(Book 5) Hayden Mackay and The Pride of Haima-Endira

31. "You Win!"

Strong-willed, I had my eyes closed.

Visualizing her in my mind, her great beauty. All the time. Every time.

The frantic month of June passed making continuous trial and error attempts. Several weeks of practice helped to attain a certain level of proficiency. It was as difficult as it was desirable to maintain bodily movements keeping my eyes downcast, perhaps even tightly pressed shut. Being in full awareness, I figured that Almourah was making desperate attempts to make me look into his eyes anyhow. Magic it was, Nazira had mentioned the other day, that had been setting a trap. Not anymore though. My resolve now strengthened, I practised to resist the desire with all my might. The longer I took to fix a stare, the longer I lived. And the moment our eyes met, he stirred up and turned more aggressive all the way till I died.

"It's working," I told Nazira, and that was after several attempts with careful consideration. "I'm positive that it's working."

"Remember," she said, noticing my excitement. "Celina should be the one to finish it off."

I numbly scratched my full-grown scraggly beard and ran my hand through the long thatch of hair thinking profoundly. Now that these experiments proved worthwhile, it was time to upgrade my strategy.

The unfinished business between him and the First, had extended into a grudge match against the stone. He treated me as though I were the First and I needed to break that impression anyhow. "Crazy, you are," Nazira reprimanded when I shared my gameplan with her. I thanked my lucky stars to have been stumbled upon the gadget a month ago. It was nothing but the Samavek. Had Ashwant not decided to leave it behind, I might have never found a way to pull it off.

Forty days, that was the time constraint I gave myself and worked accordingly. With the magical basket now damaged and dysfunctional, my own lunacy being responsible for it, I was forced to live on hot chocolate and the shoal of fish swimming in the puddle. No proper nourishment and suffering from fever round the clock were my only hurdles to deal with. However, weeks of practice and self training did bring tremendous improvement in my endurance. It didn't come as a surprise though, nor I was the first Samagraha to make it possible. Didn't Singh once mention that a certain Samagraha had been able to withstand the effects that came with the unavailability of stone?

"Celina should be the one to do it, alright?" Nazira reminded me before I woke up to get on with another trial.

The chamber shuddered with my blood-curdling scream for all I was worth. The little effort that Almourah exerted on my wrist was vigorous enough to mutilate my hand off my body. I was on my knees, tolerating the razor-sharp pain in my arm and hyperventilating. Gripping my shirt, he pulled me slightly up in the air to match his height. Every time he did that I had dared to challenge his stare. Only now being aware not to yield to the temptation, I repressed the urge bubbling in my stomach. An animalistic grunt escaped his throat. There was a certain vexation in his voice that I hardly picked up in the past months. Angered, he shoved me against the wall studded with nails. I gasped, feeling a tear of my skin against my forehead. And the impact knocked me semi-conscious.

A strange sound escaped my throat- half a cough and half a choke. I was coming nearly to the limit of my endurance and the ability to stand strong without the stone. This feeling of being normal was bizarre, and I wanted no part of it. I've got addicted to being a Samagraha, a dose its nearness in my veins was what my frazzled mind craved for.

The floor shook and I sat alert. Almourah was rushing towards me, placing hard fiery steps. He was about to throw me off the window. That was his usual style. I gave away a burst of muffled laughter. It seemed so trivial now. How many times had I gone through his viciousness? I was getting accustomed to fly off into the air, to crash down into the snowy mound and to eventually die. Today, there was no fear of dying. Perhaps this was what conquering death meant. I was visualizing Nazira and that gave me peace of mind, soothing the tension down.