I collapsed on the ground of the archeological dig, divine flesh sloughing away to expose my naked skin, reddened, rough, and raw.
No Tears of Regret
Authors: Anorrack
(4668 words)
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Brunei Bay, British North Borneo, May 1943
The jungle was silent, the noise of everything suppressed in my mind under the all-consuming sound of the Heartbeat. I collapsed on the ground of the archeological dig, divine flesh sloughing away to expose my naked skin, reddened, rough, and raw.
If I been capable of complex thought, I would have been embarrassed of my vulnerable state. All I could think of was the sharp agony corkscrewing into the center of my being like living shards of malevolent glass; I fumbled with my hands and knees, trying to stand, but my arms betrayed me, and I fell again to the ground, powerless against the pressure in my skull.
Unconsciously, unbidden, my mouth let out the smallest of whimpers. A disparate thought bubbled up through the soup that my brain had become. Please, someone… anyone. Help.
I laid there for what seemed like agonizing eternities, but what must just have been mere moments, my body a canvas painted in dissonant hues of mind-numbing, thought-destroying pain. Just as sudden as it had come, the pressure released. My vision slowly began to return to normal. The bands around my ribs eased, and I was able to breathe again.
The Japanese army major who had commanded the Heart still stood before me, unmoving, seemingly unchanged. But when my vision finally focused, I noticed that a different man stood before me entirely. No longer was he a spry younger man, but rather aged, wizened, with a hunched back and knobbled knees. His pencil-thin mustache had whitened and lengthened, drooping to almost his chin. His clothes had grown ill-fitting and baggy, moth-eaten and frayed. The wrinkles that spider-webbed across his face were broad and deep, the face of a man who had lived many hard lifetimes. He looked at me, eyes milky with cataracts, and worked his jaw for a moment, a thin strand of saliva dribbling from his lip, before he collapsed. His body imploded into a cloud of dust when he hit the ground, leaving nothing but his raggy uniform behind.
Without the touch of the major to command it, the Heart stopped in its life-like oscillations, becoming an inanimate steel sculpture once more. Overhead, I felt a cold shadow loom over me, I heard the cry of a hungry animal, and any hint of relief I felt was extinguished.
Out of the frying pan, into the fire.
My Heart-addled brain had a loose grip on reality. Something sparked in my mind, and even considering that I was in the middle of the shit-heap, I felt compelled to reminisce about home. About Nepal.
I remember coming home from mosque one day and seeing a dead ox, our neighbor's ox, on the side of the road, ribs showing, flies walking over the whites of its eyes. I remember seeing a big thing with its head stuck in the ox's open gut, playing with its intestines. Father made a noise — a cough or a thrown rock, I don't remember — and the thing snaked its head from the ox, covered in viscera, and just stared at us for a while, beady eyes set in dripping slick-red. The thing tilted its head, trying to determine whether I was close to death or no. The way it stared at me…
We passed on by, and it returned its attention to the carcass, poking its head back in the ox like nothing was the matter.
I never did like vultures.
Ten years later, I stared into the face of that same vulture made large. Its form blotted out the sun as it circled through the air, its wings stirred small windstorms with their motions as it landed. The vulture was twice as tall as a man and its ragged wings — forty, fifty feet across — were dusted with dirt and sand from the same pit as the Heart. They were marred with gaps of many plucked flight feathers. Its talons were as long as swords and tipped with gold, sparking against the rock as it shifted its bulk. Warping Vedic script and imagery was etched across feather and flesh.
Even after it folded its wings, there still remained a weight in the atmosphere, that of a coming storm. The air around the vulture roiled from its aura of decay and death, of menace and hate. The grass beneath its talons shriveled, rot steaming in the sunlight, adding to the charnel stench from the corpses around me. It stared at the place where the major once stood, its face impassive in the way only birds can be.
The vulture cocked its bald head to the side and turned its gaze from the major to me. It stared with an amber eye, one that smoldered with a fetid intelligence. The raptor opened its crooked beak and spoke.
Hello, daughter of Mohini, who was once and is Vishnu. How you have grown.
The snake within my mind, locked away for the duration of the bloodbath, wriggled free of the trap of memory I had ensnared her within. Against my will, the back of my tongue brushed the roof of my mouth, my throat constricted, and Pramaada's voice poured from my lips, rich, sultry, and feminine.
Shukarabhakshakah, the asura. The Pig-Eater. It is an honor to meet your esteemed self. I see that you are free.
Asura. The demons of Hindu myth.
