"YOU BOUGHT THE PROFESSORS OUT, DIDN'T YOU?"
Roared Lucian, pointing an accusatory finger at Elwin, flanked by his mates. The Artens nearby – mostly Fradihta – looked up from their plates.
Elwin, rudely interrupted from his well-deserved dinner, clanged his knife down upon the table, gazing up at the figure he despised more than anyone else in the world. "You are welcome to say that to me again," he replied, his voice simmering and low.
Lucian strode closer towards Elwin's lonely seated figure.
"You asked Professor Helen to pour oil on those woodblocks, didn't you? And you requested to take the exam first, out of all one-hundred-and-sixty of us, to which she accepted. How coincidental. How mysteriously serendipitous!"
"You can say that to Professor Helen," replied Elwin, rising from his seat to face Lucian. He was now only half a head shorter than him. "I would like to see what happens when your accusation reaches her ears."
"Oh, you think I'm so concerned with my place here that I'll turn a blind eye to what you've done?" declared Lucian. "That I'll run with my tail between my legs because the Master of Fire will not take kindly to me speaking the truth?"
Elwin stood his ground firmly, his senses raising on their ends at Lucian's assertion amidst the river of students.
"What truth? All you tell are lies, Lucian," he retorted, his heart pounding with the memory of all the times Lucian beat him to a pulp. "You don't have a hair's width worth of proof."
"I HAVE PROOF!" hollered Lucian in a voice so loud everyone in the dining hall could hear. All the Artens in the Grand Dining Hall now halted their spoons and forks; they turned their heads to the commotion that now gripped it.
"You couldn't even set fire to the smallest woodblock a few months ago with the Dance of the Sparks. And all of a sudden, you've mastered it, and set even the biggest woodblock on fire? You expect people to believe that somehow you improved enough in such a short amount of time? If you wanted to cheat," accused Lucian, "then you could have at least tried to make it look believable by setting just four blocks on fire, not all of them."
A reel of memories raced through Elwin's head. He recalled the aching of his muscles and bone, the countless moments of him getting hit by the metal cylinder, the smell of his vomit, the shame of feeling weak, all those things he endured in the quest to climb to where he now stood. It would be a terrible dishonor to stand by while Lucian attempted to mar the reputation he was just beginning to raise.
"You –" Elwin retorted, "don't know HALF the efforts I made to improve myself. While you returned home as soon as the winter chill hit, I stayed here alone to work my bones off so that I wouldn't tarnish the reputation of Aeternitas. So if you haven't put in the effort I have, then shut that disgusting hole you call your mouth."
Elwin enunciated his words with such conviction and force that Lucian seemed staggered for a moment. The normal Elwin he knew could never speak in such a way. Something in him has changed. But compelled by forces beyond his control, he had to persist in his hate towards Elwin Eramir.
"You think I'm a stranger to the effort it takes to be good? Have you seen me in class?" Lucian shot back, his voice raised even higher.
"Yes," Elwin replied. "All you do is frolic in your blessing with your Maht. You are so complacent with it, that all you do is show off. In fact, I can't say that you've improved as much as I did," he commented savagely, remembering what Professor Aionia had told him about those who were blessed but did not try.
But at the enunciation of the word 'frolic', Lucian's eyes immediately lit ablaze with fury.
"What did you just say to me?"
"I said you frolicked, Lucian. What? You worked hard too? Oh, I'm sorry. Now you know how I must feel when you don't acknowledge suffering of my own."
"Ha," Lucian huffed, his voice lowering to a slow roil, "your words would have had impact had it not been for your father."
"What about my father?" asked Elwin, inching closer.
"That he secured you a place here, and even bought off the professors. OTHERWISE," Lucian enunciated with deafening clarity, "how would you have been allowed to stay until now? And just in time for the mid-year exams, you passed with flying colors in an Element that is rivaled to your Maht? Doesn't all of this look mortally suspicious?" Lucian dissected, turning to his friends and the Fradihta that had gathered to spectate.
"A pile of crap," retorted Elwin. "Why in the world do you care how and why I passed the exam?"
