by Varun Sayal
“But bite him?” Rigu’s strange demand perplexed Tej.
Rigu fumed with anger. He clasped Tej’s shoulders and roared. “This demon outraged your mother’s modesty, tortured both of you for years. Don’t you feel that anger, that desire for vengeance? Bite him right now, for your mother, for yourself. Trap him in this body forever. Do it, you son of a bitch!” Rigu fumed with rage as his face turned red and his body palpitated with anger. A few drops of saliva dripped down his trembling chin. Tej, Saavi, and Gajendra were shocked to see their Guru reacting in such a fit of rage, and even using swear words.
Kumbh’s body jolted, and he opened his eyes with a loud scream. Tej immediately jumped onto Kumbh while he was still tied and jabbed his teeth into Kumbh’s wrist. Kumbh writhed in pain and let out a great cry. Even though he was tied in chains, he was struggling violently. With a strong push, Kumbh broke the chains and pushed Tej with his full strength. Tej flew several feet across the room and crashed into a wall. Saavi rushed outside to get more help. Gajendra sprinted towards a corner and grabbed a thick iron rod.
Kumbh was now fully active. He got off the cement block and eyed everyone present in the room. Even Tej’s venomous bite had left no impact on him. He tilted his head sideways as if to stretch his neck and flexed his old muscles.
He looked at Rigu and pointed his finger at him. “This fool may have brought me back, but don’t think for a moment that you have won. I am leaving this body and going away. You took your best shot at me and failed. But heed my words—this time I am coming for you. And when I come for you, you won’t even know what hit you.”
“Oh, you are not going anywhere, Kumbh.” Rigu smiled. “You can’t see it, but there is a small, faint blue line around your neck, decorating it like a necklace of shackles. Tej’s neurotoxin has worked again, just as it worked on Vetri twenty years ago.”
Kumbh touched his neck, trying to feel the ring, but couldn’t.
“You can see the same ring on your brother’s neck, which is an indication he is trapped in his vessel forever.” Rigu comfortably sat on a chair nearby. His ultimate aim had been accomplished. Kumbh was trapped.
Kumbh ran to his brother’s body. Rigu was right; those marks were there. There was a faint blue line running across Vetri’s neck.
Kumbh fumbled across the room, looking for a mirror, but couldn’t find one. He immediately tried to leave his own body. There was a slight pink gaze in his eyes, and light pink fumes came out of his mouth but got sucked in again. He struggled to leave again and again but failed. He gaped at Rigu in anger.
“All this is because of you. I will destroy this vessel of yours.” Kumbh charged towards Rigu but felt a sharp blow to his skull. Gajendra had hit him with the iron rod. Kumbh fell to his knees and dropped unconscious on the ground.
“Gajendra, put this demon back onto the cement block, and this time, get stronger chains to tie him,” Rigu ordered. Gajendra didn’t move from his place. He was too dazed.
Tej got up and walked to the center of the room, where Kumbh was lying unconscious. He turned towards Guru Rigu, bowed his head, and clasped his hands together in respect.
“Thanks, Gurudev. Because of you, I have been able to avenge my mother. I have accomplished the greatest goal of my life.”
Rigu smiled. “This demon had planned to kill billions of people in future. You have saved countless lives today, son.”
Tej dropped to his knees before Rigu and touched his forehead to Rigu’s feet. Rigu blessed him. Then, at once, Rigu cringed in agony and got up from the chair.
Tej had bitten the upper part of Rigu’s foot, digging his teeth deep into his flesh, into the great saphenous vein.
“What did you do, you fool?” Rigu was shocked and fumed with anger. Gajendra ran towards Tej and punched him hard on the face. Saavi, who’d just returned with a few disciples and witnessed the scene, was appalled too. Why would Tej bite his own Guru?
Tej’s first bicuspid tooth had dislodged from the strike of Gajendra’s meaty punch. His jaw bled, but he did not complain. Instead, he had a faint smirk on his face. He looked in Rigu’s eyes and moved his index finger across his own neck. He was signaling for Rigu to inspect his own neck.
