The Last Griffin

Chapter 1. Welcome to Helros

MalikaRoy was having a bad day.

Shewasn't a stranger to them either but this one was a doozy even herworst nightmare can't top. This morning she figured she was going tohave a fair bunch of new experiences now that she was moving out onher own, for college. But none of the articles on the internetsprouting out crap about 'how to survive away from home', had warnedher about hitting the mother-lode of the 'new experiences', the veryfirst day in the big city.

Shesupposed she should have known, nothing good ever came out ofordering a roommate off the internet. Her roommate who turned out tobe a nice enough girl with just a minor condition (casually makesfire out of thin air) was the least she should have expected. She islucky she didn't end up with a serial killer with a toilet fetish orsomething spectacularly revolting like that.

Notthat the lack of psychopaths in her apartment makes this situationany better. The 'situation' is the polite referral to the fact thatshe was hanging upside down from the very top of a very tall andpointy building in downtown Bangalore, surrounded by a bunch oflovely super-powered Harry Potter wannabes, who were hanging with herlike bats, mirroring her.

"Well,now what?" Malika shouted over the roaring of the blood rushingto her head.

"Nowwe jump!" said her roommate of half a day grinning like this wasthe best thing that could ever happen to anyone.

"Yeahabout that, Leena, I wonder if the lot of you have noticed that weare swinging a bit far up from the ground. So usually what happensis, and I am just talking out of context here, that when people tryand jump from a height like this, it usually ends with them turninginto human hummus and a whole lot of paperwork for the city."

"Relax.This is the fun part. It doesn't get difficult till much later.",said the grinning guy hanging by her other side. You wouldn't knowfrom looking at them but this guy, Ryan, was Leena's twin.Considering the extent of bizarre things that she has ended upbelieving today, the fact that these two nutters shared womb spacefor a couple of months, was the least difficult of them all tobelieve.

"Remindme again why do we have to be upside down whilst falling to ourdeaths? You people claim to have other worldly powers, and this thekinda portal you came up with?"

"Shit,stop talking! And jump because I said so. It doesn't have to makesense to your stunted brain.", came the authoritative voice ofTurner from the far left of her, beside Ryan. An hour into meetingTurner for the first time this afternoon, she'd known that mostthings coming out of his mouth sounds vaguely like an insult to yourexistence and he does mean to say all of them. By nightfall she wasquite sure that most of them are in fact true (she stillrefused to believe that he's got a TV which changes movie climaxes ifyou don't end up liking them the first time around). So, she knewwhen he says she has a stunted brain, he probably actually has athesis worth of facts to back that up. Malika simply wasn'tinterested to look into them.

"WellI am not sure I want to come with anymore", said Malika, reallyhating the idea of getting splattered all over the footpath.

"Don'tthink you have a choice anymore. I hear the guards coming up."said Leena tilting her head to the side trying to hear more clearly.

Malikathought it would be received all to well by her current audience ifshe told them she had heard them coming up about 15 minutes ago whenthey first started searching the ground floor. She refused to thinkabout the fact that she might actually be what they are telling hershe is. Instead she focused on doing the one thing every parent outthere had ingrained in their kid's brain not to do - go to unknownplaces with a bunch of strangers. Even though she was technically anadult as of last May, thank you very much, she knew that excusewouldn't fly with her mother at all.