This is from the Prince's view and begins a couple of minutes after the beginning of the last one. By the way, I'm just guessing Ayodhya would have been around at the time of this story because it was around in 200AD and is still around today.

Chapter Fifteen: A single memory

I wasn't awake and I wasn't asleep. I was so tired, sleep was something I longed for and I was on the verge of it. I had been attacked somehow; I must have passed out before the fight had even started, I had little clue of how those twins had even appeared in front of me. My thoughts drifted to Shirin and Farah briefly before I dipped into sweet slumber...however, I wasn't going to stay there.

"Will you wake up!" I heard Farah's voice suddenly yell, but I was just too tired and took little notice. Someone entered the room we were in and told her to be quiet. Yes, Farah be quiet – I'm trying to sleep. I didn't open my eyes, no; I was just too weary. However, Farah had already figured out a way to ruin this peaceful state I was in. She kicked me hard, in the face. I jumped awake, crying out loudly. I took in my surroundings quickly. I wasn't sure where I was; the place was foreign to me. It seemed to be some sort of large, pointed-ceiling, grey tent that had several lanterns inside. A pain suddenly hit me, a stinging feeling in my tendons between my biceps and shoulders; my hands had been tied above my head with rope that was attached onto a chain that was connected to a wooden beam that was part of the tent's frame, I had to admit, it was a sophisticated and rather intriguing design. I was sat on the floor, Farah was sat opposite me; her arms were also tied and suspended up. "See! It's probably because you're such a heavy sleeper that I stole that wretched dagger off you – you probably only have yourself to blame!" she whispered harshly. I blinked with a blank face. I had never seen her so annoyed.

"Where are we?" I asked. I saw Farah roll her eyes with annoyance; she had probably been awake longer than I had.

"Two men attacked me and Shirin, they used some sort of magic to make us defenceless. I woke up here and I don't know where Shirin is, what happened to you?" she explained quietly so as not to alert anyone outside, there were probably quite a few people about as I heard general talking going on outside.

"Pretty much the same, I got so far in the desert and then was confronted by some twins. They must have used some sort of magic because it felt like someone had stabbed me in the back and I passed out with the pain, but as you can see, I am fine. Do you know anything else?" I enquired. Farah nodded.

"Yes, these people call themselves the 'Demon Catchers', somewhat platitudinous if you ask me. I met one of the leaders, he was called Durjaya and he said he would kill us soon! So will you get an idea of how to escape soon?" demanded Farah. I was silent for a moment. This situation's options seemed somewhat limited, if Shirin was with me, she would be able to teleport, but she wasn't here. I couldn't break the rope no matter how hard I tried; it was too secure, firm and coarse. I looked at Farah, she had the dagger scabbard but it was without the dagger; I hadn't my swords either. My thoughts left the subject of escape to wonder temporarily over to Shirin. Where was she? What state was she in? I found it odd; I cared so much about her, yet I knew so little about her. Farah suddenly broke my train of thoughts, her voice lacked the harshness that it had just used; instead it was replaced with softness. "Are you thinking about Shirin? I'm sure she is okay. After all, if she's able to kill a load of elite guards and kidnap a princess then I very much doubt anything can hurt her. Where exactly did you meet again?" she asked.

"Back in Persepolis one night when she was trying to rob my father's palace," I explained. Farah smiled.

"Quite the operative way to meet a thief. Um, if I remember correctly I was told that the Persian king's palace was in Babylon," said Farah.

"Oh it is, but that is just one palace, we have palaces all over Persia. We returned first to Persepolis, to rest a short while, and then went onto Babylon. I later returned to Persepolis later with my father, however I was suppose to return back to Babylon...about three days ago to be exact. Doesn't your father have forts all over India?" I asked. Farah shook her head.

"Well I've only ever lived in Amber Fort. The whole point to my life as a princess, is to smile to the public, get shoved into a marriage and then smile some more," explained Farah bleakly. I had never really thought about the whole idea of marriage like that...when she put it like that, it sounded rather depressing.

"Well, if you ever want to marry someone you know then you can marry me," I murmured, slightly daringly.

"Hm, that is assuming you have an idea for our escape," pointed out Farah. I was silent again. Thoughts and scenarios ran through my mind as I thought of an escape route.

"Well, if they do plan to kill us, they will probably untie us first, maybe we can try escaping then," I suggested. It was probably our only option but Farah wasn't please with it.

"Well what do we do if they don't untie us?" she asked.

"Well putting it in the way Shirin would say it ' we are well and truly screwed'," I explained, "all we really can do now is wait."

