KRRR! KRRR! KRRR!
The Rakshasas were marrowing away at his spine as they got on top of him, making him scream and yell in pain, agony and terror.
Sanit's eyes darted around for escape.
Desperate for something to ease his misery.
"Fight goddamit! Don't just take it, your healing will only prolong your suffering and even death won't be any easier. Fight!"
The Gandharva advised him but he was in no mood to hear.
The ground was caking up with his blood and spit as he tried to sit up, but he was pushed back down again and again.
With a death defying power he lashed out, his eyeballs tearing blood while his arms strangled two Rakshasa together, bunching them up together to clobber the rest of them around him like a madman.
His voice screeching and making the most horrifying sounds in the Realm in that moment.
When it was over and he hung his shoulders in pain, dropping to the ground he saw the Gandharva float to him from the sky.
His godly voice was cut off as a pack stamped on Sanit's face all of a sudden and everything went....blank.
~*
Day 1
Sanit woke up with a start, his body sweaty and his face pale from the memory.
The stale smell of the hostel room and the cold floor beneath him a stark contrast to the ethereal realm he had just left behind in his nightmare.
He tapped his phone twice and read the time. It was very early in the morning but sleep was not an option anymore.
In more ways than one, the memories were helpful to wake him up literally and figuratively. Grounding his reasons for his return.
He got up and headed to the sink to wash his face and stared at himself in the mirror.
It had been a week since he had moved in. Since the day he had involuntarily kissed a girl without warning.
He was still trying to settle into the life he had left. As expected things had been strange initially but he was coping.
The first step was getting a new phone.
When Muneeb had overcome the shock of realizing that his weird hostel mate had not much of an idea of a phone, the guy had taken time to get him a new one and introduced it to him from scratch.
What a gem.
Sanit had to relearn the basics, from swiping to accessing the internet. It was a bizarre experience, holding something so trivial yet so integral to this world's functioning.
His eyes lit up as he downloaded games, watched videos, and read about the latest tech trends. The modern conveniences were overwhelming yet oddly comforting.
And they were also vaguely reminiscent that these were stuff he had probably taken for granted in his previous time here.
The internet was a whirlwind of information as he dove into it, the screen peppering him with articles about the Awakeners, the infamous legacy of Inborns, and the terrifying Rakshasas that plagued the world.
He read about the battles, the heroes, and the fallen. The more he read, the more he realized how much he had forgotten.
Like other Inborns he figured his healing and strength had been with him from birth. However he had felt about them, they had saved him numerous times in the other realm.
Now while the common folk looked up to all almost equally, when it came to the superhuman strata Inborns were treated like dirt.
That much he could understand by just casual observance. The little comments, the goading, the hazing, the opportunities lacking and overall unfairness rife in society were clear indicators of how deep the rot went.
Which meant Sanit had to prepare himself for a similar treatment. Whenever he would decide to venture out.
But these were not his biggest concerns. Right now he had to start paying for just living and surviving.
His hostel rent had been under the cover of a government scheme but if that got over he'd have no roof. The best thing he could think of was physical labour.
So he joined a construction crew that was building an apartment a few blocks away. The work wasn't that hard but he avoided using his powers to avoid getting his pay slashed.
Powered folks apparently had a much lower rate for fairness purposes.
Day 2
The next issue that popped up the following day was his clothing. Or rather the lack of it.
Muneeb had given a very troubling insight into Sanit's past when he recollected Sanit saying that he had run away from home for some unknown reason. Which was why he had so few clothing with him packed.
"You never gave me a proper reason but I can see that you still don't want to share," Muneeb had looked at him with a hurt look.
"Ah whatever, you do you," and with that the matter of his past at least had been put to bed for Sanit.
I'd rather deal with more pressing issues.
He began to either rent out clothing or buy it from second hand stalls nearby to make up for it.
He got to remember his full name while going through his sparse belongings, revealed to him through his citizen ID.
"Sanit Ankar," he muttered the name to himself.
With that managed, next came food. As he barely could afford the rent let alone the hostel food Sanit would often eat with the laborers thus covering that part with ease.
He had got into a sort of routine by then. Waking up, working and coming back to learn about himself and the world again.
Which was how he got to know about how the Awakeners created constructs.
Back in the realm the Gandharva had mentioned that they were surrounded by this raw Realm energy. But here the same thing was much more diluted and less denser.
