A desolate plain, bereft of agrestal vivacity, dilapidated and unoccupied, a maelstrom of monochrome brown, fragmented earth dredged the empyrean sky, afflicted by Gemini beings, conjoined foreigners estranged to such earthly uncelestial domain. Twain adolescents beseeming of the description good-looking, that of Eros, with hair of polychromatic pink and chocolate brown, and eyes of identical heterochromatic progeny, to Christiaan, whose peepers of lurid, cadaverous blue appeared to quake, his mind oscillating with but a single emotion, that of macabre, nightmarish uncertainty.
Bedraggled zephyrs swept the land, gnostic to the distance between the contradictory pair, a granular breadth of ten metres solely separating the geminate teens. The distant visage of Isaurus, the sole spectator to such imminent harrowing confrontation, his lips preternaturally quivering, though not out of antecedent barbaric expectation for Eros's instantaneous defeat, but another emotion, that of fear, for the boy bearing eyes of polychromatic hue gazed not upon the same portrait of his peers, for they appeared droll, drab, a nugatory void of euphoric sadism, his hands intertwined upon the crescent genuflection of his vine bow in an almost ardent, sultry manner. Eros's face of enchanting allure continued to crack, a tender pressure permanently plaguing the seams of his lips that had absentmindedly bowed into a grimace of fluttering, ill-repressed euphoria.
Seconds, mere seconds of virginal quiescence stagnantly swarmed the realm, akin to a putrid pond impregnated by myriad algae. Such tormenting deafness continued to fester until an exclusive utterance raped the land, discharged by the singular theatregoer to such unearthly battle, Isaurus, his lips of cherry fragmented, a ruinous prison to the following announcement. "N-Now that you've taken your place, s-shall we s-start the spar," The boy decreed, his eyes of austere melancholic grey errantly shifting, placed not upon Eros's enraptured visage, but that of Christiaan's whose lips of tremulous ordinance appeared to momentarily still, while his left hand, illiterate to the grand blade that occupied its twin scintillated with an argentite, lustrous light, a luminosity Eros transparently lay ignorant to for his mind solely palpated with thoughts of the arciform item of which he embraced.
"On the count of three," Isaurus started, his voice perversely devoid of trepidation, his twin eyes of drab slate appearing momentarily placated. And it was such a call that saturated Eros's mind, his right hand once tranquil upon a body of ivy gained motion, a snowstorm of sultry sloven animation, for with one genial mercurial move did he grasp that which antecedently abhorred him, a sacrificial pawn, a being made solely to martyr, a hyperboreal frigidness bred with the tips of Eros's flesh of snow, a cadaverous corpse of anterior zoetic vivacity, spindly and lanky, bearing a body of elongated craft, a stick, neigh an arrow.
"Two," Isuarus continued as Eros raised such slender bolt, his heterochromatic eyes befalling the appearance of the atoning lamb, a carcass of flaxen ash wood, chimerically despoiled, interbred, with fletched feathers of raven onyx and head of dulled, jaded flint, impotent, incapable of ingress.
"One," The boy announced, to which Eros instinctually nocked his beseeching penance. Deaf to such bleak throe, he waited, his eyes dull, his smile of sultry sadism on the precipice of extolled intoxication, to hear that final cry, the announcement of battle, the origin to the spar. "GO!!" Isuarus fervently screamed, only to find his voice soon asphyxiated, his every motion stifled, paralysed.
In a mere instant, a contemporary, exigent second, amidst such governed time, Eros moved, his left hand instinctively raised, unburdened by the elephantine creation of interwoven vine that lay dormant within its grasp. His eyes of mottled hues lay permanently fixed upon Christiaan, the sole focus of his once drab mind, now riddled with liberated glee, a blasphemous unbridled ecstasy, a boy who appeared stationary, his twin peepers of lurid, cadaverous craft endlessly convulsing, addled, infected by putrescent mortal motions Eros failed to comprehend, for his twain right hand of snow started to pull.
