Hey Readers,
How’s your day going? I just woke up and checked the internet connection. Thank god, it was working fine today. I thought of posting my content without waiting.
Sorry for posting so late. I had Night Shift and very little energy to post what I had written earlier and we had internet connectivity issues entire day yesterday, 28-Nov-2020, which had been week off for me and I had been planning for posting them yesterday.
Without further ado, here’s the content I had written on Day 26.
Shravani: In search of Family Heirloom
Shravani stared at her father’s headless corpse as blood sprayed from it, dousing Madhav who was grinning at her as if he had done something helpful for her.
She clenched her fists by her side and glared at him, hoping that the seething anger and hatred that she was feeling for him would be felt by him. But he just grinned harder, as if he was oblivious to her feelings.
He stepped towards her and she stepped back. He ignored that and continued to barge forward. Shravani retreated till her back touched the pole of the tent.
He stopped and put his hand under her chin, raising it towards him.
Shravani clenched her jaw and resisted. He frowned and tried harder.
She turned sharply and stepped away from him. He followed, frowning.
“What’s wrong?” he asked.
If only she were as powerful as her brother, she would’ve killed Madhav then and there itself. But she barely had any talent in either of the magic concerned.
“You killed my father,” she said, her voice quivering.
He grinned. With the blood on his face, he looked more like a monster than human. “You don’t have to worry about him any longer. I know that he objected you from loving me. From coming to me and marrying me. Now that he was dead, you are freed from his clutches. You can come to me. You can love me. You can marry me,” he said, his voice softened at the end.
She was horrified. How can he ask her to love him, after killing her father in front of her, a father whom she loved, whom she wished would love her as much as he did to her brother? He was clearly insane. “I do not love you,” she said.
He inhaled sharply. “You are joking right?” he asked. When she didn’t replied, he was seething with anger as well. “You love me. You have to love me. You have to come to me and become my wife. Otherwise, I am going to kill your brother, his army that he secretly recruited to prepare for an invasion and also each and every one in the Krishnarajyam,” he said and left her.
Shravani stared at the retreating figure of Madhav and she shivered. She was so horrified and depressed that she sank to her knees, staring at the headless corpse of her father.
Madhav killed her father. Threatened that he would also kill her brother, the army that he raised as well as her people of Krishnarajyam.
He was insane. Disillusioned.
He had approached her many times during the past year. She ignored him at first, but as he was persistent, she was impressed by his persistence and tolerated his presence. Smiled and talked with him whenever he approached her.
When he tried to be intimate with her, or propose to her, she rejected him and ignored him for days. She thought that he had understood what she meant. But looking his actions now, she was the one who was mistaken.
He thought that she was afraid of her father. That he was keeping her under his clutches. And that she was in love with him.
But no. She was in love with her destined. And when she was finally going to see him, introduce him to her father and her brother, Madhav had ruined it. He had ruined everything.
He killed his father out of pure delusion that she loved him. That she needed his saving.
What should she do now?
She could escape. She knew the palace, grew up inside it since she were small child. She could travel everywhere with her eyes closed. But she knew that she was going to encounter Madhav or his mage, the one who was powerful enough to freeze everyone around him.
Shravani was weaker. She cannot defeat them.
She can’t ask for Bhavana’s help. She had to take care of her brother. She stayed with her and became her friend only because Shravani was Neeraj’s sister. Bhavana loved Neeraj and hoped that he loved her back. Bhavana would tell her brother regarding what had happened and he would get himself killed in rescuing her.
She had to wait for her destined. He was bound to be powerful, even if he was not, he would become one when he gets her family heirloom. She had to make sure that she would deliver it to him, her destined. Then he could use it to defeat Madahv.
She goes searching for the family heirloom.
Shravani loathed Ira, the mage in the red cloak that had a huge influence on Madhav that even he wasn’t aware of.
Ira was interested in Shravani, wanted to know everything that there is to her and she went into lengthy conversations to get to know about her.
There was something off about her. Shravani didn’t know what it was, but she was different than other mages that she had seen. Especially her red eyes that created an ancient air about Ira. For some reason, she felt similar to the heavenly one that Shravani had met in her dreams. Though she hadn’t met the heavenly one in the real world, but she knew her as much as she knew about Bhavana.
Where the heavenly one radiated warmth, Ira had radiated coldness so chilling that it scared Shravani. So, Shravani did everything within her power to avoid Ira. If she failed that, she tried everything in her power to keep the conversation as short as possible.
