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Havildar: “With you at Sabal’s side, the gods will receive the glory they deserve once again.”

Those first few days, Ajay didn’t sleep for a week.

Considering the morning he’d had – witnessing a man stabbed in the neck with a golden pen, another man tortured by an angry desk-jockey, and a mountain of snow bury him in a frosty grave above the earth – it was understandable why.  It was like his body was still there – he couldn’t stop the tremors and twitches beget from a brain begging him to keep his gun warm, safe and cradled in his palm. But, god, he’d been so damn tired.

Sabal had noticed, of course. Hard to miss after unearthing someone from an avalanche. He had clapped a warm palm on his shoulder in Banapur, his kindness an odd contrast against Amita’s spitting hostility and the Golden Path’s open wariness at an American stranger.  Ajay’d been told to “clear his mind”; had been led to a rickety safehouse to do so. He had laid his aching body down on the dyed wool blankets and had closed his eyes, but sleep would not come.

Ajay was no stranger to war; he’d fought his way up the ranks in America’s military, earned his wings in the Airborne and killed so many enemy combatants in the desert they’d pinned a silver star on his chest.  War takes its toll from every man – from Ajay, war collected rest. He hadn’t truly slept well since his first deployment at age eighteen.

The battles he’d witnessed – both in the deserts of the middle of the earth, and here, in the mountains that climb to the bottom of the sky – seemed older, primal, mother-against-child breeds of violence.  That day, his first day in his homeland, Ajay had found himself shaking in the bright afternoon sunlight of the mountains, tasting cumin and sand, heart rabbiting in his throat, absolutely terrified in a village of rebel strangers that blended into the brown shades of the Afghan landscape.

War had never really returned what Ajay had payed.  Ajay hadn’t properly slept since he’d shot his first enemy combatant – a sixteen-year-old child – in the head.  His body shook, his lip trembled, and he cried dry tears of terror and sorrow long into the nights.

So he’d waited on the safehouse bed, holding his mother’s ashes, chanting that he was alive, that Sabal was outside, that he would know if an attack came.  He’d listened to the bells chiming and the children singing in the fields, breathing in, breathing out, in, out, hours and hours until the light in the room shifted and it was time to get up.  He was a soldier – duty was something Ajay was intimately familiar with.

He’d sought out Sabal and found the commander shouting himself hoarse at untrained medics, holding a bleeding man’s hand, and found an outlet for the anxiety thrumming in his body.  Volunteering, flayed by Sabal’s shrewd look (“Promise me you won’t fall”), Ajay had thrown himself into the physically demanding routine of recon.  He’d felt at ease, holding the familiar gunmetal gray rifle, picking out targets through red crosshairs one by one.  He’d felt useful.

But he didn’t sleep. 

Before they took the outposts, when the king’s guard patrolled the countryside like red plagues and the search for him squeezed every drop out of the disconnected resistance, Ajay didn’t stop moving.  When could he?  Desperately low on ammo and supplies, Ajay had tasted sour sweat every time a soldier scanned his foxhole, or a leopard met his eyes, or screams for help crowded the air with peppering return-fire.  Exhaustion was inevitable. There had been so much to do, so many people asking for the Son of Mohan’s help. 

He’d often thought of his mother, about Lakshmana and why it was so important to her.  Wondered if, every time he saw a crumpled child’s body, is this why you left? 

Adrenaline kept him alive for six days before Sabal found him, being coerced by Amita in a darkly lit war room to secure a nearby poppy-field.  Furious, he’d wrapped a tight hand around Ajay’s wrist. Amita’s hand had been on his thigh, the badly bruised one, and it probably should’ve hurt.  Sabal quietly snarled at the other golden head that Ajay wasn’t a fucking machine, he needs rest, and Amita had responded with glittering eyes, “Of course – anything for the tourist.”

Sabal had shoved him out the door to the brisk evening air of Banapur, angry.  “How long has it been, hm? Since you slept?”

“I’m fine,” Ajay had insisted, stumbling into the clay wall and leaning into it.  Everything had looked hazy; Banapur was always dark and hushed in the moonlight – never quite peaceful, consistently holding its breath for the next tragedy – but it had been at rest, and the lull in action seemed to glue Ajay’s eyes shut. Sabal herded him forward to the safehouse, gas lamp comfortingly lit in the window.  “I’m fine,” Ajay had sniped, shrugging off the hand on his shoulder and stepping into the light.

Sabal’s hand gripped his shoulder tightly and spun him around to meet Sabal’s furious gaze. Sabal froze. “Kyra,” he’d breathed, stern face slack with shock.  Ajay’s heart had leapt into his throat, flight-or-flight mode enacted, twisting to scan the horizon – threat, where was the threat?  But he’d tasted no sick flavor of blood and, despite Sabal’s eyes gleaming like a panther’s in the snowy light of Kyrat’s mountaintops, he hadn’t felt safer in days. So why was Sabal—

The touch to his face – rough skin, gentle pressure – had come as a shock.  His fingers had lightly traced Ajay’s cheek, which reminded Ajay of the scrape resulting from bad footing on a recent cliffside struggle.  He hadn’t bothered to clean it (hadn’t remembered it was there).

Sabal had inhaled, sharp eyes categorizing all of Ajay’s hurts (his burnt ankle, ripped hands, arrow-riddled arm, the bitemarks, the innumerate bruises…).

“How long have you…” Sabal had shaken his head, stepping closer to grip both of Ajay’s swaying shoulders.  He’d leveled predatory eyes at Ajay’s, fury roiling under the green.

“Ajay, answer me.  When was the last time you slept?”

Ajay hadn’t had an acceptable answer to that question.  Before I joined the army would’ve been an honest answer, but which army?  “M’okay,” he’d said, looking at the ground. His heartbeat pulsed in his dry eyes; he blinked, staring at Sabal’s boots and his own sneakers.  Only one pair was stained with blood, and it wasn’t Sabal’s. 

“People,” his voice had broken; he’d licked his lips, swallowed, tried again, “people need help, y’know?  I can’t just ignore it.”

Sabal had considered him quietly.  “Ajay,” he’d said, “you are extraordinary, but you are still a man.” Ajay had been gently herded into the golden safehouse, shepherded towards the bed festooned with pink charms and bells and warders of evil.  “Rest now, brother.  The world will not end overnight.”

Ajay had stood in front of the bed, wondering how to explain to Sabal that he hadn’t slept without dreaming of dying since he was eighteen.

Sabal had handed him a glass of water.  “Drink that,” he’d commanded, and Ajay had obeyed, too tired to protest.  After Sabal took the empty glass from his hands he said, with a gentle nudge, “Now sleep. I will stay and keep watch.”

Ajay had nodded, exhausted, mumbled something that should have been “that’s fine” and came out “thsf’n,” and slumped face-first onto the covers.  Ajay remembered someone removing his shoes and spare grenade before sweet, sweet oblivion blanketed his mind.

That was the first night he’d had the dream.

Someone was singing.  He dreamt of a stream, a waterfall thundering nearby, a temple rising from the brown roots of the mountain.  A girl – green eyes, what was it with green eyes in this country – and pink shoes, gazed serenely at him, mouthing see, Ajay, do you see? 

He dreamt of a body – a man, maybe, because he remembered the overall impression of being held against a strong chest – cupping Ajay’s world-weary soul from behind, protecting him from the red haze.  A blazing warmth settled in his bones.  Bells chimed as the man whispered into Ajay’s ear,

“सूरज धन्य पहाड़ों ' बालों में सिंदूर मला गया है,  (This is the first bell, and this is the first voice)

बहुत जल्द ही प्रकाश में आ जाएगा  (very soon the light will come)

एक सुनहरा सुबह.”  (on a golden morning)

Ajay woke the next morning, alone, with tears streaming down his face.

But he’d slept.

And if his relief was echoed on Sabal’s face during the next war meeting, Ajay chalked it up to a fellow soldier’s concern and refused to think too much into it.

 Interlude: Sabal

Sabal had told Ajay he’d known Mohan Ghale.  He had on a technicality, he supposed; he’d known Mohan the same way people knew movie-stars: a name and a common lifespan.

As a child in Kyrat, before the war began and truly ruined everyone’s lives, Sabal had been naively happy.  His family had been poorer than the dirt they slept on, but they’d had food in their bellies, clothes free of vermin, and laughter in the tea fields they worked.  Life in Kyrat might not have been prosperous, but it was good.

Then Pagan Min came with an army of mercenaries, murdering the royal family and sending the entire region into chaos.  That day, Sabal’s mother, white-faced and silent by the neighbor’s radio, had predicted that Yalung the godeater had awoken and their time was now measured.  Sabal had mocked her worries and chose to scream with the dissenters in the street, tearing down Min’s propaganda and feeling like a warrior.  The red army came shortly after that, pillaging their way down the mountains into the south.

Sabal hadn’t been there for her death.  She had died for him, her face as wet as the Chinese sword that had pierced her stomach.  When he’d found her, flies buzzing out of her open mouth, he’d cradled her head and promised himself a lifelong struggle in an unwinnable war.

Sabal, all of nine years, had run away in 1987, the year Mohan Ghale began his wife’s vision of a Golden Path. Mohan had preached to the masses to rise up against their conqueror and not die like the goats the sādhu slaughtered for the gods.  The revolutionary’s words had resonated with Sabal’s childish, unfocused fury at his own and his country’s pain.

He hadn’t known despair, not really.  Not until his family had been murdered for being rebel sympathizers because he’d been stupid enough to publicly brag his full name.  Mohan Ghale, husband to the Tarun Matara, had preached bravery to the people, not to be afraid of Pagan Min and his war ministry.  He said that the Goddess Kyra would protect the faithful and to leave their fears at the feet of the gods to bask in the blood red waters of Shangri-Là.

Sabal often thought about how Mohan had been younger than Sabal was now when he’d begun his revolution.  He wondered if Mohan regretted preaching naiveté to the war-torn children who’d worshipped his golden words. 

Now, he was just “Sabal.”  He’d buried his surname with the bodies of his parents.  Those who had grown up with him and still lived to breathe the cold mountain air remained silent about his family; the Kyrati were nothing if not respectful of the dead.

The Golden Path had welcomed him into their inner fold, hearing the story of his murdered parents.  Everyone had; the Army had pinned their corpses to the family farmhouse as a public warning. Sabal grew up with the next generation of soldiers, perfecting his guerilla warfare tactics and intimately learning Kyrat’s dips and soars.  He learned to say goodbye to friends while they still lived to hear it, learned where to hide medicine at the bottom of lakes where the red army wouldn’t find it, learned to set bones and build children’s crutches and dig six-foot holes (not for the bodies, but for the ashes). 

All of this he learned in his first year as a child soldier, undertaking grueling exercises and missions under the careful eye of his caretaker, a golden path captain who reared him on revolution.  He’d been lulled to sleep listening to the scratchy radio broadcasts of Mohan Ghale’s words – every golden path child had.

But he’d never met the hallowed founder of the Golden Path until his son was born.  It was a quiet commemoration, held in Banapur, but the Kyrati were desperate for anything to celebrate.  And how unprecedented was Mohan Ghale’s son!  A child of the Tarun Matara was said to be related to the goddess Kyra, herself. 

Sabal, then ten years of age and nursing a broken finger from a nasty fall, had followed the crowd that swelled to welcome the golden couple into the city. He remembered seeing Mohan – Sabal recalled a badly set broken nose and beetle-black eyes set in a bruised face – receiving the crowd with aplomb, leaving the Tarun Matara a traditional ten steps behind him.

He hadn’t known Mohan other than that glimpse, a child’s dazzling hero made somewhat lackluster in the light of reality, but he had met Ishwari. 

While the men had surged forward to put their scarred hands on Mohan and exchange greetings, the women gathered around the Tarun Matara. The other Golden Path children had flitted around the men, drinking in the flat face of their idol, but Sabal had slunk to the fringe of the gathering around the goddess. He twiddled the cloth brace around his broken finger as he snuck glances at the living goddess – the standing goddess.  He had marveled at how human she’d seemed.  

The village women had smiled at the bundle of blue silk in Ishwari’s arms, fussed over her fraying sari, complimented the henna wrapped around her hands.  Sabal remembered thinking she was beautiful – dark eyes, dark hair, a true daughter of Kyrat. 

Ajay looked nothing like his father.

Her sad eyes had picked him out of the crowd.  She’d smiled at him, holding out an arm laden with golden bracelets and prayers of the people, and had beckoned him closer. The women had clucked like chickens, tittering and smiling at one another.  (Sabal could not remember seeing another man in the crowd).

“Hello,” the Tarun Matara had said, the prayer flags whipping above her in the cold mountain breeze.  Sabal fell to his knees and bent his back to bow, not daring to speak; he had little to say of importance, especially to a living goddess.  He rose after the customary supplication, remaining on the ground, and stared at anything but her face: her dirty sandals, her colorful sari, the wiggling swaddling cloth she cradled in her arms.  Blue, the holy color of Kyra.

“Would you like to meet my son?” the Tarun Matara had asked.

To Sabal’s shock and shame, the Tarun Matara had knelt in the dirt before him and lowered her arms to reveal the most beautiful baby Sabal had ever seen.  Most babies born during the war were colicky, sick and starving.  Ajay had been resplendent in his mother’s arms, her same soulful eyes staring up at Sabal from a pudgy face. 

“His name is Ajay,” the Tarun Matara had said. 

Sabal had reached out a finger (the non-broken one) and Ajay had looked inquisitively at him before reaching out to grab it with tiny fingers. The Tarun Matara had laughed, the sound not unlike the bells rung for prayer on the mountainside, and said, “He likes you.”

Sabal didn’t think the dead king of Kyrat himself could have made him feel prouder than he had at that moment, crouched in the dirt of Banapur with the reincarnation of Banashur’s daughter, holding her son’s tiny hand.

“Ishwari, come.” Mohan’s bark had echoed across the field, wiping the soft mirth off the Tarun Matara’s face.  The baby had tightened his grip on Sabal’s finger, fussing.  “I am leaving.”

“Yes, husband,” the Tarun Matara had said, standing in a fluid motion.  Sabal had also shakily stood, fully aware of the fact that the living goddess had been kneeling in the dirt with him, a commoner.  He would surely be punished.

“Sabal, what are you doing?” his caretaker had demanded, red-faced in the crowd.  “You are not worthy to touch the Son of Mohan; get away!”

The Tarun Matara’s angry eyes had sliced open the captain like a kukri.  “He is my son, too,” she’d said, as fierce as a tigress.  “And any child of the Golden Path is as good as family to us.”

Mohan had said nothing more than another shouted “Ishwari!”; he’d already begun marching to the cliffside exit of Banapur.  Wives never walked before their husbands, after all.

“Ishwari,” one of the older women had said, placing a palm on Sabal’s shoulder.  “You must go.”

The Tarun Matara had looked from the blazing blue sky to her son, blinking slowly.  “Yes,” she’d said.

But before departing, the Tarun Matara faced Sabal once more, stooping to press a kiss upon Sabal’s brow.  “Farewell, Sabal,” she’d said.  Ajay had cooed up at him as Ishwari smoothed a hand over Sabal’s shaved head, smiling sadly.  Then she’d turned and followed her husband.

Less than two years later, Mohan Ghale was found dead in the Ghale homestead.  His throat had been sliced open, like a sacrificial goat.

 Rolling down the window of the repurposed Jeep, Ajay sighed into the cool morning breeze.  He was late, but whatever; Sabal would huff and Amita would snarl and life would continue.  His dream last night had been, uh – well, somewhat distracting.  Ajay needed time to think, so he’d taken the long way to the temple. He needed to think about these damn dreams.

