Where No One Stood

Elwin felt his ribs fracture at the force of his bearlike punch, as he tumbled backwards twenty yards and clipped into a column. All wind was knocked from him. Even though Ursus was no longer at his peak strength... it was a force of unfathomable power. It was as if all the metal cylinders on the road to the summit had pounded him at the same time in the same spot; if it wasn't for his battle-uniform, Ursus would have crushed his heart.

Elwin coughed, and blood instantly came from his spit, mixing with the sand.

The crowd stood up in dismay.

Ursus stood there, his arm still outstretched in its punch. With methodical effort he retracted it, and advanced on the battered boy; the only thing Elwin could see were the blue eyes of the impossible enemy that pierced the helmet shroud.

Elwin wanted to rest, to fall into his comfortable bed; he wished that he could have chosen a better path, he wished that the fates did not drive him to defeat. His vision became blurred, and a soothing dark threatened to envelop him. Even through the symphony of his coursing, rushing blood that dulled pain, a piercing sensation skewered his ribs with every breath, demanding effort to draw, and he could taste metal on his tongue and lips. Perhaps he was not meant to be the hero he expected.

Everyone in their seats witnessed Elwin's battered and bruised body, and the sight stirred in them the roar of unity.

Sure, he had his Quan taken away by the headmaster. Sure, he endangered them all on his rampage, hurting Robert and Daphne. Sure, Lucian had warned of what Elwin was like, and they had all the reason to hate him, to shun him, to be wary of him.

But still, Elwin was one of them. He was an Arten of Aeternitas, and he faced an enemy from the world outside; an enemy who had marched in here as if Aeternitas was a playground, who flagrantly challenged what the Academy stood for, and threatened to sow discord among the Artens.

And for that, one by one, voices rose forth from the seats that dismayed Alexander and Lucian.

"Stand!"

"Stand, Elwin! You can do it!"

"No one else but you can win this fight!"

"I BID YOU STAND! COME ON!"

"YOU CAN DO IT!"

"ELWIN!"

"ELWIN!"

"ELWIN!"

Maximus shouted his lungs out for his underclassman, followed by Sandora, followed by Leonardo, followed by Hina, followed by Katherine, followed by Robert and Daphne, followed by everyone with a heart for Elwin's plight. Silently in their seats Headmaster Abraxas and Professor Aionia wordlessly mouthed "Stand, Elwin, stand!" lending him the hope of Aeternitas. Even Professor Helen from her seat clenched her knuckles; Professor Thales and Professor William pumped theirs, and Professor Irina gathered her hands into a prayer for the FOUNDERS. Isaac and Mirai, just awakening from their wounds, struggled to open their eyes and stretched their hands out to Elwin from afar.

Amidst the chorus of their cheers, warmth returned to Elwin's soul once again, and Maximus's words surfaced to his consciousness.

This battle is something you have decided.

No matter how gravely your heart pounds or your leg falters, 

You must stand so that your friend Katherine can see a tomorrow. 

That shall be the proof of your greatness!

Yes, he wasn't yet defeated. He still had a chance.

He was the last one on their team; all of Katherine's future and the dignity of Aeternitas National Academy rested upon his shoulders. In the dreamlike limbo between victory and defeat, another figure from his memory rested her wings upon his back.

It is the rest of the tale that you write.

Where you can go now is for you to decide.

Who do you choose to be, Elwin Eramir?

The words lit his heart ablaze like the Sun, and he opened his eyes, dispelling all shadows of doubt that haunted his mind. Ursus was fighting to fulfill his duty; but Elwin was fighting for his own soul, to strike open a path that had never before existed, a path for himself he had been searching all his life. He was fighting to make his own worth as someone called a man, and what was Ursus but a mere obstacle...! 

He pounded his feet into the earth and stood again, his vision now wondrously sharp.

Ursus grimaced, snapping a retort at Elwin, disturbed by the echoing cheers that were not for himself. "Do my blows not hurt you? Do my strikes not crush your bones to dust? In the face of such overwhelming adversity, why must you challenge me thus? Why must you haunt me, why must you persist?"

Elwin gathered a globule of blood from his tongue and spat it out, dusting himself off. To Ursus he announced:

"Yes, they hurt.

Yes, they crush me.

Yes, I stumble.

But I can recover.

I can always bandage injuries to the body.

But what of injuries to the soul?

To have no choice but to be a scion –

To be imprisoned in the shadow of someone else?

How it crushes you, chains you, makes you feel small...

