The air did not stir; it was as if the world held its breath. No one moved. All eyes remained on Rani.
We’re too different, rakshasa and human. How can there be common ground between us?
The hate ran too deep and for too long. There was barely peace between humans, and they were all but identical. Mankind made war upon itself over the smallest things: the colour of skin, the style of clothing, the way they worshipped. So how could there ever be peace between demon and human?
Then someone threw down their sword. The weapon struck a pebble and the sound rang out over the battlefield.
Another dropped their shield.
Ash searched the crowd, trying to find the one who’d done it, his heart racing with … hope. A small hope. Hope and trust. Trust that between the two armies there was something they both valued. He looked at the demons, watched the strands of webs drift overhead. He looked at the blade in his hand, the blood encrusted on the chipped metal. He let it fall.
The trickle became a stream, then a river, then a tidal wave as rakshasas and humans alike discarded their weapons. People stared around them in bewilderment, as if waking from a nightmare.
Ash let out a breath.
Rakshasas crossed the ground and bent down before Rani. They touched her feet, prostrating themselves in the bloody sands. They kissed her hands.
Ash blinked, wiping sweat (it was sweat, not tears) off his face. He was the Eternal Warrior; he’d been in countless battles. None had ended like this.
Parvati took his hand and looked at him. “Ash …”
The cliffs trembled. Rocks cracked and boulders shook free, bouncing down and crushing the rocks and the shanty towns beneath. The sands swirled, gaining a strange sort of life.
The waves rose and stirred with anger.
Ash had known it. He picked up his sword. There would never be peace. War was eternal.
Ashoka steadied himself as the ground shook. “What’s going on?”
“He’s here,” said Ash.
Lights burst in the night sky. The air groaned, a deep sound that went down into the bones. People screamed.
The ships on the shore began to bend, to mutate. The gigantic structural beams twisted like rubber and rebuilt themselves into legs. The panels peeled themselves into new skins. The fields of spotlights tore free from their frames, blinked into life and reassembled themselves into immense unblinking eyes.
Ash had seen stone statues come to life, even one almost thirty metres high. But these towered over a hundred metres. The dozen dismantled ships merged together to create three monstrous, living automatons.
One was a spider, striding out of the sea on eight legs the size of tower blocks. Cables swung from its body, and cogs and engines and gears screamed into life, controlling its movements. Its eyes were made of hundreds of spotlights and its gaze cast a field of brilliant white over the panicking crowds.
The second metal beast was a giant lion, its teeth over ten metres in length, its claws made of iron girders. It swiped one paw across the beach and bodies went flying.
Then the third strode out of the sea. An elephant. It trampled dozens of people under its massive feet, demolishing more with each swing of its tusks. It was the size of a cathedral, its trumpeting so loud the cliffs cracked. Electric sparks jumped from its body, rising around its legs and over the beast’s gigantic frame, framing it with an azure haze.
A palanquin rested on its back. A mockery of a maharajah’s silken seat, made of black iron. The canopy was ribbed steel and barbed wire. It was a dozen metres in diameter, with room for fifty people, but on it was only one. Stark white against the black sky he stood, a cane in his hand. The wind ruffled his long blonde locks.
The rakshasas charged. Some formed a wall around Rani, but in moments they were overwhelmed. Chaos reigned and the slaughter began again.
And Savage, high up on the imperial elephant, laughed.
Chapter Forty-six
Two eagle rakshasas swooped down towards Savage, shrieking with their talons thrust forward. Savage raised his tiger-headed cane, its ruby eyes flashed and the two raptors burst into flames and plummeted into the sea.
The elephant marched along the beach, destroying everything in its path. The lion roared and leaped among the army, human and demon, and the spider crawled over the cliffs, hunting. Hundreds of smaller spiders grew from its body and scuttled into the tunnels.
The human–rakshasa army might have won, but with Savage here, many of the demons, most of those infected by his chemicals and others awestruck by his presence, sided with him.
Savage was a disease – he infected everything about him.
