Two days later...
We start this chapter off by seeing Ace laying down on top of a wall, resting his eyes. Out of nowhere, he made his axe appear and then he threw it at a hooded figure who was running. It missed him and hit the ground in front of him.
Ace sat up, looked at the figure and said before smiling, "Y'know, if you're gonna steal from people, don't dress like a thief, dude."
The robber said, "Oh titan, you're the Ace of Spades!"
"Wait, me? You think I'm the Ace of Spades? Glasses, wolf jacket, spade over his eye, and axe?" Ace got off the wall, making the thief back up, and said as his axe came into his hand, "You...You have the mind of a true scholar, my friend."
Scared, the thief turned to run as cracks made their way from the ground, courtesy of Ace. He didn't get far because the wall that Ace was just on extended in his way and stopped him. The thief turned to Ace, but he wasn't there.
"Watch the chin!"
Ace flash kicked the robber making him stumble back into the wall. Ace was invisible until the chin warning, if you were about to ask about that.
The thief made a flame appear in his hand as he said, "Just let me go, kid!"
"Whoa, is that fire?! Oh man, *gets on his knees and holds up hands* fire, my one weakness- PSYCHE!"
The second the flames hit the robber, he started running around screaming making Ace laugh hard. It didn't last too long because he tripped over one of Ace's cracks and fell face first on the ground. When he was carried up in the air by some vines, he said to a still laughing Ace, "Hey, get me down from here! It's not funny!
"Eh, you gotta admit, it's a little funny. By the way, if you thought I'd be afraid of a little fire, you might wanna start doing your homework. Sweet dreams."
With one punch to the face, Ace knocked the guy out. The boy then made the vines shake out everything that the thief had on him onto the ground.
"Let's see: wallet, clutch, handbag, tote, huh?"
Ace picked the thing up.
"Some kind of pen with a light on it. Why do I feel like I know that this belongs to someone I know?"
"I think he went this way!"
Ace turned to see three people around his age run over. One of which he did in fact know.
"Ace!" "Hey, Superstar! How you been?"
Yep, it was Luz.
Said human turned to her friends and said, "Guys, this was the witch I told you about! *goes up to Ace* This is Ace. (to Ace) These are my friends: Willow and Gus."
They waved at him.
"Nice to meet you. As Luz introduced, I'm Ace. Nickname: Ace of Spades. Here's my card."
Ace went up to them and pulled out a card that literally had an ace of spades on it. The three laughed.
"Okay, really though, that is my nickname." he said before pointing at a hanging wanted poster of himself.
"Wait, you're that Ace?" Willow asked. "Ding, ding, ding. And before you ask, no, I'm not a criminal. Belos just wants me for whatever reason."
'whatever reason' he says.
After Ace threw the pen back to Luz, he heard a couple of footsteps. He turned to see some coven scouts come over.
He went over to them saying, "*smiles* Yo, 'bout time you guys showed up! *points at still hanging and unconscious thief* Someone else could of got robbed."
Ignoring him, they readied some spell circles and one of them said, "Ace of Spades, you are under arrest."
"*raises arms* Uh, weird thank you for someone who just did eighty percent of your job. *burps*"
The scouts made barriers to protect themselves from Ace's fire. After they were gone, Ace was gone again.
"There!" One of the coven scouts said, point at the wall Ace was on before. Said boy said, "'Scuse me. Ate a bunch of spirit peppers today. See ya!" He saluted before falling backwards off the wall. He was then seen riding away on his staff.
"After him!" The scouts then started going after him...One of them did stop and get the thief down before going with the rest.
When they were out of sight-
"They'll be chasing that illusion for about an hour or so."
Luz, Willow, and Gus looked to where the voice was coming from, and in that spot appeared Ace who was invisible right after the flames came out. Red was also in his wolf form and was on his shoulder.
"Thank you, thank you, I'm here till next week. Try the steak, you'll thank me."
Gus was the first to speak. "You said for an hour? You can make an illusion last for more than an hour? That takes so much concentration!"
An Ace illusion appeared next to Gus and it said, "Well, when you're an ace in magic like Ace, things can be more complicated than it looks. Take this for example."
To Gus's shock, the Ace illusion poked him. The surprising thing was that he felt it! The illusion reached through Gus and poked Willow too. She also felt it! A second Ace illusion appeared and said after putting his arm around Willow, "When he feels like it, Ace can make his illusions tangible. He's doing this while the one the scouts are chasing is still up."
