Chapter 25: Calloused palms

A tumorous tone, an apathetic cord poisoned with a fictitious idiosyncrasy, a chilling voice that rebounded listlessly amidst Eros's benumbed brain. Crystallised flesh brutalised his uniform stained a petulant shade of maroon, boreal, algid it pressured unconcerned to the youth's antecedent betrothment, retainer to a matriarch Eros failed to hypothesise. Myriad thoughts inundated the adolescent, from unceasing images of the variegated effluvium that breathed an emanation of redolent ambrosia to the recapitulated arrogation of the feminine utterance.

'Fight me,' Eros vainly echoed, his every cognisant notion ensnared by such unintelligible declaration, after all, such words hitherto appeared aphonic, an unpronounced aspiration, a summon no girl dared enact upon their male counterpart, for such confrontation served little more than an abortive waste of time. Still, with every second spent in contemplation, the fermented wrath that plagued his shoulder only further grew impassioned. Eros had to turn, to submit to the accosted wiles of his clandestine contender, to abnegate a statement the very definition of sacrilegious, an impious acrimony against the domain he presided.

Perfervid, a convulsive motion, Eros's enchanting figure broke into a bout of such spasmodic animation, his head jerked, eyes of heterochromatic chromaticity compelled to acknowledge an artificial horizon of gilded gold, and that was when he saw it, occupying the very epicentre of his pressured scrutiny, a being who he need not "Matchmaker" to identify. Silken threads a resplendent shade of halcyon, ungroomed and feral, bearing habitat upon the virginal white collar of Enuma Esper academy's conscripted uniform, Gabriella, her flesh of porcelain, her eyes a virulent shade of emerald, she leered at the anteriorly fleeing Eros, doll-like hands once bearing a recherché diaphanous pliability now transparently calloused, in her right a prodigious pole of wrought iron, barbaric, too artless to be called a blade. At the same time, her left firmly embraced Eros's paralytic form.

"Fight me," Gabriella reiterated a fervid demand, her heart innocuously skipping myriad palpitations, ignorant she pulled, gouging upon the boy's shoulder, indifferent to his chosen predilection while contemporaneously inattentive to the innumerable taboos she tempestuously fractured, Gabriella solely wished to battle, her calloused hands tremulous with a forlorn expectancy, a notion Eros dared dispute, his lips remaining ever impenetrable.

Twain thoughts exclusively occupied the heterochromatic youth's inobnoxious mind, for from such variegated peepers did he observe that dissonant macabre scene amidst the intermittent void of the chasmic crevice, carrion, a mire of sanguine, where once an effluvium of polychromatic hue appeared sovereign no longer did it reign, the aromatic ambrosial odour appeared swathed by cologne of insipid scent, a bloodied hound stalked Christiaan's departed figure, yet to be followed by the extracted Eros.

Notions of doubt impermanently flooded Eros's form, yet they lay murdered, assassinated by his stalwart ignorance. Eros had seen it. The fog was real. Christiaan's departure lay interwoven with a Mephistophelian hand, 'He should have gone to the hospital wing,' The youth inwardly stated, a foreboding sense of apprehensive abhorrence casting a shadow upon his meddling mind. However, paradoxical to such torturous anguish did the second thought stir, an ideation lucidly fixed upon the porcelain beauty whom barbarically guided his body, a notion of hungering cupidity. With such conflict, Eros would pregnantly behold Gabriella's ability, an ostentatious display of the gift bearing the elementary, transparent title of Enhancement.

In but mere moments, however, did the Gemini couple's journey conclude, yet Eros did not befall an estranged sight, but one of wistful sentimentality, a rack, craft of ornate olive wood, commode to innumerable bodies that infinitely scintillated neath the luminescent heavens. "Pick one," Gabriella carelessly mumbled, her eyes of venomous green locked not upon Eros's liberated visage but on a singular structure, that which lay forsakenly placed amidst the argent realm, arciform, a geminate twin, a bow.

