Sand swept over distant dunes of a nearby village; one of the nearby houses had collapsed due to its old age - the mud it was made out of already had shown cracks on its walls, cracks that he had noticed but never pointed out as he tried his best to instead fix them himself with the little clay he was able to mix himself. The old lady who died under the rubble of its collapsed roof that day never even saw his face or knew of his name; he was called timid, clumsy, or helpless, but he was never discovered by anyone when stuffing the cracks of the hut's walls.
He couldn't even find the grave she was buried in, quietly sobbing to himself at the entrance of the tiny graveyard that was more just a secluded part of the village riddled with makeshift graves that were marked by pebble rings or clay slabs with engraved names written on them. He sat there, on the weathered, sandstone walls that surrounded the place - barely reaching his waist as he stared out onto the graves and wept silently, his eyes not blinking as his tears flowed, trying to find the person's grave to at least apologize for his lack of courage all these days prior.
The hut he called home was a short trek away, a path leading up a hill and then turning right, weaving through the smoking remains of what used to be a local Sabahr'Kifar that was destroyed by northern forces during their march through the region. Every time he passed by the ruins, he felt the ghostly sensation of his mother's trembling hands on his shoulders as the two of them were amongst the many that watched the destruction of their place of prayer.
Clutching his arms, he sank his head. Those foreign people that used nothing but water, a good people that fought over everything every day at the market, to blow through walls almost sounded comical as the sight looped through his head over and over again. His home was empty now; his older brother had been long gone to serve in the capital as a warrior, leaving him and his mother by themselves. They had enough food and water to survive, but the sense of emptiness never left him.
Today was a particularly bad day. On his way to school, which was just someone's hut with a few extra carpets to sit on and a larger collection of scrolls to read and write on, he was ambushed by a few older boys - their kicks hitting his ribs and the side of his head as they stomped onto him, making the dust and sand of the ground cling to his cheeks as he cried out in agony. He remembered well how, on that day, he simply stayed there, lying limply on his side, slightly curled up and unable to move, as every movement of his joints sent an aching pain through him.
Days blurred together, life was the same, and the repetition of being beaten, attending reading classes, and watching his mother cook for them without speaking a word never ended until he one day was shaken frantically awake, his blurry eyes locked on what actually was a hopeful grin on his mother's face. That day he didn't understand; she didn't say a word, only sobbed as if she felt relief or something close to hope as she dragged him out by his wrist and pushed him into a crammed carriage that had parked on the road a few houses further.
Staring at his mother as she waved at him with tears streaming down her eyes, he simply stared back at her - then the other people of the village that surrounded the carriage. He barely had a place to sit amongst the other children; most of them had their skin burnt by the constant light of the sun. Only a tiny sum of them wore metal masks and were almost completely covered by thin robes. It almost felt like they were hoarded like cattle, sent off to somewhere, at least to him since nobody thought to tell him about why he would be leaving his home amongst the others so suddenly.
All of them, including him, didn't dare to ask the men in the front of the carriage for a reason why they were led out; one masked person possessed a sacred sunshard, which allowed them to advance through the sand. Two foreign, metal-plate-wearing men were seated right beside him; not only they but also the carriage was colored in a tone of blue he had never really seen before. Quietly overhearing the whispers of the other children, he eventually found out about the north; these men were from the Water Kingdom.
Their arrival in Giv'Narva changed things; before they had even arrived at the port town, some of them had already begun to complain about the little amount of food and water. He didn't mind the sparse food; his family wasn't particularly wealthy, already scraping by. Most of the money they were able to collect by his mother's efforts in fishing was spent on him going to school. He tried to plea for his mother to let him help with her work, but any effort was futile.
The only thing he remembered between Giv'Narva and them crossing the border was one day waking up to the child next to him emptily staring at his sleeping form. Their bony limbs were crouched together as they tried to lie in the cramped space of the ride, huddled together and visibly only a few sun cycles away from fainting. Whoever it was, the reason they stared at him wasn't because they had recognized him - the tiny fly that sat right on their dimmed iris made it undeniably obvious that they had died overnight.
He too was able to see every one of his ribs now; some of them bragged about being fleshier than the others, while other children cried at the demise of their friend they made along their journey. The two men that sat beside the driver seemed indifferent about the casualties; the food situation didn't change much, but water became more plentiful the deeper they drove into the woods.
Then, finally, after a grueling journey - from what was a group of twelve children - he and three others looked at the town of Cascrender. He had made it, so he thought, as his life at the university showed him that, no matter what he seemed to survive, he'd get beaten up for existing anywhere - the sliver of pride he allowed himself to feel quickly tasted bitter.