Ajay figured that, like everything in this country, dreams in Kyrat were just normally bizarre. He realized that was a contradiction, but this pocket of the world was a paradox in itself.  Kyrat was as beautiful as it was terrible; much like the rocky landscape, its culture and its people were mired in snowy peaks and burnt crags, tears snaking through the valleys and pooling in deep, fathomless lakes.  He could point his camera anywhere, even his shoes, and take an award-winning photograph; it was almost too beautiful.  But he couldn’t walk fifty feet without finding a desecrated grave or a bombed-out village or a poppy plant.  He saw families destroyed, split into loyalists versus revolutionaries. He saw holy sites turned into battlefield burial grounds.  He saw two rational leaders sink their claws into the other, ripping the seams of the revolution into tatters.  He witnessed a dictator wearing a pink suit take a selfie after stabbing someone with a golden pen.  And, despite the tyrannical police state, there was a thriving black market that eagerly accepted his pilfered space rocks, condoms, and classic porn.

So yeah, weird shit went down in this country.

But the dreams – Ajay just couldn’t grasp them.  Particularly after last night.

He wasn’t the only one suffering impossible dreams; the people of Kyrat seemed to think Ajay was godsent. He’d never known his father, didn’t even have fleeting impressions from childhood to remember him by.  Whenever he’d asked, Ishwari had pursed her lips and said he’d perished fighting his own demons; don’t ask me again Ajay, please. His time is over.

But here, in this country, Mohan Ghale’s time had never ended. He wasn’t a man, he was a legend.  Ajay was just the convenient prodigal son to project his father’s vision onto; everyone he met did it.  (With the one exception of the tyrant king, who was more interested in kidnapping and other crimes.)

But the people loved him and the legend he bore; they watched their country slowly return to them, brick factory by abandoned school, and they sang hymns about goddess’s brothers returning home – that their golden leader had returned to them in the form of the son, clad in a blue jacket (and badly fitting sneakers).

Which, y’know, it was great to give the people hope, but… Ajay would prefer them to be happy about his accomplishments, most of which were shared amongst the people, rather than his genealogy.

It wasn’t just the locals, either.  Ajay considered himself to be an atheist, but – he was willing to bet his mother’s ashes that he’d been to Shangri-Là, witnessed its rivers of blood and poisoned landscape.  The first time he’d seen paradise and had fought its fiery demons, Ajay had awoken drooling on his father’s floor and found a burn scalding the meat of his thigh, and – how else could he explain it?  Drugs? But he hadn’t felt the syrupy-sick feeling of the medicated, he’d felt like –

Like he’d been dreaming. 

Like that first day he’d slept in Kyrat, under the watchful gaze of Sabal.

That burn on his thigh, courtesy of the Rakshasha, was impossible to ignore; it wreathed his knee in raw flesh. He remembered the fight where he’d gotten it. What – what else could’ve explained it, if not Paradise?

Ajay had been convinced he was going insane, but the inescapable reality of the paradisiacal burn became apparent during the next day’s war council.  Nothing could be hidden from Sabal, especially not injuries. When Sabal had lashed out at him for his carelessness (Amita, arms crossed and silent in the background), refusing Ajay’s attempts to call it nothing, Ajay had curtly said, “It won’t happen again.”

But it did; if not Shangri-Là, then the dreams – they just kept coming.

The dreams varied – about gods, about riots of colors, about the people’s projection of his dead father’s living dream onto him – but above them all were the dreams about a man whispering indecipherable Hindi in his ear.  Ajay could read Hindi, he could speak it – but the man’s words faded like smoke in his ear.

Whatever the dreamscape, that man – it had to be a man, Ajay just got that surefire feeling – was always present.  He would sit with Ajay overlooking some glorious scene of nature he’d seen but had been unable to appreciate due to bullet hailstorms; he’d cut like a knife through water when Ajay swam in Shangri-Là; he’d shadow the trees when Ajay walked beneath Kyrat’s forests.  The man rarely spoke, but he was just there, a familiar impression of someone Ajay knew he knew.

The man didn’t always speak, but sometimes, during the freezing nights, when Ajay’s numb body was holed up in a shack under the shadow of the Himayalas, Ajay dreamed of a warm body holding him close; a man pressing his face into Ajay’s neck and breathing hot air onto his skin, rubbing warm hands on Ajay’s cool flesh until the shivers subsided.  Ajay should’ve frozen to death many times, wearing nothing but a flimsy blue track jacket in the damn foothills of Mount Everest – but he didn’t.

When in pain – and he was often in pain – Ajay dreamed of a man muttering Kyrati prayers over his wounds, blessing them with a cool breath and a bell.  He felt new in the morning, at peace, the pain manageable, if not completely gone.

He’d had a dream right after he’d visited Paradise. The burn from Shangri-Là had disappeared the next day, after Sabal had pestered him into drinking a foul green tea and locked him into the host family’s bedroom.  (Ajay could’ve escaped out the window, but he figured the villagers’ chimes of “Son of Mohan!” would’ve alerted the immutable Sabal in less than ten seconds).  Ajay remembered the dream: the man caressing his thigh with cool fingers, like salve.

Ajay had quietly freaked the fuck out, the red bedspread pooling over his thighs like his blood should have been because people didn’t just heal 3^rd degree burns in twelve hours.

Maybe he really was just going crazy.  That was valid, right?  People went nuts during war; he’d seen it, he’d certainly done enough to warrant concern about it.  But…

Ajay had come close to giving up.  Often.  It was just – too much, sometimes. When an old woman held his hand and cried, moved to tears just by being in his presence; when he saw a man’s arms and legs blown off by a stray mine after telling Ajay a dick joke; when he fell into a mass grave of children. Ajay felt his soul quiver, strung tight like a bowstring.  On those nights, in his dreams, the man would brush his hair back and kiss his cheek as Ajay silently cried at the too-soon memory of Afghanistan’s horrors, now overlaid with Kyrat’s bloody civil war. 

Ajay couldn’t believe he was crazy for conjuring an empathetic soul to sooth his terrors at night.  But.

He could pinpoint when he thought he might truly have lost it.  A month into the conflict, after he’d seen a dead child thrown on a table, butchered like meat, he’d screamed furiously at the sky and put a bullet into every red-clad skull in the compound, dead or alive. Ajay couldn’t remember if he’d been conscious or not.  He’d slumped next to the bombed out brick wall of the school-cum-drugs depot and concentrated on breathing until reinforcements arrived, along with them the two heads.  His mission report – raw, his voice hoarse from the screaming – had concluded with Sabal looking like he carried the world on his shoulders and Amita, stone-faced against Ajay’s tears. 

“I can’t do this,” Ajay had exhaled. Amita had turned away, holding herself.

Sabal had sighed heavily, placed a warm hand on his shoulder, and said, “Come with me, brother.”

They’d been in the ruin of Pranijagat School, now the Golden Path’s latest conquered outpost. Sabal had walked him, emotionally exhausted, to the bombed-out courtyard where a makeshift football game was being played.  Kids – all ages, five to eighteen – laughed, giddy with the raw excitement of friendly competition. The ball they played with had long ago gone flat from a bullet. The kids paused their game, both to huff and puff into the pancake of a ball and to wave excitedly at their heroes.

Sabal had held Ajay steady as his knees had threated to collapse under the – Ajay couldn’t name the feeling.  It wasn’t relief.  It wasn’t the soul-crushing anger he’d felt at the grave of the child’s corpse.  It was all-encompassing, draining, and exhausting.  Sabal had seemed to understand, though, and hugged his shoulder with the indomitable strength of an elephant as Ajay’s eyes squeezed out a few burning tears as the kids returned to their game, blessedly alive.

Ajay had turned to him, said, “What can I do to help?”

Sabal had looked back at the laughing children.  “There’s an attack coming – don’t know when, but since you sabotaged the southern officers’ prostitution harem last week, they’ll be looking for replacements.”  He had turned back to Ajay, eyes blazing.  “Guard them tonight, brother.”

The dreamwalker hadn’t come that night – Ajay couldn’t’ve slept if he’d wanted to – but Sabal had.  Ajay’s wristwatch had beeped at half past three AM (the kids had set so many alarms on the damn thing he’d stopped trying to disarm them all) when Sabal had slipped silently into the room, quiet as a tiger.  Ajay, too tired to receive him, had noted the deep creases on his brow; another meeting with Amita, then.  He should have been in a bed. 

Sabal had regarded the twelve sleeping children before he joined Ajay’s slumped form against the wall, the press of his knee a welcome presence against whatever hunted for babies outside.  They’d sat there, breathing in tandem, until sunrise.

Ajay hadn’t gone crazy, but it had been a near thing.  Shangri-Là could be explained away as a drug trip, the dreamwalker was probably some manifestation of his daddy issues, but – dead and mutilated children in the name of the king was – inexplicable.  

Ajay had fleeting impressions of the man in his dreams – black hair, almond eyes, deep voice.  Sometimes he caught a circle of worn prayer beads around a wrist.  Apparently, Ajay’s subconscious battled his PTSD by supplying him with a generic Kyrati man holding him in his dreams at night and – okay, while that in itself was bizarre, it was fine. 

But Ajay was too old for a sexual crisis, wasn’t he?

Because, last night, after a relatively generic day (by civil war standards), Ajay had dreamt of being laid down on soft sheets under the blazing moon, of spreading his legs to this man, of opening his body for him to slip into, warm and welcoming.

Which, well.

Okay.

Uh.

He had dreamt of the man singing poetry and pressing naked flesh against his backside before.  But it hadn’t been sexual, just intimate, and he’d never been facing the man, never saw more than long clever fingers bracing the man’s body above his, or a fleeting glimpse of dark juniper.

But last night, no.  Last night, he’d seen the man’s face.  Strong jawline, black hair spilling out of a ponytail, scar over one green eye.

No way.

Ajay squirmed in the truck’s seat, rolling down the window further in hopes that the cool mountain air would kill the flush spreading across his face.  He’d awoken that morning to liquid fire pooling in his belly and an erection he could’ve hammered nails with.  He barely touched himself before shooting off like a rocket launcher, with aftershocks that shook the bedframe.  He’d never come so hard in his life.

Ajay shook his head; he didn’t have time for this.  He was due at Chal Jama Monastery for a meeting with Sabal, Amita, and their first officers.  They wanted his input on De Pleur’s movements; the man was as slippery as a goddamn snake and was likely responsible for the sudden uptick in child kidnappings.

Ajay breathed deeply and focused.  It was just a dream, right?

He gunned the complaining truck’s engine up the gravel road, the carven monastery entrance peeking out from the cliff face.  Stacks of ammo, gifts from Longinus, were packed into the walls much like the statuary.  Weapons were now as much a part of Kyrat as worship. 

He parked to the tune of happy cheers from Golden Path fighters and, after exiting the truck, was greeted with resounding “Ajay!”s and “Ajay, you’re back!”s and the inevitable, “how is the Son of Mohan?”  They were so happy to see him; Ajay tentatively smiled and asked how everything was going at the temple, which resulted in disappointed chattering not unlike dholes.

One woman close to him frowned.  “Not good.  Raju expelled both Amita and Sabal for fighting in the monastery yesterday.  No decision has been made about the torturer.”

Ajay grimaced. Again?

“You’ll help them see reason, won’t you, Son of Mohan?” the woman asked.

“I’ll, uh – I’ll take care of it,” Ajay nodded.  He never knew what else to say.

Ajay moved away from the Golden Path members to the winding monastery stairs.  Banhi, a happy surprise, stood to the side, hips and gun cocked. Upon his approach, she smiled at him; Ajay was grateful to see a familiar, friendly face amidst the hero worshippers.

“You’re a sight for sore eyes,” she teased in lieu of a greeting.  “Amita and Sabal have been driving the rest of us crazy with their screaming.  Please, do something.”  She tossed him a granola bar.  “And eat this, yar, you look awful.”

Ajay caught the bar and gave a stiff laugh.  “The fixer, that’s me. That’s all I’m here for.” 

Banhi gave him a frank look.  “You’re here for much more than that, Ajay.”  Her look turned sly.  “Have you seen Sabal yet?”

Uhh—

“Ajay!” Gopal called as he hauled another ammo crate inside the relic room. He looked hopefully up at him, sweat beading on his forehead.  “You busy?”

Grateful for the distraction, Ajay opened his mouth to say his inevitable, “nah, how can I help,” when Banhi interrupted, “Yes, he’s the tiebreaker, bachha, he can’t help you do your own work this time.”

Gopal’s face fell.  “Oh, right.”

Achal, the third wheel of the trio, walked around the corner smoking a cigarette.  “Namaste, Ajay,” he nodded, tapping the ash off.  “Thank the gods you’re here.  Do us all a favor and untwist fearless leader’s panties, yar?  Just smile or something, show ‘em you’re alive, that usually does the trick.”

Ajay didn’t ask whether he meant Amita or Sabal.  He pursed his lips and nodded seriously, “Will do.”

Achal chuckled.  He gestured at Gopal, “’Ey, I’ve missed this guy.  Good to know the feared ‘Golden Ghost’ has a sense of humor.”  Gopal laughed as Achal considered Ajay, cigarette dangling from his lips.  “Terrorizing the red army, rescuing prisoners, guarding our sorry butts – when do you sleep, man?”

Ajay thought of the dreamwalker whispering Hindi in his ears at night.  He shrugged, put his hands in his pockets.  “Whenever I can,” he said honestly.

“I hear that. Now go, go,” Bahni shooed, “these boys have work to do.”

“Ay, slave driver,” Gopal complained as Ajay casually saluted and turned to the staircase.

“What did you say?” Ajay heard Banhi ask. 

“Nothing, ma’am.”

Ajay shook his head, smiling as he jogged up the ancient stairs to the monastery, resplendent in the morning light.

 Ajay found Bhadra sitting on a massive, god-sized step near one of the orange bowls of flame, swinging her pink shoes in the morning breeze.  The temple was buzzing – a sacrifice was planned later, something to do with stars aligning or good wind or, something – and the colorful flags, stamped with the prayers of the wind horse, whipped and danced above her.

“You found me,” Bhadra smiled, small hands idly tracing the rock she sat on.

“Were you hiding?” Ajay asked.

She looked back down the mountain, shadowing her face.  “I suppose I was.”

Ajay swung himself up to sit next to the living teenage goddess, surprising her.  “Well.  Now we’re both hiding.”

She smiled softly, sadly.  Ajay swung his legs in tandem with hers, wondering how to break the ice with kids; he hadn’t had much experience with many back home.  The granola bar from Banhi dug into his leg and he fished it out of his pocket, checking the green label.  Rock solid, expired almost a year ago, but it was oatmeal-cookie flavored.  Kids liked cookies, right?  Everybody liked cookies.

“Here,” he said tossing the bar, “think fast.”

Bhadra snapped the granola bar out of the air so quickly Ajay tensed in surprise.  She blinked at him, then at the breakfast bar.

“Thank you, Ajay, but – I really shouldn’t,” she said.  “It’s against tradition to eat such things.”

They policed her diet, too?

“It’s also against tradition to starve,” Ajay said.  Bhadra tilted her head to the side as if to say, well, actually.  “Just try it,” Ajay said.  “I’ll eat the rest if you don’t like it.  It’s supposed to taste like a cookie.”

Bhadra’s eyes lit up.  “I’ve heard of those!”

Ajay fought hard to keep his expression neutral.  No cookies in Kyrat.

He watched the sixteen-year-old godhead unwrap the shiny green wrapping and tentatively bite into a corner.  Her expression turned into genuine surprise.  “Oh! Ajay, this is good.”

Ajay quirked his lips.  “I’m glad you like it.”

Bhadra happily chowed down on the expired breakfast food as they both turned back to the view, swinging their legs over the breathtaking fall.  Mist rose from the temple’s lake, cool and heavy, throwing shadows onto the pilgrims below.  Ajay heard a familiar song, “a very old prayer,” Sabal had told him once back in Banapur, and thought of his dreams.

“Bhadra – do you dream?” Ajay asked, apropos of nothing.

She blinked at him, green eyes brightened by the sunshine and sugardust collecting in the corners of her mouth.  “Of course.  Often I dream of a free Kyrat.”

“Well – yeah, that’s good.  But d’you ever have…” Ajay rubbed the back of his neck.  “Nevermind.”

