Читать книгу MODERN MAGICS - Tianyu (Tony) Zhu - Страница 11

Sapphire woke up to a faint slamming noise and a cacophony of arguments in the background. She groggily opened her eyes to a stone wall that looked strangely familiar. She sat up and tried to shake off the drowsiness in her head. Sapphire froze as the events from yesterday came flooding back into her mind.

She lifted a hand to her forehead in search of a head wound only to feel a little scar up the side of her face, presumably healed by a brewer’s concoction. Shifting out of bed, Sapphire stood up on her feet with the help of the bedside table. She wiped the morning tears out of her eyes and confirmed her location. She was sleeping in her old room back at the Royal House. Various familiar weapons she had gathered throughout the years were sitting in a pile in the far corner of the room.

Visible slash marks were showing up on the stones in the walls, from the countless hours she had trained alone in this room, mostly out of an urge to one day smash her cousin’s head into a wall.

Sapphire looked over to the table at the other end of the room and breathed out a sigh of relief. The old picture she had kept was still there, propped up in the corner by an old, wooden frame. She stood up slowly as she felt the soreness in her body rising once more. Sapphire walked across the room, grabbed the old picture, and wiped the dust off the screen. She took a long look at the beaming face of her mother. Every time Sapphire looked at her, she wondered if things would have been different if she were just born in a regular family.

The arguing outside pushed Sapphire suddenly out of her hypothetical theories. Shaking the uncomfortable thoughts out of her head, she finally went over and pushed open the door.

“Something needs to be done about her!” She almost fell over as the familiar, over-aggressive roar of her cousin, Ethan, came blasting out of the room to her right. Sapphire quietly walked over to the doorway and listened in to their conversation.

“We can’t just push her out, Ethan. I’m sure you can imagine the controversies that will be surrounding us.” A baritone voice reasoned, “The Council won’t like it, and we would possibly be chastised for it.” Sapphire’s eyes narrowed at that voice, a voice she knew too well. It was from the person that oppressed her throughout her entire childhood, her uncle Aaron.

Aaron was the appointed leader of infiltrators in the Royal House. Above his office was the Royal House Council. Although the Anaroth family and its employees worked closely as undisclosed servants of the Council, the Council themselves never openly strode along the corridors in the Royal House. They were a very exclusive order that preferred to remain unseen.

“Well, I’d say we just punch her and throw her out!” Sapphire rolled her eyes, Ethan’s obnoxious voice never ceased to annoy her. Ever since they were both little, it seemed as if he had hated Sapphire. He would target and attack her whenever she was around.

“What-ya doing?” A voice behind Sapphire whispered.

Sapphire flinched and swallowed a scream. She turned her head and saw the stalker behind her. Sapphire raised a finger to her lips in hopes of quieting him. Instead, he only gave her a shrug and a careless smile. “I mean, you’re gonna have to do it sooner or later.” He put his hands on Sapphire’s shoulders and began to push her into the room.

“Don’t worry, I'm on your side.” he whispered, “I have some things to ask of them as well.” I found that hard to believe. Between the relentless chasing and him using actual weapons to hunt me down, I couldn’t imagine him being on my side at all.

All arguing stopped the moment they saw Sapphire enter the common living area and an awful silence ensued. A maid, who was standing in the corner, noticed her and quietly said, “Excuse me.” She proceeded to hurry to the corridor and disappeared out of sight. Sapphire’s uncle and aunt looked at her with a stare of unflinching seriousness. Standing beside them, Ethan looked at her smugly and shook his head, knowing that she had made a huge mess.

“I thought we told you to leave, Owen.” The uncle said, breaking the quiet with his stern voice. Sapphire blinked, then she looked back and realised that he was referring to the stalker, whose name she never learned.

“And you owe me an explanation.” Owen retorted, “The information you told me was completely wrong.”

“I owe you nothing,” Sapphire’s uncle said as he stared into Owen’s eyes. “Are you forgetting the reason you took on the task in the first place?” Sapphire could see Owen’s eyes focus into a hateful glare as he lowered his head. He balled his hands into fists and ground his teeth in frustration.

“I almost killed her because of it .” he whispered quietly.

“That’s not important right now.” My uncle waved his hand. “Now get out of here, family business .” He took a knowing glance at Owen, who went silent. A moment later, he turned around and walked out of the room and slammed the door hard enough to shake the nails out of the hinges.

Sapphire swam in her sea of bemused thoughts as the nails rolled silently on the soft carpet floor. What sort of lie did my uncle coax into Owen’s ears that would motivate him to resort to lethal weapons? And what kind of debt did Owen owe to her uncle?

“Let’s make this short.” Her uncle said, shaking Sapphire out of her thoughts.

“What do you want, Aaron? ” Sapphire said tauntingly, calling him by his name. His face and composure did not betray any emotion as he turned his chair around and took something out of a leather bag beside him. To everyone else in the room, he may seem calm, but Sapphire knew the diabolical malice and intolerable temper that lied underneath his mask of calmness.

“We want to introduce you to someone.” He said and laid a paper file folder on the edge of the table.

Sapphire opened it and took out the pages. It was a profile page of a boy, complete with his address and information of every kind. She wasn’t surprised, with the kind of speed and efficiency the family works with, getting the personal information of someone could be done in a matter of hours.

