And then the pain had begun. She hadn’t screamed then. She had saved up all her screams to return them back.
Shukra would scream one day, she thought. Enough for both himself, and her.
The Purohit brushed a strand of hair off her face and she flinched. His eyes radiated kindness.
“You had so much potential, Urushi. You showed so much promise!” his deep voice echoed in the cage. “You were such a big pain in the ass with the whole rebellion, but I admired your courage and will.”
He licked his lips. “You had forced our hand into making you an Avadhani. Frankly, I still feel it’s no job for a woman. You might end up chained like an animal in a cage. Occupational hazard!” he smiled, stroking his beard.
Shukra chuckled.
“Anyway, you know that pathetic boy toy of yours? Well, he got himself captured by some kinkars. And let me tell you before you get your hopes up, there will NOT be a rescue party,” the Purohit taunted.
“He is going to end up in pieces inside the bellies of kinkars. At least they will find some use for him,” he said.
“So, you may now stop this childishness and co–operate and this nightmare will be soon over for you. Shukra wanted you to rot in here till you go mad and then die, but I am a reasonable man, Urushi. I’ll get you out of here and you can continue with your fantasies of being a relevant female representative if you promise to keep your mouth shut and work with us,” he said, and waited for her to respond.
He got nothing but silence and a simmering stare.
“Think about it. You are wise enough,” The Purohit stated with an air of finality, stood up and walked out of the cage.
Shukra knelt beside her again.
“This is your golden ticket, honey,” he smirked. “Take it! Your little playmate is gone. Gone forever,” he said and kissed her on her cheek.
Urushi didn’t even recoil. Her mind was numb and in some other place entirely. Some other place and some other time.
She was not in the cage. Not with Shukra. She was standing at the altar, taking her oath of the Avadhani. The future was bright and shining. The rebellion had finally ended. The women finally had their justice.
The words of her oath were escaping her lips, but her eyes were on the Dalapathy. His square chin –held up and his posture upright. He had an air of both authority and obedience about him. She had found it hard even then, to not think about him.
Little had she known that she would always have a hard time doing that, throughout her life.
That was the moment she had started falling in love. It was the moment she first laid her eyes on the man that she would love the most in the world.
And now she was no longer at the altar. The lights were no longer bright and the Dalapathy was no longer in front of her. She was on the floor of a cage. And she had just received the news that the man she loved the most in the world was going to end up dead from the man she hated the most in the world.
She didn’t reply.
The tears would come –of that she was sure…but not now. Not in front of this monster. She wouldn’t give him that. She wouldn’t give him any words either. There was only one thing she would give him.
Death.
“Now rest. I presume you have a lot of crying to do,” Shukra said, before leaving.
The crowd drowned Roy. He swam ahead, pushing the Forgiven aside, his hands and legs flailing.
“Niv!!” he was screaming.
He was rushing towards the central platform. Some of his hunter brothers tried to stop him. He broke free of them like a violent animal and barged ahead. The BlueSkins had already cut her palm.
Shukra was staring into the bowl of steaming water filled with her blood.
Roy saw Shukra pass the judgement, heard those words loud and clear but his mind refused to process it. He kept screaming and pushing ahead.
Niv. Niv. Niv. Niv.
The loud cheers of the Sinless or the horrified screams of the Forgiven hadn’t registered in his ears either.
Roy had broken out of the circle filled with the crowd of Forgiven and dashed ahead towards the platform. His eyes stayed fixed on Nivedita.
Everything happened slowly around him. He could see in astounding clarity, the BlueSkins who held her, drawing their blades. One of the blades rested on her neck as the other BlueSkin pulled her head back by her hair.
The moment was punctuated by sudden pain as two other BlueSkins lunged onto Roy and kicked him in the stomach. The pain felt real, yet seemed as if in a dream.
Distant and dissolving.
He was screaming. But he couldn’t hear his own voice. It too seemed distant like in a dream. All that felt real was Nivedita and her look of surrender and helplessness. He saw her smile through her big dark eyes for a brief instant as he struggled to break free of the BlueSkins holding him –a sad smile. If she felt any fear, her eyes didn’t show it.
She looked at Roy calmly and said, “Tell Pradeep I love him,” before the blade finally did its work, and Nivedita’s life ebbed away through the blood pouring out from her neck.
ESCAPE FROM HELL
This was the worst way to die, Vikranth was sure of that.
He was sweating all over. He kicked and struggled, screamed and shrieked. The kinkars that carried him hissed and snapped their jaws in anger over his attempts at escape. Their claws drew blood from his biceps and his thighs as he tried to wriggle free from their hold. The tent that held their God now loomed large ahead of him.
The constant dreadful sound of the God’s breathing was not the only thing that intensified as they approached the tent. A rancid pungent smell filled the air, like a dense fog. Vikranth gagged as they got closer. This was worse than smelling his own shit and urine day in and day out, bound to his tree. It was funny, he realized, how he had thought of the tree as ‘his’ tree. As if it was a friend –a companion in this hell.