The bowl of flame behind them put out incredible heat, juxtaposing the cool mist from below. He hoped he could blame the rising blush in his cheeks on the heat. “Are your dreams troubling you, Ajay Ghale?” Bhadra asked, pocketing the empty wrapper.

“No,” he said.  He watched himself kicking his own shoes in the air, childishly avoiding the point.  “Yes,” he said grudgingly.  “I just keep having the same – dream?  But, no, more like the same… impression of a dream.”

Bhadra smiled at him.  “A repeated vision can be a premonition from the gods.”

“But it’s not…” To his horror, Ajay found himself blushing.  He hadn’t felt this awkward since junior high.  What was he doing?  Asking a sixteen year-old about vaguely weird sometimes sexy dreams starring a terrorist general with a killer jawline, god, what was he doing?

Bhadra’s smile had turned knowing.  “It is a person that keeps joining you in sleep, is it not?”

Ajay swallowed, keeping his eyes down.  He nodded.

“Then you are lucky, Ajay Ghale,” Bhadra said, standing.  “Not many people have such a loyal intended protecting them, even in their dreams.”

Ajay looked up, not fully registering the pair of Golden Path members marching towards them.  “Wait, what does that mean—”

“There you are,” Henna, a marksman, said to Ajay.  She cocked a hip and rested her hand on it, exasperated.  “Sabal was about to send out a search party.  Come back and put the commander at peace, yar?”

Yadav, leader of one of the outposts, laughed, hands in his pockets.  “Preferably before Amita kills him, eh Ajay?”

Ajay stood, brushing off his jeans.  “Uh –right, yeah.”

Yadav shook his head.  “Ever the public speaker.” 

“Come, Tarun Matara,” Henna said, gesturing toward the temple entrance where Raju waited in the shadows of the cliff.  Ajay frowned; the priest had a knack for giving him the creeps.  “It’s time for the ritual.”

Bhadra nodded, fists tight and hidden at her sides.  She spared one last look at Ajay and a small sugar-smile before marching with the blue soldiers toward the ritual chamber.  Ajay watched them approach.  He saw a goat being peacefully herded in before the child, serene next to the kukri-wielding priest. Saw Bhadra lay a tentative hand on its horns, cupping its black wet nose.

He wondered who the ritual sacrifice demanded, really.

“Damn it, Sabal, we need to move now before Noore secures those drugs,” Ajay heard Amita’s demanding voice bleed through the rickety door, and he paused to breathe for a moment. 

The guard posted at the door gave Ajay a sympathetic look.  “I’ll just – go look for some tea,” he said, thumbing over his shoulder and scooting out of the way, leaving him to face the snarling heads alone.

“I already said no,” that was Sabal.  “De Pleur’s come out of hiding, Amita, we have to strike while we have the advantage—”

“What advantage?” Amita said.  “What possible advantage could we have over Pagan’s torturer?  Five bullets and a dull knife?  We’re outgunned, Sabal, and what’s more, we’re broke. We need supplies or we may as well fight this war with rocks and arrows.”

We kind of already do, Ajay thought.  He huffed out another breath through his nose, finding that quiet space in his mind reserved for battlefield, and opened the door.

“Ajay!” Amita rounded on him before he fully stepped into the darkly-lit room.  “Please, make this fool see reason.”

“Me?” Sabal reared back, golden crossed kukris shining from the candlelight on his jacket.  “You’re the one advocating for insanity – turning Kyrat into a drug state, bombing our shrines!”

Ajay sighed, feeling the vein in his temple pound already.

“Oh go ahead, Sabal, show Ajay what kind of man you are,” she said with a contemptuous smile, turning to Ajay.  “He wants to ‘preserve Kyrat,’ Ajay, he’s pining for the fourteenth century so he can marry off little girls and pray sixty times a day and, and to kill the infidels—”

“By preserving our cultural monuments?” Sabal barked, incredulous.  “The country’s changed, Amita, nobody’s marrying children anymore.” Amita shook her head. “You seriously think blitzing the temples to the ground is going to stop extremism?” Sabal asked.

Amita sneered.  “It will make a dent.”

“It will devastate the people!” Sabal said.  “The people, Amita, or did you forget who we’re fighting for?”

Amita prowled closer to him, “I represent the people far more than you ever will, Sabal,” she hissed.  “I’ll never let you sell little girls to pay Kyrat’s bills.”

“What?”

Amita threw her hands in the air. “How else were you planning to make money in this country?  No heroin, no cocaine – what’s left?  The only resources Kyrat has are women, children, and endangered fucking animals.”

Sabal leveled a threatening stare at her.  “It’s not our way.”

Amita tossed her braid, scoffing.  “Oh, how ethical, how noble you are, Sabal.  Lumbering like an elephant, slow and stupid – how will you pay for this war then, mm?” She pointed at the general direction of the gun shipments.  “Christian zealots’ gifts will only get you so far.  How will you pay for medicine, for schoolbooks, for water?”

“You cannot turn Kyrat into a drug state, and you cannot destroy our history,” Sabal said quietly, dangerously, “I will not allow it.  We’d be no better than Pagan.”

“We can’t even compete against Pagan without an army!” Amita said. “And we can’t even feed the soldiers we’ve got.  We need this, Sabal.  It’s not a permanent solution—”

“No,” Sabal said.  “We’re not peddling poison to the people.”

Amita pursed her lips, breathing hard and glaring hatefully at Sabal, before spinning to face Ajay.  “Listen to me, Ajay, ignore this backwater fool,” she said, brushing her hair out of her face and tugging Ajay over to the map. “Quickly, we need those opium fields secured before the product can be shipped, maybe you can find a list of buyers while you’re there—”

“Damn it, no!” Sabal slammed his hands on the wooden table, “You’re a drug dealer! Do you hear yourself?  You sound like a godforsaken dictator!”

“Enough!” Ajay shouted, startling both of the heads.  Known for his non-confrontational demeanor, Ajay almost never raised his voice.  “We don’t have time for this,” he reminded them.

“Why are you so passive, Ghale?” Amita snarled.  “Why can’t you pick a side?”

“Because you’re both right!” Ajay said, silencing her. “You’re both right,” he repeated.  “The country’s broke, so you need a viable source of money – preferably one that doesn’t piss off the United Nations, who already consider you the terrorist threat – and you can’t bulldoze your own culture; it’s what started this war in the first place.”

They watched him, wary but silent. 

“You need to compromise,” Ajay stressed.  “You can’t win a war divided like this—”

“We don’t have time for a fucking compromise!” Amita said.  “Maybe in America you can all grow fat with your constitutional rights, but Kyrat doesn’t have that kind of luxury. We need to take action now—"

“That’s exactly how to get yourself and your men killed,” Sabal said scornfully, shaking his head.  “We have got to plan this out; if we make a move on Noore’s stockpile, to destroy it,” he emphasized, “De Pleur goes back underground.”

“We can’t take De Pleur by tomorrow, Sabal, and you know it,” Amita said, and Ajay saw Sabal’s eyes lower – she was right, they didn’t have the manpower to overtake Varshakot, Paul’s stronghold.  At the rate they were going, it’d take a year to gather the firepower alone.

Well.  An army couldn’t take it, perhaps.

“I can do it,” Ajay said, and for a moment, Sabal’s face fell into weary creases as Amita looked at him incredulously.

“Absolutely not,” Sabal said, straightening into his military posture.  “You’re too valuable to send on a suicide mission, brother.”

“Ajay,” Amita said, “you’re an asset to the cause, truly, but that’s an impossible job for a single agent.  De Pleur’s hosting one of his disgusting parties; the guard count will be tripled, at the very least.”

Well, at least they were agreeing on something.

“I was a United States special forces Green Beret,” Ajay said to the astonishment of Amita; Sabal looked grudgingly impressed, but not swayed.  “I’ve trained for this stuff before.”

Amita raised her eyebrows. “‘This stuff’ is spy dirtywork,” she said.  “You’d have to get in, get him, and get out without raising a single alarm.”

“I’ve done it before,” Ajay reasoned; he’d earned the sobriquet “golden ghost” precisely by eliminating every red army soldier in the conquered outposts without triggering any alarms.  Pagan’s soldiers were terrified of the murderous specter of the son of the Golden Path.

Sabal exhaled, leaning over the map and shaking his head.  “This isn’t an outpost, brother, it’s De Pleur’s personal bunker.”  Sabal looked Ajay in the eye, expression hard. “He never leaves it. It’s guarded round the clock by at least fifty men, and that’s just by what we’ve been able to see.  You can’t parachute in, you can’t climb over the walls, and we’ve yet to find a backdoor.”  He shook his head again.  “I cannot allow you to do this.”

“No backdoor?” Ajay continued as though Sabal’s last remark had gone through deaf ears. “Okay.  So we sneak in through the front,” he shrugged.  “It’s the last thing they’d expect.”

Amita looked impressed.  She crossed her arms and smirked at Sabal.  “I see why you like him so much.”

Sabal cut her a withering look before glaring at his disrespectful subordinate.  “No, Ajay.”

“Why not?” Amita asked.  “He’s got a point.”

“Because he’s too valuable,” Sabal snapped.

Amita scowled.  “You just said how valuable this moment is.  If anything is our advantage against the Torturer, it’s Ajay.”

Ajay felt a bizarre sense of gratitude toward Amita – it was one of the few moments she’d acknowledged him.  Sabal leaned over the maps, shoulders tight.

“He’s too—” Sabal stopped himself, closing his eyes and inhaling slowly through his nose, enacting those breathing exercises Ajay’d jokingly recommended to him last week.  “Whatever either of you think, we’re still not prepared for a mission of this magnitude,” he said, pointing at the map.  Ajay glanced at it; belltowers were circled in red ink.  “I’ve got soldiers on standby, but I won’t send them into slaughter.  We need eyes on De Pleur’s gates – I need guard patrols, numbers, weapon types, timetables, vehicle counts.  We can’t just go in blind.”

Amita conceded, “Fair point.  Okay then – Ajay, you know what to do.”

Ajay looked to Sabal for confirmation; his green eyes flickered in the shrine’s candlelight.  “Fine.  Scouting only, Ajay.  Get me eyes on that compound. Use the belltowers to scope it out.” He stepped around the table and clapped an arm on Ajay’s shoulder.  “We haven’t scouted down that far southeast in a while, brother, so please,” he squeezed, “be careful.”

“Of course,” Ajay said, looking away from Sabal’s piercing gaze to Amita.  She was smirking.  Ajay hadn’t listened to a damn thing either of them had said on his first day involved in Kyrat’s conflict, and she knew it.  “Don’t spend too much time on intel, Ajay,” she said.  “Like Sabal said, we’ve only got one shot.  The party starts tomorrow night.”

Tomorrow night.  That was barely enough time to prep himself, let alone a squad.  There wouldn’t be time to plan this out, especially not to Sabal’s standards.

Okay then.

Ajay nodded, turning to exit when Sabal barked, “Ajay.”  He turned to meet the general’s dark stare.  “Do not engage De Pleur.  We cannot lose you.”

“Yeah I got it, I got it,” Ajay said, waving him off.  He closed the blue door on Amita’s smirk, targeted at Sabal, who was leveling a piercing stare at Ajay’s backside.

They knew him too well.

 Pagan Min phoned in his weekly call on Ajay’s way up a belltower in the hills outside of Tirtha.  “Rumor has it that you’re doubling down for a certain dashing general’s ‘D’,” Pagan gossiped.  “Mm, I believe I mentioned something about a bad-boy jawline and flowing locks earlier, did I not?  You have impeccable taste, Ajay; it runs in the family.  Don’t forget to use protection!”

Ajay stared, disbelieving, at the Kyrati sunset.  This wasn’t happening.

“Although,” Pagan continued, “I must admit I am surprised; you seemed the dashing sort that was just Amita’s type.  Shame – you’d have made some beautiful babies.  Your mother certainly did.”

Ajay choked, almost losing his footing on the rickety fourth story. “Pagan,” he said, “what do you want?”

“Why, to chat, my dear boy!” the king said.  “It’s been so long,” (it’d been a week), “and, though I am a forgiving man, your abrupt departure from De Pleur’s dinner was, I must admit, spectacularly rude.” He tsk’d over the phone.  “Such deplorable manners.”

Ajay stared at the cracked phone.  “You had a man tortured and killed in his basement,” he said. 

“Yes, well, casualty of war,” Pagan sloughed it off.  “He was just a monkey, my boy, not worth saving for the new world.”

Ajay considered the consequences of throwing the tech off the side of the mountain, but Sabal would throttle him for wasting valuable equipment.  (Or for withholding the fact that their dictatorial tyrant king was phoning in on a weekly basis to talk about boys.)  And even if he survived those transgressions, Sabal wouldn’t spare him for what he was planning to do next.

“Do you like ghost stories, Ajay?” Pagan oozed through the line.  “I do so love Paul, but I’m going to miss him.  Everyone’s terrified that the ‘Golden Ghost’ is going to pay a visit to the City of Pain’s shindig this evening.”

 Ajay hauled himself to the top of the tower, clicking the radio’s button. “Will you be there?” he asked.

“Oh, no, no I don’t go for that sort of thing,” Pagan sniffed.  “De Pleur ships in these, uh, ‘guests’ from nearby villages for he and his boys to play with.  I believe the lucky winners this time are from the shitstain south of Tea Terraces. I think they’re still there, actually – better hurry.”

Ajay blinked. 

“And don’t kill his guards, Ajay, even though you’re terribly good at it.  Paul’s a bit shy, you see,” Pagan said.

Was he being played?

“Um—?”

“Good luck, Ajay Ghale!” Pagan interrupted cheerily.  “Can’t wait to hear you on the news.”

Uh—

“And Ajay.  Men only love you in hindsight,” Pagan said.  “Remember that.”

The line went dead.

Ajay went to scope out the village.  It was just as Pagan Min had said; the entire population had been rounded up and put in chains, human livestock corralled for De Pleur’s “party.”

Ajay approached the village with trepidation, fully expecting an ambush by an armed squadron of Red Army soldiers.  But – Pagan’s bizarre hint checked out; the guards paid no attention to his movements in the bushes. Ajay had never seen competent actors within the Loyalist army.  There was no way that sniper taking a piss break could act that casual with an RPG slung across his back.

So, there was his in.

Ajay crept into a hedge of bushes, scoping out the scene.  Five guards, well-equipped, arranged in a typical star-formation.  Corpses – all civilians – littered the ground around them, flies buzzing on the meat.  They’d completely stripped what was left of the village; he could hear desperate sounds of the terrorized coming from the canvas truckbed.  He spotted a hole in the green fence behind the loading dock.

He could do this. 

Sabal was going to kill him.

Ajay wiped off the black flies crawling on his face, attracted to the beading sweat.  The sun had almost completely set; the Golden Path would be expecting his return about now.  He sent out a silent apology into the ether for what he was about to do – maybe the gods would see fit to deliver it, Ajay thought wryly.

“Sabal,” Ajay radioed in quietly, “I’m going after De Pleur.”

The response was immediate.  “God damnit, Ajay,” Sabal roared over the radio, “do not engage!  I can’t—”

“I’m bringing him in alive,” Ajay spoke over his commander.  “Be in touch.”

“Ajay! Don’t—!”  Ajay twisted the Radio off before pocketing it.  He checked his mags – two, plus whatever was left in the chamber, not very many rounds – and readjusted his rifle to sling across his back, tucked his pistol into the hem of his pants.  Looking at the black plume of smoke belching into the sky noting the torturer’s location, he thought again, I can do this.

He chucked a rock off the side of the building, causing the guards to swarm like a red plague of locusts.  The way was clear to the truck.  Ajay hauled himself into the truckbed and set about untying the imprisoned townsfolk; only four lived.  They moved, silently, to touch his face with a reverence he didn’t deserve.

“Ajay Ghale,” a man sobbed quietly.  “God bless you.”

“I’ll get you out of this,” Ajay whispered.  “I promise.  But I need to get into De Pleur’s compound unnoticed.  Will you help me?”

