“Ugh… what… happened…?” came the unfamiliar sound of the 17 to 18-year-old kid who was hale and hearty. Dark skinned, thin but not wiry, long brown colored hair framing his face covering his ears and striking light green eyes. The kid looked to be around 6 feet 2 inches, long fingers and also… had no clothes on.

“He gets to rescue all the hot chicks from around here and all I get are… naked… fucking men!!”

Parth then threw his cloak over the guy just waking up, “put it on till I get the chance to fetch my stuff and find you something to wear”

Parth continued walking, while the guy through his blurry vision saw his own hands. He was not fully conscious and couldn’t register it immediately but it came to him not more than a second later and his eyes were wide open right that instant!! “How…” he asked puzzled and weak.

Still on his back, he removed Parth’s cloak from over his body and threw it off and inspected all of his body. In his surprise he forgot he was naked and did not register two other people around him, one standing with a bewildered look on his face and one unconscious.

Parth chalked up his surprise to the fact that kid was surprised by how he survived the huge explosion unharmed. To which he said “Like I was saying, I will get you some…”

“How did I turn back???” the guy asked in a slightly higher tone raising his torso from the ground. Parth, surprised no doubt, asked “from wh…”

“How did I turn back???” the guy asked shouting as if mad. Suddenly he calmed down as his eyes focused on the horizon. Parth understood, the kid was looking within himself in the mana plane so immediately activated his karmic power looked at his mana plane himself and was surprised, he was sure kid here had some mana in it and good chance it was spent trying to defend himself from Kush’s attack so it should have recovered some, but this was ridiculous. He was devoid of mana entirely when Parth first saw him but now his mana exceeded that of a Docent (third out of seven levels in Karmic power). This surprised him, was he another monster like Kush?? Then he saw Kush and saw that he was yet to recover almost any mana. It had been only been 2 hours since Kush passed out, he should be recovering health rather than mana as of now?? But still, it seemed like the kid was a monster as well!!

“Hmph!! Nowadays monster seem to be everywhere, roaming the surface of Bhoomi!!” thought the guy who roams around with perhaps the strongest karmic power which ever was in history of all living beings of the universe

“You!!” shouted the dark skinned person at Parth drawing him out of his reverie.

Parth faced him not really happy at the person’s rude behavior and guy continued with urgency in his tone “Listen to me!! My name’s Angad, I am from a nearby village of Barmer. My mother Sarita Arya lives there; I don’t know what the people in village have told her about me…”

Parth simply turned around and rustled through his own stuff and then through Kush’s stuff. Angad’s matter was urgent so he simply continued “So I need you to relay the truth to her. Before that please understand!! I was part of a contingent of workers sent to the Sutlej Oasis to a project undertaken by the His majesty itself. They hired me as a local manpower for grunt work. I joined since the duration of the project was only about over a year and the pay was good. I used to lift and bring in brick and mortar to the skilled manpower, I was provided food three times a day and a bed to sleep in a night. For a person discriminated against his whole life, this was the only opportunity out of this hate filled life of misery and servitude” by now Parth found something of interest in the Kush’s luggage and held it his hand. The fabric was familiar. He then looked across the clothes and saw the familiar sigils and pattern as well. In an ancient language it read ‘Sarve Karma vasha vayam’. He then threw the cloth at the Angad which interrupted his speech for a second. Angad saw the cloth and ignored it.

He knew these were useless to him so he continued with a mild smile “My mother received all my earnings and I stayed here working since the contractor paid for everything.”

Then his smile turned into melancholy expression for the next line “Here too I didn’t really have any friends. If not for the money we were getting, the people didn’t want to work with me and the contractors recruited me because of lack of able bodied man power in the area. I took all the discrimination in stride cause this was the breakthrough I was looking for me and my mother. I was planning on using the money from here and start on my own and most important of all start my cultivation!!”

Reaching here the kid took a pause in his story “I had been working here for the entirety of the project… but one night…”

Parth had an inkling that story had started “I had a drink… we had a holiday next day, so I drank alone till late that night. It made me lose my inhibitions… heh…” he paused “for entire duration of the project, for months I had been ridiculed, discriminated against, bullied, beaten down, left in a puddle of my own shit and piss, but I held it in. Cause I had reeled it in because this was our ticket out of this life” Angad’s fist balled up in rage. Parth didn’t need to see his shaking fist to see feel the rage he exuded and he was amused by the kid’s innocence when he said he drank because the next day was a holiday “Heh, making an excuse for work even after all this time” he thought to himself.

