Alkalians
Page 40
Cain can’t help snickering. The armor of his morph is adapted to absorb magic intent on harming him, and then he can use the stored energies in his own spells. With this special power, he knows Cynthia should have no chance of hurting him, and believes he is going to easily win this fight.
Cain begins his offensive by raising his sword above him, the energy blade charged with arcane power, and with a chop forward throws a spray of spears at Cynthia. In retaliation, Cynthia casts another spell from her right hand, and two masses of fire, similar in shape to dice, roll out and collide with the arcane spears, exploding and negating each other on impact.
She didn’t take her concentration off of Cain as she side-thrusts on air balance away from his charge, straight through the blast of their spells, and his thrusting blade. When Cain slides to a stop on the floor, growling at having missed, a flamethrower from Cynthia drills into him from behind. But, just like the first fire spell, the stream of flames is devoured by his armor, and a brighter glow of stored energy shines off him.
Even more confident of his advantage, Cain turns and continues his offensive, raising his blade and charging back at Cynthia. She side-thrusts again to avoid his slash, and is about to counter with another spell when he lashes out with an aurora cast from his sword. Its cutting edge scrapes past her, and she falls backward with a well-shown green wound along her body. At the sight of her being damaged, many men from the audience moan in lamentation for her or boo down at Cain.
Standing up, Cynthia ignores the damage upon her as she looks back at Cain, casually walking toward her. She summons a blaze to engulf him, but the blaze is engulfed by him, instead. Cain, very sure of himself, decides to give Cynthia a taste of her own attacks. With a sweep from his sword, a manifested arc of fire races towards her. However, instead of being slashed and burned, Cynthia waves with her arms to catch the fire, swirl it around her, and throw it back at him, double its original size and power.
Cain isn’t impressed as his armor absorbs the magic once again without a problem. He completely glows a bright shade of heat’s orange, as if his armor came fresh from the blacksmith’s furnace. Both glad and annoyed, he says to Cynthia, “Your persistence is futile. Any one of your fire attacks will only make me stronger! There’s no way you’re going to even scratch me!”
Suddenly, something he wouldn’t have noticed if he hadn’t heard a soft sound similar to a musical note happens. A tongue of rogue flame jumps out of his left shoulder, leaving a scratch of wound energy. As Cain blinks at the wound, he hears another note, simultaneous to feeling a bigger flame crack along his right leg, and he glances at it to see another green wound. When he looks back at Cynthia in confusion, he notices her arms are positioned like she is holding up a violin and bow, ready to play.
Confusion turns to horror when Cain realizes what she’s going to do, before, with no more delay and to his dismay, Cynthia plays music from her imaginary violin, a malicious melody, sparks spitting from her fingertips and out of Cain’s armor in harmony. As the fiery energy bursts out of him at her control, his own armor is turned against him, bending and cracking to expose jagged wounds all over him, and the spikes of flame sear and incinerate the wounds for rapidly accumulating damage.
***
Cynthia could have continued her “performance”, charming the inferno binding and branding Cain with her violin music, to the point he would have to demorph if he didn’t expel all the fire magic burning out of him as one, explosive blast. With her music, and the audience’s cheering, cut off, Cain remains standing despite the overheating of his armor leaving it asunder, orange wounds glowing hot between the cracks in it. His expression goes from sour anger to sheer insanity as he raises his fractured and bent shield, casts a spell to pulse a wave of energy to heal the most of his wounds, and tosses it aside.
While Cynthia and the students watch, Cain maintains the deranged look on his face as his morph’s body starts to transform. His armor, rather than having been repaired with the healing of his wounds, breaks even further as sickly green and orange energy seems to crawl out of him, spreading across his frame like an infection, and crystal growths of the energy sprout from his shoulders and back like spines.
Cain exclaims, either oblivious or thrilled of the changes happening to him, “Do you mean to make me look like a fool? Do you honestly believe, in that puny and inferior brain of yours, that you are going to defeat me? No, I can assure you that they have assured me that is not going to happen. I will be the victor here, I am the superior one, and I shall please them by crushing you, all of you, and your pitiful spirits!” The malevolent energy crackles off him and across the floor around him, which rumbles and fractures before two large, crystalline stones levitate into the air on either side of him.
Cynthia, as well as many of her peers in the audience, gape at Cain. Not only have they never seen him use a power like this before, but he is also speaking nonsense. She addresses the red flag concerning his sanity, shouting, “Cain, what are you talking about? Who is they?”
Cain doesn’t seem to have heard her question, cackling maniacally to himself as the crystals crackle with static shocks before he says, starting out at a low tone and ending in a scream, “Do you want to know what they’re telling me now? Do you want to know what they want me to do? Well, I’ll tell you. They want me to tear you to pieces. They want me to scalp the pretty flames off your head, to split your chest in two and rip the vital energies out. They want me, to, DESTROY YOU!!”
