A group of five kirtimukhas who were working on a particular section of the dome managed to make a thin crack in it. Overjoyed, they stepped up the force and attacked the area repeatedly until just enough of the glass-like film broke off.

One eager kirtimukha tried to squeeze in. However, as soon as he stuck his head inside, Prithvi fired her loaded bow and the beast fell away, outside the dome. The rest of the kirtimukhas swooped into the gap he left and banded together to keep chipping away at it.

Their patient work was rewarded—a large fragment dissolved into nothing, allowing the beasts to begin squeezing in, one at a time. The first to enter was a particularly bulky specimen. Idhika and Fayza took charge to make sure the kirtimukha wouldn’t reach the four meditating Atmayogis.

Fayza slashed at the behemoth and tore a cut into his left leg.

‘ARGHHH!’ He bellowed and kicked Fayza in the jaw with the same leg. She flew backwards and fell beside Aman. Meanwhile, Prithvi had launched an arrow that grazed the kirtimukha’s leg. He resorted to swiping at Jagrav with a gada—the beast had grabbed it from Jagrav. Frustrated, he brought the gada down on his massive knee and broke it into two. He lifted Jagrav into the air, but just then, Prithvi’s second arrow found its mark. It caught the kirtimukha in his heart, and he fell a few steps away from Dhara in Atmayog.

Aarti, Idhika and Savitri now had to turn their attention to another, bigger kirtimukha that was trying to steal into the dome from the same gap. When he grabbed Savitri by the hair, dragging her closer, she took a moment to absorb the pain, and then spun around and jammed her spear into the kirtimukha’s eye.

But as soon as these two beasts were killed, another pair broke in. The Souls fought them valiantly, their only aim to protect the four Atmayogis sitting in their midst.

And it paid off. A few minutes later, Ujal, in the form of a brown Himalayan wolf, appeared outside. The wolf moved with great speed and bit the ankle of a kirtimukha, who tried to chase it away. Both wolf and kirtimukha disappeared into the darkness surrounding the hemisphere.

He never returned. Only the wolf did, and it started searching for yet another ankle to bite.

Not long after that, a huge black bear charged into the scrum of kirtimukhas still outside the dome and, together with the wolf, took on three of them. Dhara and Ujal, bear and wolf, fought side by side.

Back in the dome, without his gada, Jagrav came up with a plan. ‘I’ll keep trying to distract them while you take a shot. Just aim away from my head,’ Jagrav told Prithvi. He ran to the kirtimukha and swept at his leg. The beast fumbled, extending his arms and exposing his chest momentarily, and before he could stabilize himself one of Prithvi’s arrows caught him in the belly.