She took a closer look. His name is Damian Asher, age sixteen, a seer who had just awoken yesterday. She flipped the page, it was blank. Confused, she turned another page. There had to be more than just basic information to him, right? But the next few pages were blank too. She quickly flipped through the entire stack of empty paper.

“What do you want with someone like him ? He has done nothing.” Sapphire asked as she put the papers back into the file.

“That’s because we didn’t want anything disclosed, so we wiped all his records and retrieved him before Royal Councillors caught on.” My uncle explained and handed her a tablet. Sapphire took a look at the grainy security camera footage and tapped the play button. Most of the screen was pitch black, but in the middle, there was an area of harsh, white light. In that pit of light was a group of kids fighting some mysterious people off-camera. They soon revealed themselves as they came into view, clothed in black uniforms, carrying rifles, which were aimed directly at the chest of the kids.

Sapphire immediately recognized the location as a shelter. They were known to be cruel places that forced Outsider minors to live an imprisoned life. She’s heard a lot of tragic stories about the shelters and the kids living in them. She felt bad for them, not that she could help them though. Besides, controlling their powers was their own responsibility.

Pushing those thoughts aside, Sapphire returned her attention to the screen in front of me.

The boy named Damian was alone now. Most of them were laid on the ground, stunned by the tazers protruding out of their bodies, while the rest cowered behind him. Someone boldly shoved through the line of security -- an old, haggard lady, whom I was not familiar with.

Damian stood up to the old lady and talked like he spat the words out of his mouth. A second later, the guards resumed hauling out the scared kids from behind Damian. Though it seemed as if none of them were going to fight back, the guards shot them all the same.

It was at that moment something strange happened.

Damiam seemed to stagger for a moment, but straightened himself immediately. Sapphire squinted her eyes at the screen, something unordinary had just happened. Even through the grained security footage, she could feel a change in his aura.

The old lady seemed taken aback, but then regained her composure. She raised up her arm, and a lightning bolt formed in her hand. She then threw it at Damian, who somehow managed to dodge it. He threw a punch with unparalleled speed, knocking the old lady into the metal fence that caved in around her in response. The guards started shooting at him, but he somehow managed to narrowly avoid them all, dodging them by the sliver of a hair.

She watched in awe at the precision and strength of his attacks until he threw a guard at the wall the camera was attached to, cutting the video out suddenly.

“Are you sure he’s just a seer?” Sapphire asked her uncle. His skills were better than some of the most skilled fighters in the world. He had overwhelming strength and agility.

“Not just any seer, obviously,” Aaron responded, fiddling with pages in the file folder. “We know exactly who he is, and we want you to teach and employ him.”

“What? Me?” Sapphire stuttered, confused at his request.

“Yes you, are you deaf or something?” Ethan yelled as if he couldn’t bear to let a single chance to insult Sapphire go by.

Aaron held his hand up, and Sapphire swallowed the retorts that were threatening to burst out of her mouth. “So? Will you accept this job?” He asked.

“Why would I? Have someone else do it.”

“We’re short-handed at the moment. And since you just came back from your runaway, let’s just say this is punishment for your actions.”

“Yeah? And what happens if I refuse?” Sapphire retorted.

“Well let’s see…” He contemplated as he nonchalantly cleaned his nails, “Your pathetic attempt at an escape has provided for quite the endless source of nuisance and rumours around our family.”

“I’m aware of that,” She responded curtly.

“Say if I were to strip away your powers right now as the alternative punishment if you choose to not comply.” He continued as my face quickly grew pale, “If that were to happen, do you really think anyone would bat an eye towards an Impure-bred like you?”

The tension thickened in the room, all three members of Sapphire’s family stared at her with eyes full of malice. She balled her hands into fists as her uncle rose from his chair, slowly strode towards her, leaned down, and met her hateful gaze. “Last chance, are you going to take this job?” He bent further forward and whispered into her ear, “Or do you want to follow the pathetic footsteps of your father?”

Anger and frustration coursed through Sapphire’s body as every muscle tensed to spring, threatening to launch herself at him. But she knew that it would be for nothing. She would be cast out, stripped of her powers in the blink of an eye, just like he said.

The pathetic footsteps of my father. She repeated her uncle’s words.

She gritted her teeth and whispered, “I’ll do it.”

“What?” Ethan said loudly and held a hand to his ear, taunting her as if he couldn’t hear her. “I can’t hear you, can you speak up-”

“I said I’ll do it you bastard!” Sapphire screamed and turned to open the door, slamming it shut for the second time as the hinges completely came off.

She stomped back into her room. Clutching her head, Sapphire tried to control her ragged breathing. Looking around, she found her pile of weapons. She picked up a shortsword sitting on top and unsheathed the blade, its curved edges glistening in the sunlight pouring in through the windows.

It’s always been like this, you’ll get through it, just like how you’ve always managed to . Sapphire thought to herself as her breathing became slower and more controlled.

One day, Ethan. One day.

When she had finally calmed down again, she stood up tall. Sapphire raised the sword, gripping it with both hands, and readied her stance. She charged and slashed at the wall. The blade bounced off of the stone wall several times, but she steadied herself and kept hacking at it, again and again. The sparks of her blade evaporated into the air as the anger from within slowly dissipated, replaced by a calming emptiness. Sapphire’s tense grip on the hilt of the sword loosened as she stood, sweating and gasping for air.