Disappointment is bound to follow expectations, no matter how small they are. The mountain goat we worked so hard to catch wasn't the delicacy I imagined it to be.
"Himalayan Tahr isn't like our good ol' regular mutton." I kept chewing, unable to bring the fibrous meat to a condition where I could easily swallow it down. The smoky yet raw flavor of the meat made it even harder, making me feel like I was masticating burning coals in this shivering wintry cold.
"Maybe we are the worst cooks in existence. Still, I've always wanted to go camping in mountain forests, so I'm grateful for even getting to experience this." Jevin added some dry firewood picked up from the pine forest to the crackling bonfire. His bandaged right arm was lined with gooey yellow medicine spilling out of the edges of each individual cloth strip, exuding a nostalgic hospital-like smell.
"Guess you lived a sheltered life." I concluded, realizing only after that there were lots of other glaring options that I had conveniently ignored.
He gave a dry smile without saying further. I must have missed my mark by several kilometers.
"You sure you won't require healing Kundalini from me?" I asked instead, changing the topic to his bandages.
Even among the top physical leaning Rakshaks, it was very rare for them to rely on their natural regeneration qualities for repairing their body back to shape.
"The more I recover naturally, the better my regeneration rate gets. So don't worry, it's just a step in my path to becoming a stronger Yoddha." Jevin inspected his muscular arms, capable of wielding the weapon named Gada, which is a heavy mace with a burger-shaped top.
"I've been curious, Dhruva..." He mentioned my name explicitly, grabbing my attention, "Why haven't you been participating in gathering experience? The others... They have been talking about it behind your back. We know you were a support member of the league's winning team, but your actions are giving off lazy vibes."
"Believe me. They'll thank me later for not stealing their 'opportunities' for growth." I said, remembering what one of my friends had accused me of. I've been trying to have a talk with him for a while, only to be ignored every time.
Jevin thought about it for a while and decided not to dig deeper like I had done with him. Before he could move on to the next topic, a metallic smell rushed into our campsite from somewhere up in the mountain slopes.
The trunk of the pine trees around us reflected off the dancing red-orange light of the campfire, looking down at us menacingly. The subtle insect cries that were ringing till now had also disappeared, enveloping us in a sense of imminent dread.
"Send." Jevin stood up while manifesting his iron Gada from a dimensional crack, after triggering an alarm in our KalpaYaal group.
KalpaYaal is a social media of sorts that all beings who have Kalpa's Divine Vessels can access, imitating a few services available in the dimension of Alik, where most of us here were born.
"A significant amount of wild animals are approaching. Good job Jevin on sensing it." Vivikta, the Rishika acting as our guide and mentor, came out of her tent while donning her steel plate Armor and balancing the handle of a two-handed Warhammer over her right shoulder. She opened the flap of the girls' tent and shouted inside, "Aren't you five a little too relaxed? Come on out!! We've got a horde coming in!"
By now, I could feel the thundering footsteps of the wild animals vibrating the ground as they approached our campsite. The final guy in our team with whom I hadn't talked much also rushed out, bow and arrows in hand, from inside the relatively smaller boy's tent.
"How many?" He asked, glancing at Jevin, readying an arrow and facing up the mountain slope.
"At least forty, judging by the intensity of their footsteps." Jevin answered, concentrating on his perception skill.
The silvery clouds above kept hiding and revealing the moon, its light casting onto the forest at regular intervals. It won't be giving us much of a visibility during whatever altercation we are about to find ourselves in.
Vivikta arrived with five girls in tow, their once sleepy faces now in full alert mode. Aditi, the tallest among them with a pixie cut, shared a silent gaze with me, probably wondering whether I'd join the defense or not.
Things between us have been awkward from our very first dungeon crawl, despite her making amends with the rest of the members in our common friend circle.
A gut feeling kept tugging at me, like it always does before things got a whole lot worse, forcing me to stand at the back of the group looking over all of them.
Letting loose several floating fogs from my dimensional box, consisting of minuscule Kundalini beads, I attached them to my body with thin energy Tethers like a kite and its string. These strings allowed me to manipulate the fogs' positions and shapes based on the commands I had already installed within, during their creation a few weeks earlier.
The seven Rakshaks before me took up positions according to their roles, leaving me, the support and healer, as well as Vivikta, the mentor, at the very end of the group.
"Good to see you taking initiative this time." Vivikta whispered beside my ears.
"Not initiative. Insurance." I clarified.
The gravel under me kept shifting and jumping following the rhythms of the incoming wild animals and the cold air stung at my nostrils, forcing me to take shorter yet rapid breaths.
"Aditi. You have to hold the line. No matter what happens." Vivikta started assigning duties to each one of us, especially the boys who have been carrying out multiple roles in this makeshift team. "Jevin and Vaibhav, coordinate with the girls to take out any threats from the sides. Rest of you know what to do."