Cynthia doesn’t know who she is more worried for, her own safety or Cain’s sanity, before he raises his blade, bolts of the sick energy from his crystals strike it, and he cries out with fury as he launches a spear of lightning at her. Spinning on air balance to avoid that first attack, she finds herself on the evasive as Cain madly maintains a bombardment of spells upon her, his sword and crystals sending more jagged bolts and arcing blasts at her.
While she neatly dodges Cain’s spells with air balance thrusts or her own spells colliding with and cancelling them, Cynthia soon notices that, somehow, she is still being wounded with the long stripe on her and new patches breaking out on her becoming orange like amber. When she is at the farthest distance from Cain yet, about fifty yards from him in the center of the arena, she then sees the problem. Wherever his spells had touched the ground, their sickly green and orange energy remained, radiating upward like an ethereal haze. When she sees the radiation reforming into volts surging back to their source as a web, Cynthia gets a bad feeling about what is going to happen next.
With a rabid look on his face as his radioactive power surges through him, Cain points his sword forward in a stab, the massive energy stretches out from him, far and wide like a funnel, and he yells, “Gotcha!!” before the funnel condenses inward and explodes in a blinding blast, its shockwave and illumination dazing the spectators closest to the action. When the wave of radiation fades out, a seared floor between him and the wall left behind, his grin grows bigger as he sees what remains of Cynthia, blown into the wall with her whole figure, once brilliant red and orange, a pale grey like ash, her fiery hair then a flickering flame like a candle. As the candle goes out, she goes limp and falls forward, becoming ashes floating through the air before she reached the floor.
While the audience unanimously gasps in horror at the sight, many of the students and faculty standing from their seats, Cain doesn’t seem to realize, nor care, what he’s done as he breaks out into crazed laughter. All eyes but his are on the ashes, swept along by a breeze not there, towards and pass him, where they settle into a swirling pile behind him. As he looks around at the audience, perhaps wondering why they are so quiet and rigid, the pile of ashes ignites in a flash fire, and when he whirls around his freaky grin fractures, his left eye twitching. There, reborn from the ashes, stands Cynthia, her figure and hair blazing in glory, and a wave of relieved sighs and whooping cheers goes through the crowd.
Cain’s moment of stunned disbelief is brief before, like a wild animal
, he snarls and lunges at Cynthia with his sword. The mad stab misses when she leaps backwards, casting out a single fireball that splits into many in mid air at him, swirling and side-winding like a mass of serpents. In response, Cain casts a burst of his radioactive energy from his left hand, wiping out the flames converging upon him, and glares at Cynthia as she plays upon an invisible violin again, her swift and sharp music ringing around them. He scowls, then yells, “Quit playing that infernal music, or I’ll take that burning bush for your head off your shoulders!”
Cain raises his sword, his crystals feed it power, and he flings a jolt of it at her. However, it doesn’t get anywhere near her, fizzing out just a few feet before him. He blinks, not comprehending what happened, and tries throwing lightning at her again. He fails again, a stream of curses escaping his mouth as Cynthia continues playing her music. Only when he feels the air getting hotter around him does he look, and he gawks dumbly at the two crystals hovering near him, glowing brightly from the heat of searing sparks dancing upon them.
Some part of him figuring out what is going on, how a few of Cynthia’s fireballs went for his crystals instead of him and she was composing the magic to contain and cut off his own, Cain spitefully looks at Cynthia, calm in her composure as her fingers fiddled the air, and spits out, “How dare you defile them, you burning bitch!” before readying his sword to charge at her. When he thrusts forward, he gets smacked by something from the side, something hot that streaks a burning yellow wound across his face and spirals him in place before falling. Once he gets back up, he appears confused, then panicked, when he sees the object and its twin rapidly revolving around him, his own crystals turned against him as blazing blurs.
Changing the tempo of her music to a crescendo, joined by the pounding rhythm of many in the gym’s stands clapping or stomping, Cynthia feeds the fire, the crystals she hijacked whipping up a twister of flames in their speed that blazes like her hair, beautiful and fierce. The fire rises, ignorant of a trapped Cain flailing and screaming within it, until a pillar of it stands tall in the arena for a moment before she ends her music. The flames die down, revealing Cain staggering with bright orange wounds upon his cracked armor and crystal growths, and the orbiting crystals brake to a stop, transformed from heat and pressure into smooth, red stones with their rounded points aimed at him, one in front of him and one behind him. She waves her arms forward with sparks still flying from her fingertips, condenses them into gathered energy between her hands, and releases them to activate the metamorphic rocks, firing incinerating lasers into Cain that rupture his wounds further and paint them burning red.
***
Only a few seconds after the lasers drill into him, a red demorph flash consumes Cain, the flames, and the stones at once and spits him out in his human form, his face blank from shock and pain before he collapses backwards. There is a still silence over the arena before the overhead speaker announces, “The winner is Cynthia Volvaron,” and the audience erupts with applause. For their sake, Cynthia puts on her glamorous appeal, standing there and waving in her battle morph, her red suit and fiery hair adding to her brilliance. Despite her appearance and her wounds gone from her trick with the ashes, she does not feel well. In a glance at Cain’s blacked out form being attended by medics, a subtle frown crosses her.
