Sitting on the stairs leading up to the palace, was a young woman named Arlene. She looked at the swarm of men running around, trying to find the young prince’s body. She was curious about why they were trying so hard to find the body when apparently an instant teleportation spell was casted. There were still magic marks on the ground. The people of the palace were getting more and more stupid every day, she thought, and was glad that she had already quitted her job as the royal sorcerer. Arlene sighed and stood up, walking carelessly around the palace. Once she reached the palace gardens, she stopped her invisibility spell, and answered her ringing phone. It was the older prince, Adrian calling. Arlene chuckled as she saw the name and answered the phone.
“Hey, isn’t this Adrian calling? Finally remembered to call me huh?” Arlene said with a cheerful voice, twirling her dark, silky hair in her fingers. “Arlene, I need you to come to the safe house now.” Adrian commanded with a stern voice on the phone.
Arlene started laughing. “Give me a reason why I should listen to you. I still have other much more important matters to attend to.” She said, as she enabled her invisibility spell again and started walking towards the direction of the safe house. Adrian sighed, “Please Arlene, could you just listen to me for once?” He asked.
“Okay, okay, I’ll come.” Arlene answered, and hung up the phone. She took a small bottle from her cloak and dripped a drop of the transparent liquid in-front of her. She started murmuring something in a different language, and teleported right in front of the safe house.
Adrian was waiting for Arlene. After she had arrived, Adrian quickly led her into the safe house and closed the door behind them. “Arlene,” He said, “Do you know anything about my brother’s disappearance?” Adrian asked, putting his hands on her shoulders. “Well yes actually,” she replied, “Your brother was clearly teleported by someone’s magic. By the way, I also met him this morning while he was at the castle. He’s still so nice like when he was young, not like you.” Adrian nodded, then rolled his eyes as Arlene mentioned him compared to his brother. She’s always like this, complaining about everything Adrian had done or said. That’s mainly why Adrian did not contact Arlene after she had left the palace. He already guessed that there was magic involved with his brother’s disappearance. Teleportation only works for living people, so this means that his brother’s still alive. Arlene sat down on the floor and took out some cards from her cloak.
“What are you doing?” Adrian asked, clearly not understanding.
“You want me to help find your brother, right? Liam told me this morning that if anything happens, he wants me to help. Apparently, he meant this kidnapping thing, so I’m here to help.” She asked, placing the cards on the floor with the backside facing up. Adrian was genuinely surprised that Arlene was willing to help but sat down beside her anyways and looked at her performing her magic.
Arlene placed 5 cards on the floor and started murmuring a spell. The cards started to glow and flipped by themselves one by one. There were complicated symbols drawn with golden ink on all of them, shifting and glowing as Arlene kept casting the spell. As she finished, the symbols on the cards stopped shifting. Arlene picked up the cards and examined them closely. After looking at all five cards, she grinned and turned to Adrian, who had no idea what was going on.
“Guess what! Your brother’s not dead! Hooray!” Arlene said to Adrian bit sarcastically.
“Yeah, Arlene, I know he’s not dead. Where is he?” Adrian said as he rolled his eyes. Arlene looked at the cards again, and walked out the door. “Hey! Where are you going?!” Adrian said as he quickly followed her.
“I’m going to helpyou find your brother.” She said as she took out the small bottle from her cloak again. “However, due to the magic the assassin used to hide their location, I only know that your brother is on land, but I am able to teleport you somewhere near the home of who took your brother. Well, not exactly a home, but there is something that reeks of the kidnapper’s magic located, there, so I assume it’s the kidnapper’s hiding place or somewhere he had been to. Anyways, good luck.” She said as she poured the liquid in front of Adrian and started to cast the teleportation spell.
The next thing Adrian knew, he was on land and inside an elementary school. It was the end of the school day for the children. They filled up the hallway, and were extremely loud. Adrian always hated elementary schools. He had only went to school on land for 3 days, and was accused of being a psychopath since he kept trying to find whales and dolphins. This made him think that all elementary kids are mean and hated Atlantans. He still hated elementary school even after so many years.
However, there were more important things for him to do than pay too much attention to children. Adrian pulled his thoughts back and started working. After a lot of struggling, he found his way out of the school. Arlene had said that the man who took Liam lived near the school, so there had to be some sort of houses or apartments around here.
However, after searching around the school for more than half an hour, Adrian still did not see any buildings that people would live in. He sat down on the sidewalk, and stared into the sky. He knew that teleportation systems never went wrong, but where could the house be? He had already looked everywhere around the school. There was only one place he hadn't looked, which was inside the school, which seemed impossible, but he still had to make sure.
He carefully approached the gate, and after making sure nobody was around, quickly climbed up the gate and landed inside the school. The school did not have any buildings or dorms where the faculty or the students live. After another half hour search inside the school, Adrian still found nothing that might have been a house or a portal. He sighed, and walked to the back of the school. Suddenly, a small, dark alleyway appeared in his sight behind the trees. He carefully walked into the alley and saw a small door similar to the door leading to the underwater platform, it was at this point he knew he found the house.
Adrian carefully tried to open the door. To his surprise, it was not locked. He opened the door, and saw a large set of stairs that led into a darkness below. He activated the flashlight of his phone, and started his descent down the stairs. After walking for a long time, he finally reached a barricade, similar to the one blocking the way to the underwater platform. Now, he was completely sure that this was created by somebody from Aquapolis. This barricade was designed with more shifting patterns of blue purple and black with silver words written on it. “Please verify your identity.” Adrian pulled out the card from his pocket that he used to open the barricade blocking the platform, and prayed that it would work on this barricade.