Willow and Gus looked at Ace who was balancing his axe on one finger while Luz was playing with Red.
Both Ace illusions said, "His mind's not even focused on us! You think that's something? You ain't seen nothing yet." And with that, they disappeared.
The two looked at each other, then at Ace. Who on the Isles was this guy?
Over to Ace and Luz, the former was eating a handful of the peppers he was talking about earlier. Some of them are red, some are green, and some are yellow, but they're all ablaze. The fire doesn't hurt though, they just look like that.
"Ooh, are these the spirit peppers you were talking about?" "Mhm. Been eating these things for the longest. They're all spicy, but yellow's the least spicy and red's the most spicy. Thanks to these things, I can breathe flames." "Can I try one?" "You sure? I don't know if you can handle these things." "I'm sure they can't be that bad."
Luz grabbed a green pepper and took a bite out of it. After chewing on it, the burning came. She started tearing while holding her throat, and screaming, "AHH! TOO HOT! TOO HOT!"
"Chillax, Luz. The seeds haven't kicked in yet."
"AAAAHHHH!"
"And, that would be the seeds. Okay, hold on."
After the human held her mouth and throat in pain, Ace put his peppers away and grabbed some of the sandy soil from the ground, picked it up, and used his flames to heat it into a glass. He held it in one hand and with the other, he snapped his fingers and a small non-boiling raincloud formed over the glass. The rain from the cloud filled the glass with cold, fresh, water.
"Here you g-" He was cut off when Luz snatched the glass from his hand and gulped down the water. When it was all gone, Luz exhaled with relief.
"Don't say I didn't try to warn you."
"How can you eat those things?!"
"I've survived in both intense heat and cold. There's not a temperature that can bother me." he said before taking out and eating a red spirit pepper.
"I've never seen a plant that could grow peppers like that before." Willow said, going up to Ace. "That's because the plant these came from didn't grow on the Isles. A relative of my family grew it. You see, when you're an Adri and can use plant magic, just making and controlling plants is an understatement. Check this out."
Ace raised his left arm and out of the ground came a tree that had purple leaves.
"Ever heard of a tree that could give you free drinks if you make it laugh?"
They shook their heads.
"Wanna hear a joke? What's the difference between a piano, a fish, and a tube of glue?
You can tune a piano, but you can't tune a fish."
"What about the glue?" Gus asked.
"*smirks* I knew you'd get stuck on that one."
A giggle was heard from the tree and when it shook, juice boxes fell from it. Ace picked one up, put the straw in and gave it to Willow. She took a sip, she was astonished because it was unlike anything she's ever drunken in her life.
"Yeah, being an Adri's the best. With magic unlike anyone else's, life gets even better by the minute." He said before his spade glowed. He then said, "*whistles* Red, come on."
After Red got back on Ace's back as a jacket, the boy said, "Nice meeting you two. I'm off to go train. See ya."
Before Ace walked off, Luz said, "Hey Ace, could we come watch you train?" "Hm?" "I want to show my friends what kind of stuff you can do." "Well, I never trained with an audience before. Eh, why not? Might be fun. Follow me."
He stomped his feet and they were turned into solid ice. He then used them to skate off while the others followed him.
Later at Ace's training area...
The four are now at an area with ruins, overgrown structures, a big dirt track surrounding everything that Ace put there himself, cloud rings in the air that Ace also placed there, and let's not forget to mention that this area's by a cliff and at the bottom is the boiling sea. Yet when look beyond the cliff, the sea and sky it makes a great view.
Luz, Willow, and Gus were amazed that this was Ace's training grounds.
"Found this place at eleven years old. Since then, I've been coming here to train. Wanna hear something else?"
"Hearing." Luz said.
"The ruins over there are on a time loop. Every fifteen minutes they return to how I found them. So even if I wreck them as much as I want, they go back to how they were."
Ace snapped his fingers and some water floated from the bottom of the cliff and above Ace's training area in a shape of a timer that had twelve seconds left.
"Nice! (to the three) Check this out."
Ace spawned his axe and he threw it at one of the ruin structures. He threw it too hard and the axe ended up cutting the structure in two, taking Ace's friends by surprise.
"Whoops, a bit too hard." he said, referring to the axe still going. He meant to make the ruin crack, not get cut. It then came back around and Ace caught it when it was just an inch from his face. He was completely unfazed by it. Why? Because this wasn't the first time Ace's axe came flying back to him like a boomerang and almost hit him.
