The air was as still as petrified stone.
Only the deep breaths of the champions-to-be could be heard, their fists clenched tight, packs off their backs, their Quans about to breathe to life at a moment's command.
They all knew this was their final showdown; the team which prevailed on top, and made it out with the staff was to be crowned the victors for the surface to see.
Robert and his compatriots laid his eyes upon Khan and his troop;
Elwin and his kismets stared down Lucian and his clique.
Lucian swung his arm.
"MAIOR FORTIOR!"
All sixteen of them thundered the command at once, rattling the stone and still air. Sixteen Quans simultaneously roared to life in radiant glory, splitting the darkness with crosses of light, emblazoned upon their metals.
Lucian opened with an explosion that scuffed the pebbles and hewn stone, blowing it into everyone, beginning the final battle of all.
Robert threw a barrage of fireballs upon Khan; Khan threw nets of broken granite at him; Daphne dodged them, and crashed down a waterfall from a dripping ceiling onto Khan's associates, which they returned with spikes of ice; Rafia dived into Khan and smashed his hip with a brutal roundhouse kick, hurling him into the corner, how she relied on the physical arts instead of the Mahamastra making her opponents agape; she was blasted away by the opposing Artillery Guardian, who was blown with a sand out of flask by a cream haired boy, who fell backwards trying to avoid a spike of basalt pushing up to his feet; it was a free-for-all between the teams, and soon the entire hall was reverberating with the cacophony of battle, of fistfuls of boulettes and sand flying from one corner to another, water crackling and screaming being frozen into dozens of shapes, flames and explosions rocking the air and charring the frightened, huddled plants that grew under the dim light of the altar.
But divided the teams became, as Robert's squadra focused their full attention upon Khan's, and Elwin's kismets gladly locked horns with Lucian's gang, each of them standing in the other's way of victory, and for some, their lives.
Cassius blew a galeforce with a mighty 'FURA!', his loudest one yet, his robe billowing and purple Quan crackling, skidding the kismets back with the force of his delivery, reaching for Astinel's staff; Mirai hurled a frying pan like a frisbee into his face, which Claudia deflected with a dagger thrown from her sack. Katherine charged like a thundering Celendir at Rayo, throwing a jump kick with all her weight onto him, jets of fire coming from the bottom of her soles; one of which singed his hair and the other almost connected, until Lucian managed to parry her off by punching her in the gut with a gauntlet of ice, hurling her with his signature water-whip. Isaac caught her, and from behind him Elwin launched into the air and brought down a hailstorm of just-frozen caltrops onto Lucian's exposed head, which grazed his right and drops of blood briefly burst into being; Lucian tumbled backwards but steadied himself into a lowered stance, his cyan eyes raging into Elwin's amber.
Seeing all of his squadra locked in with Elwin's kismets, Lucian lobbed a thick globule of spit on the altar next to him in frustration, making Elwin grimace.
Lucian cracked his neck and fingers.
Out of the sleeves of his robes slithered thin tendrils of water, which froze as two katars of frost two feet long, their edge luminescent in the waning light, ends vibrating so sharp Elwin could almost hear it.
"Let's leave our teams to their fight, shall we?" He jibed to Elwin, pointing a katar in his direction.
"Just you and me, a duel to the death. Let's see who DEIA AETERNITAS truly prefers, and who is blessed to take the staff. The winner takes it all. What'd you say, Elwin Eramir?"
Elwin grinded his teeth, his brows low, seized by a simmering fury. He kicked the puddle of water by his feet, robbing it of the heat of the earth, frosting it to make a thick, lustrous spear of hardened ice, pounding its shaft into the floor.
"I've been itching to take you on in a proper battle ever since we first dueled," Elwin exclaimed to him, holding the lance at Lucian with a raised arm. Ever since I lost. Ever since you made my life a nightmare at Aeternitas!"
Memories of his suffering assaulted his consciousness, the bottled rage of the past year – no, four-and-a-half years coming to a boil, bubbling and bursting with the fury of a hundred suns. And in its heat he let loose of the concern that had gripped him thus far, the prospect of his fall as the Serpent.
Through his clenched jaw he declared:
"Come, Lucian. I will return to you what I experienced a thousandfold. Let this moment decide our fates. Come, come at me with all you have. SHOW ME WHY YOU'RE SO PROUD, WHY YOU'RE SO WORTHY OF THE NAME OF AETERNITAS MORE THAN I AM!"
He roared, his voice amplified by currents of air like the battle-cry of a Celendir.
"UAAAAAAAHHHHHHH!"
"HOOOOOORAAAAAAAAHHHHHH!"
Lucian launched himself forward, the rocks at his boots cleaving from the ground with the force of his approach. He was the first to reach Elwin with his katars. Spiraling like a tornado carrying glass he swung his blades hard at Elwin's face and head, which Elwin barely managed to dodge; it lobbed off handfuls of his cream-orange hair with a hideous slice as scissors to a thick mop, and Elwin somersaulted backwards, freezing the water upon his boots into pikes. Lucian lunged at him again, and Elwin swung a kick upon the armor of his enemy, sparking the metal with its graze, leaving a jagged dent running across the chestpiece.
