The war conch had barely finished rolling across Kurukshetra when the Asuras charged. The plain seemed to convulse beneath the first wave, hundreds of bodies breaking over the distant dunes while loose sand poured around their feet like water.
Some ran upright beneath armour so old that rust had eaten holes through the plates. Others dropped to all fours, limbs folding at angles Herald’s eyes resisted following, metallic-red fluid hanging from their mouths in long strings that snapped in the wind.
A sword had fused into one creature’s forearm. Another dragged a spear that seemed to grow directly from its shoulder, while farther left a thing in a rotten helmet ran with its jaw split too wide, rows of jagged teeth striking together hard enough for Herald to hear the clicking through the roar.
The winged ones rose behind them. Pale spears shaped from bone caught the afternoon light as their shadows crossed the giant ribs and half-buried wheels scattered across Kurukshetra, and the cries coming from the swarm swallowed what remained of the desert wind.
"FORMATION!" Erudite’s command cut through the noise, and the army around Herald changed before the echo faded.
The same people who had complained through the march, stolen dried mango and hidden prayers behind jokes locked themselves into ranks. Shields met edge to edge, spearheads lowered, and Siddhas moved through the gaps with the precision of people who had done this often enough to stop needing explanations.
Peril stepped forward, crimson light crawling along the Vel as the mark of Kartikeya burned against him. Its glow stained the sand around his feet before he lowered his body and drove one foot into the ground.
Sand burst outward. Peril vanished from Herald’s sight before the displaced air reached him, only to reappear in the centre of the charging Asuras when the ground erupted beneath them.
A column of sand punched upward with broken bodies inside it. More than a dozen creatures struck the earth in pieces before Herald properly found Peril again, and by then the Vel was already moving.
The spear punched through one chest and continued into the creature behind it. Peril ripped it free with the turn of his shoulders and drove the opposite end into an Asura rushing his back, never giving the bodies enough time to settle around him.
Three more closed in. Peril lowered the Vel, shoulders loose despite the shapes gathering around him.
"Come on, then." His voice disappeared beneath the answering shrieks as they rushed him.
Behind him, Erudite’s chariot thundered into motion. Bronze-rimmed wheels cut trenches through the shifting sand while carved mantras along the wooden frame glowed beneath Erudite’s hands, their light flickering across the dust-coated wood as the chariot thundered forward.
One Asura threw itself beneath the horses and vanished under a wheel with a wet crack. Another caught the side and dragged itself halfway aboard, but Erudite struck it away without looking from the battlefield.
"Don’t stop! Keep the formation moving!" His order travelled backward while the chariot forced a path through the first line.
Something small crawled across Herald’s boot. For half a heartbeat he stared at the spider as though it were the strangest thing on Kurukshetra, then recognized the creature that had spent most of the journey resting against Madam Althea’s neck.
It climbed his leg and reached his wrist, a silver strand trailing behind it. Herald barely saw the thread until sunlight caught along its surface.
Once he noticed one, he began seeing them everywhere. Dozens became hundreds, stretched between fighters and across the sand until portions of the frontline shimmered beneath an enormous web.
Spiders travelled along the strands, disappearing beneath armour and crawling over wounded skin. A soldier near Herald had taken a blade across his side, but one silver thread drew tight over the wound and slowed the blood enough for the man to stare down once before forcing himself back into formation.
The Asuras received no such mercy. Threads wound around one creature’s legs and pulled tight, its claws carving furrows through the sand while its knees refused to rise. Follow the newest chapters on NovelPing.
Another collapsed beside it without a visible wound. A third managed several staggering steps before its arms stopped answering and its face struck the ground.
Farther back, Althea stood with one hand raised, spiders moving across her shoulders and neck while silver strands converged toward her fingers through the chaos. The faint scent of crushed herbs from her satchel reached Herald even through blood warming beneath the afternoon sun.
A shadow crossed him and pulled his attention upward. Facade climbed above the battlefield, enormous golden-brown wings beating hard enough to disrupt the winged Asuras gathering around him.
The Siddhas called him the Garuda of Vishishtarajya. Herald had heard the title before, but watching Facade fold one wing and roll beneath a bone spear finally made the name feel less like praise and more like description.
Facade raised one hand, and white light split the sky around him.
The first bolt struck so violently that Herald saw the Ashura’s skeleton inside the glare before its body burst apart. A second flash followed, then a third, burning shapes tumbling through the air with smoke streaming behind them.
"Herald!" Peril’s voice reached him from somewhere ahead, thin beneath the collision of weapons and screams.
Herald tried to find him, but Kurukshetra had become too crowded to understand all at once. Chariot wheels crushed bone, spears entered flesh with dull impacts, and blood darkened the sand only for fresh grains to move over it and begin hiding the stains.
