersed, revealing surprise, until it settled in shock. And right as fear started to encroach on his face, the monster exploded into a confetti of blood.

Yet once again, running contrary to natural laws, the blood did not spread. Instead, it started to congress into one spot above the stone idol that was mysteriously levitating.

The priest looked at the gory sight with anxiety, though a tinge of hope started to eke through.

Then, one after the other, each of the monsters holding him down exploded into a fountain of blood. And the blood turned into globules before converging towards the idol, above whom a massive ball of crimson was taking shape.

As the ball grew larger, the sun started to set and the heavens started to bleed red as it turned a horrific crimson shade.

The priest held his breath as the undulating mass of blood and gore slowly descended and completely enveloped the idol, and a blood-curdling symphony of ululation started to resonate across all three realms. Usually, this harmonising sound was a complement to a celebration or festivity - an auspicious act. But as the priest saw the ungodly crimson mass, he couldn't help feeling a foreboding sensation bubbling up from his gut. In his zeal to call forth the Goddess, had he called upon something worse?

The ball shot up into the skies before dispersing into a mist of red that started to envelop the village in its entirety, essentially imprisoning the Rakshasa and all of his lesser forms. The largest, and arguably his true self that matched the height of a small adult elephant looked at this sequence of events with a morose frown. Gone was his earlier psychopathic ecstasy as he rended flesh from bone, and blood from body.

All eyes that were attached to the living looked up into the zenith of the bloody dome and observed a dark mass hurtling towards the ground. The priest saw the object grow larger and larger - it was approaching him! He immediately scuttled and rushed towards the safety of the temple, and barely made it before a loud thud that rumbled the earth caused him to trip and stumble.

He landed unceremoniously on the stone floor and immediately shuffled closer, almost by instinct, towards the idol. But he only belatedly realised that the altar stood empty.

The sound of the door hinges creaking drew his attention and what he saw caused him to nearly loosen the control over his bladder.

A being drenched in viscous blood, with a skin as dark as coal, stood up from a kneeling pose. His eyes took in the nude form of what could only be a woman, but the visuals made him question if she was human. Her bare breasts peeked from behind her matted locks that were caked in dry blood and viscera. She raised her two arms with jagged nails caked with dirt and gore, and parted her hair, revealing eyes that belonged to an apex predator - devoid of empathy, and brimming with violence and unfettered rage. Her crimson lips, which stood out against her ebony skin, parted to reveal yellow teeth painted red with pieces of flesh marring the gums.

Her tongue slithered out and cleaned the blood and flesh, and she swallowed it as an ecstatic moan left her. She trudged ahead before descending on all fours and skittered forward with inhuman speed. With a leap, she bounded the steps leading up to the temple and clung to the entrance, with all her limbs grasping at the frame.

She tilted her head and licked her lips again, causing a deathly shiver to jolt through the priest's spine, as he felt an even more invasive sense of someone measuring him up as food.

He prayed for mercy, but to whom? Was this beast before him his Goddess? Was this her true form? How was she any different from the Rakshasa roaming the streets outside? At least he could be reasoned with, this she-beast was nothing short of an animal.

But his thoughts were halted as the creature leapt from her perch on the door frame, and zipped in his general direction. The priest closed his eyes awaiting demise, but all he felt was a gush of wind rushing past him before another loud bang caused him to flinch.

Contrary to his expectations, the she-beast had one of the human-sized clones of the Asura in a death grip by its neck. She held it up effortlessly, causing its feet to lift off the ground. The asura struggled, waving the rusty talwar in his hand, but the metal bounced effortlessly off of the she-beast's skin.

The woman grabbed the demon by his scalp with her other hand and yanked hard, causing a disgusting pop to echo within the hallowed halls. The asura's blood sprayed out, but the woman opened her mouth wide, with her tongue out, and sucked hard. The blood, like a charmed snake, started to redirect from its downward trajectory and gushed towards her agape mouth.

Not a single drop of blood touched the ground as she greedily devoured it like a person parched with thirst. The Rakshasa's body dried up like a fruit left out in the sun until it was a mere fraction of its original size.

