Ash Mistry and the World of Darkness (32 page)

Ash stabbed hard with the sword, but it didn’t even scratch her. Jackie twitched her shoulder and Ash was knocked metres back.

Gritting his teeth, he forced himself back up. Jackie had to have a weak spot. Once, when he’d had all of Kali’s gifts, he’d have seen them, perfect golden lights shining upon his target’s body. Now all he could see was a mountain of muscle.

The urumi sang and Jackie snarled as the serpent sword cut four shallow lines across her face, a chaotic, hideous hybrid of a jackal’s head and a woman’s face.

Jackie turned angrily towards Parvati.

Parvati launched herself at the monstrous beast, Jackie snarling and snapping at the serpent princess. Fresh wounds from the urumi cut her pelt, but Parvati hissed with frustration as the weapon merely scratched the gigantic jackal rakshasa. Ash knew what she was trying to do – get close enough to bite. But Jackie kept her at bay.

Ash hauled himself up using a broken spear. He couldn’t breathe without pain. He felt his lungs were being sliced. His chest was black with bruises and he spat out blood.

He stood, trembling with effort, among the dead. Nameless men littered the ground.

They died trying to help me and I didn’t even know their names.

He should know them. He should have their names carved into his soul.

Jackie howled and a sea of fresh rakshasas answered her call. More and more piled across the battlefield, devouring all that stood in their way. Ash watched helplessly as Parvati was surrounded. Her urumi flashed like lightning and limbs and heads were parted from bodies, but second by second more encircled her. She screamed with rage, and she killed.

Jackie approached Ash, her mane soaked with blood, her eyes on fire with madness.

Parvati lashed left and right, but she couldn’t get to him. “Run, Ash!”

Run? He could barely crawl.

Ash gripped the spear with both hands. “Come and get it, Jackie. Let me ram this down your throat.”

Jackie broke it as if it was a matchstick.

She cuffed Ash backhanded and something in his chest cracked as he struck the ground and lay there, beaten.

He was human. He broke. He bled. His body could not support his will. He lay on the ground, and looked up.

He’d done everything he could. But it was over. Now all that was left was to die. “I hope you choke,” he snarled.

Jackie bore down upon him, opening her jaws.

“No!” Parvati’s cry rang out across the battlefield.

A thunderbolt, a thunderbolt of gold, flew through the air, into the jackal demon’s eye. It whispered in, then exploded through the back of her skull, hurling fur, skull, brain high into the sky. The force lifted her up into the air. She blazed with white fire, and as she rose, turning in midair, the flames multiplied and filled the night’s battle with blistering light. A wind swept across the sands and Ash gasped as the heat almost overwhelmed him.

Jackie was obliterated before she hit the ground. She simply disintegrated into billions of particles that vanished in the trailing wind.

“No …” Ash whispered. He should be dead.

Aching, bleeding, ribs broken, he struggled but couldn’t get up.

A figure stood over him. “Let me help.”

“Ashoka, what have you done …?”

“I wasn’t just going to stand by and watch you die.”

Ashoka lifted Ash up. Ash groaned as he rested his arm over Ashoka’s shoulder.

Ashoka held an empty bow in his hand. He’d shot the Kali-aastra at Jackie, killing her and saving Ash’s life.

But dooming them all.

“I
’m going after Savage,” said Ash.

Ashoka shook his head. “No. We’ll both go. I’ll distract him and you finish him off. You’re the Kali-aastra.”

Ash rubbed his thumb, out of habit. “There’s only one Kali-aastra and you’ve just wasted it. You should have let me die.”

“Forget it, Ash! That’s not how it should be.” Ashoka grabbed his arm and swung him round. “Look around you. Look.”

Men fought demons. With swords, spears, stones, their bare hands. A boy sobbed, cradling a man in his arms. He rocked back and forth, wiping the man’s face with a rag.

Two others lay dead, their bodies entwined, their fingers grasping each other’s. High up on the cliffs the women wailed as the demons screamed. He watched one rakshasa drag another free from a melee, shielding the monster with his own body, then falling as the arrows pierced him.

“Aren’t there enough deaths out there without adding your own?” said Ashoka.

Ash saw sons take up weapons to defend their fathers. He saw demons gathering up their dead, crying over fallen comrades. The carnage was endless, and so was the grief. Each life gone resonating across so many others.