They consulted amongst themselves, the remnants of a village devoid of a leader.  Two were clearly family, pressing their arms into each other’s sluggishly bleeding wounds.  “His men killed our little brother just now – he was six.” 

“They kidnapped my daughter months ago,” the man said to his feet.

“He’s fucking enslaving us,” a young woman with eyes the color of steel hissed.  She turned to the others before nodding at Ajay.  “We’ll stay.  We have nothing left to lose.  Get that sonofabitch, Ajay Ghale.  Make him pay for what he’s done to us.”

Ajay heard the guards call off the search, fuck the rebels, man, let’s get back before we miss the damn party.  He gently bandaged the man’s bleeding arm as the truck engine sputtered to life, promising them, “I will.”

The City of Pain reeked of death.

He gagged on it, the sickly-sweet smell of rot burning into his nostrils until he couldn’t breathe.  As the truck approached, the young woman peeked out of the ripped canvas, ashen-faced.  “Yalung rules this place,” she said.

The siblings grabbed each other’s hands as the truck rolled through the second gate checkpoint, the driver shouting oh, fuck you to the gate guard who’d shouted, where’re your papers, gwailo?  Ajay’s grip relaxed from his pistol.  Apparently, no one performed even rudimentary cargo checks.  They’d never see him coming.

No one made a sound as the truck rolled to a stop, the bass of electronica music pulsing down the fortress.  Hang on, I’m going to take a piss, the driver said.  Just make sure these goatfuckers don’t get loose. 

“Take these,” he handed her the rifle, the man his pistol.  “And stay here,” Ajay whispered to the Kyrati.  “If I’m not back in thirty minutes, leave.”

“My daughter,” the old man begged him.  “If you see her – her name is Janina.”

Ajay held his hand, gloves supple against the cracked skin of his knuckles.  “I’ll look for her, sir.”

The man had tears in his eyes.  “Banashur has not forsaken us,” he said.  “He may have sung Pagan and his Red Army into existence, but so too did he sing you."

Ajay melted into the shadows, knuckles tight around his knife. 

Paul Harmon’s farewell bacchanalia was an exercise in gluttony.  Food was everywhere; someone had even set up a cornucopia cascading with fruit and cheese and sweetmeats.  For a country facing starvation, this was a cruel display.  Even more plentiful was the beer; Ajay could smell its pungent yeast over the overwhelming scent of decay.  He stepped gingerly over a puddle of puke, grimacing; human refuse was everywhere.

The army were drunkenly dancing to the aching bass of a Bollywood techno remix, chanting the king’s name as the accompaniment to the neverending screaming in the City of Pain.  He needed to move fast.

He paused; someone was coming.  Ajay crept into a copse, hiding the shine of the kukri as two soldiers strolled past. 

“We’re burning through a lot of people with these damn parties,” one complained, scratching his crotch.  “Our stock is getting severely depleted.”

“Relax,” the other said, “the boss is leaving.  We can restock when he’s gone.  And,” he thumped a hand on his buddy’s arm, “there’ll be no one to tell us no.”

Ajay’s throat burned, his heart pounding.

“You’re right.  Hey, you going to stop by the whorehouse?”

“No,” the itchy soldier replied, “I fucked one of the whores here and now it burns when I piss.  I prefer my cunts fresh.”

“You gotta share, man,” the other shrugged.  “We're runnin' out of fresh ones. But suit yourself.”  They separated.  Ajay waited for the solider to meander around the corner, furiously scratching his crotch, before silently following the other guard.

The whorehouse looked like any other building in the City of Pain.  The only difference being distinctly feminine screams pouring from the windows, accompanied by the wet slaps of flesh-on-flesh.

“Hello, ladies,” the soldier sneered into the room.  “I’m back.  Come now, don’t be shy—”

Ajay fluidly sunk his kukri into the neck of the soldier, dragging his body through the open door and grabbing the soldier’s knife from its holster and throwing it at the other red-clad back raping a woman. He gurgled as the knife split his shoulder blades; he fell onto the girl and she muffled a scream.

The room reeked of sex.  Rugs had been thrown over the ceiling posts to make makeshift cubicles, each equipped with a red stained mattress.  The candles were scented something sickly sweet, like a carrion flower belching out rot.

Women looked up at him, gasping at the cooling corpses.  Ajay counted one, four – eight people, each in varying stages of undress.  Most had blood on their faces.

There was another scream from upstairs.  “Please – no!”  There was a bodily slam, then, “I’ll teach you to say no to me, bitch!”

Ajay lifted a finger to his lips.  He pointed to the ceiling and cocked his head.

One woman – woman, she was barely a girl – shakily nodded, her eyes smeared with kohl.  She held up one finger.  One more.

Ajay readied his knife.  He crept up the stairs.

There was a naked woman being held down by the neck over a rickety table, covered in used condoms and syringes.  The soldier holding her was fumbling with the clasp of his pants, dick straining against the red fabric. 

“Never say no to a client!” the man sneered.

Ajay's knife pierced his skull.  The man dropped to the stained floorboards with a dull slap.

The woman twisted around, hand scrabbling for a syringe, a weapon.  She brandished it at him, shaking, uncaring of her nudity.

“Back off,” she shivered.

“Janina,” the youngest girl whispered – she’d followed him up the stairs.  (Everyone had, actually; he could see the others surrounding her, like a wolf pack).  “He helped us.  He’s good.”

Janina stared at her, then back at Ajay.  “Who-who are you?” she asked.

“My name’s Ajay,” he said.  “I’m here to get you out.”

They all stared at him in disbelief.  “By the gods,” one woman whispered, mounting the last step.  “You’re Ajay Ghale, Ishwari’s son.”  She turned to the others.  “He’s with Sabal.”

“Ishwari’s child?” they murmured. “Is he Sabal’s…?”

Ajay wiped the blood off a soldier’s uniform, thinking.  What to do – his window for De Pleur was quickly closing.  But these women didn’t stand a chance of getting back to the truck without weapons. 

He gave the knife to Janina.

“Stay here,” Ajay said.  “I’ll be back for you.”

“What?” the youngest girl – couldn’t be older than Bhadra – cried.  “You’re leaving us?”

Torn, Ajay said, “I have to get De Pleur.”

The room’s collective resolve solidified.  “Are you going to kill him?”

“I’m going to capture him.”

Janina, the woman holding the knife’s eyes gleamed.  “Good.  Because I want to hurt him.”

The women prowled around the youngest like a pack of cornered wolves.  “We’ll wait for you, Ajay,” she said.  “But not for long.  I’m not living through this again.”  The blade rested on her forearm.  “I refuse to.”

He had maybe fifteen minutes left before the getaway truck departed to find, knockout, and secure Pagan Min’s torturer, and leave the compound, completely unarmed, with an additional twelve hostages to manage.  Ajay blew out a breath as he snuck up a flight of stone stairs, thinking.  Step one: where would a rat like De Pleur hide?

His eyes turned up to the canopy of rock over a small building at the top of the enclosed compound, the breeze wafting down an overpowering scent of piss and shit.  With the garbage, he thought.

He crept towards it, throwing a rock to distract the lone drunken guard.  There was an open window on the second floor; Ajay lifted his overextended body and climbed the structure, dropping down through the window and landing on bones.  Ajay gagged, covering his nose; the smell—

The room was a fucking massacre.  Ribcages, tongues, boxes of body parts, bloodstains higher than the walls.  Flies caked the walls, the meat, the single jaundiced lightbulb.  Under it all, the tang of gasoline.  They must burn the bodies when finished “playing” with them.

Ajay shuddered, mind blanking into the whitespace he’d found in Afghanistan.  He had a job to do.

He picked up one of the scalpels (resting in a pool of congealing blood).  He moved towards the unassuming brown door, readying his surgical weapon.

The door opened to a Kyrati man with a canvas sack over his head, tied with a hemp rope to the wall.  He began to shake as Ajay approached; dead bodies wearing the Golden Path uniform littered the room.  De Pleur’s humming could be heard through the adjoining doorway.

Lifting the rough cloth off his head, Ajay whispered, “I’m here to help.” 

The prisoner gaped at him.

Ajay cut the man’s ropes with the scalpel.  “Meet me outside,” he muttered, pushing the blade into the man’s hands.  “Go!”

As the thirteenth hostage scuttled out the back door, Ajay heard a preppy song jingle through the wall.  He hurried to replace the bag on his own head, adopting the victim’s position just as De Pleur walked in.

“Hey, sweetpea!  How’s my best girl?”

Through the fabric, Ajay could see De Pleur talking on a cellphone.  Ajay breathed in the sour tang of sweat.  How many other people had worn this bag before they’d died?

“No, honey, daddy’s working.  A gold necklace?” Ajay saw De Pleur lift a sparkling chain off the dead body of a Golden Path fighter.  He flexed his fingers.  “I think daddy can arrange that, pumpkin, sure.  Now listen, I just walked into a meeting, so I’ll call you tomorrow.  Hugs and kisses.  Mm-hm.  Bye now.”

De Pleur hung up.  “Sorry about that; you were on time and I was not prepared.”

Paul’s face as he lifted the canvas sack looked frozen.  “… You?” he asked.  Ajay stood, capitalizing on the boon of surprise, and headbutted the man in the nose.  He dropped, going down like a felled tree.

Ajay worked quickly, crouching to haul the body onto his shoulder then rising, straining with the dead weight.  He met the man outside – “Kyra preserve us,” he whispered at the sight of De Pleur hauled like a sack of potatoes – and ordered him to quickly follow Ajay down the hillside.  The whorehouse wasn’t far; just a few turns, they could make it…

“HEY!!”  The two men froze, just beyond the green fencing.  “This was supposed to be cleaned up hours ago!” someone harangued Pagan’s men.  “Pack it up now!”  There was a cacophony of fuck offs and loud bemoaning, but the men began to shuffle away from the mani-wheeled walls.

Oh, shit. 

Reacting, Ajay picked up a grenade from a nearby ammo crate.  He pulled the pin with his teeth and chucked it as far away from their current position as possible.  The resulting bang of the explosion sent the entire camp into a frenzy. 

“Someone sound the alarm!” 

“Quickly, that was no accident!”

The man looked at Ajay like he was absolutely insane as the whine of the alarm sounded off across the city. 

“I need to regroup with some hostages,” Ajay whispered.  “You ready to move?”

He made a silent plea to Kyra – Ajay could recognize the hand signals by now, familiar with Sabal’s frequent prayers – before nodding. 

The woman armed with his kukri, Janina, surged at him from the door.  “Ajay!” she exhaled.  “I could have killed you.”

“We need to move,” Ajay grunted.  De Pleur was getting steadily heavier. 

“Aya, is that-?”

“Oh my god—”

“Okay, ladies,” Janina said, marshalling her half-naked troops. “We lead. Ajay’s carrying precious fucking cargo.”

Miraculously, they managed to dodge every slack patrol left; most of the compound had gathered around the explosion.  All thirteen hostages breathed a prayer to Kyra when, at the compound’s entrance, the truck was still there.

The old man peeked his head out. “Ajay? Is that you? We heard explosions—” He gasped when he saw the leader of the world-weary troop. “Is that—?” the old man lifted a trembling hand towards them.  “My Janina?”

“Baabaa,” she whispered, dropping the knife to cup the withered hand and kiss it.

Ajay dumped his cargo in the mud, aware of the previous little time left to them. “Tie him up, please,” Ajay sighed, massaging his shoulder.  The youngest of the hostages stripped the bloodstained sash off her chest; there were angry red bitemarks on her breasts.  The women swiftly and efficiently bound De Pleur’s hands and feet, one moving to drape the meager shawl covering her body around the child's bare shoulders.  “I’ll drive – I’m sorry he has to stay in the back with you.”

“Yes,” Janina nodded, her whole self curled around her father’s frail body. “He will be sorry.”

Before leaving, Ajay fished for the second grenade he’d stolen from an ammo dump. The youngest girl stopped him from throwing it by placing a very small hand on his wrist, face determined. Ajay watched her lob the explosive into the compound, watched her listen to the terrified screams of her abusers.

She stumbled into his hips, hugging him. He picked her up under the soulful gazes of his people, buckled her into the passenger seat, and drove away from the burning city.

On the long road back to Banapur (where Ajay was not really looking forward to Sabal’s reaction), Paul woke up. Janina slapped him every time he spoke, grey eyes chromed like a weapon, but he still managed a sentence or two.

“Ajay, what are you doing, buddy?” De Pleur said.  Through the rearview mirror, Ajay could see the women surround him, kohl eyes wide and faces blank.

“Ajay, come on, don’t pretend you give a damn about these people!”

Ajay drove.

“Oh Ajay, the silent treatment?”

Ajay turned on the radio, blasting the Hindi top charts and Rabi Ray Rana’s cheery announcements about the City of Pain being recently on fire.

“You hear me, Ajay?  I’m good at enhanced interrogation, and you’re good at good old-fashioned slaughter!” De Pleur cackled.  “Take a look around you – this place was built for guys like us!”

Janina spat on him. This, not pain, is what sparked De Pleur’s rage.

“You fucking savages!” he snarled, muscles bulging in an attempt to overpower a people. The child’s bloody rag held fast as the women surrounded him.

“Gag him,” the pistol-wielding woman ordered. “It won’t be long now.”

De Paul’s furious grunting turned frantic once he saw where Ajay was taking him.  Banapur.

“Ajay Ghale!” Gopal cheered, slapping him heartily on the back.  “The golden ghost! Gods be good, I can’t believe you’re alive!”

“Hey, Gopal,” Sabal said, rubbing his back.  “I haven’t kicked the bucket yet.”

Gopal blinked at him.  “Bucket?  You need a bucket?  Ajay, you know you can just… go, right?”

Ajay huffed out an exhausted laugh.  “It’s an expression.  Means that I didn’t die.”

Gopal said, “ohh,” and wore an understanding expression.  “You Americans and your slang-talk, I can’t get used to it.  Hey, so, Sabal wants to see you.”

Oh, shit. 

Ajay had ridden into town with a cache of ex-prisoners and the fattest bounty this side of the Himalayas. To say the local sect of the Golden Path had been shocked would have been a greivious understatement. Ajay’d been lucky enough to avoid Sabal (Amita gave him a glittering smile, teeth bared as the torturer screamed in his cage, and purred “thank you” as she walked towards De Pleur) due to sheer exhaustion, but apparently the bell tolled for him.

“Don’t worry,” Gopal said, seeing his expression, “I always make him disarm himself before he enters the war room.  Amita, too.”

Ajay tried smiling.  “Thanks, Gopal,” he said, and went to meet his fate.

He opened the faded red door to a familiar dimly-lit room of the safehouse.  Sabal was waiting for him, stance rigid and arms crossed.  His eyes cut like the gold kukri emblazoned on his chest.

The door closed with a whine.  Ajay’s military-training kicked in as he stood at attention – he’d committed insubordination against a commanding officer, the punishment for which was dishonorable discharge in the United States.  He had no idea what Kyrati law stipulated, or what Sabal would decide.

“Let me understand,” Sabal began.  Ajay braced himself.  “You deliberately disobeyed a direct order from not only me, but also Amita, and infiltrated the king’s torturer’s private manor with four unarmed civilians and roughly eighty rounds of ammunition.”  He paused.  “Have I got that right so far?”

Ajay cleared his throat.  “Yes, sir.” He must’ve spoken to the hostages first. Damn.

Sabal’s stare was cold fury.  “Good.  You proceeded to rescue, what was it, five hostages—”

“Thirteen,” Ajay interrupted softly.  Sabal rolled his shoulders, looking down for a moment, before recapturing Ajay’s eyes.  “Thirteen hostages,” he repeated.  “You then replaced a torture victim with yourself, risked your damn-fool life to knockout De Pleur, and carried his unconscious body, which weighs roughly forty dharni, back to the truck you snuck in on.  With eight of your thirteen hostages.” Sabal squinted at him.  “Completely unarmed.”