A howl carried across the sky, fierce and filled with bloodlust and the joys of slaughter.
Ash gasped. “Jackie …”
A beast leaped across the battlefield, huge as a house and packed with muscle.
What had Savage done?
Jackie threw back her head and roared with manic glee. Her mouth was red, and broken bodies hung from her massive fangs, each as long as Ash’s arm. Her forearms rose like columns and were covered in gore. Spears, blades and bullets merely bounced off her thick tawny pelt.
Parvati stumbled up next to Ash, her own eyes wide in horror. “Savage has transformed her. He’s filled her with too much power. Look at her.”
The flesh mutated under Jackie’s pelt and she shivered with pain. Her eyes were feverish and she grinned so tightly her lips bled. She snapped her jaws and swallowed three men whole.
Then she saw them.
“Go.” Ash pushed Ashoka away. “Go after Savage.”
“We’ll fight her together,” said Ashoka.
Jackie shook her mane as men crowded around her, stabbing and slashing with whatever they had. She barely noticed until, with one swipe of her forepaw, she turned them to red ruined smears. She licked her claws.
“No.” Ash gritted his teeth. “You have to stop Savage. Leave her to me.”
“You’ll never beat her. Look at her!” said Ashoka.
“Then so be it.” He turned to Ashoka. “Now go! Get Savage.”
Parvati flicked out her urumi. “Ready?” Her fangs were extended and slick with venom.
Ash picked up a discarded sword and moved it from one hand to the other until he got a comfortable grip. “Ready.”
Jackie saw them and hunched down, her mane bristled with excitement and her claws dug into the ground. She giggled and her tail swished back and forth, flicking up huge clumps of blood-soaked sand.
She leaped.
The wind blast almost sent them both flying as the hulking mass sprang at them. When Jackie landed, the earth cracked, and suddenly Ash was airborne, spinning head over heels from the impact.
He hit the ground and rolled as a cloud of fetid breath blew down over him. Jackie’s teeth snapped closed, centimetres from where his head had been.
Ash stabbed hard with the sword, but it didn’t even scratch her. Jackie twitched her shoulder and Ash was knocked metres back.
Gritting his teeth, he forced himself back up. Jackie had to have a weak spot. Once, when he’d had all of Kali’s gifts, he’d have seen them, perfect golden lights shining upon his target’s body. Now all he could see was a mountain of muscle.
The urumi sang and Jackie snarled as the serpent sword cut four shallow lines across her face, a chaotic, hideous hybrid of a jackal’s head and a woman’s face.
Jackie turned angrily towards Parvati.
Parvati launched herself at the monstrous beast, Jackie snarling and snapping at the serpent princess. Fresh wounds from the urumi cut her pelt, but Parvati hissed with frustration as the weapon merely scratched the gigantic jackal rakshasa. Ash knew what she was trying to do – get close enough to bite. But Jackie kept her at bay.
Ash hauled himself up using a broken spear. He couldn’t breathe without pain. He felt his lungs were being sliced. His chest was black with bruises and he spat out blood.
He stood, trembling with effort,
among the dead. Nameless men littered the ground.
They died trying to help me and I didn’t even know their names.
He should know them. He should have their names carved into his soul.
Jackie howled and a sea of fresh rakshasas answered her call. More and more piled across the battlefield, devouring all that stood in their way. Ash watched helplessly as Parvati was surrounded. Her urumi flashed like lightning and limbs and heads were parted from bodies, but second by second more encircled her. She screamed with rage, and she killed.
Jackie approached Ash, her mane soaked with blood, her eyes on fire with madness.
Parvati lashed left and right, but she couldn’t get to him. “Run, Ash!”
Run? He could barely crawl.
Ash gripped the spear with both hands. “Come and get it, Jackie. Let me ram this down your throat.”
Jackie broke it as if it was a matchstick.
She cuffed Ash backhanded and something in his chest cracked as he struck the ground and lay there, beaten.
