The Ace

by Majestroke

  Minerva ran her fingers through her hair. “It’s been a week since both of us joined the Ajax military academy, and let me tell you, from the moment I saw you, something seemed to be off.”

  “Care to elaborate some more? I’m all ears.”

  “I don’t have facts to prove my argument, but I am good at assessing people from the first glance. You joined the Ajax academy in order to fight against the oppressors, but at the same time you seem to be against the current administrative system.”

  Adrian let out a frustrated groan. “Is this because I submitted this stupid piece of paper? I am a direct supporter of the prince and his order, but I see several weaknesses in his rule and I want to correct them. Just try to merge those two pieces together and read it, you’ll see.”

  Minerva threw a sidelong glance at the torn paper. “No need. Are you coming tomorrow?”

  “Yes, and I hope to meet you there and not anywhere else.”

  “I wasn’t spying on you Blackheart, it’s just that—”

  Minerva looked frustrated as if searching for the right phrase.

  “I don’t care what you think of me,” Adrian brushed away her comments and prepared to leave. “I’ll try to prove you wrong, or if I could make things quicker……… do you want to go a date with me?”

  Minerva’s eyes widened with her cheeks getting a faint shade of red, but after a few seconds she retained her normal composure.

  “Fuck you Blackheart,” she blurted and dashed past him towards the exit.

  For some reason, Adrian felt so much better after that.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  The Prisoner

  When he headed out of the classroom, he saw Tara pinned to a wall with a boy kissing her furiously. From the outside it looked like an aimless cat fight but the two participants seemed to be enjoying it themselves.

  Then Tara’s eyes flew open as if sensing Adrian’s presence, and when she saw him from the corner of her eyes, she made a desperate struggle to escape from the boy’s grip - which in turn looked like a strange form of dance. Adrian, unable to suppress his laughter, began to chuckle, which stopped the boy from his task.

  “What’s the problem Blackheart?”

  “N-nothing, just try to do that somewhere else Benny. It’s like having sex on the school stage.”

  “Argh, just shut up,” Benny snapped and stole a quick kiss from Tara. “See you later sweetheart.”

  He patted Adrian and headed along the corridor.

  “You look like a mess,” Adrian said as he watched Tara arrange herself. Her hair was a rat’s nest, one side of her blouse had fallen down and the left side of her jeans were hanging open, revealing a blue color undergarment.

  Adrian opened his mouth to make another joke when he realized Tara’s eyes were closed not because she was enjoying, but because she was starting to cry.

  “Let me guess,” Adrian deflated. “He is your new boyfriend, who you are only dating to get money for the scholarships?”

  Tara arranged her jeans and gave a look with sore eyes. “I’m just trying to find a way to continue my education without going back to the Outcast.”

  “That’s a nice way of justifying it.”

  Now that the more embarrassing moment had fleeted away, Tara wiped her eyes and regarded Adrian with a disgusted glance.

  “Who are you to argue? You are not my father you know.”

  She walked past Adrian, but he reached her before she could walk far away.

  “I’ve been friends with you for more than twelve years Tara, and I don’t want to see my friend acting like a prostitute so she could earn money for a living.”

  Tara stopped walking and glared at him.

  “Take that back!”

  “Take what?”

  “Calling me a prostitute,” Tara’s eyes beginning to brim with tears again. “You don’t understand anything do you Adrian? I think I know why. You are always the highest in the class, always the one to get the scholarships and guess what? You even got a chance to join the Ajax Military Academy. What do I have?”

  “You and I both know you possess the same skills as me, so stop acting like a baby and do some work. There are plenty of vacancies for a girl like you. Inns, receptions, cashiers, they will all accept you.”

  “I don’t care-”

  Adrian gripped her by the shoulders. “I am not angry about you, I am angry about you not using the chance when you have the opportunity.”

  Tara shrugged his hands. “I think I need to be alone. I am going to my room.”

  “We can have dinner somewhere if you want,” Adrian pulled a few coins from his pocket, trying to lighten the mood. “What do you say? Dinner’s on me.”

  Tara gritted her teeth and slapped his hand. The coins rattled on the cement floor and rolled to a stop.

  “Eat shit!” she snapped. “You haven’t lost your manners yet, haven’t you Adrian? Calling me a slut and then calling me for dinner—”

  “It’s not that—”

  “Keep your money, I don’t care.”

  And being the second girl who snapped at Adrian that day, she stomped away to the staircase and headed to her room.

  A few students passed by him, smirking and laughing. For them, it looked like he gave money for Tara thinking she was a slut. Funny how people misinterpreted stuff. Adrian slowly picked the coins one by one and dropped them back to his pocket. Walking along the corridor, he reached outside where the street lamps lighted the dark school grounds. Adrian heaved a sigh and began to head towards the ground.

  ◆◆◆

  Diana slowly opened her eyes, her blurry vision slowly adjusting to the lights of the dimly lit room. What hit her head first was a growing headache in her temples and it she slowly began to reminiscence the haphazard that had happened to her.

