The walk to the classroom had been uneventful, perhaps even boring. This morning Pelumi had been occupied by something Melmarc did not know, all he’d known was that she would not be able to walk with him to class. As for Ark, his classmates had taken him away from Melmarc before they’d even reached the academic building. So, Melmarc had been forced to walk alone.
In the end, Melmarc had been forced to walk through the worried eyes, and some looks of sympathy. There were those who only looked at him funny because they wondered at or were confused by the eyes that others used to look at him—those who had no idea who he was and why he was kind of famous.
But Melmarc knew and those who looked at him knew. He was like being the new kid in a school you transferred to. This was the feeling he had expected to get after jumping off a plane at the beginning of the semester. Apparently, jumping off a plane was not as huge a deal as surviving a portal.
In their defense, you were sucked into the portal, he told himself, now standing at the entrance to the classroom. Nobody’s been sucked into a portal before.
Melmarc’s classroom was full this morning, fuller than usual. And considering his classmates weren’t known to skip classes, the increased number had to do with the new students that Pelumi and Patience had told him about. The morning sunlight streamed through the windows, illuminating the rows of desks. Melmarc had noticed long ago how different the desks at Fallen High were from those back home. It wasn’t in the making or the craftsmanship but in the absence of markings and carvings. They bore no sign of the students that had used them before him. He had always wondered if the school changed the desks or if the students before them had always just been disciplined.
The sight of Norbert scraping at his desk at one far end of the classroom had Melmarc believing that the school changed the desks. It was difficult to believe that for how long the school had been in business his class would be the first with a problem.
Conversations littered the air as he walked into the classroom. Students gathered in groups, leaving some desks empty and devoid of their chairs and others over engaged until some students had to sit behind others just to be a part of the conversation. It was the gentle chaos one could expect from his peers, talking, laughing, arguing and comparing what Melmarc significantly doubted were notes—there were classmates who were smart but he knew of none so smart that they liked to compare notes.
Is there an assignment we’re supposed to submit today? he wondered as he made his way through the through the desks and towards his seat, ignoring the occasional glances he was getting. The only notes people compared were assignments, and it usually involved someone correcting theirs or simply copying another’s.
Ultimately, he could not recall any assignment that was due today from the update Pelumi had given him as he sat down.
Three girls near the front were playing a game of illusions from what Melmarc could see, creating tiny butterflies made of pink and grey light. They fluttered above the girls’ palms, dancing around each other. Melmarc watched the mana particles bounce around them, moving from one girl to the next, connecting them to the butterflies. It took him only a moment to realize that only two out of the three girls were controlling the butterflies. The third was just enjoying the show and maybe the feel of the butterflies on her palm. Two boys not far behind Melmarc were talking about the school updating its familiar policy and what familiars were supposed to be allowed into the classroom.
“I don’t see why they can’t allow any familiar in,” one of them named Harden said. “It’s not like we’re scared of anything.”
“It’s not like you are scared of anything,” the other, Buddie, said. “Imagine someone bringing a lion to class, brev. It would be chaos.”
“Nah,” Harden laughed. “Not possible. Dude, we’ve got big dogs in the class. You think Patience would be scared of a lion? Or Melma—”
Melmarc sighed inwardly at the abrupt termination of the boy’s sentence. It seemed he had just now noticed his presence. Melmarc could feel a touch of fear wash over him now. He didn’t need any specialty in his aspects to know that the fear came from both boys. The question now was if the fear was some sort of guilt or if they were quite literally afraid of him.
You survived a portal with some wicked injuries, Melmarc reminded himself, thoughts sarcastic. You’re wicked.
In the end, he kept his discomfort to himself and reached into his bag for his books. He brought out the book he made notes on the biology of portal monsters in and set it carefully on his desk. If he was not mistaken that was the first class of the day.
Apart from the occasional glances that he was beginning to get, it was ultimately a normal morning. None of his classmates approached him yet, not the new and neither the old. Whether it was because he had not wanted to be visited in the hospital or not was anyone’s guess. As for him, he was happy for the peace. The eyes were preferable to having to talk about it. Talking about it would leave him with a lot of dissonance to deal with because he would have to lie, and he knew he would be lied to.
One of his classmates looked back and waved at him. Melmarc waved back awkwardly. She was a classmate he did not recognize. Her head was without a strand of her, scraped almost to perfection and her blue eyes looked as if she knew something mischievous that she wasn’t going to tell anyone.