The rustling of the tall trees intensified at the front, pine cones falling out and rolling down the hilly slope we were facing. They bounced off our feet and continued their way down the twenty-degree incline.
Step aside.
My whole body screamed.
The moment I followed my body's instincts, a shadow went past my peripheral vision, splattering my face with a liquid that smelled of rust. I flinched from the unexpected feeling of warm blood over my chilled face and wiped it away instantly with my white robe.
A guttural cry followed the collapse of a female archer to my front, who was now holding the bleeding stump of her missing arm in a tight grip. She popped open a potion I had distributed at the very beginning of this Pilgrimage and chugged down its green contents.
"Wow. You alerted every other animal in the jungle of our presence. Good job!" Vaibhav complained, shooting an arrow into the dark. It lodged itself into the bark of a pine tree, missing whatever he was aiming at.
"Try to get a hit first." Another archer girl beside Vaibhav scoffed at him.
Aditi and another Surakshak continued stopping the shadow creatures, which jumped over or sideways after colliding with their shields.
The moment they changed directions, their forms materialized for a split second— A slightly overgrown and smoky silhouette of a leopard. It disappeared as soon as it had appeared.
I kept tabs on what was happening behind us, to make sure we didn't get attacked by a pincer formation. The injured girl's rest of the arm must be with the beast that sped past my face, or worse, already feasted upon by it.
The black shadow was fast but it didn't return for a second bite. Without taking any chances, I raised a barrier by manipulating one of the energy fogs floating around me, into the shape of a parabola to cover my back with.
"Chhaya Vyaghra." Vivikta concluded while trying to follow the shapes darting across, "They are supposed to be nimble and light. How in Naraka are they creating heavy footsteps like that?"
It seems she missed the moment when one of the beasts had slowed down.
"I'm activating my blessing." Pratyusha, the only person in the team who was blessed during the 'festival of celestial weapons' exclaimed, surrounding herself with a yellow aura.
"Lakshman Rekha." She mumbled softly, invoking her Blessing— a barrier from the epic of Ramayana. The barrier was powerful, but unfortunately, it had failed to protect the very person it was created for.
Two concentric circles simultaneously appeared, keeping us at their center and erecting two barriers of light, keeping away the Chaya Vyaghras that were jumping around stealthily, using the tree trunks as footholds.
Apart from the first few ones, the rest dodged our formation and continued their way down the slope.
"Dhanurdhars, try picking off as many of them as possible." Vivikta ordered, "Yoddhas, break formation and enter the outer circle to engage the beasts one at a time. Pratyusha will control the barrier restrictions accordingly."
The footsteps kept vibrating, putting pressure on our psyche with every passing minute. Knowing something was coming, yet not seeing it, was frustrating and stress-inducing.
Right after the moonlight reappeared, we saw its shine reflecting off numerous approaching sharp tusks.
"Wild Boars!!" Aditi shouted from the front as soon as she caught a glimpse of the wild animals rushing towards us. "And... And another horde of Yaks!!"
The barrier rippled as the ginormous Boars and Yaks crashed into it, spreading out thin cracks from their impact points like a smashed windshield. More and more of those cracks appeared as the animals kept colliding and then taking a detour along the boundary of our protective Rekha.
Animals in Satya seemed to be stronger and bigger versions of their Alik counterparts. Did someone use Ultimatrix on them?
I shook my head to get rid of my thoughts of the scenes from a show I was watching recently and concentrated on positioning my energy fogs in places that would allow me to stealthily deal backstab damage to any creature that might pose a threat to us.
Soon after, the Yaks got an inkling that something was obstructing their path and kept avoiding us by steering off to our sides, reminding me of 'that' scene from The Lion King.
As the final few straggling Yaks crossed us, disappearing into the darkness behind, the mountain forests reclaimed their quiet ambiance and the rumbling earth settled.
Vivikta suddenly assumed a battle stance with her arms trembling in fright.
"Here it comes," I muttered, not at all fazed by the situation. This was just a normal sequence of events by now. Soon, something chasing all those wild beasts will arrive, bringing chaos to our peaceful Pilgrimage.
Without wasting time, I started wearing the Makara Armor gifted to me by my seniors a few weeks ago. The sounds of Armor and leather straps annoyed my teammates, but only Aditi knew why I was doing this.
Her face went pale after witnessing me getting serious. She gulped and tightened the same Armor model I was equipping, cold sweat dotting her neck amidst the chilly weather.
Slithering sounds danced from one direction to another, reappearing at random intervals and leaving behind a bubbly boiling sound.
"Circumstances keep intersecting our fates, little Manava child." A voice I've long known suddenly registered inside my brain.
"Kalpa Vrikshya." I sighed, erecting my mental guards to stop her from invading my memories.