Once the woman was finished, she gazed at the lifeless eyes of the beheaded asura with morbid interest. A squelching sound ensued as the side of the woman's abdomen deformed as if something was trying to escape from it.

The priest held back the contents of his bowel from escaping, as her flesh parted and an additional pair of arms burst out, coated in mucus and blood. The two new arms cut into the asura's belly and stripped it open. She then pulled out the intestines and expertly wove them into a rope. She jabbed a finger through the asura's ear and pushed until it came out the other ear, and then sent the rope through. She then hung the intestine with a 'head-locket' around her neck. With the remaining length of 'intestine-rope', she pulled the demon's arms and legs and started to fashion herself a skirt, to cover her bare lower body.

After revealing a morbid smile of satisfaction, she crouched back on all fours and skittered out of the temple with a maniacal and greedy grunt.

---

The Asura's years of penance and prayer had granted him a special boon. Every drop of blood that left him and touched the earth would spawn a new form - a clone of himself. The clones would grow stronger the longer they lived. They would grow larger, and more intelligent as well. Though the extent of their growth was capped to their original form.

He was proud of this boon. It made him strong, and unbeatable in open battle. Because no army could stand against him, and no human, god, or otherwise could win against him one-on-one. After all, after a few minor gashes, it was never truly a one-on-one. Was it improper, or dishonourable? Who cares? The dead tell no tales. And those that remained living, all feared him.

To the world, he was a force of unthinking brutality. One incapable of stringing together complex thoughts, and one who was driven by a desire to kill everything that stood in his way by unleashing a torrent of bodies. That was fearsome enough, but that wasn't enough of a reason to fear him. The boon owned by the Asura brought with it a hidden ability that came as a pleasant surprise. This power was the ability to assimilate knowledge. Every being that spawned from his blood, was an extension of his self. In a way, they were him, and he was them. What they saw, heard, felt, tasted and experienced would become his once they were killed.

It was through this power that he had managed to beat the armies of Svarga not once, but twice. The first time was through sheer luck and numbers. The devas had underestimated him. He was certain that it wouldn't be the case the second time. And his second victory was more profound. He'd managed to fool the general of the Deva Army not once, but twice in succession, resulting in an embarrassing and brutal defeat.

The Asura was unstoppable, and his prowess had earned him a name: Rakhtabhija - the one whose blood is a seed that spawns a forest of death!

As long as wars were fought with weapons that spilt blood, Rakhtabhija would dominate... or so he thought.

Within seconds, Rakhtabhija could feel a lot of his other selves getting decimated. As he was constantly being flooded with information from his clones, the influx of five or six deaths did not affect him. But then another came, and this was brewing with an emotion he had never felt in years.

Fear.

He let himself immerse in the experience of the deceased clone and was shaken to see another demon. Truthfully, there was never camaraderie amongst his kind. Asuras are usually driven by benefits, and Asuras weren't really ones to be reasoned with. So it wasn't out of the ordinary that another of his kind would interfere in his pursuits. But his assumptions were immediately foiled as he backtracked through the memories and saw where she came from.

"DURGA!" Rakhtabhija yelled, his voice laced with unending rage. Of all the gods and devas out there, the one who he hated the most with unparalleled passion was Durga. She was the one who had killed his brother. She was also the reason he was razing this village to the ground.

This was all part of the plan. He knew that this village and most others nearby worshipped Durga ardently. He knew that given enough bloodshed of her devout followers, she would eventually descend from the heavens.

And alas, she did. But Rakhtabhija was confused. The entity that descended from the idol didn't look anything like Durga from his memories. As loath as was to admit it, Durga was the embodiment of grace and splendour, while also personifying violence in all its forms. But this... being... sacrificed the grace and the splendour and doubled down on violence. Her appearance was animalistic and inhuman; even to the warped aesthetics of an Asura, she elicited an adverse response. It was in the way she walked, her predatory gaze that killed its targets in countless ways. Who was she?

