CHAPTER ASHBORN 450: THE EVE OF WAR

Annas sat cross-legged in a pitch-black room, tail raised straight behind him. Not a single sound could be heard—the thick stone walls ensured that.

Of course, that wasn’t what Annas perceived. To his senses, he was sitting high on the tallest spire of Samar Patag—a fictional Samar Patag, that was. For a reason that had taken him nigh upon a century to come to terms with, his mindscape took the form of the great city. The great Chitran city, gilded and flourishing.

A city that never was. A city that could be.

As he opened his Chakras one by one, the city grew in both size and grandeur until its brilliance nearly blinded him.

Great golden statues honored him in every square, and there wasn’t a filthy Gargan to be seen.

It was a city of kings. The ultimate realization of the shared Chitran dream. It was the city that Annas would create, and it all began on the morrow.

Perhaps it was ill-fitting for a leader to meditate alone on the eve of battle. Perhaps the great Akh Nara would disapprove.

Annas didn’t care. He was close. He could feel it in his veins and taste it on his tongue. They were so close now. Decades of toil had led to this moment. True power was at hand. Power equal to Matiman, and, perhaps, the power to exceed even the late Raja.

Except where Matiman grew careless, Annas would be vigilant. There would be no open fields of battle here. No, Annas would use that newfound power to wreck the Akh Nara from within. By the time he might be discovered, it will have been too late for his enemy.

Yet it all hinged on this breakthrough. The single Chakra that had eluded him for far too long.

Suddenly, a loud rapping sound emanated from everywhere all at once. The mindscape shook, and Annas sighed. It would seem his time here was at an end.

Rising to his feet, Annas closed his Chakras and exited the mindscape, finding himself back in the dark room. A room that was no longer empty.

“Is it time?” Annas asked.

“It is, my liege. The way is open.”

“Then let us take it,” Annas said, following the soldier. Outside was a bustling hive of activity, with kothis and Aindri warriors milling this way and that.

The invasion wasn’t to occur until tomorrow, but Annas had some groundwork to lay. Doors to open, foundations to crack, so to speak.

He noted the irony as he walked the cold, damp tunnels. The Akh Nara had taken Samar Patag through subterfuge and guile. Now, he would taste the pain of losing to an enemy that used his own strategies against him. Now, he would understand what it meant to have one’s country burned before their eyes. To have their land forcibly taken.

Now, the Akh Nara would pay.

Annas followed silently. He was no hero, nor a Raja, though if all went according to plan, he would soon become one.

No, Annas had no interest in such things. He wished only to see justice served. For his clan to be restored to their proper place. Not above or below the other clans, but equal. Was that too much to ask? Was that somehow unfair? 𝖗ἈƝỐ₿Ęs

Clearly, the Demon Realm thought so. It was Annas’ job to change that.

They soon reached the end of the tunnels, and from there, it was merely a mile or more to the spot where the wagon awaited. The wagon manned entirely by Aindri, posing, of course, as Panav.

In their human form, the Panav looked much the same as anyone else, and while the Akh Nara had Iksana with Sight guarding the entrance, scanning the wagons with their arts, that number had been reduced to but one thanks to his army intentionally complicating their deployments. He’d forced the Akh Nara’s eyes to spread thin, and this was no accident.

With a token force guarding the gate, the lone Iksana had her hands full checking each wagon, and the Akh Nara, in his infinite compassion, wished the precious foodstuffs and healing salves to be distributed to the populace as soon as possible.

This meant the checks were cursory, and while a single Iksana would still be enough to detect Annas’ prana signature, that was only true if he wasn’t currently hiding inside the wagon, amidst a pile of prana-laden herbs.

He knew, because he’d smuggled in a dozen of his elite troops in this manner—after testing them on a captured, unconscious Gargan first, of course.

This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

A short half hour later saw the wagon coming to a stop, nestled safely within the walls of his city, on a side-street closed off by Aindri agents. If the Akh Nara knew just how close his enemies were, perhaps he’d have been more vigilant. Recent reports from Annas’ spies said he’d even left this realm to waste his time in the Human Realm, of all places.

Annas scoffed. The Akh Nara was as reticent as the Iksana under his command. Weren’t they supposed to be the infallible spies of the Demon Realm? Annas was beside himself with stress when they initiated this plan. Wrought with stress that they’d be uncovered and annihilated.

And yet, they hadn’t been. Their earlier offensive served beautifully to distract the Akh Nara’s forces, making him complacent. With a resounding victory under his belt, why would he think to search for enemies mere paces from his stronghold? What reason would he have to fear his imminent demise?

Even the mightiest Ash Beast was vulnerable after a scrumptious meal, was it not?

It was with surprising ease that Annas bypassed the city’s security. The Akh Nara’s Iksana were terrifying, but as the Akh Nara himself witnessed firsthand, the power of guile and insider support simply could not be overstated.

For all his power, the boy called Sarvaak was still young. Naive. He’d foolishly left the Chitrans in the city alive, and most were only too happy to aid Annas in restoring rightful order. To say nothing of the agents he’d managed to slip in with their help.

