[flashback] Opposed Elements [Elisse]

[Hadrian]

2nd Spring, 508 A.V. Hadrian didn't play well with others. There were a few exceptions; well, mostly Azilis, but she had been busy of late with whatever the daughter of a professor got busy with, and now he had been assigned a younger reimancy student with whom to work. On the one hand, he knew he needed the practice, but on the other, he knew Elisse was a rather accomplished pyromancer for her age. It seemed like everyone but Hadrian was content with their element. He had wanted fire, had chosen Zan to initiate him because he thought a pyromancer would be more likely to awaken the fire within him... Elisse needed a hydromancer to put out her fires. Well, good. Perhaps fire would come next, but he doubted it. It seemed to be the wrong progression of things... If Water was supposed to be the element of intuition and its mastery granted him any greater intuition, then perhaps he was not wrong in thinking that Earth would be his next element, then Air, and finally Fire. At least, when it came, if it came, his Fire would be powerful. He sat in one of the chairs that he had dragged into the practice room for them, that heavily Shielded room that would keep their burgeoning powers from exploding out into the rest of Zeltiva. She was late. Or he was extremely early. He couldn't recall which. In the meantime, he leaned forward, elbows on his knees, and began to draw glyphs for the elements on the seat of her chair. Flowing Water, steady Earth, mutable Air, and powerful Fire. Four glyphs, but of course they would not do anything, not being arranged properly to absorb any reimancy spells, but they were practice. Each one was intuitive, a visual representation of what each concept meant to him just then. They would likely change as his understanding did, and they would not look like anybody else's. Glyphing was remarkably personal, he had learned, though there did seem to be patterns one could follow. He sighed and then went over each glyph in res pushed through the pores of his fingertip. It wasn't a great expenditure of energy, per se, but it was a bit of a warm up and he wanted to have fine control of how much he produced, after all.

[Elisse]

Footsteps sounded through the long hallway, the rhythm caught halfway between a walk and a run. Elisse hated to be late, and right now, she was exactly two minutes behind. Not so much that it was a disaster, but enough that it annoyed her. And, knowing her luck, he would already be waiting in the room. Turning a corner, she silently cursed herself. She had, yet again, let herself become lost in printed words. The offending book had been hurriedly returned to her room before she began the mad dash to reach the practice room. She wondered absently what Hadrian would be like to work with. She didn’t really know him, but she knew who he was. He used water – a hydromancer. Hopefully he wouldn’t need to put out any accidents that came from her own use of fire. Elisse was slightly nervous about working in an enclosed room. Usually when she practiced alone, she would set up a large barrel of water in which to direct her fireballs. She slowed down as she neared the door, opened it and stepped inside. She immediately spotted him sitting in one of two chairs, tracing something onto the seat of the other. She shut the door with a click. “Sorry, lost track of time…reading.” She offered him a sheepish smile before walking to stand next to the empty chair. She glanced down, brunette locks falling over her face, and saw what appeared to be glyphs, traced in res. “Uh, I’m Elisse.” She expected he knew her name already, but they’d never actually met, so she felt she should introduce herself all the same. She gave him another smile, and pushed her hair back behind her ears. "Though some people call me Eli."

[Hadrian]

When the door opened, he immediately transmuted the last of the res into water and swept away whatever order his glyphs might have brought to the surrounding djed. That much was easy to do; if he truly became a skilled magecrafter as he hoped, his later works would be much more difficult to destroy. He was likely just leading himself on, thinking he might someday match the famed Areesa Tallshade, but one needed goals. He stood up quickly, his movements awkward, as if he had been caught doing something wrong. He was too tall, too pale, and too skinny. His chlorine-blue eyes were too probing, and these were possibly factors in why he had so few friends. "It's all right," he said dismissively, rather lacking in charm. "I was just... I... I'm Hadrian Aelius. Most people don't call me anything, but I'll answer to any permutation of my name, I guess." He didn't smile. It always felt awkward, off, and generally didn't seem to put people at ease. He had thought he would fit in among scholars, but many of the students were merely using the place as a finishing school, the children of rich merchants or other worthies. Hadrian was that too, but he took things much more seriously. "We're supposed to work together." Duh, Hadrian.

