(Book 3) Hayden Mackay and The Shaatrumani Stone

24. Thereokinesis (Part 2)

My eyes instantly went wild. "Aunt Tanya!"

My mind wandered and it took me two days back when I first sat down to read King Harsh's diary. I remembered King Harsh mentioning about this friend my Aunt Tanya had made. It was him? The friend my grandfather had mentioned was Shourya?

"Yes," he said, slightly nodding his head, "Your Aunt Tanya is the sole reason for everything I am sustaining with. Only if she would have come back, or atleast left the door open for me to escape, I could have saved myself from the twenty years of suffering."

"Left the door open?" I asked. "Tell me clearly, what happened?"

"King Harsh already declared that Sarakshi was going to be a Samagraha, that she was going to own a powerful stone. Everyone was proud of the first Princess of Rawat. But there was one such person whose greed had no boundaries. Tanishka. She craved for a stone too. She desired to possess a stone as powerful as her sister was going to, and she desired for the one that was stashed in the Rawat's palace itself.

It was a mistake to accept her request, but I did that mistake, because she was my friend I believed in. Tanishka showed me the hidden path that leads straight to this room. She took care of the security . And I simply and innocently, grabbed the stone and gave it to her." He sniggered suddenly, probably thinking about the mistake he had done and said, "But Tanishka didn't like it. She said the stone was too big for her to carry. And again I acted as per her say, without knowing the consequences."

"Too big?" I asked, frowning, "What do you mean? Did you try to break it? But the curse..."

"I tried to break the stone, yes. I hit it twice on the floor. Little did I knew that the stone was cursed and on my third trial, it reacted, so profoundly that the curse shook the whole room, bursting and shattering the walls. Tanishka got scared. She was scared that she might get into trouble if anyone found out that a royal princess was a part of this thieving. Without waiting for me, she left me behind and escaped through the other door. She could have atleast left the door open, but she didn't. She closed it immediately and I was trapped inside.

The curse didn't stop there, it still had to punish the one who attempted to destroy it. It gave me the pain of a lifetime. It changed me, it changed my identity, completely. After an hour of struggle, feeling different, I looked at my own reflection in one of the glasses. And I wasn't a human anymore. But the good thing is, I could change back to human as per my will. But it was already too late."

Shourya paused there. He was looking at the floor with a grim expression, his eyes streaming. My heart lurched with sympathy for him and felt a great wave of guilt taking over my body. It was because of aunt? Was this the reason she was avoiding to meet me?

"So the curse..." I asked trying to make things clearer.

"The curse laid on the stone was to make one's life miserable. No one know what else it can do, but what it did to me is something unexplainable."

"What happened then?" I asked. "What do you mean it was too late?"

"I didn't know that I can change back to human. It took me a while to figure it out. Apparently, I was a monster for the normal people. My parents were abused because of me, we were even deprived of basic necessities. I couldn't handle seeing them suffer and I ran away from them."

"I am so sorry," I whispered.

But Shourya was so immersed in telling me his story that I doubted if he had even heard me. It was as if he was pouring his heart out to me.

"I was only thirteen," he continued, "I didn't know where to go. For months I wandered all around Dakshinpur. That was the time when King Harsh so immersed in sending the suspected Samagraha away, he didn't bother about me. I was just a trash."