Ajay swallowed.  “Yes.  A couple of them need medical attention,” he said, breaking his rigid stance to gesture behind him.  “I’m no medic; I couldn’t do more than basic first aid.  Can we spare them a few supplies?  They helped me get into the compound at their own risk; I want to thank them.”

Sabal held up a hand.  “It’s been taken care of.  Old man Aagman seems to think you’re the reincarnated Banashur, come to walk the earth with mortals again.”  The hand fell.  “I’m not so sure he’s wrong.”

Ajay blinked at him.  “Sabal—”

“Let me finish.”  Ajay obediently went silent.  Sabal considered him, arms tight across his broad chest.  “Scouts are saying the Red Army thinks you’re a mogwai sent to punish them, a demonic ghost from the underworld.  Now after this stunt, stealing De Pleur from his own torture chamber without a sound, we're getting reports that they’re deserting their posts in the south.”

Ajay rubbed the back of his neck.  “Maybe they just read Pagan’s announcements.”

Sabal’s lips quirked.  He shook his head, arms uncrossing to hang at his sides.  He sighed. “What am I going to do with you, Ajay Ghale?”

Ajay straightened back into military posture.  “I would like to surrender myself for disciplinary action, sir.”

“That won’t be necessary,” Sabal said.

Ajay blinked.  “But – sir, I committed insubordination.”

“Yes,” Sabal agreed, approaching him.  “But you also captured one of the most wanted men in Kyrat and the greater north-Asian area while simultaneously rescuing Golden Path operatives and civilians without a single casualty. In,” Sabal checked his watch, “about three hours.”

Sabal paused to stand in front of Ajay, expression unfathomable.  Ajay blinked at him, unsure what he was supposed to do next, before Sabal pulled him into a bruising embrace.  He pressed his body, solid and warm, so close Ajay swore he could feel the general’s heartbeat.  Ajay was too shocked to move.

“You are godsent, Ajay Ghale,” Sabal breathed into his shoulder, eyes closed.  “Kyra be praised for sending you to us – to me.”

Ajay hesitantly hooked his arms around the general’s broad back.  “I’m just… doing my part.”

Sabal pulled back to look him in the eyes.  “Your part seems to be singlehandedly winning this immortal war, brother. You’ve done more in a month than we have in ten years.”

“You needed help,” Ajay shrugged.  “I couldn’t just say no.”

Sabal gave him a soft look, hands warm and heavy on his shoulders.  “You have a rare quality not commonly found in men, brother: compassion.  This is why many see you as a herald from the gods.”

Do you? Ajay didn’t ask.

“All that being said,” Sabal pinned a glare on him, hands tightening, “don’t ever do that again.”

Ajay grinned, the tension bleeding from the room.  “I’ll do my best.”

Sabal’s scowl deepened as he turned back to the pile of papers awaiting his perusal, muttering something he remembered his mother whispering at him, little devil, but Ajay spotted the rare laugh lines framing his green eyes.

There was a knock at the door.  “Commandant?” a soldier asked through the wood.  “The men are asking for you, sir.  They want to know, with the capture of the Torturer, if they can go home to their families anytime soon.”

Sabal’s shoulders slumped in a sigh; Ajay watched the man run a hand through his unwashed hair in a rare moment of unguardedness.  “Duty calls,” he said.  Ajay met his customary shoulder-grab halfway, to Sabal’s surprise. He curled his gloved fingers into the warm bend of Sabal’s arm.

“It feels good to win,” he said; Sabal laughed loudly, squeezing his arm.  “Yes it does, brother.  Yes it does.”

There was too much to do for the celebrations of the capture of Pagan’s Torturer to be anything but short-lived. Despite the looming threat of Pagan’s Wrath, the raksi ran like rivers that night in Tirtha. The Kyrati weren’t teetotalers and, as many a Golden Path freedom fighter had sighed post-battle, they desperately needed a drink.

The Sherpa had brought down a yak from the nearest nomad village, to which the revolutionaries bagged him down with hugs, ammo, and the occasional smooch of gratitude. Even before he and Sabal had resolved their differences, Ajay could smell the meat cooking through the door; his mouth watered at the prospect of a hot meal.

“Ajay!” Yadav crowed as he exited the safehouse, Sabal a warm presence at his back. “Drink with us, chōkarā!” He was surrounded by a squadron of Golden Path fighters, those who had been stationed near the city and patrol routes – Ajay recognized a few of them: Gopal, Banhi, Ganesa. They circled the roasting yak, quartered and sliced into massive slabs left to roast over the open flame.

Ajay turned to look at Sabal, an eyebrow raised. “Why not?”

“You go; celebrate with the men,” Sabal shook his head. “I have business to attend to.”

Yadav, well into his cups already, wore a tragic expression on his face.  “But, commandant!  We, uh – secured a 50 year-old bottle of scotch, in your honor!”  He waved at someone (worryingly close to the fire) to hold up the spirits, amber liquid sloshing in the clear glass. “Leave the war room for tomorrow, yar?”

Sabal’s face was grave. After a pregnant pause he said, “I’d prefer the rotgut, I think.”

The Golden Path cheered as Sabal consented to a beer, using the thick pad of his thumb as a bar key and downing half the bottle in one go. Ajay was impressed.

“Sit with us, commandant!” Refusing the offer to sit on ammo crates a few men stood from, Sabal lowered himself onto the ground with his fighters. “Come, sit, sit,” a man by the name Pradip fussed, pulling Ajay down by his shirtsleeve; he was scrunched between Sabal. “Sabal’s right-hand-lucky-sonofabitch-man, you’re sitting next to me. Maybe some of that magic will rub off.”

“Oh, I’m uh,” Ajay stuttered, the fire heating his face, “I’m not really—”

“Well, if it isn’t the sight for sore eyes.” Banhi circled over to him, holding a juicy slab of meat dripping from a stick. “Eat this, Ajay,” she shoved it into his hands. “You’re too damn skinny.” She handed another portion to Sabal, bowing, “you too, commandant.”

Ajay couldn’t remember the last time he’d eaten, and he’d given Bhadra the damn granola bar. The fat dripped down Ajay’s fingers, the scent flooding his mouth with saliva. He tore into his share, incisors ripping the flesh, hot juice spilling down his throat; he barely chewed before swallowing.

“Thank you, Banhi,” Sabal said quietly. 

“Oh, right,” Ajay choked, pounding a fist on his chest. “Th-thanks,” he rasped.

Banhi shook her head as the group laughed. “Born in the basement and never brought up,” she sighed, lightly socking him in the arm. “There’s more where that came from, rice too, so eat your fill.”

“Rice?” Pranav howled behind her. “If I never see rice again, it’ll be too soon.”

“Oh, go ahead – suffer from self-induced starvation, you cow!” Banhi swore, turning to her partner. Ajay exchanged a grin with Pradip before they burst into laughter. Even Sabal was smiling, arms draped over his bent knees, relaxed for the first time Ajay could remember in a long time.

The chatter around the circle was soft (the only loud conversation came from the man banging on the crackling radio, asking would it kill Rabi Ray Rana to play something we can fuckin’ dance to?), the fire was warm, his belly was full and his mind was buzzing, Sabal a sturdy presence on his left, his friends glowing yellow on his right. Ajay sighed, leaning back to study the stars – so much brighter here than in America.  He thought he could pick out the Big Dipper constellation, if he tilted his head just so. It was the only one he remembered; his mother had pointed out the stars on the roof of their apartment complex, before she'd been too sick to brave that many stairs.

The city of Tirtha was bustling that night, full of revolutionaries and traders and people, come to see the Torturer behind his own bars and bolster the revolutionaries’ resolve. One of the holy men of Kyra, his lithe body painted white and gold, approached their circle. He must’ve been on a pilgrimage; Ajay wondered if he was hungry.  

He blinked when the man fell to his knees before him, alarmed.

“God bless you, Ajay Ghale,” the sādhu said, “for saving the Tarun Matara from Yalung’s fiery tongue.” He bowed deeply, touching his forehead to the earth.  Ajay desperately wished people would stop doing that.

“You’re – you’re welcome, please get up,” he stammered.

“Rise, sādhu,” Sabal said. “You are welcome to join us.” Banhi came back over with a bowl of rice, offering it to the holy man.

Gopal wedged his way into the conversation. “The man with the golden name is always doing something heroically worthy of praise from the gods,” he bragged to the sādhu conspiratorially. “Rescuing Bhadra took just one morning. Capturing the torturer? An afternoon. Imagine what he does in a day!”  The crowd murmured in assent, blue and gold blending in the firelight.

“I seen him snipe a man’s eyeball right out its socket,” one man swore.  “A thousand yards away!”

“One time,” another added, “we were fighting on one of the islands in Lake Visalakhutta, and the royal army soldiers had us pinned against the cliff.  Ajay flew over in a gyrocopter and bombed them into the last century.”

Ganesa piped up, taking a healthy swig of beer, “and he’s a fucking god against tigers; he rescued us from a streak up by the brick company heroin stash a couple weeks back.”

“Aya, did anybody else see that time he came riding in on an elephant with a rocket launcher?”

Amidst the excited chattering of soldiers, Sabal turned to him with a raised brow. Ajay shrugged, hiding behind the beer bottle and taking a drink. He might’ve left the elephant out of the mission report. The sādhu, who’d been devouring his portion of grains, had stopped to gaze at him with sparkling eyes.

“Ohh, I saw that!” one of the greener recruits gushed. “I couldn’t believe what my eyes were telling me—”

“Hey!” Pranav wobbled to a standing position. “A toast to Ajay Ghale!” A deafening cheer rang across the cliffs, followed by a beat of silence as the soldiers drained their drinks. Sabal clinked his bottle against Ajay’s, saluting him with the green glass before draining it. One soldier chucked the glass bottle into the firepit with a whoop, shattering it; everyone else quickly followed suit. There were calls for another round before the stories continued (to Ajay’s dismay); someone hauled over another crate of booze to raucous applause, and everyone settled at Gopal’s insistence.

“Sit – sit down, everybody, I’ve got the best one,” Gopal insisted with a slur. “This dude,” he gestured to Ajay and giggled into his beer, ruddy cheeks crinkling in a grin, “okay, so we radioed for help, right, because the Khilana Bazaar outpost was under attack from those fucking red-shirts—”

“Yalung take ‘em!” Everyone cheered again and took a swig of raksi. 

Gopal swallowed, choking. “Ugh, this is some vile shit. God it's good. Anyway, Ajay here heeds the call, and comes,” he laughed, “charging up the road in a little tuk-tuk.” He blew a raspberry to illustrate the sound the unfortunate auto-rickshaws spat out when accelerating. The crowd hooted, calling out way to go, bēṭā! and kick some ass, Ajay!

Sabal was smiling at him, empty bottle held loosely in his fingers.

Soon enough, the bleary-eyed fighting force collectively decided it was time to pass out before the sun burned their eyes from their sockets. Ajay’s watch read 04:19; Sabal clapped him on the shoulder as he yawned, suggesting it was “time for bed, brother.” 

As everyone collected their weapons, Sabal moving to engage one of the lesser officers, the sādhu stopped him. “A moment of your time, Ajay Ghale.” He pressed his hands together in prayer, bowing lightly before Ajay. “Banashur, god of gods, sang the world into being through the four hymns of creation. There are some who say that he dreamt the world in order to protect it from his brother, Yalung.”

Oh boy, Ajay had no idea what to say. He briefly scanned the back of Sabal’s back, his religious interpreter. “I,” Ajay stuttered. “That’s – wow.  Dreams, huh?”

Way to go, Son of Mohan. Truly inspired words. What kind of stupid—

The sādhu raised his head to stare at Ajay with a glimmer in his blue eye. “Sleep well, son of Ishwari.”

The man was back in his dreams.  Nobody was naked this time, thank god, because his mom was there.

Ishwari looked the way Ajay wanted to remember her, before the cancer made her sallow skin sink below her bones, her hands frail, lips ashen. She’d been a beautiful woman, foregoing cosmetics for the natural dark Kyrati genotype. She’d dressed like an American, too, had encouraged him to pronounce his name “Ay-jay,” refused any information about their homeland other than the name, and had no religious iconography or idols or anything in their apartment – except bells. She’d festooned the place with bells.

They were in the old apartment, actually, the piece of shit piece of immigrant housing in Queens he’d called home for the better part of a decade. The water stains were still on the ceiling, his mother’s bells gently chiming in the breeze through the open window.

Dream-Ishwari smiled at her son, cupping his cheek with an insubstantial hand. “Hello, Ajay.”

Ajay closed his eyes and pretended. “Hey, ma.”

Ishwari turned to regard the dreamwalker, standing awkwardly to the side. His leg was in the bathtub. “I remember you," she said. "Hello again."

The man moved forward to fall to his knees before her, palms open and face exposed. Ajay could make out a scar, just below his lip. What – who was that?

“Tarun Matara,” the man breathed. 

Um?

Ishwari placed a hand on his head. “Thank you for protecting my son,” she said.

“Always,” the man lowered his head, pressing it to the ground.

“We’ll have none of that,” Ishwari admonished, pulling him to stand.

Ajay looked into Sabal’s face, green eyes unapologetic, uniform clean the way it never was, and turned to his mother. “I wish you were…” he had to swallow and look at the ground.

“Oh, my love,” Ishwari smiled, cupping his cheek. “It was my time. I will see you again, just as I see Lakshmana.”

Ajay looked at her face, dimples in her cheeks, crows feet highlighting her eyes. “Ma,” he said, and placed his hand over hers.

“Keep him safe,” Ishwari said. “You will need each other before this is over. Jalung is awake. He is hungry. He is terrifying.”

Ajay closed his eyes to Sabal’s face and then woke to it, the commander sleeping soundly beside him in the safehouse bed. Snoring soldiers surrounded them, stinking of sour ale and the collective grime of an army.

Hugging his arms around himself, Ajay wished his mother was there – just to hold her, one last time.

Amita waved him off when he approached her. “Wrong head, Ajay,” she said. “You’ve given me enough supplies to busy myself for a week. Sabal wants you.” She was smirking again. “Fun night last night, eh? Do me a favor. Make a lot of noise when you travel through camp, yes?  Give the soldiers something to cry about.”

Amita was a very cruel woman. 

Ajay found Sabal smoking a rare cigarette, surveying the distant mountaintop. Gunfire peppered the air – constant background noise in Kyrat – and the wind had a biting chill as it swept right through him. 

“Amita said you wanted to see me?”

Sabal wordlessly handed Ajay a ripped piece of brown paper.

“The orders are clear, pile it up and burn it.

Anything that looks valuable pack it up for Jalendu, we’ll have cargo trucks coming for that, everything else religious just pile it up and burn it.

Send a message to the locals, Seven Treasures is done, this is the final lesson to be taught here.

Lt. Sandhar.”

This was from Seven Treasures, the school he’d liberated shortly before capturing De Pleur. Sabal took a deep drag. “Oojam brought it to me,” he said on the exhale, smoke pouring through his nostrils like a dragon. “Said they’d cut out his father’s tongue for speaking against the king.”

Ajay didn’t know what to say.

“He pointed us to the mass grave just outside the outpost,” Sabal continued, tapping the ash. “We can’t decide whether to dig up the children and give them proper burials or to just let them rest.”

A cold wind whipped through the city streets, sliding icy fingers down Ajay’s back.

“I do not understand their hatred,” Sabal said, looking at the snowy peaks of the Himalayas. “Kyra preaches peace, harmony amongst men. They spit on our gods, defile our temples, slaughter our people.” He watched the smoke curl from the cigarette. “I cannot comprehend why.”

Ajay stepped a little closer, sharing what little body heat he could. Sabal shuddered out a sigh, rubbing a hand over his forehead.

“How many more bodies must we wrap in gold and garlands?” his voice broke. “We burn so many corpses, Ajay, the ash has turned the lakewater poisonous.  How many more babies have to die for this fucking war?”

He hissed; the cigarette had burnt through the filter straight onto his hand. Shit, he sighed.

