A CLASH OF SWORDS & ROSES
CAELUM vs ALBERTA
When the bit of reprieve from class was over and with it, the sight of his idols gone from him, Caelum followed his professor and his classmates. He thought, if not for a moment, they were heading back to class. It was a reasonable thought given what was said to them telepathically, but when they passed the building where their class was and went immediately to what was labeled “Class-C Courtyard”, Caelum became riddled with more questions than answers.
Hearing the professor explain what a Lexicon was and how it worked was fascinating to him. Caelum’s default setting was curiosity. He always loved being on the receiving end of some quality exposition. He had only heard of the term Lexicon in passing but he never managed to find out what it was - at least, not when it came to the specifics. He engrossed himself in everything Nyx said. He was dependent on his every word as he wanted to know more. But as soon as he was done, Nyx moved on to another point.
"One on one fights?" Caelum repeated back to himself, looking around at all the faces of his classmates, seeing how they were sharing his same reaction to it. And a festival in three months. That was the reason for it. Some big festival and these fights were to test their strength, to determine where they stood and how far they had to go to be the best.
Something in Caelum sparked, like a wind on his ass, brushing past him and lifting him up. The excitement covered him and his mana started to flow into his hands. It was faint but if one was looking close enough, they would see the smallest hint of green and blue cover him in a thin aura and the breeze near him picking up just slightly.
Then came the match-ups popped up in shiny, magical letters.
Caelum went down the list, quickly finding his name. At the same time, his opponent found him.
Alberta had approached him and asserted herself from the vertical high ground she held on him. His first thought about her was how beautiful she was. Despite that, however, he held his ground, gripping Stormbringer as he followed her roughly a hundred meters away from everyone else. As they walked, he couldn’t stop himself from wondering how he was going to fair against her. He didn’t know anything about what kind of skills she had or what sort of magic she used. Of course, the same could be said for her. She didn’t know him or his skills. It was a perfect position for them both and this fight was surely going to be the test of their abilities.
When they stopped, they stood about ten paces away from each other. With a sharp turn of her heel, Alberta faced him, arms firmly crossed over her chest and spellbook strapped to her belt at the ready. She observed the boy through an intense scarlet glare.
In the same moment, Caelum noticed that she wasn’t going to start off easy; he saw a poised, almost frightening look on her face that told him she meant business. Likewise, Caelum unsheathed his sword, holding it in front of him with a two-handed grip. His arms were bent slightly, his left leg forward and his right supporting him.
"Right. Let's get this over with.""Very well then!" Caelum spoke to her in a raised voice.
But she wouldn’t respond with words. A deep green glow enveloped Alberta's body as she channelled a torrent of her mana towards Caelum, intent on throwing him off focus. As he braced himself for impact the push of her sharp green mana hit him. It felt constricting, binding him in a sense. He felt a sharp pressure on his arms, causing his stance to falter.
Caelum took in a breath. It was slow, relaxing, and centering. When he exhaled, he did slowly, but when it ended, his mana exploded out. Hues of green, blue and pure white surrounded him in a much thicker aura, whispering like a large gust of wind during tornado season. It tore apart Alberta's constricting mana that threatened to crush Caelum. His own mana crackled like electricity, pushing it back with a force of a lightning bolt striking the ground.
"I’m afraid this isn’t going to be as easy as you thought it would be," Caelum stated. He smirked at his opponent and charged forward. He was never the type to sit back and let fights come to him.
But even as Caelum rushed towards her with a brandished sword, Alberta didn't move at all. Instead, her face lit up with a prideful smirk as she distributed more of her mana into the earth. Their little makeshift battleground started to rumble, louder with each passing second. On the third second, a dozen large briars sprouted from the ground before Caleum could reach her. Bright red roses gleamed in the sunlight as the vines stretched towards the sky, before tumbling down towards Caelum with frightening speed.
And as they drew closer, so did Caelum’s grip on Stormbringer. He channeled his mana into his hands, static electricity surging through the hilt of his sword, past the handguard, and up the silver blade. At the moment the sharp vines came to him, aiming to shred him into a million pieces, Caelum diagonally sliced into the air, producing a thin, yet effective sickle of lightning that tore up the vines like butter.
He didn’t stop there. Carrying himself into a full charge, Caelum followed through with his initial plan and repeated his same move. But this time, Caelum’s target wasn’t a descending wall of vines, but rather the mage who created them.