...
"...she's not injured anywhere."
Foulard's tone was a dim hush of relief while he was also slightly confused, glancing up at Midas while his hand still rested on the pulse point on the side of Uteli's throat. They had to find somewhere safe to place Uteli while she was still unconscious; neither Qayid nor Fils would search his old dorm now - either they probably already tried searching there or knew from the start that he wouldn't come back to the soaked place.
Having crouched down to Uteli as she sat on the still somewhat damp bed of his, Midas eventually turned his head towards the window that gave a distant view of the campus and the main building at its center. Smoke began to rise out of a few cracked glasses, and more and more students began to pour out of the gates while the knighthood tried their best to control the situation at hand.
Qayid stood by his word - Midas grimaced to himself; the man he had freed from his prison not only turned on him but also started a revolution that is doomed to fail and put multiple lives on the line. Emptily staring out there, the realization that Haya was most likely one of the knights controlling the mass of panicked students eventually caught him. He had to get out of here without running into either Fils and the knights around him or Qayid while also bringing Haya and Uteli with him.
Just as he wanted to turn back to Foulard, Skye eventually got up from sitting on the same bed beside Uteli and wandered up to the window - her hands were crossed behind her back as she quietly observed the chaos outside, her expression more thoughtful than panicked.
"Look... they must've laid fire to the building, and now they're all running. Someone used a water stone just now. I... I feel sorry for Fils right now."
Midas looked at Skye with confusion as she suddenly blurted out her feelings with a quiet murmur while her hand was still pointing to the supposed window; she saw blue light quickly flare out of it, the boy that robbed her of her freedom and treated her more like an investment if anything now was suddenly someone she cared about. Perhaps the occasional bit of care he did show for her was enough to make her not dislike him.
"Why is that...?"
"Because he taught me all these things... he never hit me when I made mistakes or scolded me for pressing the wrong key on the Blaincaile... he was quite thoughtful and always scribbled tiny remarks onto my notepapers to remind me of my errors. On the outside... he always acted rough and pulled me away from others - but when we were all alone, he always quietly watched me..."
She wore a tiny, delicate smile as she looked down at the floor in thought, fidgeting her fingers. She eventually glanced up at Midas - reluctant. She eventually raised her arm to point at the building again as her expression became more focused.
"I just... want to do him a favor. Only this once... so I can finally put this behind me."
Going after her request was a risk; he never exchanged many words with Fils, so his presence during such a chaotic event could very easily be misinterpreted by either him or the guards that most likely surround him. Then again, knowing Skye, she would most likely try to reach him on her own - with only the axe. Midas didn't trust her in achieving her goal, and having to free her from Fils' grasp again was something he tried to avoid at all costs.
"I guess..."
Muttering reluctantly to accept her wish, Midas turned to the still unconscious Uteli, who lay on his bed next to Foulard, whose attention was caught by the many soaked papers that were still stuck partially on the floorboards. If all of them were to go out there, she'd be left on her own, unable to help herself, which would bind at least one of them to guarding her.
"Skye... would you mind if you didn't come with us but kept an eye on her instead...?"
He would need Foulard for a potential encounter with Qayid, or if things with Fils went south - Skye had heard of mana fundamentals, and the axe she held onto didn't seem to discomfort her too much, but still, having her go could become a problem once he had his hands full with whatever chaos awaited outside.
"Alright. I can stay."
Once again, Skye sounded much more focused, her eyes fixed on Uteli's closed ones while she gripped the handle of her axe tighter. To Mida's surprise, she didn't protest one bit; even though her giddy side was gone, she almost seemed determined to do the task she was told to do. With a slightly distressed expression, Foulard got up and glanced at the window again, flinching slightly at the growing unrest at the academy gate and the smoke that trailed out the broken windows.
In the foyer, already abandoned by any student that would stay here, Midas briefly turned back to Foulard as his hand already rested on the nub of the door; seeing his partner nod at him, he opened it up. The field in front of the main academy building was a mess; spikes of stone and puddles of water made it obvious that mana stones are already being used, still needing a few steps before they would reach the main entrance. Midas' eyes tried their best to find Haya.
Through the masses of students, finding the mana of one singular person with closed lids was impossible, as all signatures blended together into one blob - his grasp over the Null-Ability was enough to pick up a presence from a floor away from him, but not good enough to extract one singular signature out of so many. The masses were held back and slowly filtered through by the knighthood, most of them at the gate themselves, others fleetingly placed around the crowd.
