Murugan had left his Guru in haste and without a proper plan. He'd promised that he would return with an appropriate Dakshina, or fees. But had no idea where to begin.
Why did he set out on this aimless venture in the first place?
It was a knee-jerk reaction. Murugan could see from a mile away that the Guru-Shishya relationship was coming to an end. And just by looking at his Guru's resolute expression, he knew that there was no way to convince the man to extend the tenure.
In fact, Murugan was already certain that he had learned almost everything that could be taught by his Guru. All that remained was experience - something that couldn't be taught and had to be accrued.
Murugan lay on his back atop his Peacock as they floated casually amidst the clouds. His mind ran through the many options that would be suitable as a Dakshina for his Guru.
Standard protocol dictated that the Guru would place their demand for what they would like to receive as their fees from their Shishya. It would then be the honour-bound responsibility of the Shishya to fulfil that demand.
Of course, not all Gurus would propose a demand. Many, like his own Guru, would often dismiss this. In which case, it would fall on the Shishya to follow through regardless.
To that end, Murugan wasn't content to just close this chapter with a simple fee of wealth. His Guru would accept it, but it would be meaningless.
After all, a Guru may have many Shishyas, but a Shishya can only ever have one true Guru - their spiritual parent. Murugan was sure that he wouldn't be his Guru's final disciple. Therefore, he didn't want to fade away into an ever-growing list.
He wanted to be remembered. And as his brother once taught him, remembrance is triggered by nostalgia. People always associate events that occur in the present with those that have already taken place in the past. They search for patterns and familiarity. And in cases where there is a significant overlap, a strong emotional reaction is triggered - nostalgia.
To be remembered, one needs to trigger this emotional reaction and latch onto it… Which was easier said than done.
Murugan knew very little about his Guru's past!
Well… That wasn't entirely true. He had seen immersive glimpses into the man's past experiences. Maybe there was something worth pursuing in there?
Murugan jolted up into a seated position. The movement startled his mount, causing the great bird to squawk and adjust its wings to maintain their altitude.
Murugan patted the iridescent neck of his Peacock. "Change of course. We are going to the Edge."
The bird let out a confused trill. It was used to traverse the physical distances between mountains and oceans, or even the spiritual distances between the various Lokas. But the Edge was different. It was the conceptual boundary where the order of their reality dissolved into chaos.
It was treacherous and dangerous. Even for Gods.
"Trust me," Murugan whispered as his hands tightened on the reins.
They flew fast, leaving the grand Himalayan ranges as mere dots in the background. The sun dipped below the horizon, but they kept going, chasing the darkness that lay beyond the twilight. Soon, the stars began to flicker and die out. The wind stopped howling and simply ceased to exist.
There were very few ways to travel between realms. Most of them relied on chance or coincidence. Murugan did not have the time or patience to wait for these opportunities. So he opted for the more surefire strategy. Alas, the guarantee brought with it significant risks. But he deemed it well within his perceived margins of safety.
The strategy was simple, on paper. What he had to do was chase the conceptual boundary between reality - Order - and the immaterial - Chaos. The problem was that this boundary behaved much like the horizon. It was a limit that existed in perception, yet retreated the closer one approached.
The horizon marked the physical limit of what the eyes could see. To actually reach it, one had to move faster than sight itself. One needed to travel faster than light.
Faster-than-light travel… An impossible feat for most. An average day for Murugan and his Peacock.
Murugan smirked and whispered a Mantra. In an instant, he and his mount were surrounded by a burgeoning, golden corona. Within a split second, they turned into a ball of blinding light before blinking out of existence to any casual observer.
---
For Murugan, though, the transition wasn't so short-lived. The moment the corona gained a translucent shade, his vision started to elongate unnaturally.
Imagine the vibrant night-sky dotted with a tapestry of bright constellations and star clusters. Now imagine grabbing them all and dragging them in a straight line towards yourself. Finally, imagine these heavenly bodies leaving an after-image of themselves as they move across the dark night sky. After a while, the entire sky turns into a bright tunnel of endless light.