A major reason as to why the Awakeners here had been able to harness it more easily and effectively, according to his own reasoning.
What he referred to as realm energy, here on earth they called it Astral energy or astral essence.
He could be wrong but there wasn't much to dispute his current theory. And if it were, then everything he knew from the Gandharva was a flat out lie.
If what the Gandharva had said was true then his time spent there soaking up all that raw dense energy ought to allow him to create a construct of his own. Inborn or not.
Of course he had tried to do it back there too with the Gandharva watching him curiously. But the same thing that helped him here was a bane there.
The energy so dense that he could only keep absorbing it as it decayed him rather than being able to channel it to create a construct.
So Sanit pushed himself to his limits, trying to manifest weapon constructs from the realm energy that now flowed through him.
But the one thing he feared was proving true. His current physical body was not even close to capable to what he was able to harness or move the way he wanted it to.
A severe limitation but dammit I need to push through this.
Day 3
He had found a park to his liking on the way to the worksite and made it a point to spend time working out there before going to his job. Stealing whatever time he could get for the same.
He was usually a mess, with sweat dripping from his forehead and the occasional bruise or cut marring his skin, but he was determined to get it right. Passersby avoiding him whenever they saw him train.
The reason was his body. It was still unused to the stress his mind wanted it to be put through and it meant the occasional wear and tear. It was like trying to break it in as if his body was sort of an animal.
He did worry if he was putting a bit too much trust in his innate healing but he figured the worst would be hospitalization.
But when he ran in the cold evenings when the park was emptier, he'd grin at his speed.
I feel absolutely nothing pushing me back...it's fucking freeing really. I wish the Gandharva could see this...
And it was really an awfully fast speed that he traveled in, gushing wind past the pathways and making the small grass sleep in it's wake.
He had nearly broken a swing trying to do pull-ups on it so he avoided exercising against inanimate objects and settled for the ground.
His first attempts at creating a naked construct were disastrous, producing only a faint shimmer of light that barely had any substance to it.
The frustration grew with each failure, but he knew he couldn't give up. He had seen too much here and there to know he had to do this.
Day 4
As he continued to train, the world around him began to make more sense. He watched the countless videos on his new phone that showcased battles that seemed to happen in war-like areas called Fronts.
With the Awakeners and the Military on one side and the Rakshasas on the other. It was chaotic at best, but also measured and organized on their side of the Front.
While the optics were cool to gaze at from here, Sanit could gauge that the real fighting was more somber and casualty prone.
With each day, Sanit's grasp on his new life grew stronger. He started to feel the various energies of the realm collected over his time there within him, and with it, the beginnings of a construct.
His first attempts had been laughable at best, but now, with each swing and punch, he could feel the energy coalescing around his fists, that gave a crude formation of a short blade like structure with three prongs.
It was a far cry from the elegant weapons he had seen the Awakeners wield, but it was a start.
Not everyone wielded a physical weapon though. The more powerful ones apparently needed only their mental fortitude to create a mass of energy inevitably forming a construct which they could wield freely and more decisively, relying less on the physical limitations of an earthly substance.
The same was reflected in their abilities and appearances which went through changes depending on the construct invoked and wielded.
It's a fancy way of saying telekinesis but I doubt everyone has it so to each their own interpretation I suppose.
Everytime he saw them online he was quickly reminded of the smugglers he had come across.
The one with the hammer had something similar. Crude but fascinating nonetheless.
The world of Awakeners and Inborns was vast, a tapestry of power and politics that he had voluntarily made himself blind to in his former time here.
The phone was a window into this chaos, and Sanit devoured every morsel of information he could find.
He read about the theories of the different realms and the probable creatures or beings that dwelt within them, the wars that had been fought and the alliances that had been forged.
More than alliances though, they were factions. Social Media was rife with talk about them. Various fan pages that praised heroic feats or acts about the different ones.
The prominent ones and most recognizable of them being the Ahlad Faction and the Dark Faction.
Then there was also the governmental agency called the 3A which oversaw everything related to Realms and Awakeners, and had their own history besides the rumors and conspiracy stuff.
His Inborn powers were a double-edged sword, both a gift and a curse.
Day 5
His days now had turned into a blur of rigorous training and feverish research.
