The wall of the cistern was a mosaic of decay, mapped out in Kalpit's mind by the Muladhara-sight. He saw the centuries of corrosion from the brackish water on the other side, the hairline fractures spreading like veins through the ancient duracrete, the rusted bolts groaning under unimaginable pressure. It wasn't a wall; it was a dam on the verge of catastrophic failure. It only needed a final push.
Devadatta was that push.
MOVE! The command was pure, instinctual desperation.
The pearlescent ship, now free from Kali's grip, became a projectile. It didn't slow. It accelerated, its engines burning with a brilliant white light as it consumed emergency power.
Kali, still reeling from the psychic feedback of his own suppressed trauma, looked up. His eyes widened, his divine fury replaced by a flicker of pure, mortal alarm as he understood their insane trajectory. He was directly in the path of the coming deluge. He was powerful, but the raw kinetic force of an ocean funneled through a single breach was a power from an older, more primal age.
He raised a hand to form an energy shield, but he was a fraction of a second too late.
KRA-KOOM-SHATTER!
Devadatta struck the wall at its weakest point. The impact was not a simple explosion; it was the final, critical failure of a system under immense strain. The sound of tortured metal was instantly consumed by a roar that was not of man or machine, but of nature itself.
The wall dissolved.
A solid, churning wall of black, silt-filled seawater erupted into the cistern. It was the forgotten ocean, the toxic, refuse-choked waters that surrounded Dharma-Kshetra City, bursting into the city's underbelly for the first time in centuries.
The deluge slammed into Kali, extinguishing his energy aura like a candle in a hurricane. For all his god-like power, he was subject to the same laws of physics as anything else. He was swept away, tossed and turned in the maelstrom, a piece of divine flotsam in the face of an elemental force he had long since caged and forgotten.
The wave hit Devadatta a moment later. The ship, designed for atmospheric flight, was now a submarine in a tidal wave. The cockpit was plunged into a swirling vortex of black water and debris. Kalpit was thrown against his restraints, the grav-inertial dampeners overwhelmed.
<"HULL BREACH IMMINENT. STRUCTURAL FAILURE IN SECTORS 4 AND 7. EMERGENCY POWER AT 3 PERCENT.">
Devadatta's calm voice was a stark contrast to the chaos. The ship was dying around them.
"The pressure! We're too deep!" Anasuya yelled, her knuckles white as she gripped her restraints. "We're going to be crushed!"
The ship was being tumbled end over end, dragged deeper into the newly flooded under-city by the irresistible current. The emergency lights flickered and died, plunging them into absolute, claustrophobic darkness, the only sound the groaning shriek of their tormented hull.
This was it. They had escaped one death only to find another.
Kalpit, his mind reeling, forced himself to focus. Vashistha's lessons echoed once more. Dharma. Purpose.
What was Devadatta's purpose? Not to fight. Not to be a submarine. It was a steed. A vessel meant to carry him.
His connection to the ship was weak, frayed by his exhaustion and the overwhelming chaos. But it was there. He reached out with his mind, not with a command, but with a plea. Live. Get us out.
The ship responded. The last dregs of its emergency power were not routed to weapons or shields. They were routed to a single system. The primary thruster.
FWOOOOOOOOOM!
A final, desperate burst of pure power. The ship, which had been tumbling, stabilized. It stopped fighting the current. It joined it, using the torrent's own power to accelerate, aiming not for the sides, but for the only direction that mattered: Up.
They rocketed through the flooded tunnels, a silver blur in the crushing darkness. Debris scraped and slammed against their hull, but Devadatta's final burst of speed was too great.
They broke the surface.
SPLASH!
The ship shot out of the water and into a vast, open cavern lit by the perpetual twilight of the Sump. They had been washed into one of the primary drainage basins, kilometers away from the collapse. For a moment, Devadatta hovered, dripping water and trailing smoke, its engines sputtering.
<"Emergency power... depleted. System shutdown... imminent.">
With a final, protesting groan, the engines died. The ship fell the last twenty meters, crashing into a pile of refuse and scrap metal on the basin's shore with a jarring, final CRUNCH.
The canopy, its locking mechanism fried, hissed and sparked, then fell away. The scent of salt, rust, and decay flooded the cockpit.
They were alive. They were free.
Kalpit's connection to Devadatta went silent. The living presence he had felt within the machine was gone, dormant. He placed a hand on the smooth, dark control panel, a pang of genuine loss hitting him. He had known it for less than an hour, but it had saved his life three times. It had felt like a part of him.
"We need to get out," Anasuya said, unbuckling her restraints and scrambling out of the wrecked cockpit. "The entire Sump is going to be on high alert. Every Enforcer, every drone, will be hunting for us."
Kalpit pulled himself from the seat, his body a symphony of pain. He looked back at the dead ship, half-buried in junk. "We can't just leave it."
"We have to!" she insisted, her pragmatism overriding his sentimentality. "It's a dead piece of metal now. It did its job. You are the priority. You are the mission!"
He knew she was right. He turned away from the wreck and stumbled after her, his feet sinking into the grimy sand of the shore. He felt hollowed out. He had awakened three chakras, felt god-like power, and faced the master of the age. And now? He was just Kalpit again. A half-blind, bleeding scavenger, on the run in the deepest, darkest corner of the world.
He looked up. Kilometers above, through the maze of pipes and city-plates, he could see a sliver of the false, holographic sky of the upper city. It seemed a million worlds away.
They had made an enemy of a god. They had lost their ride. They were wounded, exhausted, and hunted.
The victory felt terrifyingly like a defeat.
As they slipped into the shadows of a decaying tunnel, he cast one last look back at the crash site. There, sitting atop the wreckage of Devadatta, was a figure.
He was ancient, dressed in the simple robes of a Rishi, leaning on a wooden staff. His long white beard was stirred by the cavern's foul breeze.
It was Vashistha.
He had not been in the control room. He was here, waiting for them, as if he had known exactly where they would emerge. The old sage offered a serene, knowing smile that spoke of impossibilities made real.
"The steed is wounded. The Rider is weary," Vashistha's calm voice echoed across the basin, cutting through the gloom. "The first lesson is over. But the school of war, my young Kalki, is now officially in session."