Murugan glided through this tunnel of endless light for what felt like an eternity, though only a millionth of a fraction of a second passed in the material world. Slowly, the blinding streaks of starlight began to unravel and swirl. The tunnel widened and lost its structural integrity as whatever laws that held it together dissolved.
Murugan pulled on the reins, and his Peacock flared its wings to brake against the nothingness. They drifted into a space that defied geometry. It was a sea of darkness where a soup of grey mist birthed concepts that died in nanoseconds.
Floating in this chaotic void were globules.
They looked like massive, iridescent soap bubbles. Each one contained a universe - a self-contained reality governed by its own Truth.
To his left, Murugan drifted past a sphere that radiated a cold, biting chill. Through the shimmering surface, he saw the silhouette of a tree so large it defied comprehension. Its roots seemed to hold the world together, wrapping around smaller realms of ice, fire and other stuff.
Further down, another globule pulsed with the heat of a thousand suns. He caught a fleeting glimpse of a mighty river slicing through an endless desert, where giants with the heads of animals and bodies of men flickered and disappeared from view.
Murugan ignored them. He scanned the clusters with a singular focus, hunting for the specific frequency he had felt from his Guru.
He found it drifting apart from the cluster, isolated and lonely.
Unlike the others, this globule did not shine. It flickered like a dying lamp. The surface wasn't smooth; it was pitted and scarred. Murugan watched with a grim expression as the grey, shapeless matter of the Chaos oozed into the sphere through jagged tears in its reality. The realm was quite literally drowning.
"There," Murugan whispered.
He steered towards the decaying sphere. The closer he got, the more the Chaos tried to repel him, sensing an order that didn't belong. But such repulsion was barely a bump in the grand scheme of things.
As he reached the boundary, it felt brittle like dried parchment.
Murugan didn't hesitate. He leaned forward and dove into the surface of the bubble.
There was a sudden, violent shift in pressure as he burst through. The tunnel of light that had dispersed reformed around him as he punched through the membrane.
Slowly, the tunnel of light started to split up into faint dots, signifying the stars and heavenly bodies in the night sky. The golden corona around him flickered and died, leaving him exposed to the elements.
Murugan blinked the spots from his eyes and looked down to claim his first glimpse of his Guru's home.
To call it a nightmare would be an understatement.
Below him lay a landscape of devastation. The ocean had risen to swallow the land, turning mountain peaks into desperate, isolated islands. The water was dark and churning, and restless with the fury of a storm that never ended. The sky was a bruise of purple and black, choked with ash that fell like snow.
And amidst the drowning peaks, he saw the ruins. White marble pillars, shattered and broken, jut out of the water like the ribs of a decaying beast.
This was his Guru's home.
---
Once again, Murugan silently admonished himself for his hastiness. Murugan had hoped that maybe jumping headfirst into his Guru's realm would offer some insight or inspiration for the kind of Dakshina he could offer to his Guru. But looking at the desolation and destruction around him, he was completely stumped. Because there was absolutely nothing for him to take back except ruin.
It wasn't that civilisation had ceased to exist altogether here. There were still remnants, but these were just societies that were barely scraping by.
The desolation forced Murugan to confront a truth about the nature of existence that most gods preferred to ignore. The cosmos was not a solid, immutable thing. It was a bubble of "sense" floating in an infinite sea of abject "nonsense".
Murugan looked at the grey mist seeping through the cracks in the sky. That was the raw stuff of the Void. It was potential without purpose, energy without direction. In a healthy realm, the presence of Divinity acted as a barrier. The gods were the surface tension. They were the logic that kept the madness at bay. Their existence, fuelled by the belief of mortals, reinforced the laws of nature and kept the nonsense out.
But here? The gods were dead. And the belief… The scant few that lived in this realm had given up on their gods. There was hope, but only in the self, not towards a higher power.
Without that divine pressure to hold back the tide, the barrier had rotted away. The abject nonsense was leaking in. And that was where the true horror lay.
Nonsense, by definition, has no form. But when it was forced into a container of "sense", it had to abide by some rules. It has to take shape. And since it has no creativity of its own, it latches onto the lingering psychic imprints of the realm - the realm's laws and the collective fears, nightmares, and traumas of the surviving mortals. It then gives it a form and flesh.
