Ch 2.50: Echoes

The room began murmuring a little at the mention of a new fencing master, though the talking ceased once a series of footsteps began sounding through the hall. Elaina turned with the rest of the student body, laying eyes once more on Kohpicia Fireguard.

If she had been close to the most beautiful person Elaina had seen earlier in the day, it wasn’t even a competition anymore. It wasn’t the same beauty she saw in her friends, the kind that sprang forth both from body and soul, but one of pure aesthetics, an undeniable aura about the woman that called your attention to her. The entire school was a chorus of quiet as Koh walked through in a shimmering, fire-red ballgown, her curled platinum blonde hair flowing across shoulders that held themselves and her head high, sporting with a gentle face, neither smiling nor frowning, just existing in an elegance that Elaina had never even dreamed possible before this moment.

At first she thought the room was as stunned as she was about the woman’s beauty and grace, but she felt an eerie similarity as Koh climbed up to the staff table, walking and taking her spot next to Headmaster Alonse. This wasn’t the silence of a room stunned by beauty, but that of a people speechless from shock, the echo of the silence Elaina felt on her orientation, as dozens of people stared on while she failed to even get a single reading from the awakening stone. This time it wasn’t just the first-years though, hundreds instead of dozens.

“Hey Waine, no comments about duds this time?”

The words weren’t the same, not even from the same person, but they were an echo of Waine’s own outburst during orientation regardless, and the cacophony of laughter that followed was an echo of the response then as well.

Elaina’s eyes darted around, watching countless people laughing. She hadn’t seen it last time, only felt it, and somehow seeing it made it worse, the hateful glee in the eyes of the people jeering. Almost everyone was joined in, even to the teachers who were failing to stifle their laughs with their arms, only two groups still sitting in stunned silence, one being Elaina’s party, and the other a couple on the other side of the room.

Prisma had her head down again, the same look Elaina had witnessed when this happened before, and most of her friends, Ivis, Daly, Nyla, all had the same obnoxious, guffawing faces as the people around them.

But Waine didn’t. He was looking up at the staff table, still stunned into silence, eyes glazed over with shock as they stared up at his once fiance. Koh herself had a look Elaina recognized beyond any of the others, though not one she’d ever seen before. It was the look of abject despair, the sickening realization that you were a failure, the knowing that nothing was ever going to be okay again, the look Elaina knew she must have had on her face when she had stood in that same spot just weeks ago.

“Enough!” The word rang through the hall with the intensity of a thundercrack, causing Elaina to wince in pain at the volume, her ears ringing as the sound echoed over and over, dissipating again into silence. As Elaina opened her eyes again she saw the heads of here fellow students, all lowered in shame except her, her friends, and Waine and Prisma.

“You,” Alonse continued, a wrinkled finger pointing into the crowd and singling out one students Elaina didn’t recognize, “my office the instant I am done speaking. And the rest of you should feel equal shame, everyone of you,” he said as he glanced to the staff behind him.

“Professor Fireguard is the most accomplished swordfighter in the world, and she could defeat a good ninety percent of you here in a duel without restrictions. With aspects restricted, she could just as easily beat any two of you simultaneously. You should be grateful and honored for the opportunity to study under her.”

Alonse’s presence washed over the room. Even without his altered voice, the man commanded a certain amount of respect. It gave Koh enough time to step up and clear her throat.

“I’ve thought a lot about what to say here,” she said, hands folded across her waist, her face now returned to the state of grace and tranquility it had before. “I’d first like to thank you for having me here. It is an honor to be allowed to teach here, to take over for my dear friend and mentor who taught before me.

“In another world, I would have been your classmate, sitting out there in those same tables. The headmaster overstates my skills a little, but everything I know I learned from Professor Ranlit. I can’t imagine I’ll be the level of teacher that she was, but I know she’d want her teachings carried on in some way, and that she thought me capable enough to declare me a master of her sword arts.”

She bent low, presenting the top of her head to the student body sitting below her. “I will do my best to carry on her legacy. In an effort to do such, I ask for your support, so that I will have the opportunity to support you in turn.” Returning upright, she walked away, leaving both Alonse and a wake of silence behind as she sat down at the staff table.

“That is all,” Alonse said. “Now if you'll excuse me, I must away to my office for a meeting.” As he too left, Elaina began to grind her teeth in rage. There had been shock before, the pain of being reminded about what happened to her, but it was festering into something different now, an even worse feeling. Beyond monsters, beyond the Red Order, beyond criminal organizations, Elaina was becoming more and more aware of the ugliness in her world, and she didn’t like it one bit.