Chapter 17
Part 2

Indriya and Agni went to her room, escaped, was a better word. Indriya went into her changing room and dressed in a pair of jeans shorts and a black crop top that said ‘Meh!’.

Agni was seated on the couch, his legs crossed and his hand rested on the armrest.
His eyes were distant and were big and round like he was surprised. He looked up at her and blinked and looked at Indriya as though she had sprouted another head.
“What was that, Princess?” He sounded so in awe that Indriya had to smile.
“What was what?” She asked him, smiling bashfully.
“How did you do that? How did you manage to choke Mekhala and get out of that room alive?” He shook his head like a rampaged bull.
“I don’t know, I think I caught her off guard or something. In fact I myself was caught off guard. Besides I never choked her, I simply ” She sighed.

“Mekhala is never off guard, her magical gift is resistance, resistance to magic, and you probably are the only person who was able to use your power on her.” He stood up and walked toward Indriya. His lips were a whisker away from her forehead as he stood towering her, she looked up at him.

“You know, when I asked for my power to come I found it in this abyss, this chasm-like place in my body that didn’t exist until now. Do you know anything about it?” Her heart was pounding in her chest as she took a step back and bumped into the book shelf.
“Yes, I do know what you are saying, but that is not how I harness my power so I am afraid that I know very little. I’ll tell you what I know.” He admitted. Indriya walked to the couch and sat down crossing her legs. Agni followed to do the same and sighed as he sat down beside her on the couch.

“Your power is like a well, a well that keeps replenishing itself, it is more like an ability, like how you hear or see or feel. My power does not need replenishment, it only needs light and particulate matter that scatter it. As you know I can bend light to form images and I use the scattering of light to make the illusion move. As simple as that.” He concluded.

“That is so cool, so you can make any illusion? So, you can make me look like you and make yourself look like me?” She asked him with an amused grin on her face.

“Yes, you want to see it?” He asked, smiling at her cockily.
“Yes, yes, yes, show me. Please!” She exclaimed like a child.

Agni walked toward the mirror and Indriya followed to stand beside him, they looked at each other in the mirror. Soon enough Agni’s strong chiseled jaw turned round and his hair grew longer, within a blink of an eye, Indriya was standing beside Indriya.
She glanced sideways. Agni chose the dress she had worn earlier, maroon and blue. One would have said that Indriya had an identical twin, but then she realised when she looked back into the mirror, that Agni was standing where she was. Tall, chiseled jaw and tanned skin with wavy jet black hair, she was awed, the features of her face too changed, her eyes rounded and she was gawking...more like he was gawking.

Just then someone knocked on the door, she walked over and opened the door.
It was a Gandharva. He had beautiful gray eyes, a strong square jaw and chestnut brown hair.
“Who are you?” Indriya asked. The Gandharva’s eyes dilated as she spoke.
“Prince Agni, I didn’t know you could do vocal impressions.” He looked at her in awe.
“Prince Agni?...oh yes...yes. That’s who I am. I was only pulling your leg. I can do impressions now, the Princess...well she taught me how to do them. You know it’s wonderful how she can speak like me. No, Princess?” Indriya fought the urge to punch Agni who was disguised as her for pulling off this trick, but she smiled at him mockingly and nodded.
“Yes, of course I can. Amazing, isn’t it?” Indriya managed, Agni’s eyes were gleaming with a tinge of amusement.
The poor Gandharva looked like he would've gagged had it not been for Mekhala who called out to him, and entered the room.
“What are you doing here? There is a lot of work we have to do, Kishta, come with me.” She commanded.
“But madam, the Prince…” Mekhala dragged Gandharva out of the room and down the stairs like he was a stubborn horse. Mekhala gave Agni a death stare and sniffed like she smelled someone’s fart.

