[center][img]https://i.imgur.com/Irxxbbd.png[/img][/center] People moved around Auriëlle. She never knew they did it. She just walked normally. Unable to see what was happening around her. For weeks she had trained the pulses. Exhausting herself over and over. Enough so she got used to it. Or perhaps the magic she used got used to her. It didn’t matter. With every pulse, it became easier. Soon they began to flow into each other. Giving her moments of sight before she felt like dropping face-first into the ground. Last week though, it stopped affecting her. She could see again. And she saw fear. Students of the Omniversity kept moving out of her way. Probably because she moved several of them before if they didn’t do so voluntarily. Her strength had returned. “I want to go back.” She declared as she entered the plaza of Duxus. Who sat exactly where he always sat. Awaiting his next departure. Which would be that night. “You can fly. Take me back.” The sound of stone grinding of stone filled the plaza. Several students in the colonnade turned to look at her and Duxus. There was a strange energy in the mid-afternoon breeze now. Something combative. She never knew how much she missed it. “I…cannot.” Said Duxus. His large shape had moved slightly. Looking straight down at her. There was no emotion in his voice. Though Auriëlle liked to imagine that he was somehow sounding sad that he couldn’t. “You can.” She said, resolute, as she started to march forward. Underneath her stone began to break through the tiled floor. Rising up Auriëlle like a staircase being made under her foot. Heading straight for Duxus’ mouth. She had seen it tens of times. How people walked in and out of him. It was easy. And when she was inside, he just had to fly up. Yet when she rose up to his mouth it was sealed like a tomb. She put her palm against it. “Let me in Duxus.” There was a storm hidden behind her words. She was done with this place. She would escape. Now. “I… cannot.” Duxus repeated and he took a step backward. So his crystalline eyes could gaze down up Auriëlle again. “My master… demands you… to stay.” The sorceress’ expression grew dark. “Take. Me. With. You.” She said, slowly. The storm now more apparent in her words. The wind kicked up around her. The students couldn’t understand her probably. But they could see her stance. It was growing hostile. The stone she stood upon began to crumble away. Delivering her back on the same level as the titles. “I… cannot.” Still, she imagined the sadness in his voice that could not be there. “Why!?” Auriëlle screamed. Only now did she realize just how massive Duxus was. “I will hurt you if you don’t.” She said as she raised her right arm. Lightning arced over her arm. She didn’t see it but she felt it. The power coursing through her arm. She had forgotten how power felt. How intoxicating it was. How it felt so safe. “I will do it!” She shouted again, though her voice grew shaky. Students all around her began to move away. Even though they didn’t understand her words, her body language was saying more than enough. “I… cannot… little one. My master… prohibits it. You are… not allowed… to leave… the island… yet.” Duxus spoke in his usual slow, baritone voice. There wasn’t a hint of fear in it. Did he even know fear? Auriëlle clenched her teeth. The arcs over her arm grew more violent and less controlled. It would slip soon. Like fire used to slip as well. In the past, she didn’t care for that. Control – she thought – was an illusion. Especially with powers like these. She just unleashed everything. But now, making her threats, she knew she couldn’t let it slip. Not with Duxus. “Please.” She pleaded now. “Please take me with you. I cannot stand it here! Please don’t make me hurt you. Please. Please!” Tears were rolling off her cheeks as her voice grew hoarse. “I… cannot.” Her arm began to shake. The power kept building up. She couldn’t stop it. “Please don’t make me hurt you. Please I just want to get off this godforsaken rock! This isn’t home, it’s a prison!” “I… cannot.” “Please!” A last desperate plea, but she lost control. The reigns slipped from her. Lightning like she had never used shot forward. A terrible crack of thunder carried across the gardens. For a second the bright flash of the lightning dimmed all other light. AurIëlle dropped to her own knees. Her arm was fine, yet she gripped it as if it was broken. She pulsed, again and again. Duxus’ shape was, as always, half-shrouded in smoke disguising a faint glimmer beneath. Nothing happened. No sound, nothing. “I… cannot… little one. I… wish… I could… help you… but… I cannot.” A slow voice said. Auriëlle just sobbed as she held her own arm. “I’m sorry.” She stammered. Apologizing for more than just the lightning. Ashamed for the first time in years, she got up and ran away. Her heart grew weak and small. Blind she found her way towards the first garden she had arrived in. The day after her arrival something or somethings had fixed it all. Even the soft moss growing on the stone. Luckily there was nobody. As she walked passed the stones began to roll around her. Shaking off the thin layer of earth upon which the moss grew. They rolled and moved and dragged across the immaculately kept grass until they fully surrounded and hid Auriëlle, where she fell on her knees and let out a wail. “I can’t take it anymore!” She