We followed Bhairava's footsteps through the caves in silence. Corpses of Yeti, either torn apart by his Trident-Twist technique or with a single hole in their faces, were left strewn behind in our trail.
Bhairava jogged over the dead monsters, crushing their skulls and bones intentionally, as he took out enemies swiftly, even when they were invisible.
He kept twirling my drill-earthworm triangular arrowheads between his fingers, waiting for his next target.
"You should try to pick up an accurate throwing skill like that. Your transforming daggers in the hands of Bhairava is an instrument of instant fatality." Pratyusha suggested while she kept up her pace beside me.
"I've been thinking about it. Even though I have some practice throwing cricket balls, this is certainly on a different level."
"You'll pick it up. Everybody does. One needs to give it enough time." She's being oddly supportive right now. "I somewhat did it, too. Ofcourse, with your help. If I could, then it would be much easier for you."
I remembered not praising her directly about her feats back at the village. Is she trying to coax it out of me by utilizing diplomatic flattery?
Let's leave some breadcrumbs.
"Coming up with a novel application of your barrier in such a short time certainly says otherwise. Your ingenious idea saved the villagers. Not everybody could've done that. Great job!"
My words brought an unexpected reaction out of her. She stared at me through the rectangular gap in her helmet with wide, sparkling eyes. Then, they squinted a bit, like they do whenever she smiles.
It now made me feel bad.
"Was it really this unexpected?" I was dejected yet amused, "Did I never praise you guys before?"
"Not once."
"Bhairava might have rubbed off me to have done it finally. But I remember praising my previous teammates often. Or maybe, I'm just saying things inside my head and not aloud." I reasoned. Bhairava has been very encouraging for the last few hours since I met him.
"You're welcome." Bhairava commented from the front, "It seems I have imparted some virtuous qualities to you. But it would help if you said a few important things aloud. People won't understand unless you tell them how you feel about them."
I nodded—another thing to improve.
Without Bhairava's help, achieving second place in our fifth-grade rankings might have been impossible.
I also got into a new ranking leaderboard with grades five to seven taken as a whole—Ashrama's junior section. Amidst an Ocean of Seventh graders and a few archipelagos of sixth graders, I and the first rank of our batch stood as lost vessels at the very bottom of the list.
I am currently at a whopping level 54 compared to my previous 31—one less than the first place.
As Bhairava used my daggers, he provided me with some contribution points, which would soon allow me to bag the first rank. Yet, a sense of foreboding kept tugging at my stomach.
If fate allows things to work too well, there's always a reason for it.
It's never to make an upcoming ordeal easier.
But to ensure we somehow survive through it.
"We are almost there. I can finally feel the Peeth humming with Shakti." Bhairava assumed a battle stance—Trident in his left hand and my daggers between the fingers of his right. "Get ready. Considerable horde incoming."
"I remember you telling me these Yeti and Lakeh don't exude any presence. Especially the primary forces here. How come you're sensing them?" I asked and pulled out four utility barrier fogs from my dimensional box.
After manifesting them in their spherical forms, I wrapped Pratyusha and myself around with a couple for each.
"I doubt anyone among you has already awakened your heart chakra. So it must be the sage who accompanied you. They have tagged a lot of our enemies with their Air-Kundalini. Concentrate on the energies around us, and you might be able to sense them." He answered my query and started engaging with the invisible monsters.
All his attacks were purely physical. I think he's keeping his Divine energy aside for the Boss, who might be guarding the source of their Myth at the end of these tunnels.
"Stay behind me." Pratyusha stepped out front, looking for a stray Yeti that Bhairava might have missed. "I gotta work for the Armor set you gave me."
"It's better for you to wear it since I'm going to use my limited barriers for myself. I want it back cleaned and washed after this mission."
Four long strips of a dead Yeti materialized in front of Bhairava, interrupting our conversation after getting slashed downward with his trident.