We sat, waiting, waiting for those who were suppose to end our lives but hopefully wouldn't. The stinging sensation I had been feeling was now just a dull numb ache. Farah and I hadn't really talked, though talking would have probably helped the time move faster – not literally that is. I was trying to prepare something in my head to say, something that wouldn't lead onto talking about the situation, what had happened or Shirin's abnormalities. However, before I could think of something suitable to say, Farah launched into a question about the one subject I thought she would want to avoid.

"Did you really love me? Before, when we were in Azad?" she asked. I looked at her, I was sure my look said enough but before I could ask her to change the subject, I found myself replying.

"Yes...I felt close to you before the whole disaster, you were watching me as we moved across the desert to go to Azad. Don't you remember that at least?" I asked. Farah shook her head. I looked at the floor, I hated it when she said or gestured that she never remembered.

"I am sorry, for betraying you," I heard her apologise; I didn't look up at her.

"It isn't really your fault, you don't really remember it," I murmured. There was silence for a while. Farah broke the silence again.

"It was sweet what you said about marrying you, I'd rather marry you then some stranger, I'll keep what you said in mind," she said, I looked up and I saw she was smiling. I thought about her words, analysing them in my mind.

"You don't consider me a stranger then?" I asked. She shrugged (with difficulty though because her hands were tied up) with a smile.

"Well, I suppose not, no. I mean not many strangers kiss do they?" she mumbled. WHAT? What the heck was that last bit about? I questioned her on this. I saw confusion appear on her face. "Don't YOU remember before? When we were at the fort? You kissed me and then rewound time to change it because you had startled me," she explained. My face dropped. I was filled with several emotions, happiness because she remembered something, embarrassment because of what she remembered, a slight feeling of annoyance because Farah had never mentioned this before.

"You remember that? How come?" I asked.

"Well from what I have gathered, the only time I will forget what has happened is if I die, I did not die so I did not forget," she shrugged.

"WHAT? Then why the heck did you only bring this up now?" I demanded. Farah shrugged.

"I just didn't think it was entirely important – by the way, kissing a girl when she's not expecting it isn't a good way for her to like you, especially if you're practically a stranger at the time," she explained. I was still incredibly annoyed.

"Farah! You have a terrible way of putting things in wrong-priority order – how could that one single memory be unimportant?" I cried but before she could answer, we were both terribly shaken as a shock wave moved across the ground and was quickly followed by a number of smaller tremors.

"What was that?" cried Farah, a rhetorical question as she knew I knew about as much as she did. Though the tremors played havoc with our sense of balance, we managed to stand. I opened my mouth to say something to Farah but suddenly a yellow shock wave moved across the ground and then...

It had almost seemed as if I had blacked out or something. When I 'awoke', Farah spoke first.

"W-what happened?" she asked, she was barely able to stand, maybe she was shaking because of fear, maybe she was shaking because of the tremors – they had stopped now but they had obviously left Farah feeling uneasy as it had done to me. I wasn't shaking though, I was still. We suddenly heard several loud cries of pain, all at once. I stood and looked at the entrance of the tent. My heart pounded against my chest, I hadn't a clue what was happening but somehow I knew a lot of people outside had just been killed at the same time. There was silence, a silence I couldn't understand. A eerie calm was in the air. I suddenly heard someone approaching. Both Farah and I stumbled back, we hadn't any weapons so we were at the total mercy of whoever entered, and judging by the screams we had just heard, the person who was about to enter the tent didn't have a lot of mercy. We both stared, fixated on the front of the tent. However, the figure that entered was hardly a merciless killer. It was Shirin. All the tension I had been feeling suddenly disappeared.

"Shirin! Did you – wurgh! you untie us?" I asked after trying to run to her, but obviously being pulled back by the chain. She didn't move or react at first, her face was blank; she looked almost emotionless. She looked like she was looking right through me. "Are you alright?" I asked her. Her eyes looked up at me, she nodded.

"Yeah..." she mumbled quietly, almost in a child's voice.

"Then maybe you could untie us now?" I asked.

"Huh? Oh, sorry," she mumbled quickly and began to untie Farah and me. Now that my hands were untied and my arms were down, they seemed to be aching even more than before.

"Shirin, were you aware of the tremors –"started Farah but Shirin quickly interrupted her.

"I didn't do it!" she quickly cried. Farah looked confused.

"Do what?" she asked. I wanted to know too, Shirin seemed to be acting rather suspicious and out of character. She looked at me and Farah, we both must have had very sceptical and penetrating faces on as Shirin backed away and snapped back us.

"Stop looking at me like that! I didn't kill them!" she cried back.

