Inside the boys' restroom.
"Young Master, what if that bastard dies inside the gate?" Nack asked warily, pulling his head away from the swirling gate to glance at Eldric.
Eldric leaned against the wall with his hands tucked in his pockets, his cold gaze fixed on the gate as it pulsed yellow light like coiling smoke around its edges. He merely glanced at Nack, and Nack, like a cat caught by its tail, immediately snapped his head away.
Eldric shifted his weight and turned his head sideways toward the restroom's entrance, which his boys were guarding from both inside and outside. The arrangement was deliberate. If any student tried to push past the boys outside, the ones stationed inside would stop them before they could take a single step in. Thankfully, no one had entered yet. But it was only a matter of time before someone came barging through. He had tasked his boys with turning away anyone who tried, steering them toward the other restrooms down the hall. He had not stepped outside himself, remaining entirely within, yet he trusted his boys to follow his word. Still, he could imagine it well enough, the looks of confusion on students who had simply wanted to use the restroom, being nudged away without explanation.
Eldric cracked his neck, popping the stiffness from his bones. He could feel the nervousness spreading among his boys like a slow infection. They were frightened. Terrified that someone might barge in at any moment and send the whole situation spiraling into something none of them wanted to imagine.
But he was not nervous. Rather, he was angry. He was barely holding himself back from lashing out at every single one of his boys for failing to do their job properly. They could have stopped that bastard from entering. They could have grabbed him, stopped him, done something. Instead, they had stood silent and motionless while the bastard stretched out his hand and stepped right through. Eldric clenched his fist until his knuckles whitened. If that bastard came out alive, he would make sure that the bastard understood exactly where he stood.
***
Alex was pulled from the inside as he stepped through the gate, which looked exactly like the one he had entered. The very next moment, darkness swallowed him for a split second, not even a full split second, perhaps a tenth of one, and then he was out the other side.
He had barely taken his first step back into the outside world when a thunderous voice cracked through the air and echoed in his ears. A primal urgency seized him, and in that same tenth of a second, he jerked his head back and narrowly let Nack's fist tear past his face.
"You bastard, how dare you..." Nack's voice cut off as he stumbled forward from the force of his own missed swing, though he caught himself quickly and steadied his footing.
Nack whipped his head toward Alex with vicious speed, and yet Alex saw every single moment of it with startling clarity. "You dare to dodge my punch," Nack snarled, his voice dropping into something low and animal, and he hurled his entire body at Alex, clearly intending to drive Alex into the ground.
But unlike before, when Nack's movements had always seemed to blur past him in a rush, Alex now saw everything, the precise moment Nack planted his foot and pushed off the floor, the angle of his lunge, and the trajectory of his body through the air. Alex sidestepped cleanly, and Nack crashed to the floor with a grunt of pain.
Is he really this weak? The thought passed through Alex's mind, and he genuinely could not make sense of what was happening.
Then, at the edge of his vision, something moved. It moved like a gust of wind, cutting toward him with terrifying speed. Alex immediately threw his arms up in a cross in front of his body and braced himself as the punch cracked against his forearms and drove him back a step. Pain flared deep in the bone, but he gritted his teeth and absorbed it.
Eldric stood before him wearing a look that could only be described as menace, his black eyes wide and blazing with fury, his jaw tight, nostrils fuming out anger. Eldric dragged his fist back and launched it at Alex again. This time, Alex did not raise his hand to defend. Instead, in the very instant the attack left Eldric's shoulder, Alex dropped his body low beneath it, formed a tight fist with his right hand, and drove it squarely into Eldric's exposed stomach.
Whether Eldric had been caught entirely off guard or had simply misjudged the power of the punch, the punch landed clean. Eldric choked on his breath and folded forward at the waist. Alex took the opening immediately, sweeping his leg in a clean arc that knocked Eldric's feet out from under him and sent him falling to the white marble floor with a heavy thud, his face pressing against the cold, wet surface.
Eldric looked as though he had seen a ghost. The rage that had twisted his face a moment ago had collapsed into something raw and disbelieving, and he stared up at Alex for a beat longer than he likely meant to before composure returned to him and he pushed himself sharply to his feet.
Alex stepped back and immediately caught the sound of a foot behind him. He shifted left, and Nack's punch sailed past Alex once again. In one fluid motion, Alex seized Nack's outstretched arm and used the man's own momentum to fling his body directly at Eldric.
Having already recovered himself, Eldric quickly stepped aside. Nack's body hit the floor and rolled, his groaning echoing off the tiles as he came to a stop.
Alex might have allowed himself a moment of satisfaction, but there was no room for it. Eldric's minions, who had been standing at the entrance, had closed in around him and now formed a tight circle with Alex at its center.
Eldric stepped forward from among them, cracking his knuckles slowly and deliberately. He spat on the floor. "How dare you fight back," Eldric growled, and then his fist moved once again, faster this time, so much faster that Alex barely managed to tilt his head aside to let it skim past. Just as Alex thought that he had dodged the attack. He had started thinking that he could match Eldric. But, it turned out to be completely, utterly wrong. Eldric's pace doubled in an instant and his other fist came screaming toward Alex's stomach. Alex waited for the impact.
But, it never came.
When Alex looked down, Eldric's fist had stopped dead in the air, frozen only inches from his body. Eldric himself had gone still, and the expression on his face was no longer fury. It was something closer to dread, the look of a predator who has just realized, with horrible certainty, that something far more dangerous than himself has entered the room.
"You have done enough for today." The voice that cut through the silence was one Alex had come to recognize, and it rang out from behind him with a calm authority that seemed to press down on the entire restroom like a weight. The space had gone so utterly quiet that Alex could hear the unsteady breathing of Eldric and every one of his minions.
Alex turned to face the source of the voice.
***
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