For the first time since her last real battle, Alberta was taken aback.
Holding back on her mana input was her first mistake; the rumbling and the size of the briars were mainly just for show, but apparently, it hadn't been enough to phase her opponent as she'd intended. Still, to see briars of that size be damaged so easily inflicted a swift, harsh cut on Alberta's pride.
So, fear and intimidation wasn't going to be enough to bring this country boy and his flashy sword down into the dirt. Her smug expression twisted into one of rage as Caelum rushed towards her.
She needed more mana.
Once he was within one pace and a sword swing's reach from Alberta, her body shattered into thousands of rose petals. The storm of blinding red hurtled towards Caelum, thrashing his body around with enraged vigour. Seconds after, the petals dispersed and zoomed past him, and Alberta's figure took shape several paces away.
"You were right, Tempesta," Alberta spoke to Caelum through the dust clouds, flicking her hair over her shoulder.
"This isn't going to be easy for you at all."Another rumbling came from the ground, much louder and fiercer than the last one. The second eruption of rose briars were thinner, but stronger and numbering in the thousands, the tall vines creating a small, dense forest of sorts around Alberta and Caelum. As the creator of these vines, Alberta could move between them without having to worry about getting hurt. But in Caelum's case, the briars would not part way so easily. The thorny stalks swayed back and forth around him in a continuous motion, filtering much of the sun's light and piercing Caelum from all directions as they danced to Alberta's spell. It ripped parts of Caelum's tunic and pants, drawing blood in repetition.
But even this wasn't enough for Alberta, no. Professor Nyx had told the class to go all out, and she wanted to get back at Caelum, hard. Raising her hand, a cloud of thorns appeared above the entanglement of briars. With a swoop of her arm, the thorns rained down upon Caelum.
So he did the only thing he felt was the most natural thing to do; he dodged like he had never dodged before. His body flailed around and the collision the thorns made with the ground sent Caelum flying in the opposite direction. To save himself, he dug Stormbringer into the ground in an effort to slow himself, but right now, he needed to avoid falling back-first into the sharp vines that now surrounded him.
But his sword didn’t work in the way he had hoped. His body was drifting and drifting but he wasn’t slowing, so Caelum poured his mana into his sword, digging deep into the root of the ground. Then, as his mana engulfed his entire body, he came to a full stop.
Caelum's eyes narrowed at Alberta and fixated on her every move. She was poised like a true mage and if her last move was any indication, she possessed skills that were a true testament to that.
She's really strong. Caelum stood up and held his sword by his side, wincing from the cuts around his body. His attire was coated in a deep red color from the drops of blood that oozed from the cuts on his arms. He could still move them around, even though there was some pain. But pain was irrelevant when you kept your mind on the prize.
"You’re quite the skilled mage, Alberta!" Caelum shouted, shooting her a half-smirk.
"I can tell that you've trained hard and honed your craft, but if that’s the best you got, you might as well admit defeat!" he would shout again. If there was one thing he was starting to pick up, it was her excessive pride. And the best way to disrupt that was one of the classic blunders; mocking.
Alberta's smug expression quickly faded. Of course, she gave into the bait. Caelum's genuine compliments fell on deaf ears, but his false mockery didn't. Clearly, she hadn't learned from the errors of her last battle with a mage.
"As if!" Alberta howled from behind the swaying briars, hands curling into fists.
"I'll drag that stupid face of yours through the mud!""Aw, come on now. You’re being a little mean, don’t you think? My face isn’t that bad." Caelum grinned at Alberta, flashing her a wide smile. He was probably digging his own grave but Caelum honestly couldn’t resist.
"Just look at how pearly my teeth are! How can you call something so bright, stupid?""Ugh, just shut up already!" Alberta yelled back, shooting him an irritated glare.
"Just you wait, Tempesta. I'll beat you into the dirt so hard it'll knock those things right out of your mouth!"His grin persisted, though it faded as he spoke.
"How are you going to do that when you can’t even touch me?" Caelum knew he was playing a dangerous game but it was clear she was superior to him when it came to raw skill level. If he could somehow throw her off her game, then he might stand a better chance.