The ocean beneath him churned hungrily.
Murugan's musings were cut short by a sound that felt more like a drop in air pressure than a noise.
"Left!" he shouted.
His Peacock reacted within a fraction of a heartbeat of the first syllable leaving his lips, without question. It banked hard as its iridescent wings slapped against the heavy air.
A moment later, the space they had just occupied was obliterated.
A massive, slick black tentacle erupted from the roiling water. It soared hundreds of feet into the air and moved with a speed that defied its immense bulk. It snapped at the empty air where they had been, causing a sound like the cracking of a whip to echo across the drowned peaks.
Murugan pulled the reins, guiding Paravani higher, seeking the safety of altitude. But as they rose, the ocean surface began to boil.
It wasn't just one limb.
Dozens of them shot out of the water, like a veritable forest of black. The writhing pillars rose to blot out the horizon. They thrashed and weaved, creating a cage of crushing muscle. They were covered in suckers the size of chariot wheels, each one ringed with jagged, crystalline teeth.
Murugan gripped his spear tightly in anticipation. He scanned the water and tried to find the source of this assault.
A jagged fork of lightning tore through the purple sky and illuminated the dark depths for a fleeting instance.
Murugan froze.
Deep beneath the surface, staring up through the murk was a landscape of eyes. There were hundreds of them, reptilian and cold, glowing with a pale, sick yellow light. They were set into a mass of flesh that seemed to have no beginning and no end.
It looked like a giant Naga, but it was all wrong. It was a twisted mess of heads and coils that kept changing shape.
If madness wore a skin, Murugan surmised that it would probably look a little something like this.
---
A massive tentacle swept horizontally, aiming to swat the bird out of the sky like a fly. His Peacock banked sharply and dived under the limb with a grace that made the near-death experience look like a choreographed dance.
In the midst of this chaos, Murugan found his mind drifting.
It was ironic, really. Here he was, dangling precariously over a mouth that wanted to chew his soul, and he was daydreaming about a training session.
To an outside observer, this lack of focus might have seemed suicidal. It looked like the arrogance of a god who had forgotten what mortality felt like. But that wasn't it. Murugan wasn't being careless; he was just… capable.
The creature below was massive and strong, yes. But it was also mindless. Its attacks were driven by instinct, not strategy. There was no feint, no trap, no calculated malice. It just thrashed. And for a warrior of Murugan's calibre, dodging random thrashing took up maybe half of his mental processing power.
That left the other half free to wander. And it wandered back to the last time he had felt truly threatened.
It went back to his spar with his Guru.
That fight had been different. The intent behind every blow his Guru threw had been sharp enough to cut diamonds. There was a terrifying intelligence behind those fists and a calculated drive to dismantle him. Compared to that, this sea monster was just an angry storm.
Murugan frowned as he ducked under a spray of corrosive slime. The memory of that spar was frustratingly hazy.
He remembered the beginning clearly enough. He remembered the weight of his spear, the burning in his muscles, and the overwhelming pressure of facing a force of nature. He remembered being pushed to his absolute limit, his back against the wall, his options running out.
And then… nothing.
There was a hole in his memory. A void where the middle and end of the fight should have been.
He didn't remember the techniques he used. He didn't remember the blows he landed or the ones he took. It was as if his consciousness had just decided to take a break. He had effectively blacked out, only to be violently thrown back into the driver's seat of his own body right at the end, gasping for air and aching in places he didn't know existed.
He only knew what had happened in that lost time because his brother had shown him. And what he saw was astounding.
It was a jarring sensation. Imagine a friend you have known for years - a gentle soul who you assume is incapable of hurting a fly. Then, in a moment of crisis, you watch them dismantle a threat with the cold precision of a veteran killer. It isn't that they have suddenly changed or betrayed their nature. It is the terrifying realisation that the capacity for violence was always there. It was just coiled and waiting beneath the surface. You just hadn't seen it until now.
That was the horror Murugan felt. But it was infinitely worse because the stranger wasn't a friend. It was him. He watched a stranger wearing his face perform feats of violence he knew he was physically capable of, but spiritually opposed to.