“I was roaming the construction site with the bottle in hand. I didn’t watch my step I guess when I suddenly dropped down a hole in the ground” this was when Parth started to realize where this story was heading…

“I still remember it like it happened yesterday…” He slowed down now trying to remember the events of the day and closed his eyes “The bottle in my hand broke due to the fall and shattered pieces of glass were on the ground. I was really drunk and it was really dark so it didn’t strike initially at all what had happened. My hand felt wet for some reason, I thought it was cause of the wet soil, so I used the support of the wall to stand up and looked around. In the entire darkness there was only one point of light a few hundred meters ahead of me. My vision was blurry but it seemed like an exit so I started walking to the place. Heh… I remember not realizing why I suddenly couldn’t put a lot of strength in my legs. One of my hands was on the wall and the other on my thighs as walking became tougher with every passing moment… The left of my belly started to itch. At first I ignored it, but the itch continued growing. I used my right hand to scratch at it but it suddenly…” creases appeared on his forehead “It hurt, it hurt a lot!!! I had been punched, kicked, stamped, smacked and slapped… people had bullied me my whole life you see… but this… this felt like all of it combined!!!” Parth then looked to the side at Kush and gaping wounds all over his body and then back to Angad “Hmph!! wuss”. Angad had his eyes closed and didn’t see Parth, he simply continued “It hurt so much that I blacked out for a moment there and almost dropped to the ground losing strength in my legs. Using the support of the wall I got back up, but this time I realized that there was a massive wound on my sides and the shards of the bottle were holding the blood in!! I was scared!! I didn’t want to die, but it seemed inevitable, breathing became faster, the dark and closed confines of the tunnel made me feel claustrophobic. All my dreams were going to shatter, my mother would be left alone, this was my way out!!! I gritted my teeth and walked. I fell twice along the way and got up. Towards the end of the path I fell on my side. By now I could see a small pool in front of me through blurry vision. I thought I had probably walked up a slope and had reached someone’s tent. I was safe or I will be saved. I was going to have my dream. I think it was the sign of hope that renewed my strength, I managed to get up and stagger on foot to the pool. But when I reached there…” he paused as tears started trickling down his cheeks. He couldn’t control the expression on his face as he said the next line “No one was there… I was still trapped in the tunnel… all my hopes had ended, I was going to die alone and rot away with no one to give embers to my body. No one would take care of my mother, she would cry a lot. All the struggle from the start to end killed any energy I had in my body and I let my body fall and as fate would have it… my body fell in the small pool of green goo” Angad paused for a second “And it did not end there”.

Parth was now listening attentively, developing another inkling as to what Angad was going to say “I regained consciousness from the splash of cold viscous liquid. My injury hurt once again for a few seconds but slowly I lost any feeling in my body. *deep breath* it was a bit late but I realized liquid filling my lungs, I had never felt anything like that in my life. Heh… heh… I may be the world’s leading expert in describing how a person drowns, I tried to move my limbs so that I could help myself but they wouldn’t listen to me. I think the exhaustion and blood loss made it so I couldn’t move my limbs, all I could do was bob my head from side to side and hold my breath on occasion. Liquid filling my lungs felt like burning off my skin one layer at a time. Me not being able to do anything made me feel each step in detail. Each moment felt like an eternity, I wanted to let go and die… but the pain wouldn’t end.

After sometime I don’t know when but the burning stopped… and I felt a stabbing sensation in my chest. It was like something wanted to tear open my chest and come out… I wanted to bang my chest like an animal to assuage the pain, but again my limbs wouldn’t listen. Then my neck stiffened and I couldn’t even my move head. I was in water, un-moving, still but conscious of the pain. I don’t how long it took but I then passed out... funny thing is… had things ended there it would have been fine… I think… I don’t know how much time had passed but I came to again. I thought I had been saved but I was still unable to move and I was still in the green goo, but for some reason it didn’t feel painful anymore in my lungs and I was starting to feel sensation of pain in my gut… originating at the place I had been stabbed. Was this green goo a medicine?? Was it a boon from the Devas??? I am safe I thought! Then suddenly I felt pain from another location… it was sensation I had never felt likes of before. Just below the surface of my skin all over my body I felt a burning sensation. I had read about it… listened to people discuss about it but for the first time I had felt it… I had felt it… Mana was coursing through my body. The miracle green liquid had injected me with mana. I was ecstatic and I let the mana flow freely. It was an exhilarating feeling, as mana filled my veins, my limbs were still immobile but the feeling was almost… almost… “

“Orgasmic” said Parth

“Yeah!! Yeah that’s it” Angad said after opening his eye. Parth covered his face in exasperation, since he knew this was not a good sign of what was coming next.