[Elisse]

When Hadrian stood, Elisse was a little surprised at how tall he was. She thought she was quite tall, having to look down on a lot of people herself. It was actually rather refreshing to find someone she could look up to. He was rather handsome, she supposed, his blue eyes were quite striking. With a mental shake of her head, she refocused her attention as he started to speak. She noticed that he didn't smile like most did when he introduced himself, but she offered him another all the same. "Well, it's nice to meet you Hadrian." She was quite eager to begin now that she was here, and she grinned, quite out of character for her, at his next words. "That we are." She gave the room a sweeping glance. "How do you think we should go about this?" She hadn't really practiced with others before, aside from the occasional group activity, and never on such a close scale with another student. So far her aim with fire was good in short range, and not all that bad at longer distances either. Even so, she was still afraid of setting something alight, though the room seemed pretty empty. She just prayed that Hadrian would be quick with his water if that happened. She fixed her own, azure gaze on his again, and while waiting for his answer, pulled a band from her pocket and proceeded to pull her hair into a messy ponytail at the back of her head. Knowing her luck, if anything were to catch fire in front of someone else, it would be herself.

[Hadrian]

He considered for a moment, taking in the room again, that boundary of their space, and glanced at her. His eyes unfocused just a bit as he blinked several times, calling up his meager skill with Auristics to gauge her aura. He still couldn't read much in a person at this level, but he felt like whatever information he got might help nudge his intuition in the right direction. This required some concentration, and a little bit of time. Whether she was adverse to a bit of staring, he didn't know. Finally, he blinked away his Auristics and made a thoughtful face before replying. "I always like to start from the basics, checking my foundations, and then building from there. We can take turns creating our element, watching each other to learn from each other's technique, then we can attempt a bit of a battle, to see which of us is stronger -- you, no doubt -- and then we can attempt to blend our elements. Steam clean the walls, you know?" It seemed like a plan to him. He peered at her again, unabashed at making eye contact and holding it. "What do you think?"

[Elisse]

Elisse watched as Hadrian took in the room before doing so herself. She didn’t see anything particularly flammable, but no doubt she would find the one thing that was. Glancing back at him, she realised he was staring at her. She paused, and raised her eyebrows slightly before figuring he was learned in auristics or something. She looked away, wondering absently what he could read from her aura, though she quickly returned her attention to him when he started to answer her question. This time her eyebrows rose higher. A battle? ”...you, no doubt…” She gave a small smile, that she doubted. After all, he could in theory just douse any flame she attempted to summon with his water. ”What do you think?” She caught his eye and smiled properly. “Sounds good to me.” Starting with the basics was probably a wise idea. After all neither knew where the other was with controlling their element. And as for combining the elements, that sounded like an interesting experiment. Water and fire…she wondered what the result could be. “Um, do you want to demonstrate your water first, or shall I go ahead with the fire?”

[Hadrian]

He shrugged and attempted to still his mind without going into a complete meditative trance, which seemed to make just about any magical endeavor easier. Concentration of the mind led to concentration of the djed, he felt. But in any case, he was not used to an audience when he practiced, and so when he began to shift his djed around until it was moving toward his hand, it was a bit wilder than normal. He attempted to regulate the flow, overcompensating a bit, but all the same, the djed turned to res under his guidance as it poured forth from his pores, not only from his palm, but the back of his hand and up to his wrist as well. Much of the gently glowing stuff spilled to the floor rather than clinging to his hand, collecting, as he willed it to do. His control was imperfect, and perhaps that was why he had been stuck with Elisse for practice. The res seemed to draw the moisture out of the air despite his efforts, and eventually the res was converted to water of a sudden with a sort of explosive force, a thick torrent of water pushing out of his hand to hose down the wall, the force of it nearly knocking him over. "Sloppy," he muttered to himself, frowning.