Primal, fundamental paramount fear. A chill of universal abhorrence, of forced reverence, ran unanimously down the spine of all who occupied the ostentatious colosseum, whether it be fledgling espers of F-rank or the singular disciplinarian of the realm, all who lay before the presence of that boy heeded such primordial premonition, for Eros's appearance was the progenitor of such foretoken exhortation. A god, that of undeniable, irrefutable potential, a sanctified being that demanded reverence, the youth bearing head of mottled pink and chocolate brown appeared as such, the vine bow he wielded a herald of despair.
'Ahh~ I like this. Everything about this weapon feels so natural to me~ The way the wood curves, the sensation of strained string upon my fingers~ It just feels so…right!' Eros inwardly murmured, his left eye unconsciously scintillating with a transient pink luminosity while his grimace of unshackled sadism blossomed into a ravishing bewitching smile of untarnished rhapsody, a paradoxical notion to the hyperboreal glacial ambience of helplessness that exuded ceaselessly from his zenith visage, an aura solely one esper spied the sire to.
Virulent emerald eyes, venomous, a malignancy unto the world, housed by a marionette crafted of ornate, ostentatious porcelain bearing fibrous silken head of resplendent halcyon, Gabriella gazed upon Eros's abstracted visage, reverent, her heart erupting into a bout of innumerable palpitations, the singular feminine spectator to his rapturous smile, her hands capistrate obscured by a prodigious pole of wrought metal appeared to clench. In contrast, her face, once apathetic, hateful, erupted into a meagre smirk.
{+25 Affection (Gabriella Ebba)}
A translucent notification plagued the equidistant medial of Eros's gaze, a notion the youth innately ignored, his scrutiny solely focused on the trembling visage of Christiaan, whose face lay reddened, streaked by subconscious beads of lament, a look that Eros wished to extract, to further desecrate and disfigure, for his hand continued to pull, engaged in an unknowing conflict with the enslaved, maltreated and tyrannised twine, its deathly throes of agony crumbling ceaselessly upon contact with Eros's veil of hair. 'Now~' The youth inwardly breathed, his fingers on the precipice of release, yet, what next graced his ears was not the discordant choir of desanctified atonement but the shrill, cacophonous penance of death.
*Pang* The string Eros antecedently wrenched, ruptured, mangled and maimed from its centremost point, the arrow he clutched tight falling languidly upon the fragmented soil underfoot. Nightmarish silence, an undisturbed domain of spectral serenity and chimeric foreboding, neither spectator nor combatant dared breathe, their hearts antecedently stimulated merely dropped, with two bearing motions of relief, while Eros felt nought but dread, his sanity immediately reborn. 'Ah,' The boy simply stuttered, his body not taking into account the subconscious augmentation of his recent changes, his strength that had yet to be tamed or validated. Still, such macabre silence was the very definition of transient, and within mere moments, a sonorous choir of laughter echoed amidst the earthly realm, now relieved of its spectral burden.
"HAHAHAHAHA! I-I, HAHAHAHAHA!" The twain voices of Christiaan and Isaurus bellowed, intermittently failing to utter even the simplest of taunts. They merely laughed, expunged relief lacing every chortle that erupted from their geminate lips, laughter soon broken, though not by Eros, who forlornly gazed despondently upon his defiled weapon, but Christiaan whose visage exploded into a torrent of eerie animation, accelerated, fleet footsteps, clamoured elatedly upon the destitute soil, metres lost within but seconds, he appeared, his 1.2-metre edgeless greatsword locked into a state of abnormal animation.
Demoniac, not of this world, Christiaans every motion appeared skewed, from his steps that continued to accelerate despite having reached Eros's hypothetically ordained limit to the very advance of his sword, whose progress shared such parallel fate, instinctually Eros raised his vine bow, a vain attempt at defence from the blunted weapon.
*BANG* Christiaans blow collided squarely with the epicentre of Eros's arciform calamitous weapon, its strength bloodcurdlingly potent, for with but a single hit did the item of vine shatter, innumerable splinters rupturing forth, baleful, resentful to Eros's malign mistreatment they attacked few attempting to impregnate his bountiful flesh of snow, only to meet a destitute fate, for not a single scratch stained Eros's deific body. Still, such cataclysmic aggression did not cease, for Christiaan's argent appendage continued to move, dynamic, hectic, it collided demonically with the fragmented earth underfoot, birthing infinite progeny in the form of bedraggled dust, that which painted the empyrean canvass above, shrouding both Christiaan and Eros in its promiscuous cowl.