Ajay could do nothing but press himself against Sabal’s side – everything worth saying had already been said in such times. Sabal accepted his consolation; he leaned into the touch, gazing at the hills, misty in the moonlight. “It’s impossible to reconcile with war, I know.” Sabal lit another cigarette, shaky fingers lifting it to his lips. “Kyra gives us textured weakness to better appreciate what is beautiful.” He sighed out smoke, eyes tragic. “The riddle of human experience.”

After a moment, Ajay quipped, “Sounds like torture.”

Sabal barked out a laugh, surprising them both.

“Careful,” he warned, smiling around the cigarette, “you’re starting to sound like a Kyrati philosopher.”

Ajay shrugged, smiling. “Cain’t be what I ain’t.”

Sabal chuckled, leaning back to blow smoke up at the stars. Ajay found himself studying the long line of his neck, the way his Adam’s apple dipped as he swallowed. Heard, for a brief moment, Hindi love songs whispered in his ear as he slept.

He looked away, back towards Kyrat, which was as still as the remaining Sleeping Saint. He felt Sabal’s warm body sag against him, just for a moment, and wondered if anyone else got to see the man beneath the armor.

After a while, Sabal dropped the butt of the cigarette, idly stamping it out. He said, “I suppose one good thing came out of this conflict.”

“What’s that?”

Sabal turned to him. “You’re here, aren’t you?”

Ajay blinked at him, speechless. He watched the leader of the Golden Path smirk at him before striding back into the city, shoulders back and head high.

Everything had been going so well – of course it went to shit. Of course Ajay trusted two crazy drug doctors camped out in his ancestral home. Of course he’d end up in some fucked up gladiatorial pit without a stitch of clothing on.

Groggy, Ajay tried to adjust to the blinding light that’d just whipped on. Whatever those British boys had given him was hardcore; he couldn’t see… what was real. Couldn’t hear things properly. He was a blinded, muted creature and instinct demanded he hide and lick his wounds.

Whoever had turned on the lights was talking.

“This is Ajay Ghale?” he heard an incredulous voice. Someone fisted his hair and yanked his head up; Ajay grunted, the grip was painfully tight. 

“Mmm,” a woman – pink? – moaned, and he saw a pair of disembodied lips lick themselves. “He’s pretty.”

“Hey, hands off,” Noore, was that Noore?, warned. “He’s mine, he’s meat for Shanath. If he survives, then he’s Pagan’s.”

“Relax,” the pink lips said, smirking. “I’m just gonna play with him for a bit. Pagan won’t know.”

“Pagan can’t know,” Noore stressed. Ajay blinked, arching his back to dull the pain in his scalp, and he saw a woman in red open a door. “Please, Yuma. Or it’s my ass.”

Pink released his scalp, caressing a tender gloved hand over his face. He felt sick, Ajay struggled to breathe; everything was blurred in a haze. “I won't. Don't worry. Besides,” Pink said, “if rumors are to be believed about the great prodigal son, he’d slaughter your tigers in a heartbeat.”

Noore slammed the door in response.

“Alone at last,” the lips moaned. “My name is Yuma,” the pink lips smiled, all teeth. “You’re all mine now.”

“What—” Before he could finish speaking, Yuma slapped him; Ajay’s ears rang and his vision whited out.

“Animals don’t speak,” she said. “Now, open up, buttercup,” Yuma shoved her gloved finger deep into his mouth, stroking the back of his throat; Ajay choked.

“Suck, you little bitch.” The knife flashed, silver and terrible, and Ajay felt it cut into his cheek. Breathing hard through his nose, he obediently sucked the blood-flavored finger. The knife moved to gently stroke over the bleeding cut as Yuma cooed, “good boy.”

The cold blade left his face; the nausea was overwhelming. “I wish De Pleur were here, that bastard,” Yuma said, pressing on Ajay’s epiglottis and eliciting another gag, bile burning in his throat. “He had all that video equipment to record his,” she straddled Ajay’s kneeling legs, “sessions.”

Yuma snapped forward to lick the blood dripping down his chin. Ajay struggled to breathe as she forced her hand deeper into his mouth.

“Mm, Ajay,” Yuma moaned. “I wish we could. I want to send this moment to your precious commander.” She removed her hand and stood, leaving Ajay to gasp for breath and spit on the floor. “He does adore you so, Son of Mohan.”

She circled him, and Ajay saw a demon gnashing its teeth, hissing rakshasha. He gasped for breath, this isn’t real you’re dreaming please wake up.

“Has he fucked you yet?” Yuma snickered, wiping her black-clad finger on his face. “Has he mounted you like the animal you are?”

She struck him and Ajay had nothing left to give. He fell to the ground, dust and dirt climbing into his lungs; he choked and gasped as Yuma loomed over him, grabbing his hair.

“Tell me how you did it,” she snarled, pulling his hair so tight he felt it rip. “Tell me how you became Kalinag the Seeker. How you managed it, a meaningless monkey, where I could not.”

Then she stabbed him, puncturing his side with the blade. Yuma laughed as Ajay crumpled, blood pumping out of the side wound. He heard Noore – when did she get back? - furiously cut into Yuma, hollering how she’d killed the most important prisoner in the fucking country what the fuck is wrong with you.

“Relax, Noore,” Yuma drawled, licking her knife. “He’ll live. I’m just bleeding the pig. Making it fair for your kitty-cats.”

“You’re crazy,” Noore said, kneeling over Ajay on the floor, pressing a hand into the wound and lighting a firestorm of pain. He struggled to sip in little breaths, mind blank. 

“When you’ve patched the monkey, good doctor, send him to Durgesh.”

Ajay surrendered to oblivion.

Interlude: Sabal

He didn’t worry about Ajay.  Well, in truth he kept himself too busy to think much about him, until the fifth day passed with no word, sign, or signal from the prodigal son of Kyrat.

He knew better than to ask Amita. When Ajay had gone deep undercover after De Pleur, flouting Sabal’s authority like a child, Sabal had paced a valley into the floor of the monastery and snarled at anyone who tried to move him until Amita had bodily moved him into a corner of the room and ordered him to lie down before he fell down. Sabal’s body, whittled down to raw nerves, had succumbed. His mind had not.

He’d dreamt of Ajay. This wasn’t unusual; Sabal had dreamt of Mohan’s son since his celebrated birth. Often, the dreams proved sublime and Sabal only left his unconscious state to lay his eyes upon the real being. Had he never met Ajay Ghale, Sabal wondered if he’d have just gone to sleep and never woken up to this terrible world.

But he’d dreamt of Ajay, lying there in the stone bunker of Kyra’s belly, waiting to know if Ajay was even alive. He’d dreamt he was a white tiger prowling beside Ajay, painted in the white colors of Kalinag’s folk.  He’d crunched his enemies’ throats and tasted hot blood in his teeth and saw Ajay Ghale ring the bells of Shangri-Là.

Sabal had woken to an utter calm he hadn’t experienced in decades, not since childhood. Amita, out of character, had remained silent when he rejoined her at the war table, giving him a quick nod and an abridged update to their scouts’ limited information. Sabal had been able to breathe because they hadn’t found a body (yet).

Ajay had radioed in hours later with a cocky, “Come get me, guys. I have a present for you.”

So no, Sabal didn’t worry about his indefatigable charge. Sometimes the man disappeared for days on a rolling meander across the wilderness, returning with tiger skins, refugees, condoms, and new wounds for Sabal to add to his worries. 

He didn’t worry until a man (missing a few toes) came bursting through Banapur, looking for “the leader of the Golden Path.”

Everyone knew Ajay. Everyone liked Ajay. This was a boon to the cause, as Ajay’s karma was as high as the gods’; he offered help to anyone who asked for it.  But Sabal would be a cruel man to deny the toll it took on a man to sustain that kind of motivation –  he’d felt the weight of world-weariness that leadership thrust on his shoulders. He saw it in Amita, too, every time she dressed a woman’s wounds, helped clean her blood-stained pants, shot a man between the eyes.

“The Son of Mohan!” the man gasped. “He’s been taken!”

Amita, in a rare moment of tact, dropped their rolling argument about troop placement when she saw the blood drain from Sabal’s face. She moved to bite into the informant.

“Kabir!” she snarled. “What are you doing here, Noore-child? How do you know this?” she demanded.

“I work in the Arena,” Kabir stuttered quickly. “His name was listed on the roster, but he never appeared in the games. Noore hardly ever alters the schedule like that.” He pulled at his fingers. “Ajay is a good man; he voluntarily helped us with the famine.  He – he doesn’t deserve whatever’s happening to him.”

Sabal willed himself to stay calm. The man – Kabir - wasn’t a Golden Path supporter; troops reported him to be a middle-man, sucking from the teat of both sides. He was unlikely to have run across the countryside overnight just to warn them. “Probably Noore looking to stir up trouble,” he said to Amita, who frowned, and Sabal wanted to believe his troops’ intel, but. Ajay never checked in.

That night, he dreamed of Ajay again.

It had been a while – the dreams came sporadically and generally only when Sabal was scraping the bottom of his lowest point, his visions a gift from the goddess, serving to lift his spirits up to the loftiest peak of the Himalayas. This dream, however, was not sublime. This dream did not feature the usual riotous colors, Ajay’s seafoam torso and dark eyes a welcome contrast to Kyrat’s violently pink sky.

The dream was black.

“Ajay,” he breathed. Ajay looked up, manifesting from nowhere, pupils as black and wide as the chasm below. He opened his mouth to speak and black oozed from his lips. His ghostly skin crumpled like paper, and a horrendous shriek sounded from the abyss.

Sabal woke to fear compressing his heart into ice and no oxygen in the air. He put his head in his hands, face wet, and allowed himself a moment of weakness.

Durgesh.

Ajay woke up and thought he was still dreaming.

He’d seen this sight before, in his dreams. The view from the peak of the Himalayas (the man a solid weight behind him), snow drifting in his eyelashes and breaths forming clouds, the world frozen below them.

He was looking at that now. But he’d never been in pain in a dream before; his head ached, his wrists were raw. The cold from the stone he lay on was leeching every ounce of heat from his body; Ajay couldn’t feel his fingers, toes, nose. Ice crystals hung from his eyelids and lips. And the air was too thin, he couldn’t breathe.

“Hey, baby,” Yuma cooed. 

Ajay struggled to turn; he saw Pagan’s pink general straddling a chair, shoulders relaxed and smiling. “I took you back to my place; hope you don’t mind.”

Oh, fuck, oh Jesus. Oh shit. He’d heard Sabal talk about a prison like this; saw the faces of the villagers who’d lost family to the dreaded prison, trapped deep in its stone belly. Durgesh.

Yuma’s smile curved wickedly as she watched Ajay conclude where he was. “Nobody knows you’re here,” she said. “Not even the king. Just me. No one’s coming for you.”

No. No no no, no it was cold. Too cold, so cold, what was – he was trapped here? Sabal, Sabal knew where he’d been going, he’d—

Breathe! Ajay frantically told himself, sucking in frigid gasps of air, hyperventilating.

“Oh, calm down. There’s an easy way out of this, Ajay,” Yuma said, standing to fondle her gleaming knife. There were still traces of blood on the blade.  “Just tell me what I want to know.”

Ajay’s body rattled with shivers, but other than the involuntary twitches, he didn’t move.

“And what I want to know,” Yuma continued, circling him, “is how to get to Shangri-Là.”

Ajay considered his options, shivering on the floor. He could tell her to go stare into an ancient thangka painting and trip balls, yeah. He could say she had to find the deep places of Kyrat, buried in the rock, to – achieve Nirvana, or something, but it sounded like she’d already tried that. Ajay settled on option number three.

“Go f-f-fuck yourss-self,” he said through chattering teeth.

Yuma kept smiling at him. “That’s fine. I was hoping you’d say that."

She abruptly stepped forward, blowing a cloud of pink smoke in his face. Ajay choked, eyes burning; the shadows detached from the walls, ceiling, pooling around Yuma’s black boots. Her white teeth gleamed like fangs.

“You’re free to leave at any time,” she said, gesturing to the five-thousand foot drop. “But,” and Yuma struck his face like a snake; his head snapped back, ears ringing, vision whiting out, “I hope you’ll stay a while.”

Ajay struggled to his feet, vision warped and hearing compromised. Yuma put her spider hands on his shoulders and it felt wrong.

“Lie down,” she said soothingly, forcing him to his knees, then the ground. “Just take it.  It’ll all be over soon.”

She kicked his head—

Ajay became conscious to the sound of screams.

He couldn’t feel anything; his body was so stiff, crusted in ice. How was he alive.

A tortured soul howled in the cell across from his, the sound ringing through the cave. Ajay shook and shivered as he collected his limbs, one by one, and rubbed them until the pins and needles stung. His vision swam in and out of focus. Spiders scuttled across the walls, their clicking pincers deafening in the warrish mountain air.

He had to get out, get out, getout

He crawled to the door. It – it was open. When did it open? Doesn’t matter, slip through; Ajay squeezed into the impossibly small gap in the door, collapsing on the other side. Black smoke slithered like snakes from shadow-to-shadow; Ajay moved. The prison block chanted about spiders; he passed a man wetly smashing his head against the wall; one grabbed him through the bars and started to cry, “Tarun Matara! Save me from Yalung, dreamwalker please!”

Ajay’s mind was white-noise. He staggered over to the next cell, breaking the man’s tenuous grip on his jacket, holding on to the raw metal caging, get out got to get out.

His mom looked back at him, within the cell. Withered, cancerous, Ishwari looked like the last time Ajay’d seen her alive: dead. “Kyrat was always going to change you, Ajay,” she said with a black mouth, crossing her arms like the dead. Her eyes didn’t open.

“M-mm-ma!” Ajay said through bloody lips. He reached for her.

“Run, Ajay,” spiders spilled from her tongue and streamed towards him. “Take me to Lakshmana.”

Ajay violently pushed himself away from the cage, shoes slapping the craggy floor as he tore across the cellblock. 

He ran past one cave, another, desperately gasping in air – he couldn’t get any fucking air—he heard something, get down get down, turn towards the light, there’s a light; Ajay crawled around the corner and.

Shangri-Là’s fire demon patrolled the hallway. The flaming pit cut the grimacing mask of the Scorcher into cruel light. Ajay shrank back into the shadows, white-noise ear-splitting, panicking this isn’t possible, wake up, please this can’t be real.

The demon – a bloated corpse wearing a golden animal mask – gnashed its teeth and blitzed in and out of existence. It hissed rakshasha and loped down the black hallways, sniffing.

Was it looking for him? 

Breathe, someone said. Ajay, breathe.

He inhaled like he’d just broken the water’s surface, gasping, sweat dripping down his nose.

Good.  Now move.

Ajay crept past the reanimated corpse, jaw clenched so hard it ached, and slunk into the adjoining room. This place was a labyrinth, and the minotaur was hunting just behind him. He had to get out.

A body hung from the ceiling, intestines pooling from its belly and festooning the room like sick parodies of prayer flags. Ajay bolted to cover, crouching behind the stone altar the body had been strung from. Someone screamed, but it was far away. Maybe. 

Ajay breathed, struggling to stop his body from shaking. C’mon, look, there has to be something here – the rope. He was on a mountain, of course.

The moment he reached for the grapple, a Butcher demon materialized with a guttural snarl, golden god mask gazing at him with spiders in its eyes.

Ajay grabbed the rope and hit the ground running.

“Your mother ruined Pagan Min, you know,” Yuma whispered from the fucking walls. He ducked as an arrow whistled over his head, sliding around a corner, Ajay couldn’t hear anything as his shoes slapped the ground, breath gasping, fuck fuck fuck get out get out—

He slipped; fell, hands ripping into the mountain’s scaly hide. Got up as the Shangri-Là nightmares rounded the corner, screaming their maggoty war cries.  He couldn’t breathe.

