Regret

"If it were that easy, it wouldn't have been treated as a rite of passage."

His teacher's words echoed in his head like a scolding as he effortlessly skipped from one stone step to another on his way down the mountain. The old man was right yet again and he hated it. He hated how he was wrong yet again, and how all his preparations had been for nothing.

Noorh planned the kidnapping of Alessa Dia for years since he learned of her existence. He had been so close to achieving his goal until a weak-looking stranger meddled and ended up being summoned into his world instead.

"Mr. Kidnapper!"

The memory of her accusing voice made him flinch. Yes, the "great and respectable" Noorh was a kidnapper and he cruelly victimized an innocent girl after failing to accomplish his mission. He paused after softly landing his feet on the thirty-fifth stone step protruding from the cliff wall.

He was furious and frustrated. That was why he ran away. If he stayed, he would have released his anger on the sacred stone pillars and burned the dimensional gate to the ground. He needed to release the pent up rage inside him so he leapt down the stone steps one after another, letting the icy wind chip away at his flaring temper.

Noorh's mind wandered through painful memories, broken promises and unwavering convictions to seek for possible solutions and calculate possibilities. Something didn't go as planned somewhere along his preparations for the task. He was sure that his heart and mind had been set at Alessa Dia, which would explain how she almost fell into the portal. And yet the universe sent him someone else by inserting an unforeseen variable into the picture. He would return home a failure. He could already imagine his teacher telling him "I told you so."

Noorh bitterly grumbled and turned around. The woman - Kiran, was it? - should be done counting to a hundred by then. He smirked when he realized she might have even stopped counting before then, like she did when she counted to ten and turned around to check on him the first time. She could already be aware of his absence.

He glanced up at the towering set of stone steps surrounding the column-like mountain and wondered what the young woman might be doing at that very moment. According to historical accounts, people like her were meek and helpless. They easily trusted whoever they met first because they didn't know much about the world so if he told the woman to count to a hundred, she should have done so accordingly.

Yet she previously counted to ten instead and quickly turned around to check if he was still there.

Noorh narrowed his eyes at the stone steps. On top of keeping his target Alessa Dia away from him, the young woman also seemed to show signs of being different from other summoned maidens.

"She couldn't be making her way down these steps, could she?" he muttered. The safest course of action for her was to wait patiently like a helpless maiden in the meadow.

"Where do you think you're going?! Are you leaving me here?"

He flinched, his gut telling him that she wasn't the type to sit around like a typical damsel in distress. If she did try to make her way down the stairs and failed, he would have seen her fall off the cliff. That meant if she did hike down the steps, she had managed to descend from the meadow successfully so far. He could simply meet her at the steps and take her to the bottom of the mountain with him.

The cliff wall suddenly grumbled, the stone steps trembling underneath his feet.

He gasped as realization dawned on him. The eleventh step was situated next to the cave of the mountain's guardian. Could the rumbling mean she was there, and she had woken it up?!

***

Kiran couldn't move. Her wide eyes remained fixed at the amber orbs floating in the darkness. Her luck was terrible. She risked her life and braved her fears to climb down a series of treacherous steps only to be devoured by a monster.

No. Surely there was still a way for her to survive the situation.

Judging by the flaking snake skin that she had been sitting on, the monster hiding in the darkness was likely a giant snake. What did she learn about snakes in books and documentaries? Some snakes had venom, and some didn't. Those that weren't venomous killed preys by constricting them.

Recalling her knowledge of snakes eased her anxiety, taking the petrifying tension in her veins down a few notches until she could clearly think. Snakes usually had poor eyesight. They used their tongue to better sense their surroundings. The monster didn't seem like it had moved yet after opening its eyes, so it might not have noticed her presence. She still had to be sure about it though.

Kiran's fingers slowly felt the ground for a rock and thankfully found a few scattered around her. She gingerly held one in her right hand and quickly threw it across from her, hoping that it would bounce against a wall in a thump.

The amber orbs snapped to the direction of the rock, the cave grumbling as if a weak earthquake had hit the mountain.

It triggered memories of the earthquake in Kiran. She desperately bit her lip as a whimper escaped her throat and tears trailed down her cheeks. The monster clearly responded to sound so she should remain silent if she wanted to live. Kiran glanced at the edge of the cliff, forcing her attention at a possible means of escape. She could crawl out of the cave while the monster was distracted, provided that it didn't stick it's tongue out to sense her.

Was the monster even really just a giant snake? She was in an entirely different world after all. How sure was she that the animals on Earth were similar to the animals in the new world she was in?

A hiss echoed from her right, a gust of wind that stank of rotten eggs sending chills up her spine. She had to move. She had to escape but her limbs weren't responding.

"Move!" she scolded herself. She visualized what she had to do inside her head and forced her trembling limbs to move accordingly. Her shaking hand moved to her pocket, fishing out the empty flask. She then held it at her side, aiming for a spot somewhere deeper into the darkness so that the monster would turn away from her. She counted to three inside her head hoping it would help her gather the strength to throw the flask, but she ended up gripping the container tighter in her trembling fingers instead.

Kiran cursed under her breath. "Just throw the flask already!" she inwardly snapped. She squinted her eyes, snapped them open, and finally threw the flask away with all the strength that her trembling body could muster. It landed in a soft thump somewhere in the dark.

A sharp deafening shriek erupted from the monster.

Kiran gasped, realizing that she must have hit the monster's body instead of a cave wall. She immediately crawled toward the stone step, feeling the ground shake vigorously underneath her with the sound of rattling scales. The scent of rotten eggs filled the air and made her gag as she stumbled toward the edge of the stone step. She glanced back and found a giant snake mouth wide open behind her. It's fangs were laced with luminous green slime and its forked tongue slinked toward her direction, poised to catch her.

Kiran was sure she was about to meet her end when a white light slashed against the giant serpent's tongue, chopping it off. Mr. Kidnapper then gracefully landed in front of the cave like a cat leaping effortlessly in the air. He held his sword in one hand. Its large crystal blade shimmered a shade of blinding white against the darkness.

The severed forked tongue flailed as it flew toward a stone step, bouncing off of its side before finally falling over the cliff.

Kiran watched the appendage disappear into the clouds, reminding her of how far she would fall if she lost her grip on the edge of the stone step she was perched on. She glanced behind her again and found Mr. Kidnapper charging at the monster and slashing his sword against its fangs, seemingly determined to steer the monster back into its cave.

"M-mister!" Kiran managed to mumble before a strong gust of icy wind blew her way and pushed her weakened body closer to the edge of the stone step. Another deafening shriek erupted from the cave which was likely the monster yelping in pain from Mr. Kidnapper's attacks. It brought with it another gust of stinky wind that fully pushed Kiran's crouched form over the cliff.

She gasped as she fell back-first over the precipice. Her tear-glazed eyes took in the blurry image of the starry night sky, the wisps of white clouds, and the cold stone steps that she managed to scale in an effort to stay alive. The feeling of weightlessness was immediately replaced by the suffocating feeling of falling to her death.

Kiran didn't even see her life flash before her eyes. She just watched the world zoom past her as her body succumbed to the pull of gravity.