The Last Rudra

Onish didn't sleep after getting to his room. Instead, he decided to check his body carefully. 

The spirit, which he could only sense through his awareness, was now perceptible to his skin. It was really just like Bhadra had said, living in the vast sea of spirit. What surprised him was the blue pearl in his body just below his navel, condensed from the spirit and pranic energy. A similar blue pearl was in Niro's belly. So he was really a spirit bird. 

His cracked subtle body hadn't changed save some fine blue threads running all over it. Onish reckoned these mysterious threads were responsible for his awakened ability. As for the tiny specks floating in his heart chakras, they were as unresponding as ever. 

After finding everything fine, Onish decided to practice diagrams. 

According to Bhadra,  Osric's tears could only forge his spirit body but he still had to learn every path in the scroll. 

So he opened the scroll, and look for the next spirit path; 

They were for heightening vision, hearing,  memory, and nose. 

To Onish's delight, his hellish agony had greatly boosted his mind. It only took a few minutes to finish all four diagrams.  Now all he had to do was to guide the spirit to awaken the powers. 

So he put away the yellow scroll and sat down in padmasana. With his just thought, the dense spirit rushed through the guided paths, as though the invisible energy could read his mind. 

Onish felt his ears and nose getting hot, and his mind dizzy as the spirit traced the last nadis. He seemed to shrink in their eye sockets. 

It was then he heard the faint voice coming in the rustling of the night breeze. 

Somewhere, in a remote corner of the castle, someone was singing in the dead night. 

The ethereal voice was filled with loss and melancholy. Who could she be?  Onish wondered. Maybe some heartbroken maid. His reckoning was not ungrounded; he had seen guards flirting with young maids in the empty corridors. 

Onish ignored the voice as he tried to distinguish scents, assaulting his nose.

His heightened olfactory glands were choking him. The smell of his sweat, the heady smell of the herbal bath he had taken in the black tower, the sweet fragrance of the vines and flowers of outside yards.

In the next moment, Onish found himself sneezing again and again till his eyes welled up, and face turned red like a tomato. What the hell was it. He cursed.  How all these spirit wielders were still alive with such sensitive noses. 

He had to pinch his nose tightly while gasping. Then the relentless sneeze stopped. 

But what Onish didn't know was that it was just the beginning. 

As soon as he wiped his teary eyes, he was dumbfounded to see his room filthy as hell. 

The air he was breathing, the bed he was sleeping in, the floor he was walking were all infested with worms and dust. 

As if it was not worse, he heard the air sighing as loudly as the gurgling of a stream. A torrent of the sneeze was coming again. 

It took quite an effort from him not to vomit or faint with shock. The experience was not new to him. He had gone through the same during his chakras awakening on the earth. 

He knew it would take time to get accustomed to his life. He commanded the spirit to stop circulating. And everything returned to normal.

He took a deep breath, as he glanced out of the window. It was still dark outside.  So he decided to take some sleep. 

The sleep was another wonder. Onish found himself wide awake while his body was asleep.  The state surprised him greatly. It was the fabled turiyatita state, for which a yogi worked for years. A state where the soul detached itself from all the five senses and became a watcher. Bhadra explained it yesterday. "Once your two minds become one you will be able to use every ounce of your potential. You will be able to push the body beyond its limit. You will feel the body is just a vessel; we are beyond it. It is in this state Yoddhas keep fighting, even after their heads get chopped off."

Onish recalled the legends of the earth where many kshatriyas had kept fighting without their heads. They must have mastered this state. 

****

In the morning, after a heavy breakfast with his family, he left with the fowler for his training. 

Bhadra didn't bring him to the backyard garden this time. Instead, he led him outside the castle to a building with fortified walls. 

The heavy black gate was as tall as an elephant. When Bhadra approached the closed door, two armoured guards barred them from going ahead. Bhadra took out his black coin and showed it to the two shoulders. As soon as their eyes fell on the black metal,  they backed away. 

Bhadra put the coin back and waited for the two men to push open the heavy gate.

When they stepped in, the sight left him momentarily dazed. The high walls were not guarding some treasure but horses. Onish realised they were not ordinary horses. The dense spirit energy around them, and their blue eyes glowing like pearls were not something a mortal horse could have. 

Servants were running here and there, catering for the beasts. Bhadra didn't call out to them, he waited patiently at the door. 

After a few moments, Onish saw a grizzled man come out of the tower stood in the middle of hundreds of stables. Behind him was a young man in his twenty. The man howled at his coworkers, as he approached them with a deep frown on his wrinkled forehead.

"Good morning, Old Manda." Bhadra greeted the man. But the courtesy didn't soothe the man's sullen face. The boy, whose brown eyes were an exact copy of the grizzled man, gave Onish a scrutiny look, his eyes widened seemingly releasing his identity. 

"Why are you here, fowler? You know the ashvas hate your presence" The man asked, ignoring the fowler's greeting. His eyes like hawks fixed at the fowler.

"No, they don't. They just obey me more faithfully than you. As for your question, Our young lord here needs a horse." Bhadra replied as he pushed Onish forward. 

The man finally noticed Onish, like the boy his eyes scrutinized him, and then they widened. 

"Congratulations,  young lord, on your recovery." the man gave a slight bow. "We missed your presence." His harsh face softened. 

The man might have said something more. If Bhadra hadn't cut him off. 

"Save your flattery for another day. Manda, we are in a hurry. Just give us two fine Aravanian beasts. if the beast behaves well I'm sure your young lord will remember you."

Onish saw the hossler's face flushed with anger, as he grizzled moustache flickered, 

"Call them beasts again! You death bringer!" The man yelled, his right hand balled up. Onish noticed the spirit rushed towards him like a broken torrent. And a long fiery whip condensed in his hands. 

Bhadra did nothing as he watched the enraged man.

"Ok, I'm sorry. There is no need to blow up like that." he said. 

The man glared at him seemingly thinking something decided to back down. The fiery whip disintegrated into the air leaving nothing but hot air behind. 

The man looked at Onish apologetically, "Pardon this Old servant, young sire. As you know we, hossler,  can't stand it if someone disgraces our ashvas."

Manda gave the fowler another furious look, as he continued, "I will give my fine ashvas, but do tell the fowler not to use his sorcery on them." Onish had no idea what the old hossler was talking about. But he still gave his nod.

And soon they were out with the two horses, one white as snow and one brown as a nut. Surprisingly, none of them had reins. 

Bhadra helped him on the white horse as he sat behind him and they cantered off down the cobble street, with the other horse tailing them.

To Onish surprise, the horse seemed to know where they were going, as the animal continued without Bhadra's instructions. As Bhadra explained why the hossler got so furious. 

Just like falconers and beast tamers,  hosslers were those who could communicate with ashvas, the spirit-horses, and they too revered them as falconers did thier birds, and a tamer his beasts.

And when Onish asked why he still disrespected the animals before the hossler, he chuckled, "Just to poke fun at him. Haven't you seen how comical he was looking? " 

Onish shook his head, as he asked another question why Manda had called him "death bringer". 

Bhadra dodged the question by explaining the difference between ashva and a mortal horse.  Onish listened carefully as it was important for his riding lesson. 

Soon they left the bustling city behind and took a mud path leading to the woods, where Onish first met Guha. 

The horse halted in a clearing seemingly a meadow, just on the edge of the woods.