Vajra An Elven Tale

Chapter 17 part I

Chapter seventeen

Part I

Viridian and Gold

All it took was a single shot. As the bullet whiskered through the atmosphere previously thick with music and hushed up conversations; ending up hitting one of the strategically positioned mirrors on the crystal chandelier hanging above them; it cracked the mirror, and killed the serenity that prevailed along with the silence. Geared up by screams, and powered with adrenaline the crowed began to push themselves and drag their partners towards the exits. The man who fired the shot, stood there watching the as chaos unfolded before him, all but his eyes, covered with a balaclava and his hand with the pistol still raised above the crowd. With cold eyes he surveyed them and shared a glance with the few of his accomplices who were now scattered through the crowd.

Outside they could hear the police sirens, sounds of tyres screeching into halt, sound of footsteps stumping on the asphalt. That was enough for the scene to make a clear sense; those men were fugitives, looking for hostages to get them safe passage.

A few cops seemed to break through to the mindlessly haywire crowd; trying to push past the terrified civilians to the criminals they seemed to be truly after. Obliviously the crowd supplied them enough obstructions, with their obsession to get themselves off the danger zone, that the task seemed harder than anticipated.

Sanskar threw his arm around Swara pulling them both to the ground as another bullet slung past them, taking one of the fugitives in shoulder. He pulled her back to her feet the very next minute, as they attempted to move away from the crowd pressing from all sides. They were still pretty much trapped within the boundaries of the dance floor when Swara stopped dead on her tracks. It took Sanskar a moment to catch the visage which stopped her.

It was the same man who had fired the first shot. The same man stood in front of them now, his cold eyes taking in their profiles.

Swara suddenly realized Mr. Maheshwari's hold around her wrist tightened to an iron grip. The pressure he applied on her veins made her pulse quicken painfully. She had guessed it before that it might be his power, focused on her; which stopped her from having any vision while they danced. That moment, she felt the focus of the same power shift, and her mind reeled as the reality around her blurred into a flash from future.

It was the man with the pistol, holding her shoulder in a death grip while his other hand pushed the cold barrel of the gun against her temple. He casted a calculative look around at the police offices circling them hesitating to take another step, as he had himself shielded with her. The fugitive started to walk backwards, dragging her along with them. She blinked once, gathering the details of that view, his partners were already down, and the hall seemed to be stunned to a silence, another blink and it was all gone.

She looked back at the man in the present facing them, and turned her gaze towards the man beside her, in one involuntary glance. He had gone completely still, his jaw set in a hard line and his brows knitting. In his temple a vein started to throb. There was something wrong, something that she could not pinpoint but eerie about the suddenness of the situation. As she watched, the caramel brown of his eyes paled to hazel before slowly sharpening to viridian. And the man had already pointed his pistol at them.

He had known it the moment those fugitives decided to crash their party that it was too vaguer to be a coincident.  But he was yet to know, who was behind this completely normal looking phenomenon. Shifting his focus from Swara to the man who blocked their path, he reached the man's conscious with his power. There was hardly any elves who managed to resist his level of penetration, hence the untrained mind of the human did not stand a chance at all. As he churned through the thoughts of the man, in search of answers, effortlessly a memory rose to the surface.