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Freyja Eloquijm is rumored to be a descendent of the goddesses Aphrodite and Hera. However, this could very well just be an inside joke and lore created by other students of the school in reference to her seductive prowess and charm. She is a very fiery woman who is in her third year in the upper level of the academy, though she has been here since she was seven or eight. Not much is known about her background, or the years of her childhood leading up to her entrance into the academy. At the time, the admissions director claimed to be her uncle, but he has since died an untimely death as a result of some politics with the dark magic outside of the school. It was said to be an accident, but the few people that were there knew differently. No one will say what really happened. One of the others that was there was Henriik, who started dating her shortly after. He is the only child of the owner of the academy, and has stepped up in protecting her and keeping her safe for the last several years. They are certainly the "it" couple of the school.

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It is not known what realm she is from, but her powers involve fire manipulation and generation, giving her the ability to create and manipulate fire. She also has the ability to use fire to aid her movement and the movement of others. She is not always in control of her power and her rage, which sometimes results in people getting burned. People with the earth and healing elements can heal wounds inflicted by her within twelve hours. Water elements are lethal to her, and when working together with the powers of air elements, she increases her power exponentially.

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As far as school politics, Freyja has a reputation for being one of the most popular girls, if not THE queen bee. Many people avoid her for fear of crossing her, but everyone knows who she is and her position of power. Alongside Henriik, she is untouchable, as is he. They rule the school entirely. Though the is cold with many people, she is especially vicious towards [insert name], and nobody knows why. They have been rivals for longer than anyone else has been at the school. A select one or two people recall a time long ago when Freyja was friendly to many, but no one knows what caused her drastic change. If they do, no one will speak on it at all.

Zane Caldre

Credits to me

"Fire and water don't mix": a common warning as Zane was growing up, and one he ignored for the first few years of blissful childhood. He played too close to the flames, though, and got burned -- literally. He does not shy away from much, but even the smallest flame sparking to life will earn a flinch from him. While his skin is decorated with a few scars here and there, most of which are unnoticeable, he has two major wounds on his back: one goes straight along his spine and the other slings across his right shoulder. The former looks more gruesome and still proves somewhat detrimental to his range of motion; bending forward too far for too long becomes uncomfortable, if not painful. Zane doesn't necessarily mind his scars being brought up, but he does not acknowledge conversations regarding them. He just won't talk about it.

He manipulates water in all its forms, twisting life itself to bend to his will, but he cannot create it. Zane himself is a reflection of the element. His build is tall and lean rather than bulky or chiseled like an earth element. His movements are fluid but strong, his voice is low and lulling but with a dangerous undertow. In most cases, he is calm on the surface and unpredictable beneath. He is a part of everyone's lives, yet they are so used to his quiet presence that he easily disappears into the background. That's how he likes it. Zane is aloof, to say the least. He is not one for socialization, and he would much rather spend his time improving his skills and pushing water to its limits than fraternizing with a bunch of sheep.

Sheep led by Freyja, in particular. Generally speaking, it takes a lot to break the icy, silent Zane. When Freyja so much as sneezes, his irritation spikes to incredible heights and he becomes more akin to a turbulent sea than a glacier. He would do almost anything to get out of her presence. Of course, he has rigid morals, and he wouldn't use his watery advantages to go so far as to kill her, but if a trip of hers to the infirmary will get him out of future sparring matches, he'll happily play dirty.

Henriik Delamater | Air | Edward, Freyja, Zane, Sala

Henriik entered the scene at a quarter to eleven, far later than he had intended. Warmly-hued lights flickered in rhythmic movements with the heavy bass that seemed to be shaking the ancient wooden boathouse. It had been there since the beginning of time, or so it felt. For as long as he’d lived there–his entire life–Henriik had been entranced by the building, and how it always and never seemed to age. Probably some kind of magic spell, and probably not even one with any kind of valid reasoning behind it. He’d always thought the spell was cast by some drunk academicians from years prior who were worried about the floor caving in and dumping all of the fire elements in the lake it sat on. That would explain why they had done such a sloppy job–the boathouse itself was sturdy for its age, and held an air of consistency–however, the docks were decaying all around, and nobody seemed able to restore them through magic or mortal means. Either that, or the school’s administration just didn’t give a damn. That sounded just as likely.