He'd start at early dawn, his body aching from the previous day's exertion from both work and training, ending at dusk, with the last light of the setting sun casting long shadows across the hostel rooftop he had claimed as his personal training ground.
He tried his best to ignore Muneeb's constant prodding to attend college by diving fully into his regimen.
That was a place he was avoiding for two reasons. One being he still didn't know how he was going to pay for it and the second being Piya.
Despite what Muneeb had shared with him on his first day at the hostel, he didn't completely believe it.
A smile is just that, but it ain't forgiveness.
He had no idea how she saw him or what she thought of him now, and with his inherent bloodlust it was a ticking time bomb waiting to go off again.
That it kept getting triggered from the memory of kissing her or even thinking about her was not helping.
Sanit knew he had to keep his distance, even as he missed her presence. He had to get a grip on himself and fast.
Somewhere deep in the recesses of his past moral self he was being reminded that it wasn't a right thing he had done and yet his current mind, with all the combined aggressions from the other realm denied any wrongdoing.
Instead insisting him to unleash his desires for and towards everything that was within his reach.
Muneeb had also brought to his attention something else. "Word of advice, you should keep your head down and lie low. The Government spooks are looking for you." He had said as Sanit was about to go out one day.
"Is that a bad thing?" Sanit asked.
"Just be wary dude. These 3A folk aren't good news."
It wasn't much of a worry for Sanit but he kept it in mind nonetheless.
Day 6
Videos online on the constructs and about how Awakeners manifested them were partly helpful, but everyone of them had their own methods of doing it.
All they had in common was meditative Yoga, something Sanit was already quite adept at. Thanks to the Gandharva.
What the videos usually entailed was to focus consciousness on the construct or the type of weapon in hand, for a successful imbuement or manifestation.
But for Sanit it only helped calm his wild mind, that was firing on all the sensory overload of the modern century.
With his hands on his lap and sitting cross-legged on the park, he delved into his memories of battles with the beings in the other dimension.
Their form, their way of war and the instructions of the Gandharva echoed in his mind as he closed his eyes.
The many times he had collapsed bleeding, his Inborn healing kicking in slowly but surely as groups emerged to feast on him were not lost on Sanit.
He had seen those eyes, the hunger in them, the desire to rip him apart.
And he had fought and survived them all to become the husk that he was today. Something that he had shed to willfully embrace his human form and rightful place on earth.
With his memory playing, his emotions in check and his breathing stable, something extraordinary shifted. Something he had slowly noted over the past few days but felt hallucinatory.
He was now able to hear kilometers away from where he was, sense smells and make out objects beyond humanly possible limits.
He had to admit it was exhilarating and terrifying at the same time.
He could see through himself now, as if peeling back layers of his soul to reveal the power that lay dormant.
It was like nothing he had ever felt before, a power that called to him with a seductive whisper that grew louder with each breath he took.
The energies in the other realm had been overpowering, suffocating even. So much so that it made the entire atmosphere heavy to live and sustain oneself.
But here it was lighter, more bearable and hence his once adapted mind had been blown away by the lack of external pressures upon it.
Transforming himself and his inherent abilities in the most radical ways.
No wonder I could fly so easy and run so fast. Earth is more tame than other realms, I suppose.
He knew he had to harness it, to bend it to his will, or risk becoming a monster like the ones he had faced in the other realm.
End of Days
Then it came. After eons spent decaying in the other realm had allowed him to soak up on the raw realm energy, and now that he was back on Earth, he could feel it pulsing through his veins, eager to be released.
It was a heady feeling, one that made him feel both powerful and vulnerable. He had to be careful not to let it consume him, to maintain the balance between the two worlds that now resided within him.
He extended both his arms and grit his teeth as he began to bring forth his weapon from the realm. He had to get this right. For Akhil, for Piya, and for himself.
He finally felt it, but not like he hoped. A coating of energy wrapped around his forearms, thick and sticky like molasses.
Was this the way? I feel so spirited right now.
The weight of it was surprising, and his muscles strained as he tried to shape it into something more than a blob of light.
The process was painfully slow, and with each attempt, his body grew weaker. The energy seeped into the ground, leaving him gasping for air.
'Yeah I think I'm done for today,' he told himself, his body sore and his mind exhausted.
Sanit looked down at his glowing arms, feeling a mix of excitement and frustration.
He had made progress, but it was clear that he still had a long way to go.