He was human. He broke. He bled. His body could not support his will. He lay on the ground, and looked up.
He’d done everything he could. But it was over. Now all that was left was to die. “I hope you choke,” he snarled.
Jackie bore down upon him, opening her jaws.
“No!” Parvati’s cry rang out across the battlefield.
A thunderbolt, a thunderbolt of gold, flew through the air, into the jackal demon’s eye. It whispered in, then exploded through the back of her skull, hurling fur, skull, brain high into the sky. The force lifted her up into the air. She blazed with white fire, and as she rose, turning in midair, the flames multiplied and filled the night’s battle with blistering light. A wind swept across the sands and Ash gasped as the heat almost overwhelmed him.
Jackie was obliterated before she hit the ground. She simply disintegrated into billions of particles that vanished in the trailing wind.
“No …” Ash whispered. He should be dead.
Aching, bleeding, ribs broken, he struggled but couldn’t get up.
A figure stood over him. “Let me help.”
“Ashoka, what have you done …?”
“I wasn’t just going to stand by and watch you die.”
Ashoka lifted Ash up. Ash groaned as he rested his arm over Ashoka’s shoulder.
Ashoka held an empty bow in his hand. He’d shot the Kali-aastra at Jackie, killing her and saving Ash’s life.
But dooming them all.
Chapter Forty-seven
“I’m going after Savage,” said Ash.
Ashoka shook his head. “No. We’ll both go. I’ll distract him and you finish him off. You’re the Kali-aastra.”
Ash rubbed his thumb, out of habit. “There’s only one Kali-aastra and you’ve just wasted it. You should have let me die.”
“Forget it, Ash! That’s not how it should be.” Ashoka grabbed his arm and swung him round. “Look around you. Look.”
Men fought demons. With swords, spears, stones, their bare hands. A boy sobbed, cradling a man in his arms. He rocked back and forth, wiping the man’s face with a rag.
Two others lay dead, their bodies entwined, their fingers grasping each other’s. High up on the cliffs the women wailed as the demons screamed. He watched one rakshasa drag another free from a melee, shielding the monster with his own body, then falling as the arrows pierced him.
“Aren’t there enough deaths out there without adding your own?” said Ashoka.
Ash saw sons take up weapons to defend their fathers. He saw demons gathering up their dead, crying over fallen comrades. The carnage was endless, and so was the grief. Each life gone resonating across so many others.
A sharp stabbing pain shot up from Ash’s thumb.
“It is a paradox,” he whispered, “but I think I get it.”
“What?”
Ash scratched his thumb. “I’m going after Savage.”
“You’ve a plan?”
“I’ve a hope, Ashoka. Just a hope.” He held out his hand. “Goodbye, brother.” Ashoka didn’t move. He met Ash’s fierce gaze. Then he took Ash’s hand and shook it. “May the gods go with you.”
Ash ran towards the sea. It wasn’t easy as he had to force each step out of his battered body, but he didn’t look back.
The beach where the elephant stood was a quagmire as the sea and blood mixed to create a sucking bog.
The ground shook under its feet. In its wake lay hundreds. Savage stood above it all, summoning fire and lightning, revelling in his power, certain of his victory. Ash waded into the sea, the waves rising over him, as he approached a leg the size of a tower block. It was made of girders and beams and patched with steel panels. Cables ran within the exposed structure like veins and sinew.
Ash stared up as the elephant’s body passed overhead. Cables dangled loose and he grabbed one, swinging himself up on to the leg. His joints screamed in pain as he reached out and wrapped an arm around a beam as the leg rose, water pouring from it. Up and up it went, stepping over the crowds clustered beneath it, the wind howling through its body.
Ash climbed.
Chapter Forty-eight
The elephant swayed and Ash struggled to steady himself. The wind roared this high up and he felt as if he was in another world, far from the death and destruction.
Savage had his back to him, but Ash had dropped his sword in the climb. Savage laughed and thrust with his cane and a wall of fire erupted along the beach. He wove it in this direction and that, the wall responded and rolled across the sands, consuming all in its path.