Agni stopped his illusion and gave her a malicious grin, “I can do impressions now, huh?” ______________________

Indriya Vatsalya loved the adventurous anonymous outings, so there she was on the road again. This time dressed in a casual white shirt and black leather trousers. This time she wasn’t alone, she had her dagger with her, the one Eshwari Amma, Agni’s music teacher had offered.
So Indriya walked down into the town. Into the murkier parts where no soul was pure and no mind was brave enough to walk without the fear of being caught for doing something unusual or shady. She had knotted her hair into a messy bun and her dagger was tucked in her waist belt, not invisible, but not noticeable as well. It was a simple dagger with a black leather grip. The object offered her some comfort as she felt it by her waist. Indriya took random turns in the city but she made sure that she knew her way back. It was not very tough to find the street that was covered in tobacco mists and the sharp smell of overflowing barrels of Alcohol. Women and men in the street were strangely in a trance as though nothing mattered. There were a few shady inns where women stood outside beckoning to drunk men. Men were attracted to those women like moths to fire. As Indriya walked she found a Bar, the only place that was a little less creepy than the rest of the buildings was the bar.
Besides she had always seen in movies how the bartenders always had so much of intel about the town and its happenings.
So she decided to sneak in and she found herself blending in very easily.
She walked into the bar as a mist of white smoke burnt her lungs and she coughed.
“Whoops, little lady, didn’t see you there.” The drunk man smiled at her showing his black stained teeth. Indriya wrinkled her nose at the smells she got there. People in the bar had probably not bathed in days and the entire bar had very poor lighting and she could smell the blood of the meat they were cutting in the open kitchen. The entire bar was sprawling with men and women who had contended smiles on their scarlet red faces. She almost ran into a few waiters before she could reach the bartender at his counter, apologised to a woman she had run into who was wearing a rather transparent saree, she gave Indriya a playful smile before she disappeared into one of the store rooms in the bar.

