CLANG.
The concussive force of the training broadsword vibrated through the soles of Alice's boots, yet her amber eyes remained glazed, fixed on an empty point somewhere over her opponent's left shoulder.
CLANG. The amber dome of her Magic Shield spider-webbed with glowing fractures. Her opponent—a burly Honor Class swordsman whose name currently escaped her—roared, bringing his heavy blade down in another brutal, two-handed arc.
Bypassing the vessel. Raw meaning. Black Magic. The words looped relentlessly in her mind. She stood in the center of the sand-swept arena, practically catatonic. The fight wasn't real. The sand beneath her feet wasn't real. Only the cold, terrifying realization settling in her chest held any weight.
CRACK.
A jagged fissure spider-walked down the center of her shield. The swordsman let out another guttural battle cry, rearing back to channel a surge of raw physical aura into a guard-breaking strike.
The noise was excruciating. It rattled her skull, disrupting the fragile, suffocating silence she desperately needed to think. She didn't fear the blade. She was just so incredibly tired of the screaming. She just wanted the noise to stop.
Her lips parted. No elaborate geometrical visualization. No drawing upon her internal mana reserves. Just a pure, irritated, unadulterated command.
"HTSSTKT."
A violent fracture split the air.
A shockwave of invisible, concussive force exploded outward with the deafening crack of thunder. The Magic Shield shattered instantly, and the blast eradicated the swordsman from her immediate vicinity before his blade could even reach her.
The heavy-set combatant launched into the air, skipping once like a stone against the packed dirt. He flew across the two hundred-meter expanse of the training grounds' four terrains in a blur of silver, before crashing into the reinforced stone boundary wall with a sickening CRUNCH.
A dense cloud of pulverized masonry and black dust plumed into the air.
Absolute, breathless silence descended on the arena.
Alice blinked. The static in her mind vanished, instantly replaced by an ice-water plunge of terror. The world snapped back into blinding, horrifying focus.
She stared at the cratered wall across the arena. Her hands began to tremble uncontrollably, flying up to cover her mouth.
No. The crushing, monumental weight of the cast pressed against her temples, validating the horrific theory she'd just constructed in the hallway.
I killed him. Her heart slammed against her ribs like a trapped bird. They were right. It is Black Magic. I'm a monster. I'm a Black Mage and I just murdered a classmate—
A deep, groaning cough echoed from the settling dust.
The pile of shattered stone shifted.
"He's alive!" Arthur called from the settling debris.
The heavy-set combatant hung limply in Arthur's grip as he dragged him clear of the rubble. The swordsman's head lolled backward, his uniform shredded and caked in pulverized masonry, but his chest rose and fell in a steady, heavy rhythm. He was entirely unconscious.
Alice exhaled a jagged, shuddering breath. Her knees buckled slightly, but she caught herself, forcing her posture rigid.
Thank the gods for the durability of an Honor Class swordsman, she thought, and thank you, Cedric. She pressed a hand flat against her sternum, feeling the frantic, rabbit-kick rhythm of her pulse. She had lost control. She had let the panic bleed into her magic, and she had nearly become the dark, terrifying monster the rumors spoke of.
She couldn't afford this. Not here. Not with the mandatory assembly looming over them in less than an hour.
Alice closed her eyes, drew in a slow, calculated breath steeped in the scent of dry sand, and pushed the blinding terror down into a tight, iron-locked box within her mind. She expertly smoothed the horror from her face, reconstructing the flawless, apologetic smile that had become her armor.
Set it aside, she commanded herself, walking forward—though a sudden wave of lightheadedness nearly pitched her into the sand—to join Cedric beside the unconscious swordsman. Play the part. Attend the assembly. But tonight... I will confront Ms. Noctiliene.