Rising Mist(#1 Haze Series)Completed

18. The Impossible Escape

The cramped space in the enclosed woodden path felt suffocating as time passed by. The black eyed grass seems to have vanished leaving them in lurch. Not that it was the first tine it had done. If it weren't for Sana he would have been put to eternal sleep by him long ago.

"The way to exit is burning and we need to go back. Is it the prophecy? The words did mention to enter the forest as newlywed. Would it be same rule for exiting?" Chaya mused out loud.

Mahesh and Rishi didn't think so. Any restrictions were designed to trap its prey and not give it the complete control of reign. If such was the case, the heat of the fire shouldn't have reached them as they waiyed for Rishi and Sana to come out the narraw path.

As everyone was thinking for a way out on their current predicament, Sana was busy observing the carvings on the inner walls of the tree.

It was the picture of a woman breast feeding her child as the world searched for her, the one next to it was more bewildering. The same woman had thrown her cherished child into a water body as it was none of her concern. She moved more closer to it to understand the next set of carvings. But it was too blurred to understand.

Strange, she pulled her sister to show the story carved on the wooden walls, but Chaya was more puzzed as she was unable to see any such carvings she mentioned. The plain wooden walls were making her more tired than itch her curiosity of Sana's words.

The little girl seemed too engrossed in finding what the women in the carving had done next to their current crisis. As she opened her mouth to reprimand Sana to focus, Hussa returned to Rishi, jumping with a shrill cry of his own.

"Its Agnor and that centipede, Tarantum. They are waiting to capture the lady and kill you. I asked the nearby grasses, each of them had same thing to say. The red haired giant want to kill the last living blood alive of Mahan and finally enter inner forest to be the ruler of Raksharan." The grass was panting too heavily to understand everything he had said. But one thing was clear, for them to return home, something had to be done of the Agnor and Tarantum.

"Are they nearby? Can we come out and hide somewhere else." Rishi could no longer stand this cramped place. It felt more like a prison than a hideout.

The black eyed grass, Hussa nodded. It was aware that they could not stay in this place longer and had already asked his fellow companions to make an abode in the remote outer area, far from Agnor and the centipede.

Each of them followed Hussa with a heavy heart wondering if they could ever reach home. Astra was not much far, yet it felt unreachable at the moment.

Sana was the last to leave the narraw path, not before asking the jumping grass if he could see those carvings related to a woman and her baby. At the nod of acknowledgement from Hussa, she felt calmer understanding that those were for only to be seen by Raksharan and not for an outsider's eyes.

There was some hidden message in those carvings, her feeling restless as if she was missing something very important if she left hers. But the current pressing situation didn't give any room to follow her desire.

With their new hideout approaching closer, Hussa's chatter receded. The grass gestured them to hide in the house made of bushes with water dripping on the ground once in a while.

Atleast they were saved from heat waves of Agnor's fire. The day soon turned dark in the wait of fire to dwindle, so they could soon escape from this tortorous place. Not one day had gone by here that was peaceful.

Hussa was going to and fro trying to catch any signs of the Tarantum, the centipede was the enemy of their grass clan. Many had died under him, if his new found power had even a teeny bit of lethal poison on its tip, the end of that being would have happened long time ago.