She saw his awkward smile and tried to make up for it with more than enough enthusiasm. Melmarc tried his best not to frown. Frowning was rude, and Ninra had always told him that just because a person did not mean to be rude, it did not mean that their actions, even if innocent, were not rude.
He tried for a smile and failed. The girl was not dissuaded, she seemed to have more than enough smiles for the both of them. Eventually, Melmarc lowered his hand and turned his attention to his book, not because there was anything there but because there was nothing interesting.
Pelumi arrived in class walking with Patience and Martha. Their friendship, it seemed, also existed in the classroom. They cut it so close that their first class began not up to five minutes after their arrival, leaving Melmarc with no time to talk with Pelumi. Their only exchange was a smile and a wave. Brief and boring, but it was what it was.
The teacher took a moment while the class settled into silence. She glanced around, taking in the students. Melmarc noticed she was not the teacher for biology of portal monsters.
Her eyes panned for a moment longer before finally resting on Melmarc. Melmarc saw it coming before it even happened.
“Mr. Lockwood,” the woman said, her brunette hair held back in a gentle ponytail. “It’s good to have you back with us. I believe this is my first class with you.”
Melmarc nodded. “Yes, ma’am.”
“And I believe you must be wondering what happened to the teacher you know.”
Melmarc looked around without turning his head. Some people looked down and away, others looked sad, some looked unbothered. He noticed the children that were unbothered were the new students.
“Yes, ma’am,” he replied.
“Well, due to the unfortunate event with the portals a while ago, I am sad to inform you of the passing of your last lecturer.” She placed a solemn hand on her chest. “I am Ms. Francine and I have been teaching this subject for a few weeks. Since you are just resuming, I will grant you two weeks of grace to catch up with how far we’ve gone since your absence. Will two weeks be enough to get everything in order? I am very much aware that my class is not the only one you will have to catch up on.”
“I’m sure he’s got the brains for it since he’s got the bronze to survive a portal,” someone snickered.
The class went quiet, very quiet. The teacher shot the boy who’d spoken a scathing glance.
“Sanders!” she scolded. “That is a very unbecoming thing to say.”
“I mean no offense, miss,” the boy, Sanders, said. “I was merely commenting on his assumed ability to stay alive.”
“One more word out of you and it’s detention!” Ms. Francine barked, anger in her eyes.
“My apologies, ma’am.” Sanders made a zipping motion over his mouth and said nothing more.
Interestingly enough, even though he was sitting at the front and Melmarc could only see the back of his head covered in hair the color of beach sand, he could tell that the boy was smiling.
Ms. Francine took a moment before she returned her attention to Melmarc.
<> Veebee’s voice echoed in his head. Out to survey, Melmarc had restricted Veebee to only the student residential area and, while he didn’t know if it was something that Veebee was capable of or not, he insisted that it not break into anyone’s room.
Not dissatisfaction, he answered, honestly, disappointment.
“I am truly sorry about that Mr. Lockwood,” Ms. Francine apologized. “He is usually better behaved.”
No one said anything. Melmarc tilted his head to the side at the woman’s response. It was not her words that worried him but the absence of dissonance in them. Her statement definitely did not agree with the things Patience and Pelumi had said about Sanders.
“Dogs bark and humans talk, ma’am,” he said simply. “There is no reason for an apology from the teacher.”
The class remained silent, and Melmarc understood why.
He had meant for the words to come out as calm and unoffended, but they had come out as bored, as if he had no expectations of Sanders, as if the boy had met his expectations and still somehow managed to disappoint them.
But he couldn’t help it. Realizing that he might have to deal with an uncivilized human was… tiring. He would go as far as to say that it felt beneath him. An uncivilized Oath had stood against him, and he had walked out of the fight alive and the Oath was not. His gaze moved over to Sanders. He could feel the anger emanating from the boy. It disappointed him more. A bully who could dish it out but not take it was the lowest kind of bully; they were the boring kind.
The sigh left Melmarc’s lips before he could stop himself. Even the mana particles he could see slowly beginning to glow around Sanders didn’t bother him. What bothered him was what would happen if Sanders made a move. He pinched the bridge of his nose with thumb and forefinger. With everything he had to deal with, this was going to be a waste of his time.
“As I was saying,” Ms. Francine began, only to be interrupted.
Sanders shot up from his seat aggressively but did not move. He just stood there, fuming, shoulders heaving like an infant about to throw a tantrum.
Melmarc paused at the thought, suddenly confused by himself.