Shukarabhakshakah shook its plumage and let out an earth-shaking screech, one that could be interpreted as laughter.
Esteemed. The scion of my captor, calling a scavenger of corpses and gods 'esteemed'.
I felt Pramaada's presence suffuse me. Her touch was a balm on my tortured mind, the smell of burning cedar caressing bleeding holes of memory. I sensed the emotions that leached; she was scared of this creature and what it could do to her. And despite what I had done to her, she was also afraid of what it could do to me.
She spoke once more. Well, what else could I call one such as yourself?
The asura's gaze was piercing. It did not rise to take the bait. Gunfire crackled behind him, the rest of the AOI squad fighting hard against the Japanese soldiers left unbutchered. It was your father, Shiva, O He who is Mahadeva, He who is The Destroyer, who put me in my cage. It was He who sentenced me to ten thousand years of servitude, in exchange for my reincarnation as a lotus. You may call me Untouchable, for I do the deeds the Devas dare not do.
I flexed my muscles, slowly reasserting control over my physical form. I twitched a hand towards my sidearm, still within the belt holster that miraculously survived the brutal warping of my body. But Pramaada's soul glowed a warning saffron in my mind's eye, advising me from hasty action.
Her voice flowed from my lips. Perhaps you are, but that is not for me to decide. You are still charged with protection of the Heart from thieves and brigands, and the people who released you are such men.
The vulture and I both cast a glance towards the Heart, towards the motley crew that carefully approached it carrying rope and board under the encouragement of their wary foremen.
The Vulture's eye gleamed with a brown, sickly light, the color of spoilage and vomit. When the first man laid a hand on the Heart, he was instantly rendered to dust and bone by its gaze. The rest of the men quickly disengaged, even while still under the withering stream of bullets and hexes cast by the AOI squad hidden in the forest. The Japanese did not try attacking the Vulture or I, seemingly distracted by the other issues at hand.
Satisfied by its deterrence, the Vulture turned back to us, the arcane light fading away from his eye. I tire of my imprisonment. I do not care for life as a flower, nor do I care to be in Yama's good graces. I have grown hungry, and will succumb to starvation 'ere the eons pass. Now I am freed, I find myself hungry enough to devour the sun.
The fifty-sen coin in my pocket tapped with an infuriating insistence, but it was difficult to disentangle the Morse from the pain still festering in my body. Pramaada's next words came out slowly, as if she was walking through a minefield. Perhaps, then, these brigands may be enough to quench your hunger?
Shukarabhakshakah thought for a moment, and stamped his feet. No, no, I think not. Why would I eat morsels when there is a great banquet laid out before me? His pointed bird tongue flicked the air through his agape beak as he appraised my body. For the carcass of His spawn tempts me with her delicious vitality.
Shit.
My mind limped rather than raced as I slogged through my options. I had discarded my jungle carbine during my reckless charge, and my body was in no state to transform again, not for a long while. The others were too far way to be able to help. The only one who may have been able to assist was Ingmar, but for all their abilities, they weren't much of a fighter.
While I was working my muscles, Pramaada was still in control of my voice, though her power over it was fading. It trembled as she spoke, the sound weaving between registers. You misunderstand, my lord. I have no body to speak of. This boy is my host. He could no more satiate you than the rest of his ilk.
LIES. The Vulture's wings clapped like a lightning strike, the whirling winds tossing my body like a ragdoll down the hill, over the mounds of mangled bodies of soldiers and rakshasa, slamming against the protruding rock that erupted from the hill-side, before coming to a painful stop on a slab of cracked marble. The vulture hopped down the hill after me, his movement shaking the earth. I can see the boy's soul, whelp. I can see your coils wrapped around him, infusing him, infecting him with your essence. He is no more a man than the beasts that he disemboweled, whose offal he is coated in. He may not be as filling as the entrails of your Father, but he will be a start.
With the Vulture distracted, I could see the Japanese swarming the top of the hill once more, frantically moving to box up the Heart before he could turn his attention to it once more. There was a crack of a rifle as Matthews perforated the skull of one of the workers from his hiding spot in the treeline. The guards returned volleys suppressing fire, peppering the trees and undergrowth with a hail of bullets. I had to do something. I had to stop them.
But I had to deal with Shukarabhakshakah first.
I grunted and rose to a kneeling position. As I shifted, I felt a recognizable shape digging into my leg, laid where I had dropped it when I had ended my transformation. A germ of an idea sprung to mind. I clenched my fist. I just needed the Vulture to get in close.