Each were no more capable of words other than reptilian grunts and roars as all the world began to fade into blurriness around them, their rivalry ashen-hot and brilliant as the clash of two stars.
Lucian instantly conjured two long whips of water and cracked it upon Elwin's eye, which Elwin blocked with a blast of fire from the fifth dancestep, exploding it into steam; but Lucian, gathering the ever-falling water from the ceiling remade his whips, and this time, the whips grabbed a large piece of a broken boulder. He swung it around his body three times, adding force with its orbit, and let it loose upon Elwin like a shot from a trebuchet, which smashed his torso and flung him hard into a pillar ten yards behind him; the impact almost carried as much shock as Ursus did in his colossal punch, and the winds were sapped from his lungs, making him think for a second whether his ribs had fractured again. Though Lucian was not as physically strong as Ursus, Lucian was crafty and far more creative. That craftiness posed just as dire a threat to Elwin.
Without a moment to spare Lucian hurled two icespikes at Elwin, but the sharp pain Elwin expected in his ribs from the strike before was not there, and only a little blood came from his lips, so he stood, he pushed himself up on his feet, and dodged the first icespike while grabbing the second flying at him with his bare hand, his hands to the side of his body; Lucian, ever cunning, sharpened the spherical cross-section into a cubic blade as soon as Elwin had caught it, compelling it to split the skin upon Elwin's palm in its stopping skid like blade to paper. The unfocused feeling that something had happened to his palm hit Elwin before the sharp sting raced to his nerves; Elwin dropped it by instinct, and seeing the blood drip from his hand he raced at Lucian as quickly as his legs could carry him, commanding 'FURA!' upon himself, the winds on his back.
Lucian froze the puddle of water in Elwin's way so he would slip, but Elwin turned it into water as soon as his feet hit them, having done it thousands of times with Professor Aionia; Lucian made a feinting dodge sideways to avoid Elwin's fist, which was coming to his nose, so he could pummel Elwin in the stomach instead with his gauntlet; but Elwin, well aware of what had happened in his first duel, instead swung sideways, catching Lucian's head in a glancing blow, and when he ducked Elwin drove the armored plate of his knee deep into Lucian's groin, making him howl in pain, tumbling him back several yards.
They both stood, facing each other off around 10 feet, trembling with the expected moves from the other, ready for anything, shifting their feet, and Lucian froze a ball of hail from the subterranean sky above Elwin where he could not see and hurled it at him; but Elwin, sensing the threads of ORI tug at his conscious, dodged out of its way, and instead hijacked the orb to his side as a weapon of his own, pummeling Lucian like cannonballs to a wall, who had now formed a buckler of ice around himself.
It was then that Maximus's demonstration back in the fall popped into Elwin's fighting vision, and he knew all he had to do was to do the same. He pounded the riverine puddle below him into a round shield, and crystallized the ice on his hands into a long lance, putting it between the ridged cleft of the shield rim and advanced on Lucian like a warrior using the art of the spear; he thrust hard, his bicep bulging, and the sharp tip of the lance shattered Lucian's buckler into three and drove him back; but Lucian, sensing danger, redoubled his aegis as thick as he could, and put all his weight into it, smashing into Elwin, making him momentarily lose balance. What was a battle of ingenuity had become a struggle of raw, physical strength, and both roared in fury for all the world to hear them as they pushed on each other, their metal boots skidding upon wet stone with such friction that smoke began to rise out of it.
Through the gap in their shields Lucian mustered a slimy, viscous nodule of spit and hoicked it hard into Elwin's good eye; Elwin, disgusted, froze his palm-blood into a crescent spike with the rhythm of frost and swung it at Lucian, who cocked his head in the nick of time. With a growl the ash-haired boy conjured a fireball out of nowhere between them both, blasting Elwin backwards into pillar; without sparing a second Lucian flung his ice buckler into Elwin's neck, which embedded itself in the column, and commanded it to not loosen back into water. Elwin struggled to pull his head below the frozen buckler, equally matched in force for unfreezing as Lucian was keeping it frozen, the space given to his head too narrow; Lucian honed a greatsword from the waters below him, and ran at Elwin with all his might, intending to chop off Elwin's head like a blade to a guillotine, he was almost there, it was just a second before contact –
And it was then that Elwin realized he still had the power of his lungs: commanding his Quan to pool its energy into his diaphragm he roared with all the breath he could muster. His deafening voice carried the command of 'FURA!' and shook the air like thunder; it shattered the buckler that was pinning his neck and head and permitted him to duck out from underneath.