And then it happened, a mountain of emotions collapsed into him, as he was forced to live through the deaths of a hundred versions of himself all in the span of a single second. And the worst part was that they all died in the same gruesome way. The entity first drained him of his blood, until he was left with just enough to have his consciousness online. She would then eviscerate him, pull out his internal organs while licking it clean of every of blood, chopping his limbs and licking his marrow dry, and then finally, as he was drowning in pain and agony, she would puncture through his ear and shred his brains. From a third-person perspective, through the eyes of another of his forms, he would spectate as she added the limbs to her ever-flourishing frock, and added his heads to the garland around her neck.

She would go from one victim to the next in a fraction of a second, and sometimes, when handling a version of himself smaller than her, she would use her additional appendages to slaughter two or three at the same time.

Truth be told, this shouldn't have affected him so deeply, after all, he'd been slaughtered many times before this in fighting against the armies of Svarga. However, there was a difference. In those confrontations, even though he was losing bodies left and right, he wasn't ACTUALLY losing, as more would readily replace him. To put it simply, there was always a net gain of bodies and he was on the side gaining the advantage as time passed. However, what was happening right now was pure slaughter. He was being hunted with deadly efficiency, and with a strategy that was tailor-made to counter him. A sense of foreboding started to gnaw at him as he realised that there was a chance that he could actually die!

The largest version of himself, which was also the one which carried the bulk of his true consciousness, finally caught sight of the being mowing through him like a farmer running his sickle over a field of wheat, and it did little to subdue his growing discomfort. Because she made it look too easy. She was disassembling him like a child playing with a clay doll, and all the while her eyes were locked in on him - she didn't even deign to look at her victims in their eyes.

At that moment, the skies turned a murderous shade of scarlet red, even more so than the hue exuded by the turning of twilight. The being was now a few steps away from him, her body garbed in a skirt of his arms and legs. Her neck was decorated with the eye-less, tongue-less, decapitated heads of his smaller forms. And in her extra appendages, rested two clay bowls filled to the brim with blood, which she expertly manoeuvred disallowing a single drop from falling to the ground. She brought one to her lips and drank it all greedily, and then she down the next.

She looked at him hungrily, with maddened eyes, and Rakhtabhija prepared for an attack, his heart beating up to his neck. But she did not move on him as he anticipated. Instead, she circumvented him and attacked another of his smaller forms. She was relentless. Her neck had rotated a complete hundred-and-eighty degrees, ensuring that eye contact was maintained with him as she ruthlessly culled them.

Two additional arms extended from her sides and picked up two actual sickles from the detached arm of a farmer Rakhtabhija himself had killed. She then moved with the grace of a dancer and the ruthlessness of a tiger.

Rakhtabhija was inoculated to brutality over his participation in many wars. However, the brutality he was witnessing at the moment was sickening. Maybe it had something to do with the fact that he was personally seeing himself being reduced to nothing more than weeds!

His passiveness suddenly dawned upon him, as he realised that he hadn't moved or acted in response to this new enemy. A wave of disgust drenched him in shame, and his ego admonished him for his cowardice. In fact, Rakhtabhija never had to personally intervene (at least not with his primary body) in any conflict. His lesser forms often took care of it. It was his first time seeing himself so thoroughly outclassed.

"Demoness!" Rakhtabhija bellowed as he coiled his legs. He bit into his thumb, causing a torrent of blood to gush out. As it landed, it coagulated and swiftly turned into a viscous blob of dark crimson, until arms and legs started to form all around it. Then, within seconds, the blobs turned into tiny versions of himself. A heavy growl from him, caused these smaller forms to cower before they swiftly laid on the ground and held their neighbour's feet, tight.

Rakhtabhija grabbed the largest of his creations and pulled him up. As he did so, the conjoined sequence of his smaller selves snaked and cracked like a grotesque bouquet-like whip. He grabbed this whip with his free hand and pulled through. As he did so, his smaller forms inflated and burst as their bones pierced through their flesh and skin. The result was a urumi made of bone and flesh. The blood that dripped from this impromptu weapon also coagulated as it touched the ground, creating more of him in the process.

With a swift thrust, Rakhtabhija burst towards the sky and barreled towards the entity moving through his lesser selves near the centre of the village.

The demoness had her eyes trained on him at all times, and she returned a welcoming gaze as the separation between them narrowed swiftly. A few moments before impact, Rakthabhija whipped his urumi, and the barbed weapon flung forward faster than the speed of sound, eliciting an ear-shattering boom.