He then held the trident horizontally to the ground and charged forward, manifesting two more dead bodies out of their camouflage, impaled by his weapon like a couple of marshmallows on a stick.
Pulling his weapon back, he kicked the two bodies away and swung his right arm like a whip.
Three more Yeti manifested and collapsed, with my daggers turned earthworms wreaking havoc inside their skulls.
Green brain juice erupted from my daggers' access points like fire extinguishing sprinklers, creating a horrifying image.
"Pratyusha, I missed one." Bhairava gave a heads-up.
"On it... Wait. I can sense it! Should it be this easy?" She jumped over to her right, holding her rectangular shield over her head.
"Either you are close to awakening your heart chakra or have an affinity with Air." Bhairava answered while cutting down several Yeti with a horizontal swipe of his trident.
A force from above brought Pratyusha down to her knees. She pushed it upwards and rolled back towards me, holding her shield now to her left in an instant.
An impact on her shield arrived as anticipated, but it still sent her flying into the cave wall on our right.
By then, I had already guessed the location of the Yeti.
An earth javelin manifested over my head and shot off towards the invisible target.
The body of an eighteen-foot yeti collapsed after glitching out of the matrix with a hole in its neck.
"Lucky shot." After dismantling it to its foggy form, I breathed a sigh of relief and summoned the chipped, half-broken projectile to my side. Only after the dead body appeared out of thin air did I realize how close the enemy had gotten after swatting Pratyusha away.
She took her position in front of me again after gathering her bearings.
Even if the barrier I provided Pratyusha absorbed most of her kinetic energy, being subjected to opposite forces within a short interval is never a great experience.
"You okay?"
"Hmm." She nodded silently, her ears red.
I guess she's embarrassed getting tossed around right after declaring she would hold the line.
After deploying her leg-chopping tactics she perfected back at the village, Pratyusha felled multiple stray enemies by herself, allowing me to conserve my Kundalini for later.
"Dhruva, provide me with more daggers. The ones I had..." A resounding crunch interrupted Bhairava's request.
His body flew past us in a split second and disappeared into the darkness of the tunnel behind us.
The ball of light he had summoned to provide us with visibility followed him like his loyal mount and left us to fend for ourselves all alone in the suffocating darkness.
Without giving myself time to breathe, I pulled Pratyusha back and detonated all six of my fogs into blooming spikes in the space where Bhairava was before he got thrashed.
An inhuman cry vibrated the walls of the cave, broke down my urchin-shaped spikes and sent wave after wave of traumatic bass tones crashing into our ribcages and rattling our eardrums.
It ground my first of the two-layered barrier into dust, leaving Pratyusha and me vulnerable to future attacks.
I had no idea what was happening in the pitch-black environment.
I usually transform my fogs into earth spears to reduce the cost of Kundalini used for their manipulation. But now was not the time to pull back my punches, especially when I was blinded and unable to hear properly in the aftermath of the monster's roar.
I covered both of us with a healing aura to mend some of our sensory functions.
I could feel the energy in my almost-filled gem depleting as soon as I reduced the broken spikes back into fogs, rejoined and reactivated them.
Earthquakes trembled the cave as my urchins bloomed once again, breaking down the floor and ceiling of the cave.
A notification arrived soon after. I had caught up to the first-rank guy. My spikes must have killed the majority of those still left in the horde Bhairava was taking care of.
But the bloodthirst kept pursuing us like a crazed hunter.
Another roar appeared in the darkness, a little too close to us.
Pratyusha didn't take chances. She grabbed my elbow and started sprinting away towards Bhairava.
"How can you see in this darkness!" I asked, consuming more of my Kundalini to repeat the transformation and repurposing process.
My gem now had about 16 out of 24 points of Kundalini left.
"I can't, but I'm sure we are not a match for it! All we can do is run. Don't blame me if we stumble over something!" Pratyusha apologized in advance, "I'll break down the stalagmites in our path, so stick with me."
