Chapter 63 - Tears.
About a minute had passed since the second bout began, and yet neither Eveline and Rexy nor Gray and Alvazar had made a move.
Aren sat visibly tense, while in the background the students on the upper rows of the amphitheater kept up a low murmur of talk.
"Well?... What are you waiting for?... You asked for this yourself," Gray said, and Alvazar let out a deep lion's growl.
Eveline did not answer, only bending a little at the knees and raising the hand that held the activated light staff out in front of her.
Gray gave a short smirk, his eyes narrowing, and turned his head slightly toward Alvazar without looking away from the girl.
"Stay there."
He began walking slowly toward her, both hands down at his sides, one of them holding the activated staff.
Eveline tensed while Rexy lifted into the air off her shoulder and drew his little face into a scowl, and Gray for his part went on walking forward with a frightening calm.
She took a step back without meaning to, then threw herself forward, breaking into a run and drawing her arm back for the attack, though Gray gave no reaction to any of it and kept walking.
Rexy shot out ahead and loosed a burst of light with a snarl, and Gray covered his eyes with his forearm, while Eveline for her part swung her arm, aiming at his exposed torso.
Gray took a step to the side and let her staff go past his arm, still holding the forearm across his eyes.
It took Eveline a moment to come back to her stance after the miss, and Gray took advantage of it, opening his eyes and driving the staff into her back.
Where his staff met the rear shell of her protective magical layer, an energy impulse formed and threw Eveline three meters forward, striking her face against the stone.
Then Gray tilted his head to his shoulder, slipping Rexy's attack and swinging the staff back at him, though the little creature got clear to the side and flew across to Eveline, who had come up off the floor.
"Is that all?... Is that everything our all-knowing upstart is capable of?" Gray said.
Eveline said nothing again, settling into her stance and moving off along an arc, parallel to Gray as he circled.
"Gray. This is a team bout, and Alvazar is to take part," Magister Voren said.
"I don't care. Take points off if you like. You are revaluing her right now, not me. And what use is that, when Alvazar could handle her on his own?" Gray answered, without taking his eyes off Eveline.
The magister gave no answer, hands clasped behind him, while Aren's eyes went from Eveline to Gray and back.
Eveline set her teeth and threw herself forward with a lunge, swinging her staff at the same time, but Gray caught her by the wrist of her attacking arm and struck the staff upward into the shell over her head.
The impulse jerked her body without throwing it back, since Gray still had hold of her arm, and out of that inertia her shoulder went out of joint, tearing a cry of pain from the girl and making her drop her staff.
Rexy in turn attacked from behind, while Gray let go of Eveline's arm and stepped aside, letting him past, so that Rexy crashed into the girl and took her off balance and down onto the ground.
"Brainless animal," Gray said, catching Rexy in one hand before he could gather himself, then throwing him up into the air and striking him with the staff, so that he was hurled at Eveline where she sat, collided with her again and dropped beside her.
They began pushing up off the ground, on hands and paws, and Eveline had not even lifted her face before a staff blow to her chest sent her a quarter of the way across the arena and rolled her over several times.
Gray walked on and kicked Rexy aside as he was getting up, so that he fell outside the bounds of the arena.
"What is the point of keeping a companion that useless and that weak?" Gray said, walking toward Eveline as she rose off her knees.
"Ah, yes... he's the same as you, after all... what else is there to say... like owner, like pet, isn't that it?"
"WILL YOU JUST SHUT UP!" Eveline shouted, throwing herself at him empty-handed, and Gray swung a counter at her.
She dropped sharply into a roll, came through under the boy's arm and ran forward, toward her staff.
She had reached it and put out her hand when a sudden blow to the side from the thrown staff flung her body forward, and she was on the ground again, several meters short of her own.
Gray came closer, picked up both staves and threw one of them out past the arena.
"Go on then. Show me how tough you are. Or is your tongue the only tough thing about you?" he said.
Eveline got to her feet, holding her dislocated shoulder with one hand, in monstrous pain, so that a mix of held-back tears and anger showed on her face.
"What, does it hurt?" Gray asked, and Eveline closed her other hand into a fist and threw herself at him.
He gave ground calmly, at a walking pace, with the smallest turn of his body, then caught her one working arm and twisted it until he stood behind her, taking hold of the dislocated shoulder with his free hand, and the girl let out a groan of pain.
"Let me help you with that," Gray whispered, bringing his face right down to her ear.
With one sharp movement he drove Eveline's body face down into the ground and pulled her arm so that the shoulder went back into place, and the girl broke into a loud cry of pain, at which Aren came up off his seat, fists clenched, watching it with his eyes wide.
"EVELINE!"