*ahh* Eros inwardly grated, his heterochromatic eyes a canvas of painted earth, 'How? How can Christiaan be that strong? Isn't he just an F-rank? Why could he so effortlessly destroy my bow? Even if the sword is blunted and infinitely heavier, it shouldn't have been that easy, ' Eros continuously stammered, nascent to the concept of battle from the innumerable years spent isolated from his peers.
'Every act, everything he does, it all appears so ever slightly off, including the motion he retained after our collision. Agh! I don't understand. What's his ability? Has he even used it yet,' The boy continuously stammered, his heterochromatic gaze struggling to see Christiaan's stygian figure amidst the ceaseless effluvium of monochrome brown. Seconds passed in eerie suffocating suspense, in which Eros merely drew another arrow, not to fire, but to attack, to pounce.
*BANG* And it was from his back that the boy heard such deafening expulsion of dissonant sound, a collision akin to that of steel upon the earth. Spasmodic motions erupted from his enchanting visage, barbaric. Eros turned, yet what he saw was not in line with the frivolous assault he expected but something else, a gut-wrenching scene. Christiaan, his head of ink black and eyes or lurid blue appeared agonised, torturous, yet it wasn't such display that filled Eros's mind with doubt, but a spectacle centred upon the grand sword the youth wielded, for intertwined upon its hilt of leather rested a singular hand, that of which the adolescent solely used, blood, perpetual sanguine coloured a canvas of argent plated silver, Christiaan's wrist, once whole, lay maimed, his skin of pristine white lay ruptured, fragmented, with alabaster bone stained an abhorrent shade of carrion liberated from its realm of eternal hibernation.
'....How?' Eros dazedly murmured, his grip upon the carapace of ash subconsciously tightening as if in preparation for a notion his mind recognised not. Still, despite such fervent query, the boy dared not help Christiaan, remaining placid in his place, unconcerned with the idea of winning, for Eros merely wished to train, to prepare himself for the future Psyche prophesied, a notion soon to be affirmed for within but a second animation returned to the carrion domain, drops of sanguine raining upon Eros's flesh of snow. An upwards slash, of whose ancestor consisted of the same bloodied portrait, Christiaan's bone had retreated, forced into submission by its progenitor, as though a common occurrence for the boy.
* Clang!* Flint met steel in a horrific clash, Christiaan's blade accelerating at an alarming rate that Eros deemed impossible considering his current circumstance, 'His ability must have something to do with acceleration, ' Eros inwardly affirmed his singular arrow shattered, little more than a ruinous pile of debris, he needed another, chaotically the boy reached desperate for yet another bolt, a method to defend himself from Christiaan's descending slice.
Late.
Eros's fingers toyed with the idea of grasping such a cadaverous carapace, yet, no matter how much the youth ventured, such items anathematised his capture, falling in between his extremities, never to be held. He had to dodge. His body hurriedly leaned to the right, a frantic, frenzied attempt to deny such impending damage. *Bang* The wrought sword collided vehemently with the now dustless realm, failing to cleave even a centimetre of earth from Gaia's slumbering corpse, yet, once more did blood spill upon Eros's figure, for bone erupted from Christiaan's now ruinous wrist, marrow stained pink, a fragment of the structures former zoetic vivacity, it had been destroyed, detritus of alabaster spasmodically littering Eros's cowl of mottled maroon.
"Ahhhh!" Christiaan subtly seethed, his mind grappling with the overwhelming torturous agony with a demeanour akin to that of a well-spoken acquaintance, a friend, a companion, yet the boy before him was neither. Eros was Christiaan's self-imposed enemy, and despite bearing little more than apathy to the idea of winning, he wouldn't forsake such a notion.
*Bang* Still, before Eros could move, he found his stomach indented, a plain of shrouded sheathed leather plunged barbarically into his gut. "You lose! As if my centrifugal force manipulation would fall to your fucking useless ability!" Christiaan bellowed as if trying to convince himself of his own opinion, to deny such memories of fear that formerly wracked his person.
"The winner of the spar is Christiaan!" Isaurus barked, announcing an end to the hasty conflict, that which he antecedently wished to prolong but now deemed fit to end.