Ash stepped over the low steel wall of the palanquin. The floor was a network of steel, there was a carpet of barbed wire, but there were gaps, and one slip or misplaced step and he’d tumble a hundred metres, if he wasn’t smashed upon the beams that comprised the elephant’s body.
“It’s even better than I imagined,” said Savage. Slowly he turned. “Thank you, Ash.”
“You’re proud of this?”
“Who will defy me after tonight?” said Savage. “I’ll rebuild my factories, soon the RAVN-1 will flow and within weeks I’ll have it flying over a dozen cities. The world is mine. How can you deny it?”
“You’ve created a world of darkness. That’s nothing to be proud of.”
Savage scowled. “I’ve saved the world, but you’re too small-minded to see it.”
Ash made his way closer. Savage didn’t try to stop him. With the Koh-i-noor embedded in his chest, he was invulnerable against any mortal weapon.
“Why are you here?” asked Savage. “You really think you can stop me?” He smoothed his hair from his face. “Do you want to try? Come on, Ash. Shall I show you how it’s done?” He wedged his cane into the floor and pulled off his jacket, exposing the bare flesh beneath.
The ten skulls shone upon his chest, glowing with an eerie white light that looked almost radioactive. The skin seemed to glisten, as if his diamond heart had filled his veins with crystal.
“Are you ready?” said Savage, holding his fists up in a mocking gesture.
Ash screamed as his arms pulsed. He saw his bones flex, push and warp. Ash stared in horror as he watched them move under his skin. Bruises swelled, ugly and purple, as the blood vessels were torn by the moving bone.
Savage was mutating him.
“Hurts, doesn’t it?” said Savage. “This is just a fraction of what I suffered. I thought you should have a taste, before I kill you.”
Ash gasped as his ribs twisted. Savage held him to stop him falling off their perch, but drew his fingers gently over Ash’s chest. Flames licked his skin, bubbling the flesh. Ash cried out, barely able to stay conscious. But he needed to hang on.
“Why are you here?” asked Savage again. “To beg for your life? Those of your friends? Quite hopeless to even try, boy.” He took hold of Ash and held him at the edge of the palanquin. “See that, Ash? See my new world? Isn’t it glorious?”
Through mind-numbing pa
in, his vision dimming with creeping unconsciousness, Ash gazed over the battered cliffs and the carnage as thousands fought. He glimpsed flashes of light in the haze of the smoke and fire-filled darkness. He blinked. Golden lights blinked. Each one was a life.
All lives were great. So each and every passing of it was great. A Great Death. They were all around him.
Rishi had tried to tell him. So had Reggie – this was what the visions had been trying to say. Ash should have known from the very beginning. It was always about life. The Kali-aastra swelled with the power of lives you valued as great. Now Ash could see – all lives were great; all deaths. It didn’t matter whose.
Ash had been seeing it through his human perspective. The lives that he’d valued – his uncle’s and aunt’s, Rishi’s, his sister’s and Gemma’s. These were the lives that were important to him.
But a god’s perspective encompassed all of humanity. Kali rescuing the baby from the battlefield. A child that could be anyone, and everyone. All of us.
I understand.
He tingled as images snapped in his mind.
A young man who played the sitar. Ash felt the strings on his fingers. The hours he’d studied, night after night, to become a musician. He had played in small, cramped restaurants and in tiny temples down alleyways to a handful of people. But each listener had been touched by him, even if all they remembered was a single note. His life had been great.
Another life entered him. This was a builder, a maker of bricks, and each house he’d built had a part of him in it. Families sheltered and lived within the walls he’d raised. Another great life.
A woman’s soul slipped into the Kali-aastra. A cook who’d worked decades on a roadside stall. Her chapattis had been thin as tissue, and her dhal watery and spicy, and there were coach drivers and passengers and other travellers who sought her out when they pulled in for their meal.
Ash Mistry and the World of Darkness Page 25