Gray rose and stood over Eveline where she lay breathing hard, then tilted his head to one side.
"I thought this would be more interesting."
Gray slowly crouched down, looking at the back of Eveline's head.
"You know, in a situation like this the magister would normally have stopped the bout already, and yet that did not happen. Do you know why?... Because he knows, as everyone here does, that there's no other way you'll ever understand... You. Do not. Belong here."
Eveline did not answer, beginning to push up on one hand after the other, lifting her torso, then bringing out one knee after the other, until she finally stood, and Gray rose with her.
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"And now what?..." he asked with a smirk.
Eveline raised her arm out to the side, holding it straight, her eyes never leaving Gray.
"And... what?" Gray asked, and in the next moment Rexy threw the activated staff at full speed straight into Eveline's hand, which closed on the hilt and swung at once along an upward arc, striking a place Gray had not expected, between his legs.
Gray was thrown back with a loud grunt of breath, and now it was he who lay on the ground, holding his groin.
"Damn... the shell may save you from the magical impulse... but that still looks painful..." one of the students said, while Aren smiled.
Eveline swayed slightly, cradling the reset shoulder, which still sent up a sharp pain, while Gray got slowly to his feet.
"Bitch... You shouldn't have done that..." he muttered, lifting embittered eyes to her.
He stepped forward, closed the distance quickly and began attacking with swings from every angle, which Eveline barely held off with her parries.
Gray threw out a kick that made her stagger back and lose her balance for a moment, after which she got clear of his next attack.
Rexy watched from the side, holding himself back from interfering, since he knew he was not allowed on the arena now.
Doing nothing but giving ground and turning aside every attack of his, Eveline tried to find a suitable moment to counter, though even ordinary defense against Gray's fast, intricate movements cost her enormous effort, and every other time his staff passed within centimeters of her by pure luck.
At one of those moments she finally found her opening and, setting her foot for the firmest possible base, swung her own staff at once.
But Gray had deliberately drawn her into that move, parrying her attack, catching her by the arm and driving a knee into her stomach so that she folded over, then shoving her forward and striking the staff against the shell at her chin.
Eveline was thrown along a vertical arc and came down on her back.
Her torso had not yet come off the ground when the next staff blow landed on her head at such an angle that her body was thrown not forward, but straight into the stone floor.
"Ooh... that was rough..." one of the students said.
"What was she hoping for?... Gray trained with high-born, accomplished masters, the same ones who taught other Lumières."
"And her... with her own shadow, at best," another added, and the rest of the students broke into laughter.
What?... Gray is a Lumière?... , thought Aren and then turned his eyes to the magister.
Eveline shifted her weight with a cough and got slowly onto all fours, feeling the blood running from her nose.
"I'll admit, for an irritating upstart you have a decent backside," Gray said, and a staff blow followed straight into that place, driving her face into the stone.
Rexy tore onto the arena in a fury, but Alvazar landed in front of him at once, raising a cloud of dust and towering over him.
Aren meanwhile came down out of the amphitheater and ran up to the magister.
"Magister Voren, they have to be stopped! It's already obvious who won!"
"Obvious or not — it is not for you to decide when and why a bout ends," the magister answered, without turning his head.
"What the hell kind of bout is this?! He's—"
"I do not intend to repeat myself. Return to your seat, or you will never be permitted at these sessions again."
Eveline, lying face down on the floor, began setting her hands out on either side with a rasp of breath, feeling the pain in her shoulder and still trying to lift her body off the ground.
Suddenly Gray pressed the staff to the small of her back, and the impulse began driving her body down into the stone.
He held the hilt firmly, keeping the staff from rebounding off the magical shell and drawing out the energy reaction, which under those conditions built a rising pressure at the point of contact.
Eveline clenched her fists where she rested on her elbows and set her teeth, and Gray took the staff away and let her get her breath.
"Surrender," he said.
She breathed hard and unevenly, looking at the stone in front of her face and closing her fists.
"JUST PUSH HER OUT OF THE ARENA! YOU KNOW THE RULES!" Aren shouted, still standing beside the magister.
"I told you to go back, and you disobeyed. The decision is made, you are expelled from my sessions," Voren said.
"To hell with your sessions, when I have no companion and things like this happen in them!" Aren answered.
"Push her out?... Haha... Nooo... That is clearly not what any of us needs. A stubborn thing like her can only be taught by breaking her will. And that is why I have to hear it. To hear her surrender. WE ALL HAVE TO HEAR IT!" Gray shouted, and the rest of the students answered him with a cheer of approval.
Aren glanced back at them, then looked at the magister, who had returned his eyes to the arena.
"You... you can see it... this is some kind of madness..."
Voren said nothing back, and went on watching.