Angad ignored the expression and slowly shook his head while continuing “You wouldn’t understand the longing for power and mana I had” He opened his fists and looked towards his open hands tears now an uncontrollable stream falling down both his open eyes “All my life I wanted some semblance of power, when people were hurting me, when they threatened my mother, when they threw empty bottles at my mother and broke the windows of my house” he was gritting his teeth in anger “So I dropped any conscious inhibitions I had… and then… it hurt… it hurt so much that it was no pain man should ever bear, it hurt so much that I would rather have jumped in a fire than feel this, it hurt so much that I wanted someone to bash my skull in and kill me, it felt layer by layer skin was flayed, my mana veins couldn’t bear the pressure of flow of mana, they developed cracks and started to rupture. I wanted to pass out but I couldn’t, I wanted to control the mana flow but I didn’t know how, I wanted to flail about but I couldn’t, I wanted to scream my lungs out but I couldn’t… all I could do was stay still as cell by cell, tissue by tissue, layer by layer, my organs were turning to dust separating from my body, in front of my very own eyes, my hand turned to dust in the most painful way possible. Suddenly I started feeling some movement in my toes and soon I was able to move. I immediately flailed my body and got out of the pool as if that would give me relief, but it didn’t… it only hastened process as all of my body turned to dust and sprayed into the atmosphere. It was at this point that the pain stopped… I couldn’t see conventionally but I knew where everything was, I couldn’t hear anything conventionally but everything sounded more clearly, I didn’t have olfactory senses but everything smelt perfectly, I could taste and feel mana. Everything was better except… except… me… I couldn’t find myself, I had turned to dust. I tried to reconstitute myself but couldn’t. Every time I did, earth and sand from the surrounding came to gather around me!!! I couldn’t forge myself at all!!! Slowly I started feeling dizzy. I could feel a human’s perception from each and every particle of my body and processing it was impossible. I felt angry!! I felt white hot rage!! Suddenly confines of the tunnel seemed too small and I broke out. I destroyed whatever came my way, whatever my sense could see. I think I killed a lot of the guards who were there, since they attacked me, I wont call it self-defense but I think I responded to aggression. My anger only rose with each passing second and I was going crazy with rage an uncontrolled, unlimited white hot rage which I was going to release it on everything until I saw the face of a person from my town of Bhasmachal. He was a one of the people who hit me, he threw rocks at my house you know… but when I saw his face full of fear, one I remember having when I was bullied, it was then that I had just one moment of clarity and I stopped for a few hours. I think the survivors vacated the place then. Since then I don’t know how much time has passed but today is the first time I have regained my senses, I think its cause of you two”

Angad then got on his knees and put his forehead on the ground in front of Parth making him take a step back. Parth quickly held him by the shoulders and asked him to stand-up, but Angad didn’t. “I have very limited time left before the mana in my body surges again to an extreme and I don’t know when I will be able to come to my sense again. That is why I have two requests from you”

Parth tried to force him up a little but Angad still continued prostrating “I know you don’t know and owe me anything but please understand, I don’t really have a lot of options. Please don’t worry, one them is not too big a task”

“please get up”

“Not until you agree to my requests”

“Dude, i have other…”

“PLEASE!!! Please… please… sob… sob…” Angad then got an idea “he lifted his hands and pointed in a direction of an damaged structure to the side and said there should some money in there, I don’t know how much but it should be plenty since it was meant to buy food for the entire project crew for another 3 or 4 months and the journey back and other logistics. Please take it but please agree to my requests”

Parth relented “Ok. I will listen to your request so go ahead but only listen. I will then see if want to do them or not”

Angad then replied “As I told you before, my mother Sarita Arya lives in a town West of here in Barmer. I will give you detailed directions later. It shouldn’t be more than a couple days’ travel from here. I want you to relay my story to her, I may have been accused of murder, the villagers will make life for my mother tougher if no one stands for her. Please I beseech you, please relay this message to my mother and the townspeople”

Parth then thought “Sarita Arya??” he then looked at Kush and asked Angad “What is you second request?”

“…” Angad paused for minute to consider his second request again and then said “Please kill me!!”

Parth, not taken aback, had somewhat expected what Angad’s request was going to be, asked “Why? Don’t you want to take care of your mother?”

Angad sneered with his head still touching the ground “You should realize by now that I was the monster that attacked you and within a few hours I will turn right back”

Parth then replied through a snide smile “Not if I can help it”

Angad still couldn’t believe it “Sir. Please don’t make fun of my situation”

Parth replied “Kid, that is why I threw the clothes at you. They are special!! I am not a hundred percent sure, but there is a very good chance, it will stop you from turning in that monster”

Angad now looked up from his position. He was buck naked, is ass open in air when suddenly he felt something… something he had probably never felt or on few occasions which were taken away from him every time. It was hope. Was it all over?? Were his and his mother’s difficulties coming to an end???

While all this happening; in the city of Udaipur… in the central tower of the Marwaris stood a beautiful maiden, gifted bountifully by the gods in terms of appearance. There was a sign of worry on her face when she looked in a certain direction…

“Only a few… please just stay away for a few days…”