Silence, Eros remained momentarily placid, neither bursting into a lurched motion of abrupt euphoria nor advancing from his granular prison. Instead, Eros hesitated, his head inundated by myriad scripts, a play authored and prophesied to be dramatised solely by him. The youth would bring ruinous calamity to innumerable taboos, his performance beheld by myriad negligent theatregoers. He had to feign aversion, his visage futilely quivering, indistinct and unobserved by his fervid partner, yet, within moments, he moved.

Eros's visage appeared embraced by the stygian shadow of innumerable blades. Apprehensive and disheartened, he scoured, his heart calm, serene, impregnant and undefiled to the lascivious breath of the bowed weapon. He wouldn't use it. Eros didn't know how. Numberless portraits perforated his mind, illustrations of failure, the deathly throe of a snapping string, the shrill cry of desecrated arrows. Instead, his gaze lay embraced by a sterling effulgence, an edgeless sword, a mere hunk of metal, its design uninspired, drab, with a monotonous length of a singular metre and a dull swathe of leather interwoven upon its base, Eros's tremulous, quavering hand obtained such item, his flesh of snow more enthralling than its insipid splendour.

A cadaverous scowl, a leer of unhindered, candid despondency, Gabriella's eyes of virulent emerald bore into the vibrating visage of the boy, disgruntled and downhearted by his choice, yet, neither words sweet nor curses escaped her sealed orifice, a stifled vestige of grandeur for his prior performance billowing amidst her rhythmically palpitating organ. Quiescent steps instantly whispered progeny to the reticent pair. Eros's form appeared transparent with reverence, a fearfulness to the innumerable anathema forbiddance few spectators scarcely spied. 'This is good. Gabriella still wants to fight me despite the weapon I chose,' The boy inwardly exclaimed, his heart incandescent with innumerable aspirations, few reticent even to the youth himself. This fight would be different.

Within but moments, steps antecedently nescient, serene and sedated appeared massacred, little more than a festering carapace devoured by the clamorous cacophony. Gabriella's perpetually advancing form lay stagnant, inaccessible and divorced from her anterior shadow, whose mottled head of dissonant, antipathetic shades manifested mere metres away from the pestiferous beauty. An enchanting portrait, twin adolescents both mesmeric in beauty, the former male, with trembling eyes of heterochromatic hue, his right hand cowardly clutching a cadaverous corpse of bound leather, a diffident, pusillanimous hero, while his opposition, tyrannical, and stringent, merely leered, her poisonous pupils forever fixed upon his every mellow motion.

Exiguous eyes heeded the pair, governed by sporadically impertinent espers, aporetic of the scene portrayed before them, that of a male, apprehensive in his position, woven in a prophesied conflict with a beauty all deemed abhorrent, Gabriella, her constitution apathetic to the myriad sneers and repugnant, malevolent utterances that befell her form.

"We'll start on the count of three," Gabriella breathed, illiterate to the calamitous throes that besmirched her name, vociferations that ruptured the tenacious gatekeeper that guarded Eros's ears.

"Why can't she just be normal,"

"Have you ever seen her actually abide by the training the teacher proposed,"

"Hah, of course not,"

"One," Gabriella started.

"After all, she's little more than…."

"Two," Gabriella continued, her right hand embracing the prodigious pole with a fervent, impassioned constraint, that which Eros faintly spied contorted the wrought item.

"A plebian battle whore," The indistinct clamour concluded, the sparse beholders finding their throats asphyxiated by a deluge of derisive laughter, uncaring, unbothered, with neither word of concern nor disquietude advocating for the liberation of the intertwined F-rank. Still, despite hearing such stertorous discordant throe, Eros appeared uncannily calm, his mind apathetic to the influx of supposed nascent information.

After all, Gabriella's calloused palms antecedently alerted him to such actuality, for throughout the myriad espers the youth had met, none shared that anomalous feature.

"Three,"