10 10. The Ace

It was scary how each of their faces had the scariest expressions and Vinasaka didn’t dare go near them. He decided to wait behind the tree for an opening and a better opportunity. As he was watching them, he gradually squinted his brows when he realised that he might not actually be their target after all. Meanwhile as if on cue, an attendant came out in a hurry and bowed to Amir. He asked the young attendant, “Is he sleeping?”

“Yes, probably your highness crown prince. Youngest prince has been inside his chambers since yesterday and he hasn’t come out yet.”

“That’s strange!” Amir said in disbelief, “He’s not the type...anyway could you keep an eye on him? It’s best for him not to come with us.”

Vinasaka, after hearing everything and confirming that the looming danger was not for him to taste, he grew more curious than ever and started working on his mischief again. While Amir was busy giving his commands before setting out for somewhere which looked and sounded like a real dangerous expedition, Vinasaka sneaked into the royal premises and walked out of the gates as if he just came from inside his chambers, clueless about what everyone was doing. That was just some marvellous acting right there!

Vinasaka came and stood beside Mihas who could immediately sense him beside himself and said, “Vin? Why did you...?”

“Where are you all going? Let me come along? Please!”

“No Vin, it’s really dangerous, we don’t even know who we are up against?” Amir was going to forbid but Zaharia did the work instead so the crown prince just added, “Yes, she is right. You are still a child, it’s going to be really risky. If father knows then he will not be happy about this!”

“You guys always do this! Why?...Mihas please let me go along, hm?” Vinasaka turned to hold Mihas’ hands, considering that he was the most sensitive of the bunch but Mihas said, “This is not an ordinary evil hunt, otherwise you could probably come.”

“It’s not? Well, you guys do look really tense, what’s up?”

Amir said that they would tell him everything when he comes back and it wasn’t really convenient to delay anymore, so they left without taking him anyway. But who would’ve known that the demon child was adept in all sorts of tricks when it came to getting his way. With that, the three, well actually four of them carried on in their journey on the chariot, the older siblings being completely unaware about the fourth presence.

Even if he wasn’t allowed to fight, there were some invaluable things that he learnt from his guru (basically for self defence). There were three chariots which were huge. Each carried a royal child, a bodyguard and several other soldiers. It wasn’t a big deal for Vinasaka to swap himself with a soldier from Mihas’ chariot. He hadn’t yet swapped their bodies, just the soul otherwise even if Mihas couldn’t, given his bodyguard Uta was present, he could have been really caught.

Honestly, Vinasaka felt guilty that he was taking advantage of his brother’s loss of sight but Mihas was way too capable of sensing vitalities around him accurately, so it could be any moment that his facade was going to be thrown away like it was nothing. There was a reason he was called ace. Vinasaka literally held his breath throughout the ride; everybody else maintained the silence too, but the moment they were about to reach, Uta asked Mihas, “How could this unfortunate incident happen in the presence of his highness crown prince?”

Mihas replied very seriously as he held tightly on to his bow and arrows, “That just shows how powerful the opponent is. We have to be really careful.”

“Do you think crown princess will be alright?”

Vinasaka could almost guess what had happened now. How could he forget about the crown princess of the diamond kingdom? It was because of her that he could sneak out in the first place. He was almost about to give up his disguise in order to fulfil his curiosity but thankfully held himself back. After a while, the chariot had stopped abruptly in the middle of the street. Vinasaka heard Mihas saying, “Is this it? Is this the place?” They all went out and stood beside each other. Facing them was a huge dungeon. Amir stepped forward but there seemed to be an invisible barrier which rebounded him. As if the barrier worked as an alarm that a huge pool of demons came rushing from all four sides towards them and in a blink of an eye, they got too busy to notice anything else. Mihas thought quick enough and retaliated on the top of a tree carrying Vinasaka with him. Amir and Zaharia were confused about his actions but they had no time to worry or question.

Meanwhile Mihas fixed an arrow on his bow and targeted, “Since you have come, make sure you don’t cause trouble. Stay with me, got it?”

As he launched, the arrows split into several more and he was able to take down more than five demons at a time. His icicles, more like his arrows were all aimed straight for their hearts, so once it hit there was no recovering.

That was Mihas, the ace ice mage!

“You knew?” Vinasaka gulped at the thought of being found out and gradually summoned back his body as well. Demons after demons were falling, shot by Mihas’ arrows, struck by Amir’s spear or beaten by Zaharia, but there was no sign of them decreasing in number. It’s like there was no end to them. Amir shouted and informed that he would be going ahead and the others instantly knew what to do. Very easily, he broke the barrier spell as he went inside the dungeon while the others helped him to hold the demons back. The demons were all deformed beings, some looked like beasts, some like dead people, it was indeed a scary and a gross sight. Mihas kept attacking one after the other, but failed to realise a presence right underneath the tree.

One attack right at Vinasaka’s foot and he was down on the ground surrounded by a bunch of bloodthirsty monsters. Zaharia saw the scene and was almost at the verge of coming to his rescue when a huge blade came crashing on her. Even if she missed it by chance, she still incurred a serious injury. Thanks to Druhi, her bodyguard, she was able to survive as she was taken away to her chariot to be treated by a healing mage. It was difficult because she kept insisting to go back to Mihas and Vinasaka. Mihas wasn’t good at close range fighting and Vinasaka, ….he never learned martial arts to begin with.

When Mihas understood what had happened, he simply jumped down without having second thoughts. Since he was blind from a very young age, he learnt martial arts with the help of his sixth sense only and he was not called the ace without a reason. However, Uta joined them and as long as possible, they did keep Vinasaka blocked away from the attacks, but it wasn’t as helpful without Mihas’ ice arrows. Uta was an exceptional fighter, not a doubt about that but for some reason, all those demons were attracted to Vinasaka like some magnet and it was getting really hard to keep all those beasts back. That was when Vinasaka realised, he couldn’t just keep standing. He collected his energy, as much as he could and threw it towards them making sure that it didn't hurt Mihas and Uta. It looked like a normal yellow flame but it did help injure a lot of demons. However a lot of demons had fire magic, so it didn’t have much effect on them too apart from just pushing them back.

When Vinasaka realised that he couldn’t just do away with those monsters with his powers alone, he went ahead and took the scabbard from Uta which he gave up without a sign of protest, since the former didn’t have a sword himself, but he had never learnt any martial arts... for his own safety as well as the safety of the kingdom and the people. His strength was already inhuman, teaching martial arts to someone like him would probably bring trouble to oneself. To the surprise of the ones, who were probably more anxious than him, he infused his fire spells with the scabbard and handled it as a sword itself. Since the scabbard wasn’t enough to slice through, to make it a fatal weapon there was no other way.

“You probably have to get yourself another one,” Vinasaka said to Uta in the middle of fighting. Every royal guard and royal member present there could not believe their eyes. His swordsmanship was indeed clumsy but the foundation was strong. Where did he learn all of that? How?

Uta answered him politely, “That’s not a problem. I say you should focus on eliminating them first.” Confirming that Vinasaka was doing fine, Mihas shifted back to a high rise platform which happened to be the roof of the dungeon since Amir had already undone the spell, he carried on with his shooting of arrows. Soon, the demons were looking less and less in number and it was only a matter of a few seconds before they could all enter the dungeon themselves.

Little did they know that waiting inside was Jin, the first son of the demon king Asura to welcome them himself.