Speaking of drunk academicians, Henriik was hardly surprised to enter the scene to find at least a hundred of them bouncing around the boathouse to the heavy, piercing music. He was handed a cup of a purple liquid immediately, some kind of elixir someone had concocted no doubt. He wasn’t sure exactly what it did, and he wasn’t sure he wanted to find out. Unlike the majority of the people here, he felt the aching pressure of always needing to be in control. One wrong move, and his father would have him banished to the westlands beyond the mountains where darker and stronger magic would destroy him before he even had a chance to breathe the air of freedom. Nowhere was safe, really, and it had been that way for hundreds of years. The only place no one had come for yet was the academy, the key word being yet. Henriik had a hunch something stronger was at play–why else would the darker powers of this realm allow the continual training of some of the strongest individuals in the realm? He knew too much to fall into the facade of safety that the administration put up, but not nearly enough to take them down. Things were getting worse by the day, and he felt like he was the only one being suffocated by this knowledge. He’d mentioned it to his girlfriend on countless occasions, and she didn’t seem to care. She never seemed to care about anything, other than out-performing and otherwise showing up her rival, Zane. It consumed her day and night. And, unsurprisingly, when he entered the busy room, he found the pair of them right in the center of all the action, trying to out-drink each other at two kegs beside each other. The crowd circled around them, cheering as they stared each other down, dangerous glints in each pair of eyes.

“Time out,” Freyja said, slurring her words as if she’d been at the keg for hours. She would die before she would let the water element win anything. Again, she was consumed by the idea of being better than him. It was even annoying to Henriik at times, his endless patience and all. Still, he stayed by her side. It wasn’t even really for love, it was for her safety. He had the weight of the world on his shoulders, and she didn’t even know a fraction of it. Sometimes he felt like the only person in the world.

She came up and wrapped her arms around his neck, clinging to his frame and kissing him sloppily. He tensed, but played along. This was every day for them. He wasn’t surprised when instead of meeting his eyes, her gaze trailed back through the crowd to Zane, a mischievous twinkle in her eye. Even her relationship with him was a way to prove something to him. He wondered if the man even cared, he seemed more than comfortable with his casual hookups and the hundreds of girls at the academy who met him with scorn for breaking their hearts in one way or another. Surely he did care, considering the fact that he cared just as much about showing Freyja up as she did him. Not long after, he’d pulled a girl with platinum blonde hair out of the crowd and started making out with her. She seemed confused, and a little more drunk than she was able to handle. Definitely one of the new kids. Probably a scholarship kid, by the looks of the way she was handling her alcohol.

“Stop,” Henriik sighed, “you’re so drunk you can’t even stand.” He said it softly, putting on a charming smile for the crowd. They wouldn’t remember any of this tomorrow anyway, but he had a reputation to keep up. He had an image he needed to preserve, and that involved being madly in love with the most popular girl at the school. They were the couple everyone wanted to be, and even if they weren’t, he didn’t have a choice. He felt like he couldn’t breathe. The pressure and the anxiety of everything that was going on in the background was choking him. He couldn’t handle any of this, not even one breath at a time. The walls were slowly caving in around him. “Where’s Arah, have you seen her?”

“Not recently,” she slurred again, sloshing liquid around in a cup he didn’t remember seeing her acquire. “Don’t be such a buzzkill, love. You’re killing the vibe.”

“I’ll be back. You’re sure you haven’t seen her?”

“No. You don’t trust me?” Her eyes got dark, and for a brief second, the tips of her fingers began to flame. They danced in her eyes, which were a million miles away from here. She seemed to snap out of it quickly, and coldly brushed past him back to the party. He heard her demanding that Zane stop making out with the new girl, and get back to their drinking competition. He never felt more lonely than he did seeing the two of them together, and the worst part was that neither one of them seemed to realize it.