"I'm just here to warn you. This spawn of mine is just an experimental failure. It managed to come out strong but failed to inherit the qualities I was looking for." Kalpa's voice kept clawing at my brain, "It finally appeared in front of someone I have a connection to. Vanquish it to earn Siddhi points. I'll have some extra rewards ready in case you come out on top."
"You never bring good news, Kalpa. I'll act according to what I deem fit, so disconnect the channel right now. It gives off an uncomfortable feeling." I complained in exasperation.
The feeling subsided, but the intense pressure of bloodlust gripped my heart.
'Let's try it like last time.' I prepared to activate my left eye by feeding it Kundalini and saw the world glitch away. Covering my right eye, I watched the mangled remains of Vivikta and a few other members of the team. The rest had see-through holes punched across their bodies. Feeling my Prana, the life energy existing within every living being rapidly drained away, I blinked twice, ending the vision and wondering what to do next. Should I run away? Or should I try keeping these people safe?
Remembering my previous visions, something told me the scenes more or less ended up the same, no matter what I did.
The palace in Sutala had been destroyed by Vritra and the incident during Divyastra Utsaav left the Rakshaks lying unconscious on the ground. The visions had come true in one way or another.
Vivikta getting thrashed like that and the mangled bodies I saw here have no other alternative. It concluded one thing— We are not getting out of this unscathed.
Since it's already established, should I leave it to fate and do nothing? Or will that future come to pass if I take things into my own hands instead?
I remembered all those times I had given up moralities to protect my friends. What did I get in return?
Only accusations that I had stolen away their opportunities for growth.
People seem to forget their gratitude a little too early these days. All those acts of Adharma I committed, that will require decades of good deeds to balance out... They weren't worth it.
I'll be the only one to bear those sins for years to come.
Aditi in the meantime stepped back, letting Vivikta take the role of vanguard. A multi-colored Kundalini coating burst out of her body and enveloped the Warhammer she was carrying.
The suffocating bloodlust finally reached its peak, revealing Kalpa's failed experiment in the backdrop of the silvery moonlit forest.
A gigantic mass of vines, easily standing up to the height of a three-storied building.
The way its injured tendrils moved about autonomously gave an alien feeling. Not a single being in the dimensions I've been to had a movement set like this. As if hundreds of octopi were bound together, each trying to go their own way.
Two shriveled-up hibiscus flowers with a faded red color dripped radioactive yellow pus, exuding an acidic smell in the air, making both the boys and girls in the front vomit their dinner out of disgust and fear.
This overbearing feeling... It has been a while since I've felt it. It was not on the level of Vritra, the serpentine Asura, but potent enough to petrify its targets.
"Dhruva. Protect the students. I'll take care of this." Vivikta swung her Warhammer and chucked it, aiming at the aggregation point of the vines.
The Spawn shifted its body in response, creating a space by separating its vines in the middle of its body to let the weapon pass through without harming it. Kalpa's experiment crawled back and seemed to glare at Vivikta from the way its hibiscus flowers pointed themselves in her direction.
Having been attacked, the Spawn bolted towards us aggressively and started pounding on the Lakshman Rekha with its trunk-sized vines hidden among the others meant for mobility.
"I'm almost down to my final Prana. Sorry." Pratyusha apologized, her face tearing up in fright as she gazed at the cracks growing wider on her barrier. Things were looking bleak from her perspective.
Vivikta, still a little bit dazed from the monster's aura, pulled back her arm and summoned the Warhammer she had hurled. It pierced through the unsuspecting monster's back answering her call, exploding pieces of the plant outwards and raining them down over our barrier.
The juices and fluids from the monster tainted the blessed protection, corroding it away and slowly exposing us to the acidic fumes that made it hard to breathe.
Vivikta caught the Warhammer mid-air and pivoted herself around on her left foot, using its momentum to again redirect the weapon back to our verdant assailant.
This time, the Spawn caught her weapon with its vines and started playing tug of war with Vivikta as she tried her best to bring the hammer back to her hands with her Will.
The fogs were now in position and awaited my commands.
"Vaibhav, take this." I handed him one of my 36-point Kundalini arrowheads. "Right after my attack, hit the monster with this."
He inspected the star-shaped arrowhead and nodded. "Right after you."
I cracked my knuckles. Won't I be accumulating good deeds by taking out this monster and saving my teammates?
Despite all my preconceived notions regarding charity, I couldn't inhibit my impulses to act in order to save the people in front of me. The enemy this time is a monster, so I must be allowed to take it down right? How many hits from my attacks can it survive?
Calm down. Even if I have seen a possible future, I must still try to change it. At least once. Perhaps, it will also give me an insight into the mysterious powers associated with it.
Fate and Kalpa had been putting bamboo in my backside for a while. It's time to consciously fight back.
Extending out my left dominant arm and touching my middle finger with the thumb, I activated the traps prepositioned with my fogs, with a click of my fingers.