The vivid colours of his past life were quickly replaced by another.
His 49th welcomed him in dull grey and flickering oil lamp. He was in a rustic simple room. The walls around him painted dirty white in chalk, practically gray in this dim lighting. He was laying on a bed stuffed with hay on a rickety wood frame. There were other beds in the room, filled with boys in their teenage years. A single window was placed by the door, letting in the rays of morning light into the room.
Astan the Mercenary had died.
The man was once again without a name.
The nameless man shot up from his bed and quickly reached for his neck. It was smooth now, nary a nick left behind even though he had just severed his own head moments before. It was a thin neck with no beard, only the prominent adam's apple of a young teenage boy. He checked on his body and found it unharmed. His hands had no calluses, he wasn't clad in dented breastplate but instead a rough cotton clothing.
Like something a scribe would wear. A scribe or a rishi in training. He was reborn in an ashram.
[Ding!]
That dreaded sound came as usual. It marked the end of a life and the beginning of a new one. The man looked up and saw that familiar blue window. Almost transparent and totally out of place with this world. A reminder that he did not truly belong here. Its white letterings glared mockingly at him.
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[Chapter 49/???
Story Progression: 32%]
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And nothing else. A simple, primitive system. One that mocked his lack of progress. The last part of information flamed the latent madness swirling inside him.
32%
Thirty two fucking percent. That number hadn't moved for three lifetimes. Did the system deem Nara and Hanma's death so insignificant? Did his last stand against Ravana meant nothing? His pain, his desperation, his loss, his memories—did no one give a shit for what he's been through?
The man suddenly roared. Grieving for all the lives that had been lost and forgotten.
He let the colour red painted over his vision as madness took over. That mind-numbing, overwhelming grief and rage, the telling signs of his incoming madness. It happened numerous times before. When he could no longer face the endless rebirth he would then lose reason and rampaged.
Usually he'd die sooner. Only to reborn again at the next moment, then the cycle repeated. This time would probably end up the same.
He swept the oil lamp off the table. Splattering oil to the bedsheet that caught a lick of fire and was set ablaze. He tore down whatever things he could reach, flipping over the bed, kicking and punching any furnitures and even walls.
The other occupants were startled into wakefulness and was met by a ruin.
"Nazir! What are you doing?!"
"Fire? FIRE!"
"Nazir, hey!! What has come over you? Snap out of it!"
"Help! There's fire! Nazir's going crazy!"
The ashram fell into chaos that morning. Some of the bigger boys tried to grapple him to the ground, but he's faster and more skilled than them. They could only grabbed at him while he kept destroying the room. It was a miracle that he didn't seem to be interested in beating them along the way. A few of the weaker boys ran out to call for help.
"Nazir! Calm down!"
Some were chanting a spell to exorcise harmful demons that might possess him. It was no use. He was the harmful demon himself. And he was dancing with the background of hell fire, as the flame started to crept up the walls and its smoke became his crown.
"Nazir! Please stop!"
"Nazir!"
They called his name over and over again. Nazir, Nazir. So it was his name now. A new one, another life. It would probably ended the same way. He did not want to live anymore.
"Useless! So what if I'm going crazy?!" He was grabbed from all sides; all tangled limbs and taut veins.
"So what if this place burned to cinders! We will all die soon anyway! All of you and I, none of us will live to old age! None of us!
Nazir was elbowing one of the boys when finally help came to that room. An old man with face painted in red and white lines came into the room, his face was livid at the sight of ruin. Behind him were a train of younger boys bringing sticks of bamboo and buckets of water, like a little group of soldiers ready to subdue an enemy.
"Master Vandrabad! Help!"
"Master, Nazir is losing his mind!"
"NAZIRUNABAD!!" The old man bellowed until his whiskers trembled with fury. "You scoundrel! If you wish to self-immolate, do so without dragging others!"
With a wave of his hand, the old man subdued his movements. Nazir felt himself choking as if an invisible hand was strangling his neck. Then he was lifted into the air and was flown out. In his struggle, he managed to see that he was flying across a series of simple buildings. A complex of the ashram. The sky was clear. The weather bright.
Then he was thrown onto the ground roughly. He coughed out a mouthful of dirt as he gathered himself in front of the ashram's gate. The big frontyard was filled by many disciples running here to there doing their morning chores. They all saw and recognized who he was.
[Clean up your act outside then come back for your punishment!]
A loud voice suddenly rang brutally inside his head, followed by stabbing pain. It was the old man's voice; Old Vandrabad. That man must be a mahaguru of this place.
[And if you dare to run away, believe me, I will grant you your wish and roast you alive myself!]
