"Erai!" From atop within the crowd, a voice cried out in relief after witnessing the Daumier take to the Arena.
"FAE's breath, you're okay, thank goodness he's okay."
"Vaceris…"Tersia held her close, after watching the look of concern ease on her face.
If for her to see that Erai would return in good health was a welcomed sight for her and the rest of the class, with that she could only imagine how Vaceris must have felt upon seeing him.
"When I told the doctor to…I knew it's what he would have wanted but–"
"We all wanted to help him, and I think he knows that too. Else, he wouldn't have come back."
"..."
"He's fighting again because you gave him that chance. Which means right now, what he needs from us is our support, right Captain?"
"Captain? Ketsu!" Tersia called out to him, but as though her voice was lost to the void, Ketsu's eyes remained fixed on the growing frost-bound storm. Through the intensifying white veil, he witnessed something…something staring back with enough intent that the teachers immediately halted their bickering.
Reiss, Salazar and Toudou were already leaning against the railing, needing little more than a word from the announcer to move against the sudden source of such bloodlust. But before they could engage it, the sensation vanished amid the freezing and blinding winds.
"All of you are to stay your hand, we are not to involve ourselves. Especially you, Reiss." A familiar voice spoke out, getting a groan from Reiss, as he rolled his eyes.
"And do you plan on stopping me if I do? Do any of you intend on helping him, because I can assure you that you will not be enough."
"Mr. Ulrich will do nothing that I have not already instructed. As will you, Mr. Reiss. Or do I need to be forceful?" To everyone's surprise, the Headmistress was now in the Educator's Booth. Her presence and that of Ulrich's having gone unnoticed upon their arrival.
"...Well there's no need to draw attention to ourselves, after all it's the students' chance to shine." Sitting back in his seat and almost knocking Salazar over. Leaving both him and Toudou a little unnerved with how quickly his attitude had changed.
"That is true, Mr. Reiss. Our job right now is to observe our students' performance. Ms. Yuria is more than capable of intervening should the need arise, yes?" The entire staff nodded as she spoke, before she found herself a seat in front of Reiss and the other educators. Putting Ulrich just beside the last person he wanted to see.
"Gentlemen, behave yourselves. Your magic is clashing quite heavily." She said, waving her hand back and forth as if she was trying to cool herself. With the pair exchanging a fierce glance before looking away, and focusing on the battle.
The wave of freezing air blasted past Shynerai, chipping away at the emerald flames as they steadily faded against the brace of the cold. Despite not having thrown a single attack, Vauntuss was pressing against him.
Walking towards with the presence that was akin to that of a storm drake after it had trapped its prey within a storm.
Each step created a rime-ladden path towards his opponent, while frozen shards grew from the Arena with them sharper and more jagged the further out his cold magic spread. Still the emerald flames burned with tenacity, as though a flickering spark within a growing blizzard.
Stranger still, was that the white haired Daumier had not moved from where he stood. As though he was waiting for Vauntuss. At the apex range of the intense ice magic flowing from him, Shynerai now stood, facing him.
Obscured by the white veil of the icy storm that had settled over the Arena, no one could get a view of the battle with any sense of clarity. With each passing moment, the fierceness of the storm's winds began biting into the onlookers that watched with growing awe as they witnessed the garden of ice and pillars of cold began taking shape, rewriting the original view of the Arena.
But through the storm that he was generating, Vauntuss found a fearsome sight. In front of him, his opponent stood, still unmoved and yet untouched by the frost. As though the flames had taken on an ephemeral touch, while none of the emerald flames were seen sputtering about, his ice magic was without a doubt halted from encroaching up on him.
As though to mock him, Vauntuss witnessed the figure within the storm raise a hand, and with little hesitation, cut through the icy bounds of the storm, his grip landing firmly on him. Somehow appearing beyond his ability to respond in that moment. Gripping the ends of his coat, twisting it as he drew him off his feet in genuine surprise.
Had it been anyone else, the shock of such a display of strength from his opponent would have been enough to shake their resolve but Vauntuss was far from any typical person. Instead of questioning his opponent's capacity, he strengthened his resolve and acted.
