Maybe one last shot would do it.
Aru turned to her left. Kara hadn’t moved from her spot a dozen feet away. She was in the circle…and yet somehow out of it, too. Her trident gleamed dully.
Aru held out her hand.
Thunder rattled in the sky and rain began to fall. Aru couldn’t feel it on her skin, but she saw it plinking and sliding on the exterior of Mini’s shield. She had expected it. After all, she had summoned it.
Kara looked nervous as she walked forward and took Aru’s outstretched hand. They didn’t say a word to each other, but in those moments before the world changed, Aru considered how they were like two sides of a coin. A really,reallymagical coin, obviously. Maybe they’d both always known it, but at the wrong time. Maybe that’s why the Sleeper had wanted to keep them apart. Kara had always been the warmth and sunshine to Aru’s thunder and lightning.
The world they’d lived in was an eternal winter, a place frozen over by the bitterness of others. But winter disappears in the presence of two things: sunshine and rain. Together, Aru and Kara summoned spring….
Together, they broughtchange.
Aru and Kara threw their weapons. Mini dropped the shield and the kalash was obliterated. Without something to contain the liquid, without two palms waiting to scoop it up or a mouth ready to guzzle it, the amrita vaporized within seconds. Bright golden droplets hit the ground or dispersed into the clouds or blew away on the wind.
Nectar mixed with the rain and flowed in streams of immortality that gradually narrowed. Aru imagined it encasing the earth like a great shimmering net. Moments later, any signs of the amrita’s existence vanished completely.
Aru searched around her feet, but she could no longer see the anklet, the earring, the bangle, the claw, or the necklace. She wondered if the nectar had taken those pieces of people’s lives and whether, even now, an immortal alchemy was slowly translating them into legends…stories. Snippets of the eternal that could live forever in people’s imaginations. Somewhere, Aru heard a sigh of relief…but she didn’t know who had breathed the sound.
For the rest of her life, Aru would never be sure if it was her lightning bolt or Kara’s trident that had shattered the last bit of the pot holding the nectar of immortality. But in a way, it didn’t matter.
In the end, it was all light.
Astunned silence settled over the area.
When Aru looked up, the Nairrata soldiers had frozen in place, their heads craned to look over their shoulders as if they were amazed by what had happened. There were gaps between the troops now, and through the spaces Aru could see disbelief rippling through both the Sleeper’s forces and the Otherworld army.
Then dozens of voices spoke up, seeming to come from every direction:
“It’s gone….”
“I can feel it in the ground, in the air…” said another.
“What have they done?”
The handful of rakshasas still lingering nearby lowered their weapons and stared in wonder at the Pandavas. A few nagas’ hoods flared, their forked tongues flickering angrily. Nervous sparks of electricity flew off Vajra, and the Pandava sisters slowly moved toward one another, tightening the circle.
Aiden and Rudy broke through the crowd to join them. Baby Boo soared overhead, cawing happily. A huge grin broke over Aiden’s face when he saw the bird, and Aru was smiling, too, when a massive shadow engulfed the battlefield.
A powerful gust of air, like a helicopter landing nearby, whipped their hair and made them cower.
“Dee Dee!” yelled Mini. She pointed her Death Danda at the sky and cast a shield that stretched over the Potatoes and Baby Boo as a wave of dirt threatened to swallow them whole. Outside the crackling screen, Aru watched as weapons were blown out of outstretched hands. Rakshasas and asuras went flying. But they were not alone. Otherworld creatures also tumbled through the air, losing the weapons that they’d only clutched harder when it became clear thatno onewould receive the nectar of immortality.
Panic fluttered through Aru. Where had her mom gone? Urvashi and Hanuman appeared above them. The celestial dancer had cast an enchantment around her in the air, and Hanuman had shot up in height, closing his eyes against the wind. The gust couldn’t have lasted more than half a minute, but by the time it passed, the Potatoes and their mentors were the only ones still standing.
Almost.
Hanuman opened one hand to reveal Krithika Shah sitting on his palm.
“Mom!”
Far above them, Krithika gave a little wave, and although there were tears in her eyes, Aru knew her mother was proud of her.
“So…it is decided,” said an unfamiliar voice. “I had wondered what would happen.”
Garuda, king of the birds, landed on the ground. His huge bronze wings, Aru realized, had created that powerful gust. He appeared as he had when they’d first met him—a tanned, muscular man wearing long silk shorts and a solid-gold baseball cap. His face was covered in bright green feathers, his nose was a sharp golden beak, and his hands and feet ended in talons.
When the Potatoes were looking for the Tree of Wishes, he had almost attacked them. Rudy clearly remembered, because he quickly slithered behind Aiden and glared at Garuda—a self-declared snake-hater—from there.
