Chapter 7

The Iron Maiden

The center of the Mess Hall was now a funeral pyre. Out of his fury, Seva had accidentally, or perhaps deliberately incinerated his opponent into ash. There were no cheers over the Elemental Trio's victory. Just murmurs of grief for the death of a fellow Young Magister.

"Don't tell me she's…"

"They just killed her."

Hellena fell on her knees, her face buried in her hands. Even Kyro and Sakura looked troubled as well, but they didn't mourn for the loss of their friend just yet.

"No…it's all my fault…" Hellena wept uncontrollably.

"Goodbye and good riddance." Seva sneered, his eyes were looking at the pillar of flames with satisfaction. Turning himself around, the leader of the Elemental Trio addressed the crowd of students in a threatening voice. "Let this be a lesson to all of you! For this what happens when weaklings stand against those who are superior to them. Know your own place! Or else you might end up like our unfortunate dear student here!"

"What have you done!? Seva!" Kyro shouted.

"I just put your floozy in her rightful place, that's what I've done! You should have taught her a few lessons in manners." Seva replied.

Kyro didn't say anything after that. To be precise, he felt like he couldn't do anything, he was powerless to stop them from killing his own friend. All he could do was tightened his lips and clenched his fists as he watched the blaze where Tasia was being cremated.

"That's right, Kyro! Sit back and act like a coward you are! That's the only thing you're good at, after all!" Xander mocked.

It only took a couple of minutes of minutes for the blazing 'pyre' to finally extinguish itself. Nobody could see what had actually happened to Tasia due to the thick cloud of black smoke that was released around the battleground. Though most of them expected what they would be seeing once the fumes cleared away; a charred remains of a sixteen year-old girl.

"Come on now, Tasia. Don't do this now, please." Sakura prayed silently, her hands clasped together in front of her face.

"Now listen carefully!" Seva bellowed. "Once this is all over, you are to act like all of this has never happened. No one is to mention of this ever again, especially not to the High Magisters. What happened here was an act of defense which leads to an unfortunate accident!"

Seva walked towards the crowd of students and approached Hellena. The poor girl couldn't do anything when the bully yanked her by the hair and pulled her teary-eyed face closer to him.

"Let her go!" Kyro shouted, to which Seva completely ignored.

Seva continued speaking. "What really happened was that a mentally-unstable female student had attacked this defenseless little girl here for no specific reason! And we, the Elemental Trio had to stop her by force, to an extent that we had to use fatal methods against her!"

"And if any of you speak otherwise!" Hummel added.

"You'll be sharing the same fate as our floozy here!" Xander finished, cackling fiendishly.

The trio of bullies had managed to instill fear among the students successfully. Everyone in the Mess Hall began to cower, some of them have started sobbing and crying.

Just as Sakura was about to lose all her hope, a strongly familiar voice came from the veil of smoke where the 'pyre' had once burned.

"A mentally-unstable student? Man, that's just plain stupid!

Hearing the voice, Seva's grasp on Hellena immediately broke loose by itself. Hellena was then dropped to the floor, her face also looked disbelieved.

"It can't be!" Seva exclaimed.

The smoke cleared away, revealing the unscathed figure whom everyone presumed to be dead. The crowd was shocked when they saw that Tasia was still standing before them. Even though the young girl had taken a direct hit from Seva's devastating fireball, she somehow remained unhurt, without even a single scratch on her skin, to which surprised the crowd even more.

"That's…that's not possible." Hellena sniffed, though her heart have lightened up a little bit upon knowing that Tasia was alive.

"Took you long enough, idiot." Sakura's lips formed a thin smile.

"How can you still be alive, after taking a hit from Ignis Malleum!?" Xander hissed.

Tasia gave the Elemental Trio an impassive stare, while she performed a few stretching with her arms. "To be honest, your little firework was a quite a pain to block. I had to admit, if I hadn't strengthen my defense, you could've killed me. Well, it seems I owe it all to my father."

In a matter of seconds, Tasia's skin produced a dull, metallic glow. It was as if her whole body was being coated in a layer of silvery steel alloy. Even her long, dark brown hair began to glow slightly silver. Besides that, the rest of her physical appearances remained unchanged.

After finished stretching out her limbs, Tasia proceeded with fixing her gloves. "Thanks for showing me all those tricks earlier. Helped me a lot in learning the nature of your Magic. Since I knew what you three are capable of, I guess now is the time for me to show you what my Magic is capable of."

While everyone else was distracted by Tasia's sudden comeback, Sakura helped Hellena back up by lifting her on one shoulder.

"Is that…her magic?" Hellena asked, with a tone mixture of both shock and amazement.