The demons from fever-dreams of paradise chased him, blood hissing from their mouths as Yuma’s words spewed around his escape. “Your whore of a mother ruined him. And now her seed, fucked into her cunt by your infanticide coward of a father, is back to salt the fucking earth.”

He was back in his cellblock, the prisoners all dead now their blood was tangy in the air, where was his mom, the demons had their red rivers flowing even on earth-

A Butcher blitzed in a cloud of blue smoke, holding a massive creature’s tooth in its bloody hand. It sliced open Ajay’s side and he went down in a soundless scream, rolling back into his prison cell as ice crept its way into his body.

Yuma laughed, pink smoke amongst the demons as they closed in around him, blocking his only escape.

Ajay thought, breathe. He wedged himself into the rock, body trembling, as the masked demons prowled closer. Breathe!

Behind you, the man whispered in his ear, prayer beads glowing orange.

Ajay looked, snow blowing into his face.

The jagged teeth of the Himalayas glinted back at him.

Rakshasha, the demons hissed, lifting their weapons for a killing strike.

Ajay staggered to his feet. Readied his rappel.

And threw himself off the cliff.

Is he alive?

Aya, look at his arm—

His arm, girl, look at his body!

What—

Oh my god he moved.

He’s alive?!

“Get out of my way,” a woman said.

Ajay’s vision floated in and out of focus. White. All white. Burning, bright white. He couldn’t feel anything – that was nice. He was pretty sure he didn’t want to feel anything right now.

The weathered face of an old woman appeared in front of him. Ajay felt relief; there was no mask. Two others flanked him, worry writ into their eyes.

“You’re Ajay Ghale,” she said to him.

Was he?

The other two looked at her, agog. “Ishwari’s son? I thought they fled to America – what’s he doing here?”

“What are any of us doing here,” she grumbled, pulling out a sooty strip of cloth. “Help me lift him, bachha, we don’t have much time.”

Ajay felt the two pull his torso from the rocks – no pain. That was nice. He became aware that his back was wet and sticky; looked down, red splashed against the clean white backdrop of snow.

The woman quickly lifted his jacket – the other two gasped, cringing away from whatever lurked near his belly – and wrapped his abdomen with efficient, short movements, tying his arm tightly to his body. Ajay blinked up at the sky. So white.

“You need to heal, Ajay Ghale, but you cannot rest here.” She looked at him with old, world-weary eyes. “They’ll kill you on sight.”

“We have to go,” the man whispered, looking fearfully behind him. “The guard will be back any minute. If they catch us not working the mines, we’re dead.”

The woman placed a hand on Ajay’s shoulder. He couldn’t feel it. “You have survived much, child, but you must now endure more. You must go down Durgesh’s side; Pagan’s Army keeps us separated, but we know there’s only one way out. Stay out of sight; you won’t survive an onslaught.”

The man took off his scarf, wrapping it around Ajay’s neck. He couldn’t feel it. “Stay warm, yar, or the guards will be the least of your worries.”

The other woman clasped a knife into his hand; small, barely fit to clean one’s fingernails. “Remember us,” she whispered, “if you get out. When you get out.”

The old woman approached him. She kissed his forehead, wiping the exhausted tears from his cheeks before they froze.

“Godspeed, Son of Ishwari,” she said, bowing.

They disappeared into the white.

Ajay closed his eyes. 

He got up.

He made it. He didn’t know how he made it, bleeding out from a stab wound in his side, nursing a broken arm, suffering from hypothermia. He hadn’t been human. Prowling in the shadows like a tiger, Ajay stabbed a heavy in the neck, stripping him of his winter coat and knives and single grenade. He moved, checkpoint to checkpoint, crawling on the ice, until the belltower came into view.

He lobbed his grenade, lighting up the armory like the fucking Fourth of July and inciting chaos in the soldiers. 

He staggered to the gate.

He made it.

Something in the distance?

Oh. 

It was so white.

Cold.

Haze.

Pain.

Oh, Ajay.

He felt spiders, black wet spiders, crawling across his skin, his face, his eyes. They pricked his arm, sucking his lifeblood. I’m back, he thought in despair. I never left. I’m going to die here. He tasted bile, sick and sour, in his throat. I have to get out.

Someone was holding him down, warm hands burning through his flesh. 

Please, he begged.

Pain.

His arm was on fire – someone was holding him down, why would they hurt him like this, what did he do?

Shh, the man soothed. You’re doing so well, Ajay.

Something cool covered his brow. He screamed as his shoulder popped back into place; his arm throbbed to the heartbeat. 

Sleep now, Ajay. The dreamwalker was there, holding his hand.

He slept.

Ajay woke to the crumbling walls of his father’s house. Everything hurt. His back, his arms, eyes, teeth.

Ajay tried to move—NNGH, bad idea. He gritted his teeth – breathe in, breathe out – and took a second look.

Sabal.

Sabal was there, kneeling at his bedside, back curved over Ajay’s legs in supplication. He was muttering into his fingers. Prayer beads dangled from his hands, each one twisted for each prayer.

Ajay felt tears sting his eyes. It was so good to see him. “Sabal,” he rasped, unsure if this was real.

The man paused, tilting his head away from Ajay for a long moment, body trembling. He looked at Ajay’s broken body and dropped the beads in astonishment.

“Ajay,” he breathed, and enveloped him in such warmth Ajay wanted to cry. “Gods be good, Ajay,” he whispered into his hair, holding him as though Ajay was the most precious thing on earth. 

“Is – iz’is real?” Ajay asked. Sabal crumpled, face streaked in tears.

“Yes, brother,” Sabal whispered, kissing his forehead. “Yes, this is real.”

They held each other for a long moment. Ajay, finally able to breathe, was softly slipping back into the folds of unconsciousness. He thought he could hear the bells of paradise ringing.

It took him another three days before he could walk. Not that he didn’t try; Henna was there, threatening him back into bed and radioing Banhi to yell at Ajay when he made it down the ladder. When asked where Sabal was, Henna looked kindly at him. “He stayed by your side for five days, Ajay,” she said. “He’s the leader of a resistance.”

Five days?

He kept seeing Yuma, flinched every time he saw the pink garlands waving in the never-ending breeze outside. Henna never said anything when his guard slipped and she saw him shake, but she forced another mouthful of rice into his mouth and said, quietly, “You must eat, Ajay.”

He didn’t want to eat.

He needed something to do. Ajay caught himself picking at his cuticles, distracted by the blood (red, not pink, but it stained pink). 

The ninth day, when he was sick of looking at the same spectacular view and being babied every step he took, Ajay’d had enough. He waited for Henna’s breathing to even out in the room below before creeping out the window, gingerly keeping his arm tight against his torso to avoid jostling it. He wasn’t a child; he could make himself useful against these – fucking monsters. He had to do something before he lost his goddamn mind.

Ajay landed soundlessly on the pads of his feet, catlike. The Golden Path caretaker snored on the rickety old chair stationed outside his house; there was no one else guarding him. He was home-free. And even luckier than that, the moon hung fat and full; easy to see this night. 

Ajay made it to the steps that hugged the mountainside before Sabal intercepted him, eyes furious and green in the dark. “What,” he said lowly, “do you think you are doing?”

The sight of Sabal lurched something in Ajay's chest, but he smothered the feeling in favor of irritation. “I’m not a child,” Ajay said.

“Then stop acting like one,” Sabal hissed, backing Ajay into the cliffside. “You almost died, Ajay. Nobody knew where you were, nobody’d heard from you in days, we thought we’d lost you—”

He scoffed, “Yeah, but I didn’t—”

“You almost died!” Sabal snarled, furious, crowding into his space. Ajay had never seen him like this, trembling, eyes bright, and he took a moment to breathe and quiet his anger. “A hundred times over, you almost died. You should’ve suffocated, frozen to death, fallen, been killed by Yuma’s guards – any number of things should have killed you. But you didn’t. By some miracle, you escaped a dungeon no one has ever left alive.”

Ajay said nothing.

Sabal sighed, taking a step back, placing his hands on his hips, and bending under the pressure. When was the last time he’d slept? Ajay wondered. Why – why is he here? Wasn't he the general of a resistance army?

“Ajay,” Sabal said. “You can’t,” and here he looked away. “You cannot do this to me, not again.” His gaze pierced Ajay, flaying open his soul. “I cannot lose you, Ajay. After everything I have endured - I could not bear it.”

Ajay swallowed thickly. “I – I’m sorry,” he said softly.

“No,” Sabal leaned into his space, brushing a hand through his hair. “You never need to apologize to me, Ajay Ghale. Just know that – we are your family. We love you.” He pet his hair. “You came back to us,” he said with wonder, voice a low rumble under the chimes of the dead prayer tree.

Abruptly, Sabal released him. “Now go back to bed,” he said, and followed him to ensure he was tucked in. 

Okay so here are some bad notes and I just, will probably never finish this thing, but:

OMG CREATION MYTH YO:

Ajay learns his ma was a goddess

Making him a demi-god because tarun mataras, while godly, are not supposed to have babies

The monk said, “Yalung sought to consume what he created, so Banashur put himself and his brother to sleep.”  He rose to lift his face to the night sky.  “He saved the world in a dream that Yalung wakes to destroy every thousand years until Banashur recomposes himself and begins the cosmic dream again.”

Gopal blinked drunk eyes at the holy man.  “Forgive me, sādhu, but my religious history’s a bit,” he made a face.  “Uh, what…?”

“Ajay Ghale. You are the son of Ishwari, the previous Tarun Matara,” the sādhu continued, which – what?!  “In your veins runs the blood of the gods.  Some say we are not dreams of the gods, but the gods are the dreams of men.”

Sabal was staring at him.  Everyone was staring at him.

AND THEN PORN:

Sabal stared at him, calm. “I wish to make love to you.”

Ajay’s brain bluescreened. Holy – what the – why? Now??

“But – but we’re men,” Ajay fumbled for excuses.

“Yes,” Sabal said roughly, stepping forward, not crowding Ajay, not even touching him, but making his heartrate soar. “Is it wrong to seek pleasure in your body, Ajay?” he said quietly. Sabal was always most dangerous when quiet.

“No, but—”

“My religion is not defined by its bigots,” Sabal said softly. He cupped Ajay’s cheek.“It is a simple question. Do you want this?”

Turns out yep, Ajay’s down for the dick

Sabal’s cock was thick, average but curved.  It shone wetly in the candlelight, heavy and warm in Ajay’s hand.  Ajay exhaled, looking up to Sabal’s glittering green eyes.  He nodded; he was ready.

“I’m going to prepare you, Ajay,” Sabal said, mouth blistering on Ajay’s.  Their lips tugged at each other with every word, and Ajay shuddered. 

Sabal began kissing his way down Ajay’s body, worshipping it.  He licked a path down his chest, blowing cooly on it to make Ajay shiver, and fondled the buds on his nipples as he mouthed at the burn scarring on his thigh.  Trying to keep his breathing steady, Ajay focused on the ceiling, feeling the anticipation pool in his belly.  He felt Sabal grip the opposite knee, tracing the body’s natural lines up to the space between his legs.  Ajay swallowed, and let his legs fall apart.

Sabal stopped, sitting back to admire the view.  He flicked a glance at Ajay, who was quickly turning uncomfortable under the scrutiny.  He’d scrubbed his asshole for this – kind of wished he’d looked more into gay porn while internet was still readily available – but, maybe he should’ve shaved, or – how did this normally go?

“Ajay.”  He lifted his head to meet Sabal’s warm gaze.  “You are beautiful.”  He moved to tenderly kiss the knee level to his face, eyes closed.  “Thank you for this.”

Embarrassed, Ajay mumbled, “Oh, uh – anytime.”  Then his face erupted when Sabal raised a eyebrow at him.

Doot doot finger fun

“I –” Ajay was horrified at the wanton noise that escaped him.  He clamped his mouth shut around it, swallowing, gripping Sabal’s hair as the sensations overloaded his mind.

“Mm, I love that sound,” Sabal said, nosing at his ass.  He licked a broad stripe over his opening, eliciting a broken squeak from Ajay.  “Do not silence yourself, Ajay, let me hear you.”

Ajay gasped as Sabal’s tongue, fucking forked tongue, slipped past the ring of muscle and caressed his inner walls.  The feeling – incredible, what, oh, he was making these hot little moans as Sabal matched his tongue-fucking to the strokes on Ajay’s cock.

It was over so suddenly and too soon. He must’ve whined or something equally embarrassing because Sabal’s deep chuckle rumbled through his body. He kissed Ajay’s ass, scruff scraping places that had never experienced beard burn, and said, “Patience, Ajay.”

Sabal uncapped the bottle of oil, pouring a decent amount into his hands to warm it before gently smoothing a finger over Ajay’s opening, which was already sopping wet.

Ajay found himself biting his wrist in attempts to silence the noises that he couldn’t control.  How – mm, how had he not known about this?  He’d been a pretty frisky guy in the army, but it had never been like this.  Sabal slipped past the outer ring and stroked inside; Ajay whined softly because it was almost too much, it was electric, it—

A hand covered his own, the one he was shoving in his mouth. Sabal, finger still firmly inside him, curved his other oily hand around Ajay’s, gently removing it from his mouth.  “I want to hear you,” he growled.

Ajay couldn’t, though; he bit his lip to muffle the quaking of his body because – whatever he was doing was so good—

“You’re ready,” Sabal said, pleased. He removed his fingers with a wet sound and Ajay felt like dying because he’d never been this exposed in his life, but then Sabal cupped his cheek, looking him in the eyes.  “Tell me if you’re uncomfortable at any time,” Sabal said.  “I do not wish to hurt you, Ajay.”

“O-okay,” Ajay croaked, and then Sabal’s fat cock popped into his body and Ajay’s brain whited out.

It – it wasn’t good.

Ajay sucked in air through his gritted teeth, determined to mute his discomfort.  Sex was supposed to feel good – and it had with those goddamn fingers, so… maybe this part was meant for just Sabal, who couldn’t quite keep his silence.  Ajay heard stifled little mm’s and oh’s in his ear as Sabal’s dick slipped deeper into himself.  It – it didn’t hurt, not really, not like bullets or a pistol-whip (maybe his sense of pain had been a bit warped from the warzone), but it definitely wasn’t good.  

Ajay bit his lip when Sabal’s next (slow, so slow, so careful) thrust burned.  He curled his fingers into the wool blankets and willed the adrenaline shivers to calm down, taking deep breaths and smelling sex and gunpowder in the heated room.

He was going to make this good.  Ajay lowered his forehead to be supplicant on the bed, squeezing his fists and breathing through the sting.  Sabal needed this, he deserved this, Ajay – Ajay’s the one who fucking asked for this—

“Ajay?” Sabal’s quietly rasped.  His warm hand pressed gently on Ajay’s lower back.

He hadn’t noticed Sabal had stopped moving.

Ajay licked his dry lips, tasting blood.  “I – why’d you stop?”

“Because you’re strung tight as a bowstring,” Sabal said.  The hand rubbed against Ajay’s sweat-slicked skin.  “Are you alright?”  The hand stopped.  “Am I hurting you?” Sabal asked, dangerously quiet. 

Ajay fidgeted, mindful of the generous cock still resting in his ass.  It wasn’t so bad when Sabal wasn’t moving, but…

“Ajay,” Sabal said shortly.  “Answer me.”

“I’m – no, I’m okay,” Ajay said, shoulders tight and eyes forward (at the wall).  “Just keep going.”

Sabal abruptly pulled away, gently extracting himself from Ajay with a wet slurp.  Ajay, confused and angry, propped himself on an elbow and began to reprimand Sabal with a “Hey!” when he was pinned by the man, pure muscle melding Ajay’s limber but lighter body to the bed.

Sabal’s eyes were angry.  He firmly gripped Ajay’s wrists and held them above his head.  “I hurt you, didn’t I?”  Ajay looked away.  “I never want to cause you pain, Ajay, never, and you didn’t –”

Sabal huffed out a breath through his nose, composing himself.  “Why did you lie to me?” he asked.