That threat only made Nazir angrier.
A plume of black smoke was rising from the direction of his room and a loud booming curses followed. The disciples on the yard started to whisper among themselves. Their eyes glancing at Nazir with various expression.
These were orphaned boys and girls, taken into the ashram to be trained as rishis. Or if they have no talent for the deeper knowledge, then to be attendants for nobles.
And these little shits were talking smack about him.
'Hey, hey, so the mighty Nazir has fallen out of Old Vandrabad's grace?'
'Sounds like he had gone stir crazy. Must be from reading a forbidden art or something.'
'Do you think he would be still be on the run for the royal's rishi candidate?'
'I hope not! Then maybe I'll stand a chance to be listed in the selection, haha. It's going to be Young Lord Darsa who's picking this year. It's a big boon however you see it.'
'Shh. Don't say it out loud. You'll jinx it. Young Lord Aruna will be picking too this year.'
'Again? Didn't he already have a study mate from last year?'
'Didn't you know? So it's like this—'
They're quick to badmouth him, and just as quickly they forgot about him and shift the topic to something else. Anger flared up brighter in his chest, but also despair and, strangely, a bubbling urge to laugh out loud.
How insignificant life is. How fleeting and impermanent.
He's called Nazir now, but he will be called another in just a few years. Maybe in 20, maybe 30 years. He had never been able to go past the 30 years mark. And none of these people knew any better.
He staggered to his feet and wandered off. A bundle of nerves in motion. He must've looked like a trouble making youth, itching for a fight, because people avoided him on the street.
Carriages and wagon rode past him, drawn by heavy chested draught beasts with sawed off antlers. Nazir realized that those beasts were the famed rusas of Akatara, not the usual horses or mules commonly used elsewhere.
These tamed beasts were stronger than most horses but they were only this docile in their homeland. Something about the mana of the land. Because once they were taken across the sea or even crossed the Great Wall, the rusas would go mad and raged until they died of exhaustion.
He quickly observed his surroundings. He was walking along the main road. The street were lined by giant old silk cotton trees, their pods almost bursting with white cotton tufts, ready to snow any time soon. He knows only one such city with this kind of set up.
It's the city of Antieum.
He cursed under his breath. This is the city of Girivar, the future Mad King of Akatara. Only then he remembered the names uttered by the disciples before.
Darsana, older brother of Girivar, a saint-like prince who died young, making the unlikely leftover Prince Girivar as the heir to the throne. The other named Aruna was their older cousin, the future bloodthirsty general, Girivar's right hand man who never takes prisoners.
He had never liked being close to Antieum once the civil wars started. The city was indeed beautiful now at time of peace, but later these streets will be lined with bodies thrusted up on pikes. And now he's thrown right in the heart of Antieum.
Nazir cursed once more.
He spat to the side of the road and made his lanky feet run as fast as he could. Ran away from this blasted, rotten place. Ran to rid off himself the gnawing, growing sense of helplessness. Ran, no matter that his untrained lungs felt like it was burning and his muscles spasm painfully.
This neverending cycle of samsara, this damned world, this shitty life. He might as well cut his own neck again and be reborn somewhere else. Vandrabad and his spit roast be damned.
But before he could act out his suicidal thought, a loud commotion was heard. Shrill voices of heavy chested ammas calling for guards, some brave ones were even whipping their shawls fiercely at the supposed villains.
Nazir had ran all the way to a wet market where a group of thugs was seen beating a dirty looking beggar.
"Cruel villains! Rotten brigands! Sowing bad karma in the open, may you be born again as swine in your next life!"
"Amma, stay out of this," warned one of the thug, fending off the colorful clothes around him. "This is not some helpless beggar you see. He's a snake with the most poisonous tongue!"
The other thugs kept kicking the frail looking young beggar. One of them roughly yanked up the youth's hair, showing the bloodied face and even bloodier rows of teeth. The broken teenager was... smiling?
"Bastard, now you still dare to say those nasty words about my mother again? Huh?" said the burly thug.
The beggar's lips were moving, saying something in a quiet voice that made the thug's face turned an even deeper shade of red.
"I'LL PULL OUT YOUR TONGUE, YOU SON OF A—"
The thug couldn't act out the threat because right in the next moment Nazir had pulled him by the shoulder and punched him square in the face.
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[1]Rishi: an enlightened/accomplished person. In this novel setting rishi is a mage that usually become advisers for nobles.
[2]Ashram: a spiritual hermitage or monastery. But in this novel it's more like a cross between vocational school and orphanages. It will come into more diverse form later on. I take it from the word 'asrama', but it translates in English as dormitory, and it wasn't what I was looking for so, yeah...