Rigu ran to the corner of the room, opened a box, and took out a small mirror. He examined his neck. There was a similar blue line now visible.
Rigu was a time-demon.
“What happened, Guru Rigu? Or should I say—Rigasur?”
Rigu turned back and promenaded toward Tej. He had a furious smile on his face. “Well played, Tej. I knew Kumbh would tell you the truth about me, but I was sure you wouldn’t believe him. You respected me a lot for saving your mother’s life and your own. So I took a chance on you. But I underestimated your intellect. You are very smart. You are a time-demon after all.”
Tej braced himself as Rigu walked towards him. “No, Rigasur, my primitive brain could not have connected the dots. But being inside Ravi’s brain helped me see the events as they were. Ravi’s neural constructs will stay with me forever. They help me think better.”
Rigu frowned. He had underestimated Tej’s ability to learn from his vessel’s brain—a brain with the intellect of a delinquent mastermind who ran an international crime syndicate.
“I was looking for my enemy in the abandoned castles of distant future, yet my foe was right by my side all along. But you must be thinking of how I sensed the evil in you, ‘Gurudev’?” Tej lampooned.
“I’m not thinking anything, you fool. My vessel is that of a frail old sage. Your toxin will knock me out in a couple of minutes.” Rigu sat on the chair and jammed his palms on his forehead, as if in deep pain.
“Tej, I too saw Kumbh talking to you when he called Guru Rigu a time-demon,” Saavi spoke. “But I thought Kumbh was lying, weaving a false story. How did you suspect Guru Rigu to be a time-demon?” She was stupefied. Their Guru, who’d guided them on how to develop their powers of time-reading, was a charlatan? The one who taught them why time-demons were monsters was one himself?
“Several details, when looked at together, pointed to him,” Tej replied. “Rigu coming to me after twenty years. Him choosing to reveal that I, too, am a time-demon, and also that I am Kumbh’s son. And then, motivating me to be a hero in some kind of battle to save humanity. It felt strange.
“Also, when Kumbh told me that Rigu was, in fact, Rigasur, I was not surprised. Why? Because somewhere inside me, I knew that Rigu’s intentions were not as pure as he portrayed them to be. My thoughts were blindsided because he saved me and my mother twenty years ago, but the tower of doubt grew with every new piece of information.”
Tej paused. Saavi and Gajendra stood there, wearing perplexed expressions.
“The series of signs did not end there. When I returned to this time-slice, Manika was not here. Why? I gathered that Rigu has either captured or worse, killed her.”
“Oh, how did you suspect that, brilliant chap?” Rigu looked up. His eyes were dull and drowsy.
“It was easy. Manika would have seen the events of day seven in her updated time vision. In that vision, she would have seen Kumbh exposing your true face. Curious about you, she would have focused her time-reading on your past. She would have realized that you, in fact, are a time-demon in the guise of a time-reader.”
“Smart!” Rigu mocked.
“You knew that she would witness this conversation. You most probably eliminated her right after she saw the time visions of day seven. Her time readings were complete, and she had fulfilled her purpose for you.”
“Astute deduction, my boy.” Rigu clapped sardonically. “Although I did not kill her. I only captured her. Such powerful time-readers are tough to find and cultivate. I intended to keep blackmailing her for time-readings by threatening to kill her family. Anyhow, go on with your nifty deductive story. I want to hear more.” Rigu had difficulty keeping his eyes open. The n
eurotoxin released in his blood had not only entrapped him in the body but also had a delirious effect.
“The anger you exhibited a few moments ago, when I hesitated to bite Kumbh, that was the final nail in your coffin. A respected, well-read sage, if genuine, would have rarely used a swear word as you did. Even in the state of extreme pain and anger, sages keep their calm. Patience is their first virtue,” Tej completed.
