That made sense. Unni Ehtral was a separate faith within the Vedanic ethos. They did not make a new deity but just worshipped one, fanatically, refusing others, fervently – the Cult of Xath, Goddess of Light and Life, and her twin, Yama, God of Darkness and Death. Yama wasn’t one of the Vedan Gods, he was one who ferried souls on his buffalo across the Lake of Afterlife for Judgement, an oft used name for curses by soldiers. But the Ehtrals raised Yama to the status of a deity, a religion within a religion. And that was why the Namins never opposed it, for ultimately it was still the worship of one of their deities. Not before it was too late, anyway.

With the benefit of hindsight, Shishupal could see how the Unni Ehtral grew popular across Magadh, because it never tried to convert the ones with deep pockets, the ones who could have been obstacles on their path to domination. No, they went after the cults of the Lesser Gods. The Vedan Pantheon was formed of the Seven Gods of Fire, Earth, Water, Wind, Light, Darkness and Life. They could only be worshipped in rituals moderated by the Namins. Which was why cults worshipping other deities grew on the fringes of society. You name it, flowers, ocean, tide, winter, disease, tools, everything had a deity that could be worshipped by the poor without paying hefty costs to the Namin priests. And the Namins tolerated these lesser Gods. For these small deities were a cage for the poor, the downtrodden, a path of hope, for without them the poor would rise from their poverty and prowl into palaces, killing Kings and Princes alike. It had happened before.

And these fringe cults were those that the Unni Ehtral assimilated first, by giving them a chance to worship Xath, as long as they accepted Yama as a God too. The young who were frustrated, the ones who could not get women or coin or both, who burned at being looked down upon condescendingly by the rich Vedanic royals, these were the easy pickings the Ehtral targeted by giving them a sense of higher purpose, of empirism entwined with religion. The Ehtrals knew that resistance to a new religion was too deeply rooted in the elders of a cult, in the disgruntled priestesses and priests who would lose power in the face of a new God. So, the Ehtrals had them assassinated, and worked through the young to spread their web. By the time the rich liberals of Vedanism knew it, their servants, their horse groomers, their chamberlains, their guards, had all turned to the Ehtral. Even joking about the Ehtral became fraught with dangerous consequences.

‘You are right, Mayasur,’ Shishupal nodded gravely. ‘The followers of the Ehtral grew not through the lure of power, but purpose, a far more potent poison. Even when it came to coin, the Ehtral priests grew filthy rich. They might not have had royal patronage but only a fool could doubt the power of tiny contributions from each devotee. And this was when reality finally dawned on the Magadhan royals, at least the ones who had resisted the tyranny of a God that revelled in sacrifices. We were few. They were many.’