Do I hate him? he wondered, genuinely confused.
A few words from Pelumi and Patience, and he’d already written the boy off? It didn’t sound like him at all. Melmarc’s gaze moved around the classroom. Ms. Francine was focused on Sanders and the mana particles around her seemed to be coming alive too. In a class filled with Gifted students, it was no surprise that a teacher assumed that stopping a troublesome child would require the use of skills.
But Melmarc wasn’t paying attention to them. He was paying attention to everyone else. He hadn’t seen his classmates in a long while. Both the new and old. Now he watched them and seemed to see them in a new light.
He frowned at the single thought that came to mind, for it was condescending and not befitting of someone to think in regards to another.
Weak.
They were, all of them weak. He could feel it, sense it even. They were looking at him and Sanders in fear and confusion. They feared Sanders.
“Sit back down,” Ms. Francine said.
Sanders did not obey. His head turned slightly to the side so that he could look at her. “He likened me to a dog.”
Melmarc finally ignored his classmates and returned his attention to Sanders. The boy was awfully disrespectful of their teacher. It was a curious thing because Fallen High was known to show no favoritism. It did not matter who a child called their parent, they were all students within its walls and were all treated as such.
So where does he get his balls?
The thought startled Melmarc. What was wrong with him? why was he so condescending when it came to Sanders? Why was he so arrogant, so…
Prideful.
“Sit down,” Melmarc muttered.
Sanders turned, his head snapping back with so much force it was a surprise he didn’t give himself whiplash. “What did you just say?”
Melmarc met his gaze, opened his mouth to repeat himself, then closed it. His brows furrowed instead as he watched purple particles of mana come alive. Perhaps it was time for him to learn what each color of mana particle was supposed to mean. What did what stand for? If he could figure it out, he could more easily figure his opponent’s attacks out.
And you still do not fear him, he realized. Even in the absence of knowledge. Even when he did not know what exactly the boy was trying to do.
Ms. Francine sighed in exasperation, clearly tired of what was happening.
“I hate it when children do not think,” she muttered, then walked up to Sanders and placed a hand on his shoulder. “[Mage] or not, when your teacher tells you to sit, then you sit.”
“I do not—ow!” Sanders barked in pain, his body almost folding in on itself as Ms. Francine’s grip tightened, forcing him back down into his chair.
Once he was seated, she fixed him with her gaze. “I do not know how you handle your other teachers, but I will not be disobeyed so blatantly in my class. Act up again and the next one will be your neck. Am I understood?”
Mana particles flared from somewhere concealed. Melmarc’s gaze followed them and landed on the boy’s hands. His fingers were moving as if drawing in the air. Melmarc knew two people that affected mana in that way. The first was aunt Deoti and the second was Uncle Dorthna. And both only did it when they were casting spells.
Somehow, discovering what exactly purple meant was beginning to feel far more important than he’d thought.
He watched and waited as the mana particles moved, growing slowly, moving from the boy’s hand. They sailed upwards, reaching, attacking. But attacking what?
“Am I understood?” Ms. Francine asked him.
Sanders nodded very reluctantly and she released him. The moment she released him, the mana particles deemed, dissipating where they had once convened to work in tandem.
Ms. Francine spared him a brief glance once she was done with Sanders. Melmarc did his best to keep an innocent expression. For all he knew, he probably looked the way he felt; tired of everything, even if a little curious as to what purple mana particles meant.
The rest of the class went as was to be expected. There was silence and Ms. Francine taught. She taught only of new monsters, monsters that he had not been taught about this semester. She taught of how a significant number of discovered monsters known to the public actually had two to three organs that worked together to give them access to mana.
Apparently, monsters didn’t simply channel mana through their interfaces like human beings did. It was intriguing to Melmarc because something told him that Uncle Dorthna did not channel mana through his interface. There was simply something omniscient about his uncle, something that implied that he had no need for the interface.
Regardless, Melmarc found the class interesting. He learned new things and found most of them to be fun. He also learnt that the reason he was learning about completely new monsters was because the monsters being taught to them now where monsters known to be current inhabitants of Earth.
In his time being bedridden, there had been Chaos Runs form the appearance of portals that had not been significantly dealt with. The result was a large number of monsters released into the world. The school thought it smarter to teach the children first of the monsters they could accidentally run into before teaching them about the monsters that they would have to go into the portals to find.