Heavy footsteps bolted towards us in a wild stride and started reducing the distance since it was much more familiar with these tunnels than us.
"Duck." Bhairava's voice echoed.
A neon purple trident emerged from the darkness upfront, flaring up like an ethereal torch.
As soon as we crouched, a massive airburst travelled overhead, tussling our hair and releasing a shockwave from whatever it had impacted.
We heard several such bangs even through our busted eardrums as the trident made its way through the tunnel, grinding anything on its path to dust.
"Bhairava!!! The results will be the same as last time."
A desperate cry appeared this time, and a series of retreating footsteps followed. The breathless gasping sounds kept reaching us until a loud thunk interrupted it.
"As if I'm going to let you retreat this easily." Bhairava appeared from the tunnel, his ball of light illuminating the top of his head and shoulders.
"Great job Dhruva. Your spikes, in a moment of desperation, took out most of his minions." He extended his arms, pulling us to our feet and continued walking towards the final Yeti, still banging on an invisible wall that cut off his retreat.
Sensing Bhairava approaching, the Yeti gave up and faced his enemy.
Reflecting the light of Bhairava's floating ball, we finally saw the monster for what it really was.
An ape so tall he had to slump his shoulders to fit inside the cave.
Covered in blood-red fur and with multiple broken earth spikes sticking out of his body, it was hard to discern whether the crimson colour was natural or came from the blood trickling out of his wounds.
I must have lost my connection to the spikes that had entered his body for some reason to be unable to reconvert them to their fog form.
Since we can finally see the enemy, is getting hurt a condition to undo his camouflage? Or did he disengage it because he knew it wasn't working?
"How did you sense us, Bhairava? Last time, all you could do was run away like a coward, leaving behind the corpses of your followers." The Yeti taunted Bhairava.
"You were just as hard to sense as before. But your subordinates, not so much anymore. Say, does your Myth hide everything in contact with you?" Bhairava asked calmly, but a bitter look soon spread across his face.
He never told me in detail what had transpired during those four days and nights of battle here.
"We don't have much time for this." Pratyusha was feeling jittery from the way Bhairava was taking his time handling things.
"Don't worry. Your friends are still alive. These monsters require them to be so." Bhairava replied, not breaking eye contact with the Yeti, "I can feel their life force, but we must indeed hurry. Once this guy is taken care of, the rest will be a breeze."
"You never met my wife, did you?" The yeti started laughing. "I forgot! You couldn't even reach the main tunnels with your pathetic followers."
A series of events followed in quick succession, registering in my vision as blurry images.
Bhairava changed places in a blinding flash. He reappeared near the face of the blood Yeti and clobbered him down flat on the ground with a single punch.
The Yeti got up in a hurry and threw a punch at Bhairava, only to get blocked by his palm.
Digging his fingers into the Yeti's right fist, Bhairava twisted it and pulled back while using the Yeti's arm like a support to propel himself forward, kicking the Yeti square in the chest.
A flat sonic boom originating from his hit carved a circular indentation on the cave walls and sent the blood Yeti tumbling into the dark oblivion, crashing through the space barrier Bhairava had erected.
Leaving his right arm behind in Bhairava's hands, he disappeared like Bhairava had been catapulted before.
"Follow me. Let's rout them all out from their hives. They shouldn't have messed with the remains of The Devi." Bhairava threw away the detached arm and charged into the deeper sections of the tunnel while continuously threatening the Yeti.
Something about dragging them back from the corners of the earth even if they were invisible.
"How many do you think are still left?" Pratyusha asked nervously in the darkness. The slight fluctuations in her usual calm and collected tone gave it away.
"Let's not assume anything. Imagine there are still thousands left, and we have to use our stamina and energy in moderation." I replied, preparing myself mentally.
"I'll try deluding myself with that. Let's go take these apes out, no matter their numbers." She tightened her gauntlets for the nth time.
Are my hands even smaller than hers?
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