THE ALLEY RAT.

           A young blonde girl of nothing less than Ten was looking down at her reflection in the stagnant water in the pool. She was holding a torn-up brown teddy bear with tears in her eyes.

             Ariadna was born weak, unlike her other siblings. They had to be careful of the kind of blood she took or she will get really sick.

       Faithia hated her. She kept saying that she didn't like the fact that she was prettier than her. Joel refuses to play with her, he only plays with Faithia, and if she asks why, his reply is always. "You're weak and you always slow us down."   Acher only pays attention to the new boy and the new boy, they do talk sometimes but it wasn't the kind of talk she wanted. She began to recall their conversation earlier.

           "Alan, would you like to play hide and seek?"  she hugged her cute and new Teddy bear. 

               "My name isn't Alan, is Trent." The new boy looked expressionless. He turned to leave when she spoke again.

        "Trent, would you like to play hide and seek?"  Trent stared at her, his large silver eyes bored into her.

       "If I seek you, do I get to tear your stomach and look at your intestine?" Ariadna gasped and stepped back. Her healing ability was very slow. Ariadna shook her head vigorously.

   "No." he walked away and left the girl to herself. 

Ariadna sighed as she kept staring at her reflection. When someone pushed her from behind she fell into the pool. Ariadna couldn't swim. She kept struggling; she flung her legs and hands as she tried her best to breathe "Someone please help me." Ariadna said in her mind, she began to lose consciousness.

          "anybody please."  Trent jumped into the water. He carried her and swamed back to shore.

   Trent did CPR but she didn't wake up. "Ariadna wake up!" Trent struck her face but the girl didn't move.  Her heart was so low he couldn't see the difference between her and a dead body.

                Trent, combed through his hair as he thought of what to do. Then something in his brain clicked. Trent used his sharp nail made a cut in his palm and fed his blood to her. At first, nothing happened, Ariadna's body suddenly began to twitch. Her hair changed from blonde to white and her skin became paler. Trent backed away, a maid who saw Trent standing over Ariadna who was twitching on the ground.

    The maid panicked and ran to call the queen. Ariadna began to regain consciousness. "How dare you hurt my child!" she could hear her mother yelling as her eyes slowly closed. 

               Trent held Ariadna in his arms, he apparated into the throne room, where the whole family was gathered. Isolde who was crying was the first to notice him before others did.

                  "Ariadna!" Isolde ran to him and touched her unconscious daughter's face. The white line left by her tears was visible for everyone to see.

             "What happened? Where did you find her?" Isolde cried as she kept staring at her daughter.  "she was kidnapped by Amorah from the train station. The room went silent.

      "What did you just say?!"  Augustus stood up and came to her side. "Amorah kidnapped her because she needed the baby in her womb." Trent sounded like a robot.

   "Why my daughter?" Isolde fell to the ground and cried. "take her to her room, I will call a doctor." Trent left the throne.

                           Earlier that night.

               "Who is there, come out!" Ella crossed her arms. "Promise me that you will not hurt me when you see me." They looked at each other then the dark part where the unnatural tiny voice was coming from. "we promise not to hurt you!" Ella said to the unknown tiny voice.

             Ella and Cyrus saw a rat coming out from the dark part of the alley. They ignored it and kept looking at the dark place up front.

          "We promise not to hurt you, we just want to know what happened to Ariadna?!" Ella sighed and looked at Cyrus.

  "I am already here." They both blinked their eyes as they looked at the rat standing on a carton. Ella laughed. "I must be losing my mind, I can now see a rat talking." She laughed harder. "I must be losing my mind too," Cyrus murmured to himself.

        "You two are unserious, I thought you wanted to find out about the girl?" the rat shouted. "he's right, this is not the time to be surprised." Cyrus went closer to him.

         "start from the beginning."   "I am the tenth child of my mother…"

 "not that beginning. The conversation you heard with Trent." Cyrus informed. "Oh, I see my bad, well he caught me, put a spell on me to enable me to speak, and a very tall man told the pregnant lady that the child she's carrying is important to their cause."

         "what cause?" Ella asked.  "he didn't mention. He just told his partner to take her to the hideout and the really handsome and scary guy left." They looked at each other again where could the hideout be.

      The vibration of her phone distracted her from her thoughts. She answered the call and put her phone over her ear.  "Hello." Ella waited for the person in the other line to speak."

          "It is Acher, come to the palace." He caught the call.

  She looked confusedly at Cyrus. "I heard everything, I will take you."  "I am coming too." The rat jumped and landed on Cyrus's shoulder.

              The royal palace became gloomy.

 Ariadna narrated everything to her family, she cried so much she ran out of tears. Isolde gnashed her teeth in anger and Faithia became pale.

          "Look at what your mistress and her bastard of a child did to my family?!" she pointed at Ariadna as she angrily glared at the king.

         "Mother, I have told you for a million times that it wasn't Trent that pushed me, if not because of him, I wouldn't be alive." Faithia clenched her fist in fear.

      The only person who knew that she was the one who pushed Ariadna that day was Trent. She was so jealous and angry at Ariadna, that all her friends wanted to play with Ariadna and not her. Some even said that she looked like a doll.

          Out of jealousy, she pushed her younger sister into the pool. But only because she thought she could swim. She still doesn't know how Trent found out, he was not even there when it happened. 

     He threatened to put a curse that would make her ugly if she ever tried to hurt Ariadna. And she never did that until their father's birthday party where paid her maid to drag the necklace from her neck.

    "I don't care what you said or who did, I just don't want him to show his face in the palace anymore!" Trent was outside the room with Acher, they were both leaning on the wall while the king and queen argued.

            "it is my fault, everything that happened to Ariadna, it is my fault."  Trent looked sad it hurt Acher to see him this way. "No, is not, adding your blood into her system changed her life and saved her and all for the better." 

 "I am not talking about that?" Acher craned his neck to look at him. "What are you talking about?"

    "If I had gotten there sooner, if I learned to use the gifts my mother gave me then her baby would still be with her."   

       "Trent, you tried your best."

"My best wasn't enough. 

      Back in HOJ. The five elders were in prison, Elder Potter was in Romulus's office with Aurelia, Romulus himself, and Romeos.

        "How did you get out of it then?" Aurelia asked.

 "I thought of my children and grandkids, I don't want them to think that their old man has become so weak. when I started reciting the paper she gave me, I was struggling to break free from the trance. So I used my own power to overheat myself and found myself in the underworld from where I stood I could see Trent's look-alike sitting on a throne chair.

        "I will not be surprised if that boy is the devil," Aurelia said and the rest agreed. Romeos was happy for him.

          When the soul that was supposed to exhibit my body came, he was disappointed by the fact that he would be in my body.

     "What happened next?" Romeos asked.

 "I was telling it before you interrupted!" elder Potter flared at Romeo's.

         "We fought for my body and I was able to get it back."

"What you're saying is that there's another soul in the body."

 Elder Potter nodded his head.

 "But I don't think they used the same process." 

 "why?" 

"because they recently found the blessed child and the last one that they knew before this was Adam.

            "Then, how did they transfer these other souls, the last soul manipulator? died hundreds of years ago." Aurelia said. "Unless there's a soul manipulator."