Chapter 26: Desire part 1

Noiselessness, a deafened soliloquy, ambivalent voices antecedently prevalent lay suffocated amidst the heterochromatic youth's mind. Exclusive erratic breaths, disharmonious to the heavens, the sole clatter to prevail amidst the desolate realm.

Eros appeared frozen, paralysed, his heaving abdomen a singular divination of zoetic vivacity, for his eyes, that of polychromatic constitution, appeared ashen, drab, blanched in a bloodcurdling adumbration that quivered with every passing second. Reverant apprehension transparently dominated the adolescent's attention. Eros endeavoured not to act, to bring ruinous calamity to such foregone taboo.

His right hand pusillanimously clutched the blunted blade, an adjoining clamour of torturous metallic abhorrence falling deaf upon his abstracted ears.

Antipathy. Gabriella's marionette-like features anteriorly enchanting, nourished by notions of conflict, appeared poisoned, mangled and maimed into a disfigured sight of omnipotent abhorrence, a nauseous detestation towards the meek, gutless, acquiescent youth whom listlessly tremored before her, her call to arms lay squandered, consumed by myriad throes of infinite tribulations. She would have to perform, strike first and consummate the vain conflict.

The pole Gabriella grasped, an item of pliable wrought metal contorted, depressed upon a portrait of calloused craft, her fingers perforated, encroaching upon her palm ignorant to the leaden stick. 'What a disappointment,' The girl inwardly grieved, her eyes of virulent emerald momentarily glistening with a profane flicker of vestige engrossment, a conflagration prophesied to depart upon her coming strike.

A blurred motion, Gabriella's visage, once stalwart and static appeared mutated, her body of voluptuous craft little more than a stygian shadow Eros failed to observe, his heterochromatic gaze exclusively capable of spying her scintillating head of satin halcyon. 'Fast!' Eros inwardly exclaimed, his fictitious masquerade of apocryphal cowardice momentarily attaining a truthful guise. Still, amidst such a quivering pout, his lips instantly shifted into an impermanent smirk.

He had gotten what he desired.

Gabriella's apathetic attention, she had made the aboriginal move, the primaeval action of all to come. From this moment forth, the spectators would find nought issue with his retaliation, the consequences of his sex making the virgin strike little more than a relinquished idea.

*Swoosh* Gabriella's visage, formerly esoteric and incomprehensible stilled, her figure momentarily discernible in a state of perpetual animation, her right hand constricted, interwoven upon a plain of metal, eternally embracing for a destined impact. A horizontal slash, a preordained blow aimed faultlessly upon Eros's seemingly ignorant solar plexus.

*Bang!* The discordant strident sound of impact resonated ceaselessly amidst the cacophonous domain. Dispassionate eyes descended from exiguous spectators apathetically lay entranced upon the ominous Mise-en-scène. For the plot they predicted appeared ruinous, tempestuously twisted by the boy named Eros. Amidst the unborn milliseconds before the collision, the youth bearing heterochromatic pigmentation erstwhile diffident appeared to "unintentionally" move, his knees anteriorly a bulwark of delusory confidence buckling, he stumbled, retreating in a nascent abatement, yet, it was from such moronic act that the youth guarded, his blade, dulled and indifferent compelled to collide with the impending calamity that was Gabriella's attack.

To all, Eros looked like little more than a bumbling jester, a clown Fiamma abducted for nought but his enchanting appearance, yet, Fiamma's look of astonished elation adumbrated a contrasting absoluteness. His futile guard, but a billowing stroke of luck possessed strength, that which the potential force of gravity accommodated not, Eros had purposefully attacked. He had registered her motion and countered in kind.

{+5 Affection (Gabriella Ebba)}

{-15 Affection (Areata Olivia)}

'I need to make her use her ability,' Eros inwardly exclaimed, his arm recoiling vehemently from the overwhelming force of the impact, the jaded blade bowing in upon his visage in an abrupt lurching manner, prophesied for nought but an impassioned collision with the infinite granular earth underfoot, yet, before the boy could bring an end to such preordained conflict Gabriella would continue her ardent assault, an innocuous unidentified shade of red blossoming upon her preternaturally heated cheeks. A downward slash, an attack that endeavoured to gouge upon the youth's laboured shoulders, Gabriella hesitated not, her eyes retaining a perpetually mephitic scintillation. If Eros didn't defend himself, the battle would conclude, and his desire would be left pervertedly fragmented.