The Murugan in Ganesh's vision moved like an animal. There was no hesitation between thought and action. In fact, there didn't seem to be any thought at all. Just pure, unadulterated rage, violence and instinct. Although Murugan could see no rationality in his eyes, his every action was a beautiful implementation of the knowledge and experiences he'd cemented as muscle memory.
Though primal, there was a strange beauty to the violence. The longer he looked, the more engrossed he became.
It was akin to watching his father perform. At first glance, his dance would seem chaotic, terrifying even. But if you looked past that and observed carefully, you saw the beauty hidden within.
"It is about losing yourself without losing yourself," his father had told him once. "There is a very fine line, son. A razor's edge between surrendering to your nature and maintaining your sanity. You need to find that line. It is not an easy task. But once you do, you will be able to express yourself in ways beyond your imagining."
It wasn't just empty wisdom. It was the family trade.
Every member of his family seemed to possess an innate map to this territory. His brother could pick up just about any instrument and vanish into the music. His fingers would blur and find rhythms that didn't exist in written scores. His eyes closed in a bliss that separated him from the world. At that state, he was no longer thinking about the notes; he was the notes, and the notes were him. His mother was a polymath of passion; whether she was painting, dancing, or even cooking! Once, Murugan had nearly cried with overwhelming joy after having a sip of his mother's Dal - A plain lentil soup that was a staple part of the diet in every average mortal's home was transformed into a tear-invoking masterpiece by his mother's hand!
For the longest time, Murugan had felt like the outlier. Although he knew that he was a prodigy in combat, he always felt that he was hitting a metaphorical wall. The wall that kept him from truly elevating his skill. The wall that could only be overcome by losing oneself, without losing oneself.
But the vision showed him otherwise. It showed him that he could do it too! The emotion he had to lose himself to was rage!
So, staring down at the writhing horror in the ocean, Murugan made a decision. Now that he knew of the existence of his "alter ego", he wanted to meet him. He wanted to grow acquainted with him. He wanted to conquer him!
But a minute was all it took for Murugan to realise that it was easier said than done. He just wasn't feeling it!
"Extreme results call for extreme measures," Murugan muttered as he patted his Peacock's neck. The creature responded by raising towards the sky. Once Murugan deemed their altitude as satisfactory, he grabbed his spear and leapt off his mount.
He spread his arms and legs wide to catch the wind and turned his body into a living sail as he plummeted. The air screamed past his ears. It tore at his clothes and whipped his hair into a frenzy. He fell fast and hit his terminal velocity within seconds.
He smashed through the layer of dense, ash-choked clouds. The mist felt cold and wet against his skin and blinded him for a heartbeat before he burst out the other side.
And then, he saw it.
A jagged fork of lightning split the sky, illuminating the world below in a stark, strobe-light flash. The ocean had disappeared under the gaping maw of the monstrosity. It was like a cavern of wet, black flesh lined with thousands of crystalline teeth.
And surrounding it, staring up at the falling god, were the eyes. Hundreds of them. Innumerable, reptilian, and glowing with a hungry, pale yellow light. They tracked his descent with predatory focus.
Murugan felt his heart hammer against his ribs. It beat so hard it hurt. It played a frantic rhythm that echoed the thunder rolling above.
Thump-thump. Thump-thump.
The ground - or rather, the monster - was rushing up to meet him. Five hundred feet. Three hundred.
His blood felt like it was turning into liquid fire. The adrenaline flooded his system. Every nerve ending in his body lit up. His fight-or-flight response screamed at him to fly, to summon his powers, to stop the fall.
But he didn't. He pushed the fear down, compressing it until it ignited into something else.
An excited, maniacal laugh bubbled up from his chest. It started as a chuckle but quickly tore through his throat as a full-throated roar. He bellowed into the storm with a sound so raw and powerful that it cut through the howling wind and the crashing waves.
"COME ON!"
The distance closed. One hundred feet. He could smell the rot on the creature's breath. He could see the serrations on the teeth.
