“You cannot fight that all by yourself. You need help.”
Every word that she had heard that day was etched in her heart. The chaos in the city and the terror running through the city could all be traced back to that day. The day that the ruggedly dressed man had come to her house.
*
She was just horrified as the huge bandicoot tore through her precious tiny garden that she had managed to keep in the urban city of Sthapan.
“These creatures come in packs, and now there is only one of them, and it is only your garden. Imagine what would happen when this one signals the others and they all come into your house after this.”
It was a lie. His words were all a lie. But she did not know it, not then. Bandicoots were generally solitary animals, and they did not form packs in the way that social animals did.
“What can I do?” Her voice shook as the bandicoot started burrowing in the fresh grass of her land.
“I can help. You have to let me.”
His silky words should have alerted her that it was a trap. But it did not. She was already panicked with the image of a hundred such creatures inside her home. How… What… What could she do then?
“Please get rid of them.” Her terrified eyes turned to the shifty dark eyes of the man. “Do whatever it takes.”
Strangely, the man paused, though the bandicoot now paused and seemed to be considering entering her house.
“Whatever it takes to do what?” He sounded deliberately calm.
“Do whatever it takes to protect this place.” She blubbered out in fear.
“Whatever?”
Was the cold smile on his face real or imagined? She had thought it was her imagination. Why would a man smile at this? Her home was going to be run over by pests. That was no laughing matter.
She squeaked angrily as, from the corner of her eyes, she thought she saw another dark furry thing coming towards her garden. Probably, this could become an epidemic. “Yes.”
*
In three weeks, the city of Sthapan lay in waste before her.
That was the way of the Babhrus. They entered with the permission of the hosts, and once they had the permission, they did not stop, not until the entire essence of the place was drained away.
Sthapan, like other cities, had that raw magical energy, that essence, that humans had not learnt to channelize. Humans lived too busy a life to even understand that essence. But Babhrus were the creatures that had been condemned for abusing the essence of their own realms. They could sense the essence like no other. The essence was not just magic. In every realm it was inextricably connected with the assets of the place - Nature itself.
Once the essence drained, so did the air and the soil, and that was naturally followed by everything else too.
Without the essence, the world could not survive. Different creatures used it differently. Many beings used it just to power their soul, but eventually all such beings were consumed by the essence by the sheer power that it offered.
Humans were different that way. Their minds could not comprehend the power that lay around them. They did not choose to see what they could not understand.
That was why there was an abundance of essence here, dragging the Babhrus, who had all but lost their essence in their own realm.
*
But the only caveat was that with all their magic, the Babhrus could not enter another realm without the permission of the hosts.
Sometimes when she was not too busy surviving or running for her life, trying to figure out the areas that were still livable, at least for the night, she wondered how the Babhrus that could change their form at will had convinced the other humans to let the Babhrus inside their home.
She had let the creatures inside her home, and she thought it was to protect it. The house that had been her home for twenty-eight years stood, dark and strong. But outwardly it looked exactly the way it had when she had lived there. But the place felt different, even from outside. That dark, foreboding air that was filling the entire city was stronger at the place she had called home. The Babhrus would never harm that place, and they had left it alone because as long as her home… her place was protected, the Babhrus could stay here.
That was what she had permitted. Her yes had permitted the Babhrus to enter her home and destroy the whole city, as long as her place, her home, was safe.
She took a deep breath, trying to calm herself because she needed her wits to survive the darkness enveloping the city. Already the city was dying… rapidly.
Probably, Sthapan would not even last to the end of the week.
React