Sakura nodded, her eyes were pointed at Tasia. "Unlike most other common Magic in this world, Tasia's Magic is unique. Only very few people had managed to utilize it. One of the Eight True Martial Arts Magic. A Magic which is said to turn one's skin and blood into iron, making the user into a powerful sword and an unbreakable shield. The Art of the Iron Curtain."

"The Art of the Iron Curtain." Hellena noted it in her mind while she continued watching Tasia with slight admiration.

"I told you already, Tasia is going to win. Don't you agree, Kyro?"

But Kyro didn't give any reply. Then Sakura realized that he had been quiet ever since they saw Tasia surviving Seva's attack. Now she understood why.

Kyro's eyes had never moved away from the figure in white standing on the mezzanine. Sakura heard him muttering something under his breath.

"Just what are you planning to do with this?"

"You bitch! I thought I've heard your name somewhere before!" Seva cursed. "The girl who've defeated five 1st Class Martial Arts students single-handedly during her Trial. The daughter and disciple of the famous Iron Fist Feng!"

"You're Anastasia! Anastasia the Iron Maiden!"

Clenching her two fists, Tasia went into a stable fighting stance. "Now let us begin round two, shall we?"

For the second time, Tasia advanced towards the Elemental Trio, only this time she was ready to defeat her opponents with her Magic.

"So you're planning to hit us at close range, eh? Bad idea!" Seva formed a spherical flame between his palms and spread his arms outward.

"Ignis Avem!"

Dozens of flaming birds flew out from the 'hatched' fireball and homed themselves on Tasia. This time with ease, Tasia managed to dodge all of the firebirds by sidestepping around as she made her way towards Seva.

"You better try something else." Tasia smirked. It was not long when she was at close distance with Seva and his comrades.

"You're quite fast, but that doesn't mean you can get close to Seva without breaking my shield!" Hummel said as he came to stand in front of Seva and Xander. The broad boy barricaded Tasia's path, with his Mons Brachium shield gauntlet guarding his body.

"You have to try harder than that, baldy!"

Tasia threw out a direct center punch against Hummel's shield. To everyone's surprise, Hummel's supposedly unbreakable rock-hard gauntlet, broke into pieces when Tasia's iron-hard fist came into contact with its surface. Rubbles from the broken gauntlet splattered violently on Hummel, his body was flinched backwards by the powerful force of Tasia's punch.

"Impossible!" Hummel roared. "My Mons Brachium is…" Before he could regain his footing, nor finished up his sentence, Tasia made another step forward and threw in another punch, this time hitting him square in the face, throwing the boy backwards in the process.

"You damn floozy!" Xander cursed. "Aqua Verbere!"

A water tendril grew out from the floor, preparing to constrict Tasia from behind. This time, Tasia was prepared for Xander's attack. She jumped into the air and somersaulted a few paces backwards. She landed directly in front of Xander, who was standing behind her all this time. The chopstick of a boy didn't even bothered to counterattack, for he was too shocked by Tasia's acrobatic feat which had led her in avoiding his fast-moving Aqua Verbere successfully.

"And my name's not Floozy. It's Anastasia!" Tasia delivered a roundhouse kick on Xander's temple. He spun around in mid-air before falling hard against the floor.

While Tasia was preoccupied with Xander, Seva took that opportunity to approach her from behind. "Ignire." he chanted quietly, flames began to engulf his right hand. With great fury, Seva threw his burning fist at Tasia.

However, in a single swift motion, Tasia spun around to face Seva. She grabbed his still-burning fist just as the latter was about to hit her, greatly surprising the Elemental Trio's leader and also the entire crowd of spectators.

The two opponents stared at each other, eye-to-eye. The burning flames on Seva's hand suddenly extinguished, his whole body had begun to shiver. From his eyes Tasia could already guessed what he was afraid of at that moment.

"This is…this can't be happening. A piece of trash like yourself! This is ridiculous!" stammered Seva as he tried to cover up his fear.

"Will you just shut up!?" Tasia retorted, punching Seva in the face, causing him to lose his balance. Her first attack was followed by a hard thrust kick on the boy's guts, sending him flying backwards and crashing into the floor.

Seva clutched his stomach in pain, and started to cough up heavily. He turned to look at his two friends, both Hummel and Xander, including himself, were knocked down from their feet in less than a minute, by a single female Young Magister. A 2nd Class female Young Magister.

Tasia glared at her three opponents. All of them were submitted to the ground, yet they were trying to get back up. She already expected that her fight was far from over.

"Good! Now get up! It's time you learn, that even those you consider as trash, are ten times better than tyrants like you!" Tasia beckoned her opponents in a taunting manner.