He for the past three months had trained and ascended to the summit, he had learned to control the energies of the world! He finally had the power to deliver the justice he sorely wished upon Lucian, and this time, it would go so differently than the first duel he had. What was he waiting to use his power on, if not now?
"You don't know how many mornings I awoke with my voice hoarse, calling out my father in my nightmares! You don't know into what chasms of poverty my family fell, what pain it brought me when my eye was gouged from me by fate and we could do nothing about it! And still, knowing these things, you try to make up these lies, try to SULLY THE LEGACY OF A GREAT MAN, FOR NO REASON WHATSOEVER! YOU DESERVE – YOU DESERVE –!" Elwin's voice thundered into a murderous roar.
Lucian's back was still turned, walking away. And at the sight of the back of his hair, those tufts of ash-blond, Elwin's heart began to pound away, blood coursing to his ears and head, throbbing, driving him hyperconscious with fury he'd never yet experienced. In all of his vision he saw nothing but red, in its crosshairs that contemptible, disgusting snake with ash-blond hair, who for all his life tormented him, made lies of him, and formed leagues against him.
It was time.
It was time to deliver justice!
For his father and himself!
And without a moment of hesitation, Elwin broke into a sprint and closed his eyes, pulling upon all of the vapor in the air of that hall, sharpening it into a thick, lustrous whip of water with its tip as ice, and cracked it as hard as he possibly could into Lucian's uniformed back and cape, sending him tumbling in shock fifteen feet from where he had stood.
Elwin bellowed, transmogrifying into a monster of his own.
"You want me to prove myself so bad? You want to see for yourself that I really improved?" He shouted, his head vibrating with such fury that it looked erratic upon his neck.
"OKAY! I'LL SHOW YOU ABSO-LUTELY EVERYTHING!"
Elwin instantaneously sucked all the heat out from the whip, snapping it into ice, and launched its shards at Lucian's head, reeling from the unexpected blow to him, having truly believed Elwin had no power. He managed to blow a gust of wind sideways in front of him to deflect the shards by a hair's width, and quickly stood to his feet, his hands and arms in front of his face to guard against that boy with the eyewrap, who was no longer the timid Elwin he knew.
Elwin, regathering the ice, boiled it with the heat of the earth below him, and sent a roiling wave screaming with steam to Lucian, driving everyone in the crowd to scatter out of the direction. Lucian managed desperately to cool and freeze the wave just as it touched his foot, scalding his left big toe briefly, but as he put his head up, Elwin was right in front of him, driving his fist and Quan deep into his chest. Lucian reeled backwards, catching his breath as he fell, sliding out of the way. He prepared his own set of techniques to counter Elwin's berserk rampage, freezing the water on the ground to a pillar of ice which he swung at Elwin hard, and commanded his three trusted allies to distract Elwin; the entire hall was morphed into a battlefield of flying shards of ice, jets of fire, stones tossed to heads and throats, and gusts of fierce wind stripping away the delicate murals and banners on the wall, Elwin inching ever closer towards Lucian through the hailstorm of the Elements so he could wrangle him by the throat.
Two boys and girls spectating from the sidelines saw what danger all of them were in, and ran into the commotion with their arms out, begging them to stop, trying to cling to Elwin's arms and legs as well as Lucian's so they could use no more of their Arts. Lucian dodged them but Elwin was caught in the innocents' grasp; using this opportunity, Lucian landed a clean hit at Elwin's head, knocking off his eyewrap, and two of his mates successfully tore his cape off with scythes of ice, ready to land a crushing blow to his back. The tide was turning against Elwin, and wrath consumed his spirit, harboring nothing but hatred for those two who pretended to be peacemakers but didn't defend him at all when Lucian was spewing his lies.
"Get out of my WAY!" Elwin bellowed, throwing the wannabe peacemakers off of him and piledriving a hammer of water upon them sideways, launching them into a corner where they became unconscious by impact. The entire world was Elwin's enemy at that moment, and he mustered every last one of his senses to ready himself for the onslaught.