I couldn't bandage my soul alone.

Someone else helped me tend my wounds.

And right now, I want to help Katherine –

Because she is feeling the same."

Ursus grimaced because he knew what Elwin said to be true.

"If you, Ursus, know of what I speak,

If you understand what Katherine must feel...

Then you will surrender here.

And provided you cannot,

Provided duty compels you to the very end,

Then I shall stand here, ready and waiting,

For every second I am facing you,

Katherine can choose her own destiny.

To all those who come to me for help,

To all those who come to me for freedom,

I shall stand for them and exclaim:

This shall be the meaning of my name!"

Against such a determination, Ursus felt his own duty waver as a candleflame to the Sun. It tore his own self that he must continue to fight Elwin, who was braver than he.

"With regret," Ursus answered with respect, "I must continue." 

And with a heavy heart he began to charge towards Elwin with all his might, to finish the fight if he could.

Instantly Elwin honed his Asha to the ORI around him, awakening his vision to a thousand threads of gold that connected the world. He sharpened his mind to all that surrounded his very self, every pebble and every granule of sand, every vapor of water, every thread of breeze, every ray of the roaring Sun, each strand of air and every drop of his own blood until all of the cosmos splashed to life in his mind as a painting of gold among black. And with the same concentration he mustered while climbing that summit, he closed his eyes, waiting, waiting for Ursus who lumbered at him like a bear to its prey.

Two threads of ORI tugged on Elwin's Asha.

Two pillars from left and right.

With a single stream of his own sweat compressed to a blade's edge too thin to see, he sliced the flying pillars clean through and blasted them apart. And in its contact he saw and felt the wavering of earth that betrayed its master's waning will.

Threads of gold swung from afar.

Three punches, one from middle, from above, and from the side.

Elwin dodged them all.

A kick, a firespike, a flare.

Elwin dodged them all.

A lance, a spear, sharpened sand.

Elwin dodged them all.

Threads brightening below.

He kicked the ground and launched into the sky; A spike of earth erupted from below him. Elwin had dodged that one too.

And in that moment, Elwin sighted his path to victory.

He raced to Ursus, parrying all the attacks launched at him, and arrived just short of an inch of his lumbering figure. Ursus pounded down with a disc of packed earth upon Elwin's head, a sobering, crushing blow that Elwin held up at the last instant; he felt the bones of his skull bend as if to shatter, his spine popping with all its earthen weight; Ursus roared his lungs in effort to crumple Elwin, to drive him into the sand, and Elwin bellowed in equal measure, witnessing in that moment a brief vision of the infinite. Ursus raised his arms again to pound once more, and in that split second the armored robe from his left wrist came undone; and Elwin, taking a single, swift step out of the earth above him, with one motion of his arm and soul, froze the sweat on Ursus's arm into a frostblade, and sliced clean the belt that held the Quan to his wrist.

Ursus's Quan flew into the sky for all to see. 

Before he knew it, he was falling backwards with the weight of the earth no longer supported by his own Quan; he conjured up a feeble shaft of a pole and attempted to find his balance, to thrust it at Elwin, but the boy had swiped away a piece of fabric that was caught in front of his face.

"UTUMMION!"

Elwin uttered the sona of his father and his upperclassman as mightily as his voice could carry it, knowing by instinct that what it meant was down, down, and down.

The mass of air above Ursus thundered downwards, and like a hammer, struck him and drove him to the earth of that arena, whereupon the shaft of his lance broke, the force of his unprepared landing dazing him; and in the blink of an eye, a lance of ice was upon his throat, held by the figure whose eyes were still closed, standing where no one could have stood.

The shock of losing his Quan and the sona of the Ayumastra that had pounded him extinguished the last dregs of his Kaha – after fighting for more than an hour without rest, in a match of endurance that escaped his specialty, Ursus froze in place, his muscles possessing strength no longer.

Elwin spoke.

"Do we have terms?"

No one uttered a word for what seemed an eternity.

Then Ursus warily opened his mouth.

"Does Miss Katherine mean that much to you?"

Elwin nodded his head, slowly, surely. "Her liberty."

Ursus let out a deep sigh, thinking for a moment to look to his master to confirm his decision. But no; in the presence of this young man named Elwin, who he just witnessed soar past the bounds of everything he once conceived possible, looking to Alexander to obtain his permission would be an insult to the dignity of a fellow warrior. It would be dishonor for him to fight Elwin any longer.

He raised his empty palm to Elwin, as a warrior to another, his face solemn.

"...I concede."