  She sat down on where she was standing. In front of her was a metal grill which separated her from Ace, who was eagerly staring at her stirring. Without uttering any words, Diana took a quick survey of the room. Nothing occupied them except for her, her kidnapper and the chair Ace was sitting in. By the looks of the dust on the walls, it was obvious the place wasn’t cleaned in a couple of months.

  “You seem to have woken up,” Ace’s voice echoed in the small room. A small rat emerged from a dark corner and scuttled towards a small hole nearby Diana.

  She stifled a scream and scrambled back, all her headache fading away in an instant.

  “Don’t worry, they won’t bite,” Ace assured.

  “Let me out of here,” Diana scrambled forwards and began to pull the bars. It didn’t move even an inch.

  “Please try to understand the situation in a more rational way. You won’t be escaping from here until another day. Tomorrow we’ll be meeting your brother at the same spot I attacked you, until then, your home’s this cage.”

  “Is my brother safe?”

  “Safe and sound, he’ll have a few broken bones but he’ll live.”

  Diana gritted her teeth and began to bang her hands on the grill hysterically.

  “Trying to make any noise won’t help,” Ace said. “I don’t think anyone above would hear even if you screamed till your lungs melted.”

  “So we are underground?” Diana assumed.

  That made it difficult for her crew to find her. She turned her head to look at her shoulder.

  “You are smart,” Ace stood up and walked towards the gate. “But I don’t think your brother could find you using your location code.”

  Each magus had a location code tattooed somewhere in their body. The code was unique to each person, and a Seeker had the ability to find a person using the location code, since the code itself emitted a signal that was unique for each wizard. Quinton was a good seeker, but by the tone of Ace’s voice Diana knew searching her for was useless. She rolled her sleeve till her arm and checked the six digit number - 005784 - tattooed to her shoulder. She expected it to be gone but it still existed, but the order of numbers were changed.

 
007485

  “How did you do that?”

  Ace sat back in his seat. “I don’t think it’s better to concern yourself with that.”

  Diana had had enough of the skepticism. For the first time in her life, she knew she was alone. She had no chance of escape. She didn’t know who her kidnapper was or what powers he had. And the only chance she had of any escape was dissolved away by what Ace had done.

  “Why are you doing this? If you wanted to bring Grandfather out of the house you should have used someone other than me. I’m just a useless novice magus who still doesn’t know how to cast any magic.”

  “You’re clearly underestimating yourself. You don’t know how much you’re worth.”

  “What do you know?” Diana burst out. “They don’t care about novice people like me. My only chance of escape was my brother and now you removed that chance as well. If you think they’ll let grandfather out for a simple girl like me, you’re clearly mistaken. I’m not worth all that sacrifice……”

  It took her a few seconds to realize she was crying. And she had no arguments against her justifying that. She was alone, drenched in dust with a rat as her only companion, it was natural for her composure to blow away.

  Ace kicked the metal grill from his foot. “God, you are a crybaby. I said not to underestimate yourself. Do you think that magical crest of yours is some coincidence? When every other person gets a Spirk in their adolescent ages, all you got was a crest? Didn’t you think for a moment that the puzzle pieces simply don’t match?”

  Diana had thought of that indeed. She had put a lot more thought to that than Ace could ever measure. But despite her hours in the magus library and constant nagging with Travis or her brother, she had got no reply that helped to improve her investigation. Both the boys said, it was completely natural for a person to get a crest instead of a Spirk. But they were hiding something, and for Diana it was clear as the morning sky. Besides, if such a thing was natural why didn’t the books have any information about the subject?

  “I wanted you,” Ace emphasized. “And trust me, Grandfather will send a whole army of magi just to save you.”

  Despite the situation they were in, Diana felt something warming up inside her. Pride? And then she blamed herself for forgetting the current circumstances.

  “The rule of the magi is survival of the fittest,” Diana noted. “And I haven’t been doing things that can prove me as someone fit.”

  For some reason, Ace began to laugh, it slowly amplified until the voice of his sudden jubilant nature was echoing across the room, almost in a horrific way.

  “You are as naive as I was a few years ago,” he stood up from his seat. “You think the magi are someone pure and noble fighting for a worthy cause, but from the inside they are as rotten as the forces of the capital. You’ll realize that someday, just like the way I did.”

  Before Diana could ask what that meant, Ace got up from his seat and walked away, leaving a dumbstruck Diana behind. After she heard a wooden door being closed and its locks being clicked, she realized she was alone…… with a rat.

  “Hey!” she yelled. “Don’t leave me alone here!”

  No reply came from the outside.

  “Hello?” Diana’s voice echoed.

  Ace was gone. Diana didn’t know for what she felt angry anymore. For Ace for kidnapping her or for leaving her alone. But what he mentioned stroke her mind. She was special, at least at some rate she didn’t know. Lifting her blouse, she touched the crest just a few inches above her navel. It wasn’t normal, and she had found no magus who had a crest to connect with the hexsphere. Just what was so special about her?

  That didn’t matter compared to the current situation she was in. She inspected the room, but Ace had been careful enough not to keep any objects around her. As she moved herself to a corner, she found a broken stone brick, fallen down from the wall above. She stood up despite her growing nausea and checked whether the wall had any opening for the outside, but it was tougher than it looked. There was another brick wall layer behind the stone wall, so her chances of signaling the outside were over.