Making his way around the party, he asked a few people if they’d seen Arah. At the end of last semester, she’d been involved in something with the administration that he feared would cost her greatly. They never addressed it, which made him believe more sinister actions would be taken in the following weeks. Like Freyja, he felt the need to protect her. Combined with Zane, the four of them were the only ones who’d been at the school for more than a few years. They were the only ones who hadn’t been cast off by the administration for one menial reason or another. It seemed like every year the tension between the administration and the four of them grew stronger, or maybe he was the only one who noticed.

“Edward, have you seen Arah?” The loner was outside on the dock, smoking a cigarette. His hair was ruffled in the breeze, and his eyes reflected the color of the moon and the tide. He barely looked up to see what Henriik was doing as he replied, taking a long drag as he did.

“Yeah, she went off with some girl about an hour ago. She was fine.” Then, with a knowing look upwards, he said, “I would be careful if I were you.” He didn’t need to explain himself. They both knew, and Henriik didn’t realize that Edward had any clue what was going on. However, he was the fifth and final individual who’d been allowed to stay. It had to count for something, and he was certainly not too proud to blackmail someone. Henriik didn’t trust Edward in the slightest, but he had to rely on him from time to time. Everything Edward did–every favor, every word he spoke, every piece of information he distributed–it all came with a price.

“So,” Edward continued, “you seen the new kids? The kid is killing my vibe here.” His Scottish accent was dripping with something. Maybe sarcasm, maybe cynicism, maybe something more. “There can’t be two of me in this hell hole.”

“I haven’t met him yet,” Henriik admitted, “but the girl is inside with Zane.”

“Making your girlfriend jealous?”

“Something like that.”

“Care to smoke?”

“Sure,” he sat down at the dock beside the man, studying his face intently to determine his motives. “What do you want from me?”

“Nothing,” he replied coolly, smirking. “Just this once.”

Freyja Eloquijm | Edward, Máxime, Zane, Sala

Unsurprisingly, Freyja was losing more and more control of herself as the night went on. She and Zane had definitely had the most to drink and the general consensus in the room was that the pair of them had to be drunk enough to fight or make out before they would actually interact with their words rather than their eyes and their manipulative uses of other men and women to illicit jealousy out of each other. She felt like she had been there for hours, yet she hadn’t actually said anything to him. She hadn’t seen him much over the last day or two and she would have been lying if she said she hadn’t wondered where he’d been and what he’d been up to. Normally she couldn’t stop seeing him around the school’s grounds regardless of whether she wanted to or not. Some part of her felt fear that maybe he’d become mature over the summer or he’d found someone else to compete with that wasn’t her. She’d never admit that the idea of him finding another rival made her feel threatened, though.

Finally, the end to a long truce came when the blonde crawled off his lap and stumbled across the room towards a dark, mysterious figure. They were both definitely new. Most of the students here were returning from last year and would likely be removed from the school before the year was over. That was how things worked around here.

In fact, she hoped that the annoying little blonde would go before her first year was over. She was definitely a scholarship kid, so Freyja knew the chances of that were slim. Maybe Zane would lose interest in her quickly, or she’d end up getting her precious little feelings hurt enough to leave him alone. She hated how much power he had over her. She hated the way her stomach churned when he paused their antics for a woman or the way it almost worked when he tried to make her jealous. She hated the way school always came easy to him and they got the same grades. She hated that she put her entire life into getting perfect scores on tests and he simply went in and guessed and came up with the same grades as her. Most of all, she hated him. She always had, and she would for the rest of her life. Her hatred for him consumed her. And she would have been lying if she said that his hatred for her didn’t seem to consume him too.