She knows something is truly wrong with him after hearing his raving and ranting and his threats toward her, as well as his reaction to seemingly killing her. Most Alkalians, including the students and faculty of the college, know how they die in their battle morphs. Once the health of a morph becomes red in color, they are vulnerable to true damage beyond the morph, and if anymore damage that is fatal happens to it before demorphing, the morph literally falls apart as dust or ashes, signaling the Alkalian’s death.
There is something terrible in Cain’s mentality, to have been laughing at the supposed sight of her dying, and Cynthia wonders if the different form and powers of his morph were a manifestation of his madness. Despite her bright response to the cheering crowd, her feelings are dark when she glances to the medics carrying him out of the arena. She decides, not just because it’s about time the word gets out but also in light of his most recent behavior, to inform the college’s authorities about Cain’s malicious plots, especially what he planned for Matt and Rose, so that they could deal with him before anyone else could be harmed by him.
***
The next, and last, match of the tournament semifinals is about to begin shortly after Cynthia’s victory. Dante and Irene Goros, brother and sister, soon face each other from opposite sides of the arena’s middle. They wear similar suits of bright pants and vests, but Irene’s clothing is more yellow while Dante’s focused on orange. The audience, instead of resting from making noise for the first battle, is just as loud for this one by its whistles and whoops. They are not excited for a single one of the two about to duel, but rather the mere prospect of a brother-against-sister contest.
While the spectators continue making noise, Irene speaks to Dante, mocking concern clear in her voice. “Well, this is rather tragic, isn’t it? You and I, the heirs to the Goros nobility, about to fiercely battle each other and leave the winner to humiliate the other. It’s not too late, if you want to forfeit and avoid it all.”
Dante does nothing but stare back at her in response. Before, he had always taken care not to fight Irene, ever since they stopped sparring back at home when they were younger. This time, however, he feels compelled to participate in this battle. There is something he has to confront her over, and he has the bad feeling it would encourage them both into fighting the other. He says to her, “Sister, I have a question I need to ask you. Something has been troubling me for a while, and I was hoping you could resolve it for me.”
Irene replies, “Oh? You’re asking me for insights? What could my dear younger brother need clarified?”
Dante pauses before explaining his question. “Irene, I’ve heard strange stories about you, but none so strange as the one most recent. I need to know the truth from you alone, for no one else can convince me. Did you attend a late-night party where you harassed the other women, and then slept with one of them?”
Surprise flutters in Irene’s eyes. She looks around at the arena’s packed audience, knowing they can’t hear their conversation. Then she confesses to Dante, smirking as she says, “Yes, I did.”
Dante’s disciplined behavior cracks with the pale expression on his face. Irene shakes her head with a chuckle which only enlarges the fractures. “Why do you look so surprised, brother? If you had any care for me, you would know fully about my recent hobbies. And I’m not afraid to admit that I’ve taking a liking to sleeping around with others, male or female, I’ve had both several times this semester. I’ve just had an appetite for sexual pleasure that I’ve come to find hard to satisfy. I’m sure you couldn’t understand, having never even kissed someone intimately, you know.”
Grief and denial swirl in Dante’s mind around the one emotion he is desperate to suppress. Chokingly, he asks Irene, “Why, why, sister? Why would you do such things, after all of the morals and disciplines we’ve been taught?”
Irene shakes her head before answering him. “Those silly ‘morals’ and ‘disciplines’ were for when we were young and didn’t know any better. But now, I am older, more mature, and have more privilege. Plus, I’m my own independent person. I can, and will, do whatever I want that pleases me. I’m in control of my own life, and you can’t tell me how to live it.”
The suppressed feeling in Dante expands and swallows all others as he pictures the truth. Irene is losing control of her life. She has forgotten the examples of her family and her noble roles, led astray by the corrupted behaviors of disgraceful individuals. Soon, if it continues, she would fall from nobility and respect, possibly without any chance of ever redeeming herself. Dante’s sorrow and hesitation are strangled by anger and logic. However, he keeps down words of rage and condemnation, lowering his gaze as his body trembles.
Dante still says not a word, keeping it all locked down in him, not looking back at his ignorant sister. He channels his emotions, his anger, his sorrow, his guilt at what his sister has become, pressing and folding them into one essence, one feeling, sharpening and tempering it for one purpose.
***
When the siren goes off, they morph, and Dante charges forward, drawing his suppressed emotion in a flash of amber that splits the bullet shot at him. The smug look on Irene turns to shock at her brother’s explosive start, and she launches herself backwards on air balance to avoid a deep slash of his katana.
Irene remains hovering in the air, the appearance of her battle morph on display. Suited in gold and black leather, with her left arm in the form of a high power sniper rifle, she focuses on Dante with sniper vision, picking out the fury burning in his eyes. She has seen those eyes before, but only rarely, as they have grown up together, and she knows what they mean. Dante Goros is slow to anger, but once he gets mad enough to break loose, so does hell.