Chapter 36 - Only inner strength is the eternal truth.
Dhira jumped straight from the cave entrance toward the mountain peak. The wind hit him continuously on the way up and he moved through it without adjusting his pace. He reached the top and stood before the black stone gate again, alone this time, the silence at the peak unchanged from before.
He looked at the carvings and found the Sanskrit lines he had been told about. He wiped the surface with his palm, clearing dust that wasn't really there, and read.
"Don't let your strength define you. Because the thing that defines you can also defy you."
He read it twice. It was cryptic and broad enough to mean almost anything. He looked at the carved face of Ramna at the center of the door and found another line beneath it, smaller, worked into the stone just below her chin.
Strength without purpose is as useless as a king without a kingdom.
Dhira read it and said to no one in particular, "Isn't this nonsense." He turned to leave.
Then something caught his eye at the edge of his vision. Far in the distance, well beyond the mountain range, a burning dot sat on the horizon. He looked at it for a moment. Then jumped.
He went up through the clouds, through the heavy wind layer above the peaks, and came down far from the mountain range. He landed near a village. Or what was becoming the remains of one. Fire moved through it with the particular confidence of something that has no opposition. He stood at the edge looking at it with no particular expression. He was about to turn when a voice came from inside. Then another.
He looked at the fire. Something moved in his eyes, complicated and brief. Then another sound of someone calling for help came through and he went in without pausing to think about it.
He found a family pressed under an overturned table in the corner of a collapsing structure. He lifted the table and moved it aside and helped them out, navigating the burning walls without rushing. Outside the village the family stumbled and turned and saw him properly for the first time. The adults went still with the instinctive uncertainty people develop around things they cannot categorize. But the youngest child, small enough that caution hadn't fully become a habit yet, looked at Dhira's outstretched hand and reached up and took it.
The family thanked him outside. Real thanks, unperformed and unguarded. Dhira stood receiving it and looked slightly sideways, the way a person looks when they don't know what to do with something they haven't been given in a long time. He told them without meeting their eyes that there was a group of survivors moving north, he had seen them from above, they should follow. They thanked him again in a language he didn't speak. Before he left he asked what had done this. The child looked at him. Fire demons, the child said. Dhira understood. Vikritas with fire attributes. The most dangerous variety. He pointed them north one more time and left.
He came back to the mountain and stood before the gate again. No ceremony about it. He placed his hands on the stone and pushed and said quietly to himself,
"Everything is a lie. Only inner strength is the eternal truth." He pushed from the beginning with everything he had. The ground cracked beneath him. The door shook. The mountain trembled slightly. He kept going, veins rising in his arms, the door moving just barely, the smallest fraction, not enough for anything to pass through. Then the ground gave way under his left foot and his balance shifted and his head hit the door with a sound that rang across the peak.
He stood there for a moment feeling the world tilt slightly. Then from somewhere nearby came laughter. Not human laughter. An animal sound, quick and bright and entirely pleased with itself. He rubbed his head and looked toward it.
A white mountain monkey sat a short distance away on a flat rock, watching him with the particular delight of a creature that has just witnessed something it will remember for a long time.
Dhira looked at it. Then looked away and ignored it.
He examined the cracked ground, adjusted his angle slightly, and began pushing again. The monkey watched. Dhira spent the entire morning this way, pushing from different angles, different positions, different amounts of force distributed differently, and failing each time in slightly different ways. The monkey watched all of it with consistent interest, its head tilting occasionally, its tail moving lazily behind it.
By early afternoon the sun sat directly overhead and Dhira sat in the shade cast by the gate itself. He was tired in a way that didn't announce itself loudly but was present in the small details, the way he sat, the way he looked at the ground instead of anything further away.
The monkey came closer. It stopped a few feet from him and looked at him with what appeared to be a genuine question on its face. Why aren't you pushing. Dhira didn't acknowledge it. The monkey waited, found no answer coming, then walked to the gate itself and pushed. Nothing happened and the monkey stumbled back from the lack of resistance, looked at the door with clear offense, then made a decision. It ignored the door entirely and began climbing it instead, moving up the carved surface with practiced ease until it reached the top. It sat up there and looked down at Dhira with an expression that said plainly, this is how it's done.
Dhira looked up at it. Then looked away.