Dawn in the wastelands was not a sunrise; it was an unveiling. The oppressive purple-black of night gave way to the sickly brown of day, revealing the jagged, broken landscape in stark detail.
Parashurama was already outside the cave, standing before a sheer cliff face that rose for hundreds of meters. He held not his divine axe, but a simple, wickedly sharp hand-axe, the kind used for felling trees.
When Kalpit and Anasuya emerged from the cave, the warrior-sage pointed to the cliff face with his chin.
"Your first lesson," he grumbled, his voice echoing in the cold morning air. "Is humility."
He gestured to the vast, empty expanse of rock. "The power you have touched so far, the Chakras, they connect you to grand cosmic forces. The earth's structure, the flow of emotion, the hearts of others. You are reaching for the stars before you have learned to stand on the ground. You have forgotten the first and most important instrument you possess."
He tapped his own chest with a thumb. "The body. Flesh and bone. It is the vessel for all your power. Yours is weak. The cage-city has made it so. Soft food, recycled air, a life without struggle. Your vessel is cracked and leaking."
"So, what? Push-ups?" Kalpit asked, a hint of his old Sump-rat sarcasm creeping in.
Parashurama's stony expression did not change. "Climb," he said, pointing up the cliff with the hand-axe.
Kalpit looked up. The cliff face was nearly vertical, a treacherous surface of sharp edges and loose scree. There were few handholds, and a single mistake meant a fatal fall to the canyon floor.
"You're insane," Anasuya blurted out, stepping forward. "He's not a professional climber. He has no gear. He'll die."
"Yes, he will," Parashurama agreed placidly. "The weak boy from the Sump will die on that rock. And if he is worthy, a warrior will be born from the failure. Climb, boy. To the first ledge, one hundred meters up."
Kalpit stared at the sheer rock. Fear, cold and rational, prickled his skin. The ghost-memories of a thousand battles did nothing to prepare him for this. This wasn't a fight against a demon with a blazing sword; it was a fight against gravity and his own physical inadequacy. It was a more honest, and somehow more terrifying, battle.
But he had said he was ready. Retreating now would be a failure worse than falling. Gritting his teeth, he walked to the base of the cliff. He found his first handhold, a narrow, sharp-edged crack in the rock, and pulled himself up.
The first ten meters were manageable. There were enough ledges and cracks to find purchase. His body, wiry and used to scrambling through the guts of the city, had a scavenger's practical strength. He started to feel a flicker of confidence.
Then the cliff face grew steeper. The handholds became smaller, more treacherous. The wind whipped around him, trying to tear him from the rock. His muscles, unused to this kind of sustained exertion, began to burn.
Twenty meters. His arms were screaming. His fingers were raw. He was acutely aware of the drop below him, the rocks waiting like hungry teeth.
Thirty meters. His confidence was gone, replaced by a desperate, straining focus. Up. Just the next hold. Up. His lungs burned. He glanced down. Anasuya was a small, anxious figure below. Parashurama hadn't moved, his arms crossed, watching with an unnervingly blank expression.
This is pointless, a voice in his head whispered. It's a suicide mission.
He felt his grip slipping. The rock tore at the skin of his fingertips. A wave of dizziness washed over him.
He was going to fall.
<"Use your gift,">> Vashistha's voice suddenly whispered in his mind. The connection was faint, a thread stretching across the wasteland. <"He is not teaching you to climb. He is teaching you to see.">>
His gift. The Muladhara. The sight that saw the bones of the world.
Clinging to the rock with one trembling hand, Kalpit closed his eyes and focused. He pushed past the pain and the fear. He reached out with his senses, not to the whole mountain, but just to the few meters of rock directly around him.
The sight flickered on. The solid stone became a transparent lattice of stress and structure. He saw the rock not as a surface, but as an interconnected system. He saw a hairline fracture leading to a hidden, solid handhold his eyes had missed. He felt, rather than saw, a protrusion of granite to his right that was deeply anchored into the cliff, a secure foothold.
The fear didn't vanish, but the panic did. He was no longer climbing blind. He had a map.
He moved with a new, strange certainty. His hand found the hidden hold. His foot locked onto the solid protrusion. He wasn't just climbing the mountain's skin anymore; he was moving with its skeleton.
Fifty meters.
Seventy meters.
The pain was immense, but it was a distant signal now. His mind was focused on the map, on the language of the stone. Each move was precise, efficient. The climb became a grim, violent dance.
He reached the first ledge.
He collapsed onto the flat rock, his body a single, throbbing ache. He lay there, gasping for breath, the wind cold on his sweat-drenched skin. He had done it. He had survived.
"Halfway," Parashurama's voice boomed from below, amplified by the canyon's acoustics.
Kalpit pushed himself up on his elbows. Halfway? He looked up. Another hundred meters of sheer cliff face rose above him. "You said to the first ledge!" he yelled down, his voice raw.
"I lied," Parashurama stated, without apology. "Rest for a moment. Then continue. The peak."
Rage, pure and hot, flared in Kalpit's chest, momentarily overwhelming his exhaustion. It was a cruel, impossible demand. But the rage was a fuel. The burning in his muscles sharpened.
Fine.
The second half of the climb was a blur of controlled agony. Kalpit relied completely on his Muladhara-sight. The world was nothing but a transparent blueprint of holds and hazards. He no longer felt like he was climbing the mountain; he felt like the mountain was allowing him to ascend. He was a part of its structure.
He reached the summit, a windswept pinnacle of rock, and collapsed, his body finally giving out. He lay there, his cheek pressed against the cold stone, unable to move.
As he drifted on the edge of consciousness, he heard the crunch of feet on gravel. He forced his eyes open.
Parashurama stood over him.
It was impossible. He hadn't climbed. There were no sounds of ascent. He had simply... arrived. The immortal warrior looked down at Kalpit, not with pity, but with a flicker of something new in his stormy eyes. The barest hint of approval.
"Good," the warrior-sage rumbled. "You stopped thinking like a scavenger, and started feeling like a rock. You have learned that the body is weak." He nudged Kalpit's side with his foot. Kalpit groaned.
"Tomorrow, you will learn that the mind is a liar."
He tossed the small hand-axe he was carrying. It landed in the rock just inches from Kalpit's head with a solid THUNK.
"Your power let you see the mountain's weakness," Parashurama said, turning to look out over the vast, dead expanse of the wastelands. "But what happens when your opponent has no weakness? What happens when your opponent is a storm? Or an idea?"
He gestured with his chin to the axe embedded in the rock.
"At the base of the cliff is a dead Kraya tree. Its wood is as hard as iron. Its roots are as deep as your despair. Before the sun sets tomorrow, you will bring me enough firewood for a week. That is your task."
Kalpit stared at the small, inadequate hand-axe. He looked down the impossible height he had just climbed. Chop down a tree as hard as iron with a tiny axe and then somehow haul the wood back up a two-hundred-meter cliff?
"That's..." he started, the word 'impossible' dying on his lips.
Parashurama had already turned away, seemingly preparing to descend.
"Yes," the immortal warrior said, not looking back. "It is."