The reek of battle was strong enough to overpower the rich scents of the jungle, the damp and decaying foliage barely detectable. Behind him, Vorachun could hear the screaming still, could imagine the Arun Guard laying waste to his fellows with their impossible speed. Part of him longed to race back out there, join the battle on the beach, and live—die, mostlike—beside the other Lunars.
He wanted it, yes, but in the chaos, the Solar god-queen—the Devirani, they named her—had fled into the jungle, and if Vor caught her, imagine the glory. Oh, maybe the weretigers would hunt her down even if he did nothing, but after so much blood, so many lives lost, he wanted to strike the blow that toppled the Solar Empire.
So, one hand to the wound below his ribs the Guardswoman had dealt him—blindingly fast, the woman had been—the other clutching his krabi in a white-knuckled grip, Vor pressed onward. It was dark. Not even the silver light of a full moon could pierce the thick canopy, and as he waded deeper into the eerie stillness of the jungle—hacking away with his cutlass at vines barring his progress—he could make out very little. Following tracks would be almost impossible.
Hot wetness seeped through the fingers clutching his wound. Not fatal, especially not with Soma in his system reinforcing his Prana, but it still hurt like Rangda Demon Queen had spat on him. Something creaked on a branch overhead, and Vor froze, peering into the shadowed recesses above, imagining a python dropping on him. Or maybe a real tiger, drawn by the scent of blood and so many fresh kills. No Suea Saming would strike him, he assumed, for the weretigers were sworn to the nobles of the Lunar Empire … even if they sometimes looked at him like prey.
Blinking, still as death, Vor watched but saw nothing above. No shift of shadows in that canopy, no indication of what had made the sound. Slowly, he glanced over his shoulder, considered retreating to the beach and his fellows. What use glory if he died out here? Oh, but then what use was life if he had to swallow the shame of knowing he’d let fear stop him? Vorachun was supposed to be wed soon, and he would have his betrothed look upon him as a champion. When he went home, when he sailed into Yasopura, it would be under a moon of victory. The Chakravartin himself would heap praise upon Vor for his having slain the Devirani. Would, in fact, be glad to see him wed to his niece.
Chandi. Vor could picture her face, her slightly crooked smile, her mischievous eyes. She’d wanted to come, of course, but the royals were considered too valuable to risk here, on this tiny island near the heart of the Solar mandala.
Vor released his wound long enough to draw the phial of Soma from his sampot, pull the stopper out with his teeth, and down another swig. The sweet nectar coursed through him like liquid fire, igniting his veins, surging his energy, the Prana that powered his siddhi. Just a sip was all he allowed himself. Too much risked lunacy, especially when using the siddhi to push his body beyond human limits. Enough, almost, to match the speed of an Arun Guard. Yet a taste of the Moon God’s power was all a mortal could handle. Too much, and you’d be raving with delusions of godhood yourself.
So enough to blunt pain and mute fear, to let him push on. Slowly, his worries ebbed like tides seeping back into the Worldsea. What fear had he of tigers or snakes, when, flush with Soma, he could punch through a tree?
So desperate had the battle been, such slaughter as he had never seen, even in this accursed war that had raged for more than half his life. But the Chakravartin assured them, should they seize the Astral Temple, the war ended. Vor didn’t think anyone had expected the Devirani to be here, but killing her would only further throw the Solars into disarray.
The Lunars had come in a fleet of warships, descending on Astral Shore ’neath the light of the full moon, their invasion swift as a striking shark, deadly as a tsunami. They’d meant to claim the place in one night, here on the cusp of the monsoon, when they could fortify the temple before the Solars could mount a counterattack. Everyone expected a single Arun Guard here. But there had been more than one—two, three, hard to tell with them moving so fucking fast—and everywhere Vorachun had looked, Lunar bodies were toppling, his foes appearing and vanishing in flashes of sunlight, leaving a wake of corpses like seashells deposited by the retreating tides.