Ajay stuttered, eyes on the ceiling, the floor, “I – I wasn’t lying, I just—”

Sabal tightened his grip on Ajay’s wrists as a warning.  “You’re lying to me again,” he said.  “You said you’ve never lain with a man but you wanted to; was that untrue as well?  I thought I had prepared you enough, to fully give you all the pleasure you deserve and more, but…” Sabal’s grip slackened, released his wrists.  Ajay couldn’t meet his eyes, staring at the candles that Sabal had borrowed from a temple’s supply, robbed a goddess to bang an American sham. His heart raced, he fucked it up, he fucked up, he had one thing he could do for this glorious man and he fucked it up—

“Look at me, Ajay.”

Ajay swallowed, keeping his eyes fixed on the flickering lights.  He felt gentle fingers on his chin, gently moving his head to face Sabal’s worried eyes.  “Did you consent to this out of some kind of obligation?”

What?

“What?” Ajay said.  “No!”

Weary lines creased Sabal’s face.  He moved away, separating himself.  Ajay thought, he doesn’t believe me.

“You are not in thrall to me, Ajay Ghale,” Sabal said, rising from the bed.  His warm skin peeled away from Ajay’s; their sweat had dried during the disaster.  “I am sorry I made you feel this way.”

“Sabal,” Ajay said, trying to leap from the bed but, being hindered by an obvious twinge in his backside, settled for a sitting position.  “Damn it, no, that’s not why I wanted to have sex with—why would you even think that?” Ajay asked, feeling exhausted and upset with himself and the oily trickle down his thighs only served as an unpleasant reminder to his failure.

“Why else would you agree to something that obviously discomforts you?” Sabal shot back.  But he’d stopped at the bedside, by the candles.  Ajay could reach out and touch him if he tried.

“Look, I don’t – I don’t know what this is supposed to feel like,” Ajay admitted, “I’ve never done it with another guy, okay, I didn’t know what to expect.”

“You said as much; there is no shame in ignorance, Ajay.”  Sabal turned back to face him with a guarded expression, the same he wore around Amita.  “But why did you not say anything when you were in pain?” His skin glowed amber in the candlelight, highlighting the scars and dips in muscle and an extremely erect cock.

Ajay bit his bruised lip.  “I just – I wanted it to be good for you. I figured it’d get better and I just needed to adjust, or something.” He looked away.  “It didn’t hurt that much…”

Sabal’s expression crumpled.  “Oh, Ajay.”  He moved to kneel on the bed beside Ajay, knees pressing valleys into the mattress, and kissed him. 

“I am ashamed that I did not notice,” he said, hands coasting up Ajay’s sides and down to cup the grooves in his hips, eyes resting on Ajay’s chest.  “You should never suffer in silence for my gratification, priyā.”

Ajay’s hands found themselves tentatively touching Sabal’s ribs, counting them.  Too thin, they were all too thin in this country.  “No, it was good.  The first parts,” Ajay amended before Sabal’s eyes could cut into him, “the – the um, the – everything before…”  His face felt like it was on fire.

Sabal’s smile, though slow, was curved suggestively.  His fingers (long, bad fingers) traced the line where thigh met torso.  “When I touched you?”

Ajay, face flaming, nodded.  “Y-yeah.”

“But when I entered you,” Sabal said slowly, “you experienced pain.”

“… Yeah.”

Sabal kissed the skin over Ajay’s heart.  “Thank you for being honest.  I will not engage in copulation that forces pain upon your body, Ajay.  We will stop.”

“But I’m all—” Ajay gestured to his lower half, open and wet and waiting.  He sighed.  “Can we just try it one more time?”

Sabal’s eyes were like needles.  “You will tell me when it is too much.” 

Ajay met his gaze.  “Yeah. I will.”

Sabal considered him.  “Very well.”

It was like someone had snapped their fingers.  Sabal’s hands went from soothing to scorching as they gripped Ajay’s hips and pinned him to the bed, his tongue licking into his mouth, his body pressing him into the mattress.  Oh.

If Ajay was being honest, he liked Sabal’s lip service best; he’d never been kissed like that, like he was the pocket of air in a sunken cavern, like he was the grip above a bottomless fall.  His stubble scratched Ajay’s lips, lighting firecrackers in its wake, and a moan escaped Ajay’s captive mouth.

Sabal slid his hands down lower to stroke his cock, which had valiantly tried to stir back to standing attention at the proceedings.  Sabal’s own girth was hanging, hot and heavy, lightly pressing against his perineum which yeah, felt pretty nice.  He was no teenager, though, and despite Sabal’s encouraging assumption about his refractory period, Ajay gently put a hand over his and stopped the stroking.  “I’m okay,” he said.  “I want to feel good with you.”

His legs opened as Sabal’s warm and familiar weight settled between them.  Sabal leaned back, their lips separating with a wet sound, to study him.  Ajay lay panting, puzzled.  “What?” he asked.

Sabal said nothing, just looked at him for a long moment.  Then, “You are the most dazzling creature I have ever known,” Sabal said sincerely.  “Son of Ishwari.”

Ajay felt a surge of ice-cold shock in his chest that left his heart aching in the best way as his mouth fell open.  Eyes wide, he asked, “What – when did you—”

Sabal kissed him, as gentle and sweet as Ajay had ever felt.  “You asked me to.”

He’d asked him to not call him son of Mohan, yeah.  Out of the corner of his mouth, after an argument about troop placement and Ajay’s services better needed getting rest, not in the field, about twenty feet from Sabal, yeah he’d sort of asked him. 

Ajay responded by wrapping his arms around Sabal’s neck and thoroughly kissing the man back.

“C’mon, general, fuck me,” he whispered into the shell of his commander’s ear.  “I’m ready.”

“Kyra,” Sabal swore.  He moved, powerful thighs spreading Ajay’s knees wide, exposing him, cockhead pressed lightly against Ajay’s ass. Ajay felt it yield, felt his body opening for him.  He breathed; he could do this, he could do it this time, he—

“Ajay.”  He looked up.

Sabal’s green eyes, liquid in the candlelight, held his captive. 

“Tell me,” he said, unblinking.

Ajay swallowed.  “Okay.”

Satisfied, Sabal pressed in slowly, like the first time.  Ajay willed himself to stay relaxed, breathing deeply.  His eyes never left Sabal’s, who was balanced above Ajay with arms like pillars bracketing Ajay’s head.  The burning heat of Sabal’s cock was familiar, opening his body like a key.

The stretch stung, but it was an expected pain.  Even so, Ajay breathed out, “wait a sec,” and Sabal paused as Ajay grit his teeth – he couldn’t hide his expressions anymore, damn it – and waited for a signal.  Ajay swallowed, breathed, and felt his body give way, felt Sabal’s lips warm on his cheek as he whispered, “okay,” felt the achingly hot flesh move deep inside him.  Ajay breathed until Sabal’s thighs meet his own as he fully sheathed himself, balls a heavy weight on his ass. 

Ajay breathed, adjusting.  He met Sabal’s eyes, blinking down at him, arms belying the physicality of holding himself back, and nodded, hands moving to grip Sabal’s immutable wrists.  His fingers found the smooth prayer beads that never left Sabal and he twirled them, idly counting, feeling at peace.

Sabal breathed deeply, watching him, before slowly fucking into Ajay.

As he felt Sabal’s cock slide back into him, warm and thick, Ajay shuddered with the enormity of it all.  He was having consensual gay sex.  With Sabal.  In the middle of a civil war.  Sabal’s eyes closed as he reseated himself with a small grunt, biting his lip.  A thick chest brushed against Ajay’s as they breathed, and Ajay thought, okay, yeah.  It wasn’t earth-shattering, but it didn’t hurt, felt pretty nice with the whole intimate connection thing, Sabal’s gaze was already sort of an eye-fuck, he could totally get used to this—

Sabal’s cockhead pressed against something inside Ajay’s body, and he writhed in the blitz of pleasure, gasping.

Sabal froze, solid as a rock, and began to pull away again.  “Ajay, did I—”

Ajay arched his back to keep that fabulous dick deep inside, knuckles white around Sabal’s wrists.  “Don’t you dare,” he snarled, legs wrapping around Sabal’s waist.  “Don’t you fucking—Oh my god, right there Sabal, please, right there.”

Sabal’s eyes turned sharp, predatory as he prowled back over Ajay’s body, marrying their skin and cradling Ajay’s head with his warm hands.  He fucked his hips into Ajay’s, rolling them in a tight circle, and Ajay moaned like a pornstar.

Sabal paused, lips hovered over Ajay’s. “As you wish, Ajay Ghale,” he muttered into the darkness of Ajay’s mouth, and Ajay had no more thoughts after that.

Ajay woke up the next morning, blissed.  The sun was dappling in his eyes, he had a pervasive feeling of something sticky between his legs, and a thick arm was swung heavy across his chest.  Sabal’s scruff tickled the back of his neck as the man breathed, kissing the skin there on every exhale.  Mmn.

Ajay, content as a cat, moved to stretch but was viciously reminded of the previous night’s activities when a twang sounded up his backside.

Oh my god.

Gay sex.  Terrorist leader. 

Bhadra had been right, damnit.

Son of Ishwari. 

Ajay cut a glance to his mother’s urn, still retaining a remarkable shine for all the blood it had seen.  He wondered if his mom would have liked Sabal.  He wondered if she’d have cared that he was batting for the home team.  (He wondered if she’d had a choice in either of her romantic entanglements).

The hand resting on his chest moved, lightly scratching fingernails across his clavicle which set off a sparkling zing! down his nerve endings.  Sabal stretched his body forward into Ajay’s, mouthing at the junction of his neck and pushing a very interested third party between Ajay’s cheeks.

“Good morning,” Sabal rumbled, other arm sneaking under Ajay.  He could feel the flex of muscle behind him. 

“Hi,” he said, turning his head to smile at the man in his bed.  Sabal’s sharp eyes peered at him from Ajay’s shoulder, which he laid a kiss onto with reverence Ajay had only seen displayed at Kyra’s altars.

“Hello,” Sabal purred. He rested his chin on crossed arms atop Ajay’s hip, the ceramic beads on his wrist clacking together, and he sleepily watched Ajay with a quirk of his lips.  Ajay took a moment to trace a black eyebrow with a finger, resting briefly over the infamous scar.  Sabal turned to kiss his palm, eyes fixed on Ajay’s.

Ajay swallowed, a bit overwhelmed. 

He cut the tension with, “So, do you want to…” and bucked his hips into Sabal’s, watching the man’s pupils dilate with a satisfied smirk. 

“You are a minx,” Sabal growled, pushing back with his bodyweight and swooping down to capture his lips.  Ajay might have mewled, just a bit, but the finesse with which Sabal sucked on his tongue was unforgivably good.  He felt his dick stir with interest despite the distant throb in his backside, and if the press of Sabal’s hips didn’t flag the general’s own enthusiasm, a pulsing heat compressed between their bodies, Ajay would eat his shoe.

But before things could proceed, Sabal retreated.  “We are needed at Banapur, brother,” he kissed a corner of his mouth in apology.

“Oh.”  Right.  Civil war.

Sabal’s eyes crinkled in the corners, laughing at him while saying nothing.  Ajay pursed his lips and lightly smacked Sabal’s (wow, built) shoulder.  “Shut up.”

“I did not say anything,” Sabal said, smiling.  He stole another kiss (his hands had moved to cup Ajay’s face, tilting his head just so, and Ajay felt the man’s nose smoothly graze his cheek, heard Sabal exhale softly as they tasted one another) before rising.  Ajay shamelessly watched the flex of his buttocks as he padded over to their pile of discarded clothing, biting his lip.

“Stop, Ajay.”  Sabal’s stern look was ruined by laugh lines.  “We have work to do.”

He felt a twinge from his ass and masked the reflexive wince as best he could, but Sabal’s piercing eyes saw it like they saw everything.  Sabal returned to him and carefully ran an assessing hand over Ajay’s side, lightly fingering the still-healing scars.  “Are you well?” he asked softly. 

Ajay nodded.  “Yeah, yeah m’fine.  You’ve just got a big dick.”

Sabal blinked at him, astonished. 

Ajay quickly pecked him on the lips.  “It’s a good thing,” he winked.

As he moved around Sabal to find pants, he heard the man mutter, “Kyra, save me.”

And that’s all I wrote; lost interest and time, I guess. I kept my notes in here – it’s basically how I would’ve written the game if I’d been in charge. So much awesome possibilities and none of them were explored. :/

Thanks for reading.  :)  Let me know what you thought! 

OTHER NOTES:

Sabal is not a good man.

Or like he is? But war makes good people do bad things (Bhadra can say that)

At this point (all 3 generals are dead? Does sabal kill Yuma?), the leaders aren’t speaking to each other.

Sabal hints that Amita needs to die to avoid another civil war. 

            This comes after he gets a report from one of amita’s officers saying that she plans to bomb Jalendu Temple.

Ajay aint cool with this.

He goes to talk to Amita, try to hash out a compromise

Ovearhears her plotting to kill Bhadra, not Sabal. 

“Ajay!” the guard blinked, fingers twitchy on the trigger.  “We – we weren’t expecting you.”

“Is this a bad time?” Ajay asked.

The guard hemmed and hawed. “Of course not; the Son of Mohan is always welcome in Commandant Amita’s camp.  Shall I announce you?”

Announce?  What was this, the English royal court? 

“Uh, no, I’m sure I can manage.”

Ajay lifted a fist to knock on the rickety old door.  May as well get this over with.

“Bhadra?  Why?  I thought you wanted Sabal.”

Ajay froze.  He crouched down to creep around the side of the hut, careful to keep Amita’s personal guard in his periphery.  Under the open window, he concentrated very, very hard on silence.

“He’s too fucking protected,” Amita swore.  Ajay could hear her pacing.  “If Sabal dies, I’m the first that will be blamed.  It’ll start the damn war we’re trying to avoid.”

“But – but why the Tarun Matara, commandant?” name asked.

“Without Bhadra, Sabal has nothing to stand on,” Amita said.  “The Tarun Matara’s destined to suffer for her people by Kyra, anyway.  I’m just,” she inhaled.  “Fulfilling her destiny.”

Ajay felt his heart plop into his shoes.

Oh my god.

Oh my god.

Ajay’s heart pounded.  He stumbled toward the tree-line, mind buzzing.  He had to get out of here, he had to warn Bhadra – fuck, he had to get her out of this godforsaken place—

“Ajay!” name shouted, frowning.  “Where are you going?  Did you meet with the Commandant?”

The door opened. “Ajay!” Amita’s eyes were like glass.  She looked at him suspiciously.  “What are you doing here?”

Think fast.  “Amita,” Ajay started with his usual greeting.  “I came to…” 

Her eyes narrowed.

“… to talk to you about heroine? Troop placements? Sabal killing her?

He goes to Bhadra.

Tell her what he heard

“I can get you out,” Ajay blurted.  Bhadra blinked wide eyes at him.  “I’m an American, I have a contact with the Indian Embassy.  I can get you out.”

Bhadra looked away, staring sadly at her country.  “I – I cannot leave my people,” she said. “Besides,” she smiled, a wisp of a curl, “Sabal would never allow it.”

“Fuck Sabal!” Ajay shouted, startling her.  He crouched down to put his hands on her shoulders.  “It’s too dangerous here for you right now.  I said leave, not exile yourself.  We can come back when this blows over.”

“They say I’m your protector, right?” She nodded hesitantly.  “So let me protect you, Bhadra.”

Ajay held his breath as Bhadra stared into the firepit, melting down the corpse from this morning’s funeral.  She’d seen so much death in her life. 

“Okay,” she whispered.

Asks the Sherpa? Asks Longinus?

Pagan Min phones in again.

“You’re leaving.”  It wasn’t a question.

“Please, Ajay.  Leave me your mother’s remains.  Let me take her to Lakshmana.”

Sabal intercepts them on the mountaintop?

“You?”  The betrayal on Sabal’s face was unendurable.  Ajay looked away.

Omg what if pagan min swoops in on a helicopter and rescues them