“Beep, Beep,Beep.” The barricade turned red, and the words shifted to “Identity not confirmed.” Just as Adrian was trying to find another way past the barricade, a man dressed completely in black came down the stairs. He looked at Adrian, clearly puzzled by why a strange man is trying to open the barricade multiple times with the wrong card.
“Hey man, what are you doing?” The man in black asked, as he pulled out a card from his jacket. Adrian tried to act casual.
“You see, I brought the wrong card today.” He said, putting the card casually back into his pocket. Strangely, the man in black did not question him and opened the door with his card. Possible because all sorts of people use this portal, and lots of people look suspicious. Without any other questions, Adrian followed the man into the “house” of the kidnapper.
Adrian reached another door that was labeled “trade center”. Adrian was clearly confused. How could someone live in a trade center? He followed the man into the center and was stunned by the view. The center was a large plaza that was lit by thousands of different lights. All sorts of people: tall, short, men, and women filled the center. Countless shops and booths were set up all over the plaza, selling all sorts of different products. Adrian turned back to the man in black to say thanks, but the man had already disappeared into the bustling crowd.
Adrian turned back to his original purpose, and started to look for available places that a person could live in. He passed through the crowd, and looked around forany houses. Fortunately, he found a small, hidden apartment building at the end of the plaza. It was tucked tightly on one side of the walls, since it was located underground, and that revealed side was colored with gray paint, including the windows. The building was only 6 stories high and looked as if there was only one room per floor. It was almost impossible to notice behind the crowd. It was indeed a great place to live if the owner wanted to hide.
Adrian found the entrance into the building on a small corner. He tried to open the door leading into the building, and to his surprise, it opened easily. A dark, long hallway looming before him. Since no lights were in the building and the windows were covered, it was impossible to see anything. Adrian turned on his flashlight again, and headed into the hallway. At the end of the hallway was a door and an entrance to a set of stairs. Just like how the building looked on the outside, there was only one room per floor.
Adrian took a deep breath, and slowly opened the door, prepared to attack anybody who comes out. The door opened to a small room with nothing inside at all. Adrian looked around the room and discovered nothing. He walked back to the hallway and closed the door behind him. He started going up the stairs to the second floor, when he noticed a strange object on one of the steps. It was a small piece of emerald, no bigger than a coin.
Adrian especially recognized the stone since it shimmered under his flashlight and had a glow a normal rock did not. Adrian picked it up and closely examined it. This might be the important object to the kidnapper. On one side of the stone, it was polished and smooth, like half an oval shape. The other side was uneven, and looked like it had broken off of something, or rather, the other half of the stone. Adrian didn't see anything else special about the stone except for that, and put it in his pocket.
He continued his search on the second floor and still found nothing. The rooms were built the same and there was nothing in the rooms except for plain walls and dirty floors. The same went for the third floor and the fourth floor. Adrian was becoming pretty tired from all the searching. He sat down in the room of the fourth floor and grabbed his phone from his pocket. It was already 6pm. Like he expected, there was no signal underground. He sighed and stood up, thinking that he needed to hurry up. Suddenly, a figure appeared in front of Adrian out of the air.
“Ahhhhhh!” Adrian screamed, and dropped his phone. The mist around the figure started to clear, and a familiar lady appeared. “Hi Adrian! Looks like you're having some problems finding the home of the kidnapper.” Arlene said in her usual cheerful voice. Adrian was relieved, and pulled himself up. “You sure scared me,” Adrian said as he dusted his clothes and glared at Arlene, “Why are you here?” He asked. Arlene shrugged, and started to go up the stairs.
“You obviously haven’t found the room yet, or any special product, I suppose, and the kidnapper might kill your brother at any time, so I’m here to help you. You’re really slow at doing this for sure.” She said as she picked up something from one of the steps before Adrian could say anything. It was another piece of emerald. It looked similar to the piece Adrian found earlier, most likely the other half of the piece. Adrian took out the piece he found, and grabbed Arlene’s to see if it would fit. Unsurprisingly, it fit together perfectly. Arlene took the stone back, and started to examine it.
“Ah, so you did find something. Hey, do you know what a stone like this could do?” Arlene asked Adrian, looking much more serious than usual after a while of examination.
“No, of course not. How would I know what a tiny piece of emerald would do?” Adrian said, annoyed that they had already wasted enough time and that he still did not find his brother.
“These stones are used to trap souls,” Arlene said with a grim face, “and they are illegal to use. The magic used to trap souls is also banned, and no one would know how to use it except for a few of the old sorcerers. I wonder why a stone like this would be here.” Arlene put the stone back into her pocket, with a glint in her eyes.
After a few moments of thinking, Adrian decided to ask Arlene more about the stone, but she refused to answer, saying that it was forbidden for sorcerers to expose too much information to others. “Well, do you think that it’s possible for one of the old sorcerers who knew how to use this kind of magic to capture my brother or use this stone for instance?” Adrian questioned one final time to Arlene.
“No. First of all, this stone is already broken, so there’s no soul inside. Next, the surviving sorcerers who know how to use this sort of magic works for the government to capture criminals, making it almost impossible for them to have time to mess with royalty.” Arlene replied, still fidgeting with the stone inside her pocket. Suddenly, something passed through her mind. She halted on the spot, and turned to Adrian with a glow in her eyes. “I think I know who took your brother.”