When the class ended, they had another. This time Melmarc recognized the teacher and the class was relatively familiar. As the classes passed by, they all held one thing in common; the teachers always started the lessons by welcoming him back then giving him a grace period that fell between two weeks to a month. Then, to top it all off, they asked him no questions. Fearing that they would reply his answers with nothing but politeness, Melmarc offered to answer none of the questions posed to the class.
Every now and again, Veebee popped into his mind, commenting on one human thing or the other. If it wasn’t the texture of the walls, it was the smell of feces it had seen somewhere. On more than one occasion, Melmarc wondered where Veebee was seeing excrement. Each time he wondered, Veebee assured him that he had broken into no apartments.
When the last bell rang, Melmarc turned and reached for his school bag. His hand had barely wrapped itself around the strap of the bag when he sensed someone beside him. Without turning, he knew that it was not Pelumi. Even now, he could feel her presence, his mind waiting to hear what she had to say more raptly than it did for the other bearers of the [Invoker] class present.
Moving as if there was no one present, he picked his bag and stood up, throwing the strap over his shoulder.
“You really think you can walk away?” Sanders asked with a cocky grin from beside him.
Melmarc turned and saw him standing with three other boys. Two of the three boys were new, and Melmarc didn’t recognize them from anywhere.
He took all three boys in. Shorter than him, they felt like far less than a threat. It remained funny to know that he had experienced the portals, [Damned], Caldath the Demi-god and an Oath that had killed his [August Intruder] just to return to the mundane civility of short bullies.
Melmarc blinked. Short bullies?
He had never been one to mock a person’s height. If anything, for a brief period of time in his life, he had been a little ashamed of his height, being so tall among his peers who all shared similar heights that were below his. He was the last person to every look down on a person’s height. Sometimes he even felt that his complete ignorance of Delano’s height was one of the things that made Delano befriend him.
“Move,” he told all four boys. “I have places to be.”
“You come out of a portal alive and suddenly you think you’re all that?” one of the boy’s asked.
Melmarc did not know his name, but his eyes moved over to the boy all the same. The moment his eyes settled on him, something shifted in the boy’s expression and a new emotion arose from him. The fear was so thick that Melmarc could taste it if he tried. Out of the group of four, one seemed spectacularly afraid of him.
I probably don’t have to worry about him if we get into a fight.
Sanders stepped up to him, head tilted up, neck exposed, and very defiant. “You’re big for nothing, aren’t you?” he said.
Melmarc shrugged one shoulder. “I’ve been told that a few times. Humans talk.”
“And dogs bark, don’t they?” Sanders scowled.
“And snakes hiss.” Melmarc shrugged again. “Every animal makes a sound. Now move.”
“Or what?”
Melmarc looked into the boy’s eyes. “Or I’ll help you find out what other sound a human can make.”
Sanders stepped up to him, Melmarc watched purple mana flare once more, coming from the boy’s hand in his pocket, only for the boy to stop at Patience’s words.
“That’s enough, Sanders.” She sounded tired, as if she was watching a boring movie she had already seen ten times before. “He’s not fully healthy and getting into a problem with him with get you in trouble and him going on to keep living his life. I thought you knew how to pick your victims better.”
Sanders paused to look at her. He grinned after a while, it was a creepy thing, the kind of grin you’d see in a movie on maybe a possessed child.
“Now, why would you think I’m looking for victims, my dear patience?” he said with a slick voice like the scale of a snake. “I’m merely making a new friend.”
Even as the boy talked, Melmarc was very much aware that the purple mana particles had formed together and were rising up from his hidden hand. Whatever spell he was casting, he was still casting it while engaged in a conversation with Patience. For someone new to being a [Mage], Melmarc found it a little impressive.
“Pick a new friend,” Patience snapped.
“Why?” Sanders returned. “Do you like this one? Are you trying to hoard him?”
Pelumi was already approaching from where she was. Martha was heading over, too. Some of their classmates had already begun leaving the class but some stayed to see what was happening, to know how it would all end.
Melmarc found everything mundane and boring. Beneath him. His mind focused not on the boys in front of him or the conversation happening between Patience and Sanders but on why he found everyone so boring right now, on why he could no longer see them as equals.
When an answer came to him, it was not the answer to the question he was asking. It was the answer to something else.
Melmarc’s eyes hardened, focusing on Sanders and the audacity of him to break rules he, himself, had not even considered breaking as the purple mana particles finally began to take effect.
His interface popped up right in front of him.
[Sanders Vult would like access to you mind.]
[Grant access.]
[Y/N?]