Strained exertions, eternally aided by the youth's deific form, Eros pulled, willing, nay, celestially commanding his apathetic peer, imbuing the impotent item with a mandate of implored reverence. A brazen slash, a meticulous display of power left unheeded by innumerable theatregoers, Eros severed the fate of his anterior blow, releasing but a singular strike, overflowing with an untrained, superior strength, an innate power surpassing that of the bloodcurdling beast he had precedently murdered.

Fear, primaeval apprehension enveloped Gabriella's eternally inattentive mind, premonitions of ruinous calamity not ordained upon her person, but the dulled bar upon which she wielded, a prophesied annihilation the beauty abhorred. Urged indiscriminately by ceaseless palpitations of boiling claret, myriad changes enveloped the prodigal item, neglected by her enthralled peers yet ascertained by her contemporary partner. Veins of malignant, pernicious green ceaselessly raped the metallurgic item's surface, disseminating in a manner akin to myriad bifurcated branches until, within but moments, it lay as little more than a vestige, scintillating in a nugatory abstracted caliginous light.

*Bang* The rotund sound of elephantine grandeur bellowed ceaselessly amidst the tumultuous realm, yet, such dissonant throe wasn't a soliloquy, but a duet, twain noises, the latter of which proved to join in an unmelodious chorus, *Clang* A hoarse, antagonistic twang of metal echoed listlessly upon Eros's ears, his eyes perpetually quaking, paradoxically disbelieving yet impassioned by the melodramatic scene performed before him.

His sword had shattered.

Its tip pervertedly mercurial in its encroaching descent, for at present, it found accommodation exclusively amidst the empyrean heavens.

This was Gabriella's ability, the gift christened Enhancement, for her pole appeared virgin, with but an enervated scar to commemorate the overbearing, aberrant clash. 'Ah~ I want that,' Eros inwardly affirmed, his visionary feat accompanied by nought but distant shrieks, presumptuous shrills, aporetic to the boy's power, deeming such sight as a mere consequence to Gabriella's foetid, antipathetic prowess.

'But the way Gabriella used it, why did she only enhance the item's durability? Surely that's not its limit. It can't be. Otherwise, it would just be titled reinforcement,' Eros continued, his train of thought tethered once more to the mortal plain upon which he antecedently abstained, though not through machinations of conflict, for such a fight would never felicitously conclude, but a voice, not the tumorous tone of Gabriella, but the execrable, pestiferous exclamation of the sole disciplinarian, her visage encompassed by a shawl of grey, perpetual progenitor to a stygian adumbration, a sunless miasma that appeared regnant upon a monumental aperture.

A door Eros innately found his gaze infatuated with, a structure that soon began to birth, its visage contorting, bearing child of fragmented darkness. Yet, Eros would appear verboten to such preternatural sight, his gaze of heterochromatic pigmentation emphatically blackmailed by the encroaching pedagogue, her anterior features, formerly enchanting, mutilated, warped and debauched by notions of nauseation.

"STOP!" The singular instructor bellowed, her pestiferous gaze enduring placed not upon Eros's irking features but his neck, a plain of snow that horrifically egressed a hyperborean chill, a frigidness neoteric to the 'Cowardly' adolescent, instinctually Eros's gaze shifted, his mind absentmindedly pursuing the source to such eerie chill, and it was with such apprehension that the youth befell the candid reality before him, for upon his plain of snow appeared a chasmic splintering, a realm of monochrome argent. Gabriella's prodigal pole. Its body bereft of discolouration, devoid of incalescence, a torturous corporeality.

Eros had lost. Yet, his mind appeared not a nugatory void of dismal self-loathing but a fervent plain of sacrilegious desire, one nourished exclusively by the lambent beauty before him, Gabriella, her venomous eyes scintillating with transparent mesmeric jubilation, while her perfect pink lips appeared blemished, distorted in a manner imaginary to the beauty, a smile, radiant, lucent yet slight, a mere smirk, one ancestor to myriad instinctual palpitations. 'I want her. I want her ability, her smile, her everything,' Eros started, his left eye glistening with a resplendent pink light. At the same time, his mind focused on the singular notification that monopolised the epicentre of his gaze.

{+10 Affection (Gabriella Ebba)}

{Name: Gabriella Ebba}

{Age: 17}

{Race: Human}

{Ability: Enhancement}

{Love: 65%}

'I'll make her fall. The academy would allow it. After all, she's in the same power bracket as Fiamma. They're both B-rank espers. They possess equal authority. I simply need to become her attendant… this is what Psyche would want,' The adolescent continued, ignorant to the ever-fracturing aperture, a domain impregnated by myriad rays of rapturous luminosity, a world solely occupied by Fiamma.