The smell arrived with the heat. Metal sat sharp inside Herald’s nose, sweat and burnt flesh beneath it, followed by blood with a copper thickness that coated the back of his tongue.
This was not a training courtyard, nor a mission with one target waiting inside a room. People were dying within arm’s reach, and the sounds never stopped long enough for Herald to decide where he should look.
Someone screamed for a healer while another voice called a name twice and broke off during the third attempt. As that final cry disappeared beneath the fighting, Yamawadi opened wider.
〈Please. I don’t want to die. Protect my son.〉
The thought struck hard enough that Herald turned toward a soldier who had never opened his mouth. Before he could decide whether it had belonged to that man, more crowded into the same space.
〈Vishnu, please—〉
〈My leg—〉
〈Mother—〉
〈Not here. Not here. I promised I’d come back.〉
Fear crashed into fear until another battlefield seemed to exist inside Herald’s skull. Human thoughts tangled with impressions he could not shape into language: hunger without restraint, pain sharpened into rage, and the memory of teeth closing around something that had still been screaming.
His grip shifted uselessly over the Yama Danda as the real Kurukshetra blurred behind everything Yamawadi forced into him. A high ringing swallowed the clash of steel, and the sand beneath his feet seemed to tilt. New chapters come out on g.com first.
"Herald! Don’t fight it!" Peril’s voice cut through the others, real enough for Herald to follow even when he could not see him. Herald tried to answer, but another wave pressed through before he managed more than, "I can’t—"
"Yes, you can! Same as before. Pick one. Listen to me!" Peril shouted, forcing his voice above everything else until Herald squeezed his eyes shut and held onto it.
"Breathe!" Peril called, and Herald dragged air into his lungs. It tasted of dust and blood, but this time the breath reached deep enough that his chest stopped fighting him.
"Again!" Peril ordered. Herald obeyed, allowing the thoughts to remain instead of trying to silence every one of them.
They could pray, regret and bargain somewhere inside his awareness without demanding that he follow them. The ringing weakened, and Kurukshetra sharpened around him just as an Asura’s sword descended toward his face.
Herald moved before he had time to think about moving. The Yama Danda rose in both hands and met the blade against its ebony shaft with an impact that shot through his wrists and elbows.
The creature leaned harder into him. Most of its face had rotted beneath a cracked bronze helmet, and only at that distance did Herald understand what was wrong with the weapon pressing against his staff: the sword was not held in its hand; it was its hand.
Herald twisted the Yama Danda and shoved the blade aside. Movement flashed at his left, forcing him beneath a claw that passed close enough to stir the hair against his throat.
His body supplied the answer before his thoughts could. The lower end of the staff struck the creature’s knee, and bone gave with a dry snap that Herald felt through the wood.
The Asura folded under its own weight. Herald turned with the recoil and drove the carved skull at the top of the Yama Danda across its jaw, feeling teeth break beneath the ebony.
Another creature came from behind. Herald never saw its first step, yet the staff slipped beneath his arm and caught the strike anyway, redirecting the force while his feet found their position in the shifting sand.
He stepped, turned and struck in one continuous motion. Nothing about it felt newly learned, and that realization stayed with him even while another body dropped nearby.
His hands changed grip at precisely the right moments, his feet choosing spaces before his mind did. The Yama Danda flowed around his body with the familiarity of something he had carried for years, though no memory of those years returned with it.
An Asura lunged through the opening and caught the ebony shaft in both hands. The pressure against Herald disappeared the instant its fingers closed around the wood, and the creature went rigid while battle continued on either side of them.
Its eyes no longer seemed to see Kurukshetra. For one breath Herald saw something reflected inside them instead: darkness stretching without edge, a throne rising somewhere beyond distance, and a presence seated above it.
The Asura began to tremble. It was not the frantic shaking of an injured animal, but the stiller terror of something waiting to hear a judgment it already feared.
The Yama Danda vibrated beneath Herald’s palms. The carved skull at its head opened its mouth, its jaw spreading farther than wood should have allowed.
Dark green light erupted through the Asura’s eyes and tore from the back of its skull. The body collapsed at Herald’s feet with smoke curling from ruined bone, while the creatures nearest him checked their charge and pulled away.
Herald stared down at the corpse, both hands still locked around the staff. Whatever had answered through the Yama Danda had not felt like a technique he remembered using, and nothing inside his stolen memories offered an explanation.
The battle did not stop, but for one brief pocket of Kurukshetra, a gap opened around him. The nearest Asuras were staring at the Yama Danda now, and for the first time since the war conch had sounded, they were the ones who hesitated.