Rigu took several light breaths, attempting to stay conscious. “Huh. I had planned to reveal myself to you sooner than later. We could have ruled the world together—though not in this primitive past, but in the super-advanced distant future. This fool Kumbh had plans to slaughter them all. I had different ideas.” Rigu’s eyes were half closed because of delirium.
“I am not interested in your plans for world domination, Rigasur. I have only one question for you. Where is Manika? Where have you imprisoned her?”
Rigasur laughed. “Why would I tell you that? Thanks to your snake-bite, I am already trapped in this vessel. I also know that after I pass out, you’re going to put me in in some deep dark hole. You will not let me go. What do I have to lose? What’s your leverage here? But one thing I can tell you for sure, this is not over yet. I will return from the…” Rigasur collapsed on the ground, unconscious.
Tej expounded the whole story to Saavi and Gajendra. They would not have believed a word had they not witnessed this whole incident themselves. While they were envisaging what to do next Gajendra went out and returned with two heavy iron chains.
Tej suspected that Gajendra was actually Rigasur’s accomplice, and knew about his secret identity. Gajendra had been with Rigasur for several years, but Tej decided he had no choice except to trust Gajendra.
He knew if he could find Manika, she could time-read Gajendra’s past and find out the truth. With the help of a few other disciples, Tej and Gajendra trammeled both Kumbh and Rigasur with thick iron-chains, then called masonry experts and put them on the task of fortifying the chamber.
After that, Tej and a few other disciples started a manhunt around the ashram for Manika. They opened several meditation rooms which had been closed for ages. They searched in food storage halls and warehouses. But there was nothing—she was not found anywhere.
Then one disciple told them about another small, secret ashram. It was a series of small sheds a few kilometers away from the main ashram. Rigu went there often for solitary worship, and he used to be gone for a few days at a stretch. Only a few select disciples knew this. Being loyal followers, they would not have shared this information with anyone. But the news that Rigu was a time-demon had spread and had shattered their trust.
Secret Ashram | an hour later
Tej, Gajendra, Saavi and forty other disciples rushed to the secret ashram. There was a group of seven huts made of red bricks surrounded by a metal fence on all sides. There was one large metal gate, and five muscular men were guarding it.
At first, those guards acted tough and asked the disciples to get lost. But seeing an angry group of forty in front of them, they toned down. Gajendra, clutching one guard by the neck and lifting him three feet above the ground, also helped. Disciples tied them to trees. They conceded that they were each being paid twenty gold coins per month for the guard duty of this secret ashram. Where a sage such as Rigu found so much money was still a mystery. When Tej and Gajendra started breaking the locks and opening those huts, the conditions inside those rooms were appalling.
Several people were being held prisoners in those huts in inhumane conditions. Most of them were time-readers who at some point in their discipleship, had accidentally read Rigu’s past. They had realized that he was a time-demon. When they confronted him or tried to escape, he imprisoned them here. They were tied and tortured. One of them had also died two days ago, and his cadaver was left there to rot.
Tej also found Manika in one shed and was relieved to find her alive. On seeing Tej, she cried. She had been beaten and starved. With her torn clothes, disheveled hair, and a wounded jaw, she looked like a different person. The prisoners were freed and taken back to the ashram using horse-carts. Tej realized the primitiveness of this time-slice. If only they had the ambulances of the year 2024 AD! Vehicles and instruments of the current time appeared so archaic to him. Having seen the technologies of the future, the past looked like the Stone Ages.
20.
A Heavy Price
Manika took two days to get well enough to speak. One morning, as she sat sipping her herbal tea on her bed, Tej visited her.
“How are you doing, sister?”
“I am good, Tej. I couldn’t thank you earlier for saving my life.”
“You don’t need to. You helped me accomplish an act of revenge for which I waited my whole life. I wanted to see if you are doing better. Also, I still cannot wrap my head around a lot of things that happened in those seven days, so I have a lot of questions.”
“Okay?”
“But they can wait until you get better.”
“No, go on, Tej. I am bored to death lying here all day long, sipping these bitter medicines. I am not sure if this medicine has healing properties, but its taste definitely has damaging properties.”