And while the Gargan Asuras were vigilant, they were small in number. Ideal for a strike force. Woefully inadequate for patrolling the ramparts of a whole city. Yes, they’d made great strides in mending the decrepit and failing walls, but the damage was simply too vast to fix in such a short time. Holes remained in both wall and intelligence, and Annas slipped through one such.

A kothi agent greeted him on the other side.

“Welcome, my liege. Please, this way. We’d best get underground.”

Annas nodded. Even with a cloak hiding his body and a mask to cover his face, kothi features were not so easily hidden. It was best to get underground—into his own tunnel network akin to the Akh Nara’s—before anyone noticed.

The gods, it seemed, had other plans.

“Seize them!” Annas hissed as two wide-eyed girls bolted the moment they turned a corner.

Panic flared in Annas’ chest but vanished when his forces returned with the girls slung over their shoulders.

“Help! He—!?” one of them shouted, but their cries were quickly silenced by gags placed over their mouths.

Annas smiled, though there was no joy in his expression. His gaze was enough to silence any remaining resistance the girls might’ve had.

“Good,” he said. “You two are urchins, yes? Help me, and you will live. Betray me or resist, and I will have your heads cut and placed on spikes.”

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Vir returned to a bustling Samar Patag, where every soul moved with a purpose, and a sense of hope filled the air. Or perhaps that was just Vir projecting his own hopes and dreams onto everyone as he made his way to the castle. While he vastly preferred hosting military meetings in the Ash, his retinue had recently grown to include those who’d suffer or outright die in the prana-laden land, and so those meetings now occurred deep within the castle.

Vir caught several unfamiliar faces as he entered the long, low-roofed rectangular room.

Cirayus was absent, but Balagra spoke in hushed tones with Greesha in a corner. They both turned to greet Vir as he approached.

“Am I interrupting anything?” Vir asked.

“Yes.”

“Not at all, Akh Nara,” Balagra said, giving Greesha a side-eye.

Vir chuckled. “I promise not to take up too much of your time. How go the preparations?”

“Smoothly,” Balagra replied. “The combined Aindri/Chitran army continues to amass to our east, with more filtering in by the day.”

“Good,” Vir said with a satisfied nod. “They’re congregating as we’d hoped.”

“Yes, far easier to eliminate them as a single force than to spend weeks and months ferreting them from their hiding holes.”

“Any sign of Annas?” Vir asked.

Balagra shook his head. “None. He seems to have slipped even Ekat’Ma’s eyes, which likely means he’s hiding away somewhere. To what end, I cannot say.”

“Redouble our efforts,” Vir replied, frowning. “We cannot afford to have him catch us unawares. He’s plotting something, and that we do not know what worries me.”

“I have every agent on it,” Balagra said. “Fear not. If he’s moving, we’ll find him.”

But will you find him only after it’s too late? Vir wondered. “What of the people of Samar Patag? I assume the Gargans are content, but what of the Chitran? How are we handling the dissent?”

“Dissent?” Greesha scoffed. “What dissent? The streets are quiet. There’s been nary a scuffle to suppress. I admit, I never thought the Chits would take the regime change this well.”

“Nor I,” Vir replied, feeling a sudden sense of unease.

Peace was a good thing, was it not? Wasn’t it exactly what he’d striven for these past months? So why did Vir feel so uncomfortable about it? Was he truly that used to conflict that peace set him ill at ease?

Vir shook his head. He’d have to do some serious introspection when this war was done. “And what of our mobilization?”

Balagra’s back straightened, “Progressing steadily,” he said, clearly happier to discuss this topic. “Despite her commitments in the Human Realm, the goddess has graced us with her time. Thanks to Ekat’Ma’s Iksana, we knew where the enemy would group in advance, allowing us to have the goddess visit. When the time is right, she will open her Ash Gates, allowing our army to pour through from Vijaya Stronghold.”

Vir nodded. “The prana alone will kill anyone in the vicinity. I suspect our forces will have an easy time decimating our unprepared foe.”

“By the time they regroup, it will be too late,” Balagra replied. “We’ll have dealt a lethal blow from which they will have no chance to recover. The Ravager is managing preparations personally.”

Vir let out a breath of relief. With Cirayus in charge, there would be no chance of bungling the all-important logistics. Not that Malik would have, but centuries of experience went a long way to set Vir’s mind at ease.

Now, if we could only find Annas, Vir thought. With Annas defeated and the bulk of the allied Chitran/Aindri forces routed, the Demon Realm would have no choice but to acknowledge the legitimacy of his claim to the throne.

But if Annas got away—or worse—never showed his face at all? While the realm might still recognize him, Vir would never cease worrying about the kothi’s revenge.

No, Annas needed to die, and if he failed to show himself, Vir would simply have to find him.

He thought briefly of heading out personally, but that would both undermine trust in his forces, and would likely end in failure. If Ekat’Ma couldn’t find him, then Annas had taken great pains to hide himself.

No, all Vir could do now was calm his mind and work on his Chakras. He’d had precious little rest since the taking of Samar Patag and the escapade in the Human Realm, and the upcoming battle would require him to be at his best.

With a mind full of roiling thoughts, Vir entered the royal bedchambers and sat down to meditate.