Against my muscles' protests, I slowly stood, palming the object under my leg and tucking it into my belt, rising to my feet atop the marble plinth. I spoke for myself, the words rough and grating against my vocal cords as I forced them out. "I won't let you eat me. I have a job to do." I coughed and held the stitch in my side. I could taste copper in the back of my burning throat. "And from the sound of it, so do you."
Pramaada roiled in my mind, wary. Careful, darling…
The Vulture, for his part, kept his eyes locked on me. I have been able to do nothing but observe over these past centuries. Do you see the Devas anywhere, boy? Has Kali done anything as her people are trampled underfoot? Where is Balarama as his people starve? Shukarabhakshakah bent down until he was at eye-level with me. His breath stank of a thousand years of rot, and the marble cracked underfoot as it was aged by a geologic era. Pramaada's protection did much to protect me from his fetid aura, but it did little to help the stench.
My free hand crept behind my back, to the remains of my waistband. No, I think I would like to retire from my station. And who will stop me? Will it be you, boy?
I grew a tired, blood-stained smile. "It just might be." With that, I gripped my ivory kukri, held it high, and brought it down in a smooth chopping motion, right into the Vulture's eye socket. The blade burned with an orange fire, searing the flesh and eye. The snake in my mind curled and spat. NOW.
The Vulture reared back and let out a cry that pierced the heavens, flapping its wings and stamping its feet. The temperature of the air plunged from tropical to sub-zero, the ground trembled and groaned, and the rock cracked open to swallow me whole. I leapt from the marble plinth as it fell into the growing maw, and battled Shukarabhakshakah's windstorm as I ran towards him. The creature thrashed his head, wounded eye blazing Pramaada's holy fire, and searched for me with the other. A gray path of aging tracked its gaze across the field, accelerated entropy tracing a path of rot and death as plants turned to mulch and corpses turned to dust. Where are you, boy? Let me have a good look at you! I will liquefy you into fine, tender carrion!
My lungs burned, my muscles ached, my head felt like it was about to fall off. The half-healed dragon bite scars on my torso had torn open from the violent seizures and the Vulture's entropic aura, oozing pus and blood down my side.
I pushed all that aside, and pushed myself all the more. I ran as fast I could around him, clumsily clambering on top of toppled boulders and broken pillars until I was level with his back. The windstorm tore at my skin and made the jungle canopy twist and moan. The gaze of the Vulture turned lumber into deadwood and the trees gave way under their own, rotted weight, slowly collapsing to the ground. The widow-makers flushed out the rest of the squad that was lurking in the undergrowth, forcing them into the Japanese camp proper. They couldn't rely on the blinds anymore to hide.
I could see DC al Fine now wearing a Japanese face, lurking between the tents and surprising a soldier, crushing his windpipe with a single blow. She didn't waste a second before moving on, heading towards the airfield. I could see Santo, rolling grenades into tents and spraying lead. I could see Matthews, his overcoat unbuttoned and the darkling things lurking inside coming out to play, grasping hands shooting out from within to break bones and pull their victims inside, disappearing once again within the coat's impossible folds. The workers on the hill had disappeared out of sight; they must have finished packing away the Heart.
I cursed under my breath. We had lost the element of surprise and were now fighting on two fronts.
I looked back at the Vulture, who in his frantic search had drawn close to the pillar on which I was perched. I took a breath and clamped the kukri between my teeth. I felt Pramaada over my shoulder, clinging to me with her many arms, her breath against my ear, her hair brushing my neck. I ached from her presence, and yet it still soothed my wounds.
Jump, hero.
I jumped.
I soared through the air, arms pinwheeling. The whirlwind seemed to carry me on its back, aiding me in taking down its master. I landed hard on the Vulture's neck. He shook his head vigorously, but I clung on, sinking my fingers into the wrinkled folds of his bald neck. I wrapped my legs around him and held on tight, like riding an unruly stallion. I took the kukri from between my teeth, and grew a feral grin.
"I'm here, then. What are you waiting for?"
The kukri came down, again and again. I chopped at his flesh, his spine, whatever soft spot I could reach. My skin came away black, drenched in his dark ichor. My arm ached, my muscles screamed, yet I kept hewing the Vulture's fetid flesh. Pramaada was silent, but the ruby in the kukri's pommel glowed with malevolent joy. She was proud of me.
I let out a scream at Shukarabhakshak. "Yield!"
The Vulture cried in pain. I do! I submit! I yield!
I paused in disbelief, blade held in the air. "You do?"