The tent was at least six stories tall. The kinkars carried him inside, pushing open a small flap, cut out at the bottom. It was dark, hot and humid inside, like a boiling swamp. Vikranth stopped struggling as he saw what was ahead of him. Crouching on all fours was their God, a creature that had in an instant, wiped away any traces of coherent thought from his mind. He looked at it in disbelief –his mouth agape and his eyes fluttering with terror.
It was a massive abomination. The scope of its size was gargantuan –even for itself. It seemed to struggle to even exist. The weight of its body crushed its movement – a curse for being something that was never supposed to be. It lay there on its limbs, crouching and heaving like an obese toad, the size of a building. It was a towering blob of scaly, greenish–gray mass with skin that pulsated and bubbled in ever changing currents of tissue and flesh. Smaller limbs and organs –even eyes, appeared and dissolved on its body with each breath, like a horrible fission–weed induced dream.
On its back, embedded deep was the strangest thing Vikranth ever saw. A nuclear missile. The bomb stuck out of its back, only showing its tail, like an arrow out of a hunted deer. The being seemed to be drawing energy from the bomb. Its skin grew, changed and throbbed around the protruding missile – like a tumour. Rhythmic currents of raised flesh, illuminated by a dull green light within, rippled out from where the radioactive bomb dug into it. It was as if the creature grew around the bomb, like a creeper around a tree –gaining its sustenance from it.
Vikranth felt sick and nauseated. He looked for a face on the horror in front of him. Even amidst the constantly moving mass of flesh and limbs, there seemed to be a distinct form to it. Its head, facing downwards was recognizable, marked by a concentrated frequent occurrence of what looked like eyes –small glowing transparent orbs filled with what looked like blinking eyeballs. These deep holes opened up and blinked for a moment before being consumed by a current of flesh only to resurface again and again –bobbing up and down in a sea of bubbling skin.
Vikranth froze as he saw its mouth. A filthy opening grew out of its head and was guarded by
short but outspread tentacles which were lined inside with rows of pointy teeth. These slimy, pinkish–red tentacles contracted and spread out as the creature breathed in and out. This mouth in particular was nothing Vikranth could ever describe to anyone else. It was not of this world. It vaguely reminded him of octopuses, carnivorous plants, jelly fishes, human genitals and animal tongues. But it was something more and something else – an alien crevice of abject terror and vile absurdity, like a rotting and festering, fleshy portal to another dimension.
The Priest Eater knelt in front of it, his hands raised upwards towards it. Vikranth was now carried closer to it. The thick stench crept into him like a disease, choking him from within. There was something else in the tent that made him sick. It suffocated him and crushed him from inside. The kinkars that carried him came to a rest before its head and knelt. He was now right under its mouth, gazing in horror into the monstrous vision of oblivion in front of him.
His mind was slipping away. His mouth was now wet and smelt horrible. Did I throw up? He wondered. He was in a nightmare that crept into reality. The Priest Eater was now saying something.
“Give yourself up for our God,” he seemed to say. “Your mind would first be His, followed by your body. Surrender your thoughts.”
No, I don’t want that Vikranth thought.
Maybe you do, something else inside him said.
“Celebrate! For now, you are a feast to Him. Let Him inside and he will later let you inside Him,” the Priest Eater said.
After that he seemed to talk to the abomination.
“We offer you him in his entirety –mind, body and fluids. Take what is yours and give us what is ours. Consume our enemy and gift us with your essence.” After that the Priest Eater’s voice seemed to diffuse along with every other sound surrounding Vikranth.
It was getting eerily calm; a calm that wasn’t comforting but frightening. Even his vision was a blur now except for the thing ahead of him and its mouth.
There was something else inside him now, he could feel it.
Something inside his mind –a crawling worm; another conscience.
And it spoke to him. Not in words. There were no words for what it said.
It spoke in ideas and concepts.
What was it that it said?
Hunger, Vikranth. The idea was hunger.
What do you want to eat? What do you want to eat? That was its haunting question.
The world. He had answered.
But it was not him. It was more than him. It was a new him.
Yes, the world. Consume and devour.
He had never felt a hunger so intense. But the old Vikranth still held him back. There seemed to be a sort of battle going on inside him between the old him and the new him.
You don’t want to be hungry? The idea was being negated.
No, the old him said.
No? This was the new one.
Now it was the worm’s turn.
How about Freedom? Would you like being free? Go, Vikranth. Be free. Go forth into the world and back to where you came from, the worm inside his mind said.
Did it agree with the old him or was the new him playing a game, Vikranth didn’t know. Suddenly his hunger was gone. It gave place to something equally intense –strength.
He tugged his arm with such tremendous force that he heard the arm of one of the kinkars snap as it broke. He writhed and kicked as hard as he could. The four kinkars that held him were now holding onto him like a bullfighter would, onto a rogue, raging bull. One of Vikranth’s legs came free and then his other arm. Before soon, Vikranth was on lying on the floor, panting beneath the great horror’s mouth. The Priest Eater broke from his prayer. The four kinkars lay spread away on the floor; hissing and rising again.