“Tell me, are you new here?” A feminine voice asked very sweetly that distracted Indriya from the surroundings.
“Huh?” Indriya asked the lady who was wearing a light peach coloured half saree and a gold bordered blouse.
“Come, sit down.” The girl called over the roaring laughter and clunking of cutlery. Indriya did as she was told, but she realised that she wouldn’t get an intel if she acted like she was just some happy go lucky girl. She sat down on one of the high raised wooden chairs and the girl approached her.
“Are you new here?” She asked leaning closer, Indriya nodded with a grave look on her face.
“Where are you staying in the town? What’s your name and where are you from?” She spoke so fast Indriya couldn’t catch up to her.
“I… am from the North of this City, my name is Rani. Rani Devi.” She lied without giving her name much thought.
“Nice to meet Rani Devi, what do you do for a living?” The lady asked.
“I…” Indriya looked around for a second, a man had gotten very drunk and had poured liquor all over himself and was blabbering something and yelling at someone only he could see, then she said to the lady very slowly, “spill the tea for a living.” The lady’s expression had changed all of a sudden.
“Whose tea do you spill, Ms. Devi?” She asked and added, “ And whose tea do you want me to spill?” Her voice was almost a whisper as her doe shaped innocent looking eyes narrowed slightly as she looked stunned.
“I spill the tea of all those who are a threat to Lord Bhadra. Om namah shivay.” Indriya smirked slightly and the lady tensed.
“What do you want?” She asked racing out for a tea cup and pouring out freshly made tea into it.
“I didn’t know bars served tea nowadays.” Indriya retorted as she looked around herself and crossed her legs. Her leather boots gleamed in the dim lighting. A drunk old man around the age of fifty was fast asleep over the corner table.
“We always serve the best tea ma’am, all kinds of tea. You name it, we have it. Now, what do you want?” The lady smirked back at Indriya.
“They say she is here, Is she here? The Princess of Nirvana?” Indriya almost whispered.
“The word is on the street that she is. People are really hoping that she is here. Hoping that she will win her kingdom back and free them from this hell hole of a place. I say that she is only a self centered wench who would never give us a second thought. And they say she lives with that Prince in that fortress of a palace. The resting house, I mean. Lucky goose.” The lady chuckled in a way that Indriya didn’t entirely like. Indriya felt her anger rise. Self centred wench? She didn’t even know these people existed a while ago. She was never told and yet she was blamed.
“But she was young, what could she have possibly done against an entire army? She is probably not more than sixteen or seventeen. And the Lord of Bhadra is much more than just a king.” Indriya asserted, trying to sound like she didn’t care or she was bored.
“The legend says that the princess possesses the power to end an entire world with a mere glance of her eye when she is angry. But the legend is only a ballad, born in the dim light of hope in an endless abyss of tyranny and power.” The lady said. Something twisted inside of Indriya’s gut at those words. She picked up her cup and sipped all of one sip before her cup was knocked from her hand and broke. It was one swift moment, a huge figure towered her over like a mountain over a tree. The man looked at her with some kind of rage in his eyes. The kind of rage that comes out of revenge.
“You don’t get to harm our Princess. Our daughter! Oi! This woman’s going to tell on our Princess, let us bury her alive!” He yelled to the people in the bar. The man balled his fist and pulled it back and drove it toward her and before she knew it the golden light shone like celestial gold as it hung in the air with the energy humming like a high voltage wire.
Indriya gasped for air as she saw the man in the light properly. His face was half burnt and the scar charred his face, but it was not a testimony. It was a scar of true grief but his eyes were dilated and shocked as the golden light reflected in his eyes.
“Pri… Princ… Princess Indriya!” He stammered as his eyes welled up.
Indriya had realised at that moment that the entire bar was blanketed in an uncanny silence. A silence she knew too well. A silence before a storm.
That was when she realised that it was time to run. That was exactly what she did. She sprang from her seat and pushed her way through the door into the streets. She heard footsteps and grunts of men who tried to follow her. And her heart banged against her chest threatening to barge out as she ran for her life. She didn’t want to imagine what those men would do to her if they found her, the image of that woman screaming and thrashing against those city guards was still too fresh and the blood that had made patterns on those yellowstone was not wiped away from her memory. She was running out of breath, she had run so far away from the street but she knew they were still tailing her, coming for her, coming to kill her. She took a turn into the residential area and snatched a cloak from a lady who was passing by and wrapped herself in it. The market was not far off from there so she just had to take two more turns… Indriya rammed into someone and had fallen back onto the ground with such force that the breath was forced out of her lung and she gasped for air.
When she looked up, to her horror it was that very man she was running from. His snow white hair gleamed like silver in the moonlight, his face was wrinkled very much and his scar had discoloured his face and had extended onto his neck disappearing into his shirt. The man stared at her with an incomprehensible expression and all Indriya could think of was running away. So she got up from the ground.

“Princess…” The man was saying but she broke into a sprint and ran away into the night as far as her legs could carry her. She realised that she was somehow in the market. She had taken the wrong turn and had run into those men. She couldn’t think of anything else except to return home. Indriya slowed down to blend with the crowd. Those men had already reached the market and were yelling at people to stop any lady with a white shirt and a tight knotted bun. Indriya moved to the corners of the market where there were little gullies that led to the residential quarters. She shook her cloak and threw it into one of the trash cans and loosened her knot and let her hair loose. Her heart still pounded and she kept her eyes on the yellowstones and looked nowhere else. The man yelled and caught hold of a woman and called her out. But they were disappointed to find a common maid servant. The man brushed past Indriya, almost shoving her aside as he ran towards the exit of the market, all this while Indriya cowered, putting her head low as though she had committed a crime and her legs felt stiff and numb. Once she was out of the market she broke into a sprint, she ran as fast as she could toward the resting house. The wind batted in her ears and her eyes stung. Indriya Vatsalya gasped and covered her mouth as she felt her calves burn like they was being barbecued and she sobbed as her hair flew like a cape of cowardice behind her.

© YDR