Chandra turned her head around and saw no human entities unless herself. She sighed in and put her sword down on the ground near the riverbank. Her ears only captured the rustling sounds of leaves and shrubs as the wind blew them. Some birds were chirping and the water of the streaming river in front of her was bringing some gurgling rhythm. She wiped her sweating forehead and neck, 'The sun hit so hard.' After putting her shoes off and taking down her clothes, she moved in silence and walked into the river. Trying to sense the water before feeling safe to soak herself into the water. The surrounding seemed quiet, and she felt safe as she tried to enjoy her bathing time. 'The water looks quite clear and fresh,' she thought as she sprinkled the water on her naked body. Working to make the shelter for Beauty had made her drained.
Distancing only a few meters from her place, something was slithering around the shrubs and moving into the water in its quiet movement. The kind of entity seemed trying to make an almost invisible movement and its effect on the streaming water. It was observing her underneath the water.
Chandra was alert when her instinct tried to alarm her through her body sensation. Suddenly, she heard something move the leaves of the shrubs. 'What's that? Why do I sense being observed by something? I get a weird sensation as I felt something trying to reflect its energy on me,' she emerged slowly from the river. Putting on her clothes quickly and grabbing her sword, she waited for something to appear behind those shrubs. A big bear was sneaking out from behind the shrubs. It showed its hunger instinct as it found Chandra standing in front of it only less than one meter. Chandra halted her breath and was ready to unsheathe the sword. The bear showed its teeth and stood up. Its eyes were staring at her, and they locked the eyes of each other. It was about to move forward in a few seconds, but it looked to get startled. Chandra unsheathed the sword and held it with both hands.
"I don't want to be your lunch meal, beast!" she hissed at the beast. "Let me beat you," she talked to the bear and was about to sway the sword.
Something had happened that made the beast turn around and ran away. Chandra breathed in but she still felt her heart beating faster as she heard something throw itself into the water. She felt there was another entity present between her and the bear. Her intuition told her something was observing. She sighed and turned around to the source of the bumping sound, 'Something big must be thrown itself into the water, was that? Another beast?' she thought curiously. She waited again but within some minutes, there was nothing happened. She breathed deeply and returned her way to the hut. She just moved when she found two men walking toward her as they caught her by the eye.
'Damn, other men of King Dragon!' as she found the kingdom's emblem on their swords' handles. She ran but they tried to catch her steps.
"Stop running, we're going to catch you and bring you to the King Dragon," the man with a scar on his cheek shouted at her as he ran to get her. The other, taller man, laughed in an excited tone as Chandra was their prey. "We could bring her dead or alive!" he sniffed, and his eyes looked at her as a hungry lion did.
Knowing that she had to face them, Chandra held her sword and tried to attack one of them that standing closer. She moved her sword to his hip bit that he could tackle the attack with his sword. The other man attacked and aimed his sword at her neck, but she anticipated by leaning backward and tackling it with her sword. Then, she kneeled and aimed her sword at the lower leg of the man. She successfully attacked his calf as she saw it was bleeding. Not too much blood as the man still stood and tried to attack her neck with his sword again. She pushed him with the elbow and hit him on the stomach with the handle of the sword and punched the other man's left chest. Her left leg was stretched to slide down the ankle of the man with a bleeding leg. As he fell to the ground, she kicked the man's friend on his shin and grabbed his neck. Then, hitting the man's collar with the handle of the sword and giving a hard kick with her thigh on his chest to paralyze temporarily his attack movements as quickly as she could. As the man lost his control, Chandra grabbed his neck to push him down on the ground with a hard kick of her knee on his chest. Her instinct was to survive trying to find the nick time to jump back and run away. The man who holding his leg caught her calf with his other shivering hand and tried to hurt her with his sword as Chandra kicked him on his shoulder with the other leg. The man groaned in pain and the other man scratched her left arm as he tried to get up. Chandra held her arm and put her sword as she ran as fast as she could after throwing some soil into the man's eyes. Without her realizing it, there was a pair of eyes who were noticing her fighting and seemed to stay in the place observing her fighting with those two knights. He followed her direction where she was running.
'Damn, he hurt me on my arm!' Chandra took a glance at her wound as she ran and tried to practice her leaping motions, making her enemies get lost in tracking her. She stopped running and leaned against a tree. She turned her head back to find out whether the men kept running after her or not. She panted in exhausting breaths and wiped her mouth with her hand. She didn't see the men. She squatted and put a seat on the ground. She saw some little blood running from her left arm and right calf. She scowled to hold the pain and bit her lip hard. She was aware that she had to stop the blood running, then she cut her sleeve and tied it to her calf. She breathed deeply and regulated her emotion. 'No panic!' she tore her sleeve to see the wound. It was bleeding she put another piece of her sleeve cut to soak the blood. She groaned and grimaced in pain but also exhaustion as she felt some tears and sweat blend into one on her face. She covered her mouth with her hand to avoid making any sounds.
Not too long she discerned someone was whispering in her ear. She knew that voice, "Kumara?" she turned her head to the voice source. She found Kumara squatting beside her, and he offered something to drink. Chandra wiped her eyes and face then reached a water buckle from him. Kumara was staring at her, his eyes looked deeply cloudy. He sighed as Chandra arrived in her stable condition. He put her calf on his thigh, he examined her wound after tearing up her trouser. "I hope there's no poison," he smelled a blood stain that he wiped off from the wound with his finger. He sighed in a relieved way and looked at Chandra who kept watching his aid. Kumara put some white powder on the wound and some turmeric powder, "It can kill some bacteria that it causes infection," he explained as he examined her left arm and did the same thing with the wound on the calf. They got startled as they found an old man whom they didn't have any ideas where he was, but he was standing in front of them.
"What happened to you?" he smiled warmly at Chandra and tapped her shoulder. "Take her to my place, I will cure her wounds!" he turned his head to Kumara who looked at him in respectful eyesight. Kumara nodded his head and brought Chandra with his two arms. Chandra clumsily put her arms around his neck, "Thank you, I will pay for this, Kumara, my friend!" she whispered. Kumara smirked at her without saying any words in a more enigmatic expression.
'Why do I hate seeing his perplexing smirk like that? It seems that he knows everything that I don't!' Chandra thought as she captured that expression on Kumara's face. 'Is he hiding something from me? Or he knows something about me that I didn't realize?' she kept guessing.
"Don't think too much!" Kumara looked at her as he understood what was battling inside her mind. "You should thank me that I found you!" he hissed as he didn't want the old man to hear what they talked about.
"Are you following me, Kumara?" Chandra was ignited by his sentence. She deeply explored every inch of Kumara's façade, trying to get a tiny clue. 'He is so poker and flat that I almost couldn't read him!' she sighed deeply and put her eyes on the old man.