The entity twisted in place, carrying another of his minions beside her and tossed it in his trajectory. The urumi collided with the hurtling body, causing it to explode into a million pieces of viscera. Yet she did not relent, as her mouth split open, tearing apart at her cheeks allowing her jaws to open at an inhuman angle, and all the blood and gore hurtled into it like a whirlpool. Once finished, her whip-like tongue peeked through the torn seams of her cheeks and cleaned up the blood dripping out of it.

Rakhtabhija whipped the urumi at her hoping to inflict some damage. And to an extent, he succeeded, as she let the weapon wrap around her left arm allowing the barbs to dig into her flesh. He then pulled, so that the damage could be heightened, but contrary to his expectations, the woman resisted - she did not budge. In turn, she started to entangle her arms further into the weapon and started to inch closer.

He had barely enough time to register the incredible turnout when she suddenly yanked the whip causing him to fly towards her instead.

Size-wise, Rakhtabhija was at least a few heads taller than her... at first. Because as his ragdolling form hurtled towards her, he realised that she had grown, much, much larger. She grabbed him by his throat and squeezed, causing his eyeballs to reach the cusp of bursting out of their sockets.

Her tongue snaked out of her lips and danced over his face. The sweat forming on his skin was thoroughly cleansed, and so was the blood. She revealed a predatory smile and opened her mouth, causing her cheeks to split once again. And with a single chomp, she consumed his head. The last thing he heard was his own skull cracking and splitting under the pressure before his vision was doused in darkness.

Rakhtabhija's consciousness zapped into his second most powerful form immediately. It took him some time to reorient himself, and right as panic started to set in, he felt himself getting hoisted by his neck. The last thing he saw was the gaping maws of his predator before darkness consumed him.

One after another, he found himself getting transferred from one form to the other, and each barely lasted for a second before his consciousness was ejected.

Death was approaching, and he felt helpless to stop it. This was not supposed to be happening!

And within the fit of panic, Rakhtabhija paradoxically found a moment of clarity. His subdued fight or flight mechanism kicked into action, and his mind started to process his exit strategies because, as evident as day, the fight wasn't really an option. Rakhtabhija had been in far severe circumstances before, to be fair, but at this moment fear had overtaken his rationality rendering his ability to assess the combat instance obsolete.

Rakhtabhija computed the trend hastily and immediately beelined towards the clone at the fringes of his sea of consciousness. This spot was usually where his weakest forms lingered, and due to the extent of their separation from the core of his sea, they tended to behave irrationally, akin to beasts.

A tiny Rakhtabhija, around the size of an adult's thumb, suddenly exited its bloodshed-induced reverie and swivelled its head frantically. Its gaze suddenly met that of the being who had just turned his previous vessel into a desiccated mess. She then got on all eights and skittered towards him with her tongue hanging out thirstily.

He in turn booked it and ran towards the forest at the edge of the village.

The trees towered over him like massive pillars extending into the heavens, and the lowly grass stood tall like large green sword blades. He pushed them aside and rushed through. Right then, the ground beneath him started to rumble. He turned just in time to see the she-beast pouncing towards him. His body froze as he anticipated his impending demise, but the dreaded event did not occur. Seconds passed and Rakhtabhija still remained breathing, in the same body.

He slowly opened his eyes and saw the beast latched onto the trees in front of him like a spider, her eyes measuring him up like a ravenous monster. For a split second, her eyes looked far into the forest, before returning to him. Then, with a disappointed snort, she dismounted from the trees and skittered back into the village to resume her carnage.

Rakhtabhija didn't know if he should feel grateful or enraged. Her blatant disregard for him implied that his current form wasn't enough to satiate her hunger. But given her behaviour, he couldn't fathom the fact that she would just let him go.

But what options was he left with? There was nothing else he could do than retreat into the forest and regroup. And so, he continued his sprint, through grass and shrubs hoping to create as much distance as possible from the predator stalking him.

After an hour of endless sprinting, Rakhtabhija tired himself out and collapsed to the ground. He looked up at the canopy that disallowed Surya's grace from showering the damp soils and felt calmness settling in his mind. He had escaped.