And in the middle of this narakscape, Elwin stood his ground, all of his senses and Asha honed to a sharpened point, cognizant of every single projectile thrown his way, of every thrusting spear and of every lance of fire, countering Lucian's movements and trickery with an uppercut of his own, applying every single principle and technique he learned with the bone from Professor Aionia. Lucian and his mates wildly swung stones and cylinders of ice at him; but to Elwin it was no more than the exercise climbing the summit, being able to sense their arrival and dodging them all, sliding below, above and around like a leopard bent on its prey.
Half a year ago, Elwin was no match for Lucian; now, he was almost as capable, and this realization fed even more coal into the blistering core of Elwin's soul.
In that divine, wrath-driven inferno, Elwin forgot everything he knew of himself as a person, of the young man he was, of the oath he made to Professor Aionia to not use the power he learned for the exacting of hate; all his mind was bent upon satisfying his desire to right an ancient wrong. He had enough of Lucian's vitriol, of Lucian's lies, of Lucian's accursed words, years of it! And now that he possessed power, it was as sweet as ambrosia, as cool as ice on a midsummer's day, as delightful to his will as finally being able to steer the axis of fate to his desire.
"COME HERE, YOU LIAR AND BULLY, YOU FILTH!"
Elwin locked his eyes on Lucian, the entire world in his head a painting of crimson blood upon black instead of the gold he ordinarily saw, and launched a cloud of scalding steam at his targets, sprinting forward. Lucian was finally right in front of him, and Elwin stretched out to strangle him by his lapel when –
An enormous pillar of fire bisected them and separated them both, a crimson wall of flame rising like an anvil to meet the height of the ceiling. It roared and filled the hall with soot for what seemed like eternity, and disappeared in a blunderbuss of smoke; standing tall among the frightened spectators was Headmaster Abraxas. Running behind the headmaster was Hina and Maximus, whose eyes went wide with the terrible sight that lay before them.
"What happened here?" inquired Maximus, stepping forward.
"Elwin?" asked Hina, assessing at a single glance the embers of fury in Elwin's eyes, and its absence in Lucian and his mates. "Is this –"
"Hina, Maximus, assess and escort the injured to the hospital wing. Thank you for sparing your busy schedules."
The headmaster pointed to Elwin and Lucian.
"You two – my office, now."
***
The road to the headmaster's office was long and treacherous.
Elwin and Lucian, glaring at each other, downtrodden, and shying away from the hundreds of pairs of eyes from the mazelike corridors of the academy, shuffled behind Headmaster Abraxas, who strode with his staff of wolfram like a general on a military march. Their time at Aeternitas, or at least the time of one of them, was about to be over.
They came to the spacious spiraled rotunda before the Dining Hall, where Elwin remembered first awaiting to be led into the Ceremony of Initiation; the memory of his first argument against Lucian at Aeternitas surfaced to his mind. He clutched his head.
The venerable once-president and the two boys studiously climbed the wide, marbled grand spiral staircase, floor by floor, taking them higher and higher with the rotunda below them, until at last they came to just below the brightly lit dome on the pinnacle of the seventh floor. A wide, empty hallway of mahogany was awaiting for them, and on its very end rested the mighty doors to the Headmaster's Office.
Headmaster Abraxas turned to them both.
"Who threw the first swing?" He said, gravely.
"It was Elwin," Lucian jabbered.
"You might as well have thrown the first swing, you coward of a –"
"Who threw the first swing?" the headmaster asked once more, the entire wood and pillars of the hall shaking around him.
Elwin lowered his head and slowly raised his hand.
"You shall wait here," the headmaster ordered Elwin, taking Lucian inside for the first round of interrogation.
The heavy oak doors closed in front of Elwin. Murmurs leaked out of the Headmaster's Office soon after; some voices raised, some not. An eternity of time seemed to pass, and Elwin's pocket watch seemed to slow to a crawl, until he heard rhythmic footsteps upon the spiraled staircase behind him, and up emerged Professor Thales.
Elwin bowed and stood aside.
Professor Thales knocked three times upon the door.
"Come in."
The professor opened and gracefully shut the door behind him.
Moments later, Lucian was out with Professor Thales, his head held low. The Master of the Waters gave Elwin a brief glance.
Headmaster Abraxas commanded from beyond the gates.
"Elwin Eramir. You may enter."
And so Elwin did as he was told, his heart pounding out of his chest.