Aarav gasped out of his sleep.
"Was that... just a dream?" He asked himself.
Sameer who had sat to the right of Aarav noticed him awake and asked "What happened? Did you have a bad dream?"
"I... don't know?" He replied unsure weather it was a dream or a glimpse of his past.
"Hey! Why do you look so pale?" Riya who was sitting in frount of him asked.
"No, It's nothing just a bad dream." He reassured and looked around. It looked like they were in one of those mud houses, not it was more like a hut.
It had straws for a roof, wall in a circular dome, light shined through the to his right door and the single window in front, behind Riya.
Aarav remembered he fell unconscious when light from the stadium hit him after that he does not rememberanything. "What happened? How did I get here?" He asked.
He tried to sit up and then "Aaa!"
A sharp pain shot through his legs.
"I thought so..." Riya said
"What did to think?!" Aarav asked.
"Well... Both Sameer and Kabir who had ran without carring anything were in so much pain..." Aarav only then noticed that Sameer had been sitting with his legs stretched and Kabir who he had completely missed was sitting in the same posture leaning against the wall for sapport.
"So I wondered who much pain you would be in? As you ran carring me." She said sarcastically keeping he right hand on her chin for support.
Kabir whose eyes were closed, opened his eyes, looked at Aarav and said "Did you finally wake up"
"When we all fell unconscious I was the one to first wake up..." Riya replied "I went around to looking for a suitable place to take rest and found this hut which was pretty close."
Kabir continued for Sameer "By the time she came back from exploring the place I woke up and noticed that my legs were shacking and fell."
"When I got there all I saw was Kabir trying to stand on his legs using a stick. The first instant I saw and thought he was trying to dance or something." She said and laughed at that.
"And I had drag my self and you her!!" Kabir shouted angrily.
"Well I am a girl you could not expect a girl to drag two boys on her own" she justified her self. "At least I managed to drag Sameer."
Kabir laughed when she said that.
Aarav tilted his head not knowing why he was laughing for.
He turned to ask Sameer and saw Sameer's angry face which was king of funny, he almost laughed looking at his face, but holded in.
"Hey, Sameer what happened you look so.." He controlled him self from laughing and finished his sentence "Angry? What happened?"
"WHAT HAPPENED?!" Sameer shouted in anger "WHEN I WOKE UP Riya wAS dragging me ACROSS the ground by PULLING my LEG! And I had to crawl my way to this hut!!"
The three let out laughter they had been holding looking at Sameer's angry face.
"Hey! What are you guys laughing at?!" Sameer shouted offended by their laughter.
"You were the last one to wake up." Riya said and asked "What dream did you have? You were rolling and murmuring something in your dreams."
Sameer said "Yeah! You said something like you were my princess and after that shouted a name like Raviya or something."
"Revika!" He said and remembered the dream clearly too clearly.
"Who is this Revika?" Kabir asked.
"I think she... is my little sister..." He said, remembered Revika's death abd clutched his head in pain.
"Hey! Are you all right?" Riya asked.
"Aarav!" Shouted Sameer unsure of what to do.
"It was... was not any normal dream... it was... it was like a... memory... my past!" He said in pain.
He kept his hand before his mouth almost about to vomit, but holded it in.
"Hey! What happened?! Did you remember who you are? Or how did you get here?" Kabir asked.
Aarav feeling unwell slowly shock his head side to side as gesture of saying no.
He sat leaning against the wall and said "I did not find out how I got here or how I got traped in the ice..."
"Wait!" Kabir intrupted "you were traped in ice?!"
"Yeah! So were all of you." Aarav said.
"Did you just figured we were traped in ice?! Then where did you think the water we woke up in came from or why it was so cold?" Sameer asked in a moking gesture.
"Even you only knew that you were traped in ice only after I told you." Aarav said.
"Hey! No one asked you to reveal that!" Sameer protested.
"You little!" Kabir exploded in anger "You try to humiliate me?!" Kabir stretched his arm past Aarav and grabbed Sameer's ear and twisted it.
"Aaa! Please! Please! I beg your mercy!" Sameer cried.
Riya laughted "HaHhaHa!"