Alberta's fingernails dug deeper into her palms, hands whitening as all the blood rushed to her face. Though she tried to suppress the thought, Caelum's words did hold some truth. She'd realised from the moment he'd swung his sword at her briars that things might get a little tricky as their battle continued. Alberta was no close range fighter; if Caelum managed to close the gap between them again at this point, he might just be able to turn the fight in his favour. The frustrations became more evident on her face as she continued to think about it.
"Oh, I don't need to come anywhere near you. You're in my garden now, Tempesta. A beating isn't the only thing I'm going to give you."Caelum looked around him, surveying her so-called ‘garden’. With a sigh, he disappointedly glanced back in Alberta’s direction.
"Not much of a garden, is it?" he would say, slowly grinding his feet forward, moving a few inches with every word.
"If this is all you have to offer: a bunch of prickly vines, I would probably reconsider what type of magic you pursue. You’re still young, like me, I’m sure you could pick one that suits your… demeanor." Every word spoken was another inch closer to her. It was in cases like this that Caelum’s loud voice was beneficial.
Alberta's blood seethed with a fiery rage. To think he
still had the nerve to argue with her in his beaten and bloodied state. To think she had used two spells in succession with a hefty amount of mana powering them, and Caelum
still hadn't fallen to the floor.
The fact she was putting in
any kind of effort against a Class C student was a far greater insult to her entire being than Caelum's fake taunts.
But this time, it wasn't just the taunting that enraged her. Every excruciating step Caelum took to push through her writhing briars reminded Alberta that she wasn't doing enough. That she had a
weakness.
Alberta was stubborn, but Caelum even more so. And she really,
really hated that.
She couldn't let him get any closer.
With a mighty yell, Alberta summoned another storm of thorns to bombard her opponent. More and more of her mana started flooding into the earth without control, causing the rose briars to move around with even more speed and ferocity. Loose petals rained around them, and from outside, it looked as if the vines were violently shaking. Her teeth grinded against each other as her mana pulsated through the ground in great volumes, as if it threatened to devour Caelum's own.
This was Alberta's second mistake; the floodgates that held her most violent temperaments from devastating everything in her path, had burst.
Caelum shifted around the swaying briars that encased them both and he had started to pace around, though the boy didn’t remove his emerald gaze from Alberta. He saw that all attempts made to pull her out of her composed state had worked, but in realizing this, he also saw how unhinged she’d become. She was like the storm he knew he’d eventually control - someone who had all of the earth’s fury within her fingertips. And she was
p-i-s-s-e-d.
A rapid breeze hit him from behind, dirt getting thrown everywhere from the rapid swaying the briars were making, but that alone didn’t affect Caelum. It didn’t matter if his cuts were getting covered in dirt, not when Alberta’s screeching holler resulted in a raincloud of thorns coming from above and straight for him. It was quick and the impact they made with the ground was a close call, but Caelum slipped out of their pathway in the nick of time. But in the process, he was pushed against the writhing briars. Unlike previous times where it was only shallow cuts, Caelum felt one dig its pointy thorn end into his left leg. He jerked out of it but he knew it was bad because he glanced down and blood was gushing out.
"Well, this isn't good," he muttered, glaring at Alberta. The rage he saw in her eyes was only a testament to how this wasn’t going to end after just that. He knew it was only the beginning.
"If only I was stronger, I might be able to last through her fury."But he knew he wasn’t and he couldn’t go on for much longer. The more time he spent dragging this out, the more time that open wound had to drain him of all of his blood and then he would most certainly be done.
"It's now or never."In a series of actions, Caleum pushed through the pain as he poured his mana into his legs and hands. The wind gathered at his feet pushed him forward to cut down the distance between them and the mana focused in his hands went straight to Stormbringer, causing his sword to glow a bright and majestic blue and green. Gliding across, Caelum jumped on his uninjured leg and held Stormbringer over his head. As he landed three paces away from Alberta, he penetrated the earth and poured everything he had into the top of the hilt.
"Surging Shock!"Green and blue mana pulses went into the ground as though that single command was the trigger, immediately cracking the earth open, the length of which was from where Caelum was and where Alberta stood. A geyser of wind and lightning mana as tall as Alberta shot out and had the same urgency Caelum did. It responded to his conviction and it reacted just as swiftly as he did and made its way to Alberta almost at the same speed as her storm of thorns did.
