Vajra An Elven Tale

Chapter 20 Part II

Chapter twenty - part two

The rightful place

The blade was sharp, with a precise edge that could have cut through the moonlight bouncing off its length. That light illuminated the face of the man who had the blade pointed to his throat. It was Megha, or a deeply bruised version of him. His long hair, disheveled and sweaty hung over his eyes. Beneath them, one of his brows were bleeding from a swift cut, while his lip was split up and a dark purple patch was rising in his cheek. 

"Why don't you simply kill me and finish it?" He asked the attacker, his voice slightly out of breath, but steady enough to convey his resolve. "Just like you killed all these people?"

"Perhaps my intention is different..." Letting his voice tail off Sanskar turned to look at the surrounding, the tip of his sword still steadily in place against the unarmed Megha. Around them, at least dozen people lay dead, bleeding into the ground. Their blood gathering in to tiny pools, shimmered in the starlight. "Or, I wouldn't have wasted all this time talking." 

*

Someone was gently shaking her awake, and Swara breathing heavily from the horrors she had witnessed a moment ago in her subconscious, stared unseeingly at the blur of colors that made up the view in front of her.

"Jiji?" A juvenile voice called again accompanied with a gentle nudge on her elbow. 

As the sleep had worn off the view of the forest clearing around her had solidified. Swara was sitting on some hastily spread out mat, underneath a shady tree. Leaning against it, she had dozed off as the day's exhaustion finally caught up with her.

The Bhavas posed as a group of merchants, crossing the narrow lands between Asanikshastra and Akashanagara towards the lesser crowded, tribal villages in the Jaya mountain range, with wagons loaded with spices and grains; the most sought after goods in the hills. Unlike in the deserts where wagons would travel by the night and rest during the daytime, through the tall grasslands and misty moors they traveled by the day. During the night the descending fog was too thick to see through and too cold to be exposed to, that the Bhavas preferred to stay snuggled closer to their bonfires and huddled in the camp.   

The evening fog was rolling in and they had stopped for the day. Over the tops of the conifers that made her landscape, Swara had seen the Jaya peaks rising above them. They were almost at the base of the mountains by then. Megha who had been travelling by her side that day, had pointed out the familiar silhouette of the Shamashikara mountain, far in the horizon. A wave of nostalgia hit her at the sight that hinted how closer she was to the place she had grown up in, and watching her expression, the sheen of tears pooling her eyes, Megha had suggested perhaps she should catch some sleep, while the Bhvas set the camp. He had commented on, how she grumbled like a zombie around the place and earned a small laughter.

Now the darkness completely blanketed them. Above the clearing, where a cheerful fire was now cackling merrily, stars were hanging low and she had just witnessed the danger about to cross paths with her new found friend. With a sigh she buried her face in her hands. It always came back to him. The man she was foolish enough to trust. The man she was repeatedly warned to stay away from and the man destiny had toppled over her path; the yuvraaj of Vajras; Sanskar. She had been passing through several levels of grief after learning of his betrayal.

 Firstly she had found the whole thing extremely unbelievable. During the cruise journey, she had came to know this person; and that person had staked his life to save hers over and over again. Thinking back to the time they spent together, their conversations or even the meaningful silences, she could not find a trace of dishonesty in his voice, words or the way he looked at her. How was she to believe that he had been a hell of an actor?