The professor crossed the room in a few long strides and stopped directly in front of Hermes, close enough to be uncomfortable. He was smiling. Not the thin controlled expression of someone acknowledging a correct answer — a wide, genuine, slightly unhinged smile that had no business on the face of a man who had spent the previous hour making the entire class afraid to breathe.
It gave Hermes the creeps.
"In my fifty three years of life," the professor said, with the fervour of someone delivering a revelation, "I have never once seen raw potential like this. Never. A beautiful unpolished gem." His eyes were slightly too bright. "And I get to polish it."
From every direction Hermes could feel the envious gazes of his classmates burning into him like small concentrated fires. He resisted the urge to lean away from the professor.
"We cannot waste this!" The professor straightened abruptly. "Mr. Gaemond — the water rune. Do you know it?"
"I… yes sir. I memorised all the runes in the dictionary."
The smile somehow widened.
"Magnificent. Absolutely magnificent." He was definitely borderline shouting now. "Can you do the same thing again — water rune paired with the journey rune? Move a water ball across the room?"
Around them the class exchanged uncertain looks. None of them had ever seen the professor like this. Frankly neither had Hermes and he had only known the man for approximately one lesson.
"I can try," Hermes said carefully.
"Excellent! Excellent!"
Should I try to score brownie points?
Hermes considered it while the professor vibrated with barely contained enthusiasm beside him. A good relationship with the runes professor could be genuinely useful — another resource, another potential lever.
He already had a good relationship with Professor Abano, though Oculus Sapientiae had confirmed she was entirely mundane, which made her considerably less useful in a crisis than her confidence suggested.
The runes professor, on the other hand, had just written two runes in midair with his fingertip and launched a fireball across a classroom without breaking a sweat.
Yes, Hermes decided. Brownie points.
He retrieved his clay tablet, flipped it to the blank side, and began carving. Water rune first, then journey rune alongside it. When he was done he set it on the floor, knelt beside it, and placed his palm against the water rune.
He visualised water. Not flow, not ebb — water itself, gathered and shaped, a sphere of it suspended in space. He held the image clearly and poured soul essence into the carved lines.
A water ball materialised above his hand, perfectly round, trembling very slightly in the way that water does when it has no business being a sphere.
The room erupted.
Gasps first, then murmuring, then the rapid escalating noise of thirty students all deciding to say something at once.
"QUIET."
The professor did not raise his voice so much as weaponise it. The room went silent so quickly several students visibly flinched.
Hermes, undistracted, moved his hand to the journey rune. He fixed the path in his mind — straight across the room, clean arc, controlled — and poured in the soul essence with his intent locked firmly in place.
The water ball moved.
It followed the trajectory exactly, gliding through the air with an almost dignified smoothness, and when it reached its destination it simply burst — a clean wet explosion that left a dark patch spreading across the stone floor and a few students in the front row blinking water out of their eyes.
"Haaannh~"
Hermes turned.
The professor had sunk to his knees. He was on all fours on the classroom floor, head bowed, muttering something under his breath. It took Hermes a moment to make out the words.
First try. First try. First try.
What the—
Hermes stared at him.
Did he just— was that— did this man just have an orgasm over a water ball?
I should not have tried to score brownie points.
He stood very still, caught between the desire to say something and the complete absence of any idea what that something might be. Around him the class had achieved a new quality of silence — not the focused silence of concentration or the shocked silence of surprise, but the deeply uncomfortable silence of thirty people collectively deciding not to acknowledge what they had just witnessed.
The professor remained on the floor for a few more seconds. Then, with careful deliberateness collected himself and perhaps realising how he had lost composure regained his dignity, he restored his expression to its usual stern economy. If he was aware of how completely he had just dismantled his own intimidating reputation he gave no indication of it whatsoever.
"Mr. Gaemond." His voice was back to normal.
"There is an hour remaining in this session. You are free to leave early and take the break if you wish. I will need to speak with the headmaster regarding your progression — I have no desire to waste your time with material that is clearly beneath you."
Hermes shifted uncomfortably.
"I appreciate that, sir. I think I'll stay."
The truth was simpler than gratitude. This classroom was the only place he had been given free access to magic, and he had absolutely no idea where to go without his friends to tail. Getting lost in the corridors again was not an experience he was eager to repeat.
"As you wish." The professor turned to address the rest of the class. "For anyone else who manages to successfully complete the spell — you are also free to leave early."
The class renewed its efforts with a motivation that had not been present before. Whether it was the prospect of an early break or the desire to prove something after watching Hermes succeed so effortlessly was difficult to say. Probably both.
The professor moved between the students, pausing here and there to correct a rune or redirect an intent, and the room settled back into its normal rhythm.
Hermes knelt beside his tablet and tried to feel satisfied.
But he was also going to die tomorrow.
A fist sized fireball that took him three minutes to prepare was not going to save him from thirty three monsters that had previously destroyed an entire castle full of wizards. The rune dictionary had nothing left to offer him. The second book either. He had wrung both of them dry in a single sitting and what he had gotten from them was genuinely impressive for a first day and completely useless for what was coming.
He looked at the two runes carved into his clay tablet.
Maybe I should just run.
The thought settled in his mind with an uncomfortable amount of weight.