He made a roundhouse kick with a spiked boot that pierced the metal upon Lucian's shin, but didn't penetrate the Celendir wool; snapping to reality that ice did not have much use against his enemy, Elwin took to Tahamastra to restore his advantage against Lucian, his radiant Quan intensifying in its blaze. With gathered concentration he closed his eye, lowered his stance, and began the first dancephrase of the Dance of the Sparks, drilled into the memory of his muscles. Strike, strike, strike upon strike, he pumped the shimmering energy of his Quan and the world around him into the bubbles of air around Lucian, bursting them in brilliant sparks and arcing flame in place of woodblocks, a barrage of sonic explosions left in the wake of his transient fireworks. Elwin accelerated his dance and sped, sped, and sped, weaving, ducking, dodging around Lucian, the dancesteps melting into his movements, vaporizing Lucian's water-whips to screaming steam, repelling their attempts to grapple him; Lucian, hearing nothing but shrill ringing in his ears, opened his mouth to command 'FURA!' upon the air, but Elwin had said it first, cognizant of his lips; the ash-haired boy was thrown backwards, and before he knew it, Elwin was upon him; but he rolled in the nick of time, and with a roar yelled 'ZAHN!', making the winds punch Elwin and tumble him sideways. Lucian grabbed onto a pillar behind Elwin with two whips in his hands and launched himself towards it, just as he climbed the levels of the ziggurat; with legs outstretched, he landed a vicious flying kick upon Elwin, ragdolling him back several yards, scraping his face and eyewrap upon a broken tile of basalt. He tried to grab Elwin again with a whip, but Elwin froze it as they latched onto his body, and shattered its ends, shooting its pieces towards Lucian's face; he avoided them by a tenth of an inch, forcing his head to dodge in an instant, almost spraining his neck. Elwin dove into Lucian, but Lucian with a scythe of ice lobbed off his hair and the knot of his eyewrap, flinging it off for all to see; grabbing a piece of sharp stone, he brought it down like a dagger onto Elwin's boots, which deformed on hit, and bruised his toe; without wasting a moment, Lucian kneed Elwin in the stomach and brought himself underneath Elwin, intending to lift him and bring him down. Elwin rolled out from his grasp and swung his foot up into Lucian's chin in a backflip, making him reel; with enormous effort that instant, impressing a melody from the Melody of the Grains he so painstakingly learnt, Elwin raised a single mound of basalt on the floor behind Lucian's foot, and simultaneously launched as large a jet of fire as he could muster towards his face, making his enemy shuffle backwards; through Elwin's ingenious calculation Lucian's ankle was caught upon the mound in his retreat, making him lose balance. Lucian yelled 'UTUN!', the air above Elwin gathering to strike, but Elwin with even greater will delivered 'UTUMMION!', and overpowered his command; the air above him hammered Lucian instead, pummeling him to the ground supine. Reflected from the earth with the velocity of his fall, the buckles to Lucian's Quan briefly became exposed from the folds of his sleeves, and moving like lightning through the storm Elwin cut them in two; he kicked it long and hard across the hall, leaving sparks in its wake.
But not all was done, as Lucian leapt up even through the shock of losing his Quan, and grabbed Elwin by the shoulder and bit into his uniformed jugular like an animal hell-bent to win. Elwin bellowed in anger, and headbutted Lucian as hard as he could, but Lucian would not let loose. He pounded and pounded until he could feel the bones of his skull move against each other like they did in his battle against Ursus, his nose and cranium swimming with stars upon impact.
"HOW – DOES – IT – FEEL – HUH?" He screamed, the rage of nearly half a decade under Lucian's abuse fully set loose, every strike deepening the bruise upon his forehead, his eye opened wide, its whites exposed with foaming craze.
He wrestled Lucian aside, but Lucian came at him still – Lucian punched Elwin hard in the face, and Elwin took it in the nose, making no effort to dodge, his will now animating his unassailable advance like an unstoppable force –
"HOW DOES IT FEEL –"
He punched Lucian hard across his face.
"TO BE AT THE OTHER END OF THE STICK!?"
Another strike.
"AT THE OTHER END OF YOUR LIES?"
Another strike.
"WHEN YOU COULD HAVE LEFT ME ALONE!"
Another strike.
"EVERY DAY!"
Another strike.
"EVERY NIGHT!"
Another strike.
"EVERY TIME YOU TORE MY EYEWRAP!"
Another strike.
"FOR THE WHOLE WORLD TO SEE!"
And another.
And another.
Lucian held up his empty palm, bruises upon his face, as Elwin continued to drive his fists into him. Everyone slowed their brawl to gaze upon Elwin and Lucian, astonished by the former's tirade and the latter's unexpected disadvantage. At first, puzzlement took them – but concern soon began to whisper in their ears, for the words which Elwin spoke were not driven by mere rivalry but existential agony, every punch laden with an intent to maim and not simply to win.
All the horrors of Elwin's past coiled up to his soul and wrested it from his will, driving every hit and every blow with the sweetness of revenge, the honey of being able to deliver justice at last, justice without the pesky moralizing of others.
Finally, Lucian was below him, and Elwin held a lance of ice upon his hand, ready to drive it into his throat. Memories of his weeping mother and little brother shimmered into the forefront of his mind, memories of his stung body and flesh, memories of Mr. Sadis, memories of the world that didn't want him. All his mind screamed with one command, over and over:
KILL HIM !
KILL HIM !
KILL HIM !
KILL HIM !
KILL HIM !