But Ira was an expert communicator, finding the right questions to keep her intrigued and keep their discussion growing. Even though Shravani was in captive, she was allowed to roam all around her fath… no, her father had died. In his place, a shape shifter had been erected, who was creating a huge mess out of the people of Krishnarajyam. The palace now became a basecamp for Madhav.
Sighing, she walked along the garden with a fountain at centre. Sand flew out of the mouth of the mythical sand animal, which fell down on the ground. Here, the sand was not covered, the only place it was not covered inside the palace when her father had been killed.
The practice grounds.
Madhav had ordered his men to construct the fountain at the place where her father had been beheaded, on top of his burial. It was a constant reminder of what she had lost that day. It twisted her heart to see the fountain, but she knew this was where her father was present. She wanted to come to this place every day so that she could see him. At least get the feeling that she was seeing him.
“Beautiful fountain isn’t it?” Ira asked, stepping behind her.
Shravani controlled her anger. How could she ask that after what she had made Madhav do? The more time she spent around Ira, the more she would be revealing something that Ira would use to trap her. She had to escape from her and search for her family heirloom alone. She ignored her and instead, bowed her head and stepped back.
“I know that you loved your father. I would like to keep something that would remind you of him. It’s brilliant isn’t it?” she asked, her voice becoming excited.
Shravani nodded, excused herself and stepped away from Ira. Ira followed her instead.
“Tell me about your culture. The culture of destined,” Ira said.
Shravani stiffened. How did she know about that? The part of destined was something that was only applicable to royal family and anyone outside their family didn’t know about that.
Can she read her mind?
Ira smiled, confirming her suspicions.
“If you do not want me to pry into your mind, then you better tell me all you know about the destined,” Ira said.
Shravani swallowed. “When we were born, the Heavenly One appears in front of our parents, bearing the news of our destined. The one the child was going to spend the rest of his or her life, loving only him. As the child grows, the heavenly ones appear in the child’s dreams, informing about the about our destined. She will appear one final time, relaying that the time the child were to meet up with the destined has arrived and one should prepare for the same. And when our destined enters the area nearby me, we would know about his arrival,” she said, then hastened her pace so that she could put as much distance between herself and Ira.
Ira increased her pace, stepped by her side and gave her a knowing smile. “Who’s your destined?” she asked.
Shravani cursed under her breath. “It is personal,” she said, hoping Ira wouldn’t probe further.
“I heard that your destined would have unimaginable power. And you have a huge role to play in it. What is it that you have to do?” she asked.
Shravani stopped. She couldn’t tolerate it any longer. “It is personal to me and I don’t want to tell that to you. If you could excuse me, I have something that I wanted to find. And I want to do it alone,” she said.
Ira shook her head. “You are still a captive of Madhav, and ultimately mine. He was interested in you. You have something under your possession that was going to make your destined powerful. I want you to abandon your destined, divert your love towards Madhav, and give him what you have in your possession. Madhav is important in the days to come and you are going to do it. One way or another,” she said, still smiling, but the whites of her eyes were completely overtaken by red, as if blood were leaking in her eyes. Her voice grew louder, strange and scarier.
Shravani shivered, felt she was being controlled by Ira. Her body was moving out of her own violation, towards some unknown location. She had heard her father once saying to her about the location of the family heirloom, the one that she was supposed to give to her destined.
She passed many hallways, turning and twisting and finally appeared at the deity room. There she saw the box containing her family heirloom, the one time that her father had shown to her and hadn’t forgotten it ever since.
The sleek wooden box surface shined looked alive. She forced herself to continue moving away from it, knowing that if she stopped, Ira would guess about it. And moved out of it, and towards her father’s room instead.
She stopped in front of her father’s room. She was about to step inside her father’s room, but froze, unable to do it. She remembered seeing her father’s headless corpse falling down, blood sprayed on Madhav’s face as he grinned at her.
Her body shook, her vision blurred. Before she could descent into reliving the horrible day her father had died, she felt a warmth spread all over her body, starting from her core.
Her feet were urging her to move in a particular direction, guiding her towards the location of her destined. He had arrived and … she cannot meet him now. Had to protect him from Ira and Madhav.
But damn it. Her destined had arrived.
***
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Until Next Time,
Nagendra Kumar Yadav T.
Nagendra's Stories and Craft 