stumbled over the place through the passing years.
He whirled, hacking and slashing, until he came face to face with a lad whose death had not yet robbed him of all his features. His young cousin. Arpan choked back a sob, and tried not to look for the baby girl from the village.
“I release you.”
He cut the boy down, reminding himself that it was a mercy. A fresh surge of vetala washed toward them, a tide in advance of something far worse. Reverberating and metallic crashing sounded nearer and nearer from the mouth of the cave; the creatures became frantic in their assault.
ॐ
Ranajit parried heartily with his spear, feeling his age creak through his bones with every blow landed. He would gladly fight until the end, if only he could be sure that his son would return home unharmed.
One of the creatures got in close to him, and dug its fingers deep into the flesh of his arm. Ranajit gritted his teeth, refusing to cry out, and tore the creature’s skull from its body. The bony fingers remained, until he turned and smashed the rest of the torso into dust. Blood poured from the wound, and a strange odor rose to his nostrils, but he ignored it and kept swinging the heavy lathi spear.
“Father! You are wounded!” Ranajit’s son rushed to his side.
“Look to yourself. We are far from safety!”
ॐ
With a rush of old air, such as made them choke and cough, all the dust was scoured away. The remaining creatures turned as one, and scattered in front of what Macconnach could only assume was their master.
It was not an entity with form, as he had sometimes met, but an insubstantial, swirling, a gaping maw from which nothing could escape.
In its center was something like hellfire and undulating rows of gnashing and tarnished teeth. Macconnach raised his hand, preparing for what he had accepted might be his final battle. The vetala howled shrilly; Macconnach looked up again.
“Now, my sisters,” He said in Gaelic, and the skies clouded over. Lightning flashed brilliantly against the backdrop of grey and white, claps of thunder following shortly behind. He knew he asked greatly of his kin on this occasion.
They would probably hold it in debt against him, should he live to repay it. He breathed in the air deeply, and strode toward the monster. It laughed pitilessly, and in the single beat of a heart, he was surrounded by it.
ॐ
“No!!!!” Isabel made to run to Macconnach. Arpan held her back, as she fought and struggled to break free.
“He will face it alone. We cannot aid him in this battle.”
She sobbed, feeling for all the world as if she had just lost a part of herself. It was the worst pain she could remember, surpassing even that of watching her mother slip away. Ranajit came round to face her, and took her face into his hands.
“I think that this is not so. Your heart has finally come alive. Let it open; he may draw strength from you.”
Isabel nearly protested, still caught on the hooks of not wanting to surrender. Finally, she nodded, and turned away. It hardly seemed possible that she could have arrived at such a place, after only having met the man such a short time ago.
Somehow, he had found his way through her defenses. She wondered whether it was the same for him. Perhaps that was why he had persisted in trying to send her back at every turn.
She looked over at the inky cloud that had enveloped Macconnach. The winds still howled around them, lightning crackled. Surely that must mean he was still alive.
Arpan had turned his attention back to the vetala, destroying them with a ferocity she hadn’t imagined he’d had within him. She had heard him speak to one of them, though, and felt that she understood his passion.
These poor souls had been suborned to a selfish, evil end. Destroying them was the greatest mercy that could be done. She looked at the knife still in her hand, and joined Arpan.
With each swing of her arm, she focused on thoughts of devotion and affection, for her father, her brother, her mother, and finally, for a man who had found his way through the labyrinth of her heart.
Perhaps that was the only freedom she would ever know in this unfair, unbalanced world. She would not give it up easily, she realized. Until the bitter end, she would fight with her heart, not against it.
ॐ
Macconnach felt the entity wrap its tendrils around him, as it sought to feed from him. He cursed himself for not comprehending earlier that its intentions were thus. It must have sensed him, as he had sensed it, that first night in the village.
Perhaps until then it had only been trying to sustain itself with randomly taken victims. After sixty years of feeding from the hundreds it had once lured in, it was reduced to an emptied boa constrictor. It wanted one large feeding that could nourish it for some time.
