Infernal Academia

Chapter 52 - Steely Glimmers

Seeing roses bloom where they ought not to.

Cobalt stared at the words he had written on the notepad on his lap, his entire face creased with concentration.  Ever since Caeneus left him with those words, he had been pondering them over and over again, struggling to discern just what they meant.  The Glutton told him that it was supposedly only something an Incubus would understand, but there he sat, staring at the words and not understanding them one bit.  

As he made to draw a line beneath the cryptic phrase, the smooth flow of his pen suddenly grew rough as the ink ran dry.  Frowning, he clicked out the empty cartridge and rummaged around in his satchel for a fresh one.  He had to hand it to Karazelle; this pen was a masterpiece.  If only it didn't run out of ink so often, though that was probably more to do with the fact that he simply hadn't used any other writing implement since she gifted it to him.

"Ow!  Stop poking it!" whined a high-pitched voice on the bleachers next to the Incubus.

"I am checking for fractures," responded a quieter, more monotone voice.

"You don't have to do it so hard!"

"Yes.  Yes I do."

Shutting the notebook for the time being, Cobalt set it aside and glanced over at the two individuals sitting beside him.  Whitney Brode had her arms crossed with one exposed leg lying upon the bleacher, her shin bruised rather badly.  The Nymph was whining and complaining as an apathetic Elya poked and prodded the wound, evidently taking her sweet time in actually treating it.

"Owww~!  Just give me the bandages, I'll do it myself!" she snapped, reaching for the nurse's first-aid bag.

Whitney recoiled as Elya swiftly slapped her wrist.

"I am the medical proffesional tasked with overseeing this joint effort.  Do not undermine me."

"You just like torturing me, don't you?!"

Rather than respond, the Fallen just flicked the bruise, causing Whitney to howl in pain.

Cobalt sighed and wiped his forehead.

"Elya, could you please just sort her leg out, please?  She took a pretty bad hit out there," he sighed, nodding down at the sports field.

Down on the grass, two Applied Demonics classes - the Wrath and the Hubris demons - were in the throes of mock combat as a joint-exercise.  Oni were swinging their axes with reckless abandon and slinging flames and kinetically-charged projectiles all over the place, whilst their Nymph opponents ducked and dived with their spears, countering wherever they could with chained lightning strikes and tactically-conjured illusions.  Over by the sidelines, Mr. Zespire and Mrs. Lundstor were chatting to each other, occasionally calling advice to their students as the melee drew on.

Whitney had been doing okay, up until she fell victim to a rather nasty sweep-kick from none other than Izzbelle, who had been completely overwhelmed by battle-frenzy.  Though she wanted to keep fighting, Mrs. Lundstor insisted that she withdrew to the sidelines, and judging by her flushed cheeks, Cobalt figured that Whitney's pride had taken the most damage from her slipup.  

"Ah, I nearly had her, you know," the Nymph whined, throwing her head back.

"Perhaps you should not have been showing off," Elya responded, applying an icepack to the bruise.

"I- I wasn't!"

The Fallen gazed directly into Whitney's eyes with her piercing violet gaze, causing her cheeks to flush even more than they already were.