  She fell down to the ground in utter disappointment and out of pure anger threw the rock to the cage.

  I hate this world.

  The alarm bell managed to wake Adrian up. His mother had always taught him how to be organized, so whether the bell rang or not, Adrian would be up at five in the morning. He had never thought of sleeping past that point. It was dawn, and it was a new day, and a new day meant a new opportunity.

  Waking up from his messy bed, he walked towards his desk, where a singular white notebook was lying on the table with the words ‘TASK DIARY’ written from a black marker. He opened the book and skimmed over to the page he had bookmarked. In it he had written in bright red, ‘Stage 01’.

  Today was the day. At the end of that day, he’ll either be dead or he’ll be successful in finishing the first stage of his plan. He had many things to do, and pushing over the curtains of his gloomy room, he looked at the academy ground which was isolated.

  It took him only a few minutes to wash his face and get dressed into a new suit. In another ten minutes he was walking along the boulevard that led to the forest, with a slightly larger book in his hands. He loved his morning walks. While the other academics were snoring in their beds till the seven o’ clock alarm rang, Adrian would walk from the academy to the woods and then come back by the time the academy work started.

  What he most liked was the isolation and silence, which gave him perfect time to strategise. He had captured one of the magicians and was using her as hostage to reveal them to the world. The incident that happened three years ago still burned in his mind. That man had brutally killed mother right in front of his own eyes, and he had only taken action after the major damage was done. Now that he had captured Diana, she didn’t seem like a person who was trained to be a cold blooded murderer, but then again, every person isn’t the same.

  There was one more thing to be done, and that solely depended on luck and the crew members he got. If all the crew members in his team supported him, he might pull this through with a hundred percent success rate. It was all about revelation and elimination.

  The boulevard came to an end and was restricted by a metal fence and beyond it was the forest. Adrian jumped over the fence and headed to the woods, his eyes moving to the bark of each tree, where he had marked his route. These were minute and almost unnoticeable, but Adrian who possessed a sharp eye managed to find even the slightest peel, symbol, or the discreetly pointed twig that led to a much bigger tree, its branches reaching the sky and dry leaves hanging from them.

  Adrian slowly stepped towards the bark and placed his hand. Closing his eyes, he studied the structure of the mahogany bark. Every object in the world had its own unique structure. Any alternator had the power to change, destroy or sometimes combine these structures with other structures. What Adrian did was alteration - changing the shape of the substance. Gradually a circular cavity began to open in the tree trunk and expanded providing a hole enough for Adrian to go inside.

  A few inches beyond the cavity was a flight of stairs, running down, with torches hung in walls lighting the area. Adrian entered and closed the tree trunk before descending the stairs that led to the room where Diana was trapped. But just in the side was another door, which was the room of Ryan, the other survivor of the orphanage attack.

  Adrian gently tapped the door twice before entering. Ryan was inside, with a massive book on his lap, his eyes engrossed in its contents. The room was much smaller, only with a few basic furniture in it - a bed, chair, table and a small library.

  “What are you reading?”

  The small boy peeled his eyes away from the book, slightly annoyed about being distracted.

  “The Way of a Manipulator,” he replied. “Mother had this book with her.”

  Adrian threw the book he was carrying to the bed. “Read that. It’s a book about dictatorship written by a guy called N
alius.”

  “Hmm, after I read this I will.”

  “Did your roommate do anything stupid while I was gone?”

  “She screamed a lot, and I learned a lot of curse words by spending the night with her. Pretty girls have really bad mouths, don’t they brother?”

  Adrian sat on the chair. “Bad mouths and rotten bodies. Was she cursing me?”

  “At first I thought it was you when she mentioned about some hole—”

  “Let’s not go into details,” Adrian added hastily.

  “Well, as I said, at first I thought it was you, then I realized she was blaming the rat.”

  “Oh,” Adrian didn’t know whether to be amused or happy.

  “Say, you weren’t the one who placed that rat there right?”

  Adrian smiled from the corner of his mouth.

  “At first I thought I was going to kidnap that boy, but that wouldn’t be much dramatic. In most stories the villain kidnaps the girl and does horrible stuff to her. But I don’t want to do those horrible stuff to her, and that doesn’t mean I can let her go without a scratch either.”

  Ryan closed the book. “So you placed a rat? I’ve read that girls hate creatures like that.”

  “That’s not what’s important. What matters to me is whether you enjoyed that.”

  “The curse words?”

  “No, the screams.”

  “Oh, yeah. I still wish you had stabbed her somewhere painful so she could give some more high pitched screams.”

  Adrian remembered how callous Ryan could be when provoked.

  “But I couldn’t sleep last night,” Ryan complained. “I almost wanted to tell her to shut up, but then you had told me not to make any noise or go out of the room.”

  As much as Adrian hated to keep Ryan trapped inside an underground basement, he didn’t want Diana to know Ace had another kid with him. After the deal was done, the mages would sure attack his base and try to kidnap Ryan.