Macconnach could provide that, with his energies that extended beyond the natural realm. Why had Grandy never warned him of such a fiend? Perhaps the old man had never encountered one….
He worked to re-center his mind, to draw in his sisters. He could feel his life beginning to trickle away, and with it, his thoughts began to swim.
A pinpoint of light fixed in the distance, growing gradually brighter and larger. He could no longer hear his sisters, who had briefly been by his side. Were they being consumed as well?
Was that even possible? He determined to see the entity’s destruction as he himself would be destroyed. It was all that was left.
ॐ
The vetala were now but dust. Cold silence was all that remained of them. Isabel turned back to the roiling blackness of the entity which had Macconnach in its grasp.
She could not say what it must be; only that it seemed to draw every ounce of light, heat, and matter into itself. It was terrible to behold, the very manifestation of malignance.
It was a destroyer of worlds. She blinked. Why did that seem so memorable? The wicked destroyer, an ancient attribute of…whom?
“Ranajit.”
“Miss Isabel?”
“What are the two halves of Shiva?” He stared at her, uncomprehending, until she pointed at the entity.
“Ah, yes. Two aspects. You were listening to my stories. I always thought your brother was the only one paying attention. I think you mean Rudra-Siva. These are the old faces of Shiva, meaning the balance between light and dark, life and death, creation and end. There is also the far more terrible face of Shiva, the Bhairava, which is annihilation.”
“But, I recall you saying that even the worst aspect of Shiva had its counterpart.”
“Yes. I have already tried to tell you what it is this night.”
“How can I help? Compared to its will, I am nothing. Major Macconnach is the one who combats monsters, not I.”
“And yet, you have heard him say that his dominion is death. He needs something to anchor him in life. He needs you.”
Isabel could hear her heart pounding in her ears. She turned her eyes back to the entity, and knew what she must do. She must be swift.
“Please, Ranajit, if the worst befalls us, promise me you will go back and let my father know. Let him know that I am at peace.”
He smiled sadly, and took her hand for a brief moment, as he had done so many times when she’d been a child. As he let go, she dropped her knife, pulled out the pistol and let it fall, and began to run toward the swirling cloud, which would surely obliterate her.
She could hear Colonel Arpan’s protest, as she herself had cried out after Macconnach. Another step took her to the edge of darkness; she raised her hand to test its surface. A few shaky breaths, and she closed her eyes, stepping into it.
There was nothing. Nothing and everything. She wanted to scream as she felt her physical existence being torn at. She ignored it, looking ahead, trying desperately to find Macconnach.
She thought she could see him, from what seemed a distance of miles away. He was on his knees, arms raised. Still fighting? It was difficult to discern.
Courage found its way back into her, and she
stoked it like a glowing coal. It pressed on her heart, which ached and protested, but it knew it too must burst into flame. She struggled against her inertia and began to walk toward him.
ॐ
Macconnach was finding it difficult to think coherently. The monster was pulling and clawing at him. It was grueling to keep up his calls, to fend off the attack. The light, however, had suddenly flared, and began to come closer.
He gritted his teeth, working to forestall death once more. And yet death seemed to keep progressing nearer and nearer. It was enough to bring tears of frustration springing forth.
Perhaps, perhaps once he had been willing to die in the line of his duty. No longer. He knew the reason why, and half-wished it were not so, even as he clung to it. It was only Isabel who had kept him persevering against these terrible odds.
If he died, she would move on and live without him. But if they both lived? What then? He opened his mouth and expended his final bit of energy on one last call, up to his sisters. Then, with a shuddering sigh, he fell to the ground, and watched as the light drew ever nearer.
ॐ
Isabel saw him fall, and began to run. She focused her will onto him that he might live and keep up the fight. After what seemed an eternity, she began to close in. Echoes of pitiless mirth flayed at her as the Bhairava anticipated its kill; she disregarded it and pressed on.
The significance of her own mission moved her feet more quickly than she ever could have imagined, until at last she was by his side. His eyelids flickered; he raised his