Ace’s Dream

Malleus sends all of Sage’s Island to sleep in Book 7 so that they might enjoy “unending happiness,” and for Ace this seems to manifest as a dream world where he, Riddle, Cater, Deuce, Trey, Grim and the prefect are vacationing on a private beach in order to celebrate everyone moving up a grade, and the prefect becoming capable of traveling freely between their home and Twisted Wonderland.

Cater, Silver, Leona and Idia keep the dream-Riddle and dream-Trey distracted while the younger students try to awaken Ace, but Ace refuses to believe them, getting into an argument with Sebek about how he doesn’t actually consider everyone being trapped in a dream to be a problem, and asking:

“What’s the downside? If someone lives their whole life in a dream, it’s not illusory at that point, is it? There’s gotta be tons of people who would choose a dream if it meant an easy life where they never go through anything unhappy.”

Sebek points out that that means Malleus wasting away alone until his magic runs out and Ace responds,

“That’s what Malleus chose for himself. You want me to believe we’ve gotten dragged into some wild magical disaster, and that it’s OUR job to solve this problem because of what might happen to the poor jerk who did this to us? And you’re talking about fighting THE Malleus Draconia. You’re basically telling us to throw our lives away. That’s no joke—and if it’s meant to be one, it isn’t funny. It doesn’t really matter whether this is a dream or reality.”

Ortho says it is actually more surprising that none of the other students brought up these particular points before Ace and his logic is valid, pointing out that all of them are looking to challenge Malleus for their own personal reasons, and asking Sebek if he would be as driven as he is to help if the disaster had been triggered by someone else.

Silver scolds Sebek for his condescending tone and the unnecessary friction he causes with his lack of manners and Cater decides to let Ace stay asleep. As their failure to stop Malleus will result in Ace spending the rest of his life wondering if he is really in a dream or not, Cater volunteers to put him into a deeper sleep.

Cater separates from the group and Deuce follows after him, asking for one more chance to talk to Ace, and Cater reveals that he’d actually never intended to leave Ace behind from the start: his plan is to lure the dream versions of the Heartslabyul students to Ace on purpose, as the uncharacteristic things they say might successfully awaken him, but he knew that Idia would have tried to stop him if he’d said so.

Deuce volunteers to join him but Cater insists on going alone, and soon we learn why: Cater invokes his unique magic to attack Ace, successfully summoning the darkness.

When the darkness goes to his aid Ace admits that the real Trey, Ace, Riddle and Cater would never say the things that they do, but he is afraid. Ace says, “I don’t wanna put myself in danger, let alone risk my life.”

Cater says he can relate, and he was met with a similar dilemma when Riddle overblotted and all he could think about was how they didn’t stand a chance and had to run away, which is when Ace called him out for only fighting when he knows he can win.

Cater thanks Ace for that day and says, “Mind if I borrow your line? You’re not even gonna fight unless you KNOW you can win?”

Ace agrees to wake up and starts to struggle against the darkness. At one point the dream-Riddle says he will have Ace’s head and Ace struggles to breathe.

With encouragement from Cater, Ace successfully awakens.