Vikranth’s mind was back and clear as if a fog had just lifted. Did he break their God’s attack on his mind? He wondered. He knew this was the only window of opportunity he would ever get. He picked himself up quickly and then he ran as fast as he could.
A day and half before, when the moon was shining over the towers and much of the city that housed the Sinless was sleeping, Urushi woke up to the sound of someone calling her name. It was a faint call that seemed to have gone silent the moment she opened her eyes. I must have been dreaming, she thought and was almost about to lay down again to sleep when she heard the rustle of something being slipped into the cage followed by a sound of hurried footsteps that receded with each moment.
She remained motionless for a moment, unsure and puzzled. She wasn’t someone who was frightened easily. But there was an ominous air to all of it - the strange voice in the dark and the anonymous retreat of whoever had come to her cage. And what did they slip in? Was this an assassination attempt? She slowly got up and walked in the dark, towards the rusted door as her curiosity triumphed over her feeble fear.
She squinted her eyes, trying to see clearly in the blackness. Whatever it was that they had slipped in, it was lying on the floor. She realized as she came closer that it was a piece of parched paper. A note.
She picked it up and waited for a minute. When she could not sense any traces of movement outside, she returned to the window and sat by it. In the dim light that lazily crept through the window, she opened the note. The words shimmered on the note in pale blue. It was written in the dye that the Ashvins covered their bodies with. She knew it from the way it smelt. It was the same dull scent that lingered on Vikranth all the time. She brushed her dirty hair back from her eyes and started reading.
Destroy this note immediately after you read this. The very first line said. She read on.
This is a tough time for you but we urge you to stay strong.
No matter what happens, you will always remain our Avadhani and Vikranth, our Dalapathy.
Rest now and be safe –we are going for him. It is our duty to bring our Dalapathy back.
Kalki Commands.
Vikranth ran as his legs bled.
The forest engulfed him. The paths were blurred. But he ran.
He could still hear them; jumping and chasing. Hunting. The kinkars were quick. He just had to be quicker. He ran with all his might. The sounds were slowly fading away. Can it be? He thought. Had he really escaped? Maybe they don’t venture out too far from their hive. He kept running.
He was stark naked and bleeding. The undergrowth and the bushes cut him as he ran, but nothing mattered right now more than getting away from them. How far should he run? Will the kinkars give up before he did? His breath was already heavy and laborious. Everything hurt.
He had no idea if he was getting deeper into the forest or out of it. The trees all looked the same. His vision was blurring. He couldn’t hear them anymore. He seemed to have outrun the messengers of death themselves.
He stopped at a tree to catch his breath. It all seemed over. He was finally free. He was panting and wheezing, when he saw it from the corner of his vision. The kinkar jumped out of nowhere. He ducked just in time. The dark shape flew past him and fell to the ground. It was gaining its foot. Vikranth darted in the other direction. This was it. It really was over. But not in the way he thought it was. He was going to be ripped apart anytime now. He could hear the kinkar slithering and snaking behind him on all fours.
But now he heard something else too.
In the trees, in the bushes far away, he heard a great disturbance, as if something was coming.
And then he heard it. The sound of hooves.
He ran right into the sound. He turned back for a brief moment and immediately regretted it. He saw the kinkar dangerously close behind him. It now crouched mid-run for a quick second, like a coiled spring; ready for lunging on to him. He saw it uncurl and jump into the air towards him.
It was as if the moment was frozen in time. The beast’s great mouth was wide open and the multiple lines of teeth covering its insides glistened like pieces of glass. Its great claws were ready to tear him open. He could feel his feet falling forward, one after the other, keeping his r
un up. But it was a strangely detached action. As if his legs had a life of their own. His mind was only on the kinkar and how it seemed to slowly move in the air towards him as if life was offering him a few extra moments to savour before it all ended.
Then suddenly the beast’s head was no more. It was blasted into pieces of flesh and teeth –it’s dark blood pouring out of the head which had burst like a balloon. The kinkar’s body missed its original trajectory because of the impact of the bullet that pierced its head. It was as if in a dream that Vikranth’s ears registered the gunshot. These were strange sounds that did not belong in the forest. Sounds of gunshots and hooves. The moment that seemed like it was frozen in time had finally ended. He saw the body of the kinkar tumble to the ground and roll into a lifeless heap, spraying blood all over from the mashed pulp where its head used to be. It was only then that he stopped looking back and looked ahead in the direction in which he ran.
And greeting his eyes was the sight of two horses, one dark and the other light– and two men riding them, holding rifles in their hands. He recognized these men, as if from a previous life –long before time itself. Long before the nightmare of the kinkars and the haunting breath of their terrible God had begun. He knew their names.
Eeshan and Triven.
DARKNESS CALLING
I am not dead. Not yet. Vikranth’s muddled mind said.
All he could feel was the harsh sun. Or was it his burning skin? He was – sleeping? Lying down? Dying? The world was bumping up and down. And also moving around him. There were strange sounds. Hooves and the sound of men talking. He heard these voices close, yet from afar. Clouded and muffled, like a vision in a fog.
Sinners- The Dawn Of Kalki Page 14