Little of Eveline's face could be seen behind the translucent magical shell and behind her hair, which hung down over most of it.
"Well?... Do you surrender, or shall I go on massaging your lower back... or go a little lower than that?"
Eveline took a few more breaths, then swallowed and turned her face slightly to the side.
"Go fuck yourself."
Gray's face twisted into a smile, and he drove the staff into the back of her head, pinning it against the stone, so that a bright light spread across the arena with crackling sparks from the unbroken contact between the staff and Eveline's protective magical shell.
Rexy rushed straight at Alvazar, throwing out a burst of light, and the lion shielded himself with one wing and struck him with the other hard enough to hurl him into the wall.
"Rexy!" Aren shouted, then turned back to the arena at once when he heard the cry of pain coming from it.
"ENOUGH! YOU HAVE TO STOP THIS! RIGHT NOW!" Aren shouted, stepping toward the magister, who turned his head slowly toward him.
"One more word, and I will throw you out of here."
Aren's eyes were open as wide as they would go and his mouth stayed parted, while Gray lifted the staff off Eveline's head.
"Now say it again... what was it you said?..." Gray said.
Eveline did not answer, though her back was moving to the broken, slow rhythm of her breathing.
"I'll be honest, no one has ever astonished me with stubbornness like yours... not even my father..." Gray added, dropping onto one knee.
"Look at yourself... pitiful... weak... helpless... a worthless null who believes she's a Conductor... and that she has any kind of future among us... among those chosen by the sun god himself..."
He took her roughly by the shoulders and lifted her torso until she was sitting up on her knees.
"Understand this, Eveline. You never had, do not have and never will have the future you believe in so stubbornly. There is nothing special about you except that you are damn lucky... or rather... were... but everything falls into its place in time. And the world returns to order. To that great order, which I and my family will bring our republic to. And I will begin all of it — with you. With a naive, stupid little fool who imagined herself my equal."
He let go of her shoulders and let her drop to the ground again, and she caught herself on her elbows, holding her head above the stone.
"Today is the end of every dream you had. And I believe that now you have finally understood it all for yourself, and learned OUR lesson."
Eveline's lips parted slightly while she went on looking into the stone floor.
Then tears came up in her eyes and began falling onto the stone, passing through the protective shell.
"There... there it is... look at that... our stubborn one is finally beginning to understand... bravo... there was some sense left in your head after all."
Aren stood frozen, watching it happen, while the magister turned a sidelong look on him.
"Good girl. And as a reward for that... very well... I will finish our lesson," Gray said, drawing back the arm with the staff for another blow.
The approving hum of the stands, Rexy lying by the wall and lifting his little face with difficulty to look at the arena, the magister standing there and not intervening, all of it began settling onto Aren's mind layer by layer, layering over every first impression he had formed of this republic, until at last, through the strands of her hair, Aren saw Eveline's eyes for a moment, full of tears and a bitter understanding.
A second, and Gray swung the staff, and in the next moment a powerful energy impulse spread across the whole arena, while a cloud of dust rose sharply beside the magister and made him shield his face with his hand.
Lowering his hand, Voren saw a circular mark where Aren had been standing a moment before, then raised his eyes to the stands, where the students had gone still with their mouths open and their eyes bulging, while their companions sat with the same reaction.
The magister turned his eyes slowly to the arena, and his face took on the same expression.
"What the... fuck..." Gray muttered, watching as the part of his staff made of light energy was held fast in a hand covered in white-stone plating, from behind which a pair of eyes slowly looked out, glowing with a blue aura in the shadow.
Gray snatched his hand back in panic and swung again, but Aren caught it and knocked the staff away, sending it up into the air.
In the same second he struck Gray in the stomach hard enough to send him into the far wall, tens of meters from the arena.
Alvazar came at Aren from behind with a deafening roar, while Aren caught the light staff he had sent up earlier and fed his own energy into the photocyte, so that the magical part of the staff grew into a giant energy club of unstable shape, the energy itself changing color from yellow to blue.
Getting clear of the attack, Aren swung the club through almost a full turn of his body and struck Alvazar hard enough to send him into the stands where the rest of the students were sitting.
The club broke apart at once, and the photocyte in the staff's hilt crumbled, after which he threw it aside.
"STAY WHERE YOU ARE!" the magister's voice came from behind him.
Voren stood in a fighting stance with a magical sword of light in his hand, while Aren gave no answer.
"You bastard... I knew you were here for no good...." the magister added.
"For no good?... And what was happening on that arena just now... does that count as good to you?..." Aren said, beginning to turn his head.
The magister's skin crawled and his hand closed harder on the sword when he saw the way Aren looked at him over his shoulder, with glowing eyes full of fury and threat.