Taking the chance with his opponent in range, he used one hand to grip his arm and with a firm grasp sent a biting chill through it. Ignoring the invisible flames, the frost grew thick enough to form the same frozen shards, freeing up Shynerai's hold on him and allowing Vauntuss to reach for the sword that was fastened to his hip.
Still within the raging and blinding winds of the storm, he drove his blade into the ground, sending out a blizzard-like eruption of frost and bitter cold with such force that Shynerai's attempt to brace the sudden and freezing blast was knocked away, pushing him back as the storm was sundered apart.
The sudden clash of his assault of ice magic resisting against the unseen flames brought about a hanging mist.
Shynerai's gaze fell on the build up of frost that came apart after he loosened his guard, before once again spurring his emerald flames to life, with a swirl of steam gathering around him as the cold air met with his Atash.
Through this veil of mist, the two of them stood against the other's resolve manifested in their talents, at the ready the moment their opponent decided to make their move.
With Vauntuss taking charge, the sound of shuffling footsteps and cracking ice drew closer with the outline of his figure coming into closer view as the sound of his pace picked up. However with no real magical presence, Vauntuss could not see that Shynerai had been watching him from deep within the mist.
"Magic is not the only sense I have!" Vauntuss declared as the echo of his footsteps grew louder, while the mist was parted with a sudden brush from Shynerai's rush.
From one side, the ice was carved at by the passing heat of his Atash in his escape, while a path of frost followed after Vauntuss, with each leap he took over the glaciers and towering columns of ice brought him closer to his opponent.
Slipping past the scattered debris that was cut off his strike as Shynerai slipped beneath a frozen boulder that rested on a cracking sheet of ice that was split in two by the slash of his sword.
'Chasing him down will only wear me out.' Pulling out his sword and sheathing it, Vauntuss began summoning his magic once more. Creating a crystalline bow, as he drew on the delicate looking string, arrows of ice crafted from the rime in the air formed from the cold and were nock.
'In this frozen garden, your fire easily stands out.'
"Ice VII." His eyes couldn't find the passing figure even with the shape of his coat now hidden in the mist, his magic was overflowing and constantly affected his surroundings, enough that Vauntuss has had to learn to actively control his magic lest he accidently drains the life from anyone near him.
And now, within the field of ice and snow, the warmth coming from Shynerai's Atash was hard to miss.
And so, following the lone flame in the storm, Vauntuss took aim and fired a fierce barrage of freezing arrows that ripped through all the obstructions in their way before blasting their target with a splash of growing ice masses from where they crashed.
Through the past veil of mist that was steadily lessening, Vauntuss saw his chance. While Shynerai tried to recover from the assault, he found his leg bound in the grasp of the sudden growth of frost after failing to avoid one of his arrows.
Before he could free himself, Vauntuss appeared before him, with a strike so damaging, the force blew apart his icy bonds as he was sent through the mist, through the maze of glaciers into the Arena walls, that rocked with a terrifying shake upon his impact. The blow the young knight dealt granted the audience a proper sight of the battle, as they could now see the battleground for what it was.
As the crowd let out their surprise at the sight of the buried Shynerai beneath the debris from the crater nearby.
Raising his sword up and towards Shynerai, Vauntuss declared with a stern tone, and a focused glare,
"While I may face a monster, I will not falter against it. Come, beast and meet my steel–Huh?" In that moment, Shynerai tore through his guard by launching himself directly at him, getting run through before grabbing him and driving him into the ground, sending fissures out from the crater that was blasted wide by the impact.
The shock ran through him so viciously that he struggled to catch his breath for a moment as he was still stunned by the attack. His blade remained on his opponent even after the momentary onslaught allowing for it to rend threw his side however shallow the strike was.
'How can someone be this dense or is it that strange magic of his? I can no longer feel the heat of his flames' Vauntuss wrestled with the thoughts as Shynerai raised his fist and drove another blow into him, one that Vauntuss tried to deflect, narrowly avoiding the strike as he buried it into the dirt.
Launching himself out of the beast's range with the creation of a frozen pillar to separate them.
Vauntuss finally managed a moment to breathe. For the first time since the Carnival began, he had drawn blood, a sight more foreign to the very audience that was made up of his classmates. Both Vaceris and Charlotte were stricken with pale faces while Heimrill wore a heavy scowl after witnessing the state Vauntuss found himself in.
