Chapter 1

Lakshmana and the Lunatic

The gun shot rang out and echoed through the halls of the Palace.

There was a thud as Pagan Min's body fell out of the chair and hit the floor.

For a split second I felt nothing. And then I was fucking glad he was dead.

He deserved to die.

"Fascist fuck." I heard myself say. But distant. Far away. As if I was on the other side of the room.

"Fascist fuck." I said again. And it sounded even farther away.

I wanted to kill him. He gave me "the choice." But I was going to do it either way. I shot and killed as many of his toadie sycophants, his local recruits, and as many of the sick Hong Kong triad fucks he brought over here. Did he really think I wasn't going to kill him?

The lunatic.

I heard that name ring again and again in my ears. I killed him. I killed so many of them. Not killing him didn't even feel possible. But really, why I killed him was because of his fucking monologue. I wish I shot him while he was behind the bar. I wish I shot him in the shoulder, so he'd drop that bottle of ancient scotch and then berate me for forcing him to drop it.

I know. He was a Fascist. He was a gangster fuck. He was a sadistic piece of shit who murdered someone with a pen. He destroyed my family. He destroyed my country. He was a lunatic. I killed him for all of those reasons, but mostly because I was suddenly listening to him monologue and now whatever thoughts he had and whatever "truth" he was going to try and give me was a bit of nervous tissue and blood splattered on the Palace floor behind him, spilling out underneath his chair. No better than the precious crab rangoon stuck somewhere in his throat.

I kind of blacked out a bit. When I came to, I realized I was sitting at the table, and there was crab rangoon in my mouth. I spat it out. In my napkin because old habits die hard, I guess.

I grabbed a candle off the table and was about to set the Palace on fire. There was no king. There never would be again, so what did Kyrat need a Palace for? To parade tourists around like it was the fucking Versailles and talk about how we murdered the old King in his fucking Hong Kong Liberace shique?

But something caught my eye. Outside the Golden Path was celebrating. I assumed it was the Golden Path. I heard shouts, horns, happy victorious screams below, coming from down by the Fortress. We had won. They had won. They should celebrate. But I felt nothing. I should celebrate with them. But I felt nothing

The glow of the fireworks caught my eye. Something was out there in the courtyard. I went through the doorway and saw that there was some kind of shrine.

Pagan Min had a shrine? He had outlawed religion in Kyrat. Not that it was a law with a lot of traction. People still mostly practiced as they wished. But he certainly got a lot of use out of it. Everyone here practiced religion, including everyone in the Royal Army. But if it was time for a purge, pull out the Anti-Religion Statute. If you found a dissident, take a picture of him visiting a temple or a shrine. If you found a woman you wanted to steal and fuck, blackmail her with a video of her circling a stupa.

Tyrants famously disobeyed their own laws. So maybe it wasn't that unusual. And religious zealots always believed their gods justified whatever they wanted. He was sure Sabal was out there somewhere talking to Kyra or Banashur or, fuck, Yalung, who was telling him how to destroy Amita.

What deity influenced Pagan Min. I almost laughed thinking Pagan Min might have been a secret Christian, maybe influenced by missionaries who invaded the Far East since the Opium Wars. Like the Kims: psychotic Christian Despots who refused their own people the opportunity to speak with their own God, and justified their own rule by sociopaths like Billy fucking Graham.

I walked out there, the light of the fireworks illuminating my path to the shrine in flashes of red and blue and green. When I arrived at the door, I placed my hand gently on the ring and pushed it open.

There was no god. No goddess. Barely any sacred symbols. The first thing I noticed was the picture of a baby girl in a pink kira set above an urn. An urn? It looked a lot like a jar used in some Himalayan ceremonies, but up close… nope it was an urn.

There, on the altar was written "LAKSHMANA MIN. 1986-1987."

It didn't hit me yet.

I looked around more. On a table below some bells was a journal. One of my father's. Shit. How… how did Pagan Min end up with one of them?

Was there something… something secret there? I flipped to one of the last pages. And right there, was my Dad's last entry:

"Ajay, know that everything I've done is for you. All I have ever wanted is for you to grow up in a safe and prosperous country, but that goal required sacrifice."

Sacrifice.

Lakshmana.

I dropped the journal.

His other entry came to my mind,

"You whore. What you've done is unforgivable. You've betrayed me."

No.

"What have you done except spread your legs?"

No, no no no...

"Your mission was simple: collect intelligence. Not sleep with the enemy. Not fuck their commander."

I fell to my knees. I threw my backpack onto the floor. I barely had control of my limbs. I just wanted this thing off of me.

"Not bear the false king a daughter. What's her name?"

Lakshmana. Her name was Lakshmana.

And then I said it out loud, "Lakshmana. Her name was Lakshmana."

I screamed. I couldn't believe it. My mother slept with Pagan Min. I had a sister. A half-sister. And she was sacrificed. By my father.

My father killed my sister.

And no one knew what happened to my father. Everyone said it was Pagan Min. But I always knew that was wrong. If it was that fucking dead Fascist, he would have paraded my father's dead body Ghaddafi-style. That shit would have been on Youtube just like Saddam.

It wasn't him. It was my mother.

My mother bore a child to Pagan. My father killed my sister. And my mother killed my father.

I left the shrine. I couldn't breathe. And I fell to sitting on a stone.

The fireworks from the Golden Path's celebration illuminated my suffering. The cheers and bursts of victory highlighted the single truth: the King was dead.

The King was dead. And so was my family.

I had enough to think about… but with my head in my hands, I thought of Noore. I thought of the way Pagan called me a lunatic. I had killed so many people. I had fought my way through the country from Banapur to the Royal Palace. I saved people from wolves and bears, and defused bombs, and challenged maniacs in an arena. But I thought of when I tried to save Noore. When I let her live and told her that that psychopath De Pleur had killed her family years ago. How she killed herself seconds later.

This was war. War destroyed my family. Before I was even old enough to speak, they were destroyed. Completely burned. Until there was nothing left. Nothing left but a lunatic… who destroyed the lives of hundreds, thousands, of other families. I don't remember the last time I cried. Probably when Tony Figgis pushed me down in third grade and when I told… Ishwari, she hit me. "Why didn't you push him back?"

I cried.

I was always a lunatic. I was raised to be that way.