"Shirin, you're not making any sense, what are you talking about?" I asked. Shirin looked a little distressed and she wasn't able to say anything. I walked passed her and looked outside of tent. I froze. The colour drew from my face. All I could see were more and more dead bodies, either severed at the neck, waist or somewhere else.

"Okay Shirin, I accept you didn't do this...because I know there is no way you could do this, but who did?" I asked calmly. Farah walked to see what I had been looking at but I heard her immediately wretch as she saw; she probably hadn't seen many dead bodies in her life. Shirin mumbled something very quietly, I didn't hear. I looked over my shoulder at her, she was facing away from me. Why didn't she want to tell me? Maybe she honestly didn't really know either. I wasn't angry with her, I had no reason to be. At least she was safe, and since everyone that could pose a threat to Farah or me was dead, that meant we were safe too.

I returned to Shirin and Farah, holding all our weapons that I had retrieved from another tent. We were stood by the edge of the dead bodies. I could see from the look on Farah's face that at any point she was going to be sick, Shirin herself had a similar overwrought look on her face.

"Okay, let's teleport out of here," I said looking at Shirin. She didn't take this in at first, as if her mind was working on a time difference.

"Huh? Oh, I-I don't think I can, those twins, they put some sort of hex on me. That's one of them," she mumbled and pointed to a decapitated head. I saw Farah sway slightly, as if she was about to faint.

"You know Farah, if you want to be sick you can, I'll even hold your hair back," I said, trying to sound kind but it probably came across as more sarcastic than caring. She muttered quietly in reply:

"That won't be necessary, thank you." She continued to sway slightly unsteadily. I looked back at Shirin; she seemed to be just as shaken as Farah. She was such ghostly pale it looked like she had seen something that had disturbed her greatly. Somehow, I knew she was keeping something from me, something important, but I wouldn't question her seriously now, I'd wait till she was feeling better.

"Well, if whoever put the hex on you is dead then I hardly think the hex still has an effect on you," I suggested. She shrugged and nodded as agreement. She placed her left hand in my right hand and her other hand in Farah's right hand. She shut her eyes and then, like always, we were bathed in a blinding light...but this time...there was something different...

I opened my eyes.

"Whu-urgh-argh! SHIRIN! Why did you teleport us to the top of a roof?" I cried. Shirin had teleported us to a town or a city, which was good, the bad part was that she had teleported us onto a slanted roof of a building – something neither Farah or I (or even Shirin for that matter) expected so we all lost balance and fell down onto the hard, dirt ground. Farah and I stood and dusted ourselves off, at the same time we were glaring harshly at Shirin.

"What? I didn't bring us here; honestly, I had no control over where I went, where are we anyway?" she asked and looked at Farah. It made sense to look at Farah, as this was her land so surely she would recognise the city. However, Farah shrugged.

"I have never been here before, remember, I spend nearly all my time in the fort...so technically no one here will really recognise me, meaning no free-help. We are hardly in the best of situations...we have no money, no form of transport, no food or shelter," murmured Farah. It was late and the streets were empty however, I suddenly noticed one lone figure walking. It was a young man, he looked so harmless making him look even younger than I was. He was of medium height but looked a little shorter than I was. He was skinny but a very large smile was spread on his face, he didn't appear to be smiling at anything in particular – he seemed a naturally cheerful person. His face was clean-cut and his eyes were a lively grey – odd, as I never thought grey eyes could ever appear lively. He probably had black hair, because although he seemed reasonably tidily dressed, his blue turban wasn't well wrapped on his head and exposed a lot of hair. He was wearing clothes that were just off white and he seemed to have quite an up-beat walk. Farah quickly got his attention. "Um excuse me, this may sound a bit of an unorthodox question but, where are we?" she asked. His smile grew.

"You're right, that is an unusual question. Did you fall asleep on a passing cart and wake up in this city?" he asked trying to think up ways of how someone could end up asking such a question. He answered our question. "Well you're in Ayodhya, you know, in the north of India, the city that's name means 'not to be warred against'!" he chuckled. Ayodhya? In the north of India...Shirin had to be right, she couldn't have teleported us this far. Who did then? Well, that was a question that didn't really need answering, at least we were nearer the mountains that we had to climb to find the Temple of Sight. The question that was on my mind now was 'what are we going to do now?'

If there're any Sonic fans reading this then maybe you should know that my older brother is using my account to write a Sonic fic called 'When Two Worlds Collide', it's a 'R' rating (cos it's gonna get violent and there is some language) and basically may interest the older fans of Sonic, if you do read it then be kind and review it (it's a heck of a lot harder to get reviews for Sonic fics because there's so many of 'em! Plus it's his first fic)! Thanks 8)