Hayden
The shock of cold water splashed onto my face, waking me up with a start.
I spurred and heaved with a closed mouth, my nerves jittering as if convulsed with a bolt of electricity. Water dripped down my brow, and my shirt soared wet. Taking deep breaths helped me regain my consciousness, yet everything around me was still black. I pressed my eyes shut and opened them again. Vision slowly adjusted to the gloomy, ambient, reddish glow emanating from the thin line across the horizon. Blinking through the slight pain in my head, I realized that I was in a barren wasteland somewhere in the middle of the thick snow forest. Leaves and branches ominously danced with the unheard noise in the fresh flurry of snow and slush.
Creatures screeched, flying in groups high above in the air, and that flooded my senses to full alert.
A prickling sensation crept up my arms. My hands were pulled up and shackled to the thick branch of the tree. I was hanging precariously, my legs barely straight and touching the ground. I applied pressure, wanting to burn the rope and set myself free. My heart began to thump. Nothing emerged out of my hands, not even a spark. I concentrated more having my teeth gritted. Nothing. The thumping of my heart grew faster and I gasped inwardly. My pocket was deprived of the stone. What about my friends? I felt getting knocked flat by a rush of fear. I battled with my concern at the thought that even my friends must have been stripped of their stones.
Sparing no time to orient myself, I squinted through the dimness of the forest. And there they were. A couple of feet away to my left my friends lay on the ground, on their sides and their hands tied behind their backs. They were shaking and blubbering, and they were heavily bashed, clothes wet with blood, and faces bruised and battered. The intense practice of handling myself without carrying the stone in my pocket was letting me stay put, but my friends...can they yet?
A spasm of mock-filled laughter rustled the air. About twenty men or so- short and sturdy, big and brawny, tall and skinny, walked over. They stood in a group near a scarred table, flanked by two chairs, placed a few feet away from me. Their hard faces showed a mixture of anticipation and excitement at having us captured. Musket hung from their shoulders. Only the knights used the muskets. How could they possess these weapons? Each one of them was in similar-looking clothes - full-sleeve fur jackets, black loincloths, and latex boots. It awoke an instinct of who they were and who they worked for.
Their laughter came to a dead stop. The gloominess pervaded. The wasteland suddenly turned into a cemetery with the silence drawing out. The place echoed a painful grief when a frigid wind swirled blowing away the fallen leaves and the gathered snow. The group then divided into two, providing a way for the one person who walked through. Their master, their overlord, an unscrupulous threat to the country, and the one with the ambition to become a tyrant- Shashi Thribhuvan. My insides exploded with renewed fury. Memories flashed. He looked more hideous than the last time, pieces of decayed skin tearing from his cheek and sweeping away like a feather.
He walked closer, his blue eyes on the verge of transfixing me at the depth of horror. His mouth twisted. An arrogant smirk was about to spread on his face, but it never did. Instead, there was a bitter disappointment with a flare of anger on his face. He snorted in disdain and broke the stare. I pulled my courage to deal with whatever came next. But now that he was walking towards my friends, a fit of dread bubbled in the pit of my stomach.
He crouched down in front of Leena whose spirits seemed to have dislocated from her body. He ran his hand against the softness of her cheek, she turned her head away with a grimace. Hey, get away from her, I wanted to scream but I could not find my voice. "A maiden, yet a mother," Shashi said, startling Leena. "What kind of life is that?"
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(Book 6) Hayden Mackay and The Third-Eye of the Pancharatna
Fantasy"Mrs. Zutshi, how different was Zarina Khan from you? She was a clairvoyant, that makes her a witch too, right?" "Mages have their own history, Hayden. They have categories too. Since the time of Lady Chandrika's authority over the sections of the p...