Deeper, he pressed on into the jungle, feeling it close in around him, as if the very trees watched, wrathful at his intrusion into a deep place where Men were not meant to tread. His heart was hammering. The underbrush had thinned the further into the jungle he travelled, which meant he no longer need hack and hew to make progress. Such was well, as it increased his chances of sneaking up on the Solar god-queen. Huh. They’d see how divine she was without a head on her shoulders.
He tried not to picture the hail of arrows that felled two men he’d known since boyhood. He tried not to think on the Arun Guard who had slain hundreds more warriors in the space of heartbeats. He tried, more than anything else, not to imagine what sort of presence had the hairs upon his arms standing on end, nor what gave him the sensation of a cool breath upon the back of his neck. The jungle groaned, shifted around him, branches and roots and trunks all creaking. The wind seemed to whisper of something old, something foul. Something direr than mere weretigers, though those silent, stalking predators were enough to stir disquiet in the bowels of their allies and utter dread in their foes.
Vor’s hand drifted again to the phial of Soma, tempted. He was nearly out, yes, but one more swig might buoy his courage, let him see this through … Loam squelched ahead, and he dropped into a crouch, creeping forward. There, something was moving, a figure. Was it her?
He flooded Prana to his limbs, drawing on his siddhi to enhance his speed and strength, and scampered forward, closer to his prey. Glory was nearly his, as was his right as a scion of the Moon God, Chandra. Amid mere mortal warriors, Vor too had been as a god. On the beach, a Solar soldier had thrust at him with a spear, his attack coming with all the speed of a raging tortoise. Oh, Vor had slit his throat, stepped around him, smashed his palm into another Solar’s face so hard his skull cracked, then hacked the leg off a third before they knew what they faced. He had dodged spears and arrows and bent backward to dance around swords as though he but toyed with those mortal fools.
But the Arun Guardswoman had defied him! Shamed him!
Had, even as Vor stomped on a fallen man’s throat, hewed into Vor’s side. When Vor dropped, maybe the Guard thought him dead, for by the time he managed his feet, the Solar had vanished and appeared elsewhere, between two Suea Saming in tiger form. Her keris blurred from one to the other, the knife moving faster than Vor’s eyes could track. In another instant, the woman was above another tiger, thrusting down between its shoulder blades. She was gone again before the tiger could even cry out. The weretiger slumped to the ground, resuming human form as it died.
If Vorachun killed a Guard, he would go down in history, he recalled thinking, his name celebrated in song for generations alongside Malin’s. Who hadn’t heard the stories of the weretiger datu who had slain Arun Guardsmen?
Before Vor could take the fight back to her, the Guardswoman was gone again, appearing behind Mahoseth, one of Vor’s friends. The boy didn’t even see it coming as a slash tore through his shoulder and back and sent him sprawling to the ground. The war band Mahoseth had led shouted and rushed the Solar. Eyes glowing like sunlight, she danced around them at superhuman speed, appearing and disappearing with impossible ease. Twenty Lunar warriors were dead in the time it took Vor to close ten paces. She was gone again before Vor reached his friend. He skidded to a stop in the sand and knelt beside him, desperately checking wounds.
Oh, Mahoseth lived, but his breath was ragged and pained. “Draw your siddhi!” Vor had shouted at him. “Draw them, damn you!” With his siddhi, maybe there was a chance. Maybe Mahoseth could hold on till his wounds could be tended to. “Malin!” Vor had screamed, summoning the weretiger.
The Suea Saming was at his side almost immediately, kneeling to inspect Mahoseth.
“Get him to safety,” Vor commanded. Malin hesitated, looking around the battlefield, perhaps seeking the Guardswoman. “In the name of the Moon, tend to Mahoseth!” Vorachun ordered, for such an order, so worded, no Suea Saming could refuse.
The weretiger chief snarled at Vorachun, but he lifted the boy’s body in his arms and took off running back toward the ships. Mahoseth was not only Vor’s friend, he was also Chandi’s. His love would never forgive him if he let something happen to Mahoseth.
