"What? About what happened after you were kidnapped?" Sohajan asked.
Rudra nodded his head.
"It will be a long explanation!" Sohajan said.
"Still, I need to here it in detail." Rudra said.
Sohajan sighed as he looked at Vedna and then Rudra: "Fine then!"
"The night when you disappeared nothing special happened, but the next day
…" Sohajan went back to his past memories as he said.
***
It was the morning time, the sun was at its rise, peeking from behind the cloud and mountains. Sohajan just returned to clan mansion after some early morning training. He was drenched in sweat, but a joy washed over him as a cold breeze hit him, along with the warm rays of the sun, which all of a sudden made him refreshed and full of energy.
"Sohajan, elder Vasuraj has called all the young individuals of the clan within the top 10 ranks.", a senior informed Sohajan.
Sohajan nodded and walked towards the elders' room on his way walking through the courtyard, he heard someone call out to him from the courtyard. Sohajan halted and turned around to find Mayra who hastily rushed over to him.
Sohajan was stunned to see Mayra behave like this, he asked "What happened?"
Mayra said with a tensed look on her face "Sohajan! I just had gone to Rudra's room to give him a call.
"But there was no one there, he disappeared.
"Do you happen to know where he is?"
Sohajan frowned as he said, "No I didn't see him since yesterday evening!
"Could it be that he disappeared into the forests for another training period?"
"No! He won't go anywhere without telling me!" Mayra exclaimed.
"Mayra, you should not worry, he will be fine.
As for right now, we must inform the elders that he can't visit the meeting they organized!" Vedna chimed in as she tried to explain Mayra to calm her down.
"She is right!" Sohajan said.
"But still… we need to be careful!" Mayra said.
"We will be, but the first step for that is to inform our elders!" Vedna said.
In the meeting room, elder Devendra, Vasuraj and Somendra sat around a huge table. All three of them wore very tensed expressions glaring at the piece of paper spread on the table in front of them. The wind breezed through the windows with its whispers echoing in the room and the birds were chirping as the leaves rustled into each other.
Devendra suddenly asked "Where are the individual we called?"
"They must be on their way!" Vasuraj replied.
"We will need to hurry, or at this pace, those mystical beasts could annex our city at any time." Somendra said.
"Where is Vijay?" Vasuraj asked.
"I sent him to deploy our clan forces on the outlines of the city, most of our men are there, they are on high alert and won't even flinch before warning us about the danger." Devendra said.
This was when the door to the room was banged open and three people barged in hastily. All the three elders suddenly stood up haphazardly before taking a glance of the faces in front of them. They were none other than Vedna, Mayra and Sohajan. It seemed as if all of them had ran to here in a hurry as they took deep breathes for a few moments.
"What happened, why are you in such a hurry?" asked.
"Elder, Rudra went missing since!" Mayra said.
"What?" all the three elders exclaimed in unison.
"How did he disappear?" Devendra asked.
"No one knows, today morning when I visited his room, he was not there, he is not even in the entire clan mansion." Mayra said.
"Hmm….
"What if he just went to the forest for training like last time?" Somendra asked.
"But he would have told someone!" Vasuraj said.
"He must have told Vihaan already! For now we should focus on the danger ahead!" just as Devendra finished speaking the young top 10 rankers stepped into the room.
"What are you talking about, Elder Devendra?" Sohika chimed in.
"Listen carefully.
"The pack of mystical beasts that went rogue from the mist mountains and the besaak city are being tracked by scouts and it seems like they are moving towards Kashvyaviri.
Whether they appear here or not, we will have to stay on high alert for this entire week, and begin to evaluating citizens from today to prevent any further casualties and be ready to encounter those beasts at any time."
Besides the elders, everyone else in the room show utterly stunned expressions, responding with a silence as they realized the weight of the situation. Devendra stood there for a few moments as he studied his students face and prepared himself to further.
"There are some important messages that are needed to be conveyed to all the four captains of the city defense and the vice leader of our clan.
"Mayra you will approach captain Varma on the western city wall.
Sohika will approach captain tirkalya on the eastern city wall.
Sohajan will approach the captain Rajhans and vice leader Vijay at the northern wall.
And Vedna will approach captain veerakah on the southern city wall."
Devendra said as he handed each of them a scroll tightly tied with a string. All of them grabbed that scroll very carefully and hid beneath their uniforms perfectly.
Devendra flicked his hands gesturing for the four of them to leave. Now only sourav and the three other individuals were left behind. Among the four of them after Sourav the remaining three were only on the first level of the practitioner stage.
"Sourav, Mehul, Veeryan, Divrath, and Manav our clan has deployed our most powerful and experienced individuals alongside the royal soldiers to guard the city walls.
But our base is one of the critical points of this city too, due to which it need a well protection, therefore you four will stay here with us to enforce our soldiers when needed."
Devendra said as he walked to the balcony extended from the elders' room and stared at the remaining clan members clad in their clan armor and gear standing in queues together with a sync filling the entire clan courtyard with the courageous soldiers that would even risk their lives for the dignity of their clan.
"Go and prepare yourselves as well." Devendra ordered, upon which all four of them exited the room.
Devendra, Vasuraj and Somendra stared at the troops who stood under shining brightly in their armors under the dazzling sunlight, at first glance it looked very cruel to organize the troops as such. But those very soldiers didn't carry even a single emotion on their faces except of sheer determination. It was a testament to how hard they had trained to strengthen and toughen themselves for such situations.
As if the nature decided to show some mercy, the burning sunrays were eventually blocked by some rainy clouds. Somendra glared at those dark clouds before shifting his gaze back towards the courtyard as he asked.
"Are you that certain that they can attack at any time?"
"It's the information given by our scouts, we have no choice but to believe it," Vasuraj said.
"This is the only analysis that can come to my mind given the events that have occurred," Devendra said.
"What events?" Somendra asked.
"At the beginning, even I suspected the sudden disappearance of Raksha masaan for more than five years, and just a few weeks ago he pooped out of nowhere.
"With his appearance the Masaan clan annexed all its other inferior ally clans and integrated them into the Massan clan.
"The very news of this incident was also completely suppressed for the locals by the Masaan clan's present influence in that region.
"Recently, our rival has been barging though power levels and we are in a state where our base city is under a severe risk of being ravaged by the rogue mystical beasts, when we don't even haveour leader to guide us.
"Given the recent aggression of the Masaan clan, its very likely they wouldn't let this chance pass by and therefore would even try to initiate their plans as soon as possible.
"There for we must also be always ready, as we can't predict their next move," Devendra explained.
"Hmmm…
Come to think of it, do you think Masaan clan could have been somehow involved in Rudra's sudden disappearance?" Somendra asked.
"Who knows, all we can do is to investigate it ourselves!" Vasuraj said.
"Then, let us pay a visit to his room."
***
Sohajan walked through the bustling streets that led towards the northern division of Kashvyagiri. The northern division mostly consisted of low level residential blocks and houses for peasants. Some alleys were also filled with small stalls selling food items much cheaper than in the marketplace. People seemed to be in a hurry, running to and from with multiple bundles of items in their hands.
But Sohajan avoided all of it, as his mind was lost somewhere else in its own thoughts concerning about the upcoming peril.