His vision began to tunnel. The edges of the world turned black, pulsating in time with his heart. The fear vanished, incinerated by a white-hot surge of pure instinct. The conscious mind, the part of him that planned and worried and strategised, couldn't handle the overload. It flickered like a candle in a gale.
And then, right as the jaws opened wide to swallow him whole, Murugan blacked out.
---
The battle fractured into jagged shards of memory, piercing the void in blinding, staccato pulses of sensation.
Flash.
His fist buried itself in wet, rubbery meat. The impact shuddered through his shoulder, but it felt good.
Darkness.
Flash.
He was standing on a tentacle, riding the thrashing limb like a wild horse. He drove his spear down, and the flesh parted like water.
Darkness.
Flash.
A yellow eye the size of a shield loomed in front of him. He headbutted it. The lens shattered, spraying cold, viscous slime across his face. He heard a raw and guttural scream, and realised his throat was raw. He was the one screaming.
Darkness.
Then, silence.
---
Murugan woke up choking.
Liquid filled his mouth and nose. It was thick, salty, and tasted like copper. He thrashed. His heavy limbs fought the drag of the fluid and broke the surface with a desperate gasp.
He coughed and spat out the foul taste. He blinked out the sting from his eyes. He felt heavy. His muscles burned with a fatigue that went down to the bone - the kind that usually came after days of marching, not minutes of fighting.
He looked around. He was floating in a soup of purple and black. The smell was overpowering. It was a weird mix of ozone and an open slaughterhouse.
He didn't have the energy to swim. He brought two trembling fingers to his lips and blew a sharp, piercing whistle.
A screech answered him from above.
Wind buffeted the water as his Peacock descended. The great bird skimmed the surface with the precision of a kingfisher. Its massive talons reached down and gripped the back of Murugan's armour.
The bird heaved, and Murugan was hoisted into the air. He dangled limply as they ascended, letting the water drip off of him.
He looked down.
The monster was no more.
What he saw below was a debris field that stretched for a mile. Massive chunks of black flesh bobbed on the waves. Tentacles that blocked out the sky were now severed ribbons of meat drifting in the current. The ocean itself had turned a sickly, dark violet from the creature's blood.
But it was the gold that caught his eye.
Everywhere he looked, golden shafts glinted in the dim light. Hundreds of them. They peppered the floating remains like porcupine quills. His duplicated spears, thousands of them, had turned the monster into a pincushion.
The Peacock banked toward a nearby island. Maybe calling it that was generous. It was plainly a jagged tooth of rock jutting out of the carnage. The bird slowed and dropped Murugan onto the hard stone.
Murugan stumbled. His knees buckled, but he caught himself. He planted the shaft of his spear against the ground and used it as a crutch to stay upright.
He took a deep breath and steadied his shaking hands. He looked out at the horizon, at the floating graveyard he had created.
"Clean up," he muttered.
He lifted his spear just an inch and stamped the butt of the shaft onto the rock.
Clack.
Out at sea, the gold flashed.
BOOM.
The horizon disappeared in a wall of white fire. A chain reaction of explosions tore across the water as the duplicate spears detonated in unison. The remnants of the creature were vaporised instantly. The shock-wave raced toward the island, flattening the waves and hitting Murugan with a blast of warm air that dried his soaked clothes instantly.
He could help but let a faint grin arc across his lips.
But it was only momentary.
Murugan was not satisfied with his performance. He had lost himself far too deeply. The line his father alluded to was a few steps back.
No matter, there was no shortage of monsters in this realm.
---
The forest was a blur of grey trunks and black leaves.
Two figures tore through the undergrowth. The older one, a boy of maybe twelve, led the way. He gripped a battered round shield in one hand and his sister's wrist in the other. He pulled her along, forcing her to match his desperate pace.
They didn't look where they were going, only behind them.
Something was hunting them. They couldn't see it, but they could hear the heavy, wet thuds of its footsteps crashing through the brush.
The girl, breathless and crying, stumbled. Her foot caught on a thick, gnarled root that jutted out of the ash-covered soil. She went down hard.
"Brother!" she screamed.
The boy skidded to a halt. He spun around and fell to his knees beside her.