Besides, Vor had wanted to kill the Guadswoman himself. Leastwise, till he had seen the Devirani fleeing the chaos and known his destiny was greater even than to slay an Arun Guard. He, Vorachun of the Chandrakula dynasty, was meant to slay a god-queen and thus break an empire.
Moving faster now, he edged through the jungle, could see the fool woman stumbling about, looking around as if lost. No doubt she was. The jungle was apt to confuse direction, even in daylight, and she’d been twice a fool to venture hither in the dark of night. She had sealed her doom, and Vor was but the instrument chosen to enact it. He started to rise. Then a woman in the cerulean uniform appeared next to the Devirani.
The Arun Guardswoman! Beneath her sleeveless shirt, a tattoo glittered with sunlight, making her luminous in the darkness.
“Your Radiance! I found you!” the Guardswoman blurted, moving to the side of her queen. “We must leave; there are weretigers about.”
And worse things, Vorachun thought, though he dared not assault an Arun Guard head-on. Not unless … He felt the phial of Soma at his hip. Almost empty, but if he pushed his limits further, he could perhaps match her speed. Once more, he drew away the stopper. Once more, took a swig, downing the last of the priceless brew. Everything slowed, his perception of time so dilated that ordinary people seemed caught in a mire compared to him.
Siddhi drawn, he bounded off the ground, reducing his weight to glide, then landed in the boughs of a tree. The Guardswoman looked in his direction, but unlike the glowing bitch, Vor wouldn’t be easy to spot. He bounded again, shifting to another branch twenty feet away. His siddhi allowed him to balance on otherwise precarious perches with ease.
Of a sudden, she stood there on the branch before him, her sunlight somewhat dimmed, still gleaming. She thrust her keris. Vor flooded Prana to his forearm, turning flesh hard as iron. Her blow echoed, scouring his skin, even if it failed to cut through. Again and again she struck, fast as sunlight.
Malin had told them before the battle that Arun Guard could be run out of sunlight. That at night, if pushed hard enough, their reserves would falter, and only then might one slay such a foe.
The Solar vanished. Rather than look around, Vor hopped off the branch to land before a shocked Devirani. The woman—clad in a golden headdress and a blood-splattered fine Solar kemban—shrieked, falling back. Vor lunged, his elbow strike crashing into her chest like a gong, sending her hurtling through the forest, her progress impeded only by the trunk of a banyan.
A snarl, and the Arun Guardswoman was on him again. Yet Soma had made Vor almost as fast as her. She swung. He parried on his krabi, twisting his longer blade, trying to get distance. She vanished once more, and Vor flung himself to the side, even as that keris opened a gouge on his back. Still he turned, his reflexes godlike thanks to the Soma, and hacked at her. The light that had once streamed from beneath her shirt was now but a faint trickle, her power nearly spent, whilst Vor was become a living deity. The Guardswoman thrust, lightning fast, and still, not fast enough.
Vor caught her wrist, headbutted her in the face, and shattered her nose. He didn’t release her, could not allow her to Sun Stride away. Still holding her arm, he rammed his krabi through her torso. Her eyes widened, blood bursting from her mouth. Impressed with his might? She damn well should be. This was his Rangda-damned moment.
“Who’s next?” he shouted. Chandra, Vor was going to be a legend when he killed the entire Arun Guard. He’d hunt them all down! This very night!
Oh.
But before that … Vor stalked to where the Devirani had fallen. Her chest had caved in, her breaths now wet, frothing wheezes. Her eyes were open but unfocused, not seeming to see him. Which was a shame. He would have preferred to witness the terror that must come before he claimed her life. “Not a goddess at all,” he purred and seized her by the throat, chuckling at these frightful turnings of Fate, even as he hefted her face toward his. “May your Ancestors forgive your ineptitude, Queen,” he said.
With a single swipe as he released her, he took off her head.
He was the heir of Chandra the Moon God. He was a god. And when the Solars fell, he would rule all the Skyfall Isles.
