HOW OLD WAS SHE?
Ram thought about this again and again as he tried to digest what he had just old him.
That she had the device implanted in his since his birth. She knew him ever since he had been born.
Does that mean he knew who she was?
Ram tried to remember his early childhood days. But it was hazy. All he can really remember was his time in college two years ago.
Ram gasped.
He now realized that he didn't have any memories of his childhood, except that he had been lonely.
An orphan.
But Elder of Light's words implied that she had been observing him ever since he was born.
This was too much for him to take.
"Don't worry. I will reveal all about your life when the time comes. But for now just know that I know more about you than even yourself. And I care about you. It's a promise that I had made to your parents," she said, her voice softening when she mentioned about Ram's parents.
"You know who they are and how they look like?" Ram asked.
Elder of Light nodded. "Yes, they were my best friends. And if there is anyone you can trust in your life, that would be me. Originally I didn't want to reveal myself to you so soon. But who would've thought that you use as soon as you freeze the time flow, you would kiss Sandhya and make a mess out of everything. I have carefully planned everything so that you would meet with Sandhya, fall for her, then using your love for her, you would learn to control your powers. But now… you brought attention upon yourself.
"If others were to know that you were the Elder of Time, not only would they tried to kill you to steal your powers, but also some might use you a lackey to do their things. It's why I had to take the risk of exposing myself to rescue you from the clutches of the Faction of Hope," she said.
Ram stared at her in disbelief. She had been following him and set a plan for him to follow and he messed it up. Messed everything up.
Ram tried to remember her, searched all of his memories, but all he could see was…
Wait! All of this searching seemed to triggered something. He remembered seeing her. Or rather, her in disguise.
She had been with her all of his life.
The only special feature that all of them had in common was that their right eye was much smaller than their right eye. The only way for Ram to verify that she was his parent's friend was by using this feature.
Ram searched Elder of Right's face and he gasped.
"Your right eye is much smaller than your left one. You had been there with me all of my life. Oh my God," Ram said. "And you are Emily Roxane. The celebrity whom I had a crush on. You used your devices and powers to entertain me. There was no Emily Roxane in the real world. It has been you all this time. And your name is Ella, El to be short."
Her eyes widened. "How did you…" she trailed off. "I had locked that part of memories. Did the device failed?" she mumbled to herself.
Ram just stared at her. She had been with him all of his life. Took care of him in various disguises and just like today, he had learned about her identity many times in the past. "Are you going to lock my memories now also?" he said.
El shook her head. "No. Not now. God knows how many times I tried to lock those memories, but you still discovered ever single time. It's just a waste of time and resources. Besides, it's better if you have all of your memories intact and know what's actually going on to keep yourself safe," she said.
Ram swallowed. "Can you show your true self to me?" he asked.
El shook her head. "No. Not right now. I will once you have learned to control your powers and also we are in an environment that was under our control. Even though Pleasure & Privacy is secure, it's defenses can still be taken down. The chances of others snooping on our conversation were more," she said.
"Then all we discussed now was…" Ram trailed.
"Don't worry. I have taken necessary precautions. But it won't last much longer. I have so much to tell and very less time. Let's get started," she said.
Ram decided to call her Aunt El since she was much older than him, knew about him since his birth and was close to his parents. The memories were still very slow in coming, but he realized this much.
"Wait Aunt El," Ram said. "Did you know about The Twins whom I had met earlier?"Ram said.
Aunt El frowned. "Boy, I am not that much older than you, considering how long our kind will live. But since it was what you wanted, you could call me the same. But remember that you can call me like that only when we were alone. Other times, you have to address me like an Elder, as a stranger," she said.
Ram grinned.
'You are one heck of a lucky guy, to have an Aunt all of a sudden. Even though Emily Roxane is false, I still liked her so much so that I designed myself to look like her. Should I change it?' Em asked inside his head.
Ram shook his head. 'No need. Now that I know that Emily Roxane is false, my crush also might have been fabricated. I think of her as my mother. With you looking like her only …" he trailed off as Em screamed at him.
'You only want me to remind you of your Aunt every time you look at me. Don't you care about my feelings?' she asked.
'Em, it's not like that. Did you forget that Emily Roxane is an illusion my aunt had used to entertain me. Since she doesn't existed in reality and you have already chosen to appear like that, why don't you continue the same?' Ram suggested.
Em was still not convinced as her presence disappeared from my consciousness.
