Warrior Princess; Her Quest to the throne

Prithvi tore the message which he had written for Amrapali and wrote another one, asking her to vacate the Surakshan Chakra premises as fast as she could. He added an extra line where he mentioned that to show the goodwill on their part, she should not move any decorative pieces from the building. He instructed her to go into the ghost mode on all operations after moving into the new building which the zilla head was providing them with, till further instructions.     

Ghost mode meant that all ongoing operations would go on autopilot and no update or discussion shall occur at the head office regarding them. Instead the handlers would pass on the information to the chief through covert methods.     

Eastern Zilla     

Ramanujam had already heard about the incident through Amrapali's office pipe before Prithvi's expected missive came. The enraged woman had kept on ranting about the zilla head in her cabin all through the last two days, making Ramanujam wish that he could devise a switch off plug to this noise.     

After receiving Prithvi's message, he went shopping. He had been asked to stock up on food and other basic necessities for the next fifteen days. Basically, the new mission was pure information gathering. During the past couple of months, Ramanujam had surmised that a big operation was being planned by the enemy and an important part of it was to coerce Chandragarh's people into doing their bidding, in whatever manner possible. The people whom he had been trailing and interacting with in the Eastern zilla, had revealed that much.     

Prithvi had chosen not to inform the Suraksha Chakra office heads about it nor was there any action taken on this intelligence till now. This meant that he was not sure about the enemy's final plan yet. Even though Ramanujam was known for his intelligence, when it came to strategic foresight, there was rarely anyone who was Prithvi's equal. He would always wait for a definitive move from the opponent instead of revealing his own, first.     

Prithvi had been working on developing a game similar to chess during the past year or so. The style and rules were akin to chess, except that a player's end aim was not to kill the king but to surround the opposition with his forces, so that the enemy has no choice but to accept defeat. For that, the player had to ensure that not only did he need to counter and block the enemy's invasion, he also was required to build his traps around the enemy without him being aware of it.     

Considering that the entire admin department was working in different directions on seemingly unconnected tasks, Ramanujam concluded that his mentor had decided to make the game go live instead of playing it on the board.     

Himprayag     

Shaurya was shivering and his lips had turned blue by the time he made it to the outskirts of the Himprayag capital. Thanks to his mentors, one of his fake identities was already registered in the log book of permitted visitors across the border. He finally reached the place where Bela had asked him to meet him. This being his first visit to the country, he wasn't familiar with it at all and had asked the passing by locals about the location.     

"I hope that I am not too far off from where I am supposed to be meeting her," the thought had just formed in his head when he saw the familiar pair of wings coming towards him.     

The eagle descended majestically and sat on his extended palm. During the past few months, they had devised a new way of sending the messages through the eagle. It was now flattened and tucked under its wings. Each parchment was colored in the same shade of its feathers and to make it even more covert, a few feathers were attached to the folder message, making it near impossible for anyone to discern that it was a messenger bird even if it was caught, unless they inspected its body thoroughly.     

Shaurya checked but the bird was not carrying any message.     

"Are you here to tell me that Guruji is arriving soon?" the bird cocked its head sideways and its beady eyes shone with intelligence, as if it understood what Shaurya was saying.     

Giving his tired legs a rest, Shaurya leaned against one of the tall pine trees. He brought his hands together and rubbed them. It was cold but really beautiful. Everywhere that his eyes could see, was covered in white. The ground crunched under his feet because of the frozen snow. Mriga would have gone cuckoo in her excitement by now, running from one end to the other. I bet she hasn't seen this much snow in her life!     

Suddenly, Shaurya felt some sort of vibration under his feet. He crouched down quickly and put his ear to the ground. There was a rumble which seemed to be increasing with the passing second.     

Shit! Was there an avalanche headed this way? He had only heard about these snow slides which occurred in this part of the world. Unsure about what was he supposed to do, he moved his gaze all across the mountain range which was in front of him. But it looked peaceful there.     

Right the next second, the quiet of the place was shattered by a loud roar.     

Shaurya's mouth fell open at the sight in front of him. A tiny figure was riding a gigantic bear. Coming towards him at a really fast speed, the person seemed to be glued to that huge animal. He scrambled backwards, moving out of the path of the looming boulder which was coming its way. But few hundred meters away, the animal started to slow down and the rider started looking familiar.     

No way! Was that...