Chapter 214: Chapter 214

He felt his irritation mount with each passing second that his partner remained missing. Where did the guy go? The man muttered to himself, scanning the plain terrain all around. This was what truly puzzled him because they were in an open space, like a small playground for kids, except that it did not have any play tools like the seesaw, swings or slides.

To one end of the small green outdoor space was what looked like the main building, or so he thought, with another smaller one slightly adjacent to it and to his back were the plains that dropped abruptly so that he could see the sea and its horizon just beyond that.

This only told him that his partner could not have run in either direction in that short span of time. He was just not that fast! If that had happened, he, the first and oldest agent, would have seen his partner’s back and the direction he had taken.

That meant that the first theory was crushed. The sure way and answer were that his partner may have ’disappeared’ by using their unique teleportation ’ability’... but the question remained: ’Why would he do that when we are on a mission and investigating the first obvious clue they had chanced upon since they had started their search?’

"Why did they even pair me with him.... He is just disrupting my way of doing things like that!"

The man’s frustration kept mounting. This was his one chance to get some merits his way. This had been a fairly ’easy’ mission. They had one task only: ’Find the Royal who was supposed to be dead but had miraculously turned out to be alive! This was Roman.’

Roman had been the legitimate heir to the Fae throne until he had just disappeared, plunging the Fae kingdom almost into despair. After years of not hearing from him, the whole kingdom just assumed that he was dead.

However, without the burial of the legitimate heir, it was near impossible to enthrone another one who was not ’legitimate.’ Roman had never married and had no descendants at all... at least, that was what all of them knew.

Yet, as the bookkeeper, Brain, had told them, all indications showed that Roman was very well alive. However, they could find no clue as to where he was or, most importantly, whether he was really alive.

No one sent to find Roman over the years had ever come back. It had always been a dead end. This was partly why a team of two was sent so that they could know what had happened to the rest of the scouts.

The main reason the Fae council believed Brian, the bookkeeper, about the possibility of Roman being alive was that Brain was learned and had close to centuries of knowledge at his disposal. Brain’s information collection and review were unmatched in their whole kingdom.

The one reason they all tacitly agreed on, but no one dared say, was that Roman’s only living brother, Prince Syla, suffered a big backlash when they tried to enthrone him. It was an incident that no one dared speak of, lest they wanted to experience death!

The two were scouts who had been sent to sniff around the human world and find clues to justify why a larger team was needed. Prince Simon, Prince Syla’s son from the Fae land, was counting on them. The two scouts were supposed to be a formidable force when paired, but it had only taken a few hours for the first Agent to realize that his so-called tracker partner was an idiot through and through.

Instead of tracking the remnants of Prince Roman’s power, there were times when the missing Agent could track and send them to a field of butterflies just because it was pretty! It had been an annoying few weeks working with this person. He was already at his wits end and then this again?

"He may be the best tracker yet, but of what use is this ability if he is such an idiot?! Utterly useless!"

"This is not the first time too. At least, previously, the slight ’poof’ sound will alert me to the fact that he was at it again .... Did he find a new trick?"

The first Agent frowned as a thought nudged him at the back of his mind. It was weird because even though they could disappear and appear out of their own will, they could usually pinpoint each other’s exact location.

It was like a paper trail they could follow, which was unique to each of them. However, it had taken barely a few seconds, and he could not feel the second agent, as if he was dead. This had never happened in all of his time alive doing such work.

"Stop playing such games! Where are you?"

"I’m gonna count to five! One, two, THREE... FOUR...."

’Why can’t I detect him? Did he master the art of erasing his tracks now and want to test it?.... Noooooo that does not seem to make sense!’

The remaining person paced around, his frown getting deeper and more irritation set in.

’Did he get called back? ... no, he would have told me... but... where is he?’

He suddenly paused as a new thought manifested.

"Are we being attacked?" He asked aloud, but there was no one to answer. His wariness increase. He knew how important their last clue was, so it did not make sense in any way for him to ditch the mission.

His agitation grew by the minute, and a thought occurred to him. This was the last advice they had been given: ’The human world is unpredictable. The humans look harmless, but you must always be extra careful.’

As these occurred, his colleague’s desperate cries sounded around. It was very faint, but the remaining person was too distraught and unfocused to hear this last fading cry. Besides, with the slight breeze, it sounded as if there was a whistling sound in the wind. The sound was swallowed up.

At the same time, children’s voices sounded in his ears. From a distance, he could see two kids approaching him. The children were engrossed in their conversation and had not seen him yet.

"Let’s hurry up and take sister Shelby’s canvas!" one said.

The man looked around and spotted the said canvas not far from him. His eye was drawn to the beautiful drawing. However, with the children so close, he could not examine it closely, so he disappeared just as the two arrived in front of it.

’I’ll look for this idiot later,’ he thought ’, and I’ll make sure that this is the last mission that I ever do with him.’

The two kids approached the canvas. The older one reached to take the painting when the younger one’s voice stopped her,

"Look! Look! Look! Sister Shelby is soooo good. See that tiny swirl of the sea there, as if there is a strong wind blowing in the middle of the sea! This is so pretty!" The adult had first looked out towards the horizon, causing the younger one to laugh.

"I mean, look at sister Shelby’s drawing!"

The older child chuckled and said, "The detail is impeccable! It’s so tiny that I would have never caught it."

"Do you see that? She even drew a tiny person in there. It’s as if he is screaming for help! That’s so cool!"

"That’s just plain creepy!" The older one shuddered at the realistic horror depicted on the tiny figure that was shown to be drowning!

"How was sister Shelby even able to depict these realistic features of this very tiny person? He even looked weird, as if he was not human!"

"Anyway, let’s go...." The older one took the painting, rolled it up, and handed it to the youngster. Then she picked up the canvas, and the two headed back inside the orphanage building.

A few moments earlier....

When the two strange men had arrived, one took a step forward, trying to pick up remnants of the power surge that had brought them there.

The second one spotted the painting and went near it to admire it.

"This is really good! It’s so pretty! It’s almost like ... no, no, the artwork is even more than our best painters! Who did this?" He marvelled.

"Huh, what is this?" He asked himself as he felt a slight breeze and small suction from the surface of the drawing.

He looked up over the drawing and onto the horizon, thinking the wind was picking up. He unconsciously ran his hands over it, and the next thing he knew, he was in the middle of the ocean in a swirl, like in the middle of an underwater tornado or a whirlpool.

He screamed at the sudden change, but he could not swim. There was a doubt that he could have saved himself even if he could swim. He lost control of all his powers as they did not respond to him. His lifesaving sword at his back became a weight that drew him down, causing him to sink as he flailed his arm and legs.

In the depths of the ocean, he had no fighting chance as the water swallowed him up,

This all but took a few seconds.

"Help me! HHHEEEEEELLLLLLPPPPPP!!!!!!!!!" Tears run down his face.

For some reason, even in his desperation, he could hear his partners’ words and that of the kids. Just before he lost consciousness, he tried one last attempt, but nothing worked. He got to the point when he knew that nothing would work. It was like a gut instinct before the water suction pulled him under.

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