Sometimes he threw his axe with too much force, at the wrong angle, or without thinking at all.
Back to the timer, when it hit zero, the structure became whole again, surprising the three again. When that happened, the timer started at fifteen minutes.
"Man, I love the Isles."
Cue training montage!
We see Ace with frozen feet again, skating through the ruins with his axe in hand. He's seen cutting the stone to pieces as if they weren't as dense as they looked. Feeling good about himself, he started doing tricks while cutting. A couple of flips, some spins, you know, that kind of stuff. When Ace cut a ruin, the stone piece went flying.
Luz was watching with Gus and Willow on top of a boulder. The reason I brought her up was because the piece of stone that Ace cut off went flying towards her. When she saw it she panicked and braced herself, but the piece stopped midair. She looked and saw that the timer hit zero. Time in the area repeated itself and the piece went back to where it came from, making her sigh in relief.
On the dirt track, Ace is running down it. While he was, punching away pillars and abominations that were rising up from the ground. His arms then turned into abomination goo and vines like in the first chapter. He used his arms to swing among the pillars while hitting the abominations with whichever arm was free.
He did get abomination goo everywhere with every punch. At one point, he launched himself in the air, and at a high altitude, he aimed his fists at a horde of abominations. With his fire breath, he lit his fists ablaze before extending his arms at a fast rate, directly at the horde! Goo went everywhere! Some went towards the other three teens, and Willow used her plant magic to quickly cover them before it hit them.
We now take to the sky, where we see Ace riding on his staff, along with his friends. It's surprising that they can all fit on Red. They're just flying quickly through the cloud rings. Yet, if you knew Ace, you'd know that he'd do something dangerous or risky eventually.
They didn't have to wait too long for that because then Ace rode them up at a super high altitude. When they were high enough, Ace stood up, held his arms out, and fell backwards of his staff, on purpose! That alarmed everyone onboard immediately. Red suddenly flew after Ace, who didn't look alarmed by this at all. The boy's literally going through his scroll while eating spirit peppers. A couple of feet from the ground, Ace put his stuff away, did a backwards somersault, and landed right back on his staff as they came around.
That's a relief. Gus almost passed out at increasing speed in the decent to the ground.
End montage!
We now see the four sitting at the edge of the cliff, enjoying the view. It's one of the things that Ace did when he was finished training.
Everything was great...until Luz noticed a bird fly above their heads and going somewhere else. But for some reason, it stopped in the air midflight, which caught everyone's attention. It then flew backwards towards a tree close to Ace's training grounds.
"Um, Ace? What's wrong with that bird?" she asked. "Stuck in the time loop." he answered, "That's the thing about this space. Everything that was here before I came here was stuck in the time loop, even the plants and animals here. Even if they could get out of here, in fifteen minutes they'd double back to here."
"Well, is there a way to stop the time loop?" Willow asked. "I guess get rid of whatever's causing it, *looks around the training grounds* but I don't know where or what it is."
That's when Luz noticed something: when Ace turned his head to look at certain spots of his training area, his spade flashed.
Not glow, people. There's a difference
Yeah, when you hear 'flash', imagine light coming and going.
"Wait a minute..." She got up and moved Ace's head in certain directions. In one, his spade was flashing with a dim light repeatedly. The warlock and the human looked at each other. They then got up to see what was causing the flashing, with Willow and Gus following them.
They made their way through the ruins, using Ace's spade as a compass. The light got brighter and brighter, meaning they were getting closer and closer. They then came up to a wall.
Ace looked around the wall saying, "One of these bricks is not like the other- It's you!"
He swung around and kicked the wall, making a brick in the wall fall from the top, and land in his hands. Observing it carfully, he saw a lid, meaning that it was a box, not a brick. He opened it and in it was some kind of...pocketwatch?
Ace reached to pick it up, but as soon as he came in contact with it, something weird happened. His spade glowed, and he looked as if he was in a trance. He heard a voice in his head. It said,
"I always knew you were a special kid, Ace. Don't let anyone tell you otherwise.
Love, Great Uncle Thorn."
"Ace? ACE!"
Ace was out of his trance as Luz yelled his name.
"Is everythng okay?" Gus asked.
"The watch...it's my great uncle's..."