He had survived.

"She must be another of Durga's machinations!" He cursed angrily, his voice sounding more like the mindless chirping of a rodent. "I will have my revenge, and it shall be equally brutal!"

He then picked up a small pebble to his side and rubbed it against a boulder formation to sharpen in. Right as he brought it close to his wrists, his ears picked up a faint sound of grass waving.

He perked his head towards the sound and narrowed his gaze. There was no movement.

But it came again, this time from behind him. His body jerked violently and he entered a crouched stance, staring frantically in all directions in search of the cause. The wind couldn't reach this dense region, so the only explanation was that something was stalking him.

He started to crawl away, making sure to avoid broadcasting his location with wild movements and loud sounds. Minutes passed without the sound recurring, but he didn't let down his guard.

He found a small burrow and leapt towards it.

But at the zenith of his leap, something caught him. Two large daggers pierced into his abdomen, and he felt himself getting shaken aggressively. The dagger sliced through his bowels and he was propelled upwards.

Once again, his trajectory was inhibited, as two large cushion-like pads clapped together and crushed him. He was then slammed unceremoniously into the ground, and a massive weight bore down on him, crushing all his bones. He looked up, through the blood-soaked eyes, and was met with the piercing pupils of a large feline. Or maybe it was an average-sized feline but appeared large in comparison to his current stature. The creature was coloured a brilliant hue of orange, with black lines striping its body - almost like a tiger.

It tilted its head, with mild amusement in its gaze, and licked him. The barbed tongue sliced into his body, removing every drop of blood that was oozing out and about to fall on the ground.

Rakhtabhija was barely able to squeeze out a syllable before the cat tossed him into the air and swallowed him whole.

---

A gutwrenching silence hung in the village, with the unsettling sound of blood dripping, flowing and churning interspersed with the horrific echo of slurps cutting through it. At the centre of the nearly desolate village, where the mighty banyan tree once stood, where the elder folks would congregate, where the panchayat was once held, now stood a stump. Atop the stump, sat the ravenous form of the demoness who quelled the unending tide - Rakhtabhija.

She threw aside the stump of an arm that had been sucked dry of blood. She pulled open her mouth and extended her snaking, red tongue. Then, with one continuous suction, she pulled in all the blood that had pooled all over the village. This wasn't the blood of Rakhtabhija, of course, this was the blood of the denizens that had perished in his warpath. Her suction did not limit itself to fluid, as it also pulled in the strewn body parts.

Within seconds, the village had been cleaned of all signs of bloodshed.

The priest approached the demoness with caution but without fear in his eyes. He was certain of the identity of the entity seated atop the village banyan stump. His fear was to disrespect Her. He kneeled in front of the demoness and prostrated with his forehead hitting the rocky ground. The stones pierced his forehead, releasing a thin strand of blood that once again painted his forehead crimson.

She tilted her head inspecting the offering before her. It was tasty, but forbidden.

With a crude flourish, she pulled apart the many body parts decorating her and tossed them aside like a farmer sowing seeds. Then, a crimson mist started to leave through her many pores, beelining towards the body parts. The mist enriched these seeds, causing them to pulse like an egg being boiled in hot oil. The seeds grew and sprouted appendages and a head. And once the undulation settled, what remained were the villagers that had been decimated.

The priest's eyes bubbled with emotion as he looked towards Her with reverence. As the mist left Her, Her form started to shrivel with her veins popping out.

"Jai Maha Kali!" He yelled, as Her body shrunk rapidly.

Kal. Time. The great vanquisher. The inevitable.

Kala. Black. The colour of her skin, that not even the vibrant crimson of blood could mask.

Kaal. The end. And as he looked around at his resurrected brethren - an auspicious beginning.

Kali had shrivelled up altogether. Her body was comparable to the banyan tree that once stood there. The branches were barren of leaves, though they still breathed with life. At the base of the trunk, where Her stomach was positioned, now stood the same idol that the priest had worshipped his entire life, just like his father, and his forefathers before him.

"JAI MAHA KALI!" He bellowed.

The words echoed into the heavens.