And approaching him, was the beast capable of inflicting such harm.
Walking through the cover of the icy pillars and crushing them beneath the weight of his now armored heel, Shynerai's approach was the one that echoed throughout the battlefield. Stepping through the shroud of dust and rubble-scattering winds was a creature born from an unmistakable horror.
The sleeves of his coat were torn apart all the way to his elbows, revealing the sight of an unnatural metal encroaching upon the flesh of his arms, his head obscured behind the helm that resembled a demonic shade that triggered an instinctive revulsion in the young knight.
Prompting him to summon his prism of ice, this time surrounding his opponent in its crystalline walls before creating another larger prism around the first. And so this continued to the point of having the fractals distorting the sight of what was trapped within it.
But this would not last, with the shattering of each layer within the prism alerting Vauntuss that his opponent's pursuit would only continue.
"That won't stop you, I see. But I only needed the moment to myself."
"Ice VII." From within the prism the inner structures warped into icy javelins that drove themselves into the metallic fiend. Pinning him in place, what followed was enough to have the educators move towards the stands and strengthen the protective Wards.
The audience witnessed the orange barrier thicken before them and then vanishing into a mirage-like sight.
From the command of his Ice VII spell, the spears holding Shynerai in place, began to glow with a burning fury, in a brilliant display as the light of the intensifying flames were magnified by the prism.
The lantern-like prism started shaking with surprising force when the structure boomed with a sudden shockwave. Bracing himself with his sword, the force whipped past Vauntuss with shocking strength and knocked him to his knee.
Slamming against the Arena and rocking the obelisks that were flung into the barriers, shattering into a lithic rain of stone and dirt, frightening the onlookers with the Wards flickering and shimmering before they faded from sight, revealing the Arena.
Shattered into two pieces, a grand gorge was carved from the gaping pit that stretched into a vast darkness. Greater vastness that would swallow all that was near it, aside from what was at its center. Right in the middle of the bottom pit, was a shred of the Arena floor, untouched and still covered in Vauntuss' frost.
And above it, Vauntuss struggled, gasping with an exhausted attempt to resist as Shynerai slowly strangled him. What parts of him that were unscarred had been consumed by the sight of the growing dark metal.
"Wh…what a pitiful sight it must be. The princess must think...think so lowly of me–" His breath fleeted and his strength waned, bringing out a vicious roar from the demented Daumier, battered and consumed by the dark metal that advanced on his body, but with his prey in hand, the beast couldn't help but relent the mercy of the darkness.
The darkness of its eyes deepened as the amber light that peered from it vanished, with both hands working to drain the life from him, a savagery that was previously held back, bubbled to unbound levels as he continued to horrify the audience.
The sound of cracking accompanied by the volumes of blood Vauntuss' body tried to clear from his throat wrote a song of sorrow everyone was forced to hear. None could intervene, not unless one of them had decried their submission.
"He's not going to let him surrender, not while he's choking him out like that. Reiss, do something." Salazar tried to urge him but the elf simply stayed silent, watching the battle, as did Ulrich, the Headmistress and strangely enough, Ms. Yuria who was still in the Announcer's booth watching it all unfold.
"To hell with this, I'm not going to watch them kill each other–"
"You won't take another step, Salazar."
"What is wrong with you, if we don't do something we're going to end up regretting it." Salazar would have continued had it not been for the flaming ring of sigils spinning above his head.
"As the Headmistress said, if you act, we'll be forced to stop you." The rage from his gaze had the educator stumble back into his seat, having had a taste of the frustration Reiss had been made to bear under her orders.
"Please, we have to…"
"ERAI! WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU?" A voice cried out from above, cutting Salazar's plea short as he turned to look for its source.
"ERAI! THIS…THIS IS WRONG, THIS ISN'T YOU–"
"V–Vaceris?" The Daumier let out, in a faint whisper, the first words he had uttered since he took to the stage. Within his daze, Vauntuss could hear it, more so, could he see the emerald glint coming from one of his eyes.
'Once again, that same light coming from your eyes, always after hearing her name.' The young knight wondered as his blurry vision tried to focus.
"I'm sorry, but I have to do this." Stringing his first coherent sentence together before the darkness swallowed the emerald light, and the dark metal covered the rest of his scarred flesh.