The Vulture puffed his feathers impetuously. No. He turned his head and his remaining eye glared at me. The amber was bloodshot, engorged veins tracing prayers of death and rebirth clockwise in Sanskrit. The invisible ray of decay lanced through my body, suffusing every cell in my body with pure, unbridled entropy. Pramaada's aura protected me from the worst of it, but not entirely. Not even the gods are immune to the march of time. Skin wrinkled, liver spots grew, and the food in my stomach curdled. I felt deathly ill, as if the sicknesses of decades were suddenly heaped upon me.
Despite the heavy toll it wrought, I took advantage of it as best I could. The cocking of his head brought his eye within arm's reach, and a final blow with my kukri produced a satisfying, meaty impact as the blade buried itself in his eye. The amber orb boiled within its socket from scorching holy flame, and I leapt from his neck as the Vulture wailed and snapped his beak and flapped his ragged wings, now completely blinded. He was no longer our biggest problem. Back to the original plan.
I limped up the hill, and upon cresting it, I saw a panorama of cascading failure.
The Heart was in the process of being loaded onto the Kawasaki, our ticket out of here. Fine and Santo had not managed to intercept them, and were pinned down behind a ruined temple by a sorcerous fire conjured by the miko. Matthews wasn't much better battling three unleashed rakshasa at once, dual-wielding revolvers while the tangled, tanned limbs protruding from his greatcoat clawed and tore at the rakshasa's flesh. There was no one left to fight up on the hill, everyone was either dead or at the airfield several hundred feet away. There was no way for me to get there in time to help. In melee, anyways.
"Kiran!" I turned to see Ingmar clambering up the hill, panting from exertion, carrying the rifle I had heedlessly left behind with them. They held it up to me and gave a faint smile. "I thought you might need this."
I accepted the offering gratefully. We both flinched as a loud roar erupted from behind us. I cursed. Shukarabhakshakah.
The Vulture wailed and spat, his voice a death rattle. Daughter of Mohini, you rat. Face me and throw yourself into my gullet! Coward!
The asura's wings clapped and its feet stamped and there was a loud moaning from the earth as it shook. The hill trembled and the wind howled and slowly, a large crack formed in the earth beneath our feet, zigzagging down the slopes of the hill until it had split in half like an egg cracked length-ways. I grabbed Ingmar and we stepped across the gap as it widened and soil and rock and corpses falling into the fault, which seemed to have no bottom. Black nothingness yawned beneath our feet.
I remembered what Santo had said. "The ground itself cracked open to feed on the explorers."
I looked at Ingmar. "We have to move. Now." They nodded in agreement.
I skidded down the hill once more — though on the opposite side — until I hit a pile of aggregate excavated from the dig, halfway down. Ingmar came down not too far behind, alighting on a different ledge some distance away. I fumbled with the rifle in my hands; The optic of the jungle carbine was busted, the metal mount askew, most likely from when I had tossed it aside in my rampage. I snapped the mount the rest of the way off and brought the cracked wood stock up to my shoulder. Iron sights were enough.
The chasm was growing, yawning wider, the ends of the crack nearly reaching the forest's edges. The remnants of the ancient city tumbled into the abyss, shattered pillars and temple ruins falling away into the void. The crack widened, growing quickly to swallow the Japanese base camp and rakshasa, screeching as they went.
I sighted the rifle, leveling my aim against the men moving the box, the miko guiding them. My finger teased the trigger. It would have been so easy.
I heard a sharp whimper to my right. I glanced over, and was aghast to see that the jagged crack in the earth had grown to encompass Ingmar's perch, catching them unaware. Ingmar clutched at the roots and rock, their torso half protruding out of the ravine, staring at me with one eye made of stone, and another filled with fear.
"We head to Borneo next, and it is where I will die."
Ingmar knew of their fate, knew that it would come to this, knew that we would be staring at each other when the Heart was so close to my grasp, when with a single pull of a trigger I could end IJAMEA's entire scheme. I could do it.
They whispered, a faint sound nearly lost amid the cataclysmic chaos surrounding us. "Take the shot, Kiran."
Why did they hang on? They could have let go, denied me the chance to choose. Did they look into the abyss, and seeing their own death fast approaching, did they step back from the brink? Were they holding on tight, afraid to let go, afraid of their death even when they told me not to mourn so many months ago? Or was this a part of the plan, the way the Wheel was supposed to turn, them holding on, making me choose?
I couldn't choose. I could never choose.
Hamal, Singh, Mathi, Chand.