"Because Aeternitas has no place for cheaters like you," he repeated, jabbing a finger into Elwin's robe. Elwin bottled the rising fury within his chest. "And you dishonor everyone here, because you keep getting away with it, Elwin. Just like you did back at Ascension."
"And Aeternitas has a place for you, when you beat me up as gleefully as you did back at Ascension?"
Rayo, Cassius, and Claudia by his side shot Elwin a glance of utter disdain. Elwin shot them back a glower of equal measure.
"Beat you up? You couldn't lie if you tried. All I did back at school was to help you, Elwin, HELP YOU! I covered for you in numeracy class, did my best to make sure that you didn't get singled out during tagball, and showed you how to get better with your Maht. But you betrayed me, you betrayed all of us! You sabotaged all of our efforts together when we studied and worked as a team, because in your head you needed to be number one, and when we confronted you for it, what did you say?"
"Oh, what did I say?" asked Elwin, wondering how far Lucian was going to carry his lie.
"You told us to go cry about it, and left us in the dust."
Elwin let out a bemused huff. "If I actually said that, you would have killed me, and you know it."
Lucian continued as if he hadn't heard him. "When I came to Aeternitas, I was ready to surround myself with people like me, happy at last that people like you were no longer around. Little did I know, I was wrong. You had your foot in Aeternitas long before I applied, thanks to your father."
Something more than just irritation began to bubble up in Elwin.
"A grand fantasy, Lucian. Why in the MAHA do you care so much about me being here, when you can leave me alone?"
"Because you being here means that there is one person, just as skilled as one of us, who was denied admission to Aeternitas. The count of the Fradihta each year are fixed, and because you wormed your way in, we have to contend with you."
"Look," retorted Elwin, raising his voice to match Lucian's own, "I don't know why you are acting so honorable and goody-two-shoes now that you're at Aeternitas, but if you can rack your birdbrain, I've personally not done ANYTHING to make your life difficult, or gone out of my way to insult you or your friends. In fact, you would have noticed that I've never talked to any one of you on my own accord, while it's you and your mates that have always tried to rile something up in me."
"Oh, really?" answered Lucian. "That was not the case when you barged in the middle of our conversation to wrest a poem-book away from us, and challenged us to a duel."
"You are the one who challenged me to a duel, you goldfish," retaliated Elwin.
"And what happened then? Everyone here saw what happened to you. If you were in any way qualified as an Arten here, then you would have been able to stand your ground at the arena."
"That's why I practiced my bones off the past months, you blithering imbecile!" shouted Elwin, rolling his head in frustration. "And now that I've finally found some success, now that I've finally shown everyone that I am just as capable as them, you just jump in and accuse me of something I didn't do?"
"Yes, because everyone here deserves to know! If you've bought out even the professors here, then you are going to win the tournament for sure! What does that make us, those of us who try? I speak for everyone in this hall!" Lucian added, putting his voice above Elwin's own.
Murmurs of assent filled the air.
"Imagine him, being the head of a House just because his father was someone important! What about us who came from the bottom? Those of us who didn't have such connections? Are we going to be perpetually stuck at the sidelines because people like him always take the main carpet?"
"For MAHA's sake, how long are you going to frame me like this? I DIDN'T ENTER HERE OUT OF MY FATHER'S CONNECTIONS!" argued Elwin, his face contorted in view of all the accusations Lucian threw at him. "If all of you remember my friend Isaac at the Ceremony of Initiation, he explained that back at the exam hall in the capital city, a thief snuck amongst us and ran out of the hall with our bags. One of those bags had precious medicine for Isaac, and I chose to run out and abandon my hopes of the exam so that I could recover those bags and help my friend. Someone recognized me, and I sure didn't know anyone had at the time, and that's how I was admitted to Aeternitas! There, NOW. YOU. REMEMBER!"
Elwin bellowed his final word and threw down his fork, sick of being driven into a corner, sick of constantly being labeled a liar.
"You expect us really to believe something that could've easily been staged?" piped up a voice from the crowd.
"Forget that. Where's Isaac now, then?" added another.