Aarav gave a small smile looking at the two and continued. "In the dream I saw someone who seemed to be my sister, I was a farmer in the field planting rice. Every thing changed suddenly..." and narrated what he saw in his dream to the three.
After he finished Riya kept her hand on her mouth unable to belive Revika's fate.
Sameer almost vomited imagining it. Kabir controlled his vomit and asked "So that was the reason you keept your hand before your mouth for."
Aarav nodded in return. "When I was about to grab the pendent I had given her I was sucked into an black empty space and last thing I heared was the sound of a bell ringing."
"A bell ringing?" Sameer asked "like bell in temples?"
"No! It sounded more like a bell used to tie around an animal like a cow or something." He answered.
"I have a theory." Riya raised her hand, the three looked towards her and she suggested "What if we were already daed?"
"What are you talking about?!" Sameer said "that is nonsense! If we are dead then how can we move or speak?!"
"Well... she does have a point." Aarav supported her.
"What?! What are are two talking about?" Sameer fel like he would loose his mind.
"Kabir!" He shouted "tell me that atleast you have not gone insane?!"
Kabir calmily said "Calm down Sameer." And calmed him down a bit and suggested "Let's first hear what got those two to get that conclusion."
"Alright! I would like to hear your reasoning." He folded his hands and said "From your reasoning I would decide weather you two have lost your mind or are a geniuses out the four of us."
"How made you the judge of this group?" Riya asked him from looking by his gesture and Tobe.
"I my self nominated as the judge." A
Sameer said proudly.
"Anyway... " Aarav narrated what he experienced the first time he woke up in the museum.
"So we all were killed by that giant hyena?" Kabir asked.
"Yes!" Aarav answered "The hyena was the first one to be released from the ice that time for some reason."
Sammer realised why Aarav behaved that way seeing the beast and said "No wonder you said we should ran even further ahead."
"And that place..." Riya intrupted "only you went there or atleast remembered it. Why only you though?"
He thought fir a second and remembered the text he saw in the screen.
"I don't know but I do remember seeing in that screen a text that said memory altering failed or something like that."
"And it showed many other errors, like failed to create a new world and said syncing worlds and an error of failed to do protocols. And a bunch of symbols."
"Symbols?" Sameer asked tilting his head.
"Yeah! Symbols!"
"Did they look something like that?" Riya asked him and on the mud floor drew some Symbols.
"Yes! These look like the Symbols I saw on the screen!" Aarav exclaimed.
"Do you know about these symbols?" Kabir asked him.
"While I was exploring this place I had seen them." She answered "I can get that for you I saw it was carved on a stone tablet."
"Yea! Fetch us that it might just give us a clue to know what happened!" Aarav exclaimed.
Riya stood up and went out to fetch that table for Aarav.
Sameer folded his hands to his head and said "Even if you get that thing how are you going to decipher it? It is not like you can understand it do you?"
After a few minutes Riya returned carring the stone tablet. She carried it in a princess position,slowly like it was a baby.
She entered the house with it and slowly droped it in "Damm! This rock is so heavy!"
Aarav and Sameer crawled their way to the stone tablet. While Kabir slowly stood up pressing hus hand against the wall for support.
"Hey! How are you able to walk already?!" Sameer asked him jealous of him already getting recoved from the fatigue.
"I had not ran like you. As I was not been changed by that hyena twice." He said to mock Sameer's luck.
Sameer gritted his teeth in jealousy, looked at the tablet and said "They are just a bunch of symbols. Probably the early language used by the people living here."
Aarav discagreed with sameer "No, you are wrong it is a translation tablet."
"Translation tablet?" Kabir asked "What's that?"
"Look!" Aarav pointed to few text carved in the table. "These two rows are the symbols. And these two rows are alphabets."
The first row and the third rows were symbols, while the second and fourth rows were alphabets and numbers. "Now all we need to do is decipher it and this may have the key for us to find a way out."
Sameer interjected Aarav "Alright, we gave found a way to translate the text but do you even remember the texts?"
Aarav gave a smirk to him and replied "Don't underestimate me." He took a small piece of straw that had fell from the roof and started writing the symbols he had seen on the ground.
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