Rebekah.
Ingmar knew I couldn't leave another friend behind. I wouldn't allow myself to. I could fight, I could die for them. But I would never ask someone else to do the same. I could never. Never again.
Not for the fate of the entire world.
With an impatient growl I threw the rifle aside and clambered over to the growing crevasse, channeling what little dregs remained of Pramaada's energy to bolster my spirit and carry me onward. I saw the torn skin on their palms as they clung desperately on.
I saw Ingmar's fingers slip from the roots. I saw their grip release.
Everything moved in slow motion, my battered mind squeezing the last drops of adrenaline to push me forward. My hexed limbs strained, my body weighing down on me in a way it never had before. I slammed into the dirt, hand outstretched, reaching, grasping, hoping against hope that I wasn't too late.
My heart was in my throat, the seconds stretched into uncountable eternities.
I let out a soundless cry to no one, to everyone, to anyone that can hear, any divinity or devilry or anything in between who could hear my plea. Not again, please. I will save them this time. Inshallah, grant me strength, please. Please.
After a moment, an eon, my fingers laced around Ingmar's, and my shoulder screamed in its socket as the weight of a seer in freefall pulled on its weakened muscles. My aged arms trembled as I gritted my teeth and pulled up. Slowly, painfully, Ingmar rose from the pit by degrees, until they were finally pulled free collapsed on the edge.
I sat for a moment, breathing hard, letting out a wheezing laugh of exhaustion and joy. I had saved them from their fate. I could save them. I could save everyone.
Ingmar looked at me, their face grayed and aged, moreso than ever. Their voice was ragged and hoarse when they spoke. "Kiran, what did you do?"
The plane that was supposed to be our ticket out of there soared into the air, leaving us behind. The Kawasaki banked around for a pass and the side door opened, the miko leaning out of the craft, purple robes flapping in the gale. She held a hand out, and a bright spark appeared between her fingers. Like a comet, a spear of roaring fire lanced across the sky. The pillar of flame scythed across the airfield, striking the other grounded aircraft and cooking their ammo reserves and fuel tanks. In the wake of the miko's torch, greasy fireballs bloomed like mushrooms. One by one, first the fuel depot, then the planes each detonated into dark firestorms, painting the green jungle with violent orange hues as flaming hunks of metal impale themselves into the trees.
Even considering the distance, even with the speed at which the plane swooped over us, I swore the miko looked down at us and smirked, just for a moment, before leaning back into the plane and slamming the hatch shut.
The plane flew up and out until it was obscured by the burning jungle canopy. Soon, even the sound of its roaring engine faded away, leaving us alone with the dead and dying, and a roaring inferno where the airfield once stood.
Ingmar and I clambered down the rest of the hill, away from the growing pit. Shukarabhakshakah stalked the other side of the chasm, enraged, but unable to give chase to us or the Heart in his weakened and blinded state. I could hear his distant, indignant shriek. Come back! Come back now! I must have my revenge! We did our best to ignore him.
The seer's fingers lightly traced a path down my arm as we limped along, following the path of the wrinkles. "These should not last long. Pramaada's influence and the passing of time… they will heal your wounds. Nothing shall remain besides an ache when the weather turns, and a streak of gray in your hair. Nothing more." I chose not to reply. We pressed on in silence.
I mentally skittered around the decision I had made, trying to ignore the monumental mistake I had made. I felt hollow. My mind was just as paralyzed as it was under the influence of the Heart. I could not compute the events as they unfolded. It seemed impossible, after so many victories, that we could fall so hard. I had known it was always a possibility, but…
The Heart was gone.
We caught up with the rest of the squad near the airfield, cleaning up and taking stock. DC al Fine was tending to Santo, who had been badly burned by the miko's fire. He averted his gaze when Ingmar and I approached. His voice was hoarse, carrying nothing of his usual dry humor.
"You put on quite a show out there, kid."
Matthews finished off the last of the rakshasa with a savage twist of the neck. At Santo's remark, he stared at me with a face contorted with misdirected rage. "You."
His fist clenched as he stalked towards me across the burnt and trampled grass.
"Secure the artifact, we'll cover you. Should have been a simple job. You were late, you got distracted, and you didn't take the fucking shot."
My face burned. I reached out with an open palm, entreating him. "Jacob…"
My plea was cut short by a quick punch to the head from Matthews. I stumbled to the ground, my vision doubling from the blow.
I greeted the darkness as a welcome reprieve , and allowed it to swallow me whole.
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