Aunt El chuckled. "Boy, you have one heck of an assistant. If that old man came to know about you giving Em so much freedom, he would've puked gallons of blood," she said. "Besides, I don't know The Twins you are talking about. It's better I look into it."
Ram nodded. "Yes, they looked young, exactly the same. One was male called Nano, the coward of the two while the other was female called Rita, the enthusiastic one," he said, then remembered that she talked about The Old man as if she knew him. "You know about Sandhya's grandfather? I heard from Em that he was wary about you," he said.
"That was done deliberately by that old man. I was his favorite daughter after all," she said.
Ram's head was exploding from what he had learned about till now.
Aunt El was the old man's daughter, then Sandhya was her niece and she doesn't even know about that?
Aunt El sighed. "Sadly yes, she doesn't know about my existence. You see, my sister hated the fact that I got so close to your parents. She was against it. So she raised Sandhya without revealing who I was to her. Anyway forget about that. As I have already said, we don't have much time to discuss and I want to tell you about yourself. You have to make sure that you wouldn't reveal this to anyone, at least for now," she said.
Ram nodded.
"Good. As I have already said, I had been monitoring you every since you were born, appearing in disguises checking to see if you could recognize me. Which you did every single time by using my damned smaller right eye. After few years, your parents were fighting against the Forces of Darkness that tried to kidnap you. The Forces of Darkness were kidnapping young kids, wanting to experiment on them. By the time I had arrived, your parents were on the verge of their death. I promised to them that I would find you and take care of you.
"I searched for you everywhere, even made the old man to help me. After so many days I found out that the kids The Forces of Darkness kidnapped were ended up dying. It had been a huge scandal back then. I was so worried about you that I was going crazy.
"Then my father had to involve his nemesis into this and he used his resources to find out where they had kept you. All the three of us raided the location, rescue you and it was the first time I had locked your memories of your time over there.
"Later as time went on, you started to display the powers of Time. I asked grandfather to help you and you mastered them.
"But soon, we discovered that not only were you able to use the Powers of Time, but also my powers, Powers of Light. And Powers of Air, Sky, Space… you were able to use all the powers.
"My father's nemesis did some investigation on his own and informed us that The Forces of Darkness experimented on you just like the other kids. He didn't know more about the nature of the experimentation. He said he would investigate it further while he asked us to mask your memories about you using your powers. We did as he asked us.
"Few months after, my father's nemesis appeared, with wounds all over. He was on the verge of his death. We were able to save him and when he woke up, he informed us that the Forces of Darkness kidnapped all the kids to experiment with them, to enable them to use all of the existing Powers of the Elders.
"Most of the kids had died, with some only able to use some of the powers. But you were the one amongst them that were able to use all of your powers. They obtained what was so special about you and took it to give it to their leader, the first Elder of Time.
"He didn't know why you have not been killed yet. But just to be safe, he asked us to erase all of your memories, even about myself and my father for your own safety.
"But once I came to know that my father and his nemesis were fighting each other viciously for some unknown reason and are looking to kill each other, I knew that something was not right and appeared to Sandhya as my father and talked to her about how I had been approaching my end and looking for a successor, then I pointed Sandhya towards you, especially when you were using your powers.
"Now that my father had died, you have to learn to control your powers soon. I am going to do everything in my powers to make that happen. You have to cooperate with my proxy for that to happen. But remember something. There is someone amongst both of our factions working for The Forces of Darkness. We don't know who that was or even why they hadn't looked for you all this time. I don't know why my father and his nemesis had been fighting to kill each other recently. Till I get to know everything, you have to trust only me and my proxy. No one else. Not even the Elites, other Elders as well as Chandra and Sandhya," she said.
"Not even Sandhya?" Ram asked.
"Yes, not even her. Remember that she was blindly in love with Chandra. I thought you would turn her love to you, but you only messed it up. Chandra might or might not be from The Forces of Darkness. He had a heavy influence on Sandhya. Don't trust anyone else, other than myself, Em and my proxy. If you don't heed to my advice, all of our lives would be in danger. And remember, under the guise of testing and torturing you, we are going to train you. You have to keep this as a secret form others," she said.
"What if this would be revealed to others?"
"Our lives would be in danger."
Ram suddenly remembered about the twins. How they had planted their own device inside of him. And how nobody had seen them enter and do the same to him. And Aunt El didn't know anything about them.
Oh my god!