The words stung Elwin like barbs of poison. It was a long time since he'd talked to his kismets.
"He isn't with me now."
"Why isn't he with you, if you did something so important as for him to be indebted?" interrogated another voice from the crowd.
"That's because they realized the truth," Lucian interjected. "That all of it was a ploy. If you've been as observant as I am, you'd remember that on the first day, at the Ceremony of Initiation, Elwin was with three other people. There was Katherine, the heiress of the Heriz family as you all know, and there was Isaac, along with a coffee-haired girl named Mirai. But from a few months ago, he walked with them no longer. They sit far away from him, even in the same Tanaar group. Can you all guess as to why? It's because they too realized what a fraud he was! They finally realized that Elwin had lied to them! When they comforted him after hurting himself in Professor Thales's class, he lashed out at them! Even the millionaire-girl doesn't want to be with him!"
"How in the world do you know about that?" interrogated Elwin, furious that he knew of what happened between him and his kismets.
"Oh, you went off on them so loudly that my friends and I could hear even from House MANASURA. What? Did you really think the way you abused your friends would be hidden here at Aeternitas? That you could keep up your new leaf act?"
The audience murmured and shifted away from Elwin, as if he was an untouchable.
"I had my reasons! Don't take what you heard out of context!"
"You had your reasons?" Lucian viciously inquired. "So will you have your reasons too when you inevitably use your teammates and drag them down as cannon fodder in the tournament? Just like your father did to thousands of others on his cursed expedition?"
It was possible for Elwin to dam his anger when accusations were pointed at him, since he was used to it. But slander of his unassailable father he could never stand. He passed away pursuing a mission of the utmost importance, a mission that would save them all, a heroic pursuit which went unsung. And now, every ignorant ignoramus was keen to trample on his legacy, to spit on his grave. A fiery wrath was lit ablaze at the core of Elwin's being, and he hunkered his foot towards Lucian.
"What'd you say?"
"Like father, like son."
"You are not even HALF the man he was. You don't know the tiniest sliver of reason which drove him to embark on that expedition!"
"Oh yeah? And for what reason was that? Nourish me. Was it fame? Wealth? Gravedigging the tombs of the Emperors of Jin? You really call those reasons noble? My elder brother was also robbed from me because your father hypnotized him with the allure of riches!" Lucian hollered, his countenance red. Something told Elwin that Lucian wasn't lying as usual. His friends let out an audible gasp; Lucian was always silent about his past, and he often preferred hard work to idle chat; so this was the first time they were hearing that Lucian's loss was on par with theirs.
"You've no idea what great forces he was trying to protect us from," riposted Elwin. "He was –" and just as his father's letter surfaced to his mind, he found himself unable to speak. His father had confided in him that his mission should only be illuminated to those Elwin trusted, for in the wrong hands, knowledge of it could prove devastating. He had entrusted Elwin to uphold his request and complete the mission he could not.
"He was – he was –" Elwin stammered, over and over, trying to make sense of the entire ordeal. He knew his father was right, and that his death was not in vain, and that everyone should be indebted to his sacrifice for that untold mission to protect the world from beings of evil. But how could Elwin possibly explain this to prove himself, to defend his father, without revealing everything? What were those evil beings anyhow? There was no way he could.
"Trying to lie on the spot?"
"Of – of course not! You –"
"Wow, hear him stammer! So many people were taken to an early grave due to his father, fooled by his promise of glory and wealth. But look at his son, look at Elwin! He's still trying to leech off of his father's legacy, still trying to relive his days of glory at grade school! The apple doesn't fall far from the tree, won't you agree?"
Elwin was left speechless.
"If you know who he is, if you don't wish to be dragged down with his lies, don't let him into your team in the tournament!"
Lucian turned, ready to march away triumphant, having slandered Carl to the world and back, once again having taken an axe at Elwin's attempt to recover his image for reasons Elwin knew utterly not.
Elwin felt powerless to do anything, cursing his association with Lucian – and that's when the amazing thought struck him, like a lightning through his head:
He was not powerless anymore.