A horrified gasp escaped her as the fissures around her feet lit up with a brilliant light. Activating her Scarlet Wind spell, Alberta shot herself out of the thorns as Caleum's geyser tore at the briars in his immediate vicinity. The tall vines that surrounded him fell to the ground, shedding a ray of light on him as he stood surrounded by the darkness of Alberta's thorny entanglement.
Alberta didn't have time to brace herself as her back hit the ground outside of the rose vines. As she struggled to her feet, her eyes widened in shock as more of her vines started to topple to the floor. Rose petals fluttered to the ground as the garden started to wither away, a morbid spectacle that made Alberta's heart sink. Caelum's sudden attack wasn't the main culprit of her garden's untimely death; it didn't hit her until now that she was almost out of mana.
The two mages could see each other clearly now, the destruction they had caused now exposed to the harsh afternoon sun. The massive fissures and holes that had been left behind in the wake of their relentless magic assaults were, admittedly, a rare sight to see inside Class C's courtyard.
Alberta tried to catch her breath, hair and clothes matted with sweat and dirt. Gazing up, her eyes widened again at the sight of Caelum, still standing strong after everything she had put him through. As the sun beamed down on him, Alberta saw every gash, bruise and puncture on his body, his green and grey robes now soaked in red. Caelum was bloody, filthy, and absolutely exhausted, yet there he stood just metres away, a tight grip on his broadsword, even though it showed signs of loosening.
In that moment, images of Alberta's last formal fight flashed before her eyes. All the pain, anguish and humiliation she had experienced that day, it all came flooding back to her in an instant. She could even hear the faint voice of her former classmate call out to her from the back of her head, taunting her, mocking her, insulting her. Then her memories started to cross over into reality, and what she saw standing before her now was a reminder of her disgraceful shortcomings.
She started to walk towards Caelum, stepping over the piles of rubble scattered over their battleground. Her steps were slow, cautious and calculated, as if her rage had been overcome with an eerie calm. Yet her eyes still burned a furious scarlet, and the mana that continued to seep out of her felt more menacing than it ever had over the course of the fight.
It still hadn't been enough.
She wasn't enough. And those words echoed in her head, louder with each step she took.
With a gradual raise of her hand, several thin rose briars crept up from the cracks by Caelum's feet. They snaked around his body and started to slowly constrict his limbs, digging their small thorns into his skin. Alberta clenched her fist, tightening the deathly grip her vines had on him. This was no longer the grand display she had intended to put on for her professor. This was an act of desperation.
Wails of sudden agonizing defeat claimed Caelum’s tongue, like it was the result of the creeping silence of the thorny briars wrapping around his feet. His attack had drained him and only the proof of his nigh unbreakable will to keep going and prove himself kept him standing. If only that was more powerful than Alberta’s own will to win, if only he had a quarter of conviction over her, maybe Caelum would’ve been able to stop her from claiming victory.
Suddenly, Alberta dropped to her knees, and with her, Caelum's thorny constraints. She looked at her hands as they started to shake, sweat dripping onto her palms. She was out of mana.
And so was he.
The feeling in most of his body faded, forcing Caelum to fall to his knees, sacrificing his vertical lead over Alberta and once again looking up at her. Everything from the knee down burned and hurt but Caelum smiled. He didn’t know if it was because of his injuries or just how victory was so close, but he smiled and gave Alberta an appreciative glance.
He forced himself to laugh.
"I really tried you know," he admitted, coughing up blood but still keeping his blood-stained grin.
"I threw everything at you. I taunted you, I mocked you, I tried to get you to let your guard down, but in the end..." The clanking metal sound Stormbringer made when it fell out of Caelum’s hand and crashed to the arena floor was probably the perfect symbol of this fight.
"It was an honor facing you, Alberta."Alberta grunted as she soon regained her footing. She gave the defeated Caelum one last, almost apprehensive look, and held it for a moment. It disturbed her how close defeat had come to her over the course of their wild battle. It made her face contort with an unnerved disgust as she observed the boy's battered body, before turning away to walk back to the professor. No words, no support. Alberta just left him there.
Before Alberta reached the students that had finished, she tried to fix her appearance as fast as she could, ruffling her curls and patting her body free from dust and dirt. She grumbled as she glanced down at the minimal cuts and tears her clothes had sustained.
"Great. My skirt is ruined."
Member
can't wait for poor Kress to get caught in the crossfire