Ace snapped his fingers and a small orange portal in the shap of a spade appeard and dropped a book in his hand.
Just before Luz could say, 'You can make portals, too?!' Ace stopped her saying, "I'll explain the portals later. Check this out."
In one hand, he flipped through the book, while saying, "This book's an album of every Adri in our family tree. And this one's my great uncle."
He stopped on a page that showed a man with googles, a scarf, and an open pocketwatch in his hand, in it was four jewels at the numbers three, six, nine, and twelve colored green, yellow, blue, and red in that order. On his wrist was a marking of vine with thorns all over it.
"This is my Great Uncle Thorn. He was old, but he always used his magic in that watch to change that. Believe it or not, he made that watch himself to change the time on anything."
"Woah." The three said.
"He was one hundred thirty-seven years old, but he used the watch to reverse time on himself so he could be younger."
They were even more surprised by that.
"The watch could also slow down time, freeze it, and make it go faster." Ace then closed the book and threw it back through the portal as it closed. "I might've been young when I last saw him, but I can remember everything about my family." He then took the watch out of the box, threw the box away, and opened the watch. But to his surprise, the jewels inside were all black.
That meant that the magic in the watch is gone.
"Ace, look!"
Ace looked to where gus was pointing and he saw the bird from earlier was flying away from the area. More than fifteen minutes have passed, the time loop was broken!
"You did it!" "I didn't do anything. The watch doesn't have magic in it anymore. Something's up."
Ace started walking off, the others following. Yet, out of nowhere, their legs now had green auras and they started moving faster, but they weren't in charge of that!
When they were by the cliff, Ace stopped them before they could go over. There was another flash of green light, and they could move at normal speed.
"How the- Wait a minute." Ace turned to Willow and said, "Willow, I wanna test something. Could you grow a plant real quick?" "Um, sure."
She made a plant sprout out of the ground, and Ace rose his hand at it and a blue arua appeared around it. Willow was growing it at a normal pace, but the plant looked like it was growing in slow motion.
"Yes. Yes! YES!" "What is it?" "Superstar, I'm very glad to tell you that when I touched the watch, its magic was given to me, so now I can use time magic! Like when we were moving faster. When we were moving, I increased the time of our movement speed. I mean, not on purpose, but I still did it. My point is, I can change the time on people and objects. Watch this."
Ace took a step back...and off the cliff. Alarmed, for whatever reason, they should get used to this by now, they went to see if he fell into the boiling sea. Yet, they saw Ace with his arms behind his head with a red aura around him, frozen in midair. He now had a yellow aura and he did everything backwards. He...fell up and back on the cliff, retracting his foot as he landed. The aura was then gone.
"Thank you, Great Uncle Thorn."
Later...
We see the four chatting as they walked through town.
We just walked into Luz saying to Ace, "If you could make portals to places you've already been to, why didn't you just portal us home when we were in the caves?" "I was out there for a reason, we just met that day and you already got us in a fix and needed a punishment,"
She looked away after hearing that.
"and I don't think you would've been in any interest in me if I didn't show what I was made of."
"Fair points."
After chatting some more, Ace saw that it was getting late. What gave them another surprise was the portal that Ace made to get himself home. Curious as they all were, they looked inside and they saw something else they weren't expecting today.
Instead of the inside of a house that they were expecting, they saw a completely marigold colored scene with items floating around, and furniture being the only thing sitting still on the ground. Is there ground? I can't tell.
"I made this place when I was five to keep all of my stuff. Now I use it as my home. Welp, g'night people!"
Ace went in before the portal was closed. Now that he was gone, Willow could finally ask Luz, "Luz, how did you and Ace meet again?"
Before Luz could say something, she looked at their hands and said with a smile, "Uh, guys?"
The witches looked in their hands and in them were charms like the one Luz has. Willow with a clover, and Gus with a magnifying glass.
"How'd he do that?" Gus asked.
"It's best not to question it." Luz said.
Later, with Ace...
We see the Adri laying in his bed in his nightwear, Red curled up on top of him.
Ace was in thought.
"My family's stuff are all scattered around the Isles. That's good to know. Still wanna know what Great Uncle Thorn meant. There's no way he somehow knew I'd get out of the incident alive...right?"
He scratched the side of his head.
"Guess I'll have to find out when I find more of my family's relics. If I can find them."
He clapped his hands and the marigold in his home turned into dark indigo, and he slowly drifted to sleep.