The students of noble descent were filtered out first, then came the rest, hands reached out, and some grasped onto the rods the iron gate was made out of - all of them shouting, some begging to be finally let through as a stone projectile narrowly avoided hitting one of the students. Barely being destroyed by the water bending of one of the guards, Midas' ears picked up Foulard's shout, his heart sinking as he looked up at the roof - barely able to duck beneath it, while he still ran towards the building.
"On the roof...!"
Before Foulard could react to what Midas shouted back, he felt a gust of wind hit his hair as a stone projectile blitzed through the campus - the impact destroying the window the people on the roof climbed out of, making one of them slip and fall as a tiny portion of the roof collapsed. Hearing a scream echo, before the dull drop of the body reached his ear, Foulard raised his gauntlet - a somewhat stable umbrella of water covering them.
"Midas, without things to confine the water, I can't keep it up for long...!"
"Just a bit...! I think that one was Qannas...!"
Gritting his teeth, as his eyes locked onto another stone bullet, which was stuck in the film of water and caused it to become more shallow, Midas grasped it, forcing mana into his hand to reinforce his strength to crush it up into the rubble it was made from. Focusing, he threw a bit of the rubble out, some lost to the air, while the others stayed suspended in the air under the influence of his sunshard. Aligning the rubble on the edges of the water film, he was eventually able to create a loose frame on which the edges of Foulard's water could hang.
"Yes, that works...!"
Exclaiming, Foulard poured more mana into his waterstone, thickening it further so any more projectiles wouldn't be able to burst through it anymore. Only a mere few steps away from getting inside now, Midas' eyes widened as two figures suddenly stuck their heads out the burst windows right over the entrance - the stone arch of the door frame beginning to crack and eventually starting to inevitably collapse right in front of them.
Pressing his palms onto the plastered ground, Midas shot a pillar of stone up from the ground, able to hold the arch up for just a few moments longer so they could get inside the building in time. Ducking as their entrance began to crumble right in front of them, the two of them were finally inside, even though they were now also entrapped. Coughing slightly, Midas noticed smoke clinging to the roof, flowing out of the cracks.
"Idiots laid fire... in the water kingdom..."
Muttering in distain, he furrowed his brows, able to make out distant sounds of clashing metal from afar on the second floor. Nudging Foulard to follow him, Midas made his way upstairs. Some of the bricks the walls were made from were missing; stone blocks were oddly raised out of the sides and ground of the hallway they were walking through.
The two students from earlier were already looking for them, ducked behind one of the stray pillars, and Midas waited for one of them to pass by - shooting up from his hiding spot and ramming his sickle tip into the student's throat before he could utter a word. The sound of a dropped body alarmed the second one on the other end of the hallway, his hip pierced through by another of Qannas stone projectiles.
"Have you ever seen Fils bend before...?"
"No...! To be honest... I now only know his name because of that pink-haired girl...!"
Breathing heavily at their running, they passed by charred carpets and scorched paintings and hopped over missing pieces of rubble that used to belong to the roof above their heads. The golden light that shone through the fractured mosaics on the long windows was still somehow able to make the rampaged halls of the building look somehow imposing. The echoes of clashing metal came closer; Fils would be most likely waiting right around the corner, judging by the shouting, already fighting a group of students.
"Midas! Thank you for listening to that girl..."
The calm tone that called to him made him halt suddenly; in front of him was a student in a long robe - having climbed up and through the window despite being blind, none other than Qannas. Him being here most likely meant that he was hiding in the dorms all along, having overheard their conversation with Skye.
"The son of the commander still has a promise to fulfill for me, so it would be to my own benefit if he'd survive this mess."
"I see... thanks for the help anyway..."
Breathing out relief to see him instead of anyone else, Midas turned around in the direction Qannas' eyes already stared at - the two of them suddenly picking up a high spike in mana from the direction of where Fils was.
"What...?"
His head snapped back sharply at the sound of the floor above them collapsing; through it shot Qayid, an animalistic grin on him, his hands already smeared in blood as he landed right behind Qannas - his left hook arriving before he could even twist his back towards him, the blow not only taking his breath away but also catapulting the blind boy right into the wall - cracking it.
Combing his long hair back, while Qannas' body limply slid down to the ground, Midas and Foulard watched with wide eyes as Qayid's finger pointed right onto him. His eyes were faintly rimmed in red, sharply on noone else but Midas.
"Sucks to lose a friend, right...? You take out all of the people who simply fight for a better life without a thought in the world when it comes to your own goals... but once someone retaliates, you look at them like that. Didn't I tell you...? If I see you another time, it will be your last... I told you, right...?"