"Quick!" he urged, his voice tight with panic.
"I'm stuck!" The girl sobbed. She yanked her leg, but the root had curled around her ankle like a wooden snake.
The boy used his shield to claw at the dirt as he tried to dig her out. The earth was hard and cold. The cast-iron shield hit the dirt but clanged as though it hit something hard and rigid. It just wouldn't budge.
He froze.
The crashing sound had stopped.
Slowly, the boy looked up. He scanned the dense thicket of trees surrounding them. It was silent. Too silent.
Then, a low growl started. It didn't come from one direction; it seemed to vibrate from the air itself. It was an inhuman, rattling sound that shook the leaves on the trees.
The girl stopped crying. She went rigid. A dark stain spread across the front of her dress as fear robbed her of all control.
The boy grabbed his shield. And without thinking, he moved.
He leapt in front of his sister and raised the shield just as the trees in front of them exploded.
A nightmare burst into the clearing. It looked like a lizard, but it stood on two legs and towered over them. Its skin was pale and sickly, covered in sores.
It lunged.
Jaws filled with serrated fangs clamped down on the shield.
The impact lifted the boy off his feet. He was whipped into the air and dangled helplessly as the creature shook its head. He heard the metal of the shield cry with fatigue. The leather straps bit into his forearm.
"Let go!" his mind screamed.
He fumbled with the straps, and the buckle snapped open.
He dropped to the ground and hit the dirt with a heavy thud.
Above him, the creature bit down. The sturdy cast-iron of the shield crumbled like a dry biscuit. The beast spat the splinters out and threw its head back, letting out a deafening roar of triumph.
ROAAAAAR!
The sound echoed through the forest and shook the remaining leaves from the branches.
But as the echo faded, another sound answered it.
ROAAAAAAAR!
The boy blinked. The creature flinched.
It felt like an echo but didn't sound like it. In fact, it was a response - a challenge. It was louder, angrier, and distinctly human.
The creature looked confused. It tilted its massive head. Its yellow eyes scanned the canopy. The boy and girl looked up too.
A black dot appeared in the grey sky. It grew larger. Fast.
It was a man. He was falling feet first, like a thrown javelin.
He slammed into the creature.
There was a sickening crunch as the man's heels drove into the beast's skull. The monster's head snapped down, burying its snout in the dirt. The impact sent a shock-wave through the ground that knocked the boy onto his back again.
Dust and ash billowed up.
The man stood up from the crater he had just made on the creature's head. He didn't look at the kids. He threw his head back and bellowed again - a sound of pure, unadulterated rage.
Although dazed and bleeding after the sucker punch of an attack, the creature tried to rise. It then snapped its jaws at the intruder.
The man didn't even bother to dodge. He stepped into the bite. He grabbed the creature's upper and lower jaws with his bare hands.
Muscles bulged under his skin. Veins popped on his forehead. With a roar that drowned out the breaking of bone, he ripped the jaws apart.
The creature collapsed like a detached marionette.
The man didn't stop. He pounced on the twitching body. He was a blur of violence as he hacked and tore with a savagery that made the monster look tame.
The boy grabbed his sister. He hauled her to her feet. The root, loosened by the tremor of the impact, finally gave way.
They didn't look back. They ran. They ran until their lungs burned and their legs felt like lead. They ran from the monster that hunted them, and they ran from the man who had saved them.
They survived. And they had a story that no one would ever believe.
---
This time, Murugan deemed the performance to be far better.
He felt himself in control for over three-quarters of the length of that confrontation.
He remembered that there were two members in the audience as well and turned in their direction. But they weren't there any more.
He mentally brought down his score for losing track of his environment. He would have to keep better track of it in the future.
As he whistled for his Peacock, his feet collided against an object on the ground. He looked down and saw the mangled cast-iron shield.
"The shield is the first weapon every Spartan learns," he said involuntarily, mimicking his Guru's tone of voice. He let out a chuckle and picked up the "weapon".
He gazed at it for a while, and his mind started to churn with an idea.
"Huh," he evoked as he arrived at a conclusion. "This could work."