It’s
been 4 days since I’ve eaten, Vali said to himself. 16 since I’ve seen a living creature. 22 since I’ve killed anything.
He paused his stride in thought, trying to remember. It’s been 84 days since I’ve seen that worthless cretin Mayavi… and 835
days in the netherworld. No. 836. He resumed his stride.
Vali hated
the silence of the netherworld. Very few things lived here, and very few of
those inhabitants actually made any noise. The result was a world of darkness
and silence. In Kiskinda, silence was a welcome escape from the chaos of ruling
a kingdom. But here, it was whole, enveloping, strangling. The world was
silent, and very rarely was that silence broken.
The
darkness was just as bad. Vali’s eyes took months to adjust to the piercing
darkness of the netherworld, but even after, he could barely see more than 4 or
5 feet in any direction. The demons had been easy to track at first; no matter
where they went, they made a ruckus, and lit fires so they would feel at home.
But the remaining ones had learned from their weaker counterparts. They adapted
to live in the netherworld, the way its normal inhabitants had.
Vali wasn’t
really sure what lived down here. The netherworld was not a place explored by
many. Vali was the first of his kind to brave the darkness. But then, Vali wasn’t
really here to explore - he was here to
hunt.
More than 2
years ago, a great demon strolled into the kingdom of Kiskinda where Vali ruled
benevolently. He was a gigantic beast, almost as tall as the trees of the
jungle he walked in. His horns were longer than a full-grown man and curled
hideously, and his teeth stuck out of his mouth like knives. There was fire in
his eyes and in his breath, and in his many hands he held cursed black weapons,
stained with blood long ago. Tremors could be felt a mile away any time his
feet touched the ground.
As the
demon walked into the jungle, he cut and slashed everything in his path,
screaming “VALI YOU PATHETIC APE! COME FACE ME, COWARD!” His path left a wake
of ruin and flames, and all the citizens of Kiskinda fled in terror.
But when that pitiful demon saw me, he was
terrified. “I AM MAYAVI,” the demon had screamed, “AND I WILL BE YOUR DOOM.”
But when Vali dropped from the treetops, the demon took one look at him and
fled. The ground didn’t tremble when he
ran, Vali thought to himself. It
trembled when he stomped to, but not when he ran.
For all his
bulk and gigantic swords, Mayavi ran fast. Vali had chased him, and with every
step, Vali had gained on him, but never before had anyone been able to evade
Vali for as long as that demon had. Just as the demon was within arm’s reach, he
turned and sprinted straight into The World’s End.
No one had
plunged into that wretched tunnel and returned to see the light of day, but Vali
was no ordinary monkey. Vali was the strongest creature in the Universe; Shiva
had seen to that. He waited at the mouth of the cave only long enough for his
brother, Sugreeva, to catch up to him. “Watch the kingdom while I’m gone; I won’t
be long.” That was all he said before he sprinted right after the demon.
What Vali
didn’t expect was the small army of demons Mayavi had gathered beforehand. They
had all hidden and laid in wait in the netherworld for Mayavi, the only demon fast
enough to make it back to the tunnel, to bring the ape. When Vali finally
caught Mayavi, he found himself surrounded by glowing red eyes, hungry for his
blood.
I miss those first few days,
Vali thought to himself, when the demons
actually came to me. Chasing them isn’t
half as fun as fighting them. It was the best fight Vali had ever had. 3
days of killing demons, with no time for sleep or food, and they never laid a
scratch on his skin. It was the third day when they gave up the attack and
scattered. Vali watched them run; they scurried like ants under his foot. He
killed many of the slow ones that day, but the one he really wanted was Mayavi.
Vali had killed any demon he found down here, and he was sure many of them had
died on their own, but the only demon he pursued was the one who challenged him
in the first place. Bait. That’s all he
was. And I’ll be sure to remind him of it when I find him.
Vali had tracked Mayavi down a
number of weeks ago, but some of his demons had remained loyal to him. Three of
them had blocked Vali’s way, only for a second, but it was enough time for
Mayavi to escape from view. But the next
time I find him, he won’t have any more distractions to throw at me.
Vali’s
stomach growled. Hunger was not an adversary that Vali could beat with his
fists. Vali had lived off of the blind insects that lived down here; most of
them were bigger than an elephant, but Vali had no problem with that. Keeps me fed longer.
His
thoughts were interrupted by a sound. It was faint, but recognizable – the
subtle crunching of feeding. Vali halted in an instant. Finally, something to eat. Vali crawled on all fours, no more than
a few inches each second, still unable to see his target. As he got closer, the
smell of blood grew stronger, and the outline in the dark grew clearer. Just
when Vali got a clear view his prey, its head turned, and two flaming red eyes
looked into his own.
“Mayavi. I’ve
found you at last.”
Author's Note: This story is based off the character Vali in R.K. Narayan's The Ramayana. Vali is described in depth; it was said that the gods all together were not string enough to churn the oceans, but Vali pushed them aside and churned it on his own. After that, Shiva gifted him unlimited strength. In the Ramayana, a demon named Mayavi does challenge Vali and immediately run into the netherworld. However, the incident is never described; the only thing said about Vali's time in the netherworld is that he was there for 28 months and that he did in fact kill Mayavi. Thus, I wrote this just to fill in some of the gaps. As far as I know, this does not contradict anything in the Ramayana, so I didn't change anything.
Image Information
(embarrassingly, this is actually Sun Wukong from Chinese mythology. He provides a lot more badass monkey art than Vali. Source - smitefire)
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