Veda did not fall. As the black spear tip grazed his neck, the General's survival instinct—honed in a hundred battles—kicked in. He threw a smoke pellet laced with sulfur at Indra's feet and leapt from the ramparts into the swirling mist of the Gorge.
"To the Heart!" Veda screamed to his remaining men. "To the Citadel of Theta!"
The traitors and the Theta archers broke rank, retreating deep into the Vajra Peaks, a labyrinth of razor-sharp ridges and hidden caverns. They believed the terrain would save them. They believed no army, especially one of farmers, could follow them into the "Dragon's Throat."
They were wrong. Indra didn't bring his army. He left the commoners at the mouth of the gorge to guard the pass. He entered the mist alone.
The Descent of the Ghost
For three days and nights, Indra hunted. The Theta region became a graveyard. Veda, looking back from the high ridges, saw the campfire of his men being extinguished one by one in total silence. There were no battle cries, only the occasional wet thud of a body hitting the stone.
Indra was utilizing Mrigayā—the ancient Indian art of the royal hunt. He tracked them by the smell of their fear and the heat of their breath in the freezing mountain air. At the Narrow Bridge of Kalas, Indra finally emerged from the shadows.
A battalion of five hundred Theta elites stood between him and Veda. They formed a Varaha Vyuha (Boar formation), a dense wedge of shields and spears. Indra didn't slow down. He accelerated.
What followed was a slaughter that would be whispered about for centuries. Indra became a blur of black steel. He used the Valari (spinning) technique, turning his spear into a propeller of death. He sliced through bronze breastplates as if they were parchment. He moved with such velocity that the blood of his enemies didn't even have time to stain his clothes; it was flung off by the centrifugal force of his strikes. He killed a hundred men before the sun reached its zenith. By dusk, the five hundred were gone.
The Final Flight
Veda was now desperate. He reached the Summit of the Broken God, a flat plateau overlooking the Theta capital. He was gasping, his lungs burning in the thin air. He saw Indra standing at the far end of the plateau, three hundred yards away.
Veda laughed manically, clutching his side. "You are too far, boy! Even you cannot close this distance before the Theta reinforcements arrive! You've lost!"
Indra stopped. He didn't run. He didn't shout. He looked at the distance—nearly three football fields of mountain wind and thin air. A distance no human could throw a weapon with any hope of accuracy.
Indra planted his feet into the frozen earth. He took a deep breath, drawing the very soul of the mountains into his lungs. He gripped the black meteorite spear, not at the balance point, but at the very end of the teak shaft. He arched his back until his spine resembled a drawn Kodanda (divine bow).
Every muscle in his body, from his calves to his fingertips, synchronized in a single, terrifying explosion of kinetic energy.
"Die," Indra whispered.
He launched the spear. It didn't fly like a javelin; it flew like a railgun slug. It broke the sound barrier with a crack that echoed like a lightning strike across the peaks. The spear cut through the wind, ignoring the cross-currents of the gorge.
Veda's eyes widened. He didn't even have time to raise his sword.
The black spear struck Veda in the center of his chest. The force was so immense that it didn't just pierce him; it carried his entire body backward, pinning him to the ancient stone monolith behind him. Veda's boots dangled three feet off the ground, his life escaping in a final, bloody gasp.
Indra stood alone on the plateau, his hands empty for the first time. He looked at the dead General pinned to the rock. The man who had tried to rewrite his destiny was now a permanent part of the mountain.