Flashback #2

Just as he thought about running off into the cave. Gagan saw a familiar figure starting to appear in the cave, running with panic and fear evident on her face.

She had pale skin with light red tattoos around her eyes, which somehow complimented her dark orangish-red eyes. They were like a perfect match for each other, except that the panicked expression didn't suit them.

He knew that when Swara had that expression, it meant that she was not gonna see where she was going, she just wanted to run away, he had only seen it only once before. He was angry now, just as he was at the kidnappers then. He was going to kill anybody who could do this to Swara.

So just as she came near him, he caught her from behind her collar and stopped her. She was hanging in the air now.

Hanging, she was panting, "Let go... brother... giant... cockroaches... flying... they'll come for us."

{I'LL KILL THE... Oh okay, nevermind.}

"Uhh, monsters don't come out of dungeons normally, and this one starts, like, 50m into the cave. At most, they'll still be 40m away from us, they don't have that much of an aggro range." the new guy told her, smirking a bit.

Her face became red with embarrassment, "Umm, I knew that."

"So, did you find anything useful?" Gagan asked her curiously.

"Yeah, I found some money and this book that was in a room with some big bird sleeping near it, I didn't want to risk it, so I didn't take much," she took out a black book from her inventory, then looked towards her brother, "wait, let me down first."

He did as she said. He noticed that the coin like thing in her hand was different than the normal circle shaped Coirs, but he didn't care much about it.

She fell face first on the ground, "Ow oww oww, I meant gently! Gosh." She dusted off the dirt on her clothes and looked at him. "Uhh, I'm Aphrodite, and you are?" she crossed her arms.

{Are you trying to establish your dominance?} Rudra chuckled inwardly. {LOL}

"I'm Shinigami, nice to meet you." Shinigami said, with a smile that was a bit more than nice. "Could you please show me that book?" he pointed towards the skill book in her hand.

"Uhh, yeah sure." she thought for a moment before giving it to him, as she realized that he he was a mage, so the skill won't be of much use to him. "It's a fighter class skill 'Heavy Swing', I was thinking of giving it to my brother. You look like a mage, my brother is one" she said while pointing towards Himu, " would you like to join us? Do you have any skills?"

"Uh yeah sure," He gave her back the book. "I was just about to take you all to Rulmo's Lair anyway. Invite me to your party."

As Shinigami started leading them to their destination, Gagan and Himu introduced themselves too. After which, Himu started talking to him, but he was in his own thoughts, seeing that expression on Swara's lightly tanned face, which now had two long, pointy ears, he was reminded of the first time he had seen it.

***

(Several years earlier)

"Let's go!" Swara called back to Himu and Gagan. She was walking slightly ahead while Gagan and Himu were lagging behind. They were on their way to a secret party and their security detail was told to keep an eye on them, but from a distance. They were close to the location when they heard a noise ahead of them.

Upon turning the corner, a black van came speeding by them. The door opened, and the van slowed before it was close to Swara. An arm clothed in black cloth reached out and got a hold of her. Before anyone could act Swara was dragged into the van and it sped off. The security detail was immediately on the move, trying to get information about it and getting one of the groups to start going after it as they started to use the GPS tracker to follow their location.

After a while the van was tracked down and Gagan, even with everybody, including Himu, trying to stop him, after all his protests, made his way there with their security personnel. Upon reaching the location, they made his way in and found 5 men and 2 women in black clothing, each with a blade of some kind, while one of them had a gun, surrounding a tied-up Swara.

Swara's arms were tied behind the back of the chair, her feet tied to its legs. Her red eyes were round and tear filled, and there were signs of tears that had been falling for a while leaving tracks running in rivulets down her face. There was a gag in her mouth preventing her from saying anything. One of the women was holding a knife to Swara's throat, so close that every time she swallowed it scraped slightly against her skin, drawing a little blood, while there was a gun in her other hand, which she wasn't currently using.

The security personnel, which had gone around the building to find a back entrance, came in behind all of the kidnappers with their guns drawn. The kidnappers thought that they wouldn't shoot them, since they wouldn't want to risk hurting the kids. What the kidnappers didn't know was that these were tranquilizer guns. Gagan, at this moment, felt helpless, he couldn't do anything other than hiding, so that the kidnappers won't come after him and take him hostage. The security detail aimed for the kidnappers and started to fire at them bringing them down, the woman near Swara being the first one to fall down, which had left all the kidnappers dumbfounded. After they had apprehended all of them, Gagan went up to Swara, took a knife on the ground, and began to cut her loose from the bonds holding her hostage. She hugged him tightly and started crying heavily. He embraced her and they just stood there for a good couple of minutes, until he finally made her stop crying. It was at this moment, that he had decided, he didn't want to be helpless again. He was the oldest brother. He had to protect his siblings, so he was going to be strong. After which he trained in Taekwondo, Karate, Swimming, Fencing and Guns. On their 18th birthday, he outright rejected the Avatar 2.X car, which was considered a luxury even amongst the luxurious, bought by their grandpa and asked for a handgun and license for it. He gave him all three.

"Gagan bro? Gagan bro? Are you there?" he could hear something faintly, "Laddoo"

He was snapped back to reality. He looked around, Swara and Himu, towards his right, were looking at him and sighing, he also saw a huge cave-brown colour cave to the other side of him. It was dark inside. They had finally reached this place, Rulmo's Lair.

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Author's Note: Finally! Ma boi Himu's chance to kill a drago... wait, next one is going to be from Swara's perspective. Poor boy.

By the way, join my server on Discord to chat with me and also for more about the book. It's link is in the Book Synopsis.