[Elisse]

Elisse took a few steps back to give Hadrian some space. She rocked once on her heels before clasping her hands behind her back. When she noticed him attempt to calm his mind, she let her gaze wander round the room again; she knew that it was harder to concentrate when someone was watching you. Though her eyes did flicker back to him every now and again. When she noticed res on his palm, she turned her full attention to him. She watched as the substance appeared round his wrist and fell to the floor. She was intrigued by how the fallen res collected itself; Hadrian’s doing she supposed, and she watched it curiously. Perhaps that was why she jumped so violently when the torrent of water rushed past her to collide with the wall. She glanced over at Hadrian who appeared to have overbalanced with the force. She picked up his voice but she didn’t hear the word, so she turned to look at the water again. At least now it’s slightly less flammable… She waited for him to compose himself before she began to concentrate. She closed her eyes for a moment and willed her mind to steady before she raised her hand, palm upwards, in front of her. She didn’t have too much trouble calming herself when there were other people around, so she was quickly able to move her djed in a relatively controlled way. She pushed it down to her hand, and let it collect as res in her palm. She paused and made sure that she was completely focused on her res before changing it. There wasn’t a lot of res there, she was still worried about something catching alight. It sat in two indistinguishable layers and it was the top layer that she converted. She had figured out that this was possible much by accident when a fireball didn’t exactly go as planned, and she was quite proud of herself for it. Sure it wasn't a big display, but it was precise and controlled. So now she stood with fire in her palm, a thin layer of res preventing it from burning her skin. She’d learnt that if she held it for too long she would overgive quite badly, so she made to put it out. It was then that she realised there was no bucket of water for her to plunge her hand in, and she glanced wildly round the room. The water from Hadrian’s display was still covering the floor so she quickly bent and slammed her palm into it, splashing water up her legs as she did so. She stood up and glanced at Hadrian, shaking the water off her hand.

[Hadrian]

Hadrian watched Elisse's technique, rather more practiced than his own, with guarded interest. There was no getting around the fact that he wanted to be the best in all things that mattered to him. It didn't make him competitive with other people, per se, but he would push himself to reach their level, at least. He didn't need the recognition, just the achievement. "Oh," he said, realizing she might need his backup to do this safely. "Next time I will have some ready to put yours out if necessary." He looked faintly embarrassed for not having done that already. "What if we...?" He took her hand in his, and while anywhere else, the twining of his long, tapering fingers between hers might have seemed like a come on, but here he was all business. "If we can both produce res out of the same hand and... twine it out in a double helix from our hands... transmute the res into our elements about a foot away for safety... and send it to the wall? It should produce steam, and even if your fire outdoes my water, the wall is already wet..." Not waiting for her, he produced his own res, concentrating on holding it out in a corkscrew from their hands so she could twine hers through. He quickly began to sweat as this was far beyond his practice so far, but he lived by pushing himself. Blinking several times, he also called up his Auristic vision as best he could for a hazy view of what this was doing on an energetic level. Then he just waited for her to work in tandem.

[Elisse]

Elisse smiled. "It's okay, I should have realized and asked you." She stopped whatever she was about to do when he stepped towards her. "What if we..." She glanced down as he took her hand, curious as to what he was trying to do. Normally she would have tried to pull away, but he started talking again before she even had the chance to consider it. She nodded slowly while he spoke. She considered his solution for a moment. It sounded like it would work, although she wasn't sure of how much effort it would take her. When Hadrian began to produce his res, she watched for a couple of seconds before trying to add in her own. A little frown creased her brow as she concentrated on twining her res through his. It wasn't something that she had ever tried before, and she could immediately feel herself growing a little tired. She didn't change her res yet, she thought that it would be better if Hadrian did his slightly before hers, or if they both went at the same time. She flicked her eyes to him quickly. "Ready when you are."