“Alright,” Edward’s deep, booming voice echoed across the room as he stepped towards the middle of the large crowd. He mainly kept to himself except for when he wanted to stir the pot or create a scenario for someone to owe him a favor. He had a reputation for doing both at these types of parties by putting himself in charge of the games. “Who’s next? I need two people.”

Immediately, he looked at Zane and beckoned for him to go out on the floor with him. “Who else?” One of the partygoers pushed Freyja out onto the floor before she could defend herself. Despite the fact that she loved attention, she despised being the life of the party at functions like this. She only did it when she was competing with Zane for something and was too stubborn to let him win. This was one of those times.

“What’s this stupid game, Edward?” Her speech was slurred and she appeared as though she was going to collapse at any moment. Zane wasn’t doing much better than her, but he always gave the illusion of being calm. He reminded her of water in a lot of ways, and not just because he wielded it so expertly. Maybe part of the reason was because, like water, she could sometimes see her reflection in him.

“Well, you see, it’s called ‘Kiss or Go Home.’ As the title may suggest-”

“I’d rather kiss you. Go to hell, Edward.”

Despite the fact that she tried to leave, the crowd blocked her in the center with the two men. Edward continued. “Either you can kiss each other and stay until the end of the party, or you can leave right now. The last two people to stay in the game win.”

Though she desperately wanted to beat him at something, Freyja was in no mood to stay at this event until the sun came up. They had an exam in the morning and she couldn’t show Zane up on no sleep. Still, she knew that the crowd wouldn’t just let her go. She didn’t mind demonstrating a bit of showmanship for the sake of keeping her image up.

“Fine,” she murmured, tracing her fingertips from his fingertips up his right palm, then all the way up his arm. She smirked arrogantly as she felt him shiver and tense up under her touch, her hand now wrapped loosely around his neck. She twisted a tuft of his curly blond hair in between her fingers, teasing him. “I didn’t know I affected you so much,” she whispered seductively, her thumb tracing the outline of his cheek. He seemed as if he’d sobered up significantly in the last few seconds, which only made her gloat more. She was surprised that this was working, if it even was. Maybe he just looked stunned because the only time they were usually this close to each other was when one of them was shoving the other up against a wall or another hard surface while describing just how much he or she hated the other. She wasn’t shy about allowing her eyes to wander up and down his tall frame, counting the miniscule freckles on his nose that she’d never noticed before or the little flecks of different blues in his irises. Finally, she landed at his lips, allowing her eyes to flicker up and down from there to his eyes and back. She’d forgotten about the crowd as she’d lost herself in the space between them.

Finally, she leaned forward gently, allowing her eyes to soften to a deep bluish-green color. She wondered if he’d ever seen them this color considering the fact that they were normally an enraged flaming orange when she stared through him. Surely this was the thing that made him trust her enough to close his eyes. She could feel his breath on her face. Gently, she whispered four words onto his lips, leaving them there. “Zane, I despise you.” Before he could react, she used the uncomfortable emotions she felt from having everyone’s eyes on her to deliver a flame to her hand, burning his neck. “Go to hell, both of you.” She turned on her heel as if to leave, pausing briefly to look her rival directly in the eye. “Welcome back, though. I must admit I forgot you existed. I was too busy with Henriik this summer doing other things.”

"So I should expect a maternity leave, then? Tell him thanks; that makes my life so much easier."

This was enough to make Freyja turn on her heel, disbelief and amusement tangible in her eyes. “Maternity leave? Jesus, Zane, did you pull that one out of a history book? Do better.”

Now, Freyja wasn’t entirely sure how exactly it was that people were created in the other realms. Having miraculously appeared as a child–among other stories that had gained some level of popularity over the years–it was never something that she remembered experiencing, or even talking about. No one at the academy really discussed how they had come into existence, perhaps because it varied from realm to realm. Despite her lack of knowledge, however, she was never one to miss an opportunity to be right or to slight Zane in a miniscule and uninformed manner.

