A Danav By Derailment Of Destiny (4)

Chetas stepped under the shade of a tree as he waited for Rava to place the fruits and vegetables in his house, calm his drunken father down and wash himself up.

Rava did everything in a slow manner, hopping on his one giant leg, picking things up and doing everything one at a time with his only arm. Chetas wondered how much Rava could see from that hole in the earthen pot covering his head. More than that, he wondered how he could wear the pot in this heat.

After some time, Rava hobbled over to him and joined Chetas under the shade of a tree. "Sorry for the wait," Rava said, his voice strong yet gentle. He handed Chetas a copper glass half filled with water. "So, you said you're Chetas and that you wanted to talk to me?"

"Yes, I did," Chetas said, angling his head to let the stream of water fall into his mouth without letting the glass touch his lips, "Thank you." He handed the glass back to Rava, the water cooling his insides for a short moment.

"What did you want to talk about?"

Chetas stared at the single circular opening in the middle of the pot. A brown eye was staring back at him. Should he tell Rava who Chetas really was? Rava glanced down at the blades hanging on Chetas' waist. Maybe he had already figured out who Chetas really was. Question was–who, or what, was Rava?

"About you. Who you are."

"I'm… Rava?" he said, his voice a bit unsure of what Chetas was asking about.

"You and I both know that's not what I was asking for," Chetas said, leaning himself on the tree trunk and letting his hand rest on the hilt. Maybe that helps you with the answer.

Rava glanced at Chetas' hand warily and remained silent for a few minutes. Perhaps finding the words to explain things in a better way, he began speaking again. "I don't know. I wish to believe I'm a human, like you, like Janas, like Priti. But some days, when I look at myself, it just seems like some childish wish that's never going to come true."

"Can you show me?" Chetas asked, pointing at the face beneath the colourful pot.

With hesitation, Rava nodded and proceeded to remove the pot. Description of his client entered his mind and those ramblings matched reality.

Except the fangs were not really fangs, just normal straight white teeth without an upper lip to cover them, the pointed ear was really just one long ear while its counterpart was missing. The nose was small and had just one nostril. And the eye, while it was true it was just one and in the middle, while it was true it was big and red lines creeped from the corners towards the middle; it was not true that it was filled with fire and wrath. If anything, at that moment, it showed the expression of fear and insecurity.

Chetas searched his mind, his memory for any record of Danav that resembled Rava. Even a slightest bit. But no such information popped up. What is he? Chetas kept coming to that puzzling question. Was it really some Danav that he and other Amalung somehow don't know about? Or was he just what Chetas was. A human. A crippled one, sure, but still, a human.

Another explanation, a theory, snaked its way in his mind.

"Your pita, he mentioned something about a curse. Do you know anything about that?" Chetas asked, startling Rava who probably expected to be cut down as soon as he removed his helmet.

"… Yes, I do," Rava said softly, his head down. He sat down, his knee near his chest and his arm wrapped around it. Tired of standing and walking around himself, Chetas sat down too, using the tree as his back support.

"Pitaji," Rava began his tale, his eyes still cast downwards, "back in the day, he was a mercenary. He wasn't a great fighter, but he knew his way with the sword well enough to get enough protection and money collection works." It was hard to imagine that wispy old man to hold anything except a bottle of saru but Chetas didn't interrupt the story.

"One day, he was asked to collect some money from a man who owed a large sum of coins to some noble. The man had a huge fertile land with good enough income but the nobleman charged a huge interest, huge enough for the man to not pay it off completely. He asked for some time, but under the instructions of his client, Pitaji beat the man up until he agreed to give up his land as the payment.

"The man was stubborn and refused to give it up. So Pitaji used more force. He poked his one eye out, broke his teeth and jaw, cut one of his arms off and broke his leg beyond recovery," Rava paused, looking back at his home, at where his father passed out in the darkness. Chetas wondered what Rava thought of his father.

"Ultimately, even the man's will was broken. He agreed to give up the land in exchange for his life. What the nobleman and Pitaji failed to realise was the man had an older brother. A Rishi."

Chetas shook his head. Ofcourse a Rishi was involved. The mention of curse should've made him realise that one of them would be involved. It also meant that this was out of Chetas' ability.

"Seeing the state of his brother, in his rage, the rishi placed a curse upon my pitaji. If and when a child is birthed by my pitaji, that child would have half of its body missing. Just like his brother, that child would feel the pain of losing half its body, half its strength."

Lose half of its body… Chetas thought, looking at the man sitting in front of him.

"And? What's that got to do with your pita not being able to kill you?" Chetas asked, earning a flinch from Rava. He still did not dare to look up. Chetas cussed himself for not asking the question in a better way. But then again, was there a good way of asking such a question?

"If pitaji tries to kill me or tries to give birth to more children, the moment that deed is done, he would face death too," Rava said in a hushed tone.

So he let his son live out of his own mortal fear rather than love. Chetas scoffed.

His work had him be involved with a lot of monsters, different sorts of them, some relatively harmless and some dangerous enough to swallow the whole kingdom in one night. But this made him wonder, what separated Danav from humans?

In front of him was a man with the appearance of Danav but the heart of a human, and in the darkness was a human figure passed out from his own incompetence bearing inside him the heart of a Danav.