Both laughed.
“How can a time-reader be bored, sister? You can have any vision you want, at any time. And you can enjoy reveling in those visions. No?”
“I haven’t done a time-reading in last few days. It takes too much strain. Besides, there is one vision of future which has been haunting me for a long time.” Manika narrated to him the whole vision from 2072, where Kumbh planned to take billions of lives by entering the body of Karlesha Breathnach and using Concordia VX to rain havoc.
“Then by capturing Kumbh, we did save a lot of lives. I am not sure why Rigasur spent so much effort pursuing a good deed, Manika. What did he gain from all this?”
“Though the result of his efforts may appear to be positive, his ultimate aim was not noble at all. While Kumbh wanted to murder those billions, Rigasur wanted to rule them like a ruthless dictator. He would have re-configured Concordia VX to control those brains. Imagine—within a fraction of seconds he would have earned billions of slaves, all of them ready to move on his command.
“He would have created vast armies of soldiers to serve his security. Vast harems of beautiful damsels for his carnal pleasures. Huge factories of workers working to build massive monuments for His Excellence, Rigasur. He would have established his own empire on the whole planet. That’s what time-demons are usually after. They want either death, destruction, or absolute power over the world. Kumbh was motivated by the former, while Rigasur was aiming for the latter.”
“And he used me as a pawn by fueling my fire for revenge.”
“Yes, Tej, that is why he actually came to this time-slice thirty-five years ago. Here, he took an old sage’s body as a vessel. He also morphed his name from Rigasur to Rigu. His deception and con were so shadowy that people around him did not suspect him. His usual point of stay is far in future, his favorite years being 2035 to 2060 AD. Those will be the times when robotics and technology will give the best fruits to mankind, after which it will start to become a curse.”
“Hmm. And who was that other kid who called himself Tej and who came in with a fancy weapon?” Tej grimaced as he re-imagined the kid being shot down by Kumbh.
“Oh, him? I am not sure, Tej. I did see him in the time vision, and I was surprised, too. I have yet to time-read him.”
“Wow. I envy you time-readers. You have the power to know anything you want.”
“I wish that were true. We can only time-read a target we want to focus on, and that target is not always clear. Being a time-reader is like having access to a library full of infinite books, but not having any idea of what to read, unless you open one of the books and it leads you to the others. Only when I chose to read Rigu’s past did I come to know about his true d
ark self. Anyhow, you had some questions. Go ahead, shoot.”
“Yes, the first one. If you knew Kumbh had taken over Samarth Bhasin’s body, why did you not tell me before I went to the year 2024?”
“I didn’t know that when you started your future journey. As Rigu explained to you earlier, Kumbh had taken good precautions to cover his tracks. We did not know where exactly he was in that city. Imagine sifting through millions of individuals in that city. It’s a tedious activity. But several time-readers were re-reading the time visions while you lived those seven days in the year 2024. So, when that person Kevil showed you the seventeen names, it was a huge relief for us. Our potential targets were narrowed.”
“Kevin?”
“Yes, Kevin, not Kevil. When he and his friends finalized the seventeen names, I saw that list in my time vision. Using that list, I and a few others could focus our visions on each of those specific individuals. When we did so, we realized that Kumbh’s new host was Samarth.”
“Samarth Bhasin!” Tej quipped.
“Yes, that one. We decided to give you that name to direct you to the right path. But the problem was how to reach you in the far future. The only artifact going from this time-slice to that time-slice was that wooden box, which we knew you would come for. So we went back to the temple priest and engraved that name on the box. You received the box, with the engraving, in the future.”
Tej was impressed. For an instant, he felt awe for what Rigasur had created here. He had gathered several gifted time-readers of this era and put them in a single place. He’d trained them, motivated them, and cultivated their powers. Together, these special individuals could read anything in the past, present or future.
“Another question, sister. When I met Kumbh, he mentioned some massive black doors. What are they?”
“Not black doors, Tej. Black holes, Supermassive Black holes.” Manika chuckled.