Finding Henriik alone on the pier, Freyja summoned him to walk her back to the girls’ dorms, and he was feeling too low to refuse or fight back. Freyja was too stubborn to lose a fight anyway, and he didn’t feel like being berated by her on something completely unrelated to the argument would help his already low self-esteem. Therefore, they walked back together in a tense silence, barely saying so much as goodnight to each other.

“That didn’t sound good,” Arah mumbled, squinting her eyes as Freyja entered their room. Though she’d allegedly been at the party for a while, Freyja had always nagged her for having the bedtime of a grandmother and the alcohol tolerance of one too. If she’d been at the party, it wasn’t for very long judging by the sleep lines on the side of her face and the generally woozy demeanor she was exhibiting.

“Yeah, whatever. Fuck Henriik. How do people in your realm come into existence?”

“It’s quite odd, and a bit of a long story-”

“-Does it involve maternity leave?”

Arah studied the fire element’s expression with a sudden curiosity. Sure, she interrupted her all the time, but not typically to talk about something so obscure and eccentric. “No? Is this a weird Zane thing?”

Looking blatantly caught, Freyja tried to control her facial expression to make it appear less obvious. “...No? I mean, no. Of course not. Why would Zane and I be talking about maternity leave?”

“I think the better question is why you would be talking about it with Henriik, or anyone else other than him for that matter.”

“Well, whatever. How was your night?”

“Not as exciting as yours, I suppose.”

…

The next morning, Freyja woke up lethally hungover and much later than she had anticipated. As with everything else, she liked to flirt with fate and refused to use either magic or trinkets to alert her when it was time to wake up. Primarily, she was lucky to live with the realm’s lightest sleeper, who often woke up with the first ringing of the ancient, enchanted belltower at dawn. More often than not, hearing her wake up eventually alerted Freyja that it was time to be awake. And, if not, it was often the case that Arah’s anxiety would cause her to take responsibility for Freyja, and she would risk getting burned accidentally as she woke her up. Despite the fact that they hadn’t yet set the dorm on fire, it seemed likely that Arah hadn’t even tried to wake her up on this particular morning.

Though Freyja had never hurried once in her life, she did end up skipping a thing or two in her morning routine. For example, a shower, considering that there were no elixirs or capsules set aside for her on their kitchen table as there usually were. Clearly, either Arah was being held hostage, she was dead, or she had run late for the first time in her life. Freyja only briefly considered the first two, considering that the most likely scenario was that Zane had come by early in the morning with hopes of screwing Freyja over. Arah and Zane had maintained their friendship over the years, and it often served as one of Freyja’s most-frequented battlegrounds with him. He gathered a lot of information about Freyja through Arah, and likewise, primarily because the earth element was so awful at not cracking under pressure. She was almost positive that he knew her schedule and had decided to fuck with her as payback for the events of the night prior, not that she really cared to retrieve them from behind the groggy haze of her mind.

Eventually, she made it up to the auditorium. She was a few minutes late for the exam, but she was able to manipulate the professor into allowing her to take it anyway. It was only their history of elemental magic class, so it wasn’t as if she had to demonstrate a skill or something of that nature, which might have required more effort. And, despite the professor’s ability to look into their minds and determine how much knowledge they had retrieved, she had given them paper exams all semester long. Freyja assumed it was because she was an older woman, and trying to use magic on over two hundred students for one class would have been too exhausting for her. Either way, it made the process unbelievably easy for her.

With Freyja and Zane finishing the exam first and second, even with Freyja’s tardy arrival, the fire element took her opportunity to confront Zane about the actions of the morning. Even if she approached the blond with a dangerous sense of self-confidence that bordered arrogance, there was a small nagging feeling inside of her that feared what would happen if he hadn’t seen the young woman that morning. If she wasn’t with him, it was highly unlikely she had been anywhere else.

“Nice strategy this morning. Didn’t have the guts to face me in the exam, so you resorted to underhanded tactics and using your only friend as a pawn in the game. I guess courage wasn’t one of the things you had to learn for the exam, no?”