‘Anything.’
‘I accept your sacrifice. Now, my dear, embrace me. Embrace darkness, for it is your only friend, your only lover, your only company. Open your mouth wide, so the darkness may pour in. Darkness sweet, darkness eternal!’
Maya obeyed. It burned, but she was melting away, her pain was melting away. Then Maya was Maya no more, and darkness consumed her.
I have waited for far too long. You brought me back, at last. You found a way.
Adri looked at his mechanical arm. He flexed the fingers, listening to the machine respond.
‘So you woke the Sadhu’s shotgun,’ he said.
‘Yeah, and then I lost it,’ Gray said.
‘You’re wearing it on your arm.’
‘This? You mean this is—oh my—’
‘Good to see you too, Gray. And Ba’al, he sent you, I suppose.’
‘The Demon Commander sends his regards,’ Zabrielle said.
Adri nodded. ‘And it’s good to see you, Fayne.’
Fayne nodded. ‘A much awaited sight, pashlin. It has been a while, as they say.’
‘Yes,’ Adri muttered, mostly to himself. ‘It has, hasn’t it?’ He looked at them. ‘Where is Maya?’
‘Long story,’ Gray said. ‘She’s . . . not with us anymore.’
‘What has happened since I—since I was gone? Tell me.’
‘A lot,’ Gray said. ‘I don’t know where to begin.’
‘Deaths,’ Adri said. ‘Who has died?’
‘The Gunsmith,’ Gray said sadly. ‘We travelled to Nemen Sui to save him, but couldn’t. We buried him there, outside the city.’
Adri did not speak. The others looked at his new features, a wall, unfathomable. The eye was perhaps the only thing that gave it away. The light dimmed.
‘What were his last words?’ Adri asked, his voice soft.
‘One message,’ Gray said. ‘For you.’
‘Tell me.’
‘Drakabeshth.’ Gray paused. ‘That mean anything to you?’
Adri slowly stood up, mechanized joints hissing. His eye flared. ‘Father never told me,’ he murmured. ‘But I understand now, Smith. The dragon, the one dragon whose name was not needed to remember him. The one dragon murdered by the Serpent. Dhananjay. The hunter, he made a weapon, a weapon from the bones and the scales of the dragon. The weapon he killed the Serpent with.’
I failed you, Smith. I make you a promise, one to honour your last words, your dying breath which gifted me direction. I am wounded, I feel slow. This new body does not suit me, it hurts.
But it does not matter. The Apocalypse does not matter. Father will die, and I will feel his breath leave with these hands of metal around his neck.
As for the Horsemen of Old, let them know this—Adri Sen is still alive. And I am coming for you, each one of you.
I am going to put your immortality to the test.
‘Adri?’ Gray asked. The Tantric had been quiet for some time.
Adri turned around. His hands were balled into fists. ‘The Dragon’s Sorrow,’ he said. ‘The Drakabeshth. I need to find it.’
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I’d like to thank Shikha for supporting me endlessly, and being a backbone to a plethora of new ideas. Thank you Gaurav, and the entire team at Fingerprint! for working so tirelessly on the book. Gayatri, thank you for editing the manuscript with so much love, and staying with the trilogy. Mom, Dad, Promona, and my family and friends, thank you for constantly believing in me, and urging me to keep writing. Dipu, for working ever so hard on the cover illustrations, and Manas, for the new author photograph, thank you.
Krishnarjun Bhattacharya is a storyteller, film-maker, and game designer. He’s a graduate in Film and Video Communication from the National Institute of Design, Ahmedabad, and a post graduate in Video Editing from the Film and Television Institute of India. A lover of the dark and grotesque, he believes that stories can change the world, especially the ones lost to us. An ardent worshipper of Cthulhu and always on the lookout for potential cultists, he’s currently in negotiations with the thing under his bed. He lives and works in Mumbai, and is currently writing Myths of Old.
His email id is [email protected] and his twitter handle is @Akta_Golpo_Shon.
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