shouted towards the skies. The blindness, the loneliness. It tore her apart. There was nothing on the island. Nothing that could help her. She didn’t even know why she was here! Inside she was collapsing as she fell over and curled up. It had been so long since she last felt so much pain. At some point, she woke up. The air was cold enough to get goosebumps from it. When she sat up, she felt the ashes of the grass she destroyed caked on her cheek and side of her body. Stones were still all around her. Hiding her still. Yet the second she thought that they moved by some invisible force. Revealing a familiar shape looming over her. “You tried to hurt your friend.” The soft, fatherly voice said. It didn’t sound stern, or angry. Just reassuring and a little bit disappointed. “You’re lucky Duxus is such a passive creature. There are other beings like him that would’ve torn you limp by limp for threatening them as you did.” “Why are you keeping me here?” Auriëlle said. Her strength sapped away again. She winced at her own returned weakness. Was it so easy to get her down again? To break her again? “By master’s orders, my dear. Please. Come inside.” The headmaster said as he walked up to her, crouched down, and put a hand on her shoulder. Around them, rocks began to roll away again. “It’s awfully cold outside. You wouldn’t want to catch a cold.” Auriëlle shrugged off the hand. “Maybe I do.” She sneered. “Maybe it will kill me. Maybe I’ll be done with this place.” She pulled up her knees to her chest and wrapped her arms around them. Staring straight ahead. The headmaster just let out a deep, disappointed sigh. “Fourteen weeks you’ve been here already.” He said, sound sterner now. A tone she hadn’t heard before. “Not once did you ask why you’re here?” “’Cause making me blind wasn’t bad enough. That bitch of a goddess had to lock me up somewhere else as well.” Auriëlle said. But the headmaster shook his head. “Foolish child.” The sudden hard words surprised Auriëlle who looked at the creature who she thought had endless patience. It even made her look up. “For a hundred days already you’ve been here. Surrounded by power and you’ve been blind to it. Preferring to sulk in your own disability. And when you’ve finally overcome that, you think you should leave. Do you want to know why you are here?” Auriëlle wanted to hurt him for the way he talked to her. A hundred days ago, if anyone had talked to her that way she would’ve torn them to shreds just for the audacity. Yet she looked upon the headmaster and knew she couldn’t win. Not even with her eyesight back. So she just stared at him. Wearing her anger as a mask. “You are here to learn about your power. Your true power.” The stone around them shattered with a single grip. “I am powerful.” Said an by anger consumed Auriëlle. “I am the most powerful sorceress there. Nothing can beat me!” “You are a child flailing in the mud!” The headmaster shouted. She saw his hand move for a split second. The broken rocks raised up from the ground in an orbit around them. Every piece of gravel and stone floated around. Fire ignited between the stone. First, like a circle that soon turned to form a snake eating its own tail. It coiled around the headmaster and Auriëlle. “You barely comprehend the power that you wield but you are more than foolish, stubborn, arrogant, and blind.” At his command, the stone and fire collapsed to the ground around them. Auriëlle tried to pull up some stones from the ground around her, to protect her from the wave of fire raging straight towards her. Yet the moment the rocks appeared they were torn away from her grip. The heat of the fire was on her skin as she ducked down. Only the fire stopped inches away from her and pulled back again. Like sea waves they began to ebb and flow around her. Until the headmaster closed his fist and a thousand butterflies rose up as bits and pieces of the flames. “Are you willing to ascend, daughter of magic?” The headmaster then said. His voice was calm and fatherly again. His hand was outstretched. Auriëlle turned to him with equal awe and fear in her eyes. It took a moment, more than a moment, but finally she took his hand and pulled herself upright. [hider=Summary]Auriëlle can see again, sort of. Believing she’s strong enough again to return she demands Duxus to take her away. But the giant lobster refuses. Saying he is not permitted by his master. She starts breaking down and threatens him with a lightning bolt if he doesn’t do what she asked. He doesn’t relent. Until Auriëlle loses control of her magic. The bolt of lightning hits Duxus, who is still fairly okay. He tells her again that he cannot take her. In her shame Auriëlle runs away and breaks down in one of the gardens. Later, at night, the headmaster comes to retrieve her but depressed Auri refuses to come along. The headmaster’s patience is done and he calls her foolish for never questioning why she was upon the island. Auri believes it to be a punishment but then the headmaster calls her a child flailing in the mud. Unable to comprehend the extend of her power. He shows her, through several spells, what true magical power is. It convinces Auriëlle as she realized there was more to be gained in the Omniversity.[/hider] [hider=Prestige] [b]Post Length:[/b] 9.4K Characters +4 Prestige to Auriëlle -15 Prestige to Auriëlle: acquiring Theiath II [/hider]