Look Beyond What You See

Fire and Water

 The two young men begin to circle each other, sizing each other up and examining the training area as they do so. My heart is in my throat. I do not like this situation at all. I've positioned myself in a corner in the hopes that they'll keep their attacks away from me. I wish just as strongly that we'd use this time on targets or something. Did Wesley not tell Giacomo that, while I have improved immensely in various skills since learning of my magical endowment, I am nowhere near ready for any sort of combat? But what would Wesley know of that, unless Dmitri told him?

Giacomo, as challenger, moves first, launching a mighty wave of water in Dmitri's direction. Dmitri leaps into the air and wings of fire sprout from his shoulders, holding him safely out of the wave's path as he shapes and throws fireballs. He does this seemingly effortlessly. My breath catches watching him. I knew he had a lot of control with his ability, but I did not realize that he was so powerful. Giacomo, however, narrowly dodges all of the fireballs and responds with well-aimed geysers beneath Dmitri--attempts to knock him out of the air--once the wave subsides. Dmitri seems harder pressed to dodge these; some of the geysers he avoids by only a hair's breadth. The fireballs are smaller but come faster. Giacomo creates a water shield so that he can focus on other things. Dmitri flies faster and in erratic patterns while creating the largest fireball I've ever seen. He must think the water shield obscures Giacomo's vision or something, which might be accurate; the water of the shield moves rapidly, making Giacomo appear as just a vague, blurry shape behind it.

Water bursts from a large section of the ceiling just as Dmitri releases his immense flaming masterpiece in Giacomo's direction. His wings become sizzling clouds of steam when the deluge hits them and he plummets to the ground, hitting hard but rolling to his feet outside of the splash zone with a practised air. The fireball slams into the water shield and a roaring sizzle drowns out all other sounds as steam engulfs fully half the room around where the shield once stood. I lose sight of both of them in the thick white steam, but clashing roars of flame, roaring splashes of water, and brilliant flashes emit from the opaque clouds. My pulse throbs in my throat and my heart drums against my chest. Why so nervous?

An eruption of flame explodes through the clouds, burning them to faint memories and throwing Giacomo across the training area. He lands on his feet, skidding backward a metre or two as a tsunami rushes forth from his hands towards the focal point of the explosion. His eyes glitter with determination. The ends of his blond ropes of hair are smouldering. In that moment he is powerful and alluring--until I remember who is at the receiving end of that tsunami, which reaches near to the ceiling. Dmitri cannot fly above this one, and he must be running low on energy. All of these things he's been doing must take so much of it. But the eruption of flame has not shrunk; instead it seems to grow by degrees and spirals ever-faster, shooting off fiery darts in all directions. They actually pierce through the wave, though much diminished. I duck one, and Giacomo is nearly hit by three; perhaps he was not expecting them.

The wave crashes into the fiery vortex with another deafening, sizzling roar. Almost immediately Dmitri bursts out of the water and the quickly forming cloud of steam, propelled by a tail of flames, ever being extinguished by the water they come through and being regenerated through Dmitri's power. I am amazed. Another wave from Giacomo, this one more substantial. Dmitri drops abruptly to the ground, flames gone, and lets the wave pass over him, drenching him thoroughly, before leaping up again and resuming a barrage of fireballs and fiery darts on Giacomo. The water-bender is stunned. He underestimated Dmitri's skill, or perhaps that dogged, bitter determination that gleams in my fiancé's eyes is the cause for this strength. Giacomo quickly recovers his wits and forms another water shield, which is quickly followed by geysers under and around Dmitri, who leaps and flips out of range while maintaining the barrage of fiery paraphernalia.