A sharp stabbing pain shot up from Ash’s thumb.

“It is a paradox,” he whispered, “but I think I get it.”

“What?”

Ash scratched his thumb. “I’m going after Savage.”

“You’ve a plan?”

“I’ve a hope, Ashoka. Just a hope.” He held out his hand. “Goodbye, brother.” Ashoka didn’t move. He met Ash’s fierce gaze. Then he took Ash’s hand and shook it. “May the gods go with you.”

Ash ran towards the sea. It wasn’t easy as he had to force each step out of his battered body, but he didn’t look back.

The beach where the elephant stood was a quagmire as the sea and blood mixed to create a sucking bog.

The ground shook under its feet. In its wake lay hundreds. Savage stood above it all, summoning fire and lightning, revelling in his power, certain of his victory. Ash waded into the sea, the waves rising over him, as he approached a leg the size of a tower block. It was made of girders and beams and patched with steel panels. Cables ran within the exposed structure like veins and sinew.

Ash stared up as the elephant’s body passed overhead. Cables dangled loose and he grabbed one, swinging himself up on to the leg. His joints screamed in pain as he reached out and wrapped an arm around a beam as the leg rose, water pouring from it. Up and up it went, stepping over the crowds clustered beneath it, the wind howling through its body.

Ash climbed.

T
he elephant swayed and Ash struggled to steady himself. The wind roared this high up and he felt as if he was in another world, far from the death and destruction.

Savage had his back to him, but Ash had dropped his sword in the climb. Savage laughed and thrust with his cane and a wall of fire erupted along the beach. He wove it in this direction and that, the wall responded and rolled across the sands, consuming all in its path.

Ash stepped over the low steel wall of the palanquin. The floor was a network of steel, there was a carpet of barbed wire, but there were gaps, and one slip or misplaced step and he’d tumble a hundred metres, if he wasn’t smashed upon the beams that comprised the elephant’s body.

“It’s even better than I imagined,” said Savage. Slowly he turned. “Thank you, Ash.”

“You’re proud of this?”

“Who will defy me after tonight?” said Savage. “I’ll rebuild my factories, soon the RAVN-1 will flow and within weeks I’ll have it flying over a dozen cities. The world is mine. How can you deny it?”

“You’ve created a world of darkness. That’s nothing to be proud of.”

Savage scowled. “I’ve saved the world, but you’re too small-minded to see it.”

Ash made his way closer. Savage didn’t try to stop him. With the Koh-i-noor embedded in his chest, he was invulnerable against any mortal weapon.

“Why are you here?” asked Savage. “You really think you can stop me?” He smoothed his hair from his face. “Do you want to try? Come on, Ash. Shall I show you how it’s done?” He wedged his cane into the floor and pulled off his jacket, exposing the bare flesh beneath.

The ten skulls shone upon his chest, glowing with an eerie white light that looked almost radioactive. The skin seemed to glisten, as if his diamond heart had filled his veins with crystal.

“Are you ready?” said Savage, holding his fists up in a mocking gesture.

Ash screamed as his arms pulsed. He saw his bones flex, push and warp. Ash stared in horror as he watched them move under his skin. Bruises swelled, ugly and purple, as the blood vessels were torn by the moving bone.

Savage was mutating him.

“Hurts, doesn’t it?” said Savage. “This is just a fraction of what I suffered. I thought you should have a taste, before I kill you.”

Ash gasped as his ribs twisted. Savage held him to stop him falling off their perch, but drew his fingers gently over Ash’s chest. Flames licked his skin, bubbling the flesh. Ash cried out, barely able to stay conscious. But he needed to hang on.

“Why are you here?” asked Savage again. “To beg for your life? Those of your friends? Quite hopeless to even try, boy.” He took hold of Ash and held him at the edge of the palanquin. “See that, Ash? See my new world? Isn’t it glorious?”

Through mind-numbing pain, his vision dimming with creeping unconsciousness, Ash gazed over the battered cliffs and the carnage as thousands fought. He glimpsed flashes of light in the haze of the smoke and fire-filled darkness. He blinked. Golden lights blinked. Each one was a life.

All lives were great. So each and every passing of it was great. A Great Death. They were all around him.

Rishi had tried to tell him. So had Reggie – this was what the visions had been trying to say. Ash should have known from the very beginning. It was always about life. The Kali-aastra swelled with the power of lives you valued as great. Now Ash could see – all lives were great; all deaths. It didn’t matter whose.

Ash had been seeing it through his human perspective. The lives that
he’d
valued – his uncle’s and aunt’s, Rishi’s, his sister’s and Gemma’s. These were the lives that were important to him.

But a god’s perspective encompassed all of humanity. Kali rescuing the baby from the battlefield. A child that could be anyone, and everyone. All of us.

I understand.

He tingled as images snapped in his mind.

A young man who played the sitar. Ash felt the strings on his fingers. The hours he’d studied, night after night, to become a musician. He had played in small, cramped restaurants and in tiny temples down alleyways to a handful of people. But each listener had been touched by him, even if all they remembered was a single note. His life had been great.

Another life entered him. This was a builder, a maker of bricks, and each house he’d built had a part of him in it. Families sheltered and lived within the walls he’d raised. Another great life.

A woman’s soul slipped into the Kali-aastra. A cook who’d worked decades on a roadside stall. Her chapattis had been thin as tissue, and her dhal watery and spicy, and there were coach drivers and passengers and other travellers who sought her out when they pulled in for their meal.

No kings died tonight. No great rulers or masters of the world. Just people. The people Ash had passed every day of his life without even noticing. Now he knew what each life had meant and realised they had all been great.

Demons too. Ancient and cruel, but loyal to their own cause and desperate to rebuild their nation and raise their people back to honour. They had had great lives too. How could they not?

Ally and enemy died out there and each life that passed entered Ash and he shed tears for each and every one, closing his eyes as the lives began to enter him. He felt them feed the Kali-aastra.

A
sh surged with power as all the deaths, all great, added their energies to him. Liquid fire flooded his arteries, shocking every nerve. The energies pulsed with his heartbeat and the heat spread through his bones, muscles and skin, reknotting wounds, resetting limbs, healing his injuries. The grotesque bruises faded to nothing.

“It’s not … No, it can’t happen,” said Savage. He backed away. He snarled. “No!” He slammed his palms together.

An inferno consumed them. Jets of white-hot fire roared over the palanquin. The elephant shook and the steel frame around Ash buckled and melted, blasted with megatons of explosive force.

Ash bent before the hurricane of power. He should be atomised. The shock wave ended abruptly and though he stood in molten metal, Ash did still stand.

I see it all.

Time. Life. Death. He could see the ribbons of destiny unweaving all around him. He could see the brightness of souls down below. He could see Savage.

The golden god was gone. This was Savage as he truly was. His body was monstrous, a wretched, withered thing with skeletal limbs and sunken eyes. The ten skulls smouldered with sickly light, but within Savage beat the bright, white crystalline heart. The Brahma-aastra. The source of all his power.

“It’s over, Savage,” said Ash. “You’ve lost.”

“No,” spat Savage. “I am the master of the ten sorceries. I cannot be beaten. I cannot lose.”

Wave after wave of magic lashed out from Savage’s fingertips. The ten skulls blazed upon his chest. Fire, ice, thunder and lightning. He brought them down upon Ash, but they fell from his shoulders without leaving a mark.

Savage grinned. “I’ll go back. I’ll go back and find you in your crib. I’ll smother you on the day of your birth.”

Ash shook his head. “Wherever you go, Savage, I’ll be there. You cannot escape Kali.”

Savage leered. “Just watch me.”

Ash stepped forward. “No. Your time has come.”

He punched Savage in the chest.

Flesh and bone tore under his fingers and Ash snapped hold of Savage’s heart and ripped it out.

Savage gasped, clutching the bloody hole in his chest. The ten skulls blazed brighter. “What …?” He groaned, bent double, but, through insane will, did not fall.

Ash opened his fist. A bloody stone rested in his palm. The stone was a diamond. Light burned from within it – a dazzling myriad of colours, fractured by the numberless planes and faces, shone out, growing brighter and brighter, flooding the night with their brilliance.

S
avage’s body warped. The skin melted and the